A dirty-pint of stereotypes, awkward situations and leery dialogue, this is a visual novel that somehow manages to become likable over its runtime.

This is a simple fast past side-scrolling shooter that holds a fair amount of challenge. For those who need a no-nonsense shooter then this could be a quick pick me up. Really skilled players might breeze through it though and it may not hold enough replay value. If the annoying scream doesn’t bug you when you die, you might get some value out of this bright arcade retro shooter.

OkunoKA Madness is not for the casual platforming gamer. A certain level of skill is needed to remotely get close to beating this game. Once through the levels, the game relies on ranks and time trials for replay-ability so I hope you enjoy what is given. OkunoKA Madness is guaranteed to drive you mad at least a few times as you will die a lot. Overall the game is a relatively short experience, skill depending, and could have tighter controls for the genre that it is.

Iro Hero is everything you expect with a vertical shooter in that it’s tough, fast-paced and repetitive. The extra mechanic of changing colour is fun to use, and it does test your reflexes and gives you a bit more chance of completing the game. There is not a great deal of content to keep you interested in the long haul, but it still a good enough game for you to jump in straight away and get going.

Once you get past the boredom and try to strategize your way through the race, Tour de France does have some depth to it. But because of the niche market for which it is made I don’t find it worth the price of admission. Even local co-op doesn’t save it. In my opinion, the developers could do well to package this with an exercise bike rather than a console release with gamepad controls.

Element Space is a very difficult game with good intentions but poor delivery. So much time was spent crafting out a storyline, using voice acting and putting some innovations into this genre that the main functionality of the game slips down. With clunky controls, high difficulty and such slow pacing, only experts at the turn-based strategy will make it through to enjoy the storyline. But they would need to be a glutton for punishment and have a lot of time on their hands.

HyperParasite has a really nice aesthetic style, with bright, chunky visuals complimented by a decent synth soundtrack. There are some nice ideas here too, being able to posses bodies to fight back offers up some fun gameplay and scenarios. But it takes for too long to unlock more bodies, and the combat and difficulty is too uneven to really get the desire to have ‘one more go’.

Played in short bursts 60 Seconds! has enough charm and wit to make the end of the world at least seem like a bit of a laugh. Sadly, reality kicks in sooner or later and we realise that our luck can be snuffed out at any moment. When we die yet again due to factors we couldn’t control, it becomes harder and harder to muster up the will for one more go.

Galacide must be commended on its attempt to mix up the Shmup formula; by adding in the Match 4 elements it provides more challenge than simply (ha, simply) dodging bullets and shooting down ships. Unfortunately this innovation comes at the cost of being able to easily read the screen, and accurately utilise the mechanics to progress. A worthy curio then, but not one to rush out and play.

Sometimes relics should be left in the past, and unfortunately the Tomb Raider Remastered Collection is one of those cases. There is some worth in preserving the base experience of these 32-bit classics for a modern generation of consoles, but calling this collection remastered is negligible, as it’s only claim to such namesakes comes from slight visual improvements and slightly modernised controls. This collection is best served as a history lesson and would do well in a videogame museum, but although it’s pleasantly priced, there are games that cost less that are longer and offer so much more substance than this. Feel free to take the history lesson, but whereas the original three games were celebrated and rightly so at the time, in 2024 it’s a case of history dooming itself in the present.

One Eyed Kutkh is short and sweet. It’s not a particularly challenging game, but it should please just about anyone that doesn’t expect too much from it. The gameplay remains simplistic throughout, making this a very accessible and easy to understand experience. Ultimately, the target audience is clearly focused at the younger gamer.

It’s short, the story loses grip, and the puzzles are far too easy throughout.

The Library of Babel has beautiful art and an intriguing story, but the game built on top of that lacks polish and evokes old-school design in the worst way.

If you like a challenge, you will certainly find your fill here, but the best types of hard games put the failures on you. Here, too often it feels as though your failure was as random as the level design / item placement / enemies / everything else. Fun in short bursts, but not one to spend hour after hour, trying to perfect.

Outward’s harsh difficulty, its hands off structure, and its constant stat management wont be for everyone. This is one hell of a demanding RPG, and as such, it can feel less like an adventure and more like a full-time job. Still, the game deserves a lot of praise for its ambition, its depth, and for its choice-driven structure, but in the face of its poor design choices, its awkward combat, and its lack of visual polish, it’s hard to wholly recommend.

Aluna: Sentinel of the Shards is an uncomplicated hack’n’slash action RPG. It has enough elements to make it visually nice and simple to play, but the lengthy levels and repetition may cause you to suffer burnout pretty quickly. It can be played differently if you want to try melee, ranged or magic focused but I can’t see many wanting to revisit the game to play it a different way as it offers little replay value. But in terms of content, I can’t fault it definitely has plenty of hours worth of gameplay.

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.

One Night Stand is a quiet game hidden amongst the large onslaught of the action genre, but those looking for this type of gameplay and story will find it a treat and something a little different.

While sim games are hardly rare, Megaquarium has a unique, charming spin on things that make it worth checking out. Some slight UI niggles aside, there’s enough charm and content here to give you a relaxing evening playing with the fishes.

Fallout 76 is akin to Ark: Survival Evolved, being that much of its potential is lost in the midst of its many technical faults. To be clear, at its core, this isn’t a bad game, in fact, there’s a lot of fun to be had in its padded world if you enjoy this type of gameplay loop. It’s a shame that in its current form, most of that fun is frequently interrupted by horrendous framerate, countless bugs, delayed rendering, and shoddy design choices.

There’s no denying that for its cheap cost, you’re getting more than enough content in return, but it’s content that ultimately becomes repetitive before too long. Much like each of its three predecessors, New Home fails to truly evolve its gameplay loop throughout its entirety. That said, I’ll credit the game for its simplicity and accessibility, but this means very little when innovation has been sacrificed as a result.

Twin Mirror is unfortunately bit of a mixed bag. With some great ideas and potential for a captivating story it’s a shame that the adventure was cut so short. It feels like the game was intended to be longer and this is evident in the relative potential. Sam’s mind place is a highlight and does provide a lift to the game in areas that are at times lacking substance. The foundation was set but fell short of the great detective story that Sam’s return to Basswood could have been.

If you are fond of classics from 30 years ago getting modern updates, System Shock will be a commendable trip to take. Plenty has been done to make System Shock an appetizing choice for the curious, and those who wonder where Bioshock‘s influences came from. However, the frustrations of exploration, the monochrome environments and the lack of interesting enemies smushes this remake’s momentum. Your enjoyment of this System Shock Remake will likely hinge on whether you can tolerate the rigidity of this classic’s design and how much you enjoy the story and the intrigue that exists within. Lamentably though, this remake sells itself on regression, meaning you’ll need to erase all the strides the genre has made in 30 years in order to fully appreciate it. Try this remake then if you’re curious, you might enjoy it, but although this remake is commendable, it’s still too disappointingly archaic to fully recommend.

After a decade away, it’s disappointing that Payday 3 feels so insubstantial and unwilling to evolve from its excellent predecessor. The heist variety and enemy types are cool, but the predictably rote objective-following and the continuing practise of shooting bullets into police is tiresome and without change-ups to make them entertaining. For seasoned veterans and newcomers, Payday 3 should grant you a worthwhile exhibition of heists across a smorgasbord of locations, but for everybody else, this’ll be an eye-rolling exercise of the familiar and the banal. If you can band together with three mates then there’s some valuable loot to steal here, but what maybe most apparent is how Payday 3 ironically steals your time without the valuable substance to go along with it.

Despite these misgivings though, I had a fairly enjoyable time with Terminator: Resistance. Sure, its mechanics, looks and technical aspects all feel as though the last 10 years of progression in gaming didn’t happen, but as a straight shooting FPS it does a passable job of entertaining. The campaign over stays it’s welcome, but along the way there are some quite likeable characters that make the journey more bearable. It would have been nice to have the death bringing army of machines feel more of a genuine threat rather than a pop up gallery; if the tension in that early scene could’ve been maintained we might have had something quite special on our hands here. As it is, we have a pretty bog standard shooter that feels a decade too late to the party.

I had high hopes for the original game but came away underwhelmed. Danger Zone 2, however, rights some of the issues with a much better visual style and far more interesting courses. Some wonky physics, repetitive, bland background detail and a lack of things to do, lets the game down on occasion. Though, the core gameplay loop is still as fun as it’s ever been, smashing through traffic and causing carnage is a blast.

Creepy Road is a mixed bag of pros and cons. Whilst it looks and sounds the part, handles quite fluidly, and comes with a diverse variation of enemies and weaponry, there’s just too many glaring issues holding it back. Chief among them being lazily designed boss battles, poor hit detection, and several environmental bugs. It’s a shame really, because had the developer held the game’s quality to a higher standard, this could have been a hit.

There’s certainly a charm to Georifters, from it’s sickly sweet visuals and audio to the at times clever use of its mechanics across the campaign. Said campaign is far too long though, made all the more elongated by some stodgy controls that make the action feel far more unresponsive that it actually is. Fun for a few hours and when we can have mates over again, but we were stuffed long before clearing our plate.