Chris

There have been an enormous amount of deckbuilding roguelites, and few of them have reached the heady heights of Slay the Spire. It's a huge part of the reason there have been so many such titles.

If I had to describe the game in one word, it would probably have to be pure. In terms of balance, enemy and card variety, it's a perfectly-judged experience that will always find a way to challenge you. There's an inevitable RNG element in terms of which cards you draw and when, which boss you'll come up against, and such, but experienced players have the knowledge to make the very best of what the game's given them.

The difficulty can certainly be stark before you learn the ropes, though. Some of the most potent cards are utility offerings rather than big damage-dealers, and you can really squander their potential if you haven't learned which those are and how to combo them effectively. Nonetheless, it's truly satisfying to steadily get better and better and rise up the Ascension levels. While there's only a quartet of playable characters, they're all very different and there's an almost endless amount of gameplay here if the title clicks with you.

Eight mainline entries in, the Mario Kart series has seen its share of evolution. This entry could be seen as the equivalent of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a big celebration of the series that throws in just about everything we've seen before and expands on it further.

The divisive two-racer karts of Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Have been dispensed with, but gliders, underwater racing and anti-gravity shenanigans are all present and correct. Animal Crossing and The Legend of Zelda tracks and characters may be jarring for some, but this is the biggest package that Mario Kart fans have yet been treated to. With all the DLC waves on top, it's hard to see how a ninth series entry could top this.

Even with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's enormous (and ridiculous in places) roster, many still consider Melee to be the best entry in the series. It's a true icon of the GameCube library, and a fantastic follow-up to the original N64 title.

The Melee experience is as intense and competitive as you want it to be. Are you looking for a pure one-on-one fight without any ludicrous items? Maybe you'd prefer a chaotic four-player mess with projectiles, explosives and Pokemon attacks erupting all over the screen? Whatever you're in the mood for, tweaking the extensive customization options will land you in just the right kind of fight.

Melee offers a wide range of play modes for the lone player or for several, an equally enormous list of collectible to hunt down, and a nicely varied and sizable cast that ensures everyone will find a favorite fighter. It has a timeless quality that makes it popular even after the release of two even bigger sequels.

With the sad demise of Bullfrog Productions, it seems that the iconic business sim Theme Hospital wouldn't see an official sequel. The game boasted gameplay that was deep enough to be involved without being too complex, blended with a fantastic sense of humor, making it fondly remembered. Nostalgic fans were delighted by the announcement of Two Point Hospital, and crucially, the new game has these traits in spades too.

The format is the same, with the player taking charge of a series of hospitals and having to achieve certain objectives there to progress. At the same time, Two Point Hospital has enough unique elements and twists of its own to ensure that it hasn't simply ripped off the classic title.

Two Point Studios' effort gets the pacing just right, with each new stage adding just the right amount of new rooms, unique ailments to treat and quirky staff members to hire to keep you interested. With the DLC packages, there are a huge range of events to deal with too. Even if you do tire of the main campaign, the sandbox mode allows you to while away the hours developing your perfect hospital.

With the announcement and subsequent lengthy delay of Nintendo Switch's Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, fans of the turn-based strategy icon grew impatient for another slice of the same. Chucklefish, who clearly have some enormous fans of those games on their staff, dropped a rather lower-key release that franchise fans should absolutely check out: Wargroove.

A fantastical spin on the tanks-and-warplanes vibes of Advance Wars, Wargroove and its sequel tell familiar stories of the goodly battle against malevolent forces. The action takes place in a grid-based format and sees you leading troops into combat, taking advantage of your forces' strengths against the opposing units, and capturing properties to boost your funds and deploy more fighters.

There are some interesting wrinkles, though. For one thing, your chosen commander is a unit on the battlefield themselves, and though they're very powerful against a variety of opponents, you will instantly lose the match if they're defeated. They'll need to fight if they want to charge their Groove (a unique skill similar to an Advance Wars CO Power), however. For another, each type of unit can strike with a critical hit under certain circumstances (if your archers haven't needed to move before attacking for example), lending an extra layer of strategy.

With an arcade mode, the expected multiplayer and map creator options and a lengthy campaign, this is a very generous package for the price.

I'm a huge fan of the roguelike genre, but if there's one thing that often holds such titles back, it's the lack of an overarching story that drives you forward.

The gameplay loop is typically taking on runs, collecting various types of currency, and using them (where applicable) to power yourself up a bit for a hopefully-more-successful next run. A deep and satisfying narrative isn't typically needed for such an experience, but this can alienate those gamers who love such things. This is what Hades did so well.

It boasts super solid combat, varied weapons, a great progression system and everything else a good roguelike demands. The true brilliance of Supergiant's title, though, lies in the relationship building between Zagreus and his fellow denizens of the House of Hades, the between-runs hub. By adding this aspect, and an engaging narrative that ties everybody together, the game was able to also bring in those who typically find the genre's pure action focus offputting.

Final Fantasy 8, though beloved by millions of fans, definitely took a controversial step or two. It retained a lot of the elements that had become synonymous with the series, such as the ATB system and the ability to summon familiar beings like Shiva and Ifrit, but then added some more experimental mechanics on top.

The Junctioning system is one that has confounded players, as has the laborious Drawing of spells from enemies. It's a game that's easy for experienced players to 'break' and make rather trivial, but on the other side of the coin, it's one that newcomers may find difficult to get used to.

Even given its shortcomings, I found myself becoming deeply attached to the cast of characters and the minigame of Triple Triad, and the story is as engaging as I've come to expect of a Final Fantasy title (as curious as some of its twists and turns are).

Cuphead isn't a title for the faint of heart. Of course, no game can suit everybody's tastes, but this one is specifically tailored to those who enjoy relentless boss rush action and an hefty challenge. There are run and gun platforming stages too, and they're just as fiendish in their own way, but the bosses are the stars of the show.

The Ye Olde animation is sublimely done, and it's a treat to watch the transformations, unpredictable attacks and funny little references that make up each battle and stage. It's rather brutal that the easier mode doesn't technically allow the player to progress (because the all-important Soul Contracts can't be collected from your foes in this mode), being more of a practise option, but fiddling with builds and trying over and over again is what Cuphead is all about. If you're committed to getting the highest grades for each boss battle, there's potentially a lot of gameplay to enjoy here.

Ghost of Tsushima kept me completely captivated from its very first scene. It's a beautiful, cinematic experience, though certainly not one that sacrifices substance for style.

As wonderful as it looks, it's more important that Jin's adventure is a gripping one, an enthralling action RPG that sees you will him to succeed and defeat the invaders. The characterization is multi-faceted, and the story beats were interesting enough to make me desperate to know what the next chapter would reveal.

A raw and emotional story is one vital element of Ghost of Tsushima, its wonderful open world another. What tied everything together for me, though, was the combat. Stealth isn't the game's strong point, but enough tools were provided to make it a viable approach to a given scenario. For those aggressive blade-flashing players like myself, though, the ability to switch between Moon, Water, Stone, and Wind stances and perform deft maneuvers and parries felt fantastic every time.

The iconic Pokemon Red and Blue, the games that started a true phenomenon.

In hindsight, it's quite funny to look back at how much really didn't make sense at the time. The physical/special split that happened generations later was such an enormous improvement that it's difficult to go back. Meanwhile, some types, like the much-maligned Bug, had absolutely feeble representation, and the tiny inventory space was a nightmare to manage.

At the time, though, we knew none of this. We had no idea that it's shockingly redundant to give Charizard Ember, Flamethrower, Fire Blast, and Fly. All we knew was that we were meeting and battling beloved anime characters like Brock and Misty, collecting our favorite Pokemon and, in millions of cases, nurturing what would become a lifelong obsession.

Dungeon Keeper is 90's PC strategy at its very best. The setup is simple yet endlessly compelling: You, as the Keeper, must take over the world one realm at a time. To do this, you carve out an dungeon beneath the Earth, attract a range of horrific creatures to it through portals, and then train them up for battle.

Flipping the script and playing the villains against the heroes was still quite novel at the time. It gave me a perverse thrill to see a little more of the overworld map in ruins each time you return back to it, triumphant, and the dark sense of humor throughout is one of the highlights.

Some of the more involved levels allowed a lot of freedom to create huge, meticulously-designed bases, and there were hours to be spent tweaking things, placing fiendish traps, and otherwise being nefarious.

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D does exactly what it says on the tin. No more, no less. The Mercenaries minigame, which was introduced in what would become its familiar guise in Resident Evil 4, eschews a story in favor of providing a time-attack shooting experience. It's a sort of horde mode set in various familiar locales from the game(s). The player chooses from several characters from the series, each with their own specific arsenal, and must maintain combos and build a high score by dispatching the roaming enemies efficiently.

The Mercenaries 3D, a 3DS title, makes the mode a standalone experience. It simply offers quickfire arcade action, in single or multiplayer modes. It's a game that can be quickly blasted through if you wish only to complete the stages, meaning that the package is potentially quite shallow. The Mercenaries faithful can spend countless hours refining their strategies and routes through a stage, though, and these are the people the game was really aimed at.

I consider Vampyr to be a great example of a game that just needs a sequel to sand off the rough edges. In this action RPG, the player takes the role of Dr Jonathan Reid, a London doctor in the post-World War I era who happens to be infected by an vampire at the beginning of the narrative.

The player can choose whether to prey on the ailing humans they meet (the more they delve into their stories and help manage their illnesses the more EXP they're worth) or simply to help them and resist those blood-feasting urges. Doing the latter may well cause you to struggle in the frequent battles, as this is one of the primary sources of EXP. It's a similar situation to opting whether or not to harvest the Little Sisters in BioShock, with similar consequences.

The team has certainly crafted a dark, grim, and atmospheric rendition of London, but what really holds the game back is the lack of fast travel and the repetitive back-tracking that the story and sidequests can demand. The map really, really needs to show you where the NPCs are, too. If you're a gamer who absolutely needs buttery smooth performance, moreover, you won't find it here.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land, for me, is a beautiful, colorful package that defines everything the character is about. We're all accustomed with Kirby's ability-stealing shenanigans and the relentlessly cheery and less-than-taxing action that makes up his platformers, and that's exactly what's on offer in this Nintendo Switch title.

The worlds are nicely varied, the new full transformation modes are hilariously animated and actually bring something new to gameplay, and the optional objectives offer a decent challenge for more hardened players. It's a lot of silly fun that doesn't overstay its welcome, and it's hard to ask for more.

Yes, Overwatch has tended to completely overshadow this one, I'd say, but Paladins is a hero shooter that has more than its share of unique elements.

There are the basic deathmatch and objective defense modes you'd expect, and a huge roster of characters that are neatly divided into Damage, Support, Front Line and Flank roles, but what really sets this one apart for me is the degree of customization available. You choose between three different talents that define the way your hero plays, and also create a deck of cards that further boost different aspects of that character.

In Overwatch, the champion you choose is the champion you choose, but there's some real scope here to tailor your favorites to the specific way you like to play them. For fans of the genre, the only major downsides here are probably the questionable servers and the free-to-play model meaning it takes a super long time to unlock new characters (at least for free).