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.

Gearbox’s venerable looter shooter has finally developed a modicum of maturity, with improved gunplay, a proper open world, and some half-decent storytelling.

A beautifully executed and immaculately polished continuation of Hollow Knight’s Metroidvania artistry, with a similarly lugubrious art style and occasionally rage-inducing difficulty.

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.

Released in 2019, Wargroove is what can politely be called a homage, and less politely a blatant copy, of Advance Wars. It borrows its cartoon styling, turn-based tactical gameplay, and at least some of its sense of balance between units. Just swapping a semi-real world setting for a Tolkien-esque fantasy world. Its sequel doesn’t for one moment try and reinvent the wheel, instead providing a massive additional dose of the same thing. This time its campaign is split into three sizeable parts, each of which focuses on a different faction, with its own units and variations in terrain. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s the roguelike Conquest Mode, and a souped-up map creator. It’s a huge game, and just as polished and entertaining as its predecessor.

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.

Fortunately, it’s great fun anyway and avoids some of the frankly exhausting grind of Destiny 2. It’s constantly tempting to drop real cash, but even without giving in to that, there’s lots to explore and do, and a hefty chunk of plot to get your teeth into.

After the career high of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team return to their usual routine, with a Frankenstein’s monster of other people’s ideas – all of which are expressed better elsewhere.

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.