Even as it wraps up within four hours, Mixtape feels like an exemplar of the form: generous, indulgent and expertly curated, a crowd-pleaser with just the right number of deep cuts. If it doesn't persuade you to make one of your own, it may well convince you to call up an old friend to reminisce about the moments you spent together. When the world simultaneously sucked and felt so full of potential. When you were bored and rudderless and didn't realise how good you had it. [Issue#424, p.114]

Indeed, perhaps Pokopia's finest accomplishment is that it caters equally to all kinds of player: those who love to build freely, and those who crave more direction. If you're the kind of Pokemon obsessive who plays every entry and spinoff, you'll find plenty here to delight. And if you're an older or lapsed fan, or Pokemon has passed you by completely? Well, ditto. [Issue#423, p.118]

Konami has backed a game here, then, that's far from designed just to make a quick buck. Though, tentacles crossed, we hope it does that too. [Issue#423, p.110]

It's one of the freshest and most imaginative shooters we've played in a long time. [Issue#423, p.102]

It's a process as intuitive and satisfying as any merge-based puzzler... [Issue#422, p.121]

The final riddle's convolutions are forgiven by its payoff... [Issue#422, p.119]

So perhaps, we conclude, it's the right balance of the two styles that pays the biggest dividends, tagging each other in at intervals, oscillating between tension and release - after all, it's only when one character goes absent for too long that the game strains. [Issue#422, p.98]

It occasionally uses those worn tools to achieve something profound. [Issue#421, p.120]

As we play, we realise that Pathologic 3 is rich in a large variety of relatively shallow systems. [Issue#421, p.116]

Embellished with delightfully grotesque aesthetics and accompanied by some wonderful tunes... [Issue #421, p.112]

While born from the stuff of Little Nightmares, Reanimal transcends the confines of another sequel, leaving a uniquely devilish stain behind. [Issue#421, p.106]

Nioh 3 is ultimately less of a leap from its predecessor than Elden Ring was from Dark Souls 3, but that's to be expected from a direct sequel versus the introductory act of a new franchise. [Issue#421, p.96]

If not quite a giant leap for the 3D platformer, Big Hops is an accurate title after all. [Issue#420, p.106]

This is a story about finding your voice, but it also grapples with an uncertain time, when some outcomes are beyond our control or experience. [Issue#420, p.104]

TR-49 is may things simultaneously, to the extent that it can be overwhelming, causing the brain and heart to race - a remarkable feat for something so apparently simple. [Issue#420, p.103]

All these transgressions against convention add up to the most engrossing deck-builder of the past couple of years. [Issue#420, p.96]

If you can push through the lukewarm welcome and remain patient, though, you'll find something vivid and exciting here. [Issue#420, p.94]

The controls are excellent and the visuals might be a touch more rakish, but what really matters is that Radiangames has found a hectic pace that lends the blasting a kind of cumulative drama. In doing so, this until now polite series has picked up a bit of an attitude.

The town-building arc new to 0 resonates because you're renovating an idyllic town you see being reduced to ash and rubble in the game's opening hour. [Issue#419, p.121]

At its best, to play Hotel Infinity is to draw out a magic circle (or square) in the middle of familiar space, and the last thing you want is for external reality to intrude on that, whether it's the fear of ridicule or the sharp corner of a sofa you didn't move quite far enough. [Issue#419, p.116]

For most of its runtime, Routine is an extremely well-constructed horror game where even the tiniest detail has a big impact. Even if you've been following it since 2012, it has been worth the wait. [Issue#419, p.104]

Arise has embedded itself deep in our skull. [Issue#418, p.110]

Had a few more risks been taken, this too might eventually have been considered a classic. [Issue#418, p.104]

More than once we extract on our knees, the dregs of life draining out as we hit the button. [Issue#418, p.100]

Whether you're a mere mortal or a puzzle demon, then, you're all but guaranteed to enjoy the ride. [Issue#417, p.119]

Playing Ball X Pit is a long ramp of rapturous discovery, a mad scientist's laboratory where the goal is to make the screen as blissfully incoherent as can be. [Issue#417, p.118]

On the strength of Stray Children's eccentric charm and hopeful outlook for younger generations, whether or not we see another RPG from the studio after this, it feels certain that Onion Games will reveal still more strange and succulent layers yet. [Issue#417, p.112]

In a word, unbeatable. [Issue#417, p.106]

Above all, this is what few pretenders manage to imitate, and ensures that even when your stated mission is to 'kill time', you feel like you're doing much more. [Issue#417, p.104]

More broadly, Consume Me succeeds because it makes fun of Jenny without judging her; the narrative and its interactive delivery mechanisms are direct and unpatronising, criticising diet culture while demonstrating why someone could be ensnared by it. We aren't made to feel that we're being lectured or tricked into a cheap emotional response. Rather, Consume Me transcends the expected commentary on dieting and becomes a critique of self-improvement culture in general, without losing the sense of humour that makes its message digestible. [Issue#416, p.123]

If the progress loop is largely untouched, though, Strange Antiquities gradually reveals greater depth and detail, easing you in before piling up possible angles of research. From the start, when you examine an object you can now do so according to different senses - what does it look like, feel like, smell and sound like, and does it inexplicably send shivers down your spine? And if early customer requests only ask you to consider an object's form or constituent materials, later you'll need to pay attention to inscribed symbols, gems and more. Cross-referencing a burgeoning stack of books, notes and maps, you begin to absorb ancient words and ideas. It's fascinating. At times, Bad Viking gives itself an impossible needle to thread with so many nuanced elements in play. A few descriptions feel like misdirection, sending us to the hint system. More often, though, the game maintains its spell. The instinct to organise and label every last item is as compelling as the elegant interface and the story drawing towards a fateful conclusion. It would be strange to refuse the invitation. [Issue#416, p.122]

After a lengthy hiatus, the series has returned with a sense of forceful creativity it's lacked for some time. [Issue#416, p.106]

We're not sure it's entirely wise to save a game's best material for its back half, when the climb to reach it is so steep. It's hard to judge, even, whether it was all worth it - from the top of the mountain, those struggles at its base tend to seem so small and far away. But as we approach that third act, a game that at times we were struggling to find the motivation to pick back up has become one we cannot put down. As a payoff to dozens of hours of struggle - not to mention eight years of waiting before that - it's undeniable. [Issue#416, p.98]

Perhaps the biggest compliment we can pay to Sega is that even if you stripped away the IP and our memories of Musashi's prior missions, we would still have an exquisite action-platform game on our hands. [Issue#415, p.94]

Nintendo has still made something uniquely enjoyable, while wantonly shredding the playbook in the process. Whatever plans might be in place for Mario's next adventure, Donkey Kong has changed the lay of the land. [Issue#414, p.100]

The Alters is unique in how it explores trust, regret, choice, self-sacrifice, labour and autonomy through its characters every bit as much as its pylon puzzles. [Issue#413, p.110]

As an open-world game, it might be too light for some, but World earns the suffix in other entertaining ways. [Issue#413, p.106]

So while Monster Train 2 can initially seem more like an expansion than a sequel, it favours potency over a reimagining of the basics, using trusted design as a basis for even more excessive combat creations. It's all about bigger, weirder kinds of damage. If, that is, you're prepared to think like a mad scientist. [Issue#412, p.118]

No but(t)s about it: Takahashi's most complete-feeling game since Katamari sees him operating in a mode that suits him... down to the ground. [Issue#412, p.112]

Whatever the project's origins, the result is a thrilling blend of ideas, a game that, despite its fashionable and familiar components, feels wholly unprecedented. Moreover, Nightreign firmly establishes the studio's designers as not only masters of their own domain, but now a new, hitherto undiscovered realm. [Issue#412, p.100]

What keeps you playing, though, are two aspects of Minter's games that can always be relied upon: his enthusiasm for spinning ideas in hundreds of different ways, and his essential good taste. [Issue#411, p.120]

Tempest Rising doesn't revolutionize the genre, but nor does it depend on nostalgia. And if there's a gap waiting for the Veti to arrive, it's immensely gratifying to fill it with a gratuitous quantity of tanks. [Issue#411, p.116]

For all that it celebrates tight spaces, Skin Deep is anything but claustrophobic. [Issue#411, p.112]

If an RPG is measured by the temptation to explore elsewhere before heading to the next objective, this is as great as any. We stall for hours finding and investigating one magical environment after another. It's bliss. [Issue#411, p.100]

When those big swings connect, just as when we manage to knock several bottles off a wall with a single shot, Despelote offers an exhilarating reminder of the narrative ground games have yet to cover. [Issue#410, p.120]

In Assassin's Creed, the bloodthirsty are typically punished. For all its breadth and splendour, there is still not quite enough room to condemn its two most murderous inhabitants. [Issue#410, p.98]

As paradoxical as the thing itself, this single-storey mansion is a towering achievement. [Issue#410, p.106]

It's a game that wants to take games apart piece by piece - and is happy to use you as a screwdriver of sorts. [Issue#409, p.122]

A step forward over both previous entries, combining those elements with meticulous campaign craft and a gallery of inventive ideas. [Issue#409, p.116]

What begins with a potential murder, then, may end with the deconstruction of a way of seeing the world. [Issue#409, p.114]

For the most part the game's worldview is surprisingly progressive. [Issue#409, p.108]

While the script spills plenty of ink on questions of fantasy, sci-fi and prose fiction, Split Fiction's most compelling statements are made without a word, in the shape of the game itself. [Issue#409, p.100]

With its celebration of the little things in life, which rarely affords neat resolutions, Afterlove EP is a beautiful tribute not only to Jakarta but to its dearly departed creator. [Issue#408, p.122]

If Keep Driving isn't the Kerouacian roman-a-clef you might hope for, every trip will leave you with something to remember it by. [Issue#408, p.116]

If you want to know what unites all players, though, it's the sheer glory of the wide-open world that is brought into being here. [Issue#408, p.114]

This instalment breathes new life into a series that, for all its triumphs, had started to feel too constrained by its own illustrious history. [Issue #408, p.108]

Deliverance II demands unwavering fealty from its players, and the punishment for being lax in your duties can be severe. But if you're willing to go along with its more peculiar quirks, it offers a rare amount of freedom for a modern roleplaying game. Indeed, it's arguably a truer RPG than Bethesda's recent efforts, certainly a closer companion to Oblivion than Starfield is. And while its writing or characterisation aren't up there with those of The Witcher 3 or Baldur's Gate 3, its quest design is every bit as ingenious. [Issue #408, p.100]

No matter how well you think you know a language, there's always something new to learn. [Issue#407, p.107]

It's the trip that sticks with us, however - a personal passion project, made possible with public arts funding, that reaches, and sings, for the stars. [Issue#407, p.106]

Here is a game not only made over decades but one that feels made to be consumed over an equivalent timeframe. To play Caves of Qud is to be aware that you have just one life to give it - and that you might well come up wanting. [Issue#407, p.104]

Our so-called "Guardian of the Peace" concludes their journey with a body count nudging six figures. [Issue#407, p.100]

In short, the system - mostly magically - works. [Issue#407, p.94]

This is a wonderful, expansive piece of sequel-craft that has already drawn us in for a second go-around at a higher difficulty, with no fear that we've scraped the ceilings of its systems and stories. For something like that, we'll take a bit of instability any time. [Issue#407, p.90]

Tying everything together is an engagement with creativity in all its forms, and a delight in messing with the various shapes videogames can come in. [Issue#406, p.123]

It's more an effective reminder of why these games have been so captivating, though than the evolution they'll need, sooner rather than later. [Issue#406, p.122]

When it works, it's intoxicating. [Issue#406, p.106]

Despite the criticisms, though, The Great Circle isn't so much defective as in tension with itself. [Issue#406, p.102]

That there's nothing conventional about this beauty is firmly to its credit. [Issue#405, p.118]

All Activision's teams needed to deliver the best Call of Duty in half a decade was proper support. It's not V2 rocket science, after all. [Issue#405, p.112]

Who's quibbling about the originality of any given bone when there are so many of them just waiting to be broken, and in so many stylish ways? [Issue#404, p.121]

Redacted makes no apology, yet somehow escapes from the shadow of its inspiration. [Issue#404, p.116]

Double Exposure handles an adopted legacy with care, and crucially always feels like it's shifting the needle in a direction that's personal to you, which makes the smattering of lacklustre puzzles a frustrating but ultimately forgivable sin. [Issue#404, p.110]

Silent Hill 2 is the rare game that isn't over after we've finished playing. It's a state of mind, and it waits for us to return. [Issue#404, p.108]

If it's an imperfect game for an imperfect world, that in itself is something to aspire towards. [Issue #404, p.104]

Occasional misses aside, then, Starstruck is an outstanding debut performance. [Issue#403, p.120]

It's this beautiful mess of strategic genius and personality defects that elevates Wild Bastards to the pantheon of truly great hybrid roguelikes, managing to do for the FPS what Spelunky did for platforming, and Slay The Spire for deckbuilders. [Issue#403, p.116]

Where Frostpunk was painfully intimate, the sequel takes a bird's-eye view, but this distance serves it just as well. [Issue#403, p.100]

Take away the branding and there remains a core of irrepressible imagination, the fuel of so many great games, that is anything but robotic. [Issue#403, p.92]

Where once upon a time this series might have built an entire dungeon around a single gadget, here it's possible to pick up new inventions every few minutes, for hours on end. [Issue#403, p.96]

It feels revelatory, like rediscovering a lost art. The keyboard! How wonderful. [Issue#402, p.123]

Whatever tactics game you've enjoyed most in recent years, you're likely to find some element of it refracted somewhere in here. [Issue#402, p.116]

Just as in Assassin's Creed or Far Cry, each activity is enlivened by the knowledge that you have chosen to do it right now, out of many alternative options available in every other direction. So when one DOES hold your undivided attention for an extended span, it must be something special indeed. And of those, UFO 50 has more than its fair share. [Issue#402, p.100]

In a game that revels in base pleasures, it's just enough to kick our brain into action, before happily switching it back off for another two-minute rush of pure adrenaline. [Issue#401, p.122]

But that's what Arco does, playing on your sense of riding into the unknown, taking risks that might kill for the sake of curiosity. [Issue#401, p.120]

Super Monkey Ball had the sad fate of being born perfect, which means that, ever since that GameCube launch title, the series has been competing with memory. Not even a spin dash will get you past that. [Issue#400, p.120]

Of course, horror as reflection of the social and psychological is what we've grown to expect from Red Candle. That it couples here with such a confident step into pastures new, though, means we're keener than ever to see what's next. [Issue#400, p.114]

Arranger's cheeriness and playfulness thus works its way into every facet of its design, from the craft of its puzzles to the personality of its world and its inclusive embrace. This year has already supplied a pair of best-in-class puzzle games in the shape of Animal Well and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes; now they need to shift over and make room for one more. [Issue#400, p.112]

There's no denying it's a classy product, and since when do we want less novelty? [Issue#400, p.110]

The Final Shape has validated all the efforts that led to this moment, from players and developers alike. It affirms that Bungie is prepared to guide this game to a brighter future still. [Issue#400, p.106]

This is a jewel of a response, one that catches the firelight in different ways depending on how you approach it, but always dazzles. [Issue#400, p.102]

The neatness of the solution is all the more satisfying for the mess this once was: as the last piece slots into place, the sense of closure for player and protagonist feels as earned as it is overwhelming. [Issue#399, p.121]

As enveloping a puzzle space as any (outside of wells and hotels) we've encountered this year. [Issue#399, p.120]

It is a breath of fresh air to play a game that doesn't merely use its science-fiction setting as attractive window dressing, its outstanding writing and voice acting more than compensating for its visual shortcomings. [Issue#399, p.116]

This dark world - frequently illuminated by its eccentric characters and cheeky dialogue - is so captivating that the slight loss of late-game momentum is easily forgiven. [Issue#399, p.114]

What is for sure is that over its six-hour span we're engrossed in Still Wakes The Deep far more often than not. [Issue#399, p.100]

What follows is positively giddying, in the manner of a well-tuned ghost train or haunted house, provoking chuckles and squirms at the same time. [Issue#398, p.116]

The fascination of those lingering unknowns is part of why Basso's remarkable indie debut takes up residence in your brain when you're not playing it. But on a more fundamental level, it is simply a beautifully constructed, wonderfully characterful adventure, one that marks the blossoming of a major talent. [Issue#398, p.98]

For all its cinematic aspirations and borrowings, though, it's clear the Swedish studio's heart firmly belongs to videogames. [Issue#398, p.104]