What separates Death Stranding from full marks? Only its inaccessibility, but the reward for getting through its many layers is sweet beyond imagining - a brilliant story, incredibly varied gameplay and revolutionary asynchronous multiplayer. Keep pressing on. It’s well worth the trouble.

So far the best soulslike from Deck13. Miyazaki’s admirers won’t be enraptured, but not put off either by this game full of contrasts, bloody fun and several original ideas.

A bland, boring experience that’s trying to lure fans of this famous series into its trap of below-averageness. Stay away and pretend this game never saw the light of day. That’s the best vaccine against such a war disease.

Career Mode full of bugs, bland Volta instead of the much better Journey and worse gameplay than last year to boot. Ultimate Team is, on the other hand, even more fun, but is also one of the worst examples of loot box economy. This year’s FIFA belongs among the vanquished.

Inexperienced developers tried their hand on a Diablo-like RPG but they failed to understand what makes the genre so popular. Pagan Online is full of restrictions, locked content, reused maps and terrible loot.

A great adaptation of one of the best card games of all time. It’s fast, it’s accessible, it isn’t any less complex than the original. Are you bored of Hearthstone? Try Arena.

Undoubtedly one of the prettiest remakes of all time. The original game, rather surprisingly, works great even today (with a few welcome upgrades, of course). The only thing bugging me is the weirdly inconsistent performance.

A very pleasant turn-based strategy set in a strange world, full of tactical possibilities beyond the traditional “rock, paper, scissors” model. What’s more, there are even RPG elements and dialogue choices!

Neo Cab is a relaxing ride, ideal for the moments before you go to sleep so that you can spend the whole night awake, pondering your choices. Hail this cab. You won’t regret it.

An adrenaline trip full of emotion, broken hearts and beautiful visual effects. This crazy mix of ideas coalesces into one of the best music games in living memory.

Pilgrims are a most pleasant hike through a world full of Czech fairy-tales and humor that you’d struggle to find anywhere else. They’re very short, but you’re going to have fun the whole way. And you’ll leave your computer smiling.

A stylish anime soulslike with a pretty enjoyable fighting system and many different ways to play. The enemy design, however, is extremely unimaginative which applies to the level design and the story as well.

Deliver Us the Moon will captivate you by its fantastic atmosphere originating from ever- changing environments, brilliant audio and heavy questions concering us all. It’s just a shame that many potentially awesome systems were left stuck halfway there on the road to completion.

This game is the definitive proof that you won’t get a tasty meal just by mixing random ingredients that you like. The immersion sometimes feels nice (when you turn off the HUD), but there are performance problems galore and a very weak AI ready to ruin your day.

Trine is back, basking in the sunlight where it belongs. It’s beautifully stylized and the gameplay is great fun - and not too difficult, apart from some well-placed puzzles. Consider this a thorough recommendation.

This is a good basis for a game, but not a full game by itself. There are too many design errors and too little content - and the characters whose destinies you should be invested in are instead bland and uninteresting.

We Were Here Together is, by far, the best installment of the whole series. It’s finally long enough to last you several evenings, it’s much prettier, better to listen to, and its puzzles - finely tailored for two-player cooperation - will torture your mind. It’s just a shame that the story is so weak it’s barely even there.

Fresh ideas, beautiful visuals, but shallow gameplay that fizzles out uncomfortably soon. Concrete Genie is fun for a while and it is capable of gripping you, so it might serve as a tool to overcome foul mood. But this should have been a much better game.

Astral Chain’s brilliant combat system is married with calm investigative activities, interesting platforming and clever puzzles. The world is fascinating, the soundtrack is amazing, the story is captivating. This is one of the very best games by PlatinumGames - and of the year.

This is a licensed game done right. It doesn’t rely on cheap jumpscares and instead takes you on a journey inside the soul of a very broken detective.

This is a modern-looking homage to Chris Roberts’ space classics, especially Privateer and Freelancer, and one of the best space games you can get right now.

The campaign is certainly better than in Gears 4 and the core gameplay is fun, but Gears 5 is way behind the original trilogy in almost all other aspects - especially due to the incessant, and boring, lulls in the action.

There’s no fun to be had in Devil’s Hunt’s version of Hell. The fighting is broken, the level design is amateurish and the story is weak.

Dr. Mario World is Nintendo at its weakest. It’s solid, it’s colorful, but also greedy, unoriginal and… well, somehow redundant.

Amazing football freshened by realistic mistakes from players. PES is back in form, even though its old issues are back, especially bland game modes. At least the career mode got significantly better.

In spite of its technical problems, Borderlands 3 is still a very solid looter shooter, generous with both shooting and loot. The magic of the second installment - and its excellent writing - is, however, gone.

A beautiful, nicely crafted puzzle game draped in a dream-like atmosphere and filled with appropriately difficult mysteries. It’s a shame that it will probably annoy you by its failed attempts to tell a deep story and wax philosophical.

Notwithstanding little issues here and there, this is an RPG sure to be loved by every fan of HP Lovecraft. For everyone else, it’s a serious challenge comparable to reading the master’s work for the first time.