EU copy played on a Nintendo 3DS XL.

In my opinion, the best Dimps Sonic title, and probably because it feels so far removed from their previous efforts. Little to no 2D-only gameplay and in-keeping with the core design of the Wii U version, this feels almost like the real thing. It does have a case of rather boring level design and repeated music tracks which made it rather boring to play at times but it was extremely cool to see a handheld Sonic title in 3D that wasn't restricted to two dimensions.

Possibly one of the most infamous "remasters"/ports out there - broken lighting, misplaced textures, and iffy collision detection are abound in this edition of Sonic's amazing 3D debut, and they only get worse and worse with each new re-release since they're all based on the previous port. Character models get a significant upgrade but it's just not worth everything else going wrong.

If you have to get this version on one platform, make it the Steam release where you can install the Dreamcast Conversion mod which fixes everything.

EU release played via Steam on a Lenovo Y50-70.

What an utterly fantastic metroidvania. The music and atmosphere of the levels are the first things that capture you and with the wonderful creature and enemy designs, this is a hard game to put down. The jumping does take a bit of time to get used to and you will find yourself dying on multiple occasions at the same point. But Demon Peak lets you experiment, going back to previous levels to get more gold and abiities before moving forward again.

A couple technical hiccups, namely the odd screen-length line of black pixels appearing in one particular point at a level and another experience where I had closed the game but could still hear the music, forcing me to go to the Task Manager and finding it in the background processes. But other than those two minor issues I can't say there were any game-breaking bugs.

Overall, well worth the price of admission and definitely an instant favourite of the pixelated adventure genre.

EU release played on a PlayStation 4 Pro.

I'll be perfectly honest, I hated Sundered when I first booted it up. The trailer presented itself as a story-driven metroidvania (at least that's the impression I got), so to be confronted with a rogue like with minimum plot alongside death being an expectancy rather than a fail state, I was extremely turned off. I'd tried roguelikes in the past and had never really seen the appeal, so was prepared to just turn this off and never play it again. But since Sony has no refund policy on PSN purchases, I percevered and forced myself to keep going, and hey this is actually pretty good.

The art style is the first attractor, impleneting a clean, flat shaded look which utilises a hand drawn animation stlye. It's really quite beautiful to see in morion and coming up across the giant bosses in the game is all the more intimidating because of their sense of weight and scale implemented through their motion.

The sound design also manages to capture you, filling you at the best of times with a sense of uneasy calm and at the worst, complete dread. Each time you encounter a horde, a resounding gong plays and hearing it sucks every time for all the right reasons.

I managed to even love the level design in the end, regardless of it implementing some randomisation. The main locations within each area stay where they are on the map, but the rooms and corridors you traverse to get there change each time, which keeps exploration and traversal rather fresh.

And the upgrade system is incredibly satisfying, giving you the classic option between good and evil powers with both sides providing a good variety in benefits that each player will have their own preferences towards. As with most Metroidvanias, traversal becomes a complete and total joy in the endgame and gaining a new weapon or ability always felt good.

All in all I highly recommend Sundered. Even if these types of games aren't your thing, it managed to really sway me over to its overall design with some good art direction and music.

EU release played via Steam on a Fujitsu Lifebook A532.

After the success of Portal 2's whitty, character driven dialogue and at the height of the "walking sim" craze, it's kind of amazing more games like The Stanley Parable aren't around. The power of the narrator's irony-dripping voice coupled with the Winchester House-style of a maze-like office building was fairly entertaining and managed to keep that level of laughable insanity pretty much for the entirety of its play time. It gets a little tiresome once you're certain you've discovered all the little secrets and endings (an in-game check list might have been appropriate since finding those things was the sole driver of the gameplay) but for a 2-3 hour experience this was addicting.

EU copy played on a Nintendo 3DS XL.

This is an excellent rhythm game - even if you're totally unfamiliar with the FF games and their plots like I am, there's absolutely no denying that the franchise has some of the best, most recogniseable and iconic music of the video-game medium. Even the titles past Nobuo Uematsu's involvement have a fairly solid score of catchy melodies and beautiful harmonies.

The gameplay itself is split into three modes but all pretty much boil down to the same way to play, with taps, swipes and holds being the only method of inputs. It sounds like it would get stale fast, especially in comparison to other rhythm games' methods but the variation of speeds and input requirements coupled with the difficulty options keep your attention span longer than it has any right to. Unlocking your favourite characters and levelling them up is satisfying, even if I never quite figured out the item system and there's a solid pick of tunes you play along the way.

Honestly this is a must-own for the 3DS system.

EU release played via Steam on a Fujitsu Lifebook A532.

Proteus is such an odd game. During the craze of walking sims and people questioning their validity as "real video-games" (yes this was a real argument the internet was split over), there was a real wealth of unique experiences that had never been capitalised on before with the main attraction ultimately being to lose yourself in a artistically-specific environment with the possibility of no violence whatsoever.

I like to believe we've come a long way since those days but in comparison to titles such as "Gone Home" or "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter", Proteus is almost a non-game. There is no goal, that I could find anyway, and so while there are triggers to change the scenery and colours around you, there is no end either. Where other games demand you to get to checkpoint A while killing enemies in order to progress the plot, Proteus asks you to just chill out and wonder for a bit, soaking in the atmosphere and sounds it provides you.

It really is a beautiful experience and it's nice to just relax to for up to an hour, but you'll realise you've seen everything it has to offer fairly quickly which prevented me from enjoying it as much as I could have.

WIth a fresh Xbox 360 and the Guitar Hero III guitar peripheral, this was my introduction to ryhthm gaming and what a phenomenal experience! Barring the last song, GH3 does a great job at cranking up the difficulty over the course of its playlist of brilliantly-picked songs of a wide array of genres, with a control setup that feels manageable and challenging. Through the Fire and the Flames is still a ridiculous patience-tester but limping your way through that song for the first time is an experience comparable to achieving nirvana.

When Crackdown first released it was an interesting take on the 3rd-person shooter with platforming and rpg mechanics. Now it feels like at one of the earlier attempts of a 3D rogue-lite with the ability to go take on whatever boss you want in whatever order with you learning more and more with each attempt. The leveling-up system for your guns, driving and platforming are really cool and running and jumping around the large city was entertaining back when we still didn't have a lot of open-world superhero games, but the lack of any realy plot or characters can make the game feel mildly entertaining at the best of times and dull and tedious at its worst.

This, to me, is the perfect stepping stone between the N64/PS1 era of 3d platformers and what they would become in the years following. Jak and Daxter was a huge technological evolution from the Crash Bandicoot formular for Naughty Dog, with vast, open, challenging world areas, an entertaining plot that didn't talk too down to it's audience, and a killer soundtrack - and all with next to no loading times whatsoever. This was my first 100% completed game as a kid and is still stunning to this day.

EU release played via Steam on a Lenovo Y50-70.

When it comes to the classic Sonic games I'll admit my experience is rather limited. I played the hell out of Sonic 2 back in the day, always getting so incredibly close but never quite being able to beat the last boss rounds. Sonic 1 I played a bit of before getting reaching Labyrinth Zone and checking out and Sonic 3 and Knuckles admittedly remain somewhat of a mystery to me even to this day.

Sonic CD however is a wildly different beast altogether. I could maybe appreciate it's sprawling and complex level design if this were the first title or had a different graphical style about it, but it getting lumped in with other regular Sonic collections over the years and looking pretty much like a more jazzy Sonic 1 is incredibly deceptive for the amount of bashing your head against a brick wall you're in for.

I finished this game. It took me roughly 10 years but I got there in the end and I can't say I remember a damn thing about it outside the creepy easter eggs and the rad animated intro sequence. Maybe I'll come back to it again at some point and take my time to explore the game fully, but trying to plow through it from start to finish like the rest of the 2D games leaves you utterly bewildered and frustrated.

EU release played via Steam on a Lenovo Y50-70.

The Walking Dead: Season One really hit the video-game landscape at exactly te right time. Point and click games had been dead in the water for quite a number of years, despite Telltale's own attempts at the genre, but securing the rights to make a game within the universe of the (then) incredibly popular tv series of TWD, alongside having an incredibly well-written script was the shot in the arm this company, and by extent this genre, needed.

I won't go into this game too much - it's puzzles, story, and even soundtrack have all been (deserrvedly) highly-lauded for nearly a decade now - but I will argue it's probably one of the most important video-games of its era, setting a new standard for story-telling within the medium and garning attention of an audience that wouldn't normally play games, let alone point and click ones.

I'll admit my memories of this game are hazy now, with my main recollections being of night-time car journeys, relying on the street lamps to see what I was doing, and an embarassing moment of finally catching Ho-Oh, changing my mind about giving it a nickname but not knowing how to cancel, so panicking and naming it "Ho-Ho" accidentally.

It expands greatly on the original games with 100 new creatures to try and collect, and having the end-game objective of going back through Kanto again was mind-blowing at the time. This and Silver are key games in the Game Boy Colour's line up for a reason.