Live A Live is a unique experience and one that hits many highs throughout its campaign. Unfortunately, it has just enough issues to prevent it from being a truly special game.

With an array of 7 chapters, LAL drops you in at different moments in time with stories and tones that range from prehistoric crude low humour to space-bound horror. And for the most part, it’s able to strike these chords that make each section feel authentic for its time, without giving you too much in the way of tonal whiplash jumping from one chapter to the next. This is largely from the stunning presentation of a soaring and spectacular soundtrack and the gorgeous 2.5 HD graphics that Square Enix has found a winner with.

However, some of the chapters are just not that interesting. The aforementioned prehistoric chapter is fine enough, and changing the language to that of a simple caveman is a nice touch, but it’s mechanically passe. This is possibly the biggest issue with the game in general - Live A Live is at its least interesting when it plays out like a standard JRPG, which is the case for several chapters and towards the end of the game (the ‘Shakespeare in the Park language’ didn’t help either)

The chapters that were the most memorable, such as the Wild West and Distant Future had unique elements to them that made them so much more engaging, unlike running around aimlessly in Edo Japan or dealing with the irredeemably dull Akira in Near Future that had me reaching for another game.

The other aspect of the preferred chapters is the reduced amount of combat through those arcs. While the grid-based approach is unique, it fairs little in the way of the required strategy and became tedious before long. The highest compliment I can give is each battle theme whips.

…. So yeah, I had moments where I thought stopped playing, moments where I thought it was GOTY, and then laughed out loud at one of the multiple endings available. Live A Live is a solid game and a fucking ambitious one for 1994.

With no nostalgia for the series, I was genuinely charmed by Return and its cast of characters, twists and turns, solid video game(!) humour and more.

I would love to see other point-and-click games of this era get modernised using a set-up similar to what Return does, as the game does a tremendous job of taking the spirit of the original but streamlining it for a modern audience. The weaving of the task list and hint system, which is there whenever you need it but never intrusive is a brilliant touch.

I can see how the ending may be divisive, and I'm unsure what to make of it myself, but I can see how if you have a fondness for the series and an emotional attachment - I think it will strike the right chord.

A wonderfully chill platformer; every corner of the world has something to collect providing a constant supply of dopamine to the brain.

There's little in the way of challenge or obstacles to overcome, and the puzzles (point at the thing, throw a tinykin at it) may wear thin, but the playtime is fairly short and the environments are interesting enough to keep you going.

Oh, and green tinykin, you fucking champion.

Taking elements from all-timers like Dead Cells and Hades, though never quite hitting the highs of either, RL2 is still an enjoyable rogue-lite with a solid variety of classes, abilities, biomes, enemies and bosses. Playtime ended up being around 20 hours, with the game opening up to provide more options and difficulty settings once you beat it fully the first time - meaning you could lose another 20 hours or more if you feel inclined.

It also has a bunch of accessibility options if you don't want to run headfirst into a wall with the scaling of difficulty at points.

It just doesn't quite have the mechanical chops of Dead Cells or the narrative depth of Hades to make it feel like a top-tier of the genre.

Some occasional odd camera quirks aside, there's very little to complain about here. Incredibly stylish and challenging with a flow, not unlike 2021's Boomerang X. The immediate comparison is to Tony Hawk's but there's just as much 2016 DOOM in the chess-style mechanics of the combat.

Few moments this year will be sweeter than pulling a frontflip over a grunt's head while wasting them with a shotgun.

Essential.

Stardew Valley meets the Binding of Isaac. It's a management sim wrapped around leading a cult but bolts on a rogue-lite/dungeon-crawling section that breaks up the pace. It never meets the highs of either but has enough interesting ideas to make it stand out, though it does come with a few flaws.

The Switch version is incredibly janky, with numerous soft locks, hard crashes, loooooong loading times, drops in frame rate and other bugs; it's probably the worst-performing game I've played on the device.

The game also shows its hand within the first few hours (which are exceptional) but loses pace towards the end, especially as you'll likely have done most stuff possible with the cult and skill trees, which then serves little purpose with the last few hours of the game.

The biggest issue for me is the actual dungeon crawling, which is just... ok. Weapons aren't particularly interesting, the combat mechanics are basic, and the ideas it throws at you you've seen in numerous other games.

With all that said, the game will easily get its hooks in - using Stardew as the example: there's that flow you get locked into where you want to play for one more in-game day to build the extension to the farm, and then one in-game day lasts a week.

Boss fights are frantic and at times nerve-wracking as you try and survive with a single point of health left, with these typically turning into bullet hell-style encounters, though again, the Switch struggles at times when the screen gets busy.

Using rituals to brainwash your cult for 3 days, meaning their faith in you cannot drop - giving you the opportunity to gleefully murder all of them if needed. This game sure does go places at times. And this also speaks to the fact that everything in the game connects; if you don't have any gold you can sell items; if you have no meat - murder a cult member for sustenance; if die in combat and want to keep going - sacrifice a cult member for an extra life. It's all of these little options and moments where Cult of the Lamb truly shines.

Gran Turismo has never been my forte because I am neither interested in driving simulators nor fucking cars. Still, I did enjoy my time with GT7 and having a big shiny 4K TV certainly does bring the experience up a notch as the game is sumptuous to look at.

I wasn’t as aggrieved about the in-game economy or the ongoing changes made to increase grind because I never had any interest in completing the garage. Still, I totally get why that would be a dealbreaker for fans of the series, and microtransactions in a 70-quid game will never be acceptable.

The cafe menu system to navigate the single-player campaign - while occasionally tedious - was simple enough for someone like me to just jump in and start driving. I do wish the game would provide scenarios other than “come from behind” and towards the end, I was getting a bit fed up with the same format, but the racing feels good, cars have their own unique quirks and you do feel the difference depending on the set up used - again, even for a novice like me I could notice the differences.

So yeah, I’d probably still go to Horizon for my racing needs, but GT7 was a solid change of pace.