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.

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.

Another excellent remake, in the vein of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, this retains the glorious character of the original games, while adding a coat of modern polish and a smattering of new content.

There’s such a huge range of combinations of brawlers, perks, attacks, status effects, and buffs that you’ll keep discovering new approaches to even after many hours of play. A genuinely deep and complex mobile strategy game, with pleasing handcrafted visuals.

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 meticulous and polished remaster of the classic sci-fi survival horror, which retains the original’s atmosphere and complexity while adding new mod cons, most of which enhance the experience.

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.

To a casual observer it looks almost identical to the PlayStation 5 version and while careful comparison shows it has less effects and the resolution is clearly being upscaled, the important thing is that multiplayer matches are all 60fps. That’s a big achievement for a launch game, especially as it supports rollback netcode and cross-play. The latter is vitally important in terms of ensuring a steady supply of opponents and while Nintendo’s online infrastructure won’t be put to the test until there are more Switch 2 owners in the world, it seems to work fine right now.

It’s stacked full of options, including a story mode, the chance to play both games individually, and the all-important crossover mode. This mixes the rules from both games and since they’re similar enough it works pretty well, as your screen becomes filled with tetriminos and… whatever Puyos are supposed to be.

As simplistic and shallow as it is, the game is still as much fun as ever, with this version also adding a time attack mode and allowing for rewinds and VRR support.

It’s not the plot that’s important in Deltarune but the bizarre range of characters and the surreal situations you find yourself in. Although at the heart of it all is a very pacifist ideology, that celebrates the power of love and the need for empathy without ever seeming mawkish or patronising. And while also paying homage to old school Japanese role-players and having a cracking soundtrack.

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.

The Switch 1 version of Sonic X Shadow Generations is undeniably the worst one, if only for its locked frame rate of 30fps. Fortunately, the Switch 2 version is a solid revision that’s almost on par with the PlayStation 5 version.

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.