With four difficulty levels to overcome, lots of equipment to change up your play style, and five levels to master, Kill Knight is pretty fleshed out for what it is. On top of that, the controls feel very responsive, and it's all presented with a harsh, grainy aesthetic and appropriately punchy music. Given the style of game this is, it can become quite repetitive; level design remains fairly samey, and you're fighting mostly the same enemies throughout. Still, everything that's here is made to a high quality, and if you're in the market for a fast-paced test of skill, this hits the mark.

Parcel Corps has a quirky and fun aesthetic with cel-shaded visuals that complement the trendy, edgy teen vibe it’s got going with BMXing and dark comedic characters. However, the repetitive gameplay and sheer number of visual bugs overshadow the enjoyable elements. With misaligned animations, parts of the environment popping in and out, glitchy objects floating around, music looping, and characters blocking cutscenes, it’s a real struggle to recommend a title with this many issues.

By daring to downscale some of the fluff, NBA 2K25 brings its focus back to basketball in a positive way. Improvements to the series’ dribbling system and ProPLAY make this the best feeling hoops sim Visual Concepts has made, while the sheer density of different modes and features means you could play nothing else all year – and still never get bored. But the borderline insulting emphasis on microtransactions remain a thorn in this series’ side, and something you simply have to accept if you want to enjoy everything else on offer here.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is one of the most memorable RPGs we've played in years. In pursuing a new property, complete with a fantasy setting, Atlus has allowed its creativity to blossom, resulting in a brilliantly rich experience — both in terms of narrative and audiovisual design. While Metaphor takes obvious gameplay and structural cues from the developer's previous projects, it combines and refines those elements to make an epic, kingdom-hopping adventure that feels unique and deeply fulfilling.

Until Dawn drags a contemporary classic into a new generation, and its interactive teen slasher silliness more than holds up today. With vastly enhanced graphics and minor gameplay tweaks, this is still a highly recommended game. The problem is it costs three times as much as its nine-year-old predecessor, and doesn’t have an upgrade path. For all of its grisly glamour, that makes this remake a tough sell – especially when it runs at half the frame rate of its predecessor when played using PS5 backwards compatibility.

Bloober Team has faithfully and respectfully recreated one of the survival horror genre’s all-time greats, modernising Silent Hill 2 in all the right ways. So much of what made the Konami classic a masterpiece in 2001 remains in this PS5 remake 23 years later, with the same unforgettable story, satisfying exploration, and weighty combat. There were concerns in the lead-up to release, but Silent Hill 2 speaks for itself: a spectacular experience that once again represents survival horror at its best.

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.

While the Khaos Reigns expansion does come with a full Kombat Pass 2 (including the guest fighters later down the line), the story is only around two hours long, making this expansion's price – which is almost on par with an entire game – a little questionable. And it doesn’t do anything to change the glaring flaws already present in Mortal Kombat 1 such as the terrible Invasions mode or the overpriced cosmetics.

When you're in the thick of a match, using a baseball bat to smack a worm into the water, blowing up a cluster of enemies with a well-placed sheep, or expertly crossing the map with a ninja rope, only to botch the landing and start a chain reaction of mines and exploding barrels, all the rough edges erode away. Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition is a warts-and-all revival of a game that, 25 years later, still has it where it counts, and there aren't too many titles that can make that claim.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code Plus delivers a fun mystery-filled visual novel experience, perfect for anyone who is a fan of Danganronpa or similar titles. There are a few frustrating elements here and there, but the whole package is a mostly solid narrative-focused adventure.

Epic Mickey is still an enjoyable platformer with impeccable artistic talent driving it. The repetitive combat and exploration remains, but the Rebrushed updates go some way to remedying those shortcomings.

The story and world-building are definitely the most interesting things about Reynatis but it’s a shame everything else feels so half-baked and repetitive. It’s hard to get invested in the characters when the dull combat makes you want to get through the adventure as quickly as possible.

As a remaster, Reforged is about as good as it gets. It hits that perfect sweet spot where the game looks kinda like you remember it looking all those years ago, but then you have the option to switch back to the original graphics and see just how improved the new version actually is. It's a massive leap. There's also a robust and quite granular hint system to help you with puzzles that can be completely tailored to your playstyle, including a story mode that drastically revises how much thinking is required to progress. It's one of many reasons this remaster is perfect for newcomers and returning fans alike.

This is still a laugh out loud affair, though; a raucous and utterly ludicrous release that deserves to exist on modern hardware. But when the source material is this brilliant, it deserves an exceptional remaster – rather than one that’s just good enough.

Episode Aigis is one for the super fans. Its worthwhile story beats are rare and buried beneath a lot of all-too-familiar dungeon crawling, and it's undeniably expensive in terms of asking price. At best, it's an intriguing but flawed epilogue; at worst, it's a completely unnecessary addition to a fantastic game.

The Plucky Squire is a delightful adventure that surprises with fun ideas in every chapter. The world within the book offers unique puzzles and challenges, which is compounded by Jot's ability to leap from its pages into the third dimension. Though the combat's kinda flat, and some elements deserve to be used more often than they are, there's an undeniable joy to the game's constant imaginative ideas. It's a short but sweet game that'll win over players of all ages.

A substantial visual overhaul of Dead Rising is what will immediately stand out most, but where the Deluxe Remaster truly thrives is in all its gameplay touch-ups to make the classic play and feel like any other modern game. They all build to the definitive Dead Rising experience, where its time management feature can be properly appreciated.

Train Sim World 5 shunts the series forward with a number of smaller improvements. While the base package feels a bit unnecessary, it’s effectively a free client upgrade for existing expansion owners, and therefore worth your time. Of the new routes included with the Deluxe Edition, we really love the West Coast Main Line, and the other two additions bring their own character and challenges. We just hope, moving forwards, the franchise starts to live up to its moniker – it’s Train Sim World, not Train Sim UK USA Germany.

The combat feels awkward; the game is buggy, and filled with abrupt cutscene transitions. At the end of the day, we’re left asking, ‘Who is this for?’ Children don’t care about Battlestar Galactica and The Thing, and adults won’t love the boring, simplistic gameplay loop.

Caravan SandWitch is just a really pleasant video game. It can be a bit rough around the edges in terms of animations and technical performance, but its story intrigues, and its atmospheric brand of exploration is largely a delight.

Wild Bastards is good, but it didn’t quite hit as hard as we’d hoped. That said, the studio's fantastic art direction and writing continue to shine through, enough to make this a title worth looking at.

Cumulatively, you end up with a title brimming with nostalgia and good ideas, but controls that hold the affair back.

Crossy Road Castle is a really fun and addictive game, in our opinion best enjoyed solo as the multiplayer doesn’t add a lot in terms of goals for the individual and instead detracting from the action. Whimsical and cutesy, the aesthetic of Crossy Road Castle is such that it really adds to the overall enjoyment of the game, with its simple but compelling gameplay.

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is an essential release if you’re after one of the most prolific parts of fighting game history. The museum mode is a treat, and the games themselves seem to be arcade-perfect conversions, apart from MvC 1 (which should hopefully be fixed in a patch given it’s fine in the PC release). While some bonus features from the console versions of these games would’ve been nice, it’s still undeniably a great collection of titles.

Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is a surprisingly fun experience, with a variety of modes to sink your teeth into. There are some nice references to the books and films for diehard Potter fans, in addition to smooth flying controls that ultimately make the game fun to play. There are a few issues, noticeably regarding balance and the longevity of its single player content, but if you like the idea of playing a competitive sporting game in the Wizarding World, then it’s definitely worth checking out.

Overall, we’d still recommend exploring the many retro compilations and emulated releases already available on the PS Store first; while this may be a more expensive option, it’s hard to beat your own personally curated collection and the advantages of running software locally. But of course not all of the titles available with Antstream Arcade can be purchased natively, and it’s neat having access to everything under one umbrella – especially when the cost of a lifetime subscription is relatively good value considering just how much you get. Just do keep in mind that your cloud streaming experience will vary, and even in a perfect environment, will still exhibit shortcomings compared to a native solution.

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown is an absolutely phenomenal driving experience when it works. Each car is unique and you spend so much time with them that you form a real bond with your machines. Races are hard-fought and the neon streets of Hong Kong Island fun enough to explore in free roam. Unfortunately, a variety of technical issues hamper the experience, and the lifestyle elements and overall atmosphere of Hong Kong Island leave much to be desired. This is an ongoing, live service game with many seasons planned, so hopefully a lot of these issues can be ironed out. Until then, though, it’s still a pleasure to drive around in your favourite car, just soaking up the road.

With gorgeous pixel graphics, weapon builds to learn, and enemy designs that continually delight, plus some excellent maps to explore and uncover, this is a fantastic little collection that should please any Metroidvania fan. That each adventure is a little more digestible compared to 25-hour epics from recent times is an added bonus.