Putting wrestling and turn-based RPGs in a can they co-exist tag team style was an excitingly bold move that unfortunately ends in a heel turn and a crowd leaving early to beat the traffic.

Subway Midnight is a wonderfully wholesome surrealist horror game that stumbles slightly with its replayability.

With a narrative that offers more hits than misses, New Tales From The Borderlands is a modern, gorgeous glimpse into what the nobodies of the Borderlands universe get up to on their shittiest days.

Rune Factory 5 doesn’t break the mould but it's still definitely worth your time, for returning fans and potential new ones.

Flaws and all, Ghostbusters has always been one of my favourites, but its video game history has been spotty at best. Luckily, Spirits Unleashed is easily one of the best iterations of the brand, an engaging multiplayer experience that both makes you really feel like a Ghostbuster but makes the task of being bad guy just as fun if not more so. It isn’t perfect, nothing across the history of busting ghosts has ever been, but the inclusion of bots and hopefully some future content updates means this isn’t going to die an unfortunate early death and become just another entry in Tobin’s Spirit Guide.

Despite some grave issues, I want to affirm that Killing Floor 3 is not a bad game. It’s certainly a bad time if you’re on PlayStation 5. Rather, the low ceiling for gratification that the Killing Floor formula offers has seen some exciting improvements and controversial tweaks this time around. The itch is scratched, slow-mo hyperviolence intact. I’m just unsure where its confidence has gone, as it has unnecessarily overcomplicated every aspect of the otherwise casual horde shooter into a bafflingly opaque mishmash of its competitors’ form.

The Ascent nails the cyberpunk aesthetic but doesn't really attempt to capitalise on its themes of corporate slavery. The solid audiovisuals and competent action-RPG twin-stick shooter hybrid gameplay manage to glue the experience together, even when glaring flaws such as lacklustre quest design and an overreliance on backtracking threaten to derail it.

Despite my issues with The Casting of Frank Stone, I had a decent enough time during my six hours. The story may not have had the payoff I was promised at the start, but I was intrigued enough until the end, even if the gameplay did its best to take the sting out of the experience. Maybe my lack of Dead by Daylight knowledge hindered my enjoyment, but fans of Supermassive’s games will likely have a good enough time. Just don’t expect its best work.

JETT: The Far Shore has moments of brilliance, but they're buried under an overload of mechanics that aren't enjoyable and a general lack of polish. Similarly any philosophical value in its narrative ideas is ruined by needlessly obfuscated dialogue. There's something to be discovered here, but it's just not worth the trip.

Heading in a multiplayer-only direction, 2042 offers a unique blend of experiences that combines classic Battlefield sensibilities with fresh new ideas, making for a game filled with exciting content to explore whether you’re a returning veteran or a series newbie.

Carmen Sandiego is a welcome addition to a franchise that continues to educate in all the right ways. For better or worse it doesn’t mix the formula up too much, but any young one should find much to like. Just be sure to stick with a portable platform to enjoy it best.

Goat Simulator 3 not only recaptures the crazy fun of the original, but it expands and improves on everything that came before, resulting in a big, stupid sandbox experience that made me smile from start to finish.

Godstrike’s brevity is counterbalanced wonderfully by its intensity at the cost of being a little rough around the edges.

Overall Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a fun tower defence game that features a vast selection of roguelike elements to help you kill as many orcs as possible. You’ll upgrade and unlock everything you can to survive each wave you go through, all to defeat the ending boss of each run. Despite its lacking soundtrack and story, you’re guaranteed to have fun for hours in co-op or solo.

A glossy and streamlined remake of a cult classic faithfully updates the experience for modern audiences but struggles to make much of an impression nearly twenty years after the original release.

DOOM 3 VR Edition is a welcome addition for AIM Controller owners, but a little too late to the party.

Somerville is a fantastic debut for Jumpship that should be commended, but a little extra polish in some key areas would have made an already great game even better.

Gotham Knights sets itself apart from the Arkham series in all the wrong ways, leaving players with a disappointing action-RPG that’s in desperate need of refinement.

When the game makes you feel like you’re in the world of A Quiet Place being pursued by Death Angels, The Road Ahead is an immersive and tense time. It’s just a shame that the game’s mechanics and its 8–10-hour journey ultimately come at a cost to the tension and overall experience. As a result, fans of the franchise and the first-person horror genre will likely find more to like here than most, even with its budget price tag.

People of Note is an ambitious turn-based RPG which shines in many ways but ultimately fails to hit all of its high notes. While the soundtrack and turn-based combat are individually strong, there’s a persistent disconnect between the gameplay experience and the power of song that the narrative is trying to sell you, leading to a weird sense of musical emptiness that undermines the core selling point of the game.

This hellish remaster is stretched to raw, fibrous sinews. There is far too little variety in the weapons and enemies to make the many hour stretches of blind backtracking and incomprehensible connected-world layout anything more than a slightly dressed up chimera’s corpse. Place this in video game museums with its cult mantle and a sign above its polished noggin that reads ‘look, don’t touch’.

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX is a fine enough remaster if you have fond memories of the original. It looks and sounds great, but stumbles in its translation and will likely do more to frustrate newcomers than convince them the Master System classic was any good.

The highest praise I can muster is that it’s functional, while slow to load it is at least a steady performer. Roping mates into matches with you will undoubtedly inject some life into the thing too, and the aesthetics of Crash and co. do a lot of heavy lifting to give this very basic experience the appearance of fun at least. On its own merits, it’s aggressively fine, but considered as a shelved product, Crash Team Rumble feels a little like it’s taking the fruit right out of your pocket.

Backed by breathtaking visuals and incredibly visceral combat that holds its own against some of the genre’s elite, Bright Memory: Infinite is a fun and bombastic jaunt for action fans to revel in.

TRON: Catalyst is a solid game for TRON fans to experience. Despite the back-and-forth, the game features a detailed story that is satisfying to uncover as you explore the Grid and factions. The looping glitch is a great addition to the story, and the abilities you unlock throughout the game make the fast combat and gameplay more interesting. And of course, the Light Cycle is fun to use. Ultimately, TRON: Catalyst gives you more insight into the Grid life and what it’s like to be a program.

Ubisoft’s XDefiant is a compelling live-service offering that is remarkably substantive in its free-to-play offering. As a competitive shooter, its blend of satisfyingly agile movement and liberal lifting of modes and map philosophies from every other shooter makes a strange first impression. There is nothing new or surprising about what XDefiant offers. But those curious few eager to go through the initiation hellscape of purely random-skill matchmaking will find a clean and well-structured shooter that should broadly impress anyone who doesn’t mind their competent online shooter to be a personality-lacking, serials-filed amalgam of all its best competitors. Flaws and all, I was continually drawn back in the hopeful search for any active, local lobby.

An unsatisfying shooter brought even lower by an exhausting and all-encompassing script, High on Life can’t commit to its satire or ideas long enough to do anything of value.

Icarus boldly stakes its claim amongst giants in the field and swiftly proves to be a worthy contender. Everything I saw in the lead up to the release of Icarus made it seem too good to be true, but my faith and patience was rewarded many times over when I finally got to drop planetside for the first time, and the time after that, and the time after that. Icarus is going up on my list of favourite things to come out of New Zealand, alongside pavlova and Lord of the Rings.