Gory and exacting, Children of the Sun mixes the highs of tactical precision and cracking a killer puzzle.

The survival horror multiplayer has mastered publicity stunts, but it doesn't make a lasting impression.

Chug through the earth and navigate ingenious levels in this terrific platformer.

All of which combines to make Open Roads an experience that's pleasant to drift along to. The moment-to-moment uncovering of the mystery and your family history is gently absorbing, and provides the catalyst Opal and Tess need - mother and daughter - to come to some realisations of their own. Those thorny familial realisations are handled maturely and end up in a nice place of understanding, which I appreciate, and likely you'll end up with a warm glow from the game, as I did. It's a nice day out. It's just that as soon as it seems to get going, it's over and you're on your way home.

A gentle and unusual building game that's memorable but missing some purpose.

Part of the team behind Sang-Froid are back with a spiritual sequel powered by some truly dazzling thinking.

As a Sony-published release, Ronin isn’t quite Team Ninja’s Elden Ring, even if it does evolve its Nioh-like formula, with the help of existing open world formulae. Still, while it’s been great to witness the renaissance of Japanese games these past few years, there’s something special about seeing a Japanese developer stepping up to reclaim the AAA open world samurai game for itself - especially one that cares more about being a video game than a Kurosawa film.

Nintendo's second-ever Peach game finally realises the character is destined for smart level design and center stage.

A huge improvement over the original, and a captivating journey from beginning to end.

Great ideas and a storied history are mired in mediocre combat and a disappointingly unpolished delivery.

Lurking behind a dated exterior is a limited but sophisticated RPG with a unique setting and some memorable new ideas.

An ingenious combo-driven challenge that's speedy and fun.

And while you don't get any of Llamasoft's recent games, the collection ends with a lovely video piece about Minter and his partner and co-developer Ivan "Giles" Zorzin. It also ends with a lot of people admitting that the brilliant, terrifying, gorgeous thing about Llamasoft is that their games continue to get better and better and better, Space Giraffe! Polybius! Akka-Arrh! All of these make me think that, if we ever get it, Llamasoft 2: The Rest of the Jeff Minter Story is going to be unmissable.

Vanillaware's beautiful art brings to life a staggeringly deep strategy RPG where building units is just as fun as orchestrating battles.

Drag and drop with a blessedly empty head in this total charmer.

I've never read any of the Moomin books, but last year or maybe the year before I did read a memoir by Jansson about a period of her life in which she settled on a little island, Klovharun. It was "a rock in the middle of nowhere", no running water or electricity and any shelter had to be constructed. The book presents a dream landscape, but it's one of those dreams in which you have so much to do. Sorting wood and fuel and things to eat and drink: Jansson loves all this, but she doesn't hide any of it or try to frame it as something that was easy. I see that same resilience, that same fortitude, when Snufkin calmly dismantles a park and pushes back the forces of order and regulation.

Poker goes into the blender and emerges in fine form.

Dark Forces emerges from Nightdive's bacta tank refreshed and ready for action, combining classic FPS mayhem with thrilling espionage-themed missions.

KillPixel's shooter demonstrates breathtaking ambition in its 3D level design, but that can come at the cost of pacing and fun.

Rebirth is a playful take on an emo classic that's bloated but full of character in a bid to justify its own existence.

A versatile build system allows for experiments with deep skill trees and unusual crafting mechanics - but after the initial excitement of creating those builds, momentum fades.

Ubisoft's long-in-the-works pirate adventure boasts a beautiful world and bombastic ship-to-ship combat, but it sinks amid boring busywork and tedious traversal.

A punishing, exhasperating slog, or an off-beat love story between driver and car, human and the Zone? Pacific Drive is both and then some.

For all its foibles though, I have confidence that Valve is at least pushing the game in the right direction. After all, both CS: Source and CS:GO evolved considerably after their initial launch and became classics in their own right, and all the building blocks are here for Counter-Strike 2 to follow the same trajectory - and from a much better starting position. The bottom line? This is already an incredible game that's well worth playing - after all, it is Counter-Strike, too.

Don't Nod drops the melodrama for a poignantly performed story about grief and injustice, where the difficult choices tug at your heart and principles.

With its high-chaos, high-comedy firefights, Helldivers 2 is a riot to play with friends – although its launch has been hampered by persistent matchmaking and progression problems.

Get to the end of the short campaign and you realise it isn't short at all, with time attacks and plus levels and expert levels unrolling before you It's a lovely package, and another pleasant stop on the Switch's protracted farewell. The more I played, the more I found myself collecting fragments of memories of the GBA original which I thought I had lost. Familiarity, then, and forgotten pleasures: isn't that what a Vegas residency should be all about?

These classic games remain as ingenious, memorable and frustrating as ever.