Vendetta Forever is a new contender for my favourite VR game. Its high speed, intense, but relatively short levels are always somewhere between very cool, very over the top, and quite funny. It's a game that's in love with old school action movies and did it darnedest to let you shoot your way through countless classic set pieces.

Neva is almost brilliant. This is a finely crafted game let down by too much empty time-wasting, untapped potential in its puzzling, and a rather onerous desire to make people cry.

Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire needed a lot more time and work to get it into a proper release state. If this was an early access title, some of the issues would be forgivable, but it isn’t.

Sonic X Shadow Generations is a great time. The remaster is exactly as you'd expect and the new game on top of it is better, more polished, varied, and refined. It's almost converted me to a 3D Sonic guy, which is shocking, and, because it's about Shadow instead of Sonic, you don't have to put up with anywhere near as many obnoxious voice performances. Shadow himself is just a bit broody and says things like "the ultimate power" in an almost-Keanu Reeves voice which really makes me laugh – especially with the Keanu voice pack coming in December for some top tier silliness.

I really wanted to write about the positives of featuring more cultures in this genre, and about how cool it is to have a famous actor play the protagonist, but sadly the gameplay gets in the way of anything interesting. Unknown 9: Awakening is just a bunch of gaming tropes loosely tied together with boring and uninspired NPCs lazily lurching from set piece to set piece, as the poorly designed game creaks and groans under the weight of expectation.

It seems odd giving a remake of game a higher score than it's sequel but the Arizona Sunshine Remake takes all of the good elements from it's sequel and thankfully, very few of of the bad elements. Great fun in co-op mode, but playing alone makes it more tense, scary and certainly more of a challenging.

I love the idea of Hunt: Showdown 1896, but in practise it's mostly abandoned by people either sprinting all the time or camping all the time. It's hard to "get good" in this game because, one; it doesn't tell you how to, so you have to watch youtube videos and read reddit threads to figure things as basic as what UI elements mean in the menus, and two; because everyone else is already good and you die before you can get anything done or learn anything. I've made some progress, but doing so was a frustrating and gruelling experience that wasn't entirely down to my own incompetence. If you're a glutton for punishment this could be the extraction shooter for you, but it's hard to recommend to anyone that isn't already embedded in it.

In the pantheon of Mario Party games, Super Mario Party Jamboree is the best new game in a long, long time. After getting back to basics with Superstars, Jamboree sticks with the more traditional Mario Party formula in all the right ways, while still finding space to mix things up a little with new items, a blend of motion and button control minigames, Pro Rules, and some larger online modes and experiments. This is practically essential for Mario Party fans.

Silent Hill 2 is a fantastic remake of a true classic, Bloober Team putting their own spin on the iconic horror game. That being said, enough of rough edges remain that could put some players off – ironically the same rough edges that make it so successful for me. These echoes of some of the less positive aspects of the original game, as well as some performance issues on console, are the only negatives in a game that more than does service to the legacy of Silent Hill.

Ys X: Nordics maintains a lot of the qualities that this series has come to be known for. Some of those qualities aren't necessarily a positive, like the familiarly linear dungeon encounters and the less-than-impressive visuals of the game, but a lot of it works great. Combat is the best it's ever been, naval gameplay is a fresh and welcome addition, and Ys X: Nordics introduces refreshing character moments with Adol and Karja that I'm desperate to see more of in the next entry.

As a modern successor and sequel to the classic PS2 era Budokai Tenkaichi trilogy, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero is a great time for Dragon Ball fans. You'll have to ease yourself into the controls, but once it clicks it's a lot of fun to explore the full roster and smash anime characters together.

Thronefall may be a minimalist strategy title, but it is big in heart and has a lot of depth to it. It is a game that is simple to play, but will challenge you at every turn. It is incredibly tough to put Thronefall down as it has that one more turn feel down to a tee. The challenge will be offputting for some, and there is a possible bug of enemies running around a wall, but other than that Thronefall is worth your time.

Until Dawn remains a fantastic horror game with great acting and plenty of jump scares to get you out of your seat. While not essential for anyone that enjoyed the original game, this remake brings it to a new audience and is a solid update to what was already a great game.

Ravenswatch is an excellent roguelike, one that's filled with clever gameplay design, lovely art, and just a really cool core concept. Now that it's fully out in the wild, I'm happy to wholeheartedly recommend it to basically anyone who's even tangentially interested, and while I do sort of hope they keep releasing new characters, it already feels more than complete.

There’s a lot of soulslikes out there, but Enotria: The Last Song makes a decent grab for your attention with day-glow brighter than bright visuals and the fresh and engaging setting of Italian mythology. Unfortunately, too many text-boxes and confusing gameplay systems, along with a healthy dose of jankiness, takes the shine off this otherwise colourful soulslike.

Parcel Corps is easily one of the best attempts at revitalising a highly addictive subgenre of arcade game. Pulling off gnarly trick combos and thrashing those bike pedals feels great - even if things get repetitive after a while, saddling up for short bursts of play is incredibly fun. The world-building will also keep players engaged between delivery jobs with enough referential humour and satire to warrant the occasional hearty chuckle.

Undisputed is a valiant attempt by Steel City Interactive, bringing back boxing to the fore in video games after a long absence. The in-ring action is generally very good and the roster is well stacked. What is missing is good commentary and there are gameplay issues that need to be addressed, including lag and stuttering. Undisputed is not ready to be a title challenger yet, but updates may see it get there eventually.

Metaphor ReFantazio is sublime. Persona fans will have an absolute blast playing this, and hunting out the subtle (and not-so-subtle) nods to its franchise cousin. A couple of minor annoyances make it feel a little rough around the edges hold it back from an otherwise perfect score.

Arco is an artistic achievement, blending the struggles of gameplay and narrative into each other seamlessly as it draws you into the depressing but important stories of Mesoamerican natives struggling to carve out a space for themselves, in a world that grows more and more hostile by the day.

Playing Kill Knight feels like what happens if you gave a medieval peasant a bottle of soda. It's violent, and unexpected, and adrenaline-charged and fun as hell.

For under a fiver and with around five to six hours of content, the Mask of Darkness is practically an essential addition for fans of The Lost Crown. Offering an intense experience; as well as a surprisingly compelling story that fills in many of the blanks from the original game. Recommended.

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.

Hollowbody does a great job of capturing the mood and feel of survival horror classics whilst removing some of the genre’s more annoying aspects and sits at the very top of the indie horror tree alongside the likes of Crow Country and Signalis.

While some of its gameplay diversions miss the mark, Dustborn is an excellent example of how to craft engaging characters and wrap a story around them. The game is filled with surprisingly natural sounding conversations, whether they’re serious and detailed or funny and light. It’s very rare that I encounter characters that are so believable in a game. Quite the achievement considering one of those characters is a gruff, bearded New Yorker with dwarfism who heals people by reciting poetry, who I honestly wish I got to spend more time with.

I’m still none the wiser who Funko Fusion is for. It’s a kid’s game that’s too adult for kids, with a batch of franchises that only older fans will really appreciate, but then they’ve dialled down the difficulty, presumably to appeal to younger players. The shame of it is, with the right characters, this is a great kids game, and the Jurassic World levels only highlight that. Funko Fusion offers plenty to like, but just like its plastic-melting antagonist, it fuses too many of the wrong parts together to feel cohesive.

As with the original, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 is a simplified and cutesy take on the whole EDF think. While it succeeds in that goal, it loses a lot of the allure as it does so.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a charming delight, an adventure for Zelda herself that embraces a wholly different style of gameplay to Link's tales, allowing for player expression and creativity throughout.

EA Sports FC 25 is a slightly better offering than FC 24, thanks to the new Rush mode. FC IQ is still in its early stages and while it could have a huge impact on future titles, it is not yet very apparent how it is impacting the on the pitch action in this game. This is the EA Sports FC as you already know it. Whether that is a good or bad thing is up to you.