Dredge, as both me and at least two of my coworkers have written before, is good fun. Its latest bit of DLC, The Iron Rig, is buy and large more of that same kind of fun, but I can’t help but feel that, at least from a narrative perspective, it had the potential to offer a bit more than it does.

As you’ve probably gleaned from the name, the central premise of the Iron Rig is that an oil rig has popped up to the north of the game’s established islands. So, as you did with the ice-filled Pale Reach, it’s your job to head to this new landmark and see if it has a need for the finest aquatic life and abominations in the land.

When you arrive, you’ll learn from the rig’s foreman that, as is the tradition, something mysterious is afoot. The ships dispatched by the Ironhaven corporation which owns the rig to bring the supplies its workers need to get it properly set up and drilling have sunk, and no one has the foggiest why. Thus begins one of the two central gameplay loops of the DLC - you head out, dredge up some crates belonging to the corporation, and bring them back to the rig to, on this occasion, unlock it as a home base.

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My skeleton has become detached from my body. It looks quite painful. Whenever I crouch, I find myself staring directly into a patch of my own crimson innards. I think it’s my ribcage, and it’s stopping me from being able to see the prison guards I’m trying to stealth kill from the first-person view. It’s not the end of the world. I switch to the third-person view, keep calm, and carry on what’s largely been a wonderful adventure through post-apocalyptic London.

However, like the various other technical teething issues which have plagued the release version of Fallout: London, it is there, and it is an annoyance.

Sure, Team FOLON is, as you’d expect, working hard to get them fixed ASAP, so that people can play the mod as it was intended. And as we’ve seen before, games that launch in a shaky state bug-wise can be thoroughly redeemed in this regard with time and effort. But still, right now, the bugs are there, and they're persistent.

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It's pretty rare that I walk out of a movie theatre thinking "I truly just wasted 90+ minutes of my life watching that." Normally, I get something out of whatever it was I watched, be it joy or elation at best, perhaps anger or frustration at worst. Those negative feelings at least mean I'm feeling anything at all, they're feelings I can work with and talk about. But when I walked out of the Borderlands movie, I think all I felt was… apathy? A general sense of "what was the point"? Which is probably the most damning thing I could say about any piece of art, but calling the Borderlands movie 'art' is too generous.

A film adaptation of Borderlands has been in the works since 2015, and a decade later it's finally here. Who knows what the story was meant to be originally, but what we ended up with was this: Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a bounty talker who doesn't really seem to care about anyone or anything but making her next paycheck, is tasked by the head of a major corporation to rescue his daughter, Tiny Tina (Ariana Greenblatt). Things don't exactly go to plan, and instead she sets off on a journey with Tina, alongside Roland (Kevin Hart), the mercenary that kidnapped Tina, Krieg (Florian Munteanu), a big hulk of a man that doesn't say much, Patricia Tannis (Jamie Lee Curtis), a doctor obsessed with finding a legendary vault, and Claptrap (Jack Black), an annoying robot that makes too many insufferable jokes.

For the most part, that's a strong cast. Both Blanchett and Curtis are Oscar-winning actresses. You'd assume that prestige would seep through into the film. But as Borderland's lead, Blanchett's performance feels like one dampened by regret. She has previously explained that she picked up the role to save her from madness during COVID lockdown, but none of that energy can be seen in the finished product. Every single line seems underlined by the fact she's not really sure why she's there, and it kind of rubs off on everyone else too.

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My first rendezvous with Closer the Distance was back during June’s Steam Next Fest, where I spent an hour exploring the quiet town of Yesterby and getting to know an array of distinct, authentic characters as they all deal with a heart-wrenching tragedy; one of their dear inhabitants — a friend and relative — passing away.

It’s an understandably solemn start, and one that saw me keen to carve out space to breathe once my time with the demo came to an end. But I was desperate to jump back in and get to know Yesterby — and its delightfully human cast — despite the pressure of this dour starting point. I was keen to see what impact I could have on their story, considering this short, slice-of-life simulation game is all about what you can do to repair relationships and mend this struggling coastal town.

The way in which this plays out is refreshing; it’s beautiful, vibrant, and despite the saddening subject matter, there is something magically understated about it. When you first step foot in Yesterby, you’re presented with this The Sims-inspired way of controlling and observing characters that is cross-pollinated with the deeply personal storytelling of Life is Strange.

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I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is, but I need to find it, and my map swears blind it’s here. I’ve done more laps of a purposefully bare room than I can count, desperately scouring every nook and cranny, just in case it’s hidden down the side of the fireplace, or inside an antique globe. It’s not. Suddenly, I become acutely aware of just how long I’ve spent not watching my back, and snap my eyes back towards the door I came in through.

It sits wide open, and beyond it lies the ocean that’s filled up the submerged rooms of the sunken craft I’ve been prowling the bowels of. There was never going to anyone watching me, but for a moment, I felt totally sure there was. The thing I’m looking for is on the balcony above me. I won’t find it for a little while yet.

It took me a little bit of time to get to the point where I felt like I was clicking with Thalassa: Edge of the Abyss, the latest game from Norwegian indie studio Sarepta Studio. But once I did, the game really dug its hooks in. Encased in the kind of early-20th century diving suit nightmares are made of, the game sends you to explore the wrecked remains of the S.S. Thalassa, which sank to the depths under mysterious circumstances not long after the protagonist and the person overseeing this latest dive took shore leave to following a fatal accident that claimed the life of one of their crewmates.

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Ever since I've been playing video games, I've been playing them on a pad. The lovable Xbox 360 pad. The brilliant PS4 pad. These days, the bulky and boisterous PS5 pad. I have never owned an arcade stick. This was not for lack of want - an arcade stick even today is a sign of gaming prestige as a Ferrari is for driving. Imagine my shock when earlier this year this all changed with the Vitrix Pro FS. In my late 20's, without kids nor mortgage, an ever-expanding waistline and ever-receding hairline, I am in theory the ideal market for such a product. It felt natural on my lap.

Vitrix is the esports / competitive branding of Performance Designed Products, or PDP. While the company has various lines aimed towards different types of gaming enthusiasts, Vitrix is unabashedly targeted towards those who value high performance, high skill, and perhaps even professional play. At Evo earlier this month - Vitrix had a big booth, and you could see people wearing sponsored jerseys walk around with Vitrix sticks. Vitrix sticks are the current king of the competitive scene. This makes them inherently desirable for the aspirational and esports inspired. But how good are they for you, the impassioned gamer?

Before I jump into the various features of this stick, I'd like to note that this product is clearly targeted towards fighting games, rather than other arcade games. It obviously can be used by retro-heads looking for a nasty Pacman session, and it'll probably be dead handy, but this stick is clearly built for playing fighting games both at home and abroad. If you want a retro game stick you could buy a Vitrix Pro, but you could probably save a lot of money and get a more appropriate product elsewhere.

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Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a strange beast. A game that blends tower defense with squad-based strategy and third-person combat. When I first sat down with it, I was strapping in for the long haul. But any reservations I had were quickly cast aside – Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess captures your interest with a graceful pirouette and a flourish.

The game starts at the peak of Mt. Kafuku, decorated with shrines and worshipers. All's good until uh oh, the entire mountain is besieged and hastily corrupted by The Seethe. They defile the shrines and capture any unfortunate folks they get their hands on. You – a mysterious masked swordsman, of course – escape with the mountain's Kagura Dancer. This dancer (who empowers your own abilities and can purify the Seethe's corruption) is the key to taking Mt. Kafuku back. Protect her, rebuild the villages, and lead a revolt that reclaims the holy land. The stage is set.

Immidiately, the action undercuts the lofty stakes. Your main characters moves are a bit wet, a bit flaccid. They lack the punch I like to wrap my hands around in the thick of a big fight. That said, the game feel is made more palatable thanks to the units you summon. Units with specific roles, each of which can decked out with upgrades help kindle that fantasy of a general supported by a small squad of powerful allies, tactically choosing who to deploy where on the battlefield.

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Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree managed to get me excited about a tiny golden circle in the corner of a screen. Not an epic boss, beautiful vista or stunning revelation, but the non-combat area icon, suggesting I might get to learn just a little bit more about this dark, vast and scary world.

FromSoftware is Pavlov and I am a tiny rot dog, borking for my lore kibble, as an expressionless man with too many swords bonks me on the head with a newspaper made of horns and fingers, over and over again.

You’ll probably see a lot of takes that this DLC is just more Elden Ring - it is and it isn’t. While on the one (scuttling, spidery) hand, it’s a condensed version of the base game, with an unmatched sense of discovery and accomplishment as you surmount seemingly impossible odds on your way to victory.

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First of all, Still Wakes the Deep is an incredible artistic achievement. It may be The Chinese Room’s best ever game, blending the tense creeping horror of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs with the evocative, beautifully researched world-building of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

And there are familiar themes here: a sense of weariness about industrialisation, remote places that howl with the absence of far away loved ones. A shockingly effective sense of place that grounds the whole thing. Whether or not you have any lived experience of Scotland in the 1970s, Still Wakes the Deep will make you believe you do. But I think it could have been bolder. More on that later.

Along the East Coast of Scotland there can be found some of the most beautiful places on Earth. Soaring cliffs topped with the ruins of forgotten castles. Sleepy villages hidden away from the world as they nestle in the crags of natural harbours. Every town having a big successful chippy that all the tourists go to, and the small, actually good chippy off the main street that all the savvy locals go to. Arbroath, with its grin-inducing duality of being a location of great historical importance, where kings were made, and also the host of Pleasureland, a comically dilapidated indoor amusement park that feels like a living Reeves and Mortimer sketch.

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You’re going to die. Just accept it. Save often, grind where you can, and stick your nose into everyone's business to get all that lovely experience. Batten down the hatches, gird your loins, watch out. Boss battles might absolutely batter you the first time around, but then you get to go back in with your wits about you. Even some random encounters have the chance to one-shot you if you’re not careful. This game doesn’t take any prisoners.

In the vanilla release of Shin Megami Tensei 5, life was hard. In the redux, it’s brutal. Good.

Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance is class-A RPG – none of that gateway Persona nonsense that holds your hand and sings to you as you plod through your fancy little high school life. The parent MegaTen series has always been hard, it’s almost a meme at this point, and whilst Vengeance isn’t quite as tricky as SMT3 or 4, it’s definitely still out for your blood. I say it’s not as cruel as its forebears mostly because of the quality-of-life changes that have been added – being able to save anywhere, tweaks to UI readability, and clearer explanations of RPG systems see to that.

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Remaking a classic is always tricky. Video game development is like alchemy; that anyone happens upon the exact right combination of elements to make a true classic title is practically a miracle. Even saying that is a slight disservice, though - as the process is undoubtedly less scientific than that. All this is to say: it’s very easy to upset the cart ever so slightly with a remake or even remaster, and bam - just like that, it’s a classic no more.

But when the process works, it’s a joy. Twenty years on from its GameCube release, Paper Mario: THe Thousand Year Door is back - and it’s as brilliant as it ever was. That makes it one of Mario’s best spin-off outings, by the way.

The Thousand Year Door stands apart from the Paper Mario titles since with a simple, vital fact: it is a role-playing game. A proper one. That to me is the template that the Paper Mario series should follow, especially given its status as a de-facto follow-up to Super Mario RPG, which also enjoyed a Nintendo Switch remake.

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Intrusive thoughts are impossible to live with. Cloying, claustrophobic, incessant, inescapable. Radio chatter from a distant room you can’t turn off at best, some hot, odorous wet breath in your ear at worst. They might have your voice, but they’re not your words, not really. They’re unfiltered, almost primal, a communion with bits of yourself you might never know – or have wanted to know – existed. This is where Hellblade 2 gets it right, because the intrusive thoughts are agonizing.

But they’re supposed to be. That’s the point. Xbox’s very adult and very serious series has, within two games, made itself totemic of two things; portraying mental health, and looking good whilst doing it. As far as these two very separate vocations go, Hellblade 2 nails it. At first, I was so aggrieved by the chattering voices (realised in binaural sound so it sounds like they’re planted somewhere in your bastard skull) that I searched the vast suite of accessibility options to see if I could turn them off.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? These spectres dug into Senua’s conscience like a pair of blood-hungry ticks are never going away. They’re going to offer commentary on everything you do, all the time. ‘You’re not good enough to solve this puzzle’. ‘God, this level goes on a bit, ey?’ ‘Hell yeah, you’re smashing this combat encounter!’ ‘Oh no, the boss is absolutely destroying you!’

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Making a fighting game is hard - making any video game is hard! If it was easy, everyone would do it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try of course. If you've got a killer idea in your head or a love letter to games of the past at your fingertips, you should absolutely give it a crack. Die by the Blade feels like one such game, calling back to living room epics like Bushido Blade or the Deadliest Warrior games. Sadly, it doesn't quite hit the heights of such titles.

That's not for lack of trying! Die by the Blade has a nifty blend between a classic samurai aesthetic and a futuristic cyberpunk look and it works well as the foundation to the game's vibe. This is best protrayed by its stages - many of which I love! I dig the ultra-clean offices and dojo arenas, but do have a soft spot for dingy streets and dilapidated shrines you can fight to the death in.

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Indika is a game that definitely isn’t for everyone, as I very quickly learned while stepping into the titular protagonist’s shoes. The story first starts in a Russian Orthodox monastery, where Indika - a nun who is hearing a devilish voice - is clearly scorned by her peers. As the others tire of her, she is expelled from the monastery and ends up on a philosophical journey of self-discovery and self-loathing, questioning everything that she has known up until now.

Who determines what acts are more sinful than others? And are the punishments for our sins fair? If humans are sinful, why aren’t animals? Is a soul needed to experience love? If so, is God capable of truly loving anyone? These are just a small handful of the increasingly analytical questions that Indika raises on her short, puzzling adventure; an adventure that forces you to conjure up your innermost thoughts on morality and religion, while experiencing what is a stoic criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church and institutional religion.

Indika, put in the simplest of terms, is a relatively serious game (with some offbeat, comedic moments) that has you traveling from place to place as a troubled nun in an attempt to deliver a letter, but of course, other priorities come to light. There’s platforming, clever environmental puzzles to solve (that aren’t too troubling), and a thought-provoking story which is heavily influenced by directors Ari Aster (Midsommar, Beau is Afraid) and Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Poor Things), as well as writers Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov.

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As every Dragon Ball fan will know by this point in time, Akira Toriyama sadly passed away in March of this year. I won't spend too much time eulogising him, many others closer to him have put it much better than I ever could, but it was obviously a monumental loss for the world of anime and manga. And games, too.

There quite literally is no Dragon Quest or Chrono Trigger, amongst so much else that his work inspired within video games, so Sand Land – based on one of his own worlds and stories – finally getting its due in both the form of a film (later released as a series in the west) and as a video game felt more than appropriat. It felt like it was always meant to happen. The final result isn't perfect, granted, but I came away loving it specifically because of how strongly the themes you find in Toriyama's work come through. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let's set the scene.

Sand Land is a much lesser known manga title from Toriyama's catalogue, originally releasing in the year 2000, only consisting of a single volume following Beelzebub (the prince of all demons), Rao (the aforementioned old man), and Thief (another demon that serves as a guide to Beelzebub). The game and series actually added a fourth member to the crew, Ann, a mysterious young woman and mechanic whose story ventures into spoiler territory. They all reside in Sand Land, a desert area ruined by climate disaster and war, and the main setting for the game which you traverse around as you set off on a quest to find a Legendary Spring so that the country's people have easy access to water again.

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Hey pal, grab a chair. Sit down a while. I've spoken to your parents, and they're worried about you, mate. They've been telling me that you're thinking about buying Stellar Blade on the PS5 - don't get up! It's okay, this is a no judgement zone, bud. Don't look embarrassed, it's just me and you having a conversation here. Now, let me tell you something...

Ignore those bozos. Stellar Blade is a downright shocker of a release. An uppercut to the "best games coming in April" videos who could not see past feeble aesthetics to the pack-a-punch action extravaganza behind Stellar Blade, like a fool hiker missing the forest for the trees. Stellar Blade asks a question that sat steadfast in even Plato's mind: "Can too much cake ruin a party?"

For those blissfully unaware of what I'm waffling about, Stellar Blade is a third-person action game made by South Korean developer Shift Up. With roots firmly buried in the mobile market, the studio is taking a Fenway Park level swing at a true triple-A experience. We're talking PS5 console release, shiny graphics, and money splashed all over the place.

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Sucker for Love: Date to Die For is the midpoint of a planned trilogy that grew out of solo dev Akabaka's submission to Dread X Collection 2 back in 2020. The theme of the second lockdown game jam overseen by indie horror publisher DreadXP was "Lovecrafting", which Akabaka ran with to create a dating sim where you romance anime-esque waifus who are also eldritch goddesses inspired by deities described in the Cthulhu Mythos. The aim was to create a horror dating sim where the romanceable monsters were sexy and terrifying in equal measure, pulling no punches when it came to demonstrating the dreadful and often disgusting things a human would have to do to catch the romantic attentions of an incomprehensible cosmic being.

This irresistible concept quickly led to a three-game deal between Akabaka and DreadXP, beginning with Sucker for Love: First Date, an expansion on the original one-shot released in 2022. The second game, Date to Die For, is technically a prequel to First Date rather than a sequel; I say "technically" because timeline chronology doesn't have a huge amount of importance in reality-warping cosmic horror stories, and the fact that it definitely takes place before its predecessor is only revealed off-handedly near the end.

Familiarity with the first game is far from mandatory to enjoy this one, although playing them in release order will furnish you with some useful context about characters and mechanics from the original that are riffed on in Date to Die For. However, the prequel focuses on an almost entirely new cast, with cameos from returning characters kept fairly low-key — a wise choice, given that Date to Die For has the potential for wider appeal than its predecessor, which was lauded in the niche circles of horror dating sim fans but never really broke out beyond that.

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The description of Children of the Sun tells you everything that you need to know without telling you much at all. You are THE GIRL, an ex-member of THE CULT who once promised you a simpler life. Instead, they made your life hell. Now, you’re hunting down members of THE CULT, exterminating each and every one of them using your mind-bending abilities, as you attempt to reach THE LEADER.

But what exactly is this cult all about? How did they ruin THE GIRL’s life, and what are they capable of? Well, the answers are not handed to you on a silver platter, but instead drip-fed to you by some beautifully illustrated cutscenes and a detailed, moody environment that the game places THE GIRL in. This is something you’ll get up close and personal with in this sniper-puzzle shooter, where time slows as you realign your bullet, giving you plenty of time to soak in the surroundings as you plan your next move. All-in-all, however, a lot of THE GIRL’s story is open to interpretation.

There’s one thing we can all agree on, though: she's out for revenge.

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Rise of the Ronin is a frustrating game. If you’re familiar with the work of Japanese studio Team Ninja, that sentence may not be surprising to read. This is a team that has long prided itself on creating challenging, and sometimes unforgiving, action games laser-focused on delivering a specific experience. You’re either onboard with that or you aren’t.

But this game is not frustrating because of its exacting difficulty, myriad of interlocking systems or rage-inducing boss fights. No, what makes it so is that - in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, Rise of the Ronin appropriates the worst parts of its contemporaries.

Rise of the Ronin is simultaneously Team Ninja’s most modern, and its most dated, game. The jump in graphical fidelity compared to the Nioh games is massive, and it’s all the more impressive when you factor in how large and open the game’s world is. It’s the sort of upgrade many Western studios had to undertake between the PS3 and PS4 generations. That this is happening in the PS5 era, lessens the effect, but the benefits are nonetheless palpable.

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Princess Peach has made her long-awaited comeback in Princess Peach: Showtime, her second mainline game since Super Princess Peach arrived on the Nintendo DS, way back in 2005. Almost two decades later, Mario's number one princess has returned to show us what she’s really all about – no longer being at the whim of her emotions, but instead taking to the center of the stage as she reclaims the Sparkle Theater from the Sour Bunch.

That’s right. Princess Peach previously starred in a platforming game of her own where the main mechanic was channeling her emotions - rage, joy, gloom, and calm - to harness different abilities throughout the game. A 10-year-old me thought that it was great. It was vibrant, jovial, full of style - as a Peach game should be - but it hasn't really aged well.

It’s safe to say this derivative mechanic has been addressed - and flipped on its head entirely - in Princess Peach: Showtime. The world's a stage in Showtime, quite literally, as Peach takes on multiple starring roles in each of the stage-plays being hosted at Sparkle Theater, which is being overtaken by the notorious Sour Bunch.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2 is uncompromising.

It took me a long time to settle on a single word that I could use to describe this curious role-playing game. Even stretching beyond a word, Dragon’s Dogma 2 practically defies easy definition. There’s a huge laundry list of games that it is a little bit like, but few that it is actually really similar to - so that shorthand is ineffective.

In the good old days, Capcom’s marketing department would’ve briefed that Dragon’s Dogma is so unique that it renders traditional genre names obsolete. We’d be getting press releases telling us that it isn’t just an action-RPG, but instead is something like a ‘Full Action Reactive World RPG’, or some nonsense like that.

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I’ve decided the axe-wielding muscle man and tiny swamp witch are besties. How could you not?

Then, obviously, the two knights who used to be engaged have to go together so we can watch the sparks fly. But when things go wrong I can always count on my Expendables-like supergroup of the baddest mercenaries in the land to come over the hill and save the day – for maximum dramatic effect, of course.

But then Unicorn Overlord is also the story of a revolution, as Price Alain leads his Liberation Army into battle against the evil Zenoiran Empire. Deposed and exiled as a child, but kept safe by his mother’s most trusted royal advisors, Alain travels the four corners of Fevrith, gathering allies and bolstering support for his popular rebellion.

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If, right now, you ask a long-time F1 fan what keeps them tuning in to watch cars go round and round while a paddock full of very smart engineers and some of the most dodgy rich people the world has to offer look on, they’ll all probably give different answers.

Some’ll say it’s the drama, some’ll say it’s impressive tech being pushed to the limit, some’ll say they like seeing Charles Leclerc’s pretty face. All of these reasons are equally valid, but, following an opening race to the 2024 season that certainly tested my resolve to tune in again this week - I don’t think many of the answers you got would directly speak to what should be the simple reason any of us watch sports. Above all else, it’s supposed to be fun.

New Star GP, the latest release from the studio behind Retro Bowl and New Star Manager, is exactly that. It’s straight-up fun. Coming out of a recent preview of the game, I honestly wasn’t sure whether it would be, given that it was coming out of early access stocked with a mixture of arcadey and sim-style elements that seemed like they might lead it to struggle to properly deliver enough of either vision.

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Back when The Outlast Trials first went live in Early Access, I previewed the game and described it as capable of being one of the best multiplayer horror games out there. As The Outlast Trials prepares for its 1.0 launch, I feel it’s safe to say that my high expectations of the game haven’t quite been met – but that doesn’t mean that The Outlast Trials is unenjoyable by any stretch.

The Outlast Trials nails both atmosphere and sound design to an impressive degree, and looks fantastic while doing so. It’s polished, pristine, and has significantly improved the single-player experience since I last played, but when it comes to content that is highly-replayable that doesn’t feel repetitive, it is lacking. And considering The Outlast Trials is the series’ first foray into providing a ‘live-service’ multiplayer title with all the terror and scares of the original Outlast games, you’d expect there to be greater longevity in the trials and programs provided for players. There isn't. After 15 hours or so, things actually begin to feel more mundane than they do terrifying, but that doesn’t stop the occasional jumpscare from scaring you silly.

Rather than the linear story we’re used to from Outlast and Outlast 2, The Outlast Trials instead whisks players away to a laboratory headed by the one and only Murkoff Corporation. This notorious organization is far from done with its inhumane experiments on innocent civilians, and this time around, it’s seeing exactly how hard it can push common folk - reagents - into becoming sleeper agents for the government. If you’re into psychological experiments, the death games of the Saw series, and the conspiracy theories surrounding MKUltra, you’ll no doubt find The Outlast Trials and its evidence logs - documents you can pick up for additional lore - deeply interesting. Are they interesting enough to see it through to the final trials, though? I’m not sure, especially considering you can make your escape long before then.

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It’s the dumbest plan anyone’s ever come up with, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

As I motor over the crest, I can see the huge Russian lorry poking through the trees on the edge of the cliff. It’s the Tatra Force, and it’s going to be in my garage soon. I slam the pedal to the metal and ram straight into the back of it.

Entwined like great, ungainly metal lovers, the Tatra and my Loadstar plunge off the edge and – with a surprising amount of gentle grace given that I’ve essentially just dropped a truck on top of another truck - slide towards the riverbank below. Halfway down, I realise that my other ride, the one that’s sitting at the bottom of the cliff, is parked right in the path of the metal avalanche.

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In the original Final Fantasy 7, a beloved character dies in the most brutal of ways. Half an hour later, you’re snowboarding.

That dichotomy has always been at the heart of FF7’s status as one of the most important games of all time. It’s also something that the developers at Square Enix have struggled to replicate over the years. Part of it is, I suspect, down to a free-flowing development that simply wouldn’t fly today. Experimenting with 3D for the first time, FF7’s staff just made stuff. Many of these creations were then stitched into the game’s narrative. This is perhaps best exemplified by how a story scene attached to the snowboarding event has unused dialogue coded in for the recently-deceased character. That was how development was; whoever initially wrote and programmed that scene likely didn’t even initially know where in the narrative the scene would fit.

Here’s the best possible news I can give you about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: it is the first Final Fantasy since that PS1 era to truly embody that spirit. While undoubtedly every single thing in it went through endless layers of pre-production and approval as things do in modern game development, the vibe the game has is one of a production where if somebody had a cool idea, it went in. Just like the good old days.

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Several hours of chaotic playtime later, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League still largely elicits the same feelings from this looter-shooter veteran and casual DC fan. Its highs are really high and separate Rocksteady's effort from the chaff, but in the long run, we're stuck with a game of two halves.

Perhaps the most disappointing bit is how the story doesn't actually end unless you're willing to put up with the live service bloat and upcoming seasonal content. This is a common occurrence among huge GaaS titles (once again, Anthem and Avengers come to mind), but I also believe many of its predecessors in the same space actually wrapped up a full story arc before teasing what was coming next. Since most of the writing (and how everything is presented) in Suicide Squad: KTJL is generally enjoyable and charming, the fact the credits just start rolling when the overarching design randomly decides it's time to jump into the pool of interchangeable activities is especially off-putting.

To the game's credit (and everyone involved), I must say the moment-to-moment combat and late-game loop of stylish abilities and more hard-hitting guns actually carries the entire thing if you're into what's on offer. All in all, this is a far more polished release than any of the aforementioned titles. Misguided and at odds with what the studio is known for, yes, but it's hard to deny the formula works, kind of. It's just a simple matter of deciding whether you want to engage with it or not.

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How do you review a game that is essentially one giant ad for another game entirely? That's kind of what Granblue Fantasy: Relink feels like to me, the first fully-fledged, 3D, RPG take on Cygames' long-running mobile gacha game. It's a difficult question to answer, especially when – spoiler alert – Relink is actually pretty good! And it's even harder to answer when the ad kind-of works.

A quick disclaimer: I've never played the original Granblue Fantasy mobile game. I've appreciated its character designs from afar, I've heard from friends that there are several LGBTQ characters that are well-written, and I even tried to set up an account once, but never followed through. I wanted to review this game because I wanted to see what if it felt like an approachable entry point for a newcomer to the series. So, is it? Yes and no.

Relink's particular adventure starts at some point during the skyfarers' adventure, though from just the main story I couldn't tell you where. The whole crew is there (I think, anyway), with the player-named Captain, Milhouse-sounding-sidekick-dragon Vyrn, mysterious blue-haired Lyria, and several other characters, too. It quickly establishes that we're off to visit Estalucia, a fabled land that is also supposedly where the player character's father is. Sounds like the usual kind of thing you'd expect from an RPG, but that's not what the story is about at all - this is where it feels like an ad for the mobile game in places, because you don't actually find Estalucia in Relink.

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When you read that a movie is being ‘remade’, you know what it means. But in games, the concept of a remake is far less concrete. Gaming remakes can run the gamut in terms of scope, ambition, and even intention. Honestly, thinking about the differences in approach between the remakes of Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy 7, GoldenEye and Mario RPG practically gives me a headache.

Persona 3 Reload is yet another game that challenges our interpretation of that term. It’s not as lavish a remake as the attention paid to Resident Evil, and nor is it as meta and self-referential as Final Fantasy 7. But this is no ‘simple’ remake, either - it’s a ground-up effort, and in many ways delivers an experience almost as polished as an all-new main-line Persona game. Though not quite, because its PS2 origins shine through. In short, it’s complicated.

That’s the status of P3R among its peers in the industry - but the situation is complicated further still by the labyrinthine mess that is Persona 3’s past history. There’s three versions of that game: Persona 3, ‘The Journey’ as included in Persona 3 FES, and Persona 3 Portable. Each is slightly different, and Reload is an exact representation of not one of them.

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The elephant in the room when discussing the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy is the argument that it's not really a trilogy. The three games which have just been remastered and rereleased under the title — 2007's Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, 2013's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, and 2016's Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice — are indeed respectively the fourth, fifth, and sixth mainline games in the Ace Attorney series of courtroom dramedy visual novels. But nevertheless, many long-time fans were surprised at last year's announcement that the remasters were being marketed in this way, since there'd never really been a sense that the originals were intended to be read as a single continuous narrative.

Ace Attorney fans have been a bit spoiled in this regard in the past. Most video game trilogies are loosely connected when you really look at them, but the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy truly is what it claims to be: three games developed by the same creative team that come together to form a single story, paying off in a highly satisfying conclusion that weaves almost every thread from start to finish back together. The same is even truer of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, a prequel duology that was in the works alongside the Apollo Justice-era games when they were first released, and which only really pays off once you've played both halves to the end.

By contrast, the three games now united under the Apollo Justice name are each far more stand-alone. Eagle-eyed readers will probably already have noticed that although Apollo Justice gets his name in the collection's title, Phoenix Wright resumes his top billing for the latter two individual games therein, which really says a lot about the sometimes-awkward push-and-pull drawing this compilation rerelease in different directions. But still, they had to call it something to differentiate it from the Phoenix Wright Trilogy, and none of this is Apollo Justice's fault, so I think it makes sense as a title. It just has the unfortunate side-effect of creating an expectation that the Apollo Justice Trilogy isn't quite up to delivering on.

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“Yeah, but imagine what it says about your crab status,” declares Ichiban Kasuga as he strides along the sand of Aloha Beach under the Hawaiian sun, with his three mates in tow.

Kazuma Kiryu’s not having any of it. An intense debate about the living situation of the hermit crab they’ve spotted ensues. Kiryu doesn’t think four bedroom shells are a thing. Tomizawa reckons that in this economy, it’s probably a rental shell. Chitose’s sick of listening to them yack about nothing and decisively shuts the convo down with a sarky quip.

Five minutes later, Ichiban falls asleep on a lounger and a baby bird nests in his hair. “I should probably get on with saving the world at some point”, I think to myself after barely managing to carefully guide Kasuga to a mini-mart that sells bird food before his neck gave out.

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I do my best to create a 1-to-1 recreation of Margaret Thatcher in the Tekken 8 avatar creator for 20 minutes, before giving up and heading into an online lobby at 11PM. There, I lounge at the beach and practice some combos before an American reviewer hops online and sits down at a cab. He buries me alive. I download each replay and pick them apart. I mess around with some other characters, and chuckle one of them transforms a salmon into a giant missile. Tekken is truly back.

Back, and arguably better than ever. Tekken 8 is the latest entry in the legendary 3D fighting game franchise and has gigantic shoes to fill. Tekken 7, while certainly flawed, slowly grew into a world-spanning competitive title that wrestled the hearts of many, even as newer and flashier games were released around it. There is an expectation that Tekken 8 must see the bar set by its predecessor and wall jump over it. Tekken 8 manages the feat.

Let's break it down piece-by-piece, starting with the bits I always find most important when jumping into a new fighter. The online stability is fine in Tekken 8, but not genre-leading in any regard. Reviewers were given two days to try the game online, during which I played with various others from the UK, Europe, and America. Games against those in my own country (using wifi or otherwise) were smooth and frustration-free. The same goes with European matches, although a few brief hiccups here and there were noticeable.

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Since Palworld was first shown off, plenty of folk described the game as ‘Pokemon with guns’, and that’s not exactly a stretch. One look at the Tokyo Game Show trailer for the game and you’ll quite clearly see Pal designs (those are the creatures you’ll be collecting) that are akin to fan-favourite Pokemon, albeit wielding AK’s and other weaponry.

Taking inspiration from other developers, especially those behind one of the most prolific monster-collecting games globally, is fine. But that’s only one of my qualms with Palworld. Developer PocketPair claims 'it has taken no inspiration from Pokemon whatsoever', instead citing Ark, Minecraft, Rimworld, Rust, Grand Theft Auto, and Dragon Quest in an interview with The Gamer about the topic. But the game also features typography and music that you could’ve told me was from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and I might’ve believed you. Many of these Pals look explicitly like pre-existing Pokemon.

So, there’s no reference to Zelda or Pokemon having been an inspiration, despite a lot of nods to the contrary. And the sad part is, I believe this all goes a lot deeper, with some folk on Twitter claiming Pocketpair have copied Fakemon designs for Palworld’s Pals, too.

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The key tenet of a Metroidvania game is that you backtrack – you journey back to once-explored areas and use your newly-acquired powers to forge new paths, reach new ledges, backflip into obscured passageways that contain treasure. It’s part of the game; intuitive and self-aware, and smart developers leave breadcrumbs for you to nibble on as you head back through to the beginning of the game, your avatar’s body humming with new-found power. En route, you may discover more things – secrets, more hidden paths, respawned enemies with a grudge – and you get distracted and pulled from your circular orbit.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has mastered this ebb and flow, artisanally guiding you around its expansive map with an almost sadistic wave of its hand. The story, cheesy and wrought as it is, is about humans pretending at politics at the behest of an absent god, and that’s what you feel like as a player as you trek from east to west, again, puppeted by the strings of the deified powers of the developer. Why? Because you must, because you crave power, because you want to set things right.

But the story isn’t why you came here, is it? Unless you’re hungry for the subtext and lore buried in Hollow Knight’s Hallownest and told in the margins, Metroidvania titles have never really excelled at stories – it’s best to keep things simple: go here, do this, win. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s biggest failing is attempting to knit a complex narrative together, realised with haughty dialogue and Saturday Morning Cartoon visuals. It’s all A Bit Much. But it’s set dressing for the real star of the show: the map.

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Second chances are rare these days. In an age of yearly roadmaps, seasonal releases, and endless downloadable updates it can be hard to figure out when to jump into an ongoing game. Worse yet, it's impossible to avoid the feeling that you're already late. If you didn't jump in on the ground floor, then you're doomed to be stomped on by online warriors forever. With Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, the world has a second chance to get invested in one of the most interesting fighting games we've seen in some time.

It is, as you may have gathered, a major update for a fighting game that has already been released. Granblue Fantasy Versus. It's a fighting game I reviewed years ago for Eurogamer – one that I walked away from with mixed feelings. When we parted ways this gorgeous anime fighter seemingly went on a journey of self-improvement, as the package I've played recently has fixed many of the issues I had with the original.

This is a 2D fighting game, obviously. It's an anime fighter too, so not only do you have a distinct art style but also a certain speed and fluidity that's common among the subgenre. Developed as part of a collaboration between Cygames and Arc System Works, the latter being a company that has been putting out gold these past few years, Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising is a smooth, loose, and vibrant video game. Vibrant both aesthetically, and at heart. It's honestly a joy to play.

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Modern triple-A open-world games rarely make your jaw drop by using only vibes and putting aside all the fireworks. But Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora manages to do exactly that, every few minutes. It’s a familiar journey that lacks sharp edges, sure, but it’s also a game that knows what it wants to be and trusts the source material.

No matter how you feel about James Cameron’s on-going saga of tree-hugging sci-fi adventures, it’s hard to deny there’s a huge audience out there that want to experience their own treks through Pandora’s jungles. The first Avatar movie received a forgettable tie-in game all the way back in 2009 (also handled by Ubisoft), so the bar was kind of low for the next attempt at capturing the magic of Pandora and recreating a Na’vi power fantasy. However, the powers that be chose to go all in when they next approached the idea of a big-budget Avatar game.

Massive Entertainment initially felt like an odd pick to develop a gargantuan Avatar game. After all, Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry have become Ubisoft’s go-to blueprints for open-world titles, with Massive instead had specializing in co-op looter shooters. But this deviation from its norm was the first step in the right direction for Frontiers of Pandora; it may look the part, and often feel like a sci-fi riff on Far Cry Primal, but ultimately it has a voice of its own and rewards exploring and connecting with the world over grinding RDA bases for sick loot.

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As the old adage goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Such is the case for Super Mario RPG, the latest volley in what has been a banner year for the aging Nintendo Switch. WIth this remake, Nintendo takes a beloved but also oft-forgotten nineties classic and largely preserves it with all of the charm, character, and imagination that made it great in the first place.

The original Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is a real classic of its time, a delicious cross-over of Nintendo’s most beloved intellectual property with the role-playing development chops of Square, right around the time that company was pumping out the likes of Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger. It’s some real Avengers team-up type stuff - the mightiest meet to create something unstoppable. Such is the nature of this project.

For the most part, this new version of Super Mario RPG feels very faithful. But it’s not faithful to a fault - and that, in fact, is paradoxically its greatest fault. What is presented is actually closer to and more respectful of the original than I’d have imagined modern Nintendo would manage with a Mario game, but at the same time, that propensity to nip and tuck – and especially to make things easier - imposes itself on the experience.

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I was fortunate enough to spend most of my weekend playing Spirittea; not by choice, but mainly because I couldn’t put this whimsical rural-life sim down. Simply put, Cheesemaster Games has developed something beautiful that most Stardew Valley fans will be enamoured by.

Inspired equal parts by Stardew Valley itself and plenty of spirit-themed anime and manga (namely, Spirited Away), you’ll find yourself winding up in a quaint, rural town where peculiar goings-on are rampant. It soon becomes clear that these strange events are being caused by lost spirits roaming the town, and as their latest inhabitant, it obviously just so happens that you’re able to see them.

Your adventure begins with the accidental discovery of Wonyan after drinking a mystical cup of tea. Wonyan is a cat-like spirit with plenty of cattitude and a grand knowledge of the spiritual realm, and they teach you about the town’s bathhouse - a haven for lost spirits to rest and recuperate - and how it has ended up in complete disarray. You’ll then get to work running the place, inviting spirits inside to rest their bones (or plasma, or whatever ghostly gunk they’re made from), and rebuilding the bathhouse to its former glory.

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Rally cars, despite being very complex, are very simple beasts.

Given that a crew can end up trying to fix them in rapid fashion by the roadside, they have to be. The history of the sport is full of desperate bodge-jobs to try and get a car back on the road, with my favourite probably being this one from 1998:

Moments, like this classic Colin McRae one, are what rallying is all about - and I’m glad to report EA Sports WRC definitely understands that.

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Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name may be a side story in RGG Studio’s long-running Yakuza franchise, but it’s also one of the biggest steps forward in quality and thoughtful design that the series has seen in years. Throwing some of the usual Yakuza fixtures out the window (the sprawling maps, overly familiar combat, and slice-of-life approach) gave RGG the freedom to explore the often-neglected core of their formula: the characters. Kiryu takes center stage in a new way, not as a plot device, but as a proper person at last, and the entire package benefits from it.

Kiryu – sorry, “Joryu” and his peerless anime disguise of sunglasses – finds himself in a situation he never predicted. His big sacrifice amounted to nothing, he’s stuck at the end of someone else’s leash, and there’s very little he can do about it. Gaiden takes place between Yakuza 6: The Song of Life and Yakuza: Like A Dragon, in the middle of what’s arguably one of the series’ most interesting and pivotal narrative moments.

Kiryu’s world has changed irreversibly and not just because of the choice he makes at the end of Yakuza 6. After major changes in the center of underworld power, the yakuza are either in jail or hanging up their brass knuckles for a life of political and white-collar crime, and a pet politician or former Tojo clan leader in their pocket would make an awfully nice prize. It’s a setup rife for high drama and Gaiden delivers in a welcome and refreshing way.

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While it has a solid identity as the hyper-creative face of family-friendly gaming, it’s fair to say that Nintendo actually has a few different identities. On Switch, we’ve been treated to a most of them at once. We have accessible-but-hardcore offerings in Zelda, old-school joy in Mario Wonder, and here, in WarioWare’s second Switch title, we have a love letter to the Wii.

Wario Ware: Move It is obviously the latest in a long line of Wario’s microgame-powered adventures, most recently 2021's Get it Together. But really, it’s best thought of as a direct sequel to one specific game: 2006’s WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

Smooth Moves was a product of its time, and if we examine that end result, you also get a pretty good description of Move It. Specifically, this is a WarioWare that is focused on motion controls, and with the shift to motion also comes a more subtle shuffle towards a focus on multiplayer. The logic correctly assumes that if you’re going to find yourself squatting, jiggling, and writhing in front of the telly, it’s probably more fun with friends, where the act of humiliating yourself in the name of video-gaming fun becomes part and parcel of the fun rather than a side effect.

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Here’s the deal in a nutshell – Robocop: Rogue City is, much like the film that inspires it, a work made by a brilliant creative team whose ambition frequently collides with the resources available to them. The result is an overall experience that’s infinitely better than it has any right to be: janky, and a little rough around the edges, but nonetheless smart, compelling, and cool as hell.

The beloved 1987 action film Robocop was conceived as a satire of Reagan’s America: imagining the damage that his government shrinkage obsessed administration might do to the country if the ruinous neoliberal doctrine of Reaganomics were allowed to proceed unchallenged for the next few decades. The world it portrays is, as a result, incredibly bleak. Corporations rule over a wasteland of rotting buildings and tent cities in which a police force diminished by endemic mistrust and chronic underfunding is slowly but surely being privatised, militarised, and mechanised. Also, the adverts are f**king mental.

Calling it “prescient” is, quite literally, the understatement of the century: this nightmare vision of America’s future, necessarily directed by a European intellectual, holds up more or less intact in Rogue City as a nightmare reflection of America’s present. Perhaps it takes the outside perspective of a continental European to properly skewer Reagan’s legacy (or Thatcher’s, if they ever fancy making a first person shooter based on Boys from the Blackstuff).

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My Time at Sandrock is a spiritual successor to 2018’s My Time at Portia – and it's a successor in just about every way, too. This time around, you’ll be the brand-new builder in the desert town of Sandrock, alongside friendly competition, Mi-an. You’ll be striving to not only have the best workshop, but to breathe life into this dwindling community on the brink of financial ruin. Which may cut a bit close to home.

It’s a peculiar blend of Harvest Moon’s and Stardew Valley’s best bits, with some mechanics more reminiscent gacha-based titles such as Genshin Impact. More importantly, though, My Time at Sandrock does what it set out to do — provide a fruitful, cosy simulation experience... even if it does feel like it’s trying to do too much, all at once.

I started playing My Time at Sandrock two weeks ago, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. This is great, because nobody wants a simulation RPG that’s bereft of content, and My Time at Sandrock is far from lacking things to do. As I started life as a builder, I was easily overwhelmed by machines and all the different resources they each provide, as well as all the different places and faces I’d have to visit regularly. Let’s not forget about the events, mini-games, and all the other things you can spend your time doing if you wish. Sandrock is much grander in scope than a lot of other farming simulation games I’ve played, and honestly, that’s a good thing.

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Video game climbing is a deceptive affair. Rarely is it the centrepiece gameplay mechanic: often it’s barely more than a one-button means for Nathan Drake to get to the next shooty bit. A traversal mode for getting across Florence or Damascus in a hurry, akin to a car in the sense that you just press the button to turn it on and point it when you want to go. The System takes care of the rest. Yes, I’m being reductive, and dismissive of the fact that Assassin’s Creed, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and any other Climby Games you’d want to mention usually have a few tricky puzzles where being good at prodding The System is crucial, but games rarely get your palms sweaty searching for the next handhold.

Not so with Jusant. The entire game is centred around finding the next handhold. Figuring out how to scale surface A to reach objective B. It starts off simple: each trigger corresponds to a hand, depressing them makes the hands grip, the left stick moves them around. It’s much more involved than pressing X to fasten Nathan Drake securely to an outcrop, but no less intuitive. And then you go up.

And you keep going up. Because this is The Tower, Jusant’s mammoth location in which the entire game takes place, save for the opening sequence that fades up on a scorching hot former sea bed. The “why” doesn’t take shape until a number of hours later, after you’ve read countless world-building notes left behind in the ruins of The Tower’s quasi-mediterranean civilization. But it’s enough at first to know that, in the spirit of Yazz, the only way is up. Well, sometimes you have to go across a bit. But the trend is skyward.

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Alan Wake 2 plays out like a completely different game when compared to its 2010 predecessor. For all the right reasons. Believe me when I say that Remedy Entertainment has created something so unnerving, and wholly bizarre, that it will give Silent Hill’s reboot a run for its money.

Alan Wake 2 starts out as a detective story, but as you reunite with the missing (presumed dead) Alan Wake again, everything becomes even stranger. It’s Twin Peaks in a video game format, to put it simply; nothing in the town of Bright Falls is as it seems, and its townsfolk are hiding more than they let on.

Playing as FBI agent Saga Anderson, you explore the town of Bright Falls and its surrounding wilderness; creepy, rundown theme parks, biker hangouts, plenty of swampy forests. As you pick Bright Falls apart, you retreat to Saga’s Mind Place – it’s exactly like BBC Sherlock’s Mind Palace – where you’ll piece together clues, profile suspects, and can even watch some unnerving (but amusing) live-action TV. We all need to unwind, after all.

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Ghostrunner 2 is not a perfect game. I don't believe it'll be taking home many game of the year awards. It won't shake the industry to the ground. There are better games out there right now, 2023 being the monstrous year that it is. So why am I – at 3am Saturday morning – glued to the cyberpunk sequel? The answer is simple: Ghostrunner 2 knows exactly what its audience wants. There's a good chance it has what you want, too.

But first, some background. Ghostrunner 2 is the sequel to a moderately successful first-person action game from Polish developer OneMoreLevel. In it you play as Jack, the sole-surviving tech-laden superhuman Ghostrunner, one year after the climax of the original game. With tyrannical rulers taken out in spectacular fashion, it's up to you and your compatriots to face off against a whole new threat from inside (and, maybe, even outside) the Dharma tower.

Anyone who has taken even a brief glance at Ghostrunner or Ghostrunner 2 will know action is the heart of the experience here. The game is so damn fun. Whether you're perfectly parrying cybernetic ninjas, slow-mo dashing past incoming fire, or throwing shurikens at hardy mechs, Ghostrunner 2 is a blast. For all the game's faults – and it does have a few – the folks at OneMoreLevel clearly understand how to make a challenging action game like this engaging, exhilarating, and exceptionally enjoyable.

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The first thing I do when I gain access to the medical menu in MGS3 as part of the new Metal Gear Solid Master Collection (Vol 1) is shake the right stick to whip Naked Snake around like a ragdoll.

Satisfied, I back out into the game as Snake falls to his knees and blows chunks on the jungle floor.

A smile spreads across my face. Everything is as it should be.

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My time with Lords of the Fallen started out very positive, but it was disheartening to see my opinion on it turn the more of it I played. It’s a game with some genuinely brilliant ideas, and a high-level vision of how to set itself apart from other Souls-likes. But that vision did not seem to have been shared by everyone on the team.

Lords of the Fallen is a Souls-like. If you played any of those before, you immediately expect a few basic features. Combat is stamina-based; heavier weapons/attacks use up more of it than lighter ones. Your rolls and dodges rely on the same stamina pool, and you’re given ranged options in the form of throwables, weapons like bows, and magic spells.

Wither damage is one mechanic that’s not very common among those games. Blocking does not negate damage entirely, but instead turns the portion of it received to what the game calls Wither, represented by a grey colour on your health bar. You can regain that lost health by simply landing attacks on your opponent, but take one hit, and you lose it all.

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After years of expansions and DLCs, Colossal Order and Paradox are finally pressing reset on Cities Skylines. For this sort of simulation game, this is a huge moment. These titles aren’t so much games as they are platforms for years of content and expansion – and so starting fresh is a very big deal indeed.

Thankfully, Cities Skylines 2 is a smartly-designed and clearly very carefully considered reimagining and retooling of much of what made the first game a beloved heir to the city-building genre. With that said, it’s also a game that is clearly the foundation for a platform that’ll run for the next decade – with struggles and slight cut-backs that relate to that.

If you’re new to the whole shebang, the Skylines series is a descendent of the likes of Cities in Motion and (of course) SimCity; where you’re put into the role of a benevolent eye-in-the-sky mayor and let loose to dictate everything about how the city is designed and functioned.

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Super Mario Bros. Wonder is the best 2D Mario game since the franchise’s 16-bit heyday. But, honestly, writing that doesn’t even feel like the biggest, splashiest thing I can lead this review with. So, let’s try something else. Let’s get spicier.

Deep breath, now. Here goes: Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a worthy sequel to Super Mario World. Which, to me, is better than Super Mario Bros. 3 - though that’s a particularly close-fought fight. What I’m saying, anyway, is that Nintendo’s latest Switch offering isn’t just a good game: it stands amidst a blisteringly glowing pantheon of platforming gaming. And, in many ways, it’s a return to form.

To talk of return to form, it suggests that Mario’s recent 2D outings before this weren’t very good. I don’t think that’s entirely fair, as the New Super Mario Bros (NSMB) games, first pioneered on DS and then expanded on every subsequent machine, were perfectly enjoyable. But, in a curious way, playing Wonder underlines everything that was wrong with those games. The slightly slippery physics, easy-street level design, and character visuals all felt fine back when those games were released. But only now, after seeing Wonder, do I realize how insufficient they were. I don’t think I can go back to those games now.

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Spider-Man is about balance. Right back to the earliest days of the Ditko and Lee comics, this has always been the case. Your friendly neighbourhood arachnid has always struggled to find the balance between his personal life, his duty as Spider-Man, the weight of his community, his power, and – as you might remember – his responsibility.

Whether it’s Maguire, Garfield, or Holland, the movies have always walked this tightrope, too, and in his Amazing, Ultimate, Superior or whatever-other-adjective runs in the comics, Spider-Man has had to interrogate the balance of his life for over 60 years. You wouldn’t think there’d be anything left that could surprise you, that could show the tension in Peter Parker’s life in a truly new and effective way. But, with deft, artisanal ease, Insomniac has made it look easy – delivering one of the best Spider-Man stories I’ve ever seen.

Going into Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the developer made NYC its oyster, introducing Mile Morales as Peter’s ward, and establishing the universe and setting with aplomb over 1.5 previous games. And what a sublime use of that potential Spider-Man 2 is. From the off, in an introductory mission that shows off the scale and power of what the PS5 is capable off, the game astounds. And if you think one villain tearing through downtown NYC is as big as it gets here, wait until you play the next 20 hours. Setpieces just seem to get bigger, better, deeper, wider, prettier, more spectacular.

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The pitch from Sega is pretty simple: Sonic Superstars is a direct sequel to the Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic games. While, yes, Sonic 4 exists (though we all wish it didn’t), and Sonic Mania is arguably the best Sonic game of all time period, you can feel one fact emanating from every fiber of Sonic Superstars’ existence: this is the fourth installment in the 2D Sonic series.

Where the rubber-soled sneakers meet the road in the court of public opinion is inevitably going to center largely on Superstars versus Mania, and the fact that Sega elected to make this 2D Sonic in-house rather than invite back the minds behind Mania for a direct sequel. Handily, though, that’s also a pretty good place upon which to hang the central conceit of this review.

That is this: Sonic Mania was largely about refining and polishing the 2D Sonic experience as delivered across the Mega Drive titles. Superstars is a different sort of sequel – one that offers up a pretty relentless barrage of new gimmicks, ideas, and mechanics that aim to level up and modernize the classic Sonic formula. The question, then, is if that new stuff is any good.

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Assassin’s Creed is a helix, and it always has been. The developers at Ubisoft have deftly woven the dual strands of history and science fiction together for the better part of 15 years now, and the results of this experiment have been as varied as they are diverse. Mirage – heralded as a spiritual reset for the franchise – had an impossible task from the moment it was announced: reform the brand, but keep everything that people loved about the behemoth RPGs Creed of recent years.

Mirage not only meets those expectations, it bests them. It manages to find the balance not only of past and present, but also of RPG and action, of narrative urgency and freedom, of expression and intent. Mirage is my favourite Assassin’s Creed game of the past few years, and by some margin. It demonstrates that with focus comes finesse, and that you can achieve in 20 hours what Valhalla struggled to achieve in 200.

The most unexpected victory of Mirage is in its role-playing – and it almost feels accidental. You succeed in imbibing protagonist Basim, not because of any of the scant skill-trees or vague progression systems, but because of how you’re railroaded into acting like he would act, approaching situations like the character would. Gone is the viking power fantasy, the channelling of Greek gods, the gunslinging pirate gravemaker; this is Assassin’s Creed refined, where skulking in the shadows and peeking around corners is required on the dusty streets of Baghdad.

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Update: We've updated our EAFC 24 review with a full and new text about Ultimate Team.

Fundamentally, EA Sports FC 24 is not a new franchise.

It’s built on the bones of what would have been FIFA 24, so as much as it’s billed as a new era for EA Sports football, like every yearly update it’s an iterative step with a few showpiece features.

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When the credits rolled at the end of Mortal Kombat 11 and the future of a rebooted timeline was clear as crystal, I'll admit I was equal parts excited and worried. The Mortal Kombat universe is this gigantic, gruesome box packed to bursting with lore-drenched realms and dozens of playable characters, all stuffed down with years of skin, spine, and spindly bits. Surely, there are only so many times you can tell the story of the Earthrealm gang wandering into the blender that is the Mortal Kombat tournament before even the most devoted of MK fans dream of pastures new.

By the time Mortal Kombat 1 was announced, these fears subsided. Lui Kang is back with all his pals back, sure. But it looks so different! He's refreshed, and characters even my dad could name are rocking remixed designs! Mortal Kombat has wiped the slate clean in an interesting way! At last!

And, in playing it, it's clear that the game is certainly a pleasant mix of new and old – for better, and for worse.

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Lies of P is a game of two halves, both of which are underwhelming. The story is a retelling of the Adventures of Pinocchio, set in a world that owes some of its looks to Bloodborne’s Yharnam, and Steelrising’s 18th Century Paris. Outside of being aware of the idea that its nose grows every time P tells a lie, I’m not familiar with the story of Pinocchio, so I didn’t have any expectations about the narrative one way or another.

But Lies of P’s looks aren't so much inspired by those games, they’re a pale imitation. Cobblestone streets, dimly-lit alleyways, gaslit street lamps, candlelight shining through house windows, behind which sit heavy-accented NPCs who have three lines of dialogue. It doesn’t offer any new take on its aesthetics, and seems content to just remind you of things you’ve seen before.

The deeper into the game I got, the more that became nakedly apparent. If you ever played a Souls-like, you know that the worst of them tend to lift elements wholecloth from the better ones (and FromSoft’s own work) without justifying their existence, or really understanding the circumstances that birthed them in the first place.

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Starfield is about humanity peeling back the mysteries of the universe to understand its place in the cosmos. Except when it’s about exploration. Or pirates. It has an anti-war message, sometimes, when it isn’t promoting the military. Sometimes there’s smuggling, but you can be a space cop, or a space cop who smuggles contraband and beats up debt defaulters. No one in Starfield really cares what you do most of the time, though some of your companions get a bit unhappy if you murder people.

I don’t really know what to make of Starfield. After roughly 90 hours and nearly two weeks, I have no idea what it wants me to think, do, or feel about any of its themes. Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, said Starfield only really gets going after 130 hours.

There’s a lot going on, too much for Starfield to fully develop or explore (which is ironic, given the game’s core conceit). As a coherent set of ideas and goals, well, it just isn’t. But the fun to be had when Starfield isn’t bent on being infuriating is tangible. Compelling. Intricate. I even stumbled on some interesting and surprisingly thoughtful narrative themes, eventually. They're just tucked deep in the pockets of the galaxy, far beyond what's apparent to the naked eye in the beginning.

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Sci-fi, giant robots, and dystopian futures that shine a light on the worst excesses of human nature as a cautionary tale light up my brain like few other things can. If you throw in the prospect of hours spent fine-tuning one of those giant sci-fi mechs until it’s a misshapen wreck capable of bringing down entire planets, I basically turn into a living version of a mind blown gif. In theory, Armored Core 6 should’ve had the same effect on me. It ticks all those boxes, and has the framework of a deep, rewarding action-RPG – but the mech inside that frame isn’t quite up to the task.

Armored Core 6 initially follows a similar narrative path as some of its predecessors, though that’s unsurprising given it is a (From)Soft reboot. Ravenous corporations tear the galaxy apart in search of lucrative resources, destroying anyone who gets in their way, and you’re the perfect tool to help them get what they want. You play as 621, a mercenary with exceptional piloting skills gained at the expense of, well, pretty much everything else. Emotions and normal human behavior just don’t apply to your compromised brain anymore, so when your handler says “go kill these innocent people to make us money,” you comply without protest.

Granted, you probably can’t form enough coherent thoughts to actually protest, but that’s beside the point. Your role as a heartless antagonist lends a pervasive air of bleakness to Armored Core 6 that’s unique to Armored Core, and while the concept of a merc serving greedy corpos might be familiar to series fans, Armored Core 6 adds enough extra layers of intrigue and subterfuge that it never feels overly familiar.

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Not in years have I seen a game thrown out to die as hard as Immortals of Aveum. Developed by Ascendant Studios, it's a game that hopes to combine some good ol' fashioned FPS action with some slick spell-slinging. An interesting pitch for sure, but sadly not one that manifests itself in an especially exhilarating fashion. Immortals of Aveum is a middling adventure, which just so happens to be releasing at a time when several industry-shaking games are releasing. It is a game doomed for the bargain bin.

But perhaps you're still curious. Immortals of Aveum is a first-person shooter where you, in the run-down shoes of Jak, find yourself living in a magical slum preciously built over a literal bottomless pit. Content with this prime real estate, he lives with a gaggle of other urchin children away from a forever war between the tyrannical Sandrakk and the last vestiges of resistance. From these humble beginnings, Jak becomes a powerful magus in his own right and must take the fight to Sandrakk with the help of his Whedon-esque wit and the various magical spells at his disposal.

Immortals of Aveum's real narrative value comes from its cast of characters, not from any sort of enriched, overarching plot. I did find myself enjoying the performance of some of these side characters, but Jak himself didn't win me over. The protagonist may have a 'love it or hate it' Marmite effect on players, thanks to the writers' snark-ridden, quip-heavy approach with the character. It's not as heavy-handed as Forspoken was, but it's in the same ballpark. Your own personal tolerance for this style of character work and dialogue will greatly impact your overall investment in Immortals of Aveum's story.

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When you think about tentpole sequels to major Nintendo franchises, the mind doesn’t naturally jump to the iterative. More often than not, Nintendo wants to do something wild and new with each new main entry in any of its core franchises - and this is exactly the sort of thing that has historically stood in the way of things like Star Fox and F-Zero getting regular sequels. But Pikmin 4 is a shining example of what the company’s talented developers can do by taking a step back, simply analyzing and improving what already exists.

This is ultimately what Pikmin 4 is. Nintendo has been at great pains during the game’s promotional cycle to push the concept that this is an ideal entry point for newcomers to the series. Often when developers say this, it’s with their fingers crossed behind their backs - but for Pikmin 4, it’s true. This has everything you’d want from the earlier games, presented from a slightly tweaked angle that makes the entire package more palatable and approachable for a whole new audience.

Accessibility is probably the most important aspect of Pikmin 4 that’s significantly different from the previous three entries in the series. Certain traditions have been abolished completely, like over-arching time limits. Players can now rewind their progress and undo disastrous Pikmin bloodbaths. Controls have been slightly tweaked, and the general feeling of the game is… breezier. At least, in the main story.

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Every now and again, you come across a game that's a genuine surprise. I'm willing to bet that I, alongside many others out there who caught an early trailer for Exoprimal around a year ago shrugged it off as Capcom's attempt to cash in on some of that juicy live service wonga. I do still believe Exoprimal is an attempt to do so, but as far as cynical follow-ups to Overwatch go, it's certainly one of my favourites.

That reality is something I'm still slowly getting over. Exoprimal is a PvPvE team-based objective-based dinosaur word salad of a game that blends many tried-and-true aspects of the live service market with its own distinct style. The unique selling point of Exoprimal has been obvious ever since the game was first announced back in 2022: this is the game where you get to pilot cool robots and blow dinosaurs into a million pieces. It's an unashamedly honest premise that I frankly do love – and one that doesn't lose its lustre once you hit credits.

You, as the pilot of one of ten distinct exo suits each with its own distinct spread of attacks and abilities, are thrust alongside four other pilots into a race against time. Each dino survival mission (currently the only game mode available in Exoprimal) places two teams against one each other in a mad dash to complete identical objectives before they are teleported to a shared final location where a victor is decided.

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Exoprimal is out today! While we've not had a chance to play enough of it yet to warrant a full review, considering that it's a live service shooter that requires a decent time investment before an educated critique of it can be written up, we have given it enough time for a cheeky preview. Our early verdict? This is a wonderful game for Game Pass.

First up: what is Exoprimal? The game places you into the shoes of an exosuit pilot as they're sent back in time into combat wargames by a Rogue AI named Leviathan. You see, Leviathan's job is to create better and better exosuits, and they've decided that throwing you and other players into endless fights against dinosaurs (and each other) is the best way to do so.

If that sounds a touch wacky, it is! But the game actually does do a decent job at setting up the premise with just enough sincerity and a vibrant cast of likeable characters to keep you on board. This is not a super serious, heart-wrenching story of love and loss - but it is an enjoyable way to get you onto a tropical island filled with dinosaurs without rolling your eyes. A feat that I had feared was impossible.

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Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective was a great game back when it first released on the Nintendo DS in 2010, and it remains one, with its charm not lost to the passage of time. You could pick up the NDS title today and still have a blast with its polished sprites, eccentric characters, and strange goings-on, but this remaster brings the classic NDS game up to speed in 2023.

Throughout Ghost Trick, you take on the role of Sissel, who is - simply put - dead. This high-spirited protagonist doesn’t remember who he was, or why he died, and his only way of getting some answers are from a talking desk lamp called Ray, and his newfound ghost powers that let him morph into inanimate objects. In between story beats, Sissel will be solving puzzles among the land of the living using his ghostly powers and logic, bringing the dead back to life, and getting closer to discovering his own identity.

Ultimately, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a simple game; it’s much less dialogue-heavy than writer and director, Shu Takumi’s endeavours with the Phoenix Wright series (which is also brilliant), but still remains packed to the brim with simple, albeit incredibly witty, dialogue. There’s no chance of you losing track of the story or sending yourself to sleep, either, as this particular mystery unfolds with perfect pacing and plenty of twists. You can access run-downs of all the characters that you meet on the off chance that you do begin to get confused, but honestly, the characters are so clear-cut and distinct from one another that this shouldn’t be an issue.

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Final Fantasy 16 is basically two games in one. First of all, you have an excellent, best-in-class 20-hour action game with a truly brilliant story. Bolted to it, however, you have a deeply flawed role-playing game – which makes up the other 25 hours of the experience.

This is the tale of FF16; when it’s excellent, it is truly, unbelievably, earth-shatteringly good. When it’s bad, it’s mildly frustrating at best, and pretty wretched at its worst. On balance, the good outweighs the bad to an enormous degree, and so it’s a game that’s incredibly easy to recommend in spite of its shortcomings. It’s also the best entry point and jumping-on point for Final Fantasy newcomers in decades.

Let’s start with the good, because I do think that’s what’ll stay with you once the credits roll. Final Fantasy 16 presents one of the most accomplished and well-rounded stories in the series. In narrative terms, this tale now sits up there with numbers 6, 7, 9 and 10 in terms of its execution and my overall satisfaction.

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Layers of Fear (2023) brings together the stories of Layers of Fear (2016) and Layers of Fear 2 (2019), remastering the two horror titles in Unreal Engine 5 to deliver a seamless, puzzling trip into the psyche of creatives-gone-mad. Sadly, this remake represents the best and worst of Bloober Team.

This time around you’ll start out as The Writer, a new character destined to pen the disturbing tales of The Artist and The Actor, while encountering your own unusual goings-on in the Lighthouse you’re holed up in. After having won a competition to write a book about ‘one of the most mysterious and tragic figures in the history of modern art,’ you’ll be exploring winding corridors and tending to a ringing phone that is eerily reminiscent of that in the game’s inspiration, P.T.

Soon, you’re whisked into the grandiose home of The Painter and his family, and things begin to look familiar again. A home in complete disarray, burning candles and dimly lit lamps in each room, even the letter from pest control threatening us with lawyers if we contact them again, are still here. The only stark difference is in quality; built in Unreal Engine 5, Layers of Fear (2023) looks ridiculously good, at the best of times, anyway.

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Blood! Loot! Numbers! Cows! Diabo is a series with a storied legacy, built on strong pillars that have held up the ARPG classic for years now. It's a name that still holds some well-deserved clout, even if Diablo Immortal (and, to a lesser degree, Diablo 3) soured that reputation in the minds of fans. With Diablo 4 almost here, Activision Blizzard has a chance to get your mind off stolen breastmilk, cancelled PvE modes, union busting and struggling acquisitions with a good ol' fashioned bloody brawl.

Diablo 4 is a game that, from the get-go, was clearly meant to harken back to the Diablo 2 era: dark and dire, unafraid to throw the grim reality of a demonic invasion around, and keen to splatter heavy religious overtones across your face. Diablo 3, while good, always felt more like a fantastical epic. Diablo 4 nails a return to grisly, Hadean form – but, perhaps fittingly, it is betrayed. Betrayed by puzzling design decisions, betrayed by bugs, betrayed by issues that range from simply aggravating to totally devastating.

With that in mind, let's start with what Diablo 4 does well. I will not spoil the narrative, but if you played any of the betas you'll know that both the world of Sanctuary and the characters within it are syrup-rich with personality. Diablo 4 is a metal album, sure; packed with climactic moments and great battles against ghastly foes and dire odds. But it's also sad. Damn sad. Tragedy flows through Sanctuary as you'd expect in a world where the threat of demonic incursions is a reality to be dealt with. There's not a spot on the world that seems a decent place to live. Every inch of Diablo 4 is Port Talbot, Wales.

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In gaming, as in any art, you sometimes have to learn to take the rough with the smooth. No artist, director, studio, production house, or franchise is infallible. But the failures aren’t always just missteps. Sometimes, they’re stepping stones on the route to triumph.

This happens in all mediums, but I think we see more of it in games. This is the story of Final Fantasy 14 to A Realm Reborn, of the Wii U to the Switch – and of Street Fighter 5 to Street Fighter 6. A greatly troubled game at launch that took years to rescue, the fifth Street Fighter game now has its real legacy: training Capcom in what it needed to do to make a modern fighter that slaps harder than E. Honda – at launch.

Or to put it another way: Street Fighter 6 isn’t just the best package of content ever in the franchise’s history – it might be the best ever in the history of the genre.

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It’s difficult to imagine a more daunting proposition for a remake than the original System Shock. It’s arguably the game that truly launched the greatest boom of immersive sims in history – a genre whose fans are notoriously demanding, despite never having really been able to come up with a universally agreed definition of what an 'immersive sim' even is.

It’s a genre of such a specific time and place, games that possess intrinsic vibes of fat chunky keyboards, bulky cardboard boxes and 640x480 CRT screens. How do you channel that in an era of ultrawide monitors and digital only games? Does anybody even want it? Warren Spector himself, one of the key creative figures in the heyday of PC games about rifling through shelves and reading emails, couldn’t get a tumultuous System Shock 3 out the doorhttps://www.vg247.com/system-shock-3-tencent before the whole endeavour imploded.

This isn’t developer Nightdive Studios first wrangle with the licence – after acquiring the IP in 2015, they promptly released System Shock: Enhanced Edition, a slightly prettied up version of the original optimised for modern systems. At the same time, it started development on what was intended to be a ground-up remake. Here we are, a full seven years of stop-start development, engine changes, shifts in overall direction, and scope bloat later, and it should be considered a miracle that the game has been released at all. Never mind the fact that it’s an absolutely groundbreaking work of visual design that elevates the original in every possible way without losing anything in the process.

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Cards on the table, right? I love Star Trek. More than that: I love loving it. I drive my wife mad with incessant musing about whether Ben Sisko’s birth constitutes a predestination paradox, or the sociological impact on the Federation of the Battle of Wolf 359. I have an absurd number of Hero Collector ship miniatures dotted around the place. There are more enterprises in my home than you can rent a car from.

But, I am a professional, and wouldn’t dream of allowing my personal feelings to inflate my dispassionate assessment of a licensed software product. With that in mind, I’ve handily split this review into two parts depending on whether or not you, dear reader, would consider yourself a Star Trek fan. Don’t look so concerned: it’s OK to admit it here, this is a safe space.

Essentially, what this is is a mid-tier Telltale game. And I mean that almost literally: the developer, Dramatic Labs, boasts proudly on the game’s website that it is “a collaboration of 20+ former Telltale writers, developers, designers, artists, and producers.” So, if you’ve played The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us (those are the top-tier Telltale games, for reference) you know what to expect from ST:R – mechanically, at least. Although it’s worth noting that this is a complete 12-14 hour experience, not an episodic release.

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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom lets you ride a heavy metal skeleton horse, eat cooked rocks, and stuff fairies in your pockets. And these aren’t even core aspects of the game.

There are so many silly, or cool, or ridiculous nuggets like this tucked away in Side Adventures or thumbed into secluded corners of the vast map. It was during one such side quest – hot on the trail of the aforementioned skeleton horse – that I said to myself: “This would be on the back of the box of most games.”

Tears of the Kingdom is so successful because it marries an impressive sense of scale with a mechanical granularity that means you can always interact with its wide-open sandbox in creative, surprising ways.

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The sun is gone. Blotted out by a pantheon of vampiric gods who, in lieu of gleaming palaces and gothic castles, have laid claim to an unassuming island town off the coast of mainland Massachusetts. Low light is provided by the UV lamps and muzzle flare of private military contractors and cultists; a little warmth by the body heat of locals huddled together in resistance. If the internet worked, your weather app would tell you to expect lukewarm temperatures at best. Perhaps that explains why Redfall is slightly underbaked.

For many years now, Arkane has delivered an unbroken series of brave and inspired first-person action games, from 2012’s Dishonored to 2021’s Deathloop. They’ve sometimes been divisive, asking a lot of their players and nudging them towards unfamiliar playstyles, but even the studio’s detractors would concede these games were exquisitely designed and beautifully presented. You may not want a Fabergé egg in your house, but you have to admire the artistry.

Redfall breaks that hot streak. While it resembles its predecessors - osciliating between stealth and shooting, its domestic spaces filled with scattered stories to piece together - the results are soggier than usual. Don’t get me wrong: Redfall is a good open world FPS you can enjoy for dozens of hours with friends. But it’s a noticeable step down from the high perch occupied by Corvo and Colt. It’s the first missable Arkane game in an age.

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Cal Kestis is sad. Being a terrorist is hard work, and no amount of lightsaber amputations is making him any happier. In Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, you follow his excellent adventure in reaching out to old friends, desperately trying to find new ones when the OG cast inevitably remember he’s a melt, and cramming as many seeds and rocks into his pockets as the force allows.

The latest triple-A action game from Apex Legends factory Respawn Entertainment, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the sequel to a surprising hit from 2019 which follows everyone’s favourite ginger hero as he performs outrageous feats roughly a bazillion miles away from any canon film. The first game managed to please the crowds by mixing a few Soulsian mechanics with a tasting menu of Star Wars’ most iconic aspects. We’re talking lightsabers, pushing storm troopers off cliffs, and a narrative focused on rebellion and importance of believing in the good of the universe. The stuff people have been lapping up for decades.

With the sequel, I went in with higher expectations. The team at Respawn did a damn good job last time around, both at making a great action game, and a great Star Wars product. After dozens of hours in the sequel, I do believe the studio has raised the cantina on both accounts.

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Dead Island 2 starts in the sun-soaked and blood-drenched City of Angels, but there are no angels here. Brain-dead, ravenous zombies govern this city, now casually called HELL-A. You awaken aboard an aeroplane that has succumbed to the plague of zombies, and with merely the clothes on your back and an immunity to the undead’s slavering bites, you need to escape from HELL-A. Even if you have to become every other survivor’s middle man in the process.

As you trek across HELL-A, you explore mansions galore, approach the surprisingly well-maintained sewers with the utmost intrepidity, and even get to make your mark on Hollywood Boulevard. In spite of its flaws and quirks (and there are so, so many), Dead Island 2 does exactly what it needed to do just under a decade ago when it was first announced, and what it needed to do now, at launch: it provides mindless, zombie-slaying fun in an environment seething with life, vibrancy, and eccentric charm. Incredibly life-like warts and all.

Dead Island 2 has the same fundamentals as its predecessor - visceral disfigurement, brainless hard-as-nails zombies, and a Tarantino-like obsession with gore - and dresses them up in a package that feels fit for 2023. The setting you find yourself adventuring across is stunning, dialogue is cringe albeit well-grounded, and yes, there are a few glitches here and there. I expected nothing more, and nothing less, and ultimately finished Dead Island 2 satisfied with my experience.

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Sometimes the top-line pitch for a game is better than the actual finished product. Such is the case for Minecraft Legends, the latest spin-off intended to offer a different sort of gaming experience within the framework of the legendary survival franchise.

At preview, I was really impressed by Legends. After a successful jaunt into the RPG genre with ideal ‘my first dungeon crawler’ fodder Minecraft Dungeons, this title pitched the same again but for strategy titles. I like Minecraft, and I love strategy games, a genre that I feel is woefully under-served. Despite this, I’ve struggled to maintain interest in Minecraft Legends - and a lot of it is arguably down to simplicity.

As with Dungeons, the goal here is clearly to create something accessible and palatable to as wide an audience as possible. Minecraft is beloved by many very young children, and so any Minecraft game needs to have a sufficiently low barrier for entry. The bar is set low by Legends - but the game’s structure also doesn’t offer enough above and beyond that bar - which leads to an experience that feels brimming with potential, but lacking in its execution.

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It’s taken decades, but video game movies have finally come full circle with the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It was 1993’s Super Mario Bros. that kicked off Hollywood’s regular flirtations with video game adaptations - and the same film in many ways came to represent the infamy that video game movies have enjoyed since. Put simply, it was rubbish - though also filled with imagery that would make it a quiet cult classic. Now, Nintendo has partnered with Illumination, the studio behind the Minions, to break the curse.

By many measures, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is successful. By others, it is much less so - but be rest assured that anybody saying that this film is ‘as bad as’ or even remotely comparable to its nineties cousin is talking hyperbolic rubbish. This movie is in a different area code. The question is, is it actually as good as its present peers? The world of cinematic gaming conversions is very different in 2023 than in the nineties; in fact, the competition is quite fierce.

The choice of Illumination is, well, illuminating. This is a studio that I’d argue isn’t really about the art in the way some others are- certainly not in the Scorsese sense, but even within the kids’ space when compared to the likes of Pixar. In these stakes, I’d even place them south of Dreamworks Animation. But what Illumination is extremely adept at is making films that press the buttons of audiences, especially the young, in the right ways. They’re never particularly substantive, but they work. And such is the case for the Super Mario Bros. Movie.

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Resident Evil 4 Remake has finally caught up with Leon. Just as the Resi 4 protagonist is all grown up when we first see him in the 2005 original, Capcom has finally made a game that reflects how much he's matured – but that doesn’t mean the camp nature of the original cult classic is lost; it’s merely evolved to be more in line with the series’ tone.

The original Resident Evil 4 nudged the series down a more action-oriented path, and after teasing the less horror-driven route for a while, it was with the original game that Capcom got the blend between action and survival horror just right.

But Resident Evil, at its core, is a terrifying horror series. The best out there, even. Resident Evil 4 strayed from the path ever so slightly, and despite being fantastic for it, Resident Evil 4 Remake shows us that this entry in the series can be just as gritty and tense and frightening as the rest – without compromising on fun.

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In most games, going into a fight underleveled means almost certain death. Wander into the lair of the Fire Giant in Elden Ring without adequate preparation, and you’ll meet your end before you can so much as raise your blade. Stride into Gehrman, the First Hunter’s arena without grinding out the whole game and eat a face-full of trick weapon. That’s not really the case in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty – a curious Souls-like experiment from Nioh and Ninja Gaiden developer Team Ninja. Here, your level does matter… but the game cares far more about your Morale.

Each level takes the form of a battlefield, and the paper-thin premise is that you’re reclaiming the field from whatever the enemy of the day is – Yellow Turban rebels, Lu Bu’s army, treacherous allies that have turned on you in the name of power. As such, you need to claim the territory back by planting flags, and each flag gives you and your troops Morale. The higher your Morale, the more damage you can do to your enemies, and the more likely you are to wear them down in a duel. Keeping track? Good, because we’re just getting started.

Every boss has Level 20 Morale when you first face them. Per level, you need to explore everything and everywhere and claim all the flags – both the bonfire-like ones that act as checkpoints, and smaller ones smugly hidden away in the most obscure parts of the map – in order to keep your Morale at Level 20 when you die. If you’ve missed one, you will need to go out into the level and kill things (without taking hits yourself) in order to get your morale rank back to a boss-ready level.

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Video games are reaching that sort of age where throwbacks are a lucrative business. High-profile remakes, remasters and revivals are ten-a-penny now - but one of the most successful is undoubtedly Octopath Traveler, the Square Enix made and Nintendo-published SNES-era style Japanese RPG that gripped audiences in 2018. Now Square Enix is back with a sequel, the succinctly titled Octopath Traveler 2.

Back in 2018, I called the original Octopath Traveler “beautiful, brilliant, and flawed” - and honestly, that description still rather holds up for the sequel. Make no mistake, however: this second game is superior to the first in just about every way that you’d really care about - even if certain niggling shortfalls of the original remain.

Nintendo’s been pushed out of the picture for this sequel, meaning Octopath Traveler 2 is a multi-platform affair from day one, available on PC and PlayStation as well as Switch - but that’s not the only expansion going on here. It’s a larger and more in-depth game in general - and this is offered without dampening the sense of open-ended freedom that was one of the first game’s trump cards.

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I spend one Ryo for access to the Gion brothel and take on Rock Paper Scissors on the hardest difficulty. It’s a tough fight but I clutch out a win against a now borderline-naked prostitute, and leave her confused as I walk out the door and back to the street. 30 seconds later, I’m unloading three bullets into the chest of a street thug, only for his friend to join my local police force. Like a Dragon: Ishin is exceptionally entertaining.

That might not be a shock to fans of the Yakuza series, a long-running powerhouse that has thrown players into Kamurocho with numerous games as generous with balls-to-the-wall action as it is with genuinely engaging narratives and a healthy dollop of wackiness. I was glad to discover after over 80 hours of in-game fighting, fetching, and fishing that this 19th Century historical rollercoaster lacks none of the bite of its modern brothers.

Let's break it down for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Like a Dragon franchise. It’s a third-person action game, with a heavy focus on deep character-driven stories with often political twists and turns threaded throughout. This puts the series in a somewhat unique position among its peers: one second you’re pulling off explosively violent finishing moves, the next you’re learning about the importance of an empty lot. Like a Dragon: Ishin takes that tried and true structure and places it in an altogether different setting: 19th century Kyo.

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Every single time I started to like Wild Hearts, the game almost instantly did something to make me put my controller down in frustration and walk away. Yet, the next day, I’d come back genuinely excited to play more. Whether I’d ripped off my headset in disgust after clipping through a rock and eating a face full of a monster’s super-charged rage attack – ending a 25+ minute hunt in the most unceremonious way possible – or just had the most exhilarating encounter with some ancient God-bird that was threatening my hometown, there’s little consistency to the Wild Hearts experience.

In Monster Hunter, the series Wild Hearts is so egregiously moulded from, Capcom has iterated and iterated on its killer central formula. Go out, hunt, make cool stuff from what you kill, go out, hunt more stuff, make even cooler gear. It’s gaming catnip, and modern Monster Hunter games (notably World and Rise) have polished this formula like a precious stone; this core conceit glitters and shines, with all the inclusions buffed out. Wild Hearts has a lot to learn, and a lot of iterating to do.

But that doesn’t mean this is a bad game. I can’t stop playing it, even though at times I think I hate it. The camera hugs your character’s ass too close, meaning all the cool overpowered attacks you do feel weird and inhibited. The lock-on mechanism is bad – terrible, in fact – so when a monster leaps up to punish your whiffed combo (that’ll happen a lot) you lose sight of them and will have a hard time dodging them when they finally unleash their payloads. There’s more of a focus on aerial combat, but it all feels loose and flighty, so sometimes your attacks will pop up damage numbers even if they don’t feel like they connect.

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I’m once again in awe of VR gaming. In an age where we’ve kind of seen it all before, where a middling game manages to impress with its visuals and new game ideas are seemingly running out, it’s not as easy to be wowed with video games as it used to be. There was a time when every new release appeared to push the industry forward in some way, and the future looked incredible. You’ll often hear people like may say things like “you’ll never again get that feeling of playing Mario 64 for the first time after growing up with the SNES,” and I think that’s mostly held true.

The leap from generation to generation has lessened – and I know we get unbelievably good-looking games these days, before someone slams me on socials – meaning I appreciate what we’ve got, but I’m not muttering things like “holy mother of Jesus!” all the time. With PlayStation VR2 I muttered that, and more. It’s hard to see Sony’s newest entry into the VR market as more than a niche product that’ll do well if it sells to 5% of the final PS5 userbase, but if you can afford it, you’ll get those wow moments that have been harder and harder to find.

Before more gushing about how I love PSVR2, a few of the things that irked me – some directly related to the hardware itself, some VR in general.

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I know people seem to want fully interactive experiences in VR, like “proper” games, but there’s something to be said for more passive moments. Horizon Call of the Mountain is PlayStation VR2’s headline game, built especially for the new headset and controllers. It offers a full experience – it's more streamlined than the core Horizon games, but it’s one of those “proper” games. But, and maybe I’ll be in the minority here, I prefer it when it’s just letting me take in the spectacle and not making me do too much. My arms can’t take much more climbing!

Call of the Mountain opens with one of the most incredible set-pieces I’ve ever seen. But in VR you’re doing more than seeing it, at least in how it’d work in a traditional on-TV video game. You’re there. In this instance, on a rowboat, helpless as you come under attack from the machines. These mechanical monsters are all around you, over you, coming for you. You’re only along for the ride at this point, but I’d have sat through an entire game like this. It is incredible.

After this breathtaking moment (well, I at least found myself holding my breath at points) the game begins and puts you in full direct control of Ryas. What follows is a fairly linear journey through a beautiful land (that you can explore freely within its boundaries), with plenty of bow and arrow shooting, a lot of climbing, and arena-style battles against machines. Some of these elements work better than others. Did I mention that there is a lot of climbing?

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By the time your favourite band’s fourth album has come around, you may know what to expect from them – they’ve got all that experimental stuff out their system, they know what their strengths are, they know how to write a crowd-pleaser, and there’s still enough creative fuel left in the tank to surprise you.

But maybe, just maybe, your pop-rock favourites have used all their gimmicks up at this point, and what’s left is a sonically pleasing, perfectly serviceable release: safe, predictable, and taking no risks. That’s pretty much what Square Enix has done with Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Final Bar Line.

And that’s no bad thing, of course. To save you scrolling down to the bottom to check, this game is getting 4 / 5 here at VG247 – that’s better than average, good, a recommendation from me. It’s a great package, featuring some incredible songs, buckets of love for the core series, and some really aesthetically pleasing presentation, to boot. The rhythm action RPG somehow crams over 385 playable songs and 104 playable characters onto your Switch cart or PS4 hard-drive, and gives you multiple ways to play through the symphonic catalogue.

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As you hop aboard the USG Ishimura and into the suit of Dead Space protagonist, Isaac Clarke, you’ll unearth terror like never before in the form of Necromorphs. These alien horrors, alongside undertones of religious fanaticism, make the USG Ishimura one of the most terrifying settings in the survival horror genre.

In the same vein as Alien: Isolation, there is something so claustrophobic about being marooned in outer space; the immediate threat of body-horror aliens, the religious fanatics encouraging them to feed, and this huge vessel with a myriad of broken… everything. It gets in your head. Dead Space is a test of Isaac’s patience and resilience, and as you reach the third act of the game, you can tell that he’s wearing thin.

There are no safe spaces, and there is no escape from the USG Ishimura. Even in rooms with Save Stations and Stores, you can’t be sure that a Lurker or Slasher won't appear. This feeling of insecurity is paired with a satisfying combat system that Dead Space wouldn't feel the same without. Your headshots don't matter aboard the USG Ishimura. It's all about dismemberment. With abilities such as Stasis and Kinesis letting you slow enemies down and impale them with common items, combat is overwhelming at first. The second that you get into the swing of things, however, you can become incredibly creative when slaying hordes of Necromorphs.

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Forspoken shows the best and worst of the Luminous Engine’s tech, mixing kinetic combat with dazzling particle effects and janky set pieces.

Pressing the DualSense triggers in Forspoken is so hard I feel like I can now do finger push ups like Bruce Lee, but thankfully this doesn’t stop the combat from being one of the better parts of the experience – once you figure out how to play Bop-It with the complicated controls.

On your left hand, governed by L1 and L2, you have support spells designed for defensive zoning, stealing health from enemies, and buffing your abilities. While on your right you have your typical damage dealing spell types that you switch between with R1 and fire by pressing or holding R2.

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Fire Emblem turned 30 years old back in 2020, but one could be forgiven for thinking of its latest entry, Fire Emblem Engage, as a belated 30th anniversary celebration. It’s got that sort of wild celebratory energy about it; a Fire Emblem game with a little bit of everything, plus the kitchen sink, and then some. That development approach has positives and negatives in practically equal measure – but it’s nevertheless difficult to not be charmed by what Engage offers as a sprawling package.

As a series, Fire Emblem is structurally quite similar to things like Final Fantasy and Persona, in that each game is usually a relatively enclosed affair. There are crossovers, and very occasionally there are direct sequels, but for the most part each game stands on its own, connected primarily by strategy RPG mechanics that are tweaked and flavored in each game with unique gimmicks. Such is the case with Engage, but with the fanservice for the series’ past both bulked out and streamlined all at once. As contradictory as that seems.

For this title, the gimmick is called the Engage System, and this titular mechanic is also the primary conduit through which this title’s nostalgia flows. It’s specifically all about equipping ‘Emblem Rings’, special items that sort-of contain the essence and consciousness of past heroes from each of the past Fire Emblem adventures. Emblem characters can’t exist on the battlefield as discrete units, but any character can pop on a particular character’s ring and then gain abilities, weapons, skills, and a general upgrade as a result, both passively and when you ‘Engage’ with the ring, merging the equipper and the Emblem into a super-powered state.

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The Thrustmaster T128 wheel and pedal set is pitched to beginners as a first step into the world of sim driving. That is, people who love driving or racing games and want to ditch the pad, but who don’t want to spend Proper Money just yet. And that’s certainly one type of consumer who will benefit from this package: the type of person for whom it will be a placeholder. A toe in the water before a full-on plunge. But I think the greatest value of the T128 is in its suitability as a daily driver for those of us who simply don’t have room in their lives for anything more substantial: making the full-fat sim experience accessible to those of us who can’t commit to a full-fat setup.

The extent to which driving games are enriched by a proper interface can’t be overstated. There’s nothing wrong with using a pad, of course. It’s a perfectly decent way to control a pretend car. But having a sim wheel which mimics the way you would control a real vehicle connects you to a driving sim in a profound way that makes the game world come to life. All of a sudden, cockpit view becomes your default, and you come to find simple joy in the way your wheel turns in sync with its on-screen counterpart. The force-feedback allowing the road surface to fight against you. The car itself being able to communicate with you via sensation rather than just by the sound of revving and instrument readouts.

It turns something like Euro Truck Simulator 2, a dry game about transporting wooden pallets to Aberdeen, into a deeply captivating experience where the dull intricacies of controlling the vehicle and obeying local traffic laws become magical and, if you’ll forgive the pun, transportive. A pad just doesn’t translate mirror, signal, manoeuvre into an engaging game loop. It’s too much of an abstraction. With a good sim wheel, your connection to the world inside the silicon is much more direct, much less dulled by the extra steps taken by your brain and nervous system to map twiddles to turns.

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The marketing for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion has been a little bit cheeky, for my money. Square Enix has taken to calling this re-release of a PSP classic “more than a remaster”, which feels like a rather liberal interpretation of what this game is – but by the same token, god damn if this isn’t one of the most impressive remasters I’ve ever seen. The best visual remaster ever? Maybe. More than a remaster? Not quite.

So, for the avoidance of doubt, let’s start this review that way: by making clear what the game is. Crisis Core Reunion is a huge visual overhaul of the 2007 PSP game, so significant and overarching that one would be forgiven for thinking this was a ground-up remake. But it isn’t: beneath the hood, beyond the veneer of visuals and character models that have been directly borrowed from FF7 Remake or spec-built to match it, the structure of the game is largely identical.

So, for instance, Crisis Core still features relatively bite-sized play, where all but a few chapters of the game last no more than an hour. Side missions can be accessed at any time from any save point, and there’s over 300 of them to unlock – but these missions are designed to be played on the train in a bite-sized fashion; few last more than a couple of minutes, most feature relatively generic rewards, and all of the 300 missions take place on just a handful of tiny maps, meaning that for side quests you’ll be seeing the same level layouts over and over again.

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What scares you? Body horror? Claustrophobia? The idea of things being pushed through your eyes? Jump scares? Mediocre level design? The Callisto Protocol has it all, for better and for worse. Insistent on pushing you over the edge and making you sweat, Striking Distance Studios’ first game is overbearing; a carnival horror house trying to be a top-of-the-line escape room, Michael Bay trying to be John Carpenter. It does everything Dead Space did, sure – but once the ground is already broken, does it need breaking again?

There are differences, of course. The Callisto Protocol is prettier. The characters are more fleshed out, and there’s Hollywood talent in the space suits, too. The production values are upgraded. The combat, at first, is better. But The Callisto Protocol is trying to be too many things. It’s trying to be a thriller, it’s trying to be a psychological horror, it’s trying to be a sci-fi space opera about conspiracy and religious zealotry. It lacks the lean focus of its cinematic or video game inspirations, and often comes off like one of the shambling, shaking corpses it loves to spring on you when you think you’re enjoying a moment of safety, instead.

The developers at the fledgling Striking Distance Studios went off about the game’s ‘fear engineering’ during development – a lofty, PR-driven spiel about how the game can read your actions and emotions as you play and respond with brutal accuracy to terrify you. In practice, this means that favouring melee attacks will make enemies counter you more. Favouring your pistol will mean they lurch at you. Using your pseudo-telekinetic GRP device means they stay away from spikes on the walls. What was meant to be bleeding-edge AI feels like the superfluous enemies thrown at you in a Destiny raid. That are just a bit harder to kill.

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The constant mixing and mingling of game genres is a beautiful thing. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, magic happens, and entire new things are born. DOOM plus Ultima equals Daggerfall, for example. Marvel’s Midnight Suns, the new “tactical role-playing” game from the studio behind XCOM, is an absurd mashup of… almost everything going. And let’s be clear from the outset: it works beautifully.

To be even clearer: I did not expect to love this game. From the trailers, to the marketing, to the extensive 15-minute presentation shown ahead of getting our review code that felt like the kind of XCOM mission briefing you get right before an extremely Not Fun time, Midnight Suns has felt like a project with an identity crisis. It’s a little bit XCOM, but with Slay the Spire’s tactical card battling, the relationship management of Fire Emblem, the choice and consequence HQ politics of Dragon Age and/or Mass Effect, and there’s even a bit of Walking Simulator in there where you mooch about some woods figuring out how to unlock doors while piecing together disparate fragments of plot.

It’s a lot. And I haven’t even mentioned how many currencies there are in this game. Dozens of collectible resources like “skill essence”, “gloss”, or “intel”, which all have specific types of thing that they’re spent on. Arcane keys which unlock the various loot boxes dotted around your headquarters and its environs: The Abbey and its lush, knotted grounds. Basically this game’s equivalent of the SS Normandy except it’s a national heritage site and Iron Man lives there.

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I have a soft spot in my heart for a game with a good twist. A narrative switcheroo, that drags you further into the story than you’d otherwise care to go. The Knight Witch is one such game, one I initially wasn’t too keen on but eventually won me over.

The Knight Witch is a 2D Metroidvania packed with light bullet hell action. It follows the adventures of Rayne, the fifth member of a group of powerful magic-wielding warriors that gained infamy by saving the world’s population from extinction, leading them underground following a hard-fought battle with technologically advanced golems.

Starting off, the game is slow and didn’t really rub off on me. The initial premise, a typical magical girl tale where a green (but passionate) witch tries to live up to the example of her experienced peers and win the hearts of the people, failed to entice. I will not hide my general disinterest in the genre; any fiction I’ve read or watched that fits within the archetype have been commentaries of the genre, intentionally subverting expectations.

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There’s an early 2000s interview with director Quentin Tarantino in which a conservative pundit berates him about the level of gruesome violence in his movies. Their impassionate pleadings question the need for violence, but they’re met with a ridiculing, frustrated: “Because it’s so much fun, Jan. Get it?”

I thought about that interview as I played Evil West, the new game from the shooter masters at Polish studio, Flying Wild Hog. Evil West is an old-school action game that blends melee combat with firearms; a hybrid you don’t often see in the modern era.

Set in an alternate version of America’s wild west frontier lands, the story follows a secretive vampire-hunting order that has been dealing with an evolving threat for generations, while the government covers up their discoveries as viral outbreaks.

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The Devil in Me marks the fourth instalment in Supermassive Games’ The Dark Pictures Anthology, the finale of the anthology’s first season. You’d expect The Devil in Me to go out with some sort of bang, then, right? Sadly, this lacklustre dénouement lets itself down with performance issues, a severe lack of quality, and limited immersion (which is often essential to this series of games being as gripping as they are).

The Devil in Me follows the crew of Lonnit Entertainment as they receive an offer that they cannot refuse. As the creators of a true-crime series, the gang are looking for a season finale that’ll, hopefully, guarantee them even more time on the air. The subject for their final episode? America's most prolific serial killer, H. H. Holmes. However, this crew hasn't got a leg to stand on. That is, until, a mystery phone call kicks things off.

Granthem Du’Met, the supposed relative of a serial killer obsessive who has managed to build a faithful replication of H. H Holmes’ The World's Fair Hotel, invites Lonnit Entertainment to see the peculiar landmark, writhing with grim history, for themselves. So, off they go, adhering to Du’Met’s strict, strange, rules in the hopes of ending their show on a high.

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Pokemon Scarlet & Violet represent a sea change for the Pokemon series – yes, yet again – but arguably this is the most important adjustment to date. This is the template that the series will follow going forward: and I’m thrilled to report that it’s an invigorating, thrilling, and wildly lovable game that meshes together old and new with impressive precision.

I like it just as much as I did Pokemon Legends: Arceus – which I described in that review as the best Pokemon game in 20 years. So let me say it plainly: Scarlet & Violet are now the joint-best Pokemon since the Game Boy era. High praise indeed.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Pokemon Scarlet & Violet would impress me all that much. I’d found the previous generational shift, Sword & Shield, stuffed with interesting ideas, but also too often flawed. I figured this might be similar, a fact not helped by the fact that in the interim we got Legends, a spin-off so thoughtful and so experimental that it quickly made the traditional Pokemon formula feel obsolete. Going into the review period, I was convinced of one thing: no matter how much I liked this game, I’d end up missing some of that spin-off’s changes. But then something magical happened: I didn’t.

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The circus is an odd place, thrilling for some and utterly terrifying for others. Flame eaters expel their scorching breath a bit too close to the tent canvas. Clowns are just creepy. When the ringmaster invites you to the center ring, there’s a nagging fear you may be the real attraction, and at the end of the day, you wonder whether it was really such a fun experience after all.

It’s much the same in the Dying Light 2 Bloody Ties DLC. The zombies spew fire a bit too close to you. When the ringmaster invites you to the center ring, it’s because he wants to extract your intestines as painfully as possible. And the clown is you, for actually showing up.

After the lights died down and the excitement evaporated, I was left wondering how much I actually enjoyed Bloody Ties, for all its spectacle.

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The original Goat Simulator released back in 2014, and while it’s offered me plenty of laughs in the eight years since, sessions of play have continued to get shorter and shorter until the silly goat game faded fully into obscurity. That said, Goat Simulator 3 goes where no goat has ever ventured before. The game builds upon its predecessor in such an abundance of ways that it actually makes sense that Coffee Stain North chose to skip Goat Simulator 2 altogether, beyond wanting to troll its audience.

Goat Simulator 3 will have you starting life out in the fictional realm of San Angora as Pilgor, a goat who loves to scoot around on its arse. If you’re familiar with the original goat game, you’ll know that your primary objective is to cause as much chaos as possible. The goal in Goat Simulator 3 remains very much the same, albeit with a hell of a lot more direction and guidance than before. There’s also meaningful progression, too, making all of your unruly behaviour across San Angora feel much more worthwhile.

Your goals come in the form of quests and instincts. Instincts are what you’ll be very familiar with from the previous title; awarding you points for endless backflips, creative methods of destruction, and whatever other nonsense you decide to get up to as you flit from place to place. On the other hand, quests will have you interacting with the environment and Goat Sim 3’s wacky array of NPCs, which breathe such life into the title that you continually want to keep going and meeting more of them – something I had never experienced with Goat Simulator. I found myself so weirdly entranced that I finished the game in a single sitting (read: eight hours, give or take some destructive excursions that often involved driving badly). And I plan to force my friends to play through the whole thing again with me.

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I was enraptured from the start. A toddler ambles around a room, filled only by the light of a TV’s static, as the parents sleep on the sofa. It’s the most unlikely opening to a story about an invasion, but one that gives you all the info you need to be invested. A low-key, personal disaster movie begins in the moments that follow, and I was hooked throughout the hours that proceeded.

Jumpship has created a game that is hard to define. While it loosely feels similar to studio co-founder Dino Patti’s Inside (which he produced at Playdead), Somerville is on an entirely grander, more beautiful scale. It is, despite some fiddly moments, a quite magnificent sci-fi adventure, and an astonishing achievement for writer/director Chris Olsen and the team.

This article is going to be brief, only in part due to the fact that I’m pushed for time. I simply don’t want to say too much about what happens in Somerville – itself a game that packs a lot into a fairly brief runtime. On a purely functional level, this is a kind of evolution of Inside, in so much as a lot of the game is spent walking around with your character, more or less seeing the sights. There’s more exploration here than in Inside, though, and the environment is more interactive, but this isn’t a platformer of any description.

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The Cadfael game is finally upon us. It raised a sea of eyebrows upon its unveiling during this year’s joint Microsoft/Bethesda not-E3 presentation in June, despite being a sort of weird, cartoonish (emphasis on ‘ish’) ‘medieval whodunnit’. Sandwiched between the likes of RedFall and Starfield, you wouldn’t expect it to cause much excitement. And yet, for many of us watching, it struck a lutey chord as one of the most promising looking titles on the entire Xbox slate, and a perfect example of Game Pass’ appeal: something that looks interesting, but is potentially too weird and experimental a proposition to risk real money for.

I’m delighted to report, however, that its promise has been delivered upon and then some. It easily justifies its price of entry, whether you get it as part of a sub or pay the frankly too modest £14.99 they’re asking for it on the store. This is despite the fact that it’s a huge narrowing of scope for Josh Sawyer, the director of such beloved and vast role-playing games as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Unlike his previous works, Pentiment takes place entirely in one small Bavarian town over the course of a quarter-century.

Its cast is miniscule compared to those other games, as is its budget. Probably. I haven’t seen Obsidian’s books, but this was made by a core team of 13 and doesn’t have any voice acting. There are fewer buildings in it than there are in the starter town of Pillars of Eternity. I bet the entire game cost less than it took to get Matthew Perry to do a dozen lines for New Vegas. It might have even cost less than the lines he was doing during the fifth season of Friends.

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Tactics Ogre: Reborn is a remake of a remake. But that makes it no less important – essential, even – in the modern day. The strategy title – coming to PS4, PS5, Switch and PC – is a lush reworking of 2010's infamous RPG, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together that isn't afriad to dip its hands into the chest cavity of the original and move the organs around inside, restarting the heart with a well-presented and sharp pump of its fist.

Square Enix has, essentially, removed barriers to play in getting Tactics Ogre: Reborn out into modern players' hands. By letting your units take a little tour of the battlefield and collect cards that buff their stats and open their options up, you're no longer confined into one specific style of play with your armies. Letting your defensive classes, say, beef up their sword arms and get stronger hits in? That's viable now.

It means that your myriad battles – all lasting somewhere between 20 to 50 minutes – can unfold more fluidly. By dominating the battlefield and understanding your surroundings (and responding to the Buff Cards that like to spawn into the field), you can more readily and spontaneously respond to enemy threats.

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It says everything you need to know about God of War Ragnarok that you can go from listening to the captivating tales of Norse mythology, as told by your best mates as you float gently past dense riverbanks of lush jungle and along placid lakes surrounded by snow-capped mountains, to squishing giant flying eyeballs with your bare hands in the space of about 90 seconds.

Neither feel out of place or jarring, but the flying eyeballs probably disagree.

Although it starts out remarkably similar to the 2018 God of War both mechanically and graphically, God of War Ragnarok gradually builds into a meaningful evolution for the series, expanding the scope of gameplay both stealthily and overtly, while delivering a tense and twisty story that bends legend around its characters in exciting and endlessly interesting ways.

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