Much like the original this is more of an atmosphere piece and graphical showcase than a really great game or a gripping story. It's fine, but it's not why you're there. It really is super sharp on Quest 3 and the game's peppered with some real 'oh, that looks cool' moments which I really appreciated. The story kind of meanders along but keeps you interested and interacting with the things that you can look at, and in an interesting contrast to Bonelab's almost militant level of doing things purely with physics it relies much more on moving a pointer over a thing to get a readout of what it says.

I do think it's worth a play through, but I will say that the addition of a gun and shooting segments was purely negative and just frustrating.

A frustrating title, this. I really liked Boneworks as I apparently have VR legs made of granite; the pure physics interactions and the way the game absolutely rooted you in the world combined with some surprisingly solid shooting and a story that kind of went nuts towards the end created a game which stayed with me for a long while, even if I didn't want to try and jankily shimmy/mantle up another box for a while.

Bonelab tries to follow up from this and it kind of does - the way you can change your body which then reconfigures the scale of the world based on your new proportions is really cool - but the structure of the campaign means that you get that ability, do a short tutorial for each body, then do a longer level that I thought was a tutorial for combining them, then another shorter level and then the game kinda stops. I really mean that too - nothing's resolved and the game basically tells you to download some mods. It's bizarre that they'd get so close and then just stop, especially after the tower finale and then what follows that in Boneworks. It almost feels like a joke.

What's there I again found fun and interesting but it just doesn't feel like it's a complete product yet. Combined with the insane levels of motion sickness triggers, it's a hard one to recommend unless you know you'll be OK.

In terms of performance it was fine. I'd have liked a Quest 3 update to try and smooth some stuff out on the traversal but it didn't feel particularly compromised by the system.

Another RGG Studio game, another incremental improvement on the last release. Being the first time we’ve controlled Kiryu since Kiwami 2, the thing you notice right away is that this blows away previous Dragon Engine incarnations of his fighting style. Whether you’re dispatching low level mooks at Musou levels of pace with his agent gadgets or blasting bosses’ energy bars with his even more charged up brawler style (Tiger Drop now back at its full power, doing more damage and sounding significantly louder than, say, a shotgun blast), Kiryu starts strong and only gets more dominant. The new arena mode, with up to 11v10 battles, just becomes absolute chaos - loads of fun.

More importantly, though, the game justifies its existence as it follows Kiryu between the end of RGG6 and about halfway through the events of 7, culminating in a final section which delivers on the promise of the consequences of what happened at the end of 6. The shadowy Daidoji faction and its absolute ruthlessness is something I hope we see more of in 8 because there are some characters there who I’d really like to get more screen time, particularly the absolute bastard Yoshimura and Kiryu’s handler Hanawa. being made alongside 8 seemingly allowed them to include more characters from throughout the series too which hit hard.

Speaking of which, the demo for 8 which is included is definitely worth a run through. Hawaii looks great and the bad guy you meet at the start is a really promising looking cold-blooded gangster character.

Before release there was some rumbling about the game’s initial plan as being DLC; the obvious comparison point here being the Kaito DLC for Lost Judgment. That had a really strong story but felt slight due to the complete lack of side activities; I’m not sure how much longer this would be to just main line through the story but the extra activities absolutely make it stand up on its own. As a shorter, concentrated experience it’s hard to complain and I'd like to see some more of this.

Steam Deck report: It defaults to medium settings with FSR in Quality and it pretty much constantly held 40 throughout. These ports are getting better and better.

I like being surprised by a game and this was a really nice surprise. The developers' affection for Robocop is completely obvious the whole time you’re playing. On the one hand, the script clearly wasn’t written by a native English speaker and most of the voice overs are the quality you’d normally get in a badly dubbed kitchen roll commercial, but on the other the actual plot itself is a much better follow-up to Robocop 2 than what they came out with in Robocop 3, Peter Weller puts in real effort as Robo himself and the game’s levels evoke Robocop incredibly well.

In fact, it’s that sense of place, whether you’re going around the wonderfully detailed recreation of the police station or realising you’re in the same steel mill from the first film where Murphy met his end, which makes the game work. Verhoeven-level gouts of blood spray forth from the creeps, walls explode in showers of plaster and documents scatter through the air as you trundle through the areas and power up your Auto-9, which eventually becomes a hand-held heavy machine gun full auto sniper rifle with unlimited ammo by the time you’re done with the game. As you would want from Robocop, the game does a great job of keeping you as a walking tank while still raising the stakes with new enemies.

In the end, this game’s got moxie and that’s what’s pushed it to a 5 for me. That and the ridiculous final boss. If you really like Robocop I think you'll get a lot from it.

There’s a lot to like about this vampire-filled take on Max Payne. I thought it did a good job of nailing the self-important inner monologue of the main character, slow motion is always fun and the weapons, while few in number, generally have a decent punch. It doesn’t quite get there though; the biggest issue is probably the enemies themselves as most of them are melee types that just dumbly rush towards you. It’s also too long for the lack of level variety. It took me a little under 10 hours to get through all the levels but I think it could have stood to be more like 5-6.

A great RPG hybrid by Omega Force. There’s a real love for Fate in here which is obvious throughout, and the story is told to a very high standard. I wasn’t able to put this one down throughout.

In the end I think it's the fan service which makes it; being able to both talk to and play as classic and new Fate servants is great fun. I was picking up bits of Musou game move sets while going through the list; I hope the season pass stuff is more battle heavy with more characters as it really is a lot of fun.

Steam Deck report - It’s close enough to 60 even in denser areas that I was OK just setting it and leaving it. I suspect this runs on the same version of the engine that P5 Strikers did, meaning that the graphics options aren’t as extensive as I’d like, but it’s certainly good enough not to have to completely muller the visuals. Only thing I’d say is to remember to turn the game mode to ‘quality’ rather than ‘performance’ as that implements a 60 rather than 120 limit.

This one’s a shame. There are clearly some fun ideas in there, most of which are at the end of the game, but the story kind of peters out and I realised a week later I’d completely forgotten most of it. The Invasions mode is just boring and bad as well.

The fighting’s decent but I don’t play MK for the fighting bit.

Steam Deck report - I wouldn’t bother. You can convince it to run at maybe 40 - and there’s an option for a 40 cap in there so the porting studio clearly intend for that to be a thing - but it doesn’t look great and isn’t worth the hundred or so gigabytes it’ll chomp out of your SSD. After playing a good chunk of 11 on the Deck this was a real disappointment.

This game gets practically everything right. As a new Armored Core game it took me back to playing multiplayer AC3 in a way the later games never did. The variety of weapons and the agility potential of your AC make this the best feeling robot game I’ve played, even as I ended up gravitating towards becoming a floating death fortress. And as you’d expect from modern From, it takes strong characterisation and makes that into a compelling plot that gets you through three full plays.

Sure, it’s not perfect - the post-game runs almost feel too easy with a couple of exceptions, and it’s very easy to fall into a preferred play style once you get good - but I don’t think that’s a major issue and stomping those two infamous bosses using better weapons was very gratifying.

Steam Deck report - Runs at 40 most of the time in medium settings. Bits of slowdown here and there, usually when things are exploding really dramatically so personally I’d go for 40 with drops rather than a more solid 30. Very acceptable, I did the end of my first playthrough and most of the second entirely on Deck as I was out of town and I never felt like I was being held back by the hardware.

This was an extremely pleasant surprise. The ‘work’ component of farming games has done a good job of keeping me away from other games of a similar type like Rune Factory but something about how this one all came together means that this is much more than the sum of its two individually simplistic parts. The story gets kinda crazy and the soundtrack’s by Go Shiina so it’s got that pomp and energy to keep you going.

Steam Deck report - Expect around 3 hours of battery at 60fps. There aren’t any graphics settings so just set and forget. There’s a bit of weirdness around the prerendered videos, though there’s only about 3 of them in the whole game, but check ProtonDB before starting off as one’s right at the beginning.

It’s ludicrous! A flawed gem of a mid-90s shooter given the level of spit and polish that its ambition (if not its execution) deserved. What we’re left with here is still a game that has real personality, especially in the first full episode as you curse the level designers for their nasty tricks and traps.

Sure, it doesn’t hold up as well as something like Blood, but it’s finally getting the recognition it is well past due.

Steam Deck report - Runs great as you’d expect, while sipping power. I’d probably still be more comfortable with a mouse but it’d be a good excuse to get that soundtrack going through some quality headphones!

What a confident, well-made sequel. I sort of struggled to the end of Remnant 1 but I could see that they were going for, and with the sequel they have largely fixed the problems that a solo player would have (especially with certain bosses) which leaves 20 hours or so of extremely fun shooting, once you pick up a good gun.

The thing that really got me, though, was the realisation that with the way the levels worked you were only intended to see about half of the game’s areas in one run through. At a time when it feels like there are so many games trying their absolute best to snow you under with objectives and quests, having a game actually keep stuff back to keep the game’s pace up took me by surprise. For a game that wasn’t even released at full price, it really punches above its weight.

Steam Deck report - you can convince it to get to 30 but I wouldn’t; I had the most fun playing with keyboard and mouse because fundamentally it’s a shooter.

It's my own fault, really, for thinking this series was picking up again. The story starts interesting and exciting and just falls away into the toilet as the stakes go down and down and down. In the end the writers' inability to just let characters go has become a millstone around the neck of the series and has been for a long while now. I'm just going through from habit now, and I can't recommend this series to anyone starting anew anymore.

And as a side note - a game that looks like this should not be performing this badly on a Playstation 5. This new engine really is terrible.