By day, Blackwood is an exciting new third-person action game that promises to give you the chance to feel like a proper John Wick. By night, it’s a complete pile of trash that is so broken and boring that you’ll want to hire an assassin to put you out of your misery if you decide to spend any money or time on Act 1 of this game.

Halloween is one of the few decades-old horror franchises that, in my opinion, aged well enough to scare people even today. One would think there could be tremendous potential to capture Michael Myers’ unique brand of terror in game form. But alas, this simply isn't it. I'll give you plenty of reasons why, but in my opinion, Halloween is as destined as any other to release to an enthusiastic audience that drops it like a rock within a week or two.

gunplay across branching paths and more than 10 unique levels packed with enemies, bosses, secrets, and even arena-style combat sections reminiscent of the All-Range Mode from the Star Fox series.

: Big Walk is exclusively a cooperative online multiplayer game. Absolutely no part of it aside from the tiny opening hub area is remotely playable with only one player, and couch co-op is intentionally not included for reasons that will become clear shortly.

What the hell is Truxton Extreme? No, it's not the name of Elon Musk's latest kid - good guess, though. Instead, it's a surprising new entry in a series many have likely never heard of: a shoot-'em-up arcade title known simply as Truxton (or Tatsujin in Japan, meaning “expert”).

For all the similarities Kusan shares with the game that inspired it, the story isn’t one of them. Developer CIRCLEfromDOT delivers an in‑your‑face narrative wrapped in gorgeous comic‑panel artwork, yet the substance underneath doesn’t quite keep pace.

Lunarium is an action RPG by Chinese developers Lunarium Studios, which kind of makes you think they're going full MCU cinematic universe with this IP if they've named the studio after it.

Tears of Metal is a game that allows you to do just that while fighting alongside your Scottish forces to reclaim your home from foreign invaders. So you get to wear a kilt and have a short commute!

Folks, I'm afraid to be the bearer of bad news today. Gaming has peaked. This is it - there's nowhere to go but down. And you can thank Heave Ho 2 for this, because with its release we finally have a game that allows you to fart on your friends as a dedicated feature.

Desktop Explorer blends puzzles with outdated software and cryptic files that you must sift through and even modify to find out what is actually going on in this weirdly sentient computer. It has been left behind by your uncle, who has recently passed away, and is full of notes and information that he left behind for you to look through. The computer also comes with an odd software called "Desktop Explorer," which houses different adventure-style quests.

The recommended way of playing The Mound is naturally, with a group of willing participants, but that’s a terrible thing to do to your friends, so maybe try to find some players online or go it alone (if you dare).

The Mermaid Mask’s gameplay is extremely reminiscent of the Professor Layton games, and I think that’s one of its greatest appeals. You navigate the town of Silkworm-on-Sea through a point-and-click system where you can interact with any object on the map.

, Dark Scrolls is the latest game to take a swing at what was once considered an exciting genre, though to developer doinksoft’s credit, they are at least attempting something a bit different by having an old-school auto-scrolling screen that can quite literally crush players if they don’t keep moving forward.

o what is Swapmeat? Well, it's not the lingo used to exchange nudes on Grindr (though perhaps it should be), nor is it a weird phallus-swapping porno inspired by Freaky Friday, though again - maybe someone should be taking notes. Instead, Swapmeat is the gaming scene’s newest attempt to be actively repulsive to vegetarians, bringing us a beef-themed third-person shooter and roguelike that takes massive inspiration from Risk of Rain 2...

Now, I don't play a lot of beat-'em-ups as I often find their gameplay to be as repetitive as those fake mobile games ads YouTube probably forced you to watch at the start of this video. But occasionally, ones like Absolum or Big Helmet Heroes will be great enough to tickle my fancy and earn a recommendation, genre misgivings aside. Is Lost Castle 2 such a game?

Crushed in Time is a sort of spin-off of the developer’s first game, There is No Game: Wrong Dimension, where you traverse different video game universes in a point-and-click adventure. One of these universes included Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and the team must have loved them so much that they decided to give them their own game.

Does Voidling Bound, a twist on the monster-taming genre, work? Or is it just another monstrosity?

Solarpunk is your run-of-the-mill survival game with not a lot that makes it stand out from the swathes of other titles that spew out every month.

Superhot meets Hades out on the final frontier, and its final form calls itself Enter the Chronosphere, put together by developer Effort Star.

So does Yerba Buena, a narrative-focused puzzle platformer that challenges you to literally copy-paste the movement of its environmental objects, stick the landing?