Stray Gods can be inconsistent in its musical numbers at times and presents a selection of irksome technical issues, but these foibles are trivial to overlook when Grace’s journey fires on all cylinders. It is marvelously written with a beating heart lined with poignancy, which at every turn expresses the joy, fear, and unpredictability of human life you can’t help but feel represented by. Much like Grace, I’m a lost, lost girl with little direction in life, but sometimes a game like this comes along and convinces me it’s only a matter of time until I’m found.

It's clear that the devs at Mega Cat love RPGs, and they might love wrestling even more. This could easily have been a cheap cash-in, a generic RPG with a lazy wrestling facade. The truth is the opposite, and I implore fans of old-school RPGs to check it out whether you like wrestling or not. If you're a wrestling fan, then everything gets even better. You'll get all the references, enjoy the niche moves, and enjoy one of the best wrestling games in years.

Remnant: From the Ashes is one of my all-time favorite games, so the sequel had a lot to live up to. Remnant 2 makes many bold changes, and not all of them are successful, but it doesn’t lose the core of what makes Remnant so popular. It’s still a rock-solid shooter with a captivating setting that’s full of challenging boss fights, unique weapons, and plenty of mysteries to discover. If the post-launch support for Remnant 2 is anything like Remnant: From the Ashes, we'll have a lot to look forward to over the next couple of years while Gunfire Games refines the systems and adds new locations and game modes to try. The cliffhanger ending certainly indicates there’s a lot more to come, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Venba is a truly wonderful game, and executes what it sets out to do wonderfully. The art is gorgeous, the music is excellent, and the storytelling is somehow both broad in what it manages to elucidate about the South Asian immigrant experience while deep in the family dynamics it portrays. The cooking gameplay does eventually get a little stale towards the end as it attempts to include more recipes with less detail, and quite honestly, it’s more of a visual novel that touches on cooking than an actual cooking game. That said, I still found myself sniffling and wiping tears away by the end. It’s a sincere, full-throated love letter to Tamil culture and first-generation immigrants everywhere, and in that sense it is unique and singular in its ambition. I loved Venba, and have already recommended it to my Indian friends. I can only hope that it reaches far beyond that audience.

Like with the platforming, the map exploration and Metroidvania mechanics can be a bit too simplistic in execution and mostly tell you where everything is and how to get it. Seasoned platformer fans might find things too easy, but if you can accept that lack of challenge and take Illusion Island for the joyful adventure that it is, then you'll find that it's a good, simple time, with satisfying mechanics, a love for Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy, and a gorgeous world to explore.

Fans of The Expanse will enjoy this story. I’m curious about what happens in the next couple of episodes, and that’s exactly the sort of narrative pull that I was looking for. But you might also get frustrated with the game at times - it’s not a flawless experience by any means, and I really wanted more from it.

Pikmin 4 isn’t quite the best game in the series, but it’s certainly the most confident. With this new entry, Nintendo has decided to wipe away much of the past tedium in favour of ensuring moment-to-moment gameplay is more enjoyable than ever. But eradicating its past frustrations also removes much of the challenge and depth from the game’s battles and puzzles. Commanding its multicoloured armies and pilfering this planet of its treasures while gathering a motley crew of comrades kept me enraptured for hours, just don’t come into this expecting the harsh journey back home to be little more than a leisurely stroll.

Full Void is on the short side, but that’s no bad thing. There’s only so much you can do to keep someone invested in a dystopian narrative that does little to explain the world it resides in, and this adventure thankfully provides mystery, suspense, and climax in quick succession. I clocked in at just under two hours and came away satisfied. While the metaphors at work err on the self-indulgent side and the gameplay is relatively shallow, Full Void delivers a memorable experience about how it feels to have your childhood ripped away by forces you can’t control.

Exoprimal is a prehistoric relic of its own making, and a harsh but necessary lesson for a developer who has been sitting atop the pile for far too long. Future seasons could salvage the flashes of excellence on display here, but I doubt players will stick around long enough for that to become a reality. And to think we could have had a new Dino Crisis instead.

Like I said, Oxenfree 2 is all about choice, and I’m choosing to replay it as soon as I have the time.

Crime O’Clock feels like wasted potential. As a hidden object game, it has the foundations of something decent, with its lively scenes and impressive worldbuilding offering up just enough pixel-clicking for fans of the genre to get a few cheap thrills out of it. But instead of leaning any further into its time-bending angle and becoming a truly impressive puzzler, it’s happy to sit and throw a few naff minigames at you, hoping it’s enough to distract from the severe lack of any actual substance.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code delivers masterful craftsmanship of mysteries that players will delight in unravelling. Though the more hands-on gameplay mechanics aren’t groundbreaking and can feel a bit too easy, the strength of the narrative alone and cleverly created whodunnits make this a must-play for Danganronpa fans and anyone who loves channeling their inner detective.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective has long deserved a second chance at life, and in this form, it’s easily at its most definitive. Making new friends while saving their lives as a friendly ghost never gets old and only makes you feel deeper and deeper in love with everything the game has to offer as you progress. Embrace death, make friends with dogs, and delight in a brand of chaos you won’t find anywhere else in the medium.

C-Smash VRS is an interesting revival of a forgotten classic, perfectly suited for the virtual reality medium from the active nature of the gameplay to the futuristic visuals. However, it conspires to make the experience frustrating with precise controls, harsh timers, and a lack of solo play modes despite the (doomed to be mostly unused) multiplayer option having a far greater range. It's not quite 6-Love, but it's just about 6-Like.

If you love Crash Bandicoot and you've been waiting years for what once was Wumpa League, there's probably just enough there to convince you that this is a good game. But it's not. It's a bad game. They shouldn't have made Crash Bandicoot into this thing, and deep down all of us know it.

Much of my experience was salvaged by the beautiful visuals, heavily reminiscent of Night in the Woods, and the very endearing cast of characters that Finley gets to know duringver his time at Porcupine. I loved walking to work every day, chatting with the owner of the local pub, checking in with the woman who fished by the sewer, and dropping by the flower shop to see how my friend, the florist, was doing. I enjoyed bumping into patients on the street and seeing how much they’d improved. Every character had a distinct personality and felt alive, and helping them out in between shifts coloured the world in and made the experience fun, instead of just tolerable. But there’s only so much that can do to buoy a game so bogged down with inconsistencies and bugs.

Final Fantasy 16 is a bold new benchmark for the series that puts emotional complexity and courageous world building at the forefront. Clive Rosfield’s epic journey is defined by constant bouts of hurt and tragedy, but it’s also lined with an inescapable aura of hope in how our heroes are fighting for a world worth saving. Every person you meet and village saved from ruin are worth protecting, with heartfelt dialogue and ferocious combat mixing together in service of an RPG that, while flawed and glacial in some spots, I’d struggle to label as anything other than a triumph.

Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life remains one of the best that the series has to offer, managing to preserve what made it so special in the first place with its unique emphasis on an aging town and cast of characters, while also raising the bar with new content and improvements. While more recent titles in the series tend to offer distractions in the way of more mechanics and options, A Wonderful Life is a return to form that focuses more on the life sim and farming aspects that fans fell in love with all those years ago.

Dark Descent is a generic XCOM clone with brief moments of engaging puzzle-piecing strategy. The horror is underused and feels wholly out of place as it pushes you further and further into action. Music is adrenaline-pumping and clearly designed to compliment firefights, troops yell ‘LET’S GO TEAM’ every time you move, and xenomorphs are easier to mow down than avoid. Nothing about Dark Descent wants you to be scared, but everything about Aliens does. Mix in the cocktail of performance issues and thin mechanics, and what you have is another disappointing entry in the catalogue of Alien games.

Park Beyond is a unique experience that has a huge amount of potential that’s not entirely been released yet. I experienced a number of visual glitches in particular and there are still some core features that feel absent. While I don’t need to do a deep dive into micro-management I do wish I could set patrol areas for staff, instead of just restricting their duties. I didn’t even find a way to move them or call them to a specific ride. You just have to Impossify them and trust in their jetpacks and the AI. Things like this feel like an oversight that I hope is changed as the game progresses.

The problem is that everything in Layers of Fear (2023) seems to be taking cues from the first game, not the second. The Writer's frame story and both pieces of DLC share the first game's approach to ubiquitous, weak voice acting, and both pieces of DLC return to the unpleasant mansion setting. Layers of Fear 2 should have been an evolution for the series that informed what Bloober and Anshar Studios built here, but that isn't the case. Maybe it's fitting, after all, that this collection shares the first game's name.

I don’t want to get into story spoilers, but I thought its representation of AI was a wonderful breath of fresh air, one that didn’t strike fear into my heart or make me worried about the state of my job. If you like walking simulators, story-driven games, and excellent voice acting, Return to Grace is well worth a shot – very few games make me want to dip back in immediately, just to see what else could happen.

Do not play Greyhill Incident. It is a great idea that falls apart utterly and completely. The core gameplay loop is infuriating, unrefined, and unenjoyable. What specks of quality I may have encountered do little to mask the sully of the rest. The biggest commendation I can give this game is how well it implements the store-bought asset packs. There’s potential for this developer to create something better in the future. But for now: hard pass.

Harmony: Fall of the Reverie is too connected to its core concept of steering the future based on fate and factions, and this idea means players must abandon both the choice and the narrative in this choice-based narrative game. It's not exactly a formula for success. Despite some interesting designs and a potentially compelling tale at its heart, there's nothing harmonious about Harmony.

Diablo 4 has a solid foundation, but Blizzard is going to have to keep finding new ways to justify this slower take on the series forever, or else revert back to the mindless grind of D3, which isn’t what I want to see. Players are going to push for faster gameplay and less friction, and it's going to be up to Blizzard to stick to its guns here and maintain the vision of Diablo 4, while also managing the natural effects of power creep over time. It’s an unenviable position, but I respect the hell out of this team for choosing the path of most resistance and pursuing a unique identity for this game, especially in light of what Diablo Immortal is and what Overwatch has become.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a bold new step for the series and it’s the shot in the arm that I think it’s needed for some time now. This first attempt isn’t perfect and has some teething issues as it figures out its new identity, but it makes up for it by being a truly terrifying experience that shows how bright the series’ future can be.

As a fighting game, Street Fighter 6 is pretty much flawless, but it’s the little details across the board that make it clear that this is a fighter for everyone and not just fans of the genre. A wild statement for a series that’s always felt more hardcore and impenetrable than the rest. Whether you’re a newcomer playing with Modern controls or a veteran with a fight stick and a vendetta, Street Fighter 6 feels like the most approachable and welcoming fighter I’ve ever played without ever once sacrificing its potential complexity and fighting spirit.

Everything is earned here, from your gear to the answers to your questions, and the experience is all the better for it. For every battle you fail, a new one appears, yet there is minimal frustration due to the way you can learn from your mistakes. You’ll explore a haunting yet beautiful world, subtly changing as your actions affect the environment, and uncover a well-written story that kept my attention throughout. Miasma Chronicles is a dark journey that is well worth embarking on.