Sadly, I can't imagine a single scenario that I would actually want to play Awkward with anyone.
Shining Resonance Refrain might not be a classic example of the genre, but it gets the most important components of the genre right – the characters and the storytelling – and backs it up with some gorgeous art and a perfectly competent combat system.
Mushroom Wars 2 is the ideal casual strategy game.
Koihime Enbu RyoRaiRai is going to be one very niche fighting game on the PlayStation 4. Very few people in the west will care about the extended franchise that it comes from, being adult visual novels, and those that are fans enough of Koihime Musou have been able to buy the previous version of Koihimi Enbu on PC. I hope some people discover it though, because there really is a good little fighting game in there.
It's just disappointing that Hexologic didn't prove testing enough on the intellect to be a truly spectacular example of a puzzler.
It's apologetically grindy, and a time sink for the sake of being a time sink. Most of the time, it's the kind of thing I simply wouldn't enjoy, and yet, somehow for both it and its predecessor, it all comes together to be something I do really enjoy. The purity and simplicity of what drives this game is appealing, and even refreshing, and the perfect thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you just need to clear your head.
I would have liked more context to the action, better realised characters, and more involved levels. And, of course, some kind of single player experience. But, for what it is, as a no-frills Overwatch clone, Paladins gets the job done. It's a game I'll likely be playing for quite some time to come, because it certainly scratches a very specific itch.
Lumines is at its best when it's pure immersion, no frills.
It's still delightful, but perhaps a game that would have been better off in the hands of developers with a greater capacity for music curation.
As far as pure entertainment goes, it's hard to look past Sushi Striker.
I'm so delighted to say that Lust For Darkness is the real deal. The fact that I can compare it to one of the greatest erotic thrillers of all time in Eyes Wide Shut, and not break down laughing, is in itself is a great credit to the developers. The game lacks the sheer mastery and refinement that Stanley Kubrick had over his canvas, but this is still leagues ahead of the clumsy, overly-simple idea of "horror" that most game developers aspire to.
Vampyr is the vampire story that I've waited for many, many years for.
The Lost Child is also a game that so cleanly represents everything good about the dungeon crawler genre that I found it hard to put down. The fact that it's the perfect introduction to the dungeon crawler genre also makes it the perfect first example on the new hardware.
Samurai Defender looks like it should be more than it is, but never gets there, and feels overwhelmingly shallow as a consequence.
This is 2018's most cuttingly unpleasant game to play. And I'm one of those that played Agony.
Musynx is as no-frills as rhythm games get. That's not necessarily a criticism, because the music - the most important feature of the genre - is a stand-out delight. I will play this one a lot more than I play DJ Max or Superbeat Xonic, for example. And yet, while the promise of plenty of DLC music to come is exciting, Musynx also lets itself down by being far too easy, and limited in features, to hit those high notes as one of the best examples of the genre.
This is the kind of game I can sit down to and play for an entire evening without realising how much time was slipping. It's always "just one more turn," or "just one more battle", and even after all these years of playing Koei's strategy and action games set through the Sengoku period, and reading books about it, I'm always impressed that Koei Tecmo manages to teach me something new each time it releases something in the franchise.
We've seen plenty of stalker horror games in the past (Amnesia being perhaps the best example), but a combination of bugs and absolutely dismal guidance from the game makes this one a very painful grind to work through, filled with trial and error deaths and far too few checkpoints for this kind of gameplay.
Milanoir is not the longest game, but that breakneck pacing is so high octane that it can become draining. Unfortunately, it's not a game that's easy to pick up and put down at will, because it's a little confusing as to when it's actually saving the action.
I truly love West of Loathing. It's charming, silly, fun and, most surprisingly, offers genuinely engaging combat and questing.