Was initially really into this but that feeling faded as soon as the games repeated themselves. It's not that they're bad, there are just too few of them and the emergent nonsense you get in games like Fall Guys (which is a clear inspiration here style-wise) doesn't exist as you're pretty set in what you can do in each round.

That said, I think these pigeon characters are more fun and charming than the Fall Guy beans, and the challenges to unlock costumes is pretty neat. I haven't played Fall Guys since Season 2 so maybe that's already a thing there, but I appreciate that attempts were made to make getting some of these costumes a bit more interesting than just buying them in a shop.

It's been said a lot but this game really is to Pikmin 2 what 3 was to 1.

Happily, 4 resolves a lot of my issues from Pikmin 2 - cave levels are now curated, things that fall from the ceiling will happen at the same place each time round and the treasure tracker no longer sounds like a banshee screeching in my ear. Also thanks to the overworld being much larger, I no longer felt like I was running around a glorified menu selection screen, though it would have been good to have a few more environmental puzzles.

Sure, I do still miss there being some kind of time limit in the caves - I know time is meant to pass 6x slower there but there's no real risk as the day will never end while you're spelunking. I reckon a happy medium for me could have been having it pass 3x slower with the gauge still visible and still have that little bit of resistance to encourage Dandori, especially as there's a level select when/if you do return to the cave in the future.

I have some other small nitpicks (lack of respawning enemies in the overworld, auto lock-on issues, lack of bingo battle) but otherwise Pikmin 4 is a treat. Visually stunning for a Switch game, some great Dandori challenges, a bit of fanservice and the usual tonka-truck full of charm to keep you smiling through the story. From the demo I thought Oatchi would be overpowered and trivialise the need for Pikmin themselves but that noseless pup fits in a lot better than I expected.

Pikmin 3 remains my favourite as it's a bit more accessible for replays (both story and mission), but I'll still return to 4 to try and perfect Dsndori.

Pleasant point and click adventure where I grew to like the main character more than I thought I would. Some puzzles fell into trial-and-error trap but generally it made sense what needed to go where and why, as long as you're in the point and click mindset.

I was a bit put off by the controls, having to press a trigger button and the d-pad before I could even choose what interaction I make with anything felt unnecessarily obtuse and the stiff animation is also an acquired taste - I didn't dislike it but there were cutscenes that did look a bit jarring and some technical hitches.

The core of Pikmin is excellent so this is still a good game, but most of the decisions made for the sequel really don't work for me. On the positive side, I like the addition of White and Purple Pikmin (even if the latter are a little bit broken in battle) which add a little more strategy to your daily loadout and what you need to take into caves. The variety of enemies also gets a little boost, with some expert planning required in order to limit your losses as much as possible, while the Pikmin themselves get a nice little improvement in AI and no longer feel like they have the IQ of a rock. Also the Piklopedia, treasure descriptions and Louie's recipes add a lot of humour and charm to the series, so much so that I think a good hour of my playtime was purely down to reading every entry and regularly chuckling to myself.

I don't mind the overall timer being taken away (even if I prefer it), but I'm not a fan of the cave system and there being no kind of time limit there at all. To me, Pikmin always needs some kind of urgency, whether that's an in-game day limit, needing to get your Pikmin to a safe space by nightfall or just through challenges and missions. Once you enter a cave, all that evaporates and the game becomes something very different, something more survival focused. Not necessarily bad, but not what I was expecting or hoping for. The first Pikmin was a shorter and smaller game, but I felt like I was exploring a world. Here, the overground sections felt like I was walking through a large menu to get to the next cave.

In isolation I could deal with that, but with non-curated levels, random enemy placement and the occasional bomb falling from the ceiling with no warning, my enjoyment levels did start to take a slight hit. It hits its nadir when all of the above combine with having treasure nearby - not because of the gameplay of collecting them but due to the incessant and incredibly annoying chirping of the treasure radar. It's distracting mid-battle, and the ringing just won't stop even after that point until its deposited safely - the only way it will go away is by turning all in-game sound effects off which isn't a great solution.

But as I said at the start, this is still Pikmin. They're still a bunch of little guys working together in a big world to collect objects and dissolve bulborbs. The review sounds quite negative but I still had a good time playing through - I just don't think I'll be returning to this entry in the series much compared to the first and third.

I don't think I've mentally flitted around so much in my opinion of a game over 100 hours of playtime but after everything from hatred and exasperation to respect and admiration I've ended up feeling pretty positive indeed on my experience.

It's a hard game, and one I didn't think I'd particularly enjoy especially having bounced off Demon's Souls and Bloodborne quite heavily, but maybe it was the fact that I actually spent money on this (rather than getting it as a 'freebie' through PS Plus) but I persevered and had myself a good time. The feeling of satisfaction when you finally beat a boss is honestly hard to match, and the critical path 'dungeons' are easily the best part of the game - it makes me think that I need to give these previous games (and the Dark Souls series in general) another shake.

Did the open world help here? Maybe - I'm not sure it necessarily added that much to what was on offer other than having somewhere else to go if you got stuck, and I also don't think it's a particularly well designed one, but there were enough interesting places to discover that I went off the beaten track more times that I expected to. As for the story and lore of the world though, I was left underwhelmed - it was fine, but I knew I wasn't getting invested in the hows and whys of the main 'story' or the sidequests.

At the end of the day though, I was surprised. Surprised that I'd had such a good time after dying a lot and having to deal with a lot of minor frustrations caused by seemingly purposefully obtuse design decisions. Despite going through phases of loving and hating the game in equal measure at various points, when it works, Elden Ring is a great experience.

There are of course some pretty obvious inspirations here in the form of Twin Peaks and Silent Hill, but Alan Wake manages to standalone well enough to be its own thing. Some of the foresty areas, while nice, can get a little samey but Bright Falls feels like a lived in location, helped by the menagerie of characters you find along the way and the story really did manage to hook me.

I wouldn't call them bad, but the enemy encounters can get a bit clunky and repetitive, especially with a pretty narrow selection of tools at your disposal, but these elements are actually surprisingly easy to look over thanks to the overall presentation and story. The conceit of finding manuscript pages for a book that's been written for events that are yet to occur as collectibles is very well done, allowing them to not feel like pointless trinkets.

A Coc 'n' Ball story

A neat little puzzle game with a great atmosphere and some really interesting ideas thanks to its ball-hopping, world jumping puzzles. I actually think its really well designed for newcomers to the genre, or those who are more familiar with the puzzle design of 2D platformers (which the game's director was responsible for with Limbo and Inside). It was a shame for me that these ideas weren't explored much further than surface level as there seemed to be so much promise for the kinds of puzzle possible, but it's hard to be too critical in that regard as it's not something the game ever really sets out to do.

I was probably more disappointed that Cocoon lacks much of a narrative hook - as mentioned the atmosphere is great but I was really playing more for the puzzles than any kind of world building which felt a bit perfunctory at times.

I'm not super into Match-3 titles so when I saw what genre Pick Pack Pup was I didn't think I'd get much out of it but thanks to the game leaning more into puzzle than time limit (for the most part anyway) I was able to sit back and enjoy this way more than I expected.

Pup's tale was also quite enjoyable with the obvious real world analogies to certain giant corporation warehouse packing centres - a bit on the nose but no less accurate for it.

Crank usage - I think it would have been pretty hard to get it working with the core match-3 mechanics so only really using it to unfurl the comic strip story was fair enough.

The Artful Escape is a coming of age space opera about being true to yourself that is also a complete audiovisual treat. The story is simultaneously simple and over the top but remains well written throughout and it's also nice to see an Annapurna game with a star studded cast have more to work with than previous attempts this year, fitting in more naturally with solid performances and not overshadowing the game itself.

Outside of some light platforming and Simon Says sections there isn't a whole lot in terms of challenge, but for me the lack of a challenge is actually a benefit to the whole, tying in with a theme about playing what you want to play in the way you want to play it.

The slick animations and vivid, colourful landscapes certainly help with this as does an absolutely killer soundtrack, from folksy beginnings to full-on electrifying Bill & Ted-esque solos. Another boon is having a dedicated button in each level to shred your guitar along with the background music of each environment you visit, something which never got old.

There's a more to Supraland than meets the eye - on first glance you might get hints of a Steam asset swap special but persevere just a few minutes and you realise you're in for a bit of a treat as you leave your little town and fully enter a literal sandbox filled with puzzles and platforming. You're handed upgrades at a steady pace and the challenge ramps up at a decent rate while you explore a surprisingly intricate and aesthetically pleasing world.

Unfortunately, the last couple of hours were a bit of a slog to get through thanks to an increased level of already pretty tedious combat towards the end of the game. This was amplified a little by something outside of the game's control - illness - and my patience definitely started to wear thin when I reached a massive difficulty spike just before the final boss. I also had a glitch where a very important environmental asset just would not load at all, so had to Macgyver my way around that which was way too mentally taxing for the state I was in.

But it seems harsh to criticise a game for me being unwell - I still had a good time with Supraland overall and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a 3D Metroidvania puzzle fix. You just need to be aware that it's a much longer game than it might look on the surface