This is a handsome remaster that will hopefully win over new players, but for those already in love with Broken Sword, something is missing.
There is enough pleasant fun here to divert you, and there are flutters of real invention. You just wish that it ran a little further.
A choose-your-own horror without any fright, The Casting of Frank Stone has an intriguing plot that doesn’t end up delivering.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is not, nor was it, a good video game, but this loving remaster makes you think of what may still come.
Conscript may not be a true survival horror, but it taps into that legacy and roots it in fertile soil.
Kunitsu-Gami is exactly the sort of thing we need more of, the kind of game that you kid yourself used to crop up regularly in generations gone by.
Some might see it as doing the game a disservice, to always refer back to other things, to boil Still Wakes the Deep down to the intersection of the Venn diagram of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Alien: Isolation, and John Carpenter's The Thing. But honestly? In our book, that's some of the highest praise we can give.
Braid is a classic, and this edition features beautifully redone art and music, with hours of excellent developer commentary.
Indika is a must. It stays with you, its heroine is fascinating, and its surreal vision is unsettling. You haven’t played anything like it.
Few games let you experience the true horrors of an empty, slightly dilapidated council swimming pool, and for that, Pools must be commended.
A bright and vibrant world filled with dull combat and a plodding story.
Princess Peach: Showtime is proof that you can have too much of a good thing, with the mould-breaking style of Good Feel becoming mustier with each outing, and you can't help but feel that the heroine herself deserved better.
Skull and Bones is a dull exercise in checklist progression, spiced here and there with some impressive sailing.
For those of us coming back to Tomb Raider with rose-tinted sunglasses, the gentle visual overhaul and tank controls are a perfect vehicle to revisit an important piece of gaming history.
In parts, it's almost good. But for a superhero game from Rocksteady, the masters of the genre, and a descendant of the mighty Arkham series to boot? It's also a disappointing sign of the times, of corporate overlords still chasing live-service trends, even in the wake of high-profile fumbles like Anthem and Marvel's Avengers.
Silent Hill: The Short Message has interesting underpinnings – in particular the first-person influence of P.T. and contributions from Team Silent veterans Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito – but anything of real promise tends to be undercut by lampshading its best ideas.
There are pros and cons to this Recollection. Two Memories is worsened by departing the Nintendo DS, for instance, while A Journey Into Lost Memories is dramatically improved by the trip to Nintendo Switch, the hybrid handheld suiting it far better than the Wii's weird waggle.
The evocative setting and chunky Soviet hardware feel lifted from the page, but everything else is, unfortunately, worsened for making the journey from literature to game.
Fluid platforming and frenetic combat, with some lovely spectacle and a dull story.
If there is any criticism to be made of Jusant, it's that developer Don't Nod – no stranger to over-egging the narrative pudding at times – couldn't hold its tongue, filling the beautifully spartan climb with diaries, logs, and otherwise unnecessary lore. But the game's focus on its core climbing mechanics, and some of the finest art direction we've yet seen, still make this an essential journey.