If you want to play first person shooters on your iOS device, Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation is a must-buy game, so start making room for it.

Whether you’re new to the game or are simply relishing a return trip to Rogueport, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a fantastic way to experience one of Mario’s grandest and strangest adventures. Even as someone who has enjoyed the quirky charms of the last few Paper Mario games, I must admit that replaying the game via this version has made me pine for a new game with a similar sensibility to it. I don’t know if we’ll ever see that or not, but for now this superb remake more than satisfies.

Developer Grumpyface Studios does nearly everything right in making a highly enjoyable TD game in Castle Doombad, and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

It's certainly worth checking out, but be warned: it might make you feel your age, even if you're not all that old.

Vampire Survivors on Switch is everything I hoped for in a port and more. While it has some frame rate issues, which version of the game doesn’t at this point? If you somehow haven’t played it through its Xbox, mobile, or PC release, this is it. I didn’t get to try the DLC yet, but Vampire Survivors is a perfect fit for Switch, and absolutely worth buying right now. Hopefully poncle can add in cross save support at some point so I can go from Xbox Series X to iPhone to Steam Deck to Nintendo Switch with my save file.

You’ll get blown away by all of the character customization, rummaging through enemy corpses and treasure chests for loot, journeying through procedurally generated dungeons, taking down Bounties for rewards, completing achievement-like challenges, participating in ongoing Seasons–*deep breath* You get what I mean here. There’s a lot of content waiting for players of Diablo III: Eternal Collection, and it’s very much worth investing time in on the Switch.

If you love Pac-Man, Crossy Road, or just good games in general, play Pac-Man 256. It sounded like a great idea when it was first announced, and it's as great as it possibly could have been.

Dave the Diver is an amazing game. I’m shocked at how well it keeps up its pacing of unlocks and new missions throughout its two dozen or so hours of runtime, and there’s just so much to do. I never got tired of playing it, but I hope future patches can address the long load times on Switch. Barring that, Dave the Diver is top tier, and essential for Nintendo Switch. Just download the demo right now. Don’t waste time.

A wonderfully updated version of the classic arcade game. It's missing some features, most notably a multiplayer component, but the single player offering is more than competent and a lot of fun.

As I mentioned at the top of this review, if you've never played Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and you're even vaguely interested in the Star Wars universe or just surprisingly deep RPGs in general, this is a game you need on your iPad yesterday. KOTOR is easily among the best Star Wars games, and on my personal list of top RPGs I've played in my life.

The folks at Digital Application Design have done a great job of bringing this shooter classic to a modern platform, and those who enjoyed Alien Breed so many years ago will be pleased to see that the feel of the original has been well preserved in its journey 20 years forward in time.

While it lasts it's an elegant and engaging game, one that builds an atmosphere of dark experimentation. You don't know quite where your search will take you, but it seems it won't be good.

It's very simple to learn, but there's a huge amount of depth to the game.

With a good deal of attractive gameplay elements I think it's possible to overlook the game's shortcomings and have a good time.

If you are looking for a fine strategy sim game with enough depth to challenge but not too much to irritate, look no further than Rebuild 3.

I loved this game nearly 16 years ago as a joyous farewell to a series I felt was drifting away from me.

It would have been easy for Slayaway Camp to just be an amusing puzzle game that didn't try to be a fun puzzler underneath. But, the theme is fun, the puzzles are fun, and those two elements are skilfully combined into one complete package. Slayaway Camp is a killer puzzle game.

The fact that The Witness can bring out such extreme emotions of both exasperation and astonishment is undoubtedly an achievement in itself. So many modern puzzle games strive to be as inoffensive and straightforward as possible, in an attempt to be accessible to a large and increasingly impatient audience of potential buyers - The Witness boldly shuns such expectations to simply do its own thing. As a result, The Witness can be relentlessly unwelcoming, but also invites and rewards intrigue, as paradoxical as that may seem. Similarly, The Witness is an essential experience for any enthusiastic gamer (especially at a bargain price of $9.99), although can occasionally feel like an ostentatious chore that is more hopelessly unaware than socially insightful. However, amidst its many annoyances lies a technologically impressive milestone of the modern gaming industry, arguably in its best form yet.

Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 is simulating forms of racing that not everyone, especially those of us in the U.S., really understand all that well. It’s to the credit of its developers that it accomplishes it so well that you’re likely to get sucked in after playing just a race or two and really want to start building up your race team to chase down championships. Even if you don’t know your splitters from your spoilers, you just might find yourself enjoying the ride here

While there are some improvements that can be made here, particularly with regards to features like iCloud support and control placement options, it’s really hard to think of many compelling reasons why a person shouldn’t buy Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for their mobile device. It’s three measly dollars for a solid port of one of the finest games of all-time, one that even allows you to use a controller if you really can’t get on with the manageable virtual buttons. I really hope this isn’t just a one-off for Konami as I’d love to see more of the Castlevania games or the company’s PlayStation library make the jump, but we all know how this usually goes. For now, let’s just enjoy what we’ve got here: a wonderful pile of secrets.

If Found… is yet another winner from Annapurna Interactive. Dreamfeel’s story is important, touching, and brilliant. If you enjoy interactive visual novels with excellent stories, great music, and gorgeous visuals, If Found… is for you. It doesn’t overstay its welcome like many visual novels and the two to three hours you put in will just fly by. I can’t wait to see what Dreamfeel does next because this is top notch stuff.

If you enjoy puzzle platformers, you’ll have a great time with FILMECHANISM. There’s no grand story here, and its aesthetic is cute but not exactly stunning. But the gameplay is excellent, with a strong core mechanic to build puzzles around and level designs that fully deliver on that promise. It nails its difficulty curve perfectly, making it well-suited to newcomers to the genre and veterans alike. It’s just that simple.

The higher buy-in price this time around means that I’d probably still recommend West of Loathing first to someone new to this series. That said, if you’ve already played that game the odds are good that you’re more than willing to pony up for Shadows Over Loathing. I ended up enjoying it just a little less than West, but that’s likely down to it being more of a known quantity to me now. Overall, another clever, well-written RPG that feels like a breath of fresh air in the same way its predecessor did.

Out of all the things that could be salvaged from the defunct original form of Telltale Games, the Sam & Max trilogy was just about the highest on my list. Now, with this excellent remaster of The Devil’s Playhouse, that job is complete. If you’ve never played a Sam & Max game before, feel free to slide on in with Sam & Max Save the World and see it through to the end of The Devil’s Playhouse. It’s quite the wild ride. If you have played these games before, the enhanced presentation might just convince you to go for a replay. They quite literally don’t make them like this anymore.

If you’ve never played an Uncharted game before, both of these are excellent action adventure games with superlative set pieces. It is unfortunate that Sony didn’t release the first three games before this though, but you can play these directly. If you already played them on PS4 or PS5 and are wondering how they are on Steam Deck, I’d wait for a discount before buying them to play on the go. While they hold up well, there are too many caveats to this recommendation at full price if you already played these games before. If you haven’t the price is worth it assuming you’re ok with the storage requirements.

It oozes character without beating you over the head with it, and, you know, its colors and contrasts also look pretty sharp on 'HD' devices.

It’s an Apple Arcade-like choice, but the price is fair bit higher. Is Poinpy worth that? It’s a question I can’t answer for you, but I can tell you that this is a superb mobile game. It fits the format perfectly, it’s easy and satisfying to dig into, and like Downwell it seems to give you back more the more you put into it. It’s a reason to pay attention to Netflix’s gaming initiative, and is honestly a fair bit more exciting than anything we’ve seen on Apple Arcade of late.

What you get here is a game that straddles that balance between challenge and frustration, has a player-friendly free model to it, and is amusing and charming to boot. Definitely download Does Not Commute, whatever you do.