What's here is definitely good, and I'd play more of it if there was a second campaign, or more than just two bonus missions. It just plain needs more, be it in volume or flavour, to push me beyond a moderate recommendation.

It makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge a fun - albeit short - romp that's perfect for a night lounging around on the sofa with mates, or in a Discord voice call from your bedrooms. It doesn’t make any big departures from what you might expect, but that simplicity lends itself to a more social gaming experience than I’m used to. I like to imagine it captures the feeling of crowding around the original arcade machine with your pals back in the 80s (even if, as a 00s baby, I’ve never actually done that). That said, Shredder's Revenge wasn't so fun alone, so I'd recommend waiting until you manage to get a group together. There's no rush to play this one, but it'll be a good couple of hours when you can convince friends to hop in.

Launching into 1.0, V Rising is in a great spot. This is a survival game that doesn't faff around and is wonderfully streamlined, making your climb through the vampiric ranks a bounty hunting delight with little in the way of chores. To be honest, the game was worth getting in early access, and with 1.0, my thoughts remain the same. Get this if you're a survival fan who wants a good time by yourself or with pals, and especially if you love some MOBA combat.

So, The Quarry isn't perfect by any means, and you can throw in some QTE or choice moments that feel like they cheated you on top of that. But even if it were perfect, its full price entry sticker might still feel like a pretty big ask for some people. It's also not actually that frightening, if I'm honest. Instead, it goes more for "tense and thrilling" even at its most hightened moments. But The Quarry improves on almost all the flaws of Supermassive's Dark Pictures Anthology, and picks up the baton from Until Dawn as if all those years haven't passed at all. It's cool, creepy, a bit funny, and a great summer horror treat for anyone missing monster movies.

There's an awful lot to admire about Card Shark. I want more games that do something original like this, that find beauty from odd angles and tell stories in new ways. But playing Card Shark like a real person - with breaks, and other things to do - is hard. If you can't count cards, and find rubbing your tummy while patting your head at all difficult, Card Shark will likely have you absolutely mogadored.

Silt is a fairly short game, though, and playing it over a few days meant I usually figured out a puzzle the next time I came back to it. I'm just not entirely sure that coming back to Silt is the ideal state of affairs. Really the question is: are the vibes good enough to make up for the want of a nicer checkpoint system? I'm not sure they are, both because of Silt's comparative brevity and because it's not as if it's Dark Souls, here. The stopping and starting and reloading felt a bit at odds with the dreamy and/or nightmarish floating in any case. On the other hand, the addition of more checkpoints would proabably be all it needs, so your mileage, especially under water, may vary.

I hope Blackbird can turn Legion's ailing fortunes around. Not simply because good RTS games are rarer than white rhinos these days, but also because I genuinely think Legion has potential. It's not as derivative as its theme makes it appear, and despite the ruckus it caused, the idea of earning new units through play is not entirely without merit. Nonetheless, with the campaign being as anaemic as it is, right now I'd only recommend Crossfire: Legion if you already know your way around fast-paced, competitive RTS games. [Early Access Review]

You're likely to have similar dust-ups and shakedowns, of course, given the component parts of any procedural machine. But vitally, Unexplored 2 makes the player feel adventurous and special. Even when you've got no money, no XP, and no shoes. [RPS Bestest Bests]

What a thrill, to exist on the sidelines. To look longingly out towards the stars and wonder what’s going on beyond your little corner of this expansive universe. To understand a society purely through its waste products. Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a truly marvellous thing to spend time within. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Sniper Elite 5 maintains the series signature sharpshooting across some gorgeous locales, but its renewed emphasis on close-combat encounters often feels like a shallow sidestep away from your rifle, leaving objectives feeling flat and monotonous. The game's at its best when you can sit back and snipe like a champ, but when the campaign constantly forces you into tight, muddled environments, it ends up distracting you from that glorious sharpshooting. The new Invasion Mode ups the ante and makes missions more tense, while the new weapon customisation system lets you personalise your sniping experience, but the amount of time spent sprinting around means that Sniper Elite 5 often fails to hit the mark.

My Time At Sandrock is Stardew Valley with a gun. It’s a compelling and lusciously detailed life simulator with an endlessly rewarding mine-and-build loop, and a set of diverse career paths so richly designed that it’s difficult to pursue them all. When I am 120 years old, suckling grey nutrient paste from a tube in my hovering retirement home, and they’ve finally invented the virtual reality world from that one episode of Black Mirror, I want you to put me into this eight out of ten game from 2022. Just duct tape a Steam Deck to my head if you have to, and watch as a nostalgic grin spreads across my withered, paste-dappled face. Oh yes, that’s the life for me. Take me there now. [Early Access Review]

It may at first seems like a simple card battler, but Floppy Knights evolves into a meatier game the longer it goes on. There’s tough fights aplenty in the satisfying tactical battles with monsters of all shapes and sizes, and the challenge maps require you to plot your every move carefully to succeed. Rose City Games’ venture is just really easy to get along with, through its caring protagonist and welcoming art style, and never crosses too far into becoming a tiresome Saturday morning cartoon. Floppy Knights is a really enjoyable tactical card game that offers more the longer you spend with it, and it’s a joy to experience.

While its tone may be a little uneven, its heart is definitely in the right place. Gibbon: Beyond The Trees deals with a lot of hefty topics in 60 minutes, but it also knows when to let its hair down, too, giving you everything you need to enjoy and celebrate these creatures while they're still with us.

Once you've figured out the broad parts of how to save people, it becomes harder and harder to get the details you would like right. I spent an exorbitant amount of time trying to get Tom and Jenny to have an argument about the right thing on the right day, to no avail. It is extremely likely you'll reach a point that you go, "Fuck it, just let 'em burn!", probably more than once, at which point you should turn the game off and leave it for a day or so. This isn't a game that you should pick at for hours. It's one to put back up the shelf for a bit, until you can take it down and look at the problem with fresh eyes. You have all the time you need. Sort of.

As a whole, Swansong is a bit more loose and messy than I'd expected, but with some screws tightened the annoyances would be much less irritating and the game much more fun. It's almost really good as is. I had, I think, a middling run, where I got to enjoy the silly bits and interesting details, and didn't have too many tragic failures. I do want to play it again and try different choices, or make better decisions, but... I'm in the middle of a new TV show. And there's that book I've been reading, you know? And I need to put a wash on. I got attached to my three vamps, but not that attached.

I like Songs of Conquest a lot. I may not quite love it, but it's colourful and rich in flavour and has more strategic depth than at first appears. Its main inspiration is clear, but it more than earns its own place in the sun.

I tried my damnedest to like Source Of Madness... but it all comes back to The Itch. The game has its moments and the world's beautifully horrid, but when everything's churned out of a machine-learning bot it makes for a roguelite that's too random. Yes, you've got to think on your feet, but a lack of defined margins means your life's often snuffed out by mess. And mess leads to frustration. And frustration leads to excuses. When you're pinning your demise on the game itself, it's hard to summon the willpower to push on.

Ultimately Nightmare Reaper's a fun retro-styled FPS with a couple of rogue-lite elements to introduce some loot-fuelled pizazz to bloody proceedings. While it lack of full commitment to the rogue-lite reward loop knocks it a touch - you're still in for a treat. The game's sheer volume of randomised weaponry and twisty levels make it worth picking up for retro FPS veterans or newbies alike.

Rising is definitely not the required must-play you need to absorb beforehand. After all, we don't even know what role CJ, Isha and walking talking kangaroo Garoo (yes, really) will even play in Hundred Heroes yet, let alone whether they'll be interesting enough to warrant buying a whole prequel game for (and on the strength of this current evidence, almost certainly not). Instead, I'd wait and see what their deal is in Hundred Heroes before bothering with this one, and only then if you're really desperate for some switch-off-brain button mashing fan service. It does have the added benefit of being on Game Pass if you're really curious, although whether it will still be here once Hundred Heroes comes out remains to be seen. Still, as we discussed at the beginning of this review, there are some things in life that are just better off forgotten.

For all its quirks, Ska Studios have themselves a solid entry here. I don’t think there were many problems I encountered that couldn’t be patched out, and I had a lot of fun with the game in spite of some annoyances. If Salt And Sanctuary was Ska Studios sheepishly imitating a more successful formula, then Salt And Sacrifice is them confidently finding their stride. For a game about tearing out hearts, it’s clearly had a lot of heart put into it and Monster Hunter fans in particular shouldn’t pass this one up. Just don’t expect perfection.

Trek To Yomi doesn't quite reach the heights I'd hoped, in all honesty. The game's combat can't match its beauty, but it's a journey worth embarking on if you're after a bitesize story of revenge – who doesn't love revenge? - that's got some of the most striking visuals around. This rings especially true if you've got Game Pass, as it makes for a perfect package filled with pretty things.

So despite the nagging feeling that FixFox needed an unforgiving editor at some points, Rendlike have made a lovely world to just BE in, tootling around on your desert bike, arriving in and out of town, eating nice soup. It's all about co-operation and being friendly and helping out. And in return the locals like you too! Isn't that lovely? Yes. Yes it is.

Ultimately, it's not the machinery of Citizen Sleeper I'll remember, not the ticking clocks and the rerolls, but the hackers and the mercs, the drunks and the shipyard workers. Because like Feng once said: systems aren't important, people are.

So embrace the chaos, friends, because Daemonhunters is the absolute business. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Now, I wouldn't say that Rogue Legacy 2 features an area or a weapon or otherwise that's utterly bonkers. There is nothing on selection here that's all too different from other roguelikes or metroidvanias. Still, it doesn't matter. All of its many, many, systems coalesce into a roguelike that'll give you a great big "one more run" itch. And it's an itch that rewards you, no matter how much you scratch.

If Curious Panda can flesh things out enough on top of the smaller tweaks they already appear to be patching in, and really lean into its unusual details, it could distinguish itself well in an increasingly competitive division. [Early Access Review]

Less good than very good is still good (wrote the professional, terribly), and Spice Wars has been a very pleasant surprise overall. It’s intricate. It’s polished. It’s well considered.

Glitchhikers is an interesting place to explore, a suspended cat's cradle with weird art and angles that are more effective prompts for thoughts than any of the voice overs about place and meaning. When it's silent you have to have strange ideas to fill it up. But Glitchhikers as a whole feels less like a series of dreamy conversations and more a series of lectures being delivered at you by a self-conscious writer.