It may look like a party racing game in the vein of Micro Machines but Circuit Superstars is its own animal, combining the top-down cartoony aesthetic of the Codemasters classic with sim-elements which isn't a combination I've seen very often at all and one that works. Mostly.

Probably most importantly the cars feel fun to fling around each course, with each vehicle type having distinct handling and providing a different challenge and it's to the game's credit that it feels satisfying when you nail everything. Another nice touch is the addition of pit strategies, something that you don't normally see in this type of racer, meaning that you can try something a bit different to your opponents either by taking a risk with you fuel and making fewer pit stops or making your tyres last slightly longer so that you're in a better position at the end of the race

The tracks are well designed and are complemented by the game's simple art style which isn't distracting but still helps each course feel alive. In fact, some of the circuits are stubby little homages to real world courses which are instantly recognisable if you know your motorsport but still different enough that you won't be able to master it immediately. Each of them has at least one or two corners which are tricky to get right every single time while still feeling fun to drive around when you don't.

Unfortunately at the minute the limited number of tracks get repetitive pretty quickly (especially with very short laps), while the game's main draw - the multiplayer offering - is severely underbaked, only offering public lobbies with a choice of three randomised races to pick from and nothing outside of that. Single-player too doesn't really have much to it outside of a short championship for each vehicle type. The physics as well are a little off, as sometimes the tiniest knock will have you flying off the circuit while a massive shunt into the side of your car doesn't do anything to your speed or position on the circuit.

I hope the devs continue to fine tune the game to smooth out some of the kinks and add new content as I think it could be something special but right now it's merely pretty good.

The influence of Monty Python on Joe Richardson's work is undeniable, not only in Terry Gilliam-esque animation but also the overall tone and humour of the writing and scenarios. With such direct and successful comparisons available, it's a testament to the game that it manages to feel like it's own thing.

Drawing on the art of the Renaissance era, the scenarios you're placed in seem utterly bizarre until you looks at the paintings that inspired them, with just the right level of self awareness about them in the writing and dialogue to not feel heavy handed. The absurdity also lends itself to some of the more out-there solutions you sometimes see in point and click games, although it would perhaps benefit from a smidgen more guidance - it wouldn't have to be a lot, but small things like some dialogues with hints being said more than once wouldn't go a miss.

The Processions to Cavalry is short and sweet and while I would have liked to see a few more areas to explore and solve silly puzzles in, I certainly appreciate the effort that has gone into recreating these classic paintings and portraits as environments and characters

Through sheer iteration, F1 is better than it's ever been in video game form - a shame then that the much vaunted and marketed story mode is complete and utter tosh.

I don't fault the game for having a set story it wants to tell, but it constantly allows you to break the believability of what you're being told by what it lets you do on track. It would also help if the story itself was interesting or believable in any capacity - if you have anything more than a surface level understanding of the sport it just seems ridiculous at points.

But it's still one of the best racing games out there and great fun in the usual career or multiplayer modes, and one that's surprisingly easy for newcomers to get into despite how complicated the sport can be.

Forza Horizon 4, but in Mexico. I'd say if you enjoyed that then you'd also have a great time with this entry but for whatever reason I just can't gel with FH5 as much as I did its predecessor.

Maybe it's fatigue, maybe it's the locale not interesting me as much or maybe it's just noticing the things that didn't bother me last time as it was my first experience with the series. Every line of dialogue which seems like it's purposefully trying to ape Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock, interesting set pieces but with boring, indistinct track layouts, being constantly interrupted in the first 5-10 hours with new events being added to an already overstuffed map or having another set of numbers pop up or increase to give you a serotonin hit to keep you playing for as long as possible.

It still looks great and blasting around the world in each vehicle is still a gratifying experience as you bounce through sand dunes or jungle areas with reckless abandon. But while I think I had a decent enough time overall, at the end of my last session I couldn't help but feel that I had just spent three hours consuming content, rather than having a properly enjoyable experience.

My guess is that open-world racing might just not be for me in the long run and I just prefer games in this genre where I can properly learn specific tracks with distinguishing features and how each car will perform on them.

Beautiful Katamari has all the characters, cousins and katamari chaos you would expect from a game in the series but you can tell that it's missing a certain something.

The levels you're given are great and expand in entertaining ways but there isn't much variety on offer - you have two different smaller starting locations which eventually grow out into the same larger overworld which is a nice idea but growing out into the same wider world for every level does tend to get old a bit quickly. There's a bunch of levels stuck behind DLC which may address this, but I haven't been able to try these out yet.

The objectives too are pretty stale. The base request you'll receive is to reach - or ideally beat - a certain size while also rolling up as many objects of a particular type which is fine in theory. However, it's almost impossible to fail in collecting enough of those object types (and quite easy to get more than you need to get even the highest scores) which makes it pretty redundant, leaving you stuck with the base 'as big as possible' objective. You do get a couple of requests that are a bit different (like having to keep your katamari warm by rolling up warm things and avoiding anything cold as you try to reach 10,000 Celsius) but these are few and far between and don't match the creativity on display in the two previous PS2 games.

But the main thing that I think is lacking is purpose. I don't want to romanticise the first two games too much, but among the silliness there were interesting ideas. The first entry showed us the concept and executed it to a tee, the second developed it alongside a smart meta story about fanservice and having to do the same things again. In Beautiful Katamari, the only progress is in how nice the game looks. The story has nothing to say and is even more of a non-entity than before while its corporate nature shines through with a level about collecting 'cool' things being filled with Xbox 360s - this title of course being an Xbox 360 exclusive despite the history of the series elsewhere - along with the aforementioned locking of 7 of the game's 20 levels behind DLC

With all that said it's still a Katamari game where the simple act of rolling something up is incredibly satisfying, so much so that you're able to block out some of the weaker elements in this entry and just enjoy the ride. It's not perfect by any means but I'm super glad that this made it into the Xbox backwards compatibility program and that I've now been able to play a game I missed 14 years ago

I will never get tired of people's terrified screams as they become entangled in a giant sticky ball filled with sweets, cats and vending machines.

This time round I did notice that the time limits given to you are very generous and you're left with too much dead time at the end of each level where there's very little left to collect, especially the further you get into the game. But that's a relatively minor quibble, everything still holds up pretty damn well.

Now if Bandai Namco could just hurry up with We Love Katamari REROLL, that'd be great...

It's more Darkside Detective but better in almost every way.

Each case feels more fleshed out with more interesting puzzles and mini-games, and while the pixelwork in the first game wasn't exactly shabby there's a notable uptick in quality on display. The writing and dialogue is still very funny and doesn't rely as much on pop culture references as its predecessor, allowing the game to have more of its own identity and its characters to stand out a bit more.

The best improvement though is probably one of the more subtle changes. McQueen and Dooley's were very much of the straight man/wacky sidekick archetype in the first game and while this is still prevalent in the sequel, you now feel like there's relationship between them outside of being stock character types. They actually feel more like friends this time round who care about each other and their wellbeing, who just also happen to be silly people in a silly town as well. As I said, it's a very slight change but it's very welcome and adds an extra decimal point of dimension to this 2D adventure.

I do think I'd struggle a little if it were my first foray into the series - it references a lot of previous characters and events which is sometimes fine but happens so often that you could be left feeling a touch lost at times - but seeing as this isn't my first trip to the Darkside this wasn't an issue for me.

A great time-loop detective game which manages to stay interesting, build on things you know in a logical fashion and provide quite a good chunk of cultural insight into classical-era customs and mythology

The writing and delivery of the dialogue really are the Maxime Pretiosum Histriones here, with every single person feeling like their own entity and the voice actors manage do a great job at giving life to each character which allows you to look past the cold dead eyes that stare back into your soul. And to be fair, any graphical hitches and animation quality issues can be forgiven when you look at the whole and realise that this started as a mod for Skyrim, with this final product being made by a dev team of three.

There are a few conversations that don't flow naturally and feel repetitive, though ironically not due to the looping mechanic - some characters just have replies which they repeat or are too similar to other things they've already said - but overall the game is pretty good at not wasting your time with things you've already learned on a previous cycle and has a handy shortcut system to get you back to where you were at the start of a new one. Really looking forward to seeing what Modern Storyteller are able to do next.

As others have said the first act is really, really good, with Inscryption managing to successfully balance roguelike deckbuilding and puzzle room mechanics. Unfortunately it doesn't manage to maintain that quality as it moves to its next stages - I appreciate the ideas and ambition involved (and there are still some interesting moments to come) but the quality of the card game suffers slightly, especially in the middle.

One of those 'if only' cases where I think something really great could have been created if the first section had been expanded upon and made the focus. This is maybe quite a negative read on a game that I still enjoyed, but I think there were different cards in Daniel Mullins' hand that he could have used to achieve an even better result.