Marathon delivers a plethora of deep mechanics, engaging gunplay and a truly unique look, but there's simply too much tedium and way too much busywork between fights.

Crimson Desert is a highly ambitious open-world game. It is absolutely beautiful, packed with discovery, puzzles and combat. It doesn't always deliver on all its potential, and bugs are to be found, but in the end it is unique, mesmerizing and addicting.

The setting is great, the characters are solid, and the missions provide just enough variety to keep the experience engaging all the way to the finish line. However, the game still shows its age, clearly bearing the marks of being a decade old.

An engaging city builder with a novel concept centering water power and possibilities in industrialisation and giga-projects. But the daily lives of the inhabitants suffer from monotony

I'm sure this will be something very special for those who already love Pokémon and games like Animal Crossing and Dragon Quest Builders 2. But once the initial wow feeling is gone, there's little that makes me want to return to Pokopia.

Quotation forthcoming.

Quotation forthcoming.

Requiem delivers the best of both worlds — a masterclass in tension and release.

A beautiful and atmospheric walking sim that lacks meat on its bones.

Styx: Shards of Darkness is an entertaining adventure that offers challenging stealth in vertical environments packed with obstacles. While there are plenty of possibilities and Styx has many tricks to avoid being spotted by guards, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this could have been so much better.

High on Life 2 is a breath of fresh air in a gaming landscape that, let’s face it, has a tendency to take itself way too seriously these days.

Mario Tennis Fever takes the series another step in the direction of Mario Kart craziness, but it doesn’t quite work as well on the small tennis court. Multiplayer matches provide short lived fun, but the overall experience lacks staying power, resulting in a shallow and uneven entry that fails to fully capitalize on the series’ potential.

The air runs out of the balloon long before the game’s end, and by comparison, Romeo is a Dead Man feels like exactly what came before: a game trapped 20 years back in time.

Appearances aside, Escape from Ever After isn't just a Paper Mario knock-off, but a wholly enjoyable roleplaying game in its own right. If Flynt had a red cap and an airy moustache, you might've convinced me that Nintendo had made this.

Nioh remains at the top of the soulslike genre, outside of FromSoft's own titles. The third instalment's ninja style fighting and more open world are both excellent additions to the formula.

Gorgeous visuals, exciting combat, simply stunning in its execution. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined should be the template that all other remakes look to going forward.

An improvement on its predecessor, in terms of both combat and setting, but the choppy framerate and ridiculous outfits ensure that the Code Vein II experience remains an underwhelming one.

Contre Jour ends up being -- despite some small flaws -- a good physics based iOS game. A well thought out game mechanic revolving around manipulating the terrain lies as a solid foundation, and every level completed feels like a small triumph.

Square Enix has worked wonders in porting this gorgeous game over to the Switch 2, with the lower resolution and frame rate the only noticeable downgrade. If you've been waiting to play this game on the go, now's the time to jump in and explore Midgar.

Octopath Traveler 0 is without a doubt the best game in the series, and it almost sounds strange when we consider that this is a reworked and expanded version of a mobile game. Despite that, the combat system has never been better, and the stories in this game are fantastic, and even through little pixel people they are more believable and poignant than most of the genre has offered in a long, long time. There's just one thing that really annoys me. Almost all of the music is recycled from previous games. It's amazing, and better than pretty much any other music that's come out since the first Octopath Traveler game, but still, we heard it in the first Octopath Traveler game.

Though Metroid Prime 4 doesn’t quite surpass its predecessors, it offers solid, old-school puzzle exploration, while suffering from a few pacing issues in the later chapters.

This point and click adventure ticks all the boxes to feel like a retro classic. Stunning presentation, great design, and really good acting.

A clever and often funny take on the superhero genre, with a tight narrative that pulls you in and refuses to let go throughout its eight episodes.

This year's Call of Duty gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Black Ops 7 might not stray very far from the franchise's usual offerings, but makes up for it with clever design choices throughout the campaign, multiplayer and zombies.

You can have a great time if you stop there and just enjoy the game at its most fundamental, but if you take your time, get into the details, and get to know the different drivers and vehicles, you will find a game with enormous depth. It lies in the small details, and there are many of them here.

Syberia is a classic adventure game that truly deserved more than this pretty, but lacking remaster. The story is thankfully as wonderful as ever.

Jurassic World Evolution 3 gives you the tools to build the dinosaur park of your dreams. There are still annoyances with difficult dinosaurs, but overall this is the best game in the series.

This roman take on the Anno-series scratches all the itches for the dedicated Anno-player, though your life as a roman governor could have been more smooth with some player-friendly interface-options.