There are puzzles, but never in a way to stop you on your journey forward. Like the music, there’s a pull or need to keep going. It’s what one might dismiss as art first, game second. Shape of the World is, well, neither. Instead it is a transportive journey that feels like a great ambient electronica album come to life. Brief and wonderful, and something to savour.

The lack of depth, a good story, and stuff like voice acting makes it all feel a little average. Pulling on your Zelda nostalgia heartstrings to drive motivation, even though the battles are all pretty much the same.

Moonlighter, like many classic action-RPGs or fantasy blends like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, is a grower. With masterful touches.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more complete, competent, fun and wonderfully balanced Indie experience. We all love the God of Wars and Battlefield Vs of the world, but I’d take 10 more Yoku’s Island Expresss every day of the week. And absolutely perfect gaming experience.

This collection shines with the underlying impressive emulation of Mega Drive hardware, the variety of visual options you get to switch between realistic and pixel-heavy versions of each game, and the quality of life stuff like rewinding and picking up where you left off. And thanks to over 50 titles in the collection there are gems to find that you may not have played before - including Phantasy Star and Alien Soldier.

There’s value in narrative, if you don’t mind sloppy exposition, telegraphed characters and incentives as well as explosive quick time events that sit at odds with arbitrary quick time events, that sit even further at odds with ‘page-turner’ quick time events. When you get towards the game’s crescendo, which admittedly is handled excellently between the three main robot characters, and deal with ‘action’ sequences that take you out of your nanna or grandpa QTE slumber, the game feels interesting, but it’s smoke and mirrors. Acting, visuals and a relatively well-conceived future Detroit are the carrots on string here. The problem is our robot horse needs QTEs as well to get going and without enough blue blood, bled by actual gamers, it’s a hard task and road to Maple Syrup ahead.

An RPG of this scope could never really be perfect, but Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire has got it where it counts – story. Not only in the linear progression of following a god to try and reason with a trail of wanton destruction, but in the open exploration and creating your own mark with Deadfire. There are very few lengthy, memorable, and expansive stories as what you can find here.

There’s something about it that keeps you coming back, whether that’s the fun exploration or simply going on a quest to clear a few houses of infestations and then loot all the cupboards and drawers for goodies. But above all that it does nail the combat side, where headshots feel great as does getting up close with a machete. Gruesome and fun zombie-apocalypse survival, but also bug-ridden and poorly optimised.

Death Road to Canada attempts to offset the normally dark themes of the zombie genre with zany characters, a charming pixel art style, and poppy music, but the lack of depth to its combat and randomly generated content will quickly leave you feeling frustrated and unsatisfied. There is some fun to be had here for sure, which is definitely best experienced with friends, but that doesn't make up for its issues and overall lacklustre action.

If you have a spare 100 hours or so, you could do a lot worse than this. If you don’t, its ever-long pacing means it’s not at all hard to pick and play in increments. Absolutely recommended.

With City of Brass there’s a feeling you’re playing a home port of an arcade game, where short spurts of action, strategy, and fun doesn’t translate to a sit-down to play for an extended length of time videogame. It looks fantastic but there’s not a lot below the surface. But by keeping all power-ups and progression tied to procedural generation, there’s just not enough to keep you coming back time and again.

Although not the biggest or most expansive release in the franchise Thrones of Britannia surprises in its depth and commitment to building an experience specific to an era and place. From the warring houses and backstabbing and ever-changing map, to the war-hungry Vikings looking to cause one last moment of chaos. If medieval history is your thing, then this is the Total War for you.

BattleTech’s ambitions may exceed its grasp, but there is a lot to love about the entire package. From the tactical combat to the great story and characterisation. Marred by mostly technical issues, it’s a title that should theoretically improve over time. In the meantime, even in a scrappy state, the MechWarrior meets XCOM promise mostly delivers.

Going in with as little knowledge of the mechanics and choices and scenario structure is the best way to experience Frostpunk. One of the most intense, beautiful, and emotionally resonant games that features arranging housing and streets ever made.

For all its wonder and remarkable variety, where even after a dozen attempts at adventuring through the world of Ditto no two versions ever look the same, it’s overly punishing when it doesn’t need to be. Especially when exploration is concerned. And keeping you several steps behind the threat, never powerful enough to feel like a true hero, feels slightly off. Fun, charming, but ultimately frustrating.

The Enemy Within lets you shape and navigate your way through not only an entire relationship, that being the one with John Doe, but also in the direction and creation of The Joker. When you factor in that the Joker is perhaps almost as iconic as Batman, that Telltale was able to execute this progression at all, let alone imbue it with emotional weight – makes The Enemy Within essential for fans of the caped crusader.

This is a God of War game, and it’s f.cking brilliant. It has old-school game-design coupled lovingly alongside a modern storytelling tilt, and it marries the two in a contemporary and meaningful way. And playing on PS4 Pro on a setup like my Samsung QLED 65” Q8C with HDR, it just screams quality.

Are wonderful visuals, brilliant sailing mechanics, and fun activities like playing music and throwing up on your crewmates after drinking too much grog enough? For a few hours sure, but probably not in the long term. What’s here is extremely polished and wonderful to look at. And if the simple joys of sailing through Sea of Thieves gorgeous world clicks with you as it did me, then however long you spend visiting outposts and islands and strange wrecks – will be time well spent.

With an expansive story and memorable mechanics, it’s hard not to view Kingdom Come: Deliverance as one of the most interesting RPG releases in years. One where the difficulty is often a barrier to progress and some of the design choices become frustrating experiences in repetition or flat out giving up and moving on to another activity. Or reloading an earlier save to do more sword training. Rough around the edges sure, but the ambition often shines through.

Above all else, and despite its similarities and homages to several films and other properties A Way Out surprises with little touches and moments of joy. Stopping to play Connect Four in a hospital waiting room or picking up a banjo for a strum in a farmer’s house after washing his dishes and stealing his clothes. A Way Out understands that co-op can be fun and spontaneous in addition to providing another tense moment requiring coordination.

What we get in the end is a Far Cry that is both structured and full of open player-agency and emergent activity. It’s a game whose game-world is designed for you to love and adore, to become intimate and at one with; to be equally terrified of. This is videogames, after all, and that is at the fore of design here.

Even with its faults, from the weird two-halves of the story to the often poorly designed and uninteresting side-quests, Final Fantasy XV feels like a triumph. Discovering a new location or seeing a giant monster for the first time, Final Fantasy XV constantly surprises. And thanks to its likeable cast of heroes, provides as memorable an animated adventure of a boy band in a world filled with monsters could possibly be.

In the end the narrative isn’t quite as strong as the puzzle content found throughout, but nonetheless Q.U.B.E. 2 is an impressive entry in the test-chamber puzzle game subgenre first made popular by Valve’s Portal.

No matter the art form, there’s always room for a good sci-fi story. The Station, from a team of veteran developers who worked on titles like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and BioShock Infinite, offers a great sci-fi ending. One that is both memorable and, in a way, fun. The only real issue is that outside of the narrative there really isn’t much to the puzzle solving and exploration. Reading emails, listening to audio recordings of conversations, and taking in a space bedroom or two. Stuff we’ve seen and handled more intuitively before.

Even though there are several weapons to unlock and find along the way, a lot of them feel undercooked. Plus, some of the boss mechanics lean a little too heavily on the side of increasingly more difficult patterns to learn. That being said, it’s still worth checking out. Immortal Redneck is the sort of game that seemingly comes out of nowhere, where initial curiosity leads to hours of fun. For fans of old school shooters and the rouge-lite setup of games like Rogue Legacy then it’s well worth equipping Grandpa’s Blunderbuss and venturing into a pyramid filled with adorable but dangerous snakes and flying skulls.

Polished, fast, over-the-top and most of all fun, Dragon Ball FighterZ is a fighting game worth more than just a passing glance. Its lengthy campaign alone will keep you glued to the action for a while, but its other gameplay options and Dragon Ball universe depth make it something of a must own -- whether your DBZ fan alumni, or fighting game guru. One of the year’s excellent fighting game releases.

No doubt it would have been interesting to see some alternate take or variations in this remaster, perhaps in a secondary ‘modern mode’ with streamlined controls, updated AI, and less tech-tree clutter. But as a reasonably priced remaster that doesn’t mess with the original apart from implementing some minor improvements and all the bug fixes and content that came with later expansions it’s hard to fault Age of Empires: Definitive Edition. A fun, engaging trip down RTS memory-lane.

The themes of nature, balance, and the connectiveness between all living things is strong and can be felt throughout. In the end Fe certainly looks the part but doesn’t quite have enough memorable moments or feeling of discovery to match its ambitious design.