Pigeon Simulator is the definition of ‘fine’. While it does nothing great, most mechanics work just well enough to allow for fun when in a group. It is a poor experience solo, though, so unless you have a friend or three, which is made easier as a Day One Game Pass launch, it may not be for you.

FAIRY TAIL 2 is best left for fans and potentially players of the first game. A fun combat system and entertaining character interactions are strained against a linear, dull boss rush adventure with poor performance and weak sidequesting. I don’t think I can call this game an RPG in any capacity.

God of War Sons of Sparta has a weak start, solid middle, and strong ending. If you can get through a tedious first few hours you will eventually be rewarded with solid combat and an emotional story.

In the end, either solo and especially in co-op, it’s an easy recommendation for me. All four heroes play fantastically and are quite different from one another. It also looks great on a Series X. I hope that Gotham Knights becomes a series because this is one hell of a first entry.

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a fun romp through old fashioned Japanese horror. The atmosphere is lovely, the story is interesting, and though the gameplay might wear down a bit over time, it’s a unique survival horror game that I can recommend to anyone.

Control was a 9, and Alan Wake 2 was a 10 for me. I love Remedy’s games – normally – but FBC Firebreak seems to have lost their usual magic in a search for a wider audience. I get it, but I do not like it, and I think it hurts the title in the long run.

I had a great time with High on Knife, and I do plan on going back in to clean up some undiscovered items, which thankfully, the game allows you to do, even after completing the main questline. If you loved the off-beat humour, gross body horror and Rick and Morty style humour of the original game, you’ll hardly be making a mistake picking this mini-expansion up. It’s Knifey’s time to shine (or stab everyone)…or both.

I enjoyed the first videogame of the Unknown 9 universe, and I sure hope it won’t be the last, as I wanna keep going back to this vast fictional world. And while I absolutely want to applaud Reflector Entertainment and Bandai Namco for trying something different, perhaps they stuck a little too close to the action adventure videogame genre’s tropes, in an attempt to better appeal to the masses. Still, it’s a game that has some good ideas and a terrific lore, one expanded upon by all the transmedia products out there. Fans of action adventure games should take this leap of faith into The Fold and give Unknown 9: Awakening an honest shot, with its budget price that should help with pulling the trigger over such an… Unknown quantity.

It may not be the “AAAA” game Ubisoft touted, but with a solid enough foundation, a decently planned bevy of seasonal content ahead of it, and the uniqueness of making the ship and gear the focus, it may be finally on the right course after all.

SLEEP AWAKE is a game I saw in my email, having never heard of it. I redeemed the key on a whim, and dear lord, am I happy that I did. The four hours I spent in The Crawl as Katja were full of intrigue, some genuine scares, and a hell of a lot of enjoyment.

Ultimately I’m a bit torn on Boti: Byteland Overclocked. On one hand, it’s gorgeous and charming, but it’s gameplay and the myriad of bugs I ran into really soured the experience. On the other hand, Boti is still fun to play and I wouldn’t mind going back for the collectibles and a hundred percent run in the future.

Swansong promised a lot but delivered what I felt to be a severely flawed gaming experience. Quality cut-scenes alone cannot carry a title and that has been proved out here. With boring, glacially paced gameplay, janky controls and far too many technical issues wiping out any sense of pleasure gained from playing through to the games anti-climax, I was left wanting.

Ultimately, while the quality of the games in this package is varied, with so being the effort going into the actual remastering process too, this is hardly an essential purchase. It is however a package that is nice for hardcore fans of the franchise, but also those who want to rediscover the most advanced classic Tomb Raider (IV, that is), the bizarre piece of gaming history that is Angel of Darkness… and also Tomb Raider V, I guess. Sometimes, even missable games are worth a solid remaster.

Madden NFL 24 is made for the returning fans. One title in a series that will continue to go for many years to come. You can see it in the features they’ve added, such as returning modes and iterative improvements on the presentation and gameplay mechanics. But technical issues compounded with an unintuitive user experience and unhelpful tutorials make it difficult for someone new to the sport to really sink their teeth into American Football. Still, the core gameplay is solid and fun to play—I just wish it were easier to get to.

I’m the kind of person who can sit in front of an idle game for hours, as I multitask something else like writing reviews or watching a TV show. Yet, Tap Wizard 2’s bizarre game design initially made me want to log off after a couple minutes at a time, and I really had to force myself to sit through various ascensions and countless deaths just to see if something more exciting came along. Eventually, the game evolved to a point that I could say I was having a decent amount of fun. But unless you’re a hardcore idle game fan and need a fix, you can likely this one out, as the first 10-20 hours of this game are easily the least enjoyable part of an otherwise quite okay game.

Ultimately, Sonic Frontiers struggles with creating interesting levels and challenges in its large maps filled to the brim with padding. But if you can look past that, there is fun to be had within its frustrating confines.

I’m not too big a fan of how much was stripped away in Ninja Storm’s Connections History mode, but it still does a good job of picking the right moments to sum up for Naruto-noobies while still offering fun fights alongside Boruto’s extra story. Ninja Storm fans will know what they’re coming back to, this time with a larger roster than Storm 4. Connections is ultimately a great little collection of all things Naruto.

For fans of Destiny, The Division, and all the loot-focused games-as-a-service titles, this is a damned good one at launch. We’ll see if they can continue to grow and improve it over time.

All in all, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (2023) is, at its best, a safe and minimal upgrade over last year’s episode and, at its worst, a visibly rushed, somewhat poorly designed, and unbalanced collection of game modes. Sure, it builds upon the excellent technical and mechanical background from last year’s game, but much more worryingly: it offers a short Frankenstein monster of a hybrid campaign with much of it being essentially repurposed Warzone content; a Zombies mode that also feels like an unbalanced and unpolished rehash of things we’ve seen in said battle royale mode and last year’s DMZ; lastly, with multiplayer limiting itself to fairly superficial (if generally positive) changes, alongside merely introducing remakes of old maps.

Frankly, this game just isn’t very good.

If you love the idea of taking a floppy tube, pointing it at something hot, and spraying all over it until everything is cold and you’re filled with regret then FireFighting Simulator – The Squad can be done alone, but it’s far better with some friends.

Gangs of Sherwood was fun for 15 minutes. Every second after that was a dreadful monotony that I cannot recommend to anyone living or dead.

My verdict? This isn’t just a retro release—it’s a tribute. To the creativity of the 90s, to the risks developers took, and to a mascot who still puts a smile on people’s faces. It may not be flawless—but it is, without question, the purrfect way to experience Bubsy.

Its initial teasers promised a gorgeous magical world full of incredible sites. Instead, we’ve been given something boring, that runs terribly and has a story full of overused tropes.

For me, for a multiplayer game all focused on replaying levels again and again, the very fact that both my teammates and I were already tired at the mere suggestion of playing through all this snow again, meant one thing. I’m afraid I’m going to have sit this blizzard out.

The good news is that you can enjoy the hell out of this game without spending a penny, but if you’re either prone to MTX-it is or really care about PVP it wildly throws off the endgame balance.

Starfield’s first expansion is an excellent dive into one of the game’s key pieces of lore. There are answers to be had and mysteries to be born anew. It is all wrapped up in one of the best ‘looks’ I’ve seen in a video game to date. For any fan of the base game, this is a solid 10+ hour adventure you do not want to miss.

RENNSPORT has all the core elements in place to be an engaging and accessible racing simulation. A handling that feels solid even a controller, a more welcoming approach than most hardcore sims have, and a lot of solid ideas to have great racing going at all times – against the AI and online alike. Yet, with only 12+2 tracks, a limited selection of cars, a lack of polish in many areas, various missing features and a confusing microtransaction model, it needs more time in the oven to truly become an essential racing simulation.