Ride a motorbike across the sand with a worm biting your bum, fly your own ornithopter high in the sky, set down a combine harvester to collect spices. There's so much to do here even though it's all sand. Anakin Skywalker would hate it here.

For those looking for a strategy game to plug away at for the rest of May, Songs of Conquest may just be the ticket. It's crammed with content, has a polished sheen that many other games fail to achieve, is easy to pick up and play, and has systems that make even its more complex elements approachable or surmountable.

With severe pacing issues in the first and third quarter, with frequent let-downs, and with a lukewarm ending, only fans like me will want to complete it, and even if there's some great talent involved here, the best news is that the technology is now ready to maintain more, and hopefully much better, games in the future.

It's a humorous action game that relies heavily on the fact that it feels funny and unique in its presentation.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name is a title that serves as a bridge between the two main series by filling in those plot holes left over from Yakuza: Like a Dragon, while also offering a complete new epilogue to Kazuma Kiryu as the protagonist, before ceding his throne as Like a Dragon's protagonist to Ichiban Kasuga.

Simple but effective and engaging combat, a neat story wrapped up in an interesting, quirky world. It makes Lost in Random: The Eternal Die a game that's very difficult not to like, even for an aging grump like me who has all but had it with the idea of roguelikes, roguelites, and any other like or lite.

If you already own the original and can take advantage of the "cheaper" upgrade path then it's not exactly a big risk if you are looking for a reason to return to Oregon and to replay Deacon's adventure. However, if you're going to snag this at full price, you'd be just as well to look to the original instead, as the best part of Days Gone is still very much the storyline.

Frozenbyte doesn't take many chances with Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy. It's another game based on the now familiar Trine script - there are a few new puzzles, new properties and the like, but basically it's much the same as before.

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster is an absolute triumph, and may very well be the best yet from Nightdive. With only a few minor flaws, this space adventure is dangerously close to the perfection that Quake Remastered delivered last year.

EA Sports FC 26 is, in short, a better game than what we have seen in recent years. There are major improvements on the pitch and minor improvements here and there in various game modes, however there are still things that detract from the experience, such as buggy menus that froze my game several times and a poorly updated Player Career.

Puzzling Places executes its simple idea successfully. The clear appearance and calm atmosphere supports light puzzle solving, and handling those snazzy jigsaw pieces makes time fly easily.

Despite a disappointing ending and some irritations with the dialogue and combat, Beyond Galaxyland is an RPG that will remind you of the heady days of your first Final Fantasy, mixed with a Pokémon blend.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is cosy and full of creative joy for anyone willing to take the time to build a Mii community with personality. I would argue that it requires a fair bit of imagination on your part as a player to get the full value out of the experience. By that, I don't just mean a desire to create visually, but also an overarching concept of who your characters are and what their relationships with the other residents should look like. Essentially, build your own story and see what happens. For me, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is primarily a great tool for creative thinking, whilst it's then up to us as players to decide what we want to create.

Big Hops has plenty to celebrate and reasons to check it out, but it is also worth remembering that it's quite the traditional and familiar 3D platformer in many respects.

If you've eaten too much after this year's extraordinary role-playing buffet, you can easily let this serving go by in the first instance, but if you have an appetite for more and an interest in the universe, Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader is definitely worth a recommendation.

There's no way to dislike this, Red Dead Redemption was a fantastic game and still is today, but this is a shameless cash grab like no other.

Our impressions are generally positive, partly because it works more often than not, partly because it creates great gaming memories, and partly because it improves on many of its predecessor's gameplay systems. It's the amount of technical issues that prevent this from reaching higher heights than its predecessor.

The best words I can possibly use to describe The Operator is that never once during my playthrough of this game did I wish I was on the other end of the phone call, in the heat of the action in the field, ducking under gunshots and evading danger. Bureau 81 has somehow made being Alfred more exciting than being Batman.

The middling world activities and RPG elements don't detract from the fact that Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden is a remarkably engaging story to follow. From the first moment you'll be entranced by the tale of Antea and Red and the contract they have been tasked to fulfill.

Its unique idea is a logical extension of Saber's previous productions, and serves as an excellent motivation for building roads and repairing infrastructure. Games tend to encourage unmitigated destruction, so repairing that destruction is a refreshing change of pace.

I will not explain away or excuse Game Freak's bizarre way of constructing their games, nor will I claim that it makes sense for these AAA titles to be so incredibly stingy with rudimentary details such as 3D-modelled balconies in a city inspired by Paris, or voice acting. But at the same time, this is fundamentally a game that is once again about collecting, developing, and battling with Pokémon. That's what you do most, and that's what works best.

NeoSprint is a charming game in a retro genre already overflowing with games. It does nothing to stand out from the crowd, but at the same time it offers what is most important in a car game: driving pleasure.

If the stress and time investment of F1 Manager games put you off of them but you still want the thrill of leading a motorsport team to victory by racing on familiar tracks with familiar sounding corners and landmarks and familiar teams and drivers then Golden Lap does enough right to make this a top choice.

Into the Restless Ruins actually offers something new and fresh that helps enrich the beloved rougelike genre. Although it borrows liberally from other rougelike giants, Ant Workshop has really borrowed from the right places and created something unique that is very addictive and offers an insane amount of replay value.

MotoGP 26 remains a very strong game in a series that does justice to the real-life MotoGP, and gameplay-wise it's entertaining, but unfortunately it feels as though the series is starting to slow down a bit too much. There simply isn't enough new content, nor does it feel sufficiently different from last year's title.

For once the smoke has cleared and the blocks have fallen into place, Drop Duchy offers a charming adventure where cute graphics blend with interesting and engaging gameplay. It may not be a ground-breaking take on the puzzle genre as a whole, but it is nonetheless an exciting concept with a great many clever touches. If you enjoy tactical thinking and relaxing puzzle-solving, this is an obvious purchase, and if you're willing to get to grips with all the complex choices on offer, you'll also find a game that you can spend countless hours playing over the coming summer months.

Titans of the Tide begins as a "great" platformer and steadily slips into "good" territory, perhaps even "mediocre" at times…

The Midnight Walk doesn't always succeed as a game, but as a story and an art form, it draws you in effortlessly. It's a brilliantly atmospheric adventure that makes up for limited gameplay with emotional peaks that'll make you question everything you've just witnessed and done. The Midnight Walk might be a shorter path than I first thought, but it's not one I'll be forgetting.