Katanaut looks good and has potential, and honestly, it’s getting better by the day. The developer has been dropping frequent updates that offer additions and enhancements that weren’t there when I first started playing, and the push and pull of going between melee and ranged during the action feels on point. However, there’s a lot of competition in the roguelike genre right now, and in order to succeed, Katanaut‘s going to need better handling of its story and adjustments to the grindy nature of the meta-progression. As it stands today, it didn’t land with me and I haven’t stuck with it, but that could change in the future with a few more patches and upgrades.

Unto the Evil is a solid start, but it’s likely that the two other DLCs yet to come will surpass it since the development team will have thousands of hours of community play and feedback by that time. Time will tell.

I would recommend any Doom fan give Doom 64 a try if they missed it the first time around, and in some ways it’s become my favourite Doom game. For me, it scratches that simple classic Doom itchthat Doom Eternal can sometimes lack, and does so with a unique visual style and atmosphere that makes it feel fresh, whilst also aping my early memories of Doom.

This blend of strategy and dexterity results in an experience that is consistently interesting to see and hear, but not always as engaging to participate in. While the mechanics complement the aesthetics, I never felt as though these elements were as in sync in my hands as they were on the screen. Victory often felt arbitrary in Breakout Beyond, and though my skills did develop over the course of my journey, I never felt as though they factored into my success or failure.

An incredible game which deserves respect from anyone with even a passing interest in FPSs.

I really like what Strike Vector EX does — the ships look great, it feels good to fly around in the world (when not hovering, anyway) and dogfighting games aren’t as common as they used to be. The developers are onto something good here, and I hope Ragequit continues on this track — maybe a sequel with a bigger focus on the campaign next time?

After Burner Climax is as close as it gets to getting the full experience short of stepping into a specialized arcade cabinet, and the EX mode gives legs to what would otherwise be a incredibly short play time.

SUPERHOT VR is a dazzling experience that manages to improve on what was already mind-bendingly intense. I didn’t think it was possible, but the developers have improved on SUPERHOT, cutting what little fat there was off of and leaving only the purest moments of intense violence. SUPERHOT was a completely bold and different addition to the world of FPSs, and SVR manages to do exactly the same thing to the virtual reality scene.

The Surge 2 is a thrilling ride from beginning to end. The foes are a joy to battle, the maps are built to invite and reward exploration, and the story offers just enough intrigue to keep the player hooked until the final battle. It’s wonderful to see developers taking a hard look at the successes and failures of their previous effort and ensuring that the sequel surpasses it in every way.

MainFrames is a delightful romp set in an era of technology that took place before my time, but thanks to its charm and solid gameplay, I felt nostalgic for that world despite having never lived in it.

End of Zoe is incredibly well-paced and zips through four mid-sized locations in around an hour, including a return to an old haunt that’s been completely transformed by the Umbrella-led cleanup. End of Zoe is an incredible expansion to RE7 not just because it completely rebuilds the core gameplay and still works perfectly, but because it reinforces just how transformative VR is to the horror experience.

Frustratingly, Ginga Force is more ambitious than it is good, dragging down its occasional moments of signature Qute brilliance with a glacially-paced story mode in service of a forgettable plot. With much more generous tuning of the progression rewards, this could potentially be an effective gateway title to welcome newer players to the genre. As it is, it’s weirdly perched between the old and new, with too much grind and too much noise to really land for anyone.

However, when not scratching my head over the wheezy story or gritting my teeth as I retraced my steps from the central castle to the local encampment for the thousandth time, Dragon's Dogma came alive with grand-scale role-playing that I won't soon forget. In between the missteps and oddness, there is an awful lot of awesome on display, and that's a hard sandwich to resist, condiments or not.

With slightly more vivacious level designs and a little American bombast here and there, this very British title could have turned a lot more heads.

Twenty years later, Blade of Darkness offers a fine-enough retro-style action experience. The combat system and gory decapitations will be of interest to fans of the genre, but one’s enjoyment will ultimately depend on nostalgia, or perhaps one’s tolerance for repetitive, clunky combat from 2001.

It offers some good ideas and fabulous artwork, but without fine-tuning those ideas and mollifying the overly-difficult ending, I finally understand why it got lost in the shuffle this year.

All in all, Paper Trail is a beautiful, thoughtful experience. This interesting approach to puzzle construction sets it apart from other sin the genre, and its audio-visual landscape only adds to its charm. While completing some of the levels was a struggle and having so many mechanics at once was difficult at times, Paper Trail remains a pleasure to venture through and solve.

The remaster's packed-in expansions add little, and the "upgrade" is a failure.

The game isn't deep or diverse enough to justify the 20-plus hours players can expect to invest before reaching the end. A tighter, narrower scope would have elevated Rebel Galaxy beyond being the sort of mild distraction derived from marathoning a TV show.

But Clear Sky takes everything that I loved about Chernobyl—the mature storyline, the nerve-wracking underground laboratories and the rewarding combat—and muddies them with a litany of bugs and bad design to the point that it overwhelms its more redeeming qualities.

While it does have issues, I hope that the brevity of Beholder’s appeal and the sloppiness of its translation don’t dissuade anyone from checking out one of the year’s more conceptually-ambitious indies. While I’ll hopefully never find myself in a position similar to Carl’s, I’d like to think that games such as Beholder help me to understand, even just a little, how a middle-class everyman can be coerced into performing heinous deeds, as so many throughout history have.

When played the way the developers intended, Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is a one-of-a-kind triumph, and a shared horror experience unlike anything ever produced. It’s extremely presumptuous to ask players to buy two copies to get the full effect, but I can’t deny that it’s absolutely worth the time and expense for those who do. Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is a true evolution of the interactive movie genre, and horror fans owe it to themselves to climb aboard.

Even if World Brothers were just a quickie distraction meant to tide fans over until the post-apocalyptic madness of EDF6 it would still be worth a look. It manages to be so much more than that, though — the huge cast, constantly surprising powers, humorous writing and huge numbers of classic enemies and heroes all combine to turn this into a celebration of the franchise. Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is a love letter to one of the craziest videogame series ever, and its simplified look and gameplay ironically make this unbelievably niche title one of the best jumping-on points the series has ever offered.

Perhaps this game appeals less to adolescent and adult males than most games do: Starfy is more Kirby than Mario. But it does what it does very well, and I hope that this title is merely the beginning of Starfy's legend in North America.

Void Bastards is sharp-looking, dryly ironic, and addictive. Anyone even remotely interested in systemic FPS games should play it.

The developers had a full year to get this game ready for consoles and bring it up to the level of current RE titles. Instead of doing that, they shifted the graphics from 3D to HD. What a waste.

As I ran around this forest performing repetitive fetch quests for much longer than I wanted to, I felt an awful lot like the fox I was possessing – a tool in a conflict I have no stake in, when all I wanted to do was look at the pretty scenery.

For anyone happy with being dumped into horde-style arenas and expected to slam zombie brains across the room with a sledgehammer with a team of like-minded savages, it’s definitely one of the better options on the market right now. Players who crave more than just shooting might find that it doesn’t quite manage to deliver a captivating experience past this core competence, though.