ExMassEffectFan

A brilliant arcade racer, if you love old-time racers like Daytona, Sega Rally, Ridge Racer and Outrun 2 then you’ll love this. There’s plenty of replay value too as there are loads of vehicles to unlock and each one can be upgraded. This is absolutely essential if you love arcade racing games.

The best 3D Mario game since 64. The levels offer so many different ways of attempting missions that just like Mario 64 there’s always a different way to approach things, making the game infinitely replayable.

This is no definitive edition. A hideous remaster that changes things for the worse, has terrible performance and is full of graphics errors. A simple port of the PC version from years ago would have been far better, this game is unfinished and rushed. It’s also missing music tracks. The fact that Rockstar deliberately hid this game, didn’t do previews, didn’t release in-game footage and didn’t send out review copies shows they knew it was bad. Rockstar cynically relied on people preordering on the expectation they’d get the game they remembered, not this half finished mess.

This game is an extremely dark and unpleasant follow up to one of the best narrative games ever made. While the gameplay of the original was not especially great the narrative of Joel losing his daughter and then learning to love again when he meets Ellie was an uplifting and affirming story. This game is a hopeless and desperate tale that destroys beloved characters and revels in darkness and gory scenes. There are no redeeming qualities to the story and any technological achievements from the graphics are rendered irrelevant by a tale that no-one other than a serial killer would enjoy experiencing. Avoid at all costs and perhaps ask yourself why the critics were so unified in their praise when actual gamers hate it so much.

I love this game, it's somewhat like a Metroidvania in that new abilities help you to access new areas but there are also secrets hidden in the worlds to help you make progress. The retro style is lovely and the music and gameplay are absolutely top notch. Definitely one of my favourite games of the year and on the Switch!

As one of my favourite Switch games it's fantastic to be getting these new characters which really change the style and feel of the gameplay. It makes the game feel like new again as you work out the best weapons and techniques of the new character.

A fantastic game, I've been replaying this off and on ever since it came out. The fundamental improvement over the previous Ace Combat games is the addition of checkpoints. There was nothing more annoying in the previous AC games than to be 15 minutes into a mission and to then crash into something, as that meant going all the way back to the start of the mission. With AC6, there are plenty of checkpoints to ensure you aren't forced to backtrack huge amounts of progress after one silly mistake. The game is also much more forgiving than previous examples, allowing the odd light bump or **** of the ground to go by unnoticed. Story-wise, AC6 is like previous entries in the series and sets itself in a fictional world using made-up countries that are fairly obvious ciphers for our own world (in this case it's Emmeria (America) fighting Estovakia (Russia). While the story is often quite silly, it's got that slightly off-kilter Japanese style that makes it charming rather than embarrassing. Graphically, the game is beautiful with fantastic ground detail that even fairly close remains convincing. The cut-scenes between levels are also rendered in real-time and look fantastic. I actually think being exclusive to the 360 meant the developers were able to work a bit harder to squeeze more out of the engine, as I think this game looks better than its disappointing sequel "Ace Combat Assault Horizon". This is a great addition to the AC series and definitely worthy of a play-through or two.

Superb game! While Binary Domain could perhaps be called somewhat derivative, the game overall is so satisfying and fun to play that any of those complaints are long forgotten. It's quite sad that Binary Domain has been overlooked, as it's a real unsung gem ****. The game itself is a mixture of Terminator, Gears of War and Mass Effect. The sci-fi story is surprisingly deep, asking hard questions about what it is to be human or robot. The squad of soldiers seem initially stereotypical, but they very quickly start to develop personalities of their own, and the dialogue system encourages you to frequently communicate with your squad mates to raise their loyalty to you. The loyalty system is very important to the game and can have huge repercussions in the games ending(s). The gameplay is very satisfying, blasting wave after wave of robots. The limbs of the androids can be shot off, which often results in robots hopping on one leg or dragging themselves along the floor to get at you. The AI is pretty good too, which makes ordering your squad mates around an important tactic. Grab this game while you can, it's probably going to be in the bargain bins at this point, but I foresee a time when it's a pricey item on eBay. Great work, Sega!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]