Beat Cop is a strong effort to create a compelling police-themed adventure. Patrolling your street and building relationships with various characters is engaging, and it certainly looks the part with nicely done pixel art visuals. Its open ended design can lead to multiple endings, which makes it surprisingly replayable, but in practice, it all quickly becomes a little too complex for its own good. With your attention so scattered among numerous calls to action, it can be confusing. Still, there is some fun to be found here if you don't sweat the details.

Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 1: Order of the Stone is a lacklustre start to Telltale's latest series.

Needless to say, you probably won't be playing Legend of Mana for the plot, but there's a charm to how carefree the game feels. You'll stumble across character-driven side quests that open up new paths through the world, and there are loads of different locations to discover and explore. Honestly, it's a difficult game to explain in just a handful paragraphs, but know that there's fun to be had in its lack of structure.

EDENS ZERO is a competent adaptation and a very basic — but often fun — action RPG. Generic in its design and held back by some seriously rough visuals, it's the kind of game that's barely going to appeal to those outside of the established fandom, but there is a charm in how breezy it is to actually play. The bottom line is that if you're looking for an easygoing anime-based adventure, you could do worse than EDENS ZERO — although it does take a few hours for things to feel mechanically interesting.

The game pitches itself as FMV horror, and while the experience does incorporate those two elements the more you play, it never amounts to anything more than cheap jump scares and creepy episodes of breaking the fourth wall. It's effective enough the first time, but diminishing returns weaken the tactic dramatically. The same can't be said for some of the horrific voice acting, however, which is cringeworthily terrible on almost all fronts. Although, Simulacra offers just enough of an intriguing, narrative reason to put up with it all.

We really wanted to like Black Mirror more than we did, but a few too many technical hitches put a cap on our enjoyment. This mystery is absolutely one worth solving thanks to the captivating plot and engaging characters, but be prepared to wrestle with poor controls, glitches, and frequent load times.

The RPG elements mean you'll nearly always be making some forward momentum. Finding treasure, sinking ships, and completing missions rewards you with XP, and you can upgrade and customise various parts of your boat to ensure your vessel is ship-shape. What's more, each town has its own side missions to tackle, and a market where you can trade goods in a shifting economy. These parts of the game are its strengths, but working through somewhat confusing menus and engaging in predictable battles take the wind out of its sails.

Moon Hunters is certainly an ambitious idea from Kitfox Games, and for the most part it hits the right notes.

There’s some fun to be had here, spread across dozens of different events, and some vibrant environments. However, this isn’t an especially ambitious outing, so don’t expect it to drive away with your heart like the classics that it’s so clearly inspired by.

SwapQuest is a bright and breezy release that's well suited to the PlayStation Vita. We didn't especially appreciate the release's decision to make us rush, but there's an appeal to the simplistic gameplay that will keep you venturing the land of Aventana – especially if you've got a bit of time to kill.

Ragnarock is a rough-around-the-edges rhythm game that's super fun to begin with, but the appeal may start to wane after a handful of sessions.

It all just needs a little more polish: the execution isn’t quite tight enough, the pace not quite brisk enough to achieve that addictive, rapid-fire feel of WarioWare. It’s close, and certainly another entertaining idea from Atari, but unless you’re from the era of the 2600 and its ilk, you’ll probably struggle to look beyond the sloppy feel of this otherwise likeable release.

Life Is Strange 2 feels like it’s flying under-the-radar, which is unfortunate because this sequel has all of the hallmarks that made its predecessor a success. Episode 2: Rules is slow, but DONTNOD is still easing its new cast of characters in. There’s definitely something good brewing here, but for whatever reason we can’t shake the feeling that the developer has utterly failed to capture the imagination of Arcadia Bay’s biggest fans.

This is the same old Torchlight, but somewhat diminished. Classes are full of character and lots of fun to play, while Relic abilities encourage experimentation and significantly change combat. However, there's nothing especially new or exciting about this third instalment.

Once you get to grips with how it handles, V-Rally 4 is a competent and lightweight arcade-style off-road racer with a fair bit of charm that harkens back to the series’ foundations. Aiming for spectacle and variety in design, it looks and feels like a 2018 V-Rally game. However, a shallow and disappointing career mode, irritating music, and a handful of visual and gameplay bugs means you’re likely to grow weary in a short space of time.

Just as enjoyable as it is frustrating, Romeo Is a Dead Man is an incredibly uneven experience. You’ll love it one minute and hate it the next. Persevere with its more annoying elements, and you’ll discover a unique and entertaining hack and slasher at the end of it all. It just takes a lot of effort and restraint to get there.

It's disheartening a previously Japanese exclusive Mega Drive game, patiently anticipated since 1994, is now known for poor presentation due to Version 1.00 releasing with gameplay breaking emulation errors — like Stage 2's missing scaffolding obstacles, and invisible enemies. There was a narrow window for Halloween 2021 hype, and even though thankfully a week later Version 1.01 patched in the omitted sprites, still Panorama Cotton could be haunted by the infamy of Ratalaika's conversion. Since many gamers never experienced this rare game, it'd be a shame if they believed an initially bad PS4 port directly correlates with the quality of the original.

If you're looking for a game that will show you just about every in and out of the Vita's control experience, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more thorough showing than Little Deviants. Of course, if you're looking for a game that will keep you engaged for the duration and coming back for more, you might want to look elsewhere.

Across the board, the emulation is excellent, and the package has been enhanced by beautiful 3D renders of the original Famicom cartridges, as well as artwork and high-resolution scans of each game’s manual. This is a well-done and loving bundle, then, but the games themselves are ancient and demand a very specific mindset if you plan to extract any actual entertainment value from them.

Tangled Up in Blue lacks the narrative heft of many of the best Telltale games, and the individual Guardians aren't given enough to work with in the short running time to help distinguish them from the versions seen in the 2014 movie. There are flickers of hope – usually involving Rocket – that the characters will come into their own in future episodes, and some of the flashbacks and backstory hint that the storyline might go in interesting directions, but it feels like Guardians of the Galaxy-lite, lacking the irreverent humour, swashbuckling action, and the occasional heart of James Gunn's surprise hit.

Although the gameplay feels a little on the shallow side, Wandersong is a disarmingly joyful game. Singing your way through this cutesy adventure may not offer much of a challenge, but mixed in with a varied cast of characters and a sweet story, it's definitely a hard game to hate.

The Council has impressive ambitions – even if its execution is not up to scratch. You’ll already know whether its alternate history backdrop appeals to you, but it’s the RPG elements that threaten to disrupt the narrative genre. We already like what this series is doing, but the writing and voice acting leaves a little to be desired. That said, this is a solid start, even if it is a bit too early to come to any conclusions about the overall story just yet.

If you've been burning with anticipation for a fantasy RPG on Sony's newest console, Bound by Flame may be worth a look – but be sure to keep your expectations lukewarm.

The most ridiculous Call of Duty has ever been, all of Black Ops 7’s multiplayer strengths are overshadowed by the silliest campaign in the franchise’s history. It’s still quality online, and the Zombies mode is as solid as ever. They don’t matter quite as much, though, when a co-op campaign manages to reframe an entire release into one of stupidity.

The core of Deceive Inc. is good; deducing who might be an opponent while trying to blend in is a tense, fun experience. It's in need of some updates before it reaches its full potential — adjustable text size would be nice, and it's going to need a wider variety of maps and modes going forward. It's a solid starting point with a great premise; hopefully it can evolve into something really worthwhile.

City of Brass is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the roguelike genre, but those that know a thing or two may leave feeling a little short-changed. The core gameplay loop at its heart is very satisfying, thanks to its experimental nature, and with the genies’ perk selection, there’s a decent amount of variety when you’re in the thick of it, but there just isn’t enough here to keep you coming back past your first couple of completed runs. There’s definitely fun to be had here for a few hours, but it’s nothing you’ll remember with a great deal of affection in six month's time.

There's absolutely fun to be had here, and the more you delve into it, the more potential strategies you'll discover. However, finding those satisfying moments is made tougher by a lack of opportunities to adapt. Luck Be a Landlord is an interesting roguelike to explore, but it didn't hook us in the way that many others in the genre have.

While its competitor MLB: The Show swings for the fences, R.B.I. Baseball 16 is happy to bunt this year round – and that's okay. The controls are easy to pick up, the games are short and sweet, and the simplicity of it all is what makes this year's edition appealing to casuals. Still, its lack of innovation and modes mean that the title gets to second base – but not much further.