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.