Nexomon: Extinction is a solid take on the monster training genre with some interesting gameplay tweaks on the Pokémon formula and narrative decisions. The higher difficulty saps some of the pace and enjoyment of adventuring, making me hanker for a return to a Pokémon game. Still, if you’re after some monster catching and battling, Nexomon: Extinction will do the job.

Technically it is a well crafted game without any bugs in sight. The look SUTD Game Lab has gone for with it stands out well, and works in the context of the game’s setting. The soundwork is also very well done. The majority of puzzles are decent too, but it is the ones that take ages to get past, even though you know the solution, because of timing that remove a lot of goodwill for One Upon Light. There were points where fun wasn’t being had because of them. At the same time One Upon Light feels very mechanical.

Atomic Ninjas is a blast when you get a full room going and the variety of skills/weapons on offer will give you a lot of choice when deciding your playstyle. It’s just a shame that, so soon after release, it is difficult to find a four player game.

What is difficult to forgive though, are the distracting drops in frame rate at key times which make the game frustrating to play.

Madden 21 has the components to be a solid, if utterly by-the-numbers entry in the franchise. However, a raft of bugs and glitches serve to undo the game’s atmosphere at every turn.

Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn looks the part, this is a sumptuous 2D scroller that clearly loves the 1990s with unabashed and borderline obsessional desire. It effectively emulates the experience of playing a game from that era too. The problem is that includes dodgy controls, plentiful gameplay frustrations and difficulty spikes so sharp they’d make a 42-year-old man cry. And they did.

Jurassic World Aftermath Collection brings the tense experience to Switch mostly intact, but the Quest version - and the upcoming PSVR2 port - remains the best way to play.

Death Howl has a strong central theme to it, the cards are well made, and there's a decent variety to build out decks. But it is also a game that can require a lot of repetitive grinding to make small amounts of progress, and the quests could have been better designed.

Squirrel With a Gun is more than just a jokey throwaway meme game, but in some ways this is its biggest downfall. There is so much potential in the central mechanics that is held back by floaty controls and so it falls between two stools. A little more refinement and this could have been a more solid experience, but as a joke it goes on too long. That being said, there is enough here to entertain if you can look past those control issues.

Balan Wonderworld is a passable platformer marred by a string of increasingly baffling design decisions. It has charm by the bucketload and off-the-wall concepts that land well in spite of themselves, but the experience is inconsistent at best and frustrating at worst. There is a good game in here somewhere, and it is great fun at points, but waiting for those points isn’t really worth it.

If silly jump scare horror is your thing, you can do a lot worse than Doom 3 VR Edition, but you can also do much better. Its cutscenes are 2D, you get lost a lot, and occasionally you need to waggle your weapon about so it cooperates, but if you can get past these issues it's... a good enough version of the venerable id Software shooter.

I’m happy to finally have an official English release of Gundam Versus in my hands, but confused as to why it feels less feature rich than the last game. There’s the amazing framework and attention to detail that makes this such a fun game to play, but there’s just very little for you to sit down and actually put those gameplay systems to use in. Having a group of friends to duke it out with will add a lot more value to the experience, but without that, you’re looking at a delicious burger that’s missing a bun and maybe just has a little piece of lettuce on it.

This child-friendly dungeon crawler has brief moments of brilliance, but descends too often into dull drudgery. Plus, for a game about flying a dragon, actually flying your dragon is a lead weight.

While I eventually enjoyed Aporia: Beyond the Valley, the moments where bugs and glitches appeared took me right out of the experience. It’s a shame too, as the story is well told despite uttering no words at all, the premise is genuinely interesting, and the puzzles – when they work as intended – are a joy to solve. It’s certainly one to wait on for now while they tidy up all the bugs and glitches.

Formula Legends is a love letter to F1, and for fans of the sport, you can’t help but fall for its charms. However, it is a small-scale arcade racer, and you need to temper your expectations when getting into the driver’s cockpit.

Destiny 2 is still one of the best feeling games to play, but compared to the inventive, personal story told in The Witch Queen, Lightfall is dull and totally inconsequential. What a disappointment.

For those who have been following the game since long before it’s PlayStation 4 announcement, Gang Beasts really does come as a poisoned chalice. Its meathead multiplayer melees will light up your living room for hours on end, yet when there’s only one person in the hot seat, it loses that charm almost completely.

Somerville is a fantastically evocative game as it depicts an everyman's journey through a War of the Worlds-like alien invasion, leaning on countless sci-fi tropes and ideas along the way. Disappointingly, it's undercut on a number of levels by controls and a detached feeling and hastiness with some parts of the story it's telling.

Gungrave G.O.R.E is a decent game. It's not the best shooter, but it is often very entertaining if just for the spectacle. It has a few issues, mostly in level design, and the story isn't particularly memorable, but there's plenty of fun to be had in chainsawing your enemies with a transforming coffin.

Ruiner has some great set pieces and a dark, bleak world that I would normally gravitate towards. Yet when the dystopian renders everyone inhabiting it to be as relatable as raw sewage, there was little for me to latch onto. Maybe you’ll find the world of Ruiner to be more bearable than I did, but even the best films of the genre have a glimmer of hope for the audience to cling to, something Ruiner is devoid of.

Splitting Ground Zeroes back into a separate release was always going to be contentious. Thankfully, there is a lot more gameplay and depth than the early reports of the main mission’s length suggested and it’s full of potential for exploration, fan service and Kojima’s particular brand of hackneyed allegories.

There’s a satisfying strategy sim here, running behind design choices that try to streamline the experience, but don't necessarily make it more accessible. Awakening feels like a reshuffling of ideas without necessarily evolving the Nobunaga’s Ambition formula or pushing it forward. We’re hoping the next instalment is a little braver, or at least cherrypicks the best elements from past games, refining them into the ultimate Sengoku strategy game.

Telltale’s take on Game of Thrones feels quite low-key compared to some of the goings on in the main series, but this episode begins to move away from that being a problem and starts using it to its advantage, as it shows you different sides of familiar situations. There’s still a lot of filler to get through, though, and it’s very dialogue heavy with little to offer in terms of unique gameplay.

How does Bravely Default: Flying Fairy HD Remaster hold up in 2025? In short, it holds up poorly unless you’re a big fan of the franchise, or just love JRPG tropes with a passion. Even the combat mechanics that lends the game its name wear thin, leaving little about this game to really recommend against more inventive JRPGs or Switch 2 launch titles. For the first time ever I'd rather play a racing game than a JRPG.

Across its approximately 15 hours of playtime, #Blud offers a fun and straightforward dungeon crawler with a great aesthetic, but it is undone by some bugs that impact the flow of the game, along with some missions that just bring the fun factor right down.

By no means a bad game. The chance to face off against Resident Evil favourites such as Nemesis is a really interesting idea, and the constant threat of zombies will always have you on edge. Saying that, I can see the multiplayer modes becoming repetitive fairly quickly. Whilst differing slightly, the modes on offer are too similar, and all play out on the same handful of maps.

Final Fantasy XV Pocket HD is a bullet-point RPG that just about gets away with its narrow focus thanks to the charm of its lead characters, fun combat, and having been able to crib some of the original’s great production values, particularly the epic soundtrack. It’s more or less impossible to recommend to PlayStation or Xbox owners, but for Switch fans it’s a light snack before next year’s deluge of proper Final Fantasy games.

For new players, Blood Ties may come across as both demanding and frustrating due to its reliance on trial and error gameplay.