Critical Hit

Overall, Twelve Minutes is an excellent game with an interesting concept and story. It’s filled with great talent, but its rigid structure and stale gameplay hold it back from being a must-play.

Overall, Cris Tales is a beautiful indie RPG that is held back by various issues, keeping it from being one of the greats. Incredible story, filled with exciting characters, areas and interesting time powers, makes it worth the play. However, held back by an uninteresting battle system that becomes stale and too easy, a horrible third act of the game slows it down to a crawl.

It’s lucky for Backbone then that it’s story and characters manage to carry it through the dirges of disappointment. While the gameplay is generally underwhelming, the visualisation of this weird iteration of Vancouver and the sad, hopeless folks that inhabit it kept me pushing forward to eventually see the conclusion.

Guilty Gear’s latest chapter is its most accessible one yet, a righteous display of power and attitude that unleashes the sickest of heavy metal guitar licks and unrelenting style.

Given its simplicity, and the fact it was developed in just a few months, it’s surprising just how good Overboard! is. A couple of disjointed transitions aside, the game is exhilarating, frequently funny, and addictive thanks to its all-round style (text and visual), and insistence that players embrace deliciously, strategic wickedness.

DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power succeeds in not feeling like a simple cash-grab. Much like its source material, it has genuine heart, plenty of activities to take part in, and a cast of characters who are simply adorable. Some of its more social open-world gameplay may feel a touch slapdash, but its colourful and explosive action more than makes up for it by being a blast of addictive and easy-to-grasp fun.

Ninja Gaiden: The Master Collection is a fascinatingly violent time capsule that shows off the best and the worst of Koei Tecmo's fan favourite shinobi. It's as barebones a collection as can be, packing all three games together with a sprinkling of DLC, but it's still a fine showcase of brutal difficulty and white-knuckle thrill power that is inimitable by anything else on the market. Just don't expect anything more than that.

Boring narrative aside, Sniper Elite Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is superb at delivering its bread and ballistics gameplay. Focused purely on the art of the kill, CI Games has crafted numerous detailed sandboxes to become the ultimate long-distance predator inside of, resulting in a game that forges ahead and doubles down on its own unique brand of hold-your-breath gunplay. Pure cathartic and exhilarating action with every squeeze of the trigger.

A beefy shotgun has more subtle layers of resistance to help you decide whether you want to unleash or or all barrels of destruction, a mini-gun that spews tiny black holes sends the controller into a vibrating fit, and a grenade launcher allows you to use the aiming trigger resistance to gauge how far you want to hurl an explosive. It’s just pure haptic bliss, right there in your hands.

It’s beautiful, it’s charming and its insights are given greater punch by exceptional voice acting. Yet, despite ticking so many boxes, The Magnificent Trufflepigs never manages to find the sweet spot of player satisfaction due to some odd, clashing design choices.

Knockout City is both easy to pick up and deviously simple in its design, hiding a layer of complexity behind more casual gameplay that fans will discover the more they become invested in it.

Through out the entire experience though, there’s a game that has been lovingly recreated on a visual level, each surprise trap being rendered in art style of exquisite beauty through the surprisingly versatile RE engine. Magic and power-ups dot the landscape, but no matter how well-armed you are, Ghost ‘n Goblins Resurrection will always kick your ass and laugh in your face while doing so.

Capcom Arcade Stadium has a divisive collection of charming cult classic titles and time-wasting distractions, but it's all presented in a package that lures you in with bright lights, loud sounds, and plenty of nostalgia.

Biomutant’s combat is pretty much a rough ride from start to finish, with mastery of its intricate combos, chains, and weapons becoming exceedingly difficult when you face bigger mobs of enemies.

It’s pioneering, and there’s a definite creative logic to the mechanic, but it also introduces a noticeable stiffness to the engagement element, which, in turn, is a continual distraction.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is as definitive a collection as you could hope for. Remaining rough spots have largely been dealt with by new patches, and the tale of a galaxy uniting in the face of a greater threat is one that still easily rivals the likes of Star Wars and Star Trek on any give day.

Subnautica: Below Zero presents the player not only with a harsh tundra to live in but the icy depths underneath it all. It’s tense, challenging, and always engaging, pushed on by a surprisingly in-depth narrative and characters that make eventually leaving behind all those magnificent alien animals all the more challenging when you eventually roll credits.

The idea of being being confronted with impossible predicaments while a mysterious voice in the back tells you to give in may work better on the Switch, where its touchscreen features and portability make this title perfect for some head-scratching exercise while you’re in a cozy bed, and there’s something neat about seeing a bunch of vital clues just littering the bottom of your screen, but remember: There is no game.

Wrath of the Druids is still more of the same but somehow more focused. Less waffling about on doing every single activity in a map that’s way too damn big, more getting right down to business, and being gently encouraged to do other activities when you find the time to do so.

The gameplay is so limited and often stilted that fans of more modern visual novels will no doubt find it trite but those looking to experience the birth of a genre and appreciate a piece of Nintendo history which never actually made it out West back in the day should check out either of these games.

It’s not only an amazing survival-horror game, it’s a great shooter in the same breath. Helped along by some interesting level design, enemy variety, and always cheesy (but nonetheless terrifying) supporting characters, Village shows off how a modern Resident Evil game should play.

Returnal’s sound design is phenomenal either way. The world around you sounds alien, the soundtrack always hits the right notes as it swaps from eerie to all hell breaking loose, and Selene’s voice actress does a brilliant job at portraying the stranded astronaut.

It’s relaxing yet challenging enough to keep your mind in focus, and a terrific implementation of Pokemon’s gotta catch ‘em all attitude.

Push past the convoluted mechanics and daunting start of Trials of Fire to be greeted by a deep and engaging deck-building rogue-like that’s meticulously designed, generous with content, and rewarding to play.

Forged in the Barrens is an interesting expansion for Hearthstone that plays it safe while also introducing ideas that could make for some exciting changes in the future.