I played the original Destroy All Humans! quite often when it first came out. It stood alone then as being unique - playing the 'villain', piloting space-craft and vaporising humans seemed a new take on a third-person open-world shooter. Its writing was dry and sarcastic, and riffing off 1950s Cold War hysteria and pop-culture was something new for me as a teen. You were humanity's saviour: saving them from their stupid selves, harvesting brains for the good of the Furon Empire.

Does this all translate today? A lot of it does actually, but perhaps not entirely. The writing and performance seems a bit stilted and the complexity of the missions aren't nearly as groundbreaking anymore, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun.

Like Spyro and Crash remakes, the differences to the original are predominately visual. Blackforest Games have 'cartoonified' the models here which is a striking difference but works more in the game's favour than against it, I thought. Unlike those PS1 remakes, there are some gameplay control changes which work well for me but might not for others. Some added abilities from the second game like the Transmog are welcome, and an all-new S.K.A.T.E. mechanic for quick traversal on ground as well as better manoeuvrability for the jetpack are both godsends. New side-story challenges are a good addition too.

Definitely worth picking up if you liked the original but may not have legs if you’re new to the games. Honestly, it’s incredible to me that it was even chosen by game developers to be remade as although the games have a decent following, it’s not that huge.

An enjoyable experience that matches together a platforming collect-a-thon with a game mechanic that is unique and captivating. The story centres on overcoming one's bullies whilst sharing positivity by painting uplifting murals. As you bring colour back to the town with a magic brush, you choose which art designs to use and add your own vision to the story. These murals all remain on the map as you progress which is a wonderful touch. The genies you get to create are expressive, charming and add an interactional element through their requests that really brings the game up a notch in terms of immersion.

There was room for improvement in places. Occasionally, the map is a little difficult to read, but counteracted as protagonist Ash can easily clamber across many surfaces to reach places to put murals. The story comes to a close a little earlier than anticipated too but there's some replayability. I thought the motion sensor controls were fine and serviceable but they missed a trick by not allowing you to also use an optional PS Move controller! I'd have loved to have been able to use that as a brush. The devs addressed this, slightly, with a VR/Move level (which I haven't played) but it still could have been added to the main game.

Lots of fun and worth playing for its innovation alone.

Not hugely into the LEGO games other than LEGO Jurassic World, but this was a pleasant surprise. It's a GTA-clone bringing to mind family-orientated predecessor Simpsons Hit & Run, but unlike that game (and even many other LEGO games), this has its own original story. Lots of the story beats riff off other action-adventure and/or crime films and it's written very well. Genuinely humourous too. I can't recall when I've laughed out loud this much playing a game.

It's standard LEGO game gameplay of using different character types to puzzle and combat your way through the story. It's fairly rewarding but simplistic. The driving is decent if not a little sluggish. Probably let down the most really by its very lacklustre soundtrack. Very boring and repetitive, and I think the inclusion of a radio, with instrumental tracks, could have been a really great addition.

Maquette struggles in places to work as a game and doesn't always mesh well in its story-driven content either. Although I enjoyed some of the recursive puzzles a lot, there were plenty that were so obtuse and out there that they made me feel dumb when I worked out the solution. I don't think that's a marker of good ludic design if the way to play the game alters this much.

Sure, it's a beautiful looking game (although on PS4 suffers from significant frame-rate issues and stuttering) and the love story between the two feels like a modern, realistic attempt at navigating relationships.

That said, why is it told through a maquette world? What is the maquette of the gameplay and title really for? I get that there were some metaphoric connections between symbolism in the maquette and the real world, but it felt very tacked on. I learnt after finishing the game that this whole story WAS tacked on. Originally, the story revolved around a more fantastical setting involving a wizard trapping someone in the maquette. Makes more sense than what we got.

The game left me feeling frustrated, miserable and honestly quite bored.

List of VR Games ranked

This is a charming VR experience that transports you into a diorama-influenced world full of cut-out surfaces and taped-together buildings. Playing as this 'ghost giant', you help a young Louis with day-to-day tasks as he looks after his sick mother.

The puzzles are well-designed involving lifting mechanics, throws, crank movements, twisting objects and more. I was surprised just how much use the developers got out of the Move controllers. With a stationary setting and a set of puzzles that unlock parts of each level, it brought to mind the best parts of classic point-and-click adventures.

Some of the movements were a little finnicky, however, and at times it was very unclear what the puzzle was asking you to do, but nothing too difficult. Often, having real-world knowledge does aid you for example one later-game puzzle requiring you to make apple pie requiring you to know how butter is made, but that's all part of the fun.

It's a smart and homely approach to a VR adventure and I look forward to what the Thunderful Development team do in future.

I liked this quite a bit. It's a quiet and contemplative experience chock full of decent puzzle elements to keep you intrigued and a few non-human enemies to dispatch in a sparing way now and again.

Some puzzles and checkpoints are quite infuriating, however, and the camera angling does you few favours. The 'rage' mechanic is extremely hit-and-miss right up to the end and on top of that - there's some very buggy areas.

I played this on the PSP and it looked incredible for that system. It's well-lit and has very crisp details despite the graphical downgrade. perhaps some of the control issues I had are due to that system, but looking at video walkthroughs (which were a godsend), it seems those playing on the PS3 had similar issues.

Fun overall but I doubt I'll replay this one.

I've tried perhaps three times since 2006 to play through this mammoth story but end up losing interest towards the last third each time. It's beautiful to look at and traverse, has innovative gameplay and a fantastic soundtrack, but I just can't seem to beat it. There are a lot of textboxes. A LOT. Could have done with far less like other 'art' games such as Ico or Shadow of the Colossus.

Just let us bask in the world and make our own interpretations. I suppose that's not what the developers were after - but I wish, really wish, it had been.

Klonoa's is a very different game to most platformers. Visually, it looks unique and being a 2.5D perspective game, much like Pandemonium! where a 2D plane moves through a 3D space, it's unique. There simply weren't many of these back when this game out, nor really after (I have a list collecting them all here). The story is.. serviceable but incredibly weird in places but I wonder if it's due to the English localisation. Always has been odd but it's something to do with the realm of dreams and nightmares? Regardless, the three stars rating here though is more for the remake than the original game (original's a 4).

As much as I enjoyed the visual update to the original, there's something unbelievably clunky about the controls in this version. It feels like it's something to do with the hitboxes which make landing on platforms more difficult and the 'wind bullets' inaccurate. Vision 6.2 was, aptly, a true NIGHTMARE to play and I had to set the settings to easy just to get through the boss. Much like the original, the game ought to have separated the levels from bosses.

This Metroidvania feels so fun to play. The world alone, a Chinese diesel-punk setting with anthropomorphic animals, is just a joy to look at and navigate. The three weapons are great to play with and when you get good with them, it's a real blast.

It's not perfect though. Besides a rather bare bones cut-and-paste story, the gameplay difficulty of the bosses on normal sometimes lets the experience down as they can be brutal (the last boss I conceded and changed the difficulty to easy after 30 attempts...). There's also some nasty framerate / load-in issues on PS4.

Some of this is excusable maybe as this was developed by a small Chinese team. Speaking of, I recommend playing this in its original Chinese audio as well. There's few games released in the West that have Chinese language and this is one of the better ones. Probably will come back to this in future so gets a 4* from me.

Spent a good year casually playing the story expansion for this survival game, Wintermute. Thoroughly enjoyed all four episodes and I wish there were more survivalist games like this that were light touch with the sci-fi elements. Not a big fan of the genre but this just felt right.

The mechanics of surviving this cold apocalypse are really well thought out and gives you many different playstyles. I haven't yet tried the Survival Mode which for many is the meatier experience but the crafted narrative was what I was looking for. That said, these elements were sometimes a frustration when in part due to scripted timber wolf encounters but still the rest of it made up for these "danger" moments. I'll consider this completed for now but will definitely return

Whereas the first game leaned into a macabre version of Spirited Away in tone, Tarsier studios took inspirational cues here from bizarro-noir films like Dark City as well as disturbing entities that found life as memes on the internet. We've got David Firthian Grannies, suited Slender Men, and probably not intentional but a sort of Globglogabgalab-like thing too. Horrible creatures the lot of them.

The controls unfortunately made the journey frustrating on many many occasions especially when precision was needed but hey 2.5D cinematic platformers have had issues with this since Oddworld: Abe's Oddysey. The glitches and clipping on the other hand detract from the completeness of experience the original game offered. Overall, this was a great sequel but perhaps undercooked in some places