Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC has more meat on the bones than many full releases, and if you miss the beauty and punishment of the base game then the Shadow Realm beckons.

With a cracking setting and emotional narrative that’s expertly brought to life by fantastic voice acting and writing, Still Wakes the Deep is a solid horror title that falls short of greatness due to its generic gameplay and limited scare factor.

There’s simply nothing else on the market right now like this series – a tonally unhinged pop-cosmopolitan-apocrypha-anime-apocalyptic JRPG that plays like Pokemon on steroids. Just like the best SMT games, its plot is rich as syrup and just as opaque. Read too close into the nonsensical jumble of mythological creatures and themes and you’re sure to be nauseated. However, supposing you can appreciate the excess of everything and have played a few turned-based RPGs before, Vengeance is simply the most approachable and engrossing core Shin Megami Tensei game currently on the market and the best way to check out this weirdo series.

While it’s commendable that OTXO attempts to freshen up the top-down shooter genre by mixing in roguelike qualities and a time-bending mechanic, the result, unfortunately, feels at odds with itself.

RKGK / Rakugaki offers a visually stunning world with great music but struggles with slow pacing, flat interactions, and frustrating gameplay mechanics. The game has potential, but it needs more polish and variety to truly shine.

Where most Mario games will leave a smiling impression between bouts of frustration, this Paper Mario entry wants you to be laughing out loud as well. I’m just worried that the humour might not carry everyone to the finish line in light of repetition, laborious backtracking and uninteresting combat. But there’s no denying that this remake is polished to the smoothest presentable sheen, leaving a first impression I still love, even though it burned me out long before the credits.

An unapologetically cinematic descent into the darkest parts of the human mind, Indika is a unique and crunchy little experiment that comes alive in its ideas and tone if not always its gameplay.

It is a masterclass in vibes, the kind of immersive experience games with a small country’s worth of budgets can only ever try to clumsily emulate. That is of course if you’re open to what POOLS is trying to do, no doubt some will find its lack of explicit systems or goals frustrating or outright boring. Fortunately, I’m a sicko and this kind of slow-burn, ambient horror is exactly what I want from interactive experiences. As I began to piece together my understanding of events in the game through stray imagery and implications, jumping at shadows and straining my ears for an attack that never came, I realised I had drowned somewhere along the way in POOLS.

Paper Trail is a perfect example of a simple but engaging mechanic done well. Its difficulty is spicy enough to make you feel like a moderate origami genius, but not so difficult that you want to throw your crudely crafted swan into the fiery pits of hell. Folding reality itself may perhaps have lent itself to a bit more metastory meat, but a chill colourful aesthetic and a nice feeling of momentum should be more than enough to sate the average puzzle fan.

Which is the overarching tale of Senua’s Saga– for almost everything it does well, there is a better counterpart in its predecessor, the remaining new additions never fully realised. It is painstakingly crafted yet thoroughly unengaging, its ruminations on the human condition are not unwelcome but presented with unearned profundity and housed in gameplay that is apathetic to the player at best. Senua’s Sacrifice was a crunchy experience but, in its limitations, and focus, it blossomed into a striking, contained reflection of emotions through systems. Conversely, Senua’s Saga is undeniably gorgeous and well intentioned, but exhaustively preoccupied with its own reflection.

David Lynch would be proud of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It’s wild, clever and compelling in the best of ways, absurd in its visual style and challenging in its puzzles. Do not let this one pass you by.

There is a special category in my heart for a game that offers a precise and calculated afternoon of good clean fun, and Little Kitty, Big City is an ideal fit for such a thing. The kind of game that you whip out to engage with loved ones who may not be all that close to gaming, to show them that the space is not just gloomy headlines and violence-blaming – it can be full of wonder and innocent charm. If you are a cat lover, you will love this game. Even if you are not, I challenge you to play this game and resist the urge to crack a smile.

As a successor to the S.W.A.T. games and tickling a strategic itch that Rainbow Six hasn’t scratched in years, Ready or Not nails the tension and tactical satisfaction that this genre prides itself on. Its single-player Commander mode is one of the better ‘training’ modes for a hardcore multiplayer game in years, though the wobbly AI can lead to many frustrating failures. With friends or a like-minded community, there’s probably no other tactical co-op game this engaging or evocative right now. It’s just a damn shame that the game’s matchmaking does nothing to nurture this experience.

Sand Land manages the tough task of translating an enjoyable story without overdoing the open-world mechanics in the process. It’s rough in places but is a respectful adaptation of Toriyama’s work and a pleasant experience throughout.

Stellar Blade is collage filtered through kaleidoscope, its myriad influences bleeding together in a neon swirl that produces vibrant new colours and dull familiar ones at an uneven pace. When it chooses to use its building blocks to reach new heights it’s a dizzying achievement in combat presentation and approachability, with EVE’s toolset fun and varied enough to carry the weight of the game’s lesser components. It leaves you wanting to see what else this studio could accomplish, even if they’ve gotten this far on borrowed wings.

While Harold Halibut doesn’t quite hit the heights it sets out to reach, you have to admire Slow Bros.’ unwavering commitment to its vision it spent 14 years bringing to life. Unfortunately, Harold Halibut’s stop-motion visuals do the majority of the heavy lifting, with the game’s repetitive and shallow gameplay reducing the overall experience to a tedious trudge through underwater space.

TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants is a fun diversion for any fan like me that missed it the first time around. I didn’t mind it, despite its obvious flaws, but this console port should have done more. I’ll happily acknowledge that the original team behind the Wrath of the Mutants arcade cabinet did a solid job at the time to rekindle much of what made the originals so fun. It’s just, given the modern world we live in where Shredder’s Revenge exists, the timing on this port is unfortunate.

As baseball games go, MLB: The Show 24 is the only team on the field to choose from but handles its license wonderfully well. No doubt long time players will have their gripes with some of the minor changes here or there, that’s a given when yearly titles constantly attempt to evolve, but if you’re like me and want to experience a baseball game for the first time, this is a no-brainer choice. It’s also reflective of what sports titles should be aiming for; a game that isn’t throwing the microtransactions at you in every menu and that treats the history of the sport with respect while sharing it to a larger audience. There’s still space to evolve further, and there will always be another yearly cycle, but the San Diego Studio team are putting in the work and that should be applauded.

As Tales of Kenzera reaches its natural conclusions and the woes of its crunchier challenges fall away, it’s hard to not be happy in the afterglow. Here’s a game that, while mechanically rather safe, takes huge personal and cultural swings, infusing the genre and industry writ large with almost singular emotional reflections and broader, deeply necessary, creative visions. If this is your genre, you’ll have a blast with its tight platforming and expressive combat, but even if it’s not, bite down and give it a go. We deserve more games like Tales of Kenzera: ZAU.

Broken Roads is a gorgeous Aussie world undone by incurious writing, ambitious but poorly implemented ideas, and unstable performance issues.

The reward for my perseverance with Goblin Stone would be a well-narrated bit of storybook exposition and perhaps a new combat class or weapon tier, before heading back to base to find missing inventory items, goblins, and stats being reset to the impossibly low 0/0/0. It’s just boggling stuff, making for an arguably unplayable late game that kills any curiosity and goodwill that the first impressions made. A disappointment, as there is genuinely a heap of interesting ideas here repurposed from turn-based indie greats, but Goblin Stone forces its implementation onto rails with no fanfare and no incentive or reward for player experimentation or even investment.

Buckshot Roulette is an oddly addicting beast. What starts as a series of frustrating dice rolls quickly progresses into a gripping, sinister experience that commands you to keep at it and master its dark payload. It quickly became a game I wanted to run in a window alongside other things, an interstitial challenge I can summon at will. The horrifying maw of the Dealer loomed in the darkness, and I was hungry to keep finding creative ways to force feed him buckshot.

The thesis of Dragon’s Dogma’s sequel appears to be that the original was ahead of its time, and indeed will likely draw audiences back to the imaginative original. Dragons Dogma 2 is a game filled with genius ideas about how fantasy roleplaying can be turned into a video game. It requires unlearning much of what we take for granted in fantasy action adventures but rewards this with unique and dynamic world events that will constantly surprise players. It is a masterful sequel that polishes every element of its first draft, with the technology to make those ideas into a seamless adventure marked by heart-pounding threats and euphoric discoveries.

Open Roads is a journey I’m glad I went on, though the disappointing circumstances of its development do feel as if they loom over its final form. As a complete package there’s something to love, something to respect and admire, with two lead actors elevating the material well beyond what many others might have achieved. It’s just a shame it couldn’t have been bigger, bolder in its impact and exploration of its themes and its mysteries. Maybe it needed something darker, something stranger to lean into, but the results stand as a simple yet effective road trip that’s worth taking for an hour or two.

Broadside Games’ Bears In Space is an anomaly in the sense that it is like many things, but there is really nothing that is truly like it. As a first-person shooter, it is a chimera that gleefully gobbles up facets of so many other classic games – not just shooters – to create a girthy gameplay experience that can change at a moment’s notice to deliver something completely out of leftfield without giving the player mechanical whiplash. Yes, a moment ago you were casually shooting robots – but this is the Virtua Cop-esque shooting section. And a little later we will do the fishing minigame, okay? On paper it would read like the scribblings of a madman, but in execution it all ties together beautifully into a medley of frenetic fun.

Nintendo has a knack for finding brilliant new ways to keep an existing formula fresh, and in the case of Princess Peach: Showtime! they have managed to take the concept of a simple platformer and spin it on its axis to create something varied and engaging. The Showtime format offers a fantastic opportunity to explore the capabilities of Peach as a character, allowing her to literally slip into multiple roles and wear a myriad of hats – crushing each and every one she attempts. I came away hopeful to see more in future – though I will admit I’d love to see a dedicated Mighty Peach game, if they want to explore that Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker spin-off route at some point. Please? Nintendo?

Rise of the Rōnin's open world is vast and content-rich, but it's a case of quantity over quality that's only partially rescued by the unambitious but technically adequate combat.

Alone in the Dark marks a fine attempt at contemporary survival horror mechanics but is completely adrift with an incoherent narrative, dull design, and baffling tonal choices.