Puzzles are more tedious, scares are more pitiful, and for all its expanded gameplay, this sequel manages to be no better than the last.

Ugly and threadbare, both mechanically and aesthetically, Garten of Banban has spread its lumpy legs and given birth to one of the most cynically manufactured franchises of all time.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is just another intellectually lazy application of a horror movie license. Well done game, you made murderous space clowns boring… that’s one hell of an achievement.

How f.cking dare Star Wars: Hunters? I really hope it becomes yet another “service” game that’s been shut down in less than a year. It deserves to be burned to nothing.

Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 can be a mentally taxing experience by design, especially if one already has their own litany of mental health struggles. It is a necessary part of a game that explores its themes touchingly and tastefully, a beautiful and astoundingly stylish production. Like its predecessor, the presentation outstrips the gameplay, which suffers from repetition and a lack of escalation or variety. It’s a damn fine thing in totality though, one well worth digging into.

Indika is a treasure of a game, an adventure that truly defies expectations. Constantly surprising and laudably bold in its subject matter, this story of a questioning nun and the devil in her head is among the best things I’ve ever played. A little dash of jank does nothing to take away what this game is - a landmark of strange and fascinating storytelling.

If you’ve been frustrated by the state of some retro horrors, or even if you haven’t, this is a fine addition to the genre that deserves to be ranked highly among the modern examples. Aside from those bastard traps, it’s a damn good bit of body horror.

Despite the reduction of novelty as it progresses, Slayers X is nonetheless a fantastic idea executed very well. Retro indie shooters are a dime a dozen, but hardly any of them commit to the bit quite like this brilliantly stupid follow up to Hypnospace Outlaw...It’s the kind of nonsense I’m just incredibly happy to see exist in the world, and the possibilities it offers for potential future games set in this universe has me on the hook.

Can we turn one of these 80s horror films into something with some substance now? This asymmetrical online shit has clearly reached the barrel’s bottom if this is what we’re getting.

Stellar Blade is at war with itself in a conflict between style and substance. Sadly, style wins with merciless regularity, but there’s a strong core of genuinely good gameplay fighting through an ocean of bells and whistles.

Although far from the highest quality Soulslike, Another Crab’s Treasure is an original, intensely likable one. Its sharp script is backed up with a fun gameplay conceit, wrapped up in a package with a whole lot of character.

Terribly balanced, broken in several ways, and barely able to support the online mode it’s pushing, Sker Ritual is a waste of time. If you like Maid of Sker you don’t need this poor follow-up, and if you like COD: Zombies you don’t need this poor facsimile. Nobody and nothing needs Sker Ritual’s bullshit, least of all Sker Ritual.

All the way down, the theme of “not enough” pervades Princess Peach: Showtime! The costumes Peach wears look cute but their gimmicks are limited both in terms of their abilities and the game’s implementation of them. The lack of imagination is unbecoming of Nintendo, and it’s a real shame because Peach deserves a much better game. It’s like nobody’s heart was in the making of this, and while there are some entertaining moments, Showtime! simply has very little to show for itself.

Rise of Ronin really likes its players, and that’s what I love most about it. While its world features a lot of busywork, it’s also a joy to explore thanks to how easy and versatile movement is. An enthralling combat system openly traces the best of Sekiro and Nioh, serving the extract in a more accessible fashion with a huge variety of ways to fight. While co-op is restrictive, it’s still really funny to go online and turn bosses into confetti, plus you can run a cat rental service...Excellent stuff.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is outwardly hostile to its audience, embracing everything that made the original such a hassle to enjoy. A game designed with the purpose of wasting a player’s time, which makes Capcom’s “time saver” microtransactions all the more sickening. It’s a glorified xerox that you will adore if you believe Dragon’s Dogma was literally perfect when it released in 2012 and absolutely none of the progress within games development in the past twelve years meant one fucking thing. Indeed, if your idea of a good time is having a terrible time, you’ll love this malignant resurrection of ideas and implementations that should have stayed long dead.

Rebirth is totally bananas and I’ve surrendered to the ride. While its obsessive drive to always be different can prove exhausting, it so often does different with such style...My opinion doesn’t matter. For better or worse, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is going to be whatever it wants to be, and what it wants to be is anything it damn well pleases. Against all common sense, that audacity absolutely works, and I can’t wait to see how the next game gloriously screws things up.

I was pleasantly surprised, especially given the series’ ignoble history to this point, to find 2024’s Alone in the Dark is actually really enjoyable. While not the most polished or visually impressive game, it’s a charming one that goes out of its way to pay tribute to the original trilogy with its survival horror elements and shameless lore dumps. An effectively spooky presentation, violent enemies, and clever puzzles round out the package, making this the first Alone in the Dark game since the 1990s to be an Alone in the Dark game.

While the strictly defined horror gameplay might not keep one hooked for hours-long sessions, The Outlast Trials’ style and atmosphere is worth several return journeys. It makes very few changes to the series’ usual stealthy scariness, yet the inclusion of three other players makes for a breezy version that’s pretty damn entertaining. Be aware that playing it alone makes everything take four times longer and isn’t particularly fun, but with even just one more player, some torture porny fun can be had...Plus penises.

Pacific Drive is one of those amazing games that I’ve fallen in love with despite it doing so much I’m inclined to loathe. It’s brilliant in its externalization of survival gameplay with a car that acts perfectly in its dual role of burden and bearer. Its humor, style, and a luxury assortment of modifier settings have kept me spellbound. I can paint my car pink. Game of the year contender.

Helldivers 2 struggles to appeal after stripping out so much of what made its prequel memorable, and if that’s all that was wrong with it I’d be sadly grateful. Miserably, it’s such a wreck of a product that it spends significant amounts of time in a near-unplayable state while the rest of the time is typified by frequent crashes and other technical difficulties. You're supposed to expect a certain level of quality in a Sony-published game, and Helldivers 2 is a reminder that such expectations are naive as all f.ck.

There are so many of these bloody games on the market now, all vying for attention, all doing the same thing, and none of them doing enough of anything good. This is just one in a line of flimsy “service” games, light on original content but plenty heavy on microtransactions. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has its moments of messy fun, but those moments are entrenched between gulfs of numbingly inane “looter shooter” nonsense...I'm just over it.

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a very good thing. Adorable, silly, and quite funny indeed, this roguelite might be a big genre shift from its predecessor but it’s just as lovable. It hurries itself along a bit too much, but the fast pace of gameplay and swift progress at least ensures it never gets dull.

The “remastering” is of highly questionable value and the extra content is weak. No Return is a cheaply recycled and tawdry take on roguelite gameplay, while the Lost Levels were lost for a reason. Worse, such additions hammer a final nail into the coffin of this game’s creative ambition, definitively invalidating an already flimsy story with the kind of combat-focused experiences that communicate only one thing to the player - violent videogames are cool.

By selling Gangs of Sherwood, Nacon is robbing from the gullible and giving to the inept. I’d have worked on a better closing analogy, but this game isn’t bloody worth it.

Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection is really rather sad. It looks and feels cheap, the drought of available options is stark, and the fact they couldn’t even include save states or rewind options without being extremely frugal about it is audacious at the very least. To top it off, all six games - masquerading as seven - are garbage. Pure, utter garbage. Yes, even the ones you remember...Especially the ones you remember.

GameMill Entertainment continues its run of rushed, cheap, utterly contemptuous scam jobs. Yet another game where you can see how the developers at one point hoped to make something good until reality hit them in the face, forcing them to spray some vomit onto storefronts and call it a day...It’s only marginally better than Skull Island: Rise of Kong because I can f.cking laugh at it.

Karmazoo is a wonderful cooperative puzzler that encourages wordless teamwork in a way that should lead to chaos but instead results in elegant simplicity - most of the time. With its cute sense of humor and even cuter character designs, there’s a huge amount of appeal in simply unlocking and trying new characters, of which there are many. A game about being polite to strangers is as twee as it sounds, and it’s a tweeness I’m absolutely here for...Plus you can be a duck.

I’d call Skull Island: Rise of Kong embarrassing, but I’m not sure you can be capable of feeling such an emotion if you’re able to sell this thing. Ultimately, Skull Island is a scam. It’s not even bad in a funny way, it’s just insulting - it’s not been finished, it was roughly stitched into the vague shape of a videogame and given the price tag of a legitimate product...It’s the kind of game that makes the case for some sort of independent trading standards body in the game industry. I say this with all due gravity - The Game Mill should not have been allowed to sell Skull Island: Rise of Kong. In an industry with adequate customer protections, it should be recalled.