Ultimately Astro Aqua Kitty blasts its way to PS5 with panache. With its Metroidvania formula, light RPG elements, strong presentation, and slick retro synth music, this is an old-school outing that manages to also feel contemporary.

The main thing that lets it down is its new economy; unlike previously, you cannot use Crowns to purchase the best costumes in the shop, and Kudos is harder to earn too. Your Crowns instead go towards a ranking with long-term unlocks. They're replaced by Show-Bucks, a premium currency needed for all the coolest stuff, which stings a bit after years of access to everything. It lessens the impact of winning because you can just buy all the rarer items now. The free Fame Pass is still there, but it's supplemented with a premium tier, which is really the only way to earn Show-Bucks without simply buying them. Despite these concerns, the game is just as fun as it ever was, and thankfully none of the things you can buy alter gameplay. There's so much to like about Fall Guys, and now it's open to everyone.

If you flash back to a concern exacerbated from our Turrican Flashback review, Wonder Boy Collection's paltry four titles puts pressure on retro gamers to question its value for money, because it omits series defining titles and key console ports when compared to the more expensive Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection from Strictly Limited Games — which has sold out of its 2,000 PS4 retail copies. It's also worse value than retro compilations that released within weeks of the Wonder Boy Collection, when set side-by-side against the cheaper and more complete Pac-Man Museum+ and the superior extras in Sonic Origins.

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined’s ability to seamlessly segue from what seems like a simple remaster into a full-blown remake is brave – and it does it beautifully, too. This looks and sounds like you remember the Super Nintendo release, but is bursting with vibrant flourishes that elevate it beyond mere nostalgia. For purists, it’ll no doubt be perfect – but newcomers may scoff at the archaic control scheme, which purposefully limits your capabilities and leads to significant pain.

VOID Riders is a solid addition to OlliOlli World that justifies itself with a neat new mechanic, fun characters, and some cracking extra levels. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it doesn't need to; if you're into it already, this just gives you more excuses to keep things rolling.

Redout 2 won't be worth the effort for a lot of people. It is rewarding, sure, but to be brutally honest, part of us thinks that you should just boot up WipEout Omega Collection instead and save yourself the trouble.

If you can stomach its rough exterior, Shadowrun Trilogy is an easy recommendation for RPG fans. The games' straightforward structure makes them approachable in ways that other tabletop-based titles on PlayStation aren't, and the role-playing options are engaging throughout. Combat could do with a bit more punch, and the technical issues are an annoyance, but there's a lot of value to this well written sci-fi-fantasy package.

Taking a look at Capcom Fighting Collection, it’s very clear that it does exactly what it set out to do – you’ve got superb versions of ten arcade classics here, several of which are significantly difficult to play elsewhere. The online play works beautifully, with efficient menus letting you switch games in the lobby. And that online is really all that matters in the end. Can you play Hyper Street Fighter II online with no lag? Yes. Then it’s more or less perfect, isn’t it?

Sonic Origins presents four of the hedgehog's best games with style, and it's a joy to revisit these iconic platformers. Presentational flourishes like the animated cutscenes, as well as a host of extra modes like Boss Rush and Missions, give fans and newcomers alike plenty to see and do, and the Museum is full of interesting artwork you might not have seen before. Some stingy DLC practices let the side down, and of course, the games themselves have some 30-year-old weaknesses, but this is by-and-large a wonderful spin down memory lane.

While nirvanA Initiative doesn’t stray too far from the formula established in the original, the gritty sci-fi story and likeable characters mean that it is a compelling adventure. Piecing together all the threads of the story will lead you on a rollercoaster of a journey and keep you guessing until the very end.

Atari, in its current incarnation, seems setup solely to profit from its past classics. Gravitar: Recharged, though, actually does justice to the original – and even if you weren’t around in the 80s, there’s fun to be found in this sprightly shmup at the right price.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard always faced an uphill battle in comparison to the two other PS5 upgrades, and the mountain has proven too much. While the game looks and runs better, it's still a long way off Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. It's like playing a really good-looking PS4 game rather than something native to PS5. Still, at least the game itself remains a cracker.

Final Vendetta wears its heart on its biceps: it’s a burly and brutal beat-‘em-up that serves as a love-letter to the 16-bit greats from a bygone era. Ass whoopins have never felt quite this good.

While a PS5 version of Resident Evil 3 could never rectify the glaring issues of the PS4 remake — cut content, very short run time — it does at least shine bright with ray tracing implementation and a native 4K resolution. Capcom was simply trying to make Resident Evil 3 look and run better on PS5, and it at least achieved that.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a superb beat-'em-up that captures the spirit of Konami's coin-op classics, but modernises them in all the right areas. With smooth combat, gorgeous presentation, and rock-solid rollback netcode, it all adds up to deliver a super fun experience.

Capcom hasn't gone to any great lengths with its updated PS5 version of Resident Evil 2, offering fans and newcomers two imperfect graphical modes to choose from. Very speedy load times will have you immersed in a flash, though, and the support for the PS5's adaptive triggers adds another extra wrinkle on top. Resident Evil 2 is still every bit as good as it was three years ago; this PS5 version simply gives you the chance to experience it all over again with further shine.

For everything The Quarry does right, it has just as many glaring issues or niggling problems to bring it right back down to Earth. Supermassive Games has been trying to better Until Dawn for seven years now, and at this point, it looks like it's never, ever going to happen. The Quarry is just a bit dull, and that's the exact opposite of what these types of titles strive to be.

So we recommend Super Perils of Baking, It's a solid seven out of ten, And we promise, scouts honour, no word of a lie, We'll never do a review like this again.

This is a handful of games and a legal settlement away from being comprehensive, but it undoubtedly gives you a flavour for Pac-Man’s storied career – and between the ups-and-downs, there’s plenty to chew on.

Silt represents what's so special about indies: a great game just outside the norm.

Kao the Kangaroo makes his big return in 2022, but the game feels like it's leapt straight out of PS2's back catalogue. Despite many rough edges and old-fashioned design principles, it ultimately succeeds in delivering a fun, breezy 3D platformer for fans of the series. It manages to evoke feelings of nostalgia despite being a brand new title with its simple gameplay and colourful worlds. It does fall apart under modern scrutiny, but it just about gets away with it, thanks to its harmlessly old-school approach.

Sniper Elite 5 knows exactly who it’s aimed at, and Rebellion is on target as always. The developer’s dense French sandboxes are hugely replayable, and look fantastic to boot. There are some sloppy gameplay mechanics, like the climbing and twitchy camera, but these are easy to forgive. A wide array of difficulty options mean both super-agents and rookies can eke something out of this title, and with the release accommodating so many different play styles, it represents a real bullet to our heart – or should that be balls? [Review in Progress]

Landing itself somewhere between a twin-stick shooter and a rhythm game, Soundfall feels like it's not really doing one or other of these particularly successfully. Saved by an incredible soundtrack, Soundfall has the potential to be a really incredible game with an exciting concept, but is let down by repetitive gameplay and a weak story.

The game's best design choice is how its variety of playable characters significantly alters the gameplay mechanics. Cotton Fantasy's Producer, Shinya Nagatomo, told Issue 231 of Retro Gamer magazine that "It's an all-star game with not only characters from other games, but also new systems from other Success games". This means controlling Ria incorporates the risk/reward Buzz System from Psyvariar, and you can unlock playing as the final boss character, Tacoot, with wand flinging abilities. It's these deeper systems, and unlockable stages that make Cotton Fantasy an intricate cute-'em-up that core shoot-'em-up fans will relish mastering and replaying.

The overarching feeling while playing this game is that it's wonderfully relaxing. Save for a handful of tough difficulty spikes or moments where you lose your way on the sprawling map, A Monster's Expedition provides a genuinely pleasant puzzle experience you can enjoy at your own pace. A few options for tips mean you have some help if you want it, and no loading means it's a doddle to get into. If you're after something chilled out to wind down with, it's certainly worth taking this journey.

It's a shame, because so much of what's here is still so enjoyable. The combat is intense, challenging and varied, with a huge number of enemy types to battle against. You've got a ton of weapon options to tailor your build, and the capacity to level up seemingly hundreds of different stats in order to bring the fight to the Mages. It's just that those fights can be so unfair and one-sided due to the more random elements that can throw a spanner in the works. A brave attempt at something new, yes, but ultimately misguided.

The best game of its kind that we've had the pleasure to play, Evil Dead: The Game is equivalent to its source material in being way more fun than you could reasonably expect it to be, and it's faithful as hell to the movies and TV show in a way that'll thrill fans. Post-launch support is a total roll of the dice — if the content ain't there, nor is the audience, and if the audience isn't there, there's no game, because the single player content sure isn't picking up the slack. Evil Dead, though, is more fun than having a chainsaw for an arm, delivering a pleasant bloody surprise at each turn. Shall we say it together? Groovy.

Swansong's biggest problem is that at times it's perhaps not as clear as it could be about what you're actually meant to be doing or how to bypass certain problems, and you'll find that it's trial and error that gets you through. There's also a couple of technical issues, including one in which we spent ages wandering around trying to solve a puzzle only to reset the game and discover that the solution to the problem hadn't loaded the first time around. Not cool.