Aces Of the Luftwaffe: Squadron does a lot of things right over its short duration. Tight gameplay, small innovations to the shoot ’em up genre and terrific local co-op. Unfortunately, the grind to level up characters and lengthen the playtime turns what was once fun into a tedious and frustrating slog.

House of the Dead: Remake is a great blast from the past that will satisfy that nostalgic itch and provide plenty of gory fun. On Xbox, however, you lose out on much of the feel of the title and are left fighting against the controls. If it’s your only option then there is still enjoyment to be had here, but if you have access to a PlayStation, Switch or PC, then I’d recommend picking it up on there instead.

It’s clear that Crisis on the Planet of the Apes has a lot of ambition and it does get a lot right in this regard, but at the end of the day, all we have here is a VR tech demo. Climbing around here was the most immersive VR moment I’ve had to date, but the controls could sometimes took me right back out of it. As a showcase for what VR could do in the future, it’s another great example of things to come.

It takes a while for Godfall’s combat to truly open up and when it does, you’ll revel in its beefy ballet of well-timed blows and counters. That said, it’s hard to ignore the flimsy scaffolding that keeps this PS5 launch title standing, the lack of matchmaking, and a loot system you’ll quickly lose interest in. Although still great fun in short bursts, this isn’t the rousing next-gen RPG experience you’ve been searching for.

Ultimately, Let It Die: Inferno has too many flaws to look past, especially when so many of those flaws are related to the base gameplay loop and experience. It can be fun and sometimes rewarding to dig through a janky game for a satisfying gameplay or story experience, but that isn't the case here. While the game looks and feels just like the original at a glance, it isn't a game I see myself putting nearly as much time into, or remembering nearly as fondly.

We Were Here Together is ultimately a bit of a let down on console. Some of the biggest puzzles are quite frustrating, some of the others rely on a poorly designed user interface, and the ones we most enjoyed were the shorter ones anyway. There are better coop puzzlers to spend your cash, time, and friendships on.

The Knight Witch could have been fantastic. It was so dang close to being something very special thanks to its fantastic visuals, great gameplay and compelling story, but it's instead plagued by frame rate issues and awful difficulty spikes rearing their slappable faces to ruined the fun. Fingers crossed Super Mega Team takes the time to thoroughly patch The Knight Witch and make it the game that it deserves to be.

Despite three years in Early Access, it's hard to recommend Graven at launch. From odd design choices to bugs and progression issues, the unfortunate conclusion is that Graven is a real missed opportunity.

Painkiller is a shame not because it's especially bad, but because some of the fun weapons and combat are buried beneath the dull, uninspired and repetitive mechanics, and a surprisingly short 6-hour runtime. It can be fun to shoot demons with cool weapons and a friend or two, but this just feels a bit too disposable, and ultimately uninspired.

Kirby’s Dream Buffet isn’t a terrible game, and certainly has the typical Nintendo aesthetic polish, but the whole package is underwhelming and lacking in any real variety. I felt as if I had seen everything bar the unlockable cosmetics after a few hours play and there was nothing to keep me hooked. Unless you are a total diehard Kirby fan, I’d just go for a replay of Forgotten Land.

Rogue Trader on the Switch 2 is a bad port of a fantastic game. If you have the patience, it’s just about playable, and there’s still some enjoyment to be found in its epic narrative and compelling characters. However, it needs a cavalcade of patches to reach the level of performance on Switch 2 that the game deserves.

The Piano is an ambitious and interesting project that doesn’t quite meet its potential. The setting, story, and atmosphere are well realised and show that the writers have talent, whilst the game itself illustrates what a small team can achieve. Unfortunately, the glaring design issues in actual gameplay hold it back, and it becomes another game that may actually have benefited from being more of a walking simulator. The combat is entirely unnecessary, the stealth can be wildly unbalanced and unfair, and the piano mini-games need some kind of actual musical mechanic to justify their inclusion.

There are definitely plenty of similarities when comparing it to Pokémon, yet labelling Fossil Fighters Frontier as a clone would be perhaps a little too harsh. Its developers have made genuine attempts to spice up the JRPG blueprint with vehicles, mini-games, and other interesting features. However, many of these feel tacked on with no real impact on the overall experience.

This is best viewed as an educational tool, rather than a satisfying interactive experience in its own right.

Hideo Kojima has been accused at various points of promoting style over substance, and in this remaster of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner that’s more apparent than ever. For all of its fantastically designed mech, and its tight and often enjoyable combat, Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner is an ugly, poorly-told and overly short slice of nostalgia that can’t be saved by the introduction of VR.

Croc: Legend of the Gobbos remaster is a good look at how 3D platformers were put together in the 90s, but the gameplay falls seriously short of modern standards. There is just so much that could be better when it comes to the gamplay that would have made the experience more tolerable and enjoyable, but what we have is a bang average 3D platformer.

Watch Dogs Legion: Bloodline tries to be a love letter to fans of the series by bringing back two iconic characters as the protagonists, but in doing so, it removes the one gameplay mechanic that made Watch Dogs: Legion so memorable. Without characters to study, befriend, and recruit, Bloodline is a more watered-down open-world experience than the base game it's tied to. Worse is the fact that it doesn't expand on the base game at all. With no new regions to explore, activities to engage in, or gear to unlock, it's a pretty barebones package overall.

I think it is good that classic franchises are getting a new lease of life, but Rushing Beat X: Return of Brawl Brothers could have been a better return for the series. When combat works it can be really satisfying, but with enemies wandering aimlessly on and off screen, and depth perception and hitboxes being off, there is improvement needed. There is, at least, a good variety of characters to play around with through the story, lending itself to allow players to try different approaches, but the best character is locked out until after you complete story mode. Rushing Beat X: Return of Brawl Brothers is a short, solid brawler, but there are better sides-scrolling beat 'em ups out there.

Struggling is a mess. While I can’t fault the controls themselves, the object physics are just not reliable enough in crucial areas, as the momentum when using some objects is too chaotic to reliably make progress. Unless you have the patience of a saint or an online audience eager to see your reactions as you're battling through, this is probably not the game for you.

There is fun and satisfaction to be had in stealthily taking out whole levels without being spotted, but that is perhaps due to the nature of stealth gameplay rather than the strengths of the game itself. If you are looking for something along these lines and don’t mind the issues too much, you may enjoy Filthy Lucre, but there are other games that do the same thing with more success for a similar price, making this particular game difficult to recommend.

Outcast: Second Contact is an eighteen year old game that’s been given a makeover. This is absolutely fine if you’re a fan of the original and want to play it again on modern hardware, but if you don’t have the nostalgia quality there’s absolutely nothing that you won’t find here that’s done far better elsewhere.

Unwanted and unasked for, Secret of Mana does the bare minimum you’d expect from a remake, and when you consider the original’s beloved status, the fact that it’s been given such a lacklustre treatment is stupefying. There are some elements of modernity that are welcome – the dual language voice options for one – but taken as a whole, they’ve reassembled the base components of the game, but somehow lost the original’s charm in the process.

Overall, it’s a game of two halves that just doesn’t quite come together. Some, like myself, will no doubt find themselves engrossed in the story, only to be disappointed by the trial-and-error labours of combat.

As you come to grips with the tactical combat and progression systems, Sword Coast Legends may start to grow on you. For those who can see past its long loading times and other shortcomings, there’s an RPG here well worth the price of entry. However, for casual fans of the genre looking for something upbeat, this n-Space swansong is likely to disappoint.

Those Who Remain is difficult to recommend, but there is an interesting meditation on guilt, redemption, and judgement hidden amongst an unfortunate mass of clunky design and gameplay. It might even be that watching someone else play the game is the best way to enjoy it, so you won't have to fight the controls and frustrating checkpoints. Ultimately, the game itself fails to live up to the potential of its ideas. This is one that should remain on the shelf.

Cuisineer is a game with a strong core idea, but doesn't invest enough in its systems to keep it interesting. The excellent combat and good restaurant running soon become repetitive as a result. If the basics are enough to keep you coming back then Cuisineer might work for you, but for me this dish has turned stale.

It has some neat ideas and is certainly a break from the norm, but Throw Anything is surprisingly old-school. Its difficulty and the constantly screaming NPCs that won’t shut up are chief among the game’s issues, but frantic chucking out junk will entertain for a short if challenging time.

Dragon’s Crown delivers in a number of areas, though not in the ones that matter most. Stunning visuals and nods to the roleplaying genre simply aren’t enough to outweigh the repetitive combat and a so-so narrative.