Nintendo serves up another bumper blink-and-you-lose blitz in WarioWare: Move It!, but the package is let down by the need to fumble with often-fussy motion controls.

A gorgeous fantasy journey enlivened by some thrilling rock-climbing.

Teyon blends bloody linear shootouts with light open world action for an entertaining, if unadventurous, RoboCop experience.

In its quest to be the most meta game ever made, Alan Wake 2 becomes a spectacle about writers and writing that badly needs an editor.

Moonring adds modern convenience to a classic Ultima-style RPG to create an approachable and appealing adventure with a huge amount of depth and discovery.

An endless cascade of ideas in a game that takes Mario to some wonderfully strange places.

Respectable platforming and classic Sonic elements are undermined by inconsistent new ideas.

At once a little simple and a little over-stuffed, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is still above all a game of immense charm and fluid, free-form style.

A thrilling arcade pool game with a lot of leeway for making your own blend of rules.

A serviceable, sometimes-engaging official Star Trek version of Stellaris that makes sense for generic space war fans, but flounders when it comes to narrative logic and Trekkie authenticity.

Missing the elegance of FromSoftware, Lords of the Fallen is let down by Soulslike clichés and performance woes.

A crew searches a watery world for a missing friend in this evocative game of exploration and conversation.

Dull warfare mars a fascinating battle for supremacy during the late Bronze Age collapse.

Developer Harebrained Schemes returns with an evocative and pulpy tactical adventure, where enjoyable turn-based combat just about offsets some woeful real-time stealth.

A shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck.

Detective Pikachu Returns is a straightforward mystery adventure whose strengths lie in its Pokémon setting and breakout star.

Golden Age Baghdad, along with a return to a more focused, stealth-based design, makes for a rich and characterful adventure.

A generous and lavish racer, with thrilling driving, that wants you for the long haul.

It's a short game, and quite a painless one, then, but it feels dense: rich and imaginative and the result of some insatiable curiosity for putting things together in new ways. Even at the end of the adventure, five or six hours in, Cocoon was happy to introduce a new mechanic. By which I mean, of course, it was happy to wordlessly teach it, complicate it, turn it inside out and then twist it into something almost unimaginable. I'm sorry to be vague, but you need to see this for yourself. There are no easy words, but also seeing it, witnessing such clarity and ingenuity, is where the pleasure lies.

There are improvements, and there are problems - business as usual. The era of EA Sports' FIFA may be over, but the game goes on.

Demake visuals are the perfect match for a game that's both direct and gloriously weird.

2021's groundbreaking Wikipedia ARG returns with new art and fungal sidestories – and a superb execution of its multi-layered, misinformation murder mystery.

Mortal Kombat 1 envisions an exciting future with fluid combat, a fantastic story mode, and superb visuals - but receding features, underbaked mechanics, and a dated online experience keep it in the past.

An open-world Hawaii and a generously spirited racer, chafed by always-online irritations and a lack of originality.

A wide range of systems make Dune: Spice Wars an enjoyable 4X, but the depth of Frank Herbert's world-building is largely lost in translation.

Arkham-esque combat and lovely platforming combine in this joyous and colourful game.

Lies of P has strong enough foundations in its edgy tone and tweaked weapons to provide an enjoyable experience for those in need of a FromSoft fix.

Starfield pairs near-impossible breadth with a classic Bethesda aptitude for systemic physics, magnetic sidequests, and weird vignettes. But in sacrificing direct exploration for the sake of sheer scale, there's nothing to bind it together.