In summary, I'd say there's good news and bad news with Starfield on PC. The quality of the game is clear and unlike, say, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, we're not seeing disruptive problems that ruin the experience. However, there's clearly work to do. The options menu isn't descriptive enough or helps the user in any way in tailoring the game to their hardware. Basic features like field of view control, HDR, gamma and contrast controls need to be added, as well as official DLSS and XeSS support...Tackling the disproportionately poor Nvidia and Intel performance also needs to addressed, while there's the sense that the game isn't properly tuned for the major CPU architectures used in today's PCs. Optimised settings clearly yields large performance dividends though, suggesting some degree of scalability, while the DLSS mod is a must for RTX users and can help both performance and image quality for Nvidia owners - but let's hope to see some genuine improvements from Bethesda in Starfield's first major update. [Digital Foundry]

Cars, boats, guns, stealth, traps, super-strength, scent-vision - it's crowded, but its density is actually our delight, because while it may not play as strategically or controllably as something like "Halo," or as evocatively and inventively as something like "Half-Life 2," it's still atmospheric, involving, and empowering.

It doesn't, however, fulfill the task of being absurdly entertaining. The failings in the campaign mean that for all its incredible fireworks and visual splendour, its not interesting enough.

As crisp and vibrant as the game looks, there's little to elevate this above far cheaper and more interesting games designed around the controls - rather than shoehorned into them.

A highly polished, mostly highly enjoyable hackandslash romp with only occasional lapses into tedious gaming by numbers same-old-same-old object hunting and respawning enemy laziness.

Weaving Terry Pratchett, Terry Gilliam and more, Esoteric Ebb is a comedic D&D adventure where a waylaid Cleric is tasked with solving a crime, days before the world's first election.

What a game. A tangle of motives, rendered all the more thrilling by memorable characters, some of which slyly subvert stereotypes, by moments of whimsy, by static art that has a particular flair for eyes, and for the way that eyes can reveal the interior life of a person. And that setting! One night, and one grey, drained-away day in Tokyo, the buildings sheer walls of bleached concrete, the sky latticed by power lines, telephone lines, by the webs of all that information zinging about. [Eurogamer Recommended]

It's extraordinarily well crafted and polished, as most Square Enix games are, and should deliver a good forty hours of entertainment for your money. Once you get past the kitsch trappings of the game, there's a surprising amount of intelligence underlying it all.

After years in the wilderness, RTS is pretty cool again right now, and something as cheerfully straightforward as this is just what's needed to stop the big braininess of "Company of Heroes" and "Supreme Commander" leading to another plunge into an inaccessibility that turns more casual players off the whole genre.

EA should take a page out of FIFA's book here: focus on the game. Every iteration - pre-alpha onwards - sit down and play a full game, 15-minute quarters. If it feels 'right', then you're on the right path.

As a follow-up to one of the most innovative and accomplished 2D fighters in recent years, Continuum Shift is a worthy successor which refines the BlazBlue formula.

It only works as a whole, and it doesn't hit you like a flavour; it builds up in your system like an intravenous solution. If you took away the masks, or the blinking colours, or knocking over guys with doors, or the stuff about answerphone messages, or the DeLorean, or the wobble on the screen, or the super-fast movement, or walking back through what you've just done, you probably wouldn't understand why it stopped working, but it would definitely stop working.

The game, as a whole, does not just play to the most talented and devoted. Difficulty can now be adjusted when you fail a song, even if it's the middle song in a set-list. Faced with one of Guitar Hero's notorious difficulty spikes, of which there are a few here, the option to try again at a human level is very welcome.

If you can overlook the niggles with the island's economy, Tropico is one of the best city building sims of recent years and certainly the most amusing.

If you're planning on playing the single-player much, it's an abomination, and you shouldn't touch it with a bargepole; and on Xbox Live, it's simply so flawed as to be unplayable in anything other than a basic 1v1 lobby, which arguably makes it into a pretty poor investment unless you have a friends list teeming with people who want to play.

As a starting point for a successful brand, though, Black Rock has totally nailed it, and this represents a hugely promising effort. Stomach churning insanity doesn't get any better right now.

Ostensibly the same again, then, LocoRoco 2 nevertheless pulls its charm tight and burrows deeper into the mechanics, level layouts and set-pieces, presenting more elaborate rewards in visuals and gameplay, and doing a better job of sharing them with you so that you don't always feel as though you're searching for cuddly needles in a Teletubbies haystack. It comes across as a refined, more elaborately constructed sequel that remembers why it was good in the first place.

Moria is an evolutionary expansion in which Turbine has honed what it does best: storytelling, an enjoyable, constantly changing levelling curve, and atmosphere in big, rocky buckets.

It’s as cryptic to begin with as any game ever conceived by Square, and it lures you in with some tremendous combat mechanics and a unique selling point (Disney), but it also tries to piss you off with a vacuous opening zone and the Chipmunks.

A sequel that takes the thrilling cold-survival city-building heart of Frostpunk and evolves it in every way, while losing none of what made the series so special to begin with.

Given the circumstances that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales releases into, it's heartening to have a tale that's so eager to see the best in everyone, and that strives for diversity in a world divided. In that way, Spider-Man: Miles Morales' message of hope feels like the right sentiment for this very moment. It's escapism with a social conscience, a timely, tremendous thing right now. Insomniac's second crack at Spider-Man retains the breathless energy of the original, but ends up a lot like Miles Morales himself - still fresh on its feet, a little awkward in places, but steadily growing into itself. It's a game that's full of character, and a tremendously likeable one it is too. [Eurogamer Recommended]

It's a brave experiment in the genre, a more solid package than the Penumbra games and stops at nothing to make you truly, deeply uncomfortable.

As it is, Soulcalibur IV's new features and its ability to entertain both newcomers and fighting game experts make it a good buy - if not the revolutionary leap to the next level you might've hoped for.

For those of us who understand that while true non-linear storytelling is never going to happen, personalising a linear narrative in meaningful ways according to your own inclinations is far from inconsequential, then it's another significant step into the future.

Forza Horizon is built on the best parts of the Motorsport games but delivers a strikingly different experience to them, and in many ways a better one. It has its own personality. It exchanges infinite laps and bottomless grind for an actual structure and a sense of adventure, while mastering its roads requires less practiced skill than it does courage and intuition.

Batman Arkham Shadow can feel rough around the edges at times, but it's still a more than worthy entry to the Arkham series, and an essential Quest 3 experience.

A stunning simulator that true racing enthusiasts will be able to marvel at for months, but one that will be an incredibly daunting prospect for those of us just merely looking for racing entertainment. It truly goes off the scale in terms of difficulty if you've any intention whatsoever of playing it remotely seriously, and I've never come across anything quite this brutal.

Here's a more grounded Doom, but one that's as brisk and playful as ever.