A lovely looking origami-themed 3D platformer that’s let down by dull combat and pedestrian puzzle design, and then positively ruined by its use of fixed camera angles.

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 successful relaunch of the Shinobi franchise that doesn’t attempt to do anything startlingly new but instead makes do with being a very well-constructed action adventure.

A glorious, symphonic, jet-powered hover sword exploration of desert landscapes, filled with secrets and infused with riotously colourful sea life and Tony Hawk style tricks.

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 loving tribute to Gradius and its spin-off series, with some of M2’s best archaeological work and an excellent retro sequel in Salamander 3.

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 fun restatement of the Ninja Gaiden 2D formula, that is just complex enough to engage both new and old fans, while being surprisingly accessible in terms of its difficulty level.

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 cosy hobbit-themed life simulator that can look pretty but is almost entirely made up of thinly veiled multi-part fetch quests and drab, under-developed minigames.

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.

The original game remains the best entry in the series but Jamboree TV on its own adds little of value and isn’t worth the upgrade.

A quirky and offbeat open world biking RPG that works nicely until races get more taxing, at which point its mechanical limitations make it frustrating to play

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.

Mixing Pac-Man with Metroid seems like an enjoyably strange idea at first, until you realise just how bland and unimaginative the end result is.

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.

An engrossing stealth action game, featuring incredible scenery and facial animation that shames many triple-A games, never mind other indie titles.

A triumphant return to centre court for Donkey Kong, with the best destruction effects in gaming and mountains of bizarre and wonderful ideas - and a surprising amount of jank when it comes to the camera.

A relaxing, minimalist and deceptively complex puzzle-style city builder, with surprisingly challenging gameplay if you decide to test yourself against its global leaderboards.