A charming, homespun cosy game about exploring the joys of old-fashioned record shops and the importance of in-person socialising.

A fiercely imaginative puzzle solver that builds on all the best elements of Call Of The Sea to deliver a genuinely challenging, Lovecraftian-flavoured adventure.

The makers of Until Dawn unleash a new interactive sci-fi horror, whose polish and narrative twists are undermined by under-informed choices and an awful lot of walking about in dimly lit corridors.

Although compelling, it was originally priced at a rather sporty £24.99 on iOS, which many found off-putting. Its release on Apple Arcade also includes its DLC, making this an irresistible bargain and easily the best way to experience the game on the go.

A heartwarming adventure about growing up, packed full of imagination and 90s snark, but its main strength is the way in which it manages to expertly capture what it feels like to be a young, bored teen on the verge of adulthood.

A near future third person sci-fi adventure whose believable characters, expressive animation, and glorious icy backdrops are undermined by a linear story with too little variety in its interactions.

A fun and energetic fighting game that does its best to cater for both casual fans and fighting game veterans, although its roster has some strange priorities and the single-player content is very limited.

A genuinely different kind of team multiplayer game, with exactly the sort of thoughtful weirdness you’d expect from Double Fine.

A noir boomer shooter rich in style and atmosphere but limited by its unremarkable gunplay and flat writing, which fails to capitalise on its fun premise.

A more family friendly attempt to mimic the likes of Limbo and Inside but while the graphics are impressive the gameplay feels stolid and poorly paced.

Super Meat Boy in 3D seems to be an inherently flawed concept and while this does its best to make navigating the third dimension feasible, the end result feels frustratingly imprecise.

Whilst ultimately an underdeveloped entry, it does make for a loving send off for Max Caulfield. Unfortunately, being another weak entry, it may also play that role for the franchise itself.

With base building, monstrous sea beasts, and a slow progress from hapless crash survivor to king of the ocean depths, it has more or less the same cadence as the original Subnautica, which was also very good. It does feel slightly like a missed opportunity that this isn’t quite the sea change (pun, I’m afraid, intended) it could have been. Especially given how long the actual sequel is taking.

It’s a well-made game, but lacking in magic. The anodyne character design, lacklustre script, and battles that have challenge but little excitement, conspire to make it feel oddly pedestrian. Still, if you’re craving a decent sized role-player on your phone this certainly manages to tick all the right boxes, even if that’s all it does.

While point ‘n’ click adventures experienced their apogee in the 1990s, it’s still a genre that manages to generate new outings. Mystery Of Silence is one, telling the story of a journalist investigating a mysterious island monastery.

A bizarre mishmash of disparate gameplay elements, with absolutely no sense of coherent design or narrative… and yet its stunning game world is still a fascinating mess to explore.

A mostly successful remake that reimagines Fatal Frame 2 for the modern day, and while it can veer a little too much into action territory it’s still an impressively horrifying video game.

An impressively full-bodied Japanese role-player that’s good enough to attract non-Monster Hunter fans, with the Pokémon style collection process making up for the flaws in the storytelling and combat.

A missed opportunity for an exciting take on medieval history, that’s inferior to Kingdom Come: Deliverance in every respect.

A competent Left 4 Dead clone that seems to have gained little from the association with John Carpenter, but it is a sensibly priced diversion for those that want a new co-op shooter to play with friends.

An atmospheric and evocative action role-player whose rough edges and lacklustre combat are balanced by compelling world-building, beautiful environments, and a far reaching sense of consequence.

Like its predecessors, it’s incredibly lightweight, your choices set out so briefly you’re regularly left guessing about potential outcomes; a sense the game attempts to paper over by throwing so many of them at you. It’s occasionally amusing, but too insubstantial to be satisfying.

Rhythm action combat proves a fun way to get sweaty, assuming you like the style of music, but the extreme brevity is only slightly extended by online leaderboards.

A beautiful looking 2D side-scrolling puzzle game whose lack of challenge and regularly recycled mechanics prove disappointingly bland, with no significant improvements over the original.

Absorbing VR tower defence that improves on the original game in almost every department, but is let down by a pointless, tacked on narrative.

A very run of the mill Metroidvania that does little of interest with the God Of War setting and stumbles in terms of the dull combat and unengaging plot.

An accomplished and darkly witty first person puzzle game that’s predictably not as good as Portal, but does come surprisingly close at times.

The newly vertiginous sandbox levels prove an excellent canvas for sneaking and stealing, in a welcome new entry in what feels increasingly like the spiritual successor to Thief: The Dark Project.

An inventive sequel whose small improvements in gameplay can’t make up for tedious firefights and minigames, and a less witty script.

A darkly atmospheric horror puzzle game from the original developers of Little Nightmares, that’s undermined by dull puzzles and too much trial and error.

The incremental pace of progress and presence of numerous currencies are the remnants of its microtransaction-based original version, which is still available on Android, where its clean graphical style and slowly complicating interactions remain moderately entertaining.

An historically authentic military flight sim that rewards the hard work put into mastering its combat, although there was no need for it to be quite this inaccessible to non-propellerheads.

Almost as conflicted as Hamlet himself, this is both an amusingly whimsical graphic adventure and a frustrating, needlessly obscure chore.

A loving remake of a JRPG classic, with pitch perfect graphics and charming, if simplistic, storytelling and combat.

A flawed but brilliant mountaineering game that splices survival gameplay and a fascinating four-limb climbing system with exploration, risk-taking, and the emotional fallout from a climber’s loved ones.

A lo-fi 8-bit style twin-stick bullet hell shooter whose exhilaratingly weird music and catalogue of surreal weaponry is undermined by technical problems and a reliance on luck.

A genuinely funny Paper Mario style role-player, with entertaining puzzles and a welcome mockery of LinkedIn culture, let down by rhythm action battle mechanics that don’t quite work.

An extremely solid tag team fighting game that’s bound to become even more impressive over time, assuming it can sort out its launch performance problems.

A strikingly beautiful, sci-fi alternative to Hollow Knight: Silksong, but one which is consistently off the mark when it comes to the balance between difficulty and frustration.

An engaging mix of The Legend Of Zelda and Fez, which rearranges a number of familiar ideas into a clever action puzzler, even if its visuals are a bit too old school for its own good.

If you must play a video game version of Monopoly then this is definitely the best way to do it and far from the lazy cash-in that it could have been.

The mega evolutions and real-time battles continue to impress, but this expensive DLC is far too repetitive to be considered an essential purchase.

An excellent start for FIFA on the iPad, even if it does show every sign of first match nerves - with considerable room for improvement.

A distinguished iOS release that manages to replicate almost all the features of the home consoles originals, both good and bad.

An impressively daring horror experience that pushes the boundaries of what most people would expect from a video game, in terms of subject matter and imagery.

It’s certainly a better alternative to the mobile game that inspired it, but what few new ideas Octopath Traveler 0 has do little to give it its own identity and paint a worrying picture for the series’ future.

Almost exactly what fans didn’t want from a new Metroid Prime but while it is widely inconsistent the majority of the game is undeniably entertaining.

Some of the best 2D artwork ever seen in a video game, married to a spitefully difficult game whose main gameplay gimmick only manages to make it more frustrating to play.

An interesting and personal feeling set of first person histories that barely constitute a video game and yet wouldn’t really work in any other medium.

A time loop adventure with an interesting premise and characters, but a frustratingly rigid structure that fails to resolve most of the stories it sets up.

An awful campaign and a lack of innovation drag down the most content-stuffed Call Of Duty game to date, with an eye largely locked to past glories.

A raucous VR splatterfest that captures Deadpool’s brand of sardonic humour and gratuitous violence perfectly, with sky high production values largely making up for the overly simple combat.

A cute woodland survival game that looks like an illustrated children’s book but has a few too many rough edges to make full use of its charming setting.

Relying noticeably more on action, an automatic bullet time kicking in as you take aim with your silenced silver baller pistols, its colourful good looks and globetrotting look good on touchscreen, although its profusion of buttons are only really suitable for iPad. As ever with games that feature occasional frenzied action, a controller is your best bet. Its Achilles’ heel though, is that it doesn’t permanently save checkpoint data, so if you have to close the app and reopen it, you’ll need to restart the whole chapter from scratch, an egregious oversight for a mobile port with such long and involved missions.

Excellent remakes of two of the most important games in JRPG history, with pitch perfect presentation and a substantial charm, despite the inherent simplicity.

A polished and charmingly drawn action role-player, whose straightforward battles, simple puzzles, and elementary but prolific dialogue will appeal to children more than it will seasoned players.

Yet another entirely unnecessary sequel to a classic game that should never have got any follow-ups at all. But if you want even more of the same old thing there are few small sparks of imagination here and there.

A parkour and puzzle game that is not quite as action-packed as its marketing suggests but still represents a superior VR experience, that wouldn’t be nearly as captivating on a flat screen.

A nostalgia trip with a distinctly British flavour, that blends various brands of platform gaming with references to 1980s games, films, and TV shows – and despite some frustrations keeps it accessible for every age of gamer.

A laudable achievement in terms of visual design and general ambience but the complete lack of challenge, and short length, reduces its overall impact.

It’s still as embarrassingly low-tech as ever but this is easily the best of the 3D games, with a surprising amount of ambition and invention, not to mention real-time combat that actually works.

A very peculiar platformer, whose wonky mechanics never fully deliver on the fever dream promise of its ambience, but at least it plays better on more modern formats.

A refined but unadventurous restart for the Battlefield series, which returns to the thrilling spectacle of the classic entries, even if it doesn’t do very much that is new.

The new developer perfectly recreates the art direction and atmosphere of the originals, but there’s a lack of innovation and variety in this otherwise enjoyable quasi-horror sequel.

A multiplayer driven dungeon crawler with flashes of comical entertainment, but which neither excels as a party game or as a captivating solo grind.

A decently tweaked iteration of EA’s domineering football sim, but while the changes might not be seismic they are all positive.

One of the best-looking open world games ever but the formula is beginning to feel increasingly outdated, despite the cool visuals, fun samurai gear, and surprisingly good plot.

A beautiful, meditative Lego-based puzzle game for two, that emphasises playful fun over challenge, although to such a degree that it’s all over a bit too soon.

The Beast still feels like an extended piece of DLC, which while entertaining in itself lacks any new innovations and has an unwelcome clutch of bugs.

A relatively entertaining new mode and a mostly empty new island result in one of the most overpriced releases Nintendo has ever produced.

A fun, extra slice of Indiana Jones’ familiar brawling, puzzling, and tomb raiding that sits comfortably inside the Raiders canon without adding anything distinctive of its own.

After a few dozen rounds the jaunty but unremittingly insistent music is enough to trigger homicidal rage, but once that’s switched off it’s a breeze, to the extent that our first non-three-star performance was the boss fight on stage 30. If you like your challenges gentle or have a game-curious preschooler in the house, this might be just what you’re after.

While it’s perfectly playable as a freebie, its monetisation is aggressive, from the recharging energy required to play levels, to repeated entreaties to buy upgrade packs, even if underneath all the sales effort its gameplay remains mildly diverting, and its artwork sublime.

A ruthlessly hard parkour shooter, with impressive visuals, frantic firefights, and a truly punishing difficultly level.

A largely successful experiment in limiting the amount of onscreen help given for exploration and navigation, but the game it’s tied to is far less interesting and wastes some interesting story elements.

A remaster too far for a game that, through no fault of its own, is showing its age and is further encouraging the franchise’s reliance on nostalgia instead of innovation.

Remaking Metal Gear without its creator seems foolhardy but this is as good an effort as could be imagined, without completely redesigning the original game.

An unnecessary but well-made expansion for what remains Kirby’s best platform adventure, with plenty of neat new extras and a peculiarly difficult final boss.

A well made and fun 2D Metroidvania game that despite having a sprinkling of new ideas, looks, plays, and behaves like a clone of Dead Cells.

A delightful sojourn in bleakly beautiful landscapes, that has you steering a herd of giant yak-like beasts while gently wrestling with controls that aren’t afraid to embrace the organic waywardness of your charges.

A charming pixel art retail management sim with a surprisingly involved plot, whose well-structured gameplay keeps you engaged right up until the disappointingly abrupt ending.

A bafflingly under-designed multiplayer game that features some classic Nintendo innovation in terms of controls, but deeply unengaging presentation and zero longevity or variety.

The most cinematic entry in the series so far but no matter how good the visuals or acting are, the story is clichéd and predictable, and the gameplay feels like barely an afterthought.

A short, surreal roguelike puzzler that proves a video game doesn’t have to be 60 hours long or feature photorealistic graphics to be entertaining and thought-provoking.

A wearingly competent Soulslike that seems to have no interest in inventing anything of its own and which is nowhere near as refined as FromSoftware’s best games.

A competently made but disappointingly inferior follow-up to the excellent AI: The Somnium Files games, featuring mediocre puzzles and an uncharacteristically simple mystery for a game with Kotaro Uchikoshi’s name in the credits.

A thrillingly uncompromising racing simulator, that is easily the best endurance racer of the modern era, even if it’s got a way to go before it’s feature complete.

An inspired new point ‘n’ click adventure that proves impressively daring with its dark storytelling and retro style presentation.

Another loving homage to the glory of RoboCop and despite only being a standalone expansion this features quite a few new ideas, as well as some hugely satisfying combat.

A welcome new remaster of two of the PSP’s most iconic exclusives and while they’re as flawed as ever this is arguably the definitive version of the games.

If you love Persona, this supplies a new set of interesting characters and successfully translates the flair of Persona 5 into a portable format, although it also features cross-save functionality with the PC version.

A clever and hugely enjoyable online team game, even at this early stage in its career -although it feels more like a rival to Rocket League than EA Sports FC.

A disappointingly drab Tron tie-in that wastes some interesting ideas on dull and repetitive combat and an unequally unengaging story.

A thought provoking yet funny retro style adventure, that offers one of the most complex and versatile branching narratives in gaming.

A management game where you have to handle people as well as just spreadsheets, but while its sci-fi elements add intrigue the survival gameplay isn’t all it could be.

A surprisingly iterative sequel that’s nonetheless superior to its predecessor and despite some dull moment, and an incoherent narrative, this is still the best Metal Gear game in a decade.

The problem is that the strategy elements are shallow and underplayed and while the game is fun and interestingly weird, it really doesn’t add up to much. We were interested to see how the mouse controls work, but while they’re fine on a technical level they’re really not necessary, given how little of the map you can see at any one time.

There’s no question that this is a great game, but the problem is that this is not the ideal way to experience it. The frame rate is uneven and while this isn’t a straight action game there’s a constant sense that it’s only barely managing to work on the Switch 2. The occasionally blurry visuals are also less impressive than other launch ports and while some of that may be fixed with a patch, it’s clear this is a fairly compromised port.