Robinson showed a great deal of promise, but ended up much like any other VR game in this launch window.

For $21.95 AUD — what I’m assuming is the price of this title, as that’s the usual RRP of Wales Interactive’s FMV outings — it’s hard to go wrong with a bit of gory fun. Gore, though, is the keyword here; if you’re not into that kind of thing, Dead Reset isn’t for you. Try an FMV crime thriller instead. Whatever you do, grab some friends (and turn on Streamer mode so you can debate choices), pop some popcorn and have a night of it; you won’t be disappointed.

Those without a real attachment to the Bat family will feel indifferent to what's presented; most who adore Dick and Babs will simply be disappointed.

Super Lucky’s Tale is by no means bad — it’s simply good; fun, but easily forgettable. If it was released at a different time than Odyssey, it may have made more of an impression, but alas, here we are.

Wolfenstein Youngblood is largely forgettable. It’s not bad, per se, merely competent. I’m happy to set this one aside and wait for the next proper Wolfenstein sequel, far removed from half-baked RPG mechanics and Nazis who conveniently design door switch and secret mechanism to be completed by two people instead of just one.

In 2012, I forgave most of Resident Evil 6‘s failings, and I’m ashamed at my behaviour in doing so. I couldn’t, in good conscience, do that any longer. It’s an already dated game, worse now due to its chaos than ever before.

Overall, Project Motor Racing just doesn’t quite reach what’s promised. A strong and visually impressive catalogue of cars and tracks is countered by poor default setups and samey handling. There’s definitely some good here – the career mode offering is robust and the competitive leaderboards are a nice addition – but they’re ultimately overshadowed by, well, everything else.

While Layers of Fear was a jaunt into the unknown, Layers of Fear 2 has a strong sense of déjà vu that you carry with you from beginning to end; you’ve the feeling you’ve seen this before, and likely, more expertly done. Despite that misstep, it remains a must-play for horror fans who’re looking for a polished, atmospheric little fright. Emphasis on “little fright”, though — don’t expect too many scares. If you’ve not played the original, I’d recommend it over its sequel.

The entire experience is one that’s reminiscent of NBA Jam, but never provides the same levels of joy you’re after.

Yet despite its issues, I’m still playing ReCore. Its narrative, while no great work of prose, is intriguing enough to draw me through. Combat is varied enough to keep me coming back — even when I’m forced to replay the same encounter on occasion due to gang-up attacks. The ability to craft upgrades and collect loot throughout the world scratches that Metroid-style itch that Nintendo itself refuses to do anything about

Agents of Mayhem is Volition’s latest, a third-person, single-player shooter that’s been spun off from Saints Row and wants to channel the likes of Overwatch and Borderlands. It does not succeed.

Super Bomberman R is basic Bomberman. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before, but it’s still great fun with simple, chaotic local multiplayer after all these years, even if it is extremely overpriced.

Having spent more time with We Happy Few, I couldn’t be happier. Arthur’s story is clearly the longest, though the game’s additional two parts — with a different protagonist in each — are equally as enjoyable. They’re thankfully unique in that each part doesn’t merely feel like your character has been reskinned.

As a multiplayer mode, Ghost War is fun enough — I got destroyed in my first 4v4 games before realising I had to play like the realistic military shooter I was expecting in campaign. Once you get your head around things, you’ll enjoy working as a team to best your opponents. But whether or not I’d choose Ghost War over, say, the Crucible? Hands-down, I’m out. Sorry, Breakpoint.

Predictable jump scares, ringing telephones, spooky notes, guys in animal masks humping things and malfunctioning flashlights litter the landscape, and with each new instance, you’re left less and less impressed.

FlatOut 4: Total Insanity is quite an improvement over the last game in the franchise. This is a competent car game, not excelling at anything but merely holding its own. You can get better racers or derbies out of a handful of other games, but its stunts are unique and enjoyable. They alone are worth a purchase if you’re in amongst a group of rev heads with nothing to do on a Friday night.

What needs to be made clear is that Wreckreation has been built by a team of only 10 people with a few small titles under its belt — a far cry from when Criterion was building Burnout Paradise in its heyday. I made similar comments when I reviewed Danger Zone 2 back in 2018, praising the efforts of such a small team for creating something fun. When put into this context, what Three Fields Entertainment has set out to achieve is massive — I can’t imagine how much hard work has been put into Wreckreation. That said, some cut corners, bugs, janky mechanics, and limited content shows that a project of this size may have been too ambitious for such a small team.

While I think there is the opportunity for fun to be had in this game, it would mostly be generated by the players making their own fun and not the game supplying it. Friday The 13th: The Game has the potential to be a great game but sadly it’s not right now.

The problem with the grind is that there’s hardly anything new worth doing! Over on Xbox One, we’re treated to a second expansion that borrows old missions to repackage as Strikes. The only new Strike available in Warmind is a PS4-exclusive, which is good to those on the console, but us poor PC and Xbox folk are missing out. Everything about Warmind screams reskin, from weaponry to enemies (icy Hive) to these Strikes. It’s beyond disappointing. [Provisional Score = 55]

In the end, it’s best to look at Broken Roads as the answer to “What if Fallout but Australia?” Fans of any CRPG will immediately recognise a lot of what Broken Roads is going for, and those with more old school tastes will feel right at home nestled deep in the West Australian outback.

Roller Champions is a mixed bag that is in definite need of some balancing. Under the right circumstances it’s an absolute blast… but take one little bit of that equation away and you’ll be left frustrated.

Need For Speed Payback represents EA’s answer to where most racers are headed -– massive worlds, large car lists, extensive customisation options and plenty of things to do.

Controlling your player is frankly difficult, and I can see people dropping off because they don’t enjoy the experience. Thankfully, that’s where some of Drag x Drive‘s mini-games come into play as they not only break up games, but try to encourage refining your ability to control your player.

Just Sing isn’t bad; it’s a good karaoke game marred by presentation problems, or, a half-decent party title.

Calling All Units is a neat expansion to add to The Crew, but unless you’ve got a sufficient in-game credits you’ll either need to buy crew points with actual money or grind through events to afford the vehicles you’ll need to complete the additional missions.

Overall it feels like an atmospheric step forward for the developer, but a mechanical trip backwards. Until that gets sorted, the red planet can wait.

Currently, I’m roughly 9-10 hours in to Suicide Squad and I feel pretty confident I’ve seen all that it has to offer by way of gameplay. To be honest, I don’t really want to spend any more time with it. That not how this works, of course — I’ve not yet spent enough time to properly score this fairly and accurately because we received our review code three days after the refund window closed on the die-hard DC fans that forked out ridiculous sums for early access, and only 13 hours before its general release. Do what you will with that information. [Review in Progress]

Unknown 9 Awakening is a competent title with some outdated and flawed designs, but with a larger universe and lore that is undeniably compelling. It’s well worth dealing with the rough edges if that idea excites you (especially at its reduced price tag!).

Unfortunately, the closer these games get to quality, the more those little issues stand out, and off the pitch this is still an unsatisfactory package lacking modes, licences and polish. If graphics, the English or South African rugby union team, or long term commitment are important to you, Rugby 22 isn’t going to deliver. If you’ve been hanging out since the PS2 era to just have some fun with a rugby union game, you might just find it in Rugby 22.

While there’s the potential via various endings and story branches, the simple slog of The Inpatient has proven too much for me. Is it VR that’s the culprit, or does Supermassive already need a new hook?

The only other time you may need to pull the disc back out is to show off virtual reality to friends or family. That’s it.

Bioware have all the pieces of the puzzle, but right now Anthem isn’t living up to its potential. It’s bad, but not so bad it can’t be fixed.

Harmless fun from a mobile game that wants to be a console one instead.

So far it seems the ocean in Skull and Bones is a mile wide and an inch deep, devoid of any real personality. As Arrowhead Studios — developers of the darling of the moment Helldivers 2, have proudly emblazoned on their website — “a game for everyone is a game for no one.” In Skull and Bones’ case, it seems that a game that does everything is a game that does nothing. [Review in Progress]

I’ve been playing Hades 2 at the same time as Hotel Barcelona, and the former captured my attention more than the latter. Hotel Barcelona sure is quirky, but lacks some much-needed polish that could have truly elevated it. Know what you’re in for, and pull the trigger accordingly; though kudos to publisher Cult Games for setting this at a very digestible $60 AUD price point. I had a blast setting things to easy in order to blow through the lion’s share of its story (as in I missed a side mission or two) in roughly 6 or 7 hours.

Sadly, a game that’s meant to showcase the Switch’s Joy-Cons also demonstrates how broken they can become.

Rightly or wrongly, the Carnival Games name has come to represent the type of shovelware that shifted opinion on the Wii from revolutionary to revolting in record time. Carnival Games VR is inoffensively decent, controlling well and offering some moments of entertainment, but it doesn’t last and does little to reverse opinion on the series.

World Series has a lot of good ideas that were implemented quite poorly. If you were thinking about this one to scratch a casual racing or nostalgic itch, you’re best to hold off – at the very least, until these niggling performance issues are corrected.

AEW Fight Forever isn’t exactly a stupid idea from bad creative, it’s just a product scoped so small that asking a AAA new release price tag for it feels criminal. Matches are fun and entertaining, for a while at least, but absolutely every facet of the thing feels hugely undercooked. WWE 2K has been sorely in need of some real competition for years just as WWE itself has, but unfortunately AEW just haven’t pulled it off here as well as they did on television.

With 30 levels, too few of them being actual trials and too many being stupid platforming, Trials of the Blood Dragon seems nothing more than an attempt at showing off what a few developers could do after getting drunk and watching 80 action movies and Saturday morning cartoons. The disappointing thing is this could have been so much better by simplifying the concept and making it a DLC map pack for Trials Fusion.

Cricket 24 is a curious case of being one of the best in the series, but with such minor changes over Cricket 22 that it feels like we’re watching a replay during a rain delay. That makes it hard to recommend if you’re already invested in past games. For new players, it remains as accessible as a sport as complicated as cricket can be. With a bevvy of returning control options and difficulties, there’s a way to play for all skill levels. Cricket 24 is still at its best when bat meets ball, and there are more licensed modes than ever before headlined by reliving the 2023 Ashes and forging a lengthy career – but the same experience can be had, without Gilly, at a fraction of the cost with Cricket 22.

Right now, there are just too many bugs, too many exploits, and just too little simulation of the best parts of the sport it tries to replicate for me to recommend Rugby 18. This is a solid base to build upon, but with so many great playgrounds out there playing on a solid concrete foundation with a few stray woodchips for safety just doesn’t have much appeal.

The game is very playable from a first person perspective but VR is by no means essential.

Old Time Hockey is as bush league as it gets – from a desire to represent that mirrored by the size of V7 compared to the gargantuan EA Canada. It’s occasionally rough around the edges, but in ways that usually elevate rather than hinder it. Questionable design decisions aside, Old Time Hockey is great fun — a reason to invite a friend over, crack a beer and dive back into the good ol’ days.

It’s not that I’m mad, I am just disappointed. These three PS2 games remain iconic, and I have enjoyed returning to Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas, but as a remaster, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is lacking the care and respect such highly regarded games deserve. It doesn’t have the quality we have come to expect from remasters recently. Yet, such is their quality, the underlying games, which deserved better, still hold up as a product of their time. They are worth returning to if the PS2 GTA Trilogy holds a special place in your heart, so long as you can temper expectations and accept the good, the bad and the downright ugly from a ‘that’ll do’ remaster. If not, you’re better off persevering them with those rose-tinted memories.

Redfall is a truly exciting experience. It's great solo, has the potential to be great with friends -- especially if someone has a save so I can access that last 17 Gamerscore I need, thanks. It’ll be perfect for anyone who's loved an Arkane game -- sci-fi, fantasy or otherwise -- in the past.

There’s some quick fun to be had here, but if you want meaningful cricket on consoles, stick with Ashes Cricket.

All of Stone’s systems work to create a quirky little game with a bunch of things going for it and almost as many things that can detract from it.

The lack of local multiplayer is Mutants in Manhattan‘s biggest sin.

It turns out communism isn’t the only idea that works better in theory than practice.

Melee attacks and a general active feel just don’t work in a tactical RPG.

Crackdown 3 feels too similar to the game that came before it; it’s like Sumo has made Crackdown 2 again, ignoring everything it could have learned from the last decade of open world titles.

Unless you’re an absolute die-hard Power Rangers fan who foams at the mouth when it comes to new content (and has patience to wait for online matches), give this one a very easy miss.

Gameplay isn’t bad, nor buggy, but it is very formulaic.

Start playing The Grand Tour Game after work tonight and you will be done with the single-player campaign before your Uber Eats order arrives.

There’s plenty of fun to be had here for fans of the show. It’s a AUD $20 interactive puzzle game that expands The Grand Tour beyond the confines of an hour of television each week. It isn’t trying to be a fully fledged racing game, and it isn’t priced like one. Just as The Grand Tour show isn’t really about the cars, The Grand Tour Game isn’t really about the gameplay.

There’s a lot that I hope gets fixed and altered, and it’s crying out for a greater variety of maps and story beats to pull its campaign runs together from. The fundamentals of its design are genuinely great though, and it’ll be a tremendous shame if it just withers away and dies. There’s a shining diamond here, it’s just a bummer that it’s buried under so much muck.

Making a new game that’s so much like the original — right down to the borderline excessive load times — was a terrible decision.

This is a shallow, simple shooting gallery you would expect from a motion control minigame collection, adding a VR layer to expand it to 180 degree action isn’t enough and even if you are engaged there is no way to compete against yourself, let alone the world. Thoroughly mediocre.

Bethesda has chosen to release a half-finished, buggy mess of a title in its current state. This isn’t early access, nor is it a beta — this is apparently a finished product that I have to assess. I have: it’s garbage. This poor release provides Bethesda the opportunity to take notice of two key takeaways: the Creation Engine needs to go, and single-player developers shouldn’t bite off more than they can chew when making a multiplayer game. And this comes from a guy who looked past Fallout 4‘s last-gen engine and subsequent failings to give it a 10/10. Free pass no more, Bethesda.

It’s poorly made and is, hands down, the worst game I’ve ever played. The fact that the end credits didn’t include a personal apology because you simply made it to ’em is astonishing.

A mish-mash of concepts and half-cooked ideas that are never fully developed, wrapped up in a cutesy aesthetic that is at odds with its (at times) dark and disturbing themes. This is one to avoid.

Ace Banana in its present state is barely playable with Move controllers.

I didn’t think it would be possible, but Umbrella Corps has officially taken the title of “biggest Resident Evil cash-in” away from Operation: Raccoon City. Brief moments of online merriment don’t even come close to saving this muddy, jumpy, bot-filled mess.

7 Days to Die is awful. I’d imagine this is how the PC release initially played back in 2013 as part of Steam Early Access; I’m utterly confused as to why there’s no polish at all on this new console release. There’s no excuse for such a flimsy mess, and I’m quite surprised Telltale Games would permit its name to be associated with such tripe. Avoid the game at all costs.

Give Agony a hard miss. It looks awful, controls horrendously and definitely can’t get by on shock value. There’s nothing to see here.

After the stellar, story-based content that was “Far Harbour”, “Vault-Tec” simply underwhelms. A handful of fetch quests pad out limited crafting content. While you can go nuts and design a Vault any Overseer would be proud of, the content itself only asks that you explore a couple cave systems and build four experimental machines.

Risk: Urban Assault is a decent game wrapped in a terrible package disrespectful of the player and their time. It throws pointless animations, cutscenes and bloat into a board game that is already well known for being a soul sucking grind. If this was just a board game I’d begrudgingly recommend it to people who really like Risk but as a video game I find it hard to recommend to anybody.

Pleasure Planet excels in every way over its predecessor. Puzzles are challenging but fair; each failure made is clear-cut and understandable (though with that said, it’s best to save more often than simply rely on the auto-save). One or two puzzles suffer from a logic gap or have elements that simply work themselves out, inexplicably, to progress a thread, but they’re quite uncommon and largely forgivable. I never experienced the states of hopelessness and futility that Space Tyrant was often plagued with.

While it may be the remaster none of us asked for, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger is a fun, nostalgia-filled title that’s relatively easy on the eyes and won’t be a problem for most PCs.

Overall, these three new Operations feel very consistent with the standard set by the core Watch Dogs 2 experience. The chance to return to San Francisco and geek it up with the DedSec team is welcome, and their characterisation remains as energetic and positive as ever. While the missions aren’t perfect – the return of an extended ‘getaway chase’ sequence brought on rage-flashbacks to the ‘Cyberdriver’ mission of the critical mission path – it does give another taste of everything that made this game great last year. Wth more DLC yet to come, I’m hopeful this same standard will be maintained and help bring on an even MORE hipster Watch Dogs 3 announcement.

AFL fans might never get the game we’ve been dreaming of, but we deserve a much better attempt than this quick cash-in.

If you could forgive Rugby League Live 3 its flaws and enjoy it, then this sequel will leave you as happy as Fatty and King Wally after Origin 3. Everything about the gameplay is tighter; from the improved ruck and play-the-ball to a more realistic AI that flings passes around less but ruthlessly punishes you for shooting out of the line or attempting to stop a big man with a little one.

Casey Powell Lacrosse 18 is a solid sports title that newcomers will find engaging and enjoyable. Die-hard lacrosse fans will frankly gobble this up.

Both Breach and Arcade improve the overall package, the new fighters will be appreciated by the dedicated community and it’s great to see a visual improvement 18 months post-launch. However, this is a strange situation where the Marching Fire content is great, but I can’t recommend buying the $45 expansion.

There’s more fun to be had here than the past couple of games, and it feels like it’s been made with more passion, by AFL fans, for AFL fans who desperately want an AFL game to play.

It admittedly features some pretty average voice acting — most notably one Aussie who is absolutely speed reading though his lines — but that feeds into the entire package, giving it a quaint, Twin Peaks-like vibe where you’re aware that something’s off, but you’re willing to go with it nonetheless. If you’re interested in the weird and unusual, or just after something that’s different from the norm, it’s hard to go wrong priced at $8.99 AUD accordingly. Give Burn a go and help Nina sort her demons.