This is not the return to the series fans were hoping for. Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a slight experience with a story that feels poorly connected to the older classics. Elalith's actions undermine the decisions taken in previous games and, if that's not enough, the gameplay is very basic. It does have some interesting visual sections, but these also scale back the interactivity. As a result, it doesn't feel cohesive and strikes me more of a piece of merchandise than a game.

There may be fans of City Hunter, the manga comic, but we'd be surprised to find any fans of this game's original PC Engine version so this expensive port is hard to recommend, especially because of the game's awful level design.

There was enough about I Hate This Place to keep us engaged right to the very end, but the longer we played it, the more it annoyed us. It feels dated, confused and amateurish in everything it tries to do, and it's such a shame because you can tell there was heart and vision behind it. It just needed more time, talent or maybe both.

We gave The Perplexing Orb: Bounce N' Roll the benefit of the doubt when we reviewed it but this sequel isn't just similar, it's basically the exact same game. With all the same problems as before and even less of a lifespan. It's a bit of a rip-off and we just can't support it.

It's one thing having rogue-likes do the shooting for you but this brick-breaker has zero interactivity apart from letting you pick your perks. And while that can be the most addictive part of some of these sort of games, it's not really enough to carry a game by itself.

Ultimate Zombie Defense is a bad port of an average PC game and it gives you almost no incentive to keep playing it.

Whilst it tries to do something interesting with it's pro-trucker story, time on the road is filled with irritants. The behaviour of the other road users is erratic and obeying the laws of the road only seems shorten your driver's chances for survival. The long hauls only seem to showcase a large, bland map with very few points of actual interest. Truck Driver: The Dutch Connection is a something of a dull mess that doesn't quite stack up.

Cat God Ranch is an odd thing. We suspect the concept was solid when it came to the project brief but the execution leaves something to be desired. Mechanics aren’t well explained at all and you’re guaranteed to hit a solid difficulty wall after a while. Yes, the animals are all very jolly and vocal, but can’t carry this beyond the initial couple of hours. The problem is the game mechanics aren’t clear and bafflement is likely to be your default state rather than enjoyment. For now, avoid this.

The Order of the Snake Scale is a small and cheap effort that struggles to serve up mystery or tension. Whilst the music can be atmospheric, most areas are lifeless and combat is sparse. It's an adventure game but the steps you take to progress the story feel strangely disconnected. The tank controls lead to an awkward fumble and the first-person view, whilst making it easier to navigate, is an ugly thing to look at. It's playable but far from cohesive.

Fast and Furious Arcade Edition is a vacuous void of a game that while it might work well in an arcade environment, but is so sadly lacking in this home port. The AI rubberbanding is among the worst we’ve ever seen in our memory, if not ever, to the extent that no matter how well you drive, the opposition will be on you regardless. Don’t waste your time and money buying and playing this, instead pick up Burnout Paradise on the PSN store as you’ll get more from that for less money. Avoid this at all costs.

Inside ZOE Begone! there's a good idea but it doesn't really come together as a game and feels like it's a few patches away from being its best self.

Gore Doctor aims to be a creepy, psychological, gore-filled horror game but in the end feels cheap, clumsy and poorly-presented. It doesn't really get anything right.

Super Engine GT Turbo SPEC is just the minimum viable product of racing games. It adds nothing to the genre and misses all the modes, options and fun that you'd get from pretty much any other racing game. It's surprising just how uninspired this game is.

Hegzis feels like a struggle to play. Not because of any skill ceiling or puzzle challenge but just because it's so repetitive and uninteresting.

S. Prism Destroyer is a run-and-gun shooter with gameplay from the '80s, visuals from the '90s and not much else. There's some challenge here but not much in the way of inspiration.

This cheap and cheerful BMX game has a solid enough engine but there's no real game hanging off of it. A serious lack of content lets this one down.

Police Shootout is a mystery. We somehow enjoyed playing it despite it having poor graphics, terrible audio, laughable writing and clunky, flawed gameplay. It's by almost every measure a terrible game and yet we finished it multiple times. Unlike the playtesters.

Beyond the Ice Palace II is a throwback in the worst possible way. A sequel to a 1988 Amiga game that should never have been greenlit, not to mention the terrible job Storybird did with it. The checkpointing is miserly, the platforming uninspiring and the post-release patch that deleted our save and removed what little enthusiasm we had for the game were nails in the already rickety coffin. Bury and forget.

Build Lands could have worked as a relaxing building game but instead aggravates with fussy level designs and an interface that fights you every step of the way.

Eastasiasoft's Bomb Jack clone gets a sequel which doesn't really improve anything but does take the previously trivial difficulty level a little too far in the opposite direction. We're not really sure who this one is for because it certainly doesn't land for the Bomb Jack obsessives here.

Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator has potential, but in its current state, that’s all it is. The diagnostic system that underpins the game was broken by the day one patch and remains in a state where the game is effectively unplayable. The gameplay itself is a bit repetitive but no less so than the nine to five grind. We just hope a future patch resolves the issues, because as things stand, we can’t really recommend this.

We love auto-shooters when they are done well but Spellagis fails to deliver in any aspect.

Shieldwall feels very hollow. The idea of building an army sounds great but it's realised in very limited terms. Tactical options seem very light and the timed nature of each battle means you're following the same basic flow every match. As diverse as the map selection can be, you're still stuck capturing flags against AI that seems to, at the very least, not operate under the same cooldown restrictions. The lack of multiplayer really hampers any longevity this game might have. As it is, Shieldwall is a very slender product with little depth.

This just doesn't want to click for me. Skautfold: Into the Fray has some intricate pixel art but the combat is hampered by a small selection of guns and enemy variety. The shooting prioritises precision and I don't think the analogue sticks quite supply it. How you engage with combat rarely changed over my time with it and that results in something frustrating and a little tedious.

Visuals from 20 years ago meet gameplay from 40 years ago. Space Paradox: Noire isn't terrible but it's about as unexciting a shoot 'em up as we can remember reviewing.

We love twin-stick shooters and we love tower defense games. Unfortunately, Road Defense: Outsiders doesn't execute either aspect particularly well.

Ninpo Blast combines ninjas and shoot 'em ups to make a game that's oddly unexciting.

Graven is a console port stricken with a fatal save bug. For anyone wishing to persist, the remaining product is lacking in a few key areas. I love how the levels are designed with clever shortcuts but the encounters can begin to feel stale. The lack of new enemy types and a small selection of weapons really brings the mood down. Magic doesn't really feel special and can often operate like another key, rather than a tool for combat. There's a good atmosphere but the potential this game wants to invoke doesn't really come to fruition.

If you really like physics-based action puzzle games and are under medical orders to not get excited in any way, then Bouncy Chicken might serve a purpose but for everyone else, there's little to recommend about this tired budget effort.

I simply cannot trust Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, at present. For as tense as combat can feel, it can't match the fear of a game seconds from breaking. At the time of writing nobody has finished this game. My save is broken to the point where there are two levels I can't even finish due to scripting errors. If you have to check it out, PC seems to be where the support and community is. Out on Playstation consoles, it's toast.

Adding a story-driven mission structure to the humble auto-shooter is a pretty cool idea and infusing that with some Lovecraftian horror should produce a game that's better than this.

An amateurish Survivors-like that'll last you less than an hour and will provide you with pretty much no enjoyment at all.

South Park: Snow Day is a slight effort that feels somewhat underdeveloped. The combat has a chaotic feel to it without any real nuance or precision. The few missions that are here follow a familiar path and it misses some much needed variety. The random card drawing can deliver some variables but not enough for encounters to feel different. South Park's humour is here but it's in much smaller doses and simply can't carry what's a mediocre offering.

Turret Rampage might have worked better on something like a Nintendo Game and Watch back in the '80s but this level of simplicity, from both the gameplay and presentation, probably doesn't cut it in 2024.

For everything Hammerwatch II does well, there's a downside. In a series that is now a decade old, this is the worst game in it and it suffers from issues that the studio should have resolved long ago. Maybe it just isn't a good fit for consoles or maybe the developers technical skill doesn't match their ambition but whatever it is, we feel pretty let down by this one.

Gangs of Sherwood is a hollow effort that, despite the decent visuals, struggles to raise a compliment out of me. For a game so short, it runs out of variety quickly. The lock-on might be a struggle but combat is so without risk it barely matters. Perhaps a robust cast of characters could've saved it but even they overlap in abilities and movesets. I've played worse but those worse games have arguably had a lot more to say.

Stickman's Arena takes all of its inspiration from Brotato but fails to get close to its greatness in any facet.

Custom Mech Wars clearly shares some DNA with the EDF games but it fails to deliver on the promise. If you see it a lot cheaper, there's some fun in seeing what sort of mechs you can make but taking them into combat is such a flat, empty experience that in the end you'll wish they took the combat out and just made this a mech-designing sim.

Truckzilla - Monster Truck Mega Ramp Mania is a game of two halves, the campaign mode is passable but the ramp stages are an unmitigated disaster. Pop-up is very evident, the likes of which we’ve not seen since the original PlayStation. Oh and while there’s a slider for music volume, there’s no music. A bit of a mess all told.

We've got time for the devs behind this vertically-scrolling slice 'em up but they've been doing this three-colour retro bit for a while and it's not really working anymore. If you want two platinums in half an hour, this is for you but if you want a game with any real substance at all, this isn't it.

Diorama Dungeoncrawler definitely tries to do something different in its attempt to mine some nostalgia from its retro-themed presentation and gameplay and we do appreciate that. The problem is that there's a reason why games in the '80s and '90s didn't look or play like this and that's because it doesn't look nice and it's not much fun to play.

Die After Sunset mixes the rogue-like ideas of Risk of Rain 2 with the cheery, colourful presentation of Fortnite and it has a few decent ideas in there. Unfortunately, the game is hampered by poor design, unsatisfying gameplay and a feeling that whatever small audience it might gain, they'll likely be gone by sunset too.

Feeble Light is Panda Indie Studios' worst game by some margin and feels like a poor imitation of their other shoot 'em ups.

Super Jagger Bomb is a Bomb Jack clone where the classic gameplay does its best to shine through despite the visuals and controls letting the side down.

Casual Challenge Players' Club is a pool game with no AI, bad physics, poor presentation, almost non-existent campaign and, most unforgivably, it lacks any spin controls which is a move we didn't even see happen in the '80s when playing pool games on the Spectrum. This has to be the worst game in this genre.

Whilst I was hoping Arsonist Heaven to turn a corner, the limiting experience ultimately left me frustrated. Whilst I could eventually memorise and beat the standard stages, boss fights became more of a dice roll coupled with tests of execution that I simply wasn't up for. Initially, your movement seems capable enough but it soon becomes apparent how few your options are in combat. With a few tweaks, this could've been something serviceable. As it is, I can't say many good things about it. This feels rigid and lacking in ideas.

Thunderbolt Collection is an interesting curio for shoot 'em up collectors. There's definitely some value in owning two hard to get mid-'90s console shooters but the games weren't celebrated back then and that's for good reason: they're just not all that good. But as a package, you have to admire QuByte's efforts to bring these games to a new audience.

Aniquilation should be right up our alley. A twin-stick shooter on rotating planetoids? That's literally our jam. But Aniquilation manages to combine sub-par technical performance with gameplay that just isn't enjoyable. There's potential here but it's mostly wasted.

Ultra Mission is a top-down shooter that just doesn't offer anything. It's all well and good playing the 'retro' card but this game would have underwhelmed as much in 1982 as it does in 2022. You can't ignore forty years of innovation in this genre and claim it's a love letter to it.

Road of Death mixes twin-stick shooting with classic survival horror mechanics but none of it is done well enough. There's a degree of challenge that's mildly interesting for an hour or so but beyond that, the game just isn't any fun to play.

MX vs ATV Legends is a shambling corpse of a game struggling along on life support. How it passed testing and got approved for release is anyone's guess, but we figure THQ Nordic probably release so many games that the Sony approval team will rubberstamp literally anything these days. Don't bother, we really wish we hadn't. This series is effectively dead to us now. Hopefully it’ll be patched to a playable state, but at the moment it simply isn’t.

Inessential. That's how I'd describe Destroy All Humans!: Clone Carnage. It feels like a placeholder between games to keep the fans simmering over and I'm not even sure they would be satisfied. Online lobbies are already deserted so your chances of any joy might have to stay local. Even when I found a match, the lack of content means I'm struggling for reasons to stick around. It looks nice but some of the maps feel fairly empty.

Spacewing War does a good job of pretending to be a Game Boy shoot 'em up but its low-fi approach, weak level design and complete lack of challenge make it a tough sell even if the extended content does give it some extra value.

Wearing its inspiration on its sleeve, Dolmen is a clear attempt at bringing the Souls-like to a sci-fi setting. However, the experience is hurt thanks to shoddy execution in almost all aspects. Featuring a non-committal narrative, poorly paced difficulty, and a general lack of polish in both single and multiplayer modes. Dolmen is difficult to recommend, especially when considering the competition out there, whether that be from more capable clones or From Software. We can only hope that the rare, good aspects are carried over into more proficient titles which are no doubt coming in the future.

Divination is a startlingly brief visual novel that you will be done with inside a half hour. Inside five minutes if you skip the dialogue and take the easy platinum instead. A real missed opportunity given the central mechanic.

With its mix of twin-stick shooting, roguelite elements and heavy metal music, Metal Tales: Overkill has some promise but is let down by game-ruining technical issues.

In Nightmare has a decent idea at its base and some nice visuals but the fundamental gameplay makes too many missteps to make this one worth playing.

With its low-poly aesthetic and appealing retro flavour, Thunder Kid has the hallmarks of what should be a solid indie game that apes the classic PS1/Saturn 32-Bit era. Much like Renegade Sector's Breakneck City though, it doesn’t meet the mark of even the most basic games from that time. Instead, it feels like a facsimile, with the only true retro callback going to the poor tanky controls and limited design scope.

In movie terms, if Resident Evil 4 is Citizen Kane of all Spanish-speaking, zombie-shooting survival horror games, this isn't even the straight-to-DVD rip-off. Valley of the Dead is the year one film school homework project filmed on an old iPhone by students who are failing the course.

Dyna Bomb evokes memories of old console and computer games but is reasonably unique. Unfortunately it looks and feels like what it is, a cheap and cheerful port of a 2016 budget PC game.

Super Onion Boy 2 should probably be called Super Onion Boy DX as it doesn’t really amount to much more than a port of the original browser-based game with added trophy support. It’s not very good but neither is it terrible. Bang average.

It was inevitable that the retro-revival part of the indie scene would turn its attention to the low-poly, 32-Bit era for inspiration. Breakneck City tries to bring back the glory days of playing Die Hard Trilogy Arcade and Virtua Fighter. However, it lacks the feel and polish of both. It has some moments to shine, but these are fleeting and cannot shake the overall ropey feeling that permeates throughout.

Guardian of Lore is a buggy horrible mess with baffling design choices peppered throughout, not to mention the fact the white guy is the one guarding the secrets. Much as we'd loved to have completed the storyline, we couldn't face anymore. Don't waste your time. If you want to learn about legends, read a wikipedia page instead.

Way Down is a truly poor effort that reduces an exciting bank heist into a series of mini games. Visually, it has a very cheap look with very little polish. It's very rough around the edges and sometimes those edges fall away. The multiple protagonists do try to keep things fresh but the final act devolves into a repetitive slog. In safer hands, a game could've brought life to an interesting caper. As it is, Way Down is dreadfully executed.

So what we’ve got here is a game that’s very short, possibly unfinished and barely a shoot ’em up. Getting through it is really just going to take you an hour once you figure out what it wants from you and then it’ll leave you thinking ‘is that it?’

While Nuclear Corps has promise as a modern take on the puzzle style of Lost Vikings, the clunky game mechanics and buggy environments really let it down.

Insomnis is a horror-themed, puzzle-based walking simulator but unfortunately it really only nails the walking bit. With no real scares, a lack of engaging puzzles and no real technical proficiency, this is just an average indie game that doesn't really make a case for its own existence.

While we're always happy to see obscure retro games get a new audience, it's hard not to be disappointed when they get a lazy port like this. As retro fans, we did enjoy aspects of this lesser-seen Mega Drive title, the enjoyment was fleeting and tempered by some core gameplay issues and problems with the emulation.

Probe: A Game Dev Experience criminally undersells it's own industry. Whilst I did struggle with the motion controls, the tasks I was given were basic and over fairly quickly. It's the lack of context that troubles me. Adding lighting to a scene or AI to a character is fine if I know why I was doing it. For an education product, it doesn't sprinkle any interesting insights about the workings under the hood. It's far too simple for it's own good.

I've said all I can about Takorita Meets Fries. My biggest fear is to be shown a game I can struggle to talk about. This culinary non-adventure has so little on the table that it's hard to recommend. It certainly feels geared towards a younger audience but even children have higher expectations. The incredibly brief narrative leaves me completely unsatisfied and the impressive presentation can't really save it.

Virtuous Western is a (very) cheap and cheerful puzzle game dressed up as a retro Wild West shooter. It has its moments but you're looking at a thirty minute game here with a pretty trivial level of difficulty and as such you'll be done with this before you know it.

With only two tracks and a non-exaggerated game completion time of ten minutes, suggesting Ion Driver is a barebone experience would be an understatement. This initially attractive racer does nothing to further the futuristic racing genre, or do anything to make an impact beyond the nagging feeling of disappointment which permeates throughout. The experience is plagued by bugs, poor collision detection and far too many broken promises to count. Avoid.

Apple Slash is a basic top-down, maze-based hack and slasher set in a fantasy land but it's too short, simple and plainly presented to really be something we can recommend.

Freddy Spaghetti 2 is a poor sequel. It's a straightforward platinum and while it's not devoid of quality, it's just so average with it. If you've not played the first game, we'd recommend you play that instead.

Rabisco+ is a wolf in sheeps clothing, it's cute looks belay its unforgiving nature. Ultimately the challenge and twitchy controls overwhelm any real fun you might have otherwise. The very fact that we can’t be doing with playing again for the PS5 platinum speaks volumes.

Gutwhale feels like a game in concept. With some responsive controls, there is an enjoyable loop on display that quickly ran out of steam, for me. Content is all too slight and, whilst it's a game that feels best suited when you have a couple of minutes to spare, I'd seen it all in ten minutes more. If it was expanded upon with more levels, hats and enemies, I would have been more inclined to recommend it. As it is, by the time I got into Gutwhale, it was already over.

Despite the initial promise of an interesting story with a comedic quirk, The Protocol falls flat on nearly every fundamental level. The gameplay is tedious, the comedy doesn’t land and for all of the title’s good ideas; the game fails to live up to or capitalise on any of them.

A hardly noticeable PS5 facelift does little to elevate one of the least fun tennis games we've ever played.

Chess Knights: Viking Lands is a chess-themed puzzle game that has an okay core concept but the lengthy, complex puzzles stop being fun after a while and the controls are abysmal.

The Five Covens is a student project that would be too expensive if it was priced at a fiver rather than the frankly laughable £10 it’s actually up on the PSN store for. Bad controls, bad camera, bad mechanics. Bad. We played it so you don’t have to. Spend your money on something else.

Whether you have nostalgia for Sega’s Crazy Taxi franchise or not, Taxi Chaos by Lion Castle Entertainment is a hard sell. The game is a poor attempt at mimicking a classic IP in the hopes of bringing the formula to a new audience and fails to capitalise on any of the elements that made the original experience so fun to play in the first place. Taxi Chaos lacks any flair in the gameplay, visuals or audio department, while turning the once entertaining concept into an exercise in boredom.

Waves Out! Tries to evoke a sense of nostalgia with its simplistic party game concept and retro visuals, but just ends up feeling dated. The single player is vacant of challenge or ideas and the multiplayer doesn’t fare much better. One to miss.

Balancelot is a great pun but doesn't amount to much otherwise. Sure it's an easy enough platinum but it's very little fun to play due to the controls being a mess on PS4. Switch off your TV set and do something less boring instead.

Loot Hero DX has some lovely visuals but has next to no gameplay. Trophy chasers will lap this up but, even at the cheap asking price, there's no substance here at all. You're buying a pretty Platinum and nothing else. But if they use this engine for a real game, we'll be well up for trying it.

Jade's Ascension is weak both in terms of presentation and gameplay and adds nothing to an already populated genre. If it was technically reliable that'd be something but the game feels unfinished even beyond the incredibly limited scope of its design.

What Handball 21 does well is represent the top of the European table of the sport. Unfortunately, the gameplay and animation can't hold up to the challenge. As a newcomer, I struggled to get to grips with what is a very tactical sport. I find space hard to manufacture and, whilst defensive duties are better handled, the goalkeepers provide a real lottery. I can't complain much about the modes on offer but the clumsy gameplay dampened my enthusiasm. Some training modes could've helped but I found this game tough to penetrate.

Vera Blanc: Full Moon is a clunky visual novel with easy puzzles and a forgettable plot. It's not terrible, but neither is it easy to recommend.

If you're going to take on a 1981 arcade classic with modern day (almost) cutting edge hardware then you'd better come correct. But if you ignore what made that game a classic and add game mechanics that make things worse, then that's a little embarrassing. Terra Bomber may pander to the fond memories of Scramble fans but ultimately it'll alienate them most of all.

Street Racer Underground somehow takes the concept of street racing and makes it entirely uninteresting. This game is badly conceived and the implementation is even worse.

Skatemasta Tcheco looks, plays and feels like the sort of game that NES magazines would have given very average scores to back in the '80s, so in 2020 this kind of throwaway nonsense really doesn't make any sense at the end of the PS4's lifespan.

Exp Parasite is a challenging platformer with plenty of mechanical variety. Unfortunately the bosses are a weak point and there are some major bugs that need to be endured on top of the difficulty in order to reach the end and complete all those level goals.

Tennis World Tour 2 is a great example of how not to make a tennis game. Virtua Tennis on a Dreamcast VMU gives a more satisfying experience. It fails wholesale to learn the lessons of the game it's a sequel to and isn't much fun to play. At least there's no microtransactions.

Tamiku borrows heavily from a few arcade classics but manages to do its own thing and that is admirable but this simple platformer is over pretty quickly. Not bad for the price but not a game that'll last in the memory.

Road Bustle is a grift at best. Some chancer made this and somehow got Sony to allow it on their store.

West of Dead has a lot of charm, confidence and potential but is currently a bit too flawed to recommend. However, a few patches down the line this one might end up being your huckleberry.

Hunting Simulator 2 might as well be called Misery Boredom Simulator as we spent ten+ hours playing it and came away wanting shoot ourselves to end it all.

At times, Strawberry Vinegar handles friendship between two children well. There's moments of humour and some good character building on offer. The aesthetics are sickly sweet, twee and a little too much for me. Unfortunately, the good work is undone by some rather awkward, awkward implications. This game takes a rather inevitable turn which I really wish it had the nerve to avoid.

Many Faces' simple, short-lived gameplay and even simpler visuals mean that you'll likely forget this basic platforming shooter as fast as it'll take you to finish it.