Crysis Remastered is a strange one. It took me a while to actually start enjoying my journey but the further I got the more I wanted to find out where they were taking the story. They have done a good job on remastering and luckily, I didn’t come across any visual issues. But you can’t overlook that this is still a game from 2007 and the AI is handled poorly with so much randomness that occurs whilst playing.

Rugby 22 is probably the only rugby game out there, so there is little to compete with. That being said you can tell they have put a lot of effort into it and with it being a tough game to simulate to begin with, they have done all the right things. A few things need fleshing out, but once you’ve got your head around it, you will be having lots of fun.

Defenders of Ekron is passable at best. I wont deny that the game shines at its brightest and is at its most exciting when there’s a lot of action on screen, but the moments that lead to that, despite some interesting ideas, often struggle to maintain grip. There’s also a few technical issues and poor design choices to contend with, on top of the game’s play-it-safe story. Fun indeed, but hardly compelling.

If you are a fan of the One-Punch Man anime, it’s a no brainer and you should pick this game up! It’s enjoyable creating your own hero and rising up the hero ranks. However, in the end I did feel a little bit disappointed as it takes a lot of work to rise up the ranks, with way too many side quests needing completing.

Everyone appears to be having fun and that gusto carries some of the weaker moments. This becomes the crux of what makes Bloodshore great, it isn’t aiming for high-minded art but at larger-than-life entertainment with energy and gusto. As long as you, the audience, are game then you will have a blast.

Foreclosed excels with the visuals making this a unique experience I haven’t seen elsewhere, but could have used more work with voice recording and mixing with game audio. Fans of third person shooters or people searching for an interactive fun comic book game will enjoy this artistic title. It’s also a great selection for those who like Max Payne or Deus Ex as described by the developers.

SuperMash to me had a goal in mind, and that goal was to create a variety of games for the player to play out of different types of genres. It executed it’s goal perfectly but even so, I feel that a few more additions to the game itself would make it even better and more entertaining than it already is.

Those Who Remain puts on a passable front, but once we get past that there’s nothing here that’s worth getting worked up over. With a dull story, tedious searching of areas using unresponsive inputs, scares that never really come and some technical hiccups that make it feel like a last gen title, you’re best off looking elsewhere for your pulse racing thrills.

Guts & Glory is a game that’s far too bare for its own good, consisting of little other than a range of challenges across a variety of uninspiring maps. The game’s most defining aspect is that it’s brutally gory, and although it is indeed fun to begin with, repetition swiftly rears its head soon after. Furthermore, performance issues, dated visuals and a lack of content diversity mars this already bland experience.

If you’re looking for a game to start your love affair with tactical turn-based games, Crown Wars: The Black Prince is as good a choice as any thanks to the way healing and upgrades work. Despite a few flaws, I had a great time with Crown Wars: The Black Prince.

It looks utterly gorgeous, has an oddly stirring soundtrack, and the core gameplay loop is simply fun to engage with. Traversing the digital landscapes as they fill in and focus in front of us is a treat, and even though they may look initially daunting in size, there’s a smart logic to how they unfold every time. Each new power up comes along at just the right time (well, mostly) and clocking in at around 8-10 hours it’s not an overly long title to get through. Plus, there’s a genuinely interesting story to weave together throughout, and as noted above it’s well worth going back and hunting any missed logs to get the ‘true’ ending. Some weak combat and fiddly UI are the only real blemishes on an other great title, and I can confidently recommend this as something to check out.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance nails the charm of the Gelflings and the world of the Dark Crystal, but fails to do anything even remotely new in the Tactics genre. Nevertheless, it’s a simple game that for a small price could be worth picking up for a quick blast of uncomplicated strategy when the strategy craving hits.

Override 2: Super Mech League changes the formula for the story mode from its predecessor in a way that isn’t my favorite. That doesn’t take away from the stunning visuals this 3D brawler gives us. Unfortunately it seems Override 2: Super Mech League was banking on online play and I had a tough time finding opponents. Luckily bot matches can supplement our need to finish sponsor tasks but ultimately the game could use a bit more life.

The Church In The Darkness is a nice change to the contemporary games of today and strives to open the mind of religion and cultism in a top-view, open world environment with stealth mechanics and multi narrative story scripts. Looks great and plays great, albeit not being the longest game ever. It appeals to a different nature and pushes for originality.

With all this negativity going on is there anything nice to say about Tennis World Tour 2? Yes of course, if you like Tennis and you want a challenging gameplay experience then this will be a fine game if you don’t stumble upon difficulty-based weirdness, but there is too much here that’s off-putting to anyone but the most ardent of tennis fans. Tennis World Tour 2 has a bland career mode, dull presentation aspects, unfair matches thanks to difficulty inconsistencies and it’s largely just a safe but lifeless experience. Big Ant Studios served up better aces with their A.O titles, go and play them and forget about this one.

While the idea is novel and decent on paper, God of Rock left us wanting thanks to a tricky learning curve and music that fails to inspire replayability.

WWE 2K Battlegrounds is the WWE’s big release for the year, but it’s taken a new direction after last years effort and is a decent arcade alternative to the previous WWE games. The gameplay is fair and different, but you always expect a decent storyline to play through as well. The comic strip idea is OK but with no voice acting anywhere it just feels a bit weak.

If you’re starving for more Star Wars nourishment in videogame form and you haven’t given Star Wars: Bounty Hunter a whirl, there are far worse games that make use of the Star Wars license. It can be a blast to blast around linear levels with Boba Fett and his jetpack while repelling galactic grunts, but no matter how slick the remaster job is, it cannot hide how old this twenty-plus year old game is, and the frustrations inherent within it are too apparent to ignore. So Bounty Hunter isn’t the worst Star Wars outing and the remaster doesn’t do a bad job, but just like the original game, it might be worthwhile for Star Wars geeks to froth over, but it’s otherwise a despairingly middling affair. So go give Jango and go, but this one doesn’t steal the show and it sorta blows.

The Tunes are back in videogame form, which is great to see however this compilation of sports mini-games falls a bit short for the wacky world in my opinion. I love getting to see and play as some of the Looney Tunes but the sports themselves feel too basic and sometimes even clunky to really want to go back or even introduce it to friends or my kids. Golf was good and tennis was not bad but at a 50% okay rate in terms of fun, it’s a hard recommend to seasoned gamers.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood is a bit of mediocre game in very sparkly packaging. I was drawn to the trailer as the transitions to a werewolf looked stunning and I thought this would really be a good play through to test the Xbox Series X. The transitions in the game are quite cool, from human to lupus is neat and the burst into the Crinos form was great at the start. But after you clear a room of enemies with the powerful form you revert back into your human form like nothing has happened and it all feels a bit flat which is a feeling you carry throughout the game.

Project Starship was fun the first couple times but got boring very quickly. If you’re looking for a game that you can install quickly and 1000g then this is one for you, but I can’t imagine it’s going to capture the attention of anyone for long. Dodging bullets is fun, but you will just find yourself constantly shooting and hoping.

OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes is a prime example of licence cash grabbing. It’s not a bad game, but it’s clearly an experience that focuses on fans of the show, inadvertently alienating fans of the game’s genre. There’s no depth and innovation within, leaving players with nothing more than a bog-standard brawler that does very little to excite or excel.

Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris is a waste of both money and time. It’s a shame that Bungie couldn’t use the Infinite Forest themselves to find a timeline in which they had actually crafted a content drop that was as interesting and innovative in practice as it was on paper. Curse of Osiris does house some solid elements, such as decent voice acting and gorgeous design, but that means absolutely nothing when the content itself is meagre and half-baked.

Shoppe Keep is a management game that delivers depth, innovative gameplay, and decent functionality. The problem, however, is that it doesn’t come without a fair share of issues; lengthy loading screens, poor UI, and wonky controls. This would have been a much better game had the developers spent more time optimizing and fine-tuning it for console.

Sadly, whilst Dolmen is a game that may have been well suited 10 or 15 years ago, with a ton of souls-likes already out there such as The Surge, Hellpoint, Mortal Shell, Nioh, and so on, there is a lot to achieve if you want to make it as a memorable experience in the action RPG genre, and Dolmen doesn’t stand up there with the cream of the crop already available.

Even though I love indie horror, this was a bit too broken to appreciate properly.

The Path of Motus is not going to blow you away, but if you’ve ever endured the matters of its sensitive subject material, I highly recommend that you consider diving in. The gameplay itself is nicely paced and presents a gradual challenge that will test your morality, as well as your platforming and puzzle solving skills. Unfortunately, however, its short length and its basic visuals hold it back to some degree.

Some great ideas are hobbled by awkward execution in Winter Ember. For every bright spark there are a handful of quirks and issues that are just too prevalent to overlook. It’s just a shame that the parts don’t form a cohesive whole, and instead we’re left with a game that is stuck in the shadows of the greats.