Ghost Trick is an essential and engrossing experience for any PC gamer.
Vengeance combines the fresh, familiar, and the fiendish into one incredible RPG.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D is welcoming for newcomers, a fan's dream, and a truly timeless classic.
Relink offers fluid combat against inventive bosses in gorgeous landscapes-this is an essential ARPG.
Riven is as impressive, immersive, and unmissable as it's ever been.
Wildly unpredictable but always enjoyable, The Alters is a masterclass in high-tension gaming.
Whatever the mode, there’s no doubt Gleylancer’s a brilliant 16-bit shmup. The game’s fantastic use of parallax scrolling adds not only speed but excitement to its varied eleven stages; taking you down through icy depths, weaving between small gaps in tight tunnels, slowly looping around a gigantic battleship, or hurtling through an asteroid field. The ways your Movers — the floating gun turrets that follow your ship — can behave are so different from one another they have a direct impact on how you tackle everything from “popcorn” enemies to end of level bosses, and the newfound flexibility of Modern Mode feels like the perfect twist on an already brilliant idea. Gleylancer is as fresh and thrilling as it’s ever been, only now it’s as authentic — or accessible — as you want it to be too.
Clockwork Aquario has been a long time coming, but it was definitely worth the wait. An obvious labour of love, this ill-fated arcade gem has been improbably recovered, restored, and reassembled, and it never feels like anything less than a carefully unearthed treasure that's been polished until it shines. It won't take long to beat - and it shouldn't, because a good 30-year-old arcade platformer is supposed to be short and sweet - but what the game lacks in length it more than makes up for in entertainment and raw creativity, with stages pitting you against everything from mechanical flying fish to a gigantic egg-dropping robo-penguin. It's the sort of game you come back to again and again because you want to rather than have to, and we feel lucky to have it.
The blend of all-out action, deep strategy, and Ancient's irreverent humour is as enjoyable as ever here, and smashing a huge castle-tank into evil things never stops being fun. Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness plays its story for laughs but the game itself is an expertly crafted challenge with lots to do and plenty more to keep coming back for.
Flexible, fun, and ferocious too, this roguelike has more than enough dungeon diving for everyone.
A fun and engaging RPG with beautiful graphics and a bouncy pace.
An excellent remake, prequel, and game in its own right-Crisis Core has it all.
Kunitsu-Gami's a gorgeous and engaging take on the tower defence formula.
Eternal Strands is an unforgettable combination of intense action, inventive improvisation and an engaging story.
Atmospheric, imaginative, and enjoyably unpredictable-this is one of the year's best horror games.
Familiar and inventive, tough yet easygoing, World of Goo 2 is a whole world of fun.
Fantasian will make you work hard for every win, but the reward's always worth the effort
A beautiful remaster of a great game that leaves some very old, obvious issues untouched.
A superb retro-style smorgasbord in real danger of drowning out its own consistently good work.
This is unlikely to be the Aleste collection anyone wanted. Those interested in the early days of Aleste will quickly notice the lack of the MSX2 games and the omission of Musha, Dennin (AKA: Robo), and Super Aleste will disappoint those fond of the most popular entries in the series. However, even without those, Aleste Collection still contains five great shmups and represents excellent value for money, especially when you consider this package costs much less than some second-hand cart-only auctions do for single games contained within it – and that's before you even consider GG Aleste 3's very welcome addition.