Fired from your job and abandoned on a distant planet, Revenge of the Savage Planet is a competently put together action-adventure game with Metroidvania progression that's entertaining enough on the whole. Thanks to its formulaic structure and tacked-on co-op mode, however, you’ll occasionally get the feeling that you would be better off doing something else with your time.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S is an underwhelming port of a great game. The addition of a single new mode and a handful of hardware features isn’t enough to justify the steep asking price, especially given its online matchmaking limitations. Had Sega offered a cheap upgrade path for existing Puyo Puyo Tetris owners, it would be much easier to recommend.

Despite awful PC performance dragging down the gorgeous visuals, 1348 Ex Voto excels at offering satisfying sword combat in an enjoyable, bite-sized adventure. However, as a whole package, it wasn't able to keep me invested in a story that I would otherwise love had there been more time spent developing its central relationship.

Just Dance VR would have been perfect a few years ago, but the dated track list and the fact that it doesn't take full advantage of the VR medium leaves me wanting more.

This demanding strategy game forces you to embrace the fact that you can’t save everyone, and you may lose more lives if you try, but bugs and a lack of polish mar what is an otherwise great experience.

Payday 3 is a competently made and fairly polished heist-’em-up but while stealth gets an upgrade, the shooting is the same as its decade-old predecessor. Hitman-esque levels provide a nice distraction, but this feels like a foundation for Payday 3 as a live service game rather than a total product.

Armored Core 6 offers slick and well-polished mech battling fundamentals, diluted by the inclusion of ill-fitting soulsborne mechanics that don’t compliment the mech pilot fantasy. Though there’s much to enjoy for fans of the series, newcomers will be met with a lopsided experience that doesn’t quite capture the full potential of the Armored Core series.

Atlas Fallen is a solid but uninspiring open-world fantasy RPG with brilliant movement and traversal but not much else. In a crowded field of fantasy RPGs, it doesn’t have the level of finish, characters, and story to make it a truly memorable experience.

Drag x Drive is undoubtedly original and shows off the effectiveness of the Switch 2’s mouse mode pretty well. 3v3 matches are decent fun to hop into if you’ve got a spare few minutes, and the controls are generally intuitive. But as intuitive as they may be, those controls do get tiring on the arms after a little while. Additionally, the game is visually uninspired, lacking the vibrancy and character we all expect from Nintendo titles.

While Homeworld 3 looks the part and is a competent strategy game, the chaos of battle obscures much of the nuance of its new features.

Like its predecessor, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 - Turbocharged is a solid racer elevated by its stunning life-like visuals. With few new additions, however, this sequel struggles to justify its own existence.

Fashion Dreamer is a solid fashion simulator that nails outfit creation and its colorful aesthetic but the lack of any real structure holds its single-player component back from greatness.

Much like the game’s creatures that assemble from the bits and bobs of the deceased on their path, Cronos: The New Dawn also amalgamates the prime cuts of Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, The Last of Us, Alan Wake, and more survival horror classics. At least the result isn't a hulking monstrosity that I want to kill with fire. However, despite traces of genuinely inventive ideas, it's a flawed patchwork that just about gets away with competently imitating all of its absorbed parts.

Crash Team Rumble has all the ingredients of an engaging online multiplayer game. Its team-based fundamentals are strong with a small but well-thought-out roster of playable characters and varied map design that greatly complements the game’s quickfire matches. It’s unfortunate, then, that Crash Team Rumble is lacking the content – and progression – needed for a live service title to stand the test of time.

Layers of Fear is a shiny remake with the same dull and slightly uneasy story that plagued the original titles. While it masters elements of a hallucinogenic game with smooth transitions and creative mind-boggling settings, I was never even slightly scared, surprised, or excited.

While the Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake expands upon the original’s content and adds replayability, its clunkiness leads to even the simpler puzzles feeling frustrating, especially with a slow start that drags on for longer than it should.

Quantum Error is an intriguing and solid horror game - though never gripping or truly outstanding. At its best when you’re a firefighter using your specialist skills and tools, the title has an original premise and story but is let down by weird over-the-top cinematic stylings as well as odd pacing, as well as characters and dialogue carved out of oak.

While it makes for a fun, relatively short co-op jaunt, Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t live up to its predecessors. Puzzles lack complexity, the story lacks heart and, though it’s still a grim world for our protagonists, the fear factor just doesn’t pack enough punch.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion clearly takes inspiration from the Xenoblade Chronicles series with huge open maps and deeply customizable mech suits. The game nails the customization and has some cool ideas all its own, like the superb fusion system. Unfortunately, it does very little with its open spaces, and they aren’t particularly visually interesting. With bland interior levels, shallow side missions, and rather listless combat, it’s ultimately a game that feels half-baked.

Lego Fortnite is a solid swing at a survival crafting game, but will likely only fully come into its own after a few updates. Building is an issue at present, a real issue in a Lego title, but as a survival game, it’s excellent.

The first original Mana series game in over a decade and a half is a pleasant romp through a visually stellar fantasy world. Fun combat quirks such as class switching and malleable builds offer plenty of customization, too, that’s all really quite easy to understand. Unfortunately, some stiffer elements of movement and a story that doesn’t quite realize its full potential have Visions of Mana falling short.

Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss doesn’t truly excel at anything, chucks in a few unnecessary mechanics, and can be technically wobbly, but fans of cosmic horror and in-depth puzzle-solving will surely enjoy it as a perfectly competent investigation game that offers a sinister and spooky edge.

Frontier Developments’ foray into the Age of Sigmar universe is competent and slick, boasting a fun single-player campaign and plenty of robust multiplayer features. However, the game’s cookie-cutter approach to unit design and combat interactions makes for a simplistic experience that will disappoint seasoned RTS players.

Excellent shooting, fluid parkour, and plenty of variety electrify this brief sci-fi adventure. The visuals are superb, but it’s undermined by rocky performance and awkward dialogue throughout.

The Invincible deploys its source material brilliantly in terms of style, aesthetic, and story, however a lot of slow parts, empty spaces, and over-simplistic mechanics and puzzles mean it never really hits truly stellar heights.

Total War: Pharaoh offers satisfying battles and challenging empire management, but undermines itself by pushing the player towards half-baked diplomacy, trade, and intrigue systems that feel authentic but aren’t consistently fun.

Mafia: The Old Country offers a compelling mob story, complete with great voice acting and beautiful cinematics, that’s undermined by some bizarre mechanics. Shoddy stealth segments, familiar set-pieces, and vanishingly few opportunities to explore its stunning world make for an entry that’s far from the worst in the series, but falls short of the best.

Lost Soul Aside is a competently made action game filled with phenomenal combat and cinematic battles. It has some compelling visuals and environments, but PC performance is lackluster, resulting in frequent hitches and distractions. The story isn’t the most engaging and has awkward platforming mechanics too.

More like Bizarro to Superhot's Kal-El, Cold VR's flip to slowing down time while in motion offers some incredibly fun gameplay moments that are also enhanced by great presentation. It's too bad that the game often lacks the polish of its biggest inspiration through bugs and occasionally wonky design.

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered delivers a welcome visual overhaul to The Last Revelation, Chronicles and The Angel of Darkness with excellent character models, detailed textures and revamped lighting working together to wonderful effect. The modern control schemes across the collection are frustratingly cumbersome but some great quality-of-life improvements and the excellent photo mode features make this remaster a must for longtime fans.

Despite its bizarre premise, Exoprimal’s core loop works tremendously well, providing a team-based multiplayer experience that’s simultaneously unlike anything else and has a strong ‘one more match’ feeling. However, it remains extremely difficult to recommend due to being a full-priced multiplayer-only title.

Jamboree TV offers some more and varied uses of the Switch 2's unique features with a charming game show format that will be fun for breaking out at parties. Its new content, however, doesn't integrate with the base game and makes for an awfully pricey package if you don't already own the original game.

Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is ultimately a curio that won’t live long in the memory. As a literal tech demo for the various components that keep the Switch 2 ticking, learning things about the system can be fun, and the demos and minigame challenges presented each offer something unique. The experience only lasts a handful of hours, though, and you will need a 4K TV and accessories like the Switch 2 Camera in order to see the game through to completion, which is more than a little cheeky in a paid release.

The pre-launch hype, understandably, got wildly out of control for Football Manager 26, and even though Sports Interactive was somewhat transparent about features being removed, nobody expected just how buggy and half-baked the final product would be. It's still Football Manager, and there's still a lot to love, but it's abundantly clear this game was only released because it had to be contractually. Keep playing Football Manager 2024, and wait until Football Manager 27 if you don't think you'll be able to stomach missing features and buggy UI.

GreedFall: The Dying World could have been a triumphant fresh start for a setting with a rocky foundation - providing Spiders with a true breakthrough mainstream hit. While offering a trek through some beautifully realized forests and cities, it unfortunately fails to deliver either an engaging strategic challenge or a narrative that competently handles the difficult themes it wants to explore.

The appeals to nostalgia can’t save Life is Strange: Reunion from seeming like a low-budget cash grab that clumsily undermines the narrative of not only the previous instalment, Double Exposure, but also the beloved first game in the series. It mostly functions on a technical level, albeit while looking pretty hideous at times, but its egregious plot leaves me wishing I could "rewind" this sloppy new entry.

You Will Die Here Tonight is not particularly scary or thrilling, and it can get very frustrating. From the get-go, you’re pushed into a storyline that isn’t fully explained with mechanics that you don’t fully understand; solving things through trial and error can then get cumbersome.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is frustrating. I’ve never seen a game that looks as brilliant as this, but the game’s art direction is let down by so-so combat, awful AI, and weapons that just aren’t satisfying.

Cute characters and a handful of promising ideas in its multiplayer matches do little to redeem Foamstars, which is spoiled by terrible solo missions, a lack of maps, and excessive monetization.

Failing to take the franchise into new territory and held back by its ties of the past, there’s simply nowhere for Life is Strange: Double Exposure to go except aimlessly in circles.

I can’t help but wish Nintendo offered a skew for the game in the West similar to what has been offered in Japan, where players had the chance to buy the otherwise Switch Online-only NES/Famicom replica controllers with the game in a package not too dissimilar to what we see with controller bundles for Super Mario Party. As a freebie with a controller, this game would feel like a neat curio, and while still not wholly satisfying as a standalone experience would likely offer just about enough to satisfy as a pack-in title. Otherwise, this feels more like a first-round knockout than a championship-winning shot at glory.

AEW Fight Forever certainly has moments where it delivers on its promise of back-to-basics, arcade-like pro wrestling fun. However, such moments are few and far between. More often than not, you’ll be wrestling with buggy combat, lackluster visuals, and an underbaked career mode that feels woefully tacked on. It’s not a bad effort from Yuke’s, but one that’s far from the developer’s best work.

All of the groundwork is there for this Hobbit life simulator to be a delightful jaunt through the rolling hills of Tolkien’s imagination, but the execution is lacking on almost every front. From bugs and poor optimization to uninspired dialogue and ill-paced progression, Tales of the Shire takes what should be a reflection on the lessons we might learn from Middle-earth’s most humble of races and mangles it into a bleak reminder that the “simple life” is no fun at all.

Alone in the Dark squanders the promise of its compelling source material with ropey design, awful combat, and choppy presentation.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory has all the parts required to be an amazing VR game. It just assembles these components in an unsatisfying way that leads to an experience I can’t recommend, even to a mega fan.

Phantom Abyss is a mediocre-at-best roguelike 3D platformer. If you’re desperate to grind an unforgiving game, then you may want to give this a go, but, if not, then this may not be for you.

Endless Dungeon may look sleek and polished, but this isometric rogue-like offers little depth. Despite a strong opening, the paper-thin narrative, stock characters, and repetitive combat mechanics do little to maintain interest.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is a superhero third-person shooter that has some interesting ideas and excellent writing, but is intent instead on subjecting players to death via live service nonsense.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 misses more than it hits. A fun zombies mode and the return of fan-favorite maps from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 can’t save Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 from its awful campaign and a multiplayer that feels like a step back from the rest of the reimagined Modern Warfare trilogy.

I’d love nothing more than to play as Dwarves retaking their homeland alongside friends, but sadly, this is not the game to do that in. Besides the setting, there’s not much else to celebrate in Return to Moria.

Mowing down poorly paced waves of the same handful of enemies in repetitive, cramped environments is a chore in this ill-conceived Control spin-off, even when you add two friends to the equation. With no story to speak of and sluggish progression, FBC: Firebreak is a disappointing mess.

A cobbled-together walking simulator with a dead world and poorly paced linear narrative that’s unconvincingly pretending to be an action RPG. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is a disaster and not the sequel its legendary predecessor needed or deserved.

Tamagotchi Plaza is a painful slog, with embarrassingly basic minigames that fail to provide even a slither of entertainment. Grinding for hours in order to unlock upgrades for its miniscule hub world is incredibly unsatisfying and ultimately a huge waste of time.