Starfield is an expansive and beautifully crafted open world experience full of endless discovery and opportunities.

Intelligent, involved, and relentlessly exhilarating, now, just as in '93, the most exciting FPS around is a game called Doom.

On court, this is probably the best-looking launch game on PS4, and a real step forward for the 2K series. The new story mode is novel, but far from perfect.

More sparkle than a wand dipped in fairy dust.

Titanium Court is a jazzy, off-beat corpcore roguelike that blends match-three with RTS battles in a way that feels effortlessly simple rather than overwhelming complex. Infused with a joyously weird sensibility that extends into each roguelike war, this is snappy enough to keep me coming back to see what could possibly be next, all with an overarching mystery that keeps me compelled. This is so oddball it couldn't possibly be like anything else, and this fusion is so unique it'll keep me hooked for many more hours to come.

There are many more original real-time strategies out there, but few that scream "pick up and play me" as loudly as Tiberium Wars. Its back to the basics approach to the genre won’t win any prizes for innovation, but it should prove to be a fan favorite anyway.

While Madden 10 is our favorite football game of this generation, it suffers from trying to do too much. We love the new gameplay engine (more, please!) but could’ve happily done without most of the presentation “improvements” that get more irritating with each game.

Combat is incredible, and the cities of Boston and New York deliver some of the strongest open-world gameplay you'll experience this generation. And yet, it's still an extremely uneven experience, even if the strong gameplay outlives the issues to make for a solid package.

Continuum Shift improves on Calamity Trigger in every way, and it's undoubtedly one of the best fighting games available; it oozes style, incorporates some truly radical ideas into its gameplay and sports a level of polish not always seen in fighting games.

Life is Strange fails to execute in critical spots, but it's beautiful world, fun time-reversal, and honest look at adolescence makes it a game worth remembering. A diamond in the rough.

While it may lack a certain technical finesse, Hotline Miami manages to take players down a road not many games do. It's as much fun to play through the game as it is edifying to reflect on what we've done, and for that, it is quite powerful.

So, is Guitar Hero World Tour better than Rock Band 2? Not quite. Yes, the instruments are superior, and we love four-on-four online matches, varied tweaks to each instrument’s parts, character customization, and build-your-own-guitar options. But, we just don’t get as much out of the music editor as one would hope, and Rock Band 2’s better note maps, smarter interface and more musical “feel” resonate more with us.

Don't buy Dead or Alive 4 unless you're willing to become its student. It's a great looker, but it's a sourly aggravating game until you learn its ways. However, if you take the time to get some technique wrapped up in those fists, you'll start to enjoy the depth behind the startlingly pretty face.

An astounding technical achievement. It's one of the best-looking games ever, and it knows how to bring the spectacle. Its single-player provides a playground for the joyous nanosuit powers, although some buggy AI and generic aliens keep the campaign from soaring as high as it could have. The multiplayer, meanwhile, is a fantastic buffet of playstyles that rewards the creative player.

This enchanted kingdom certainly has its flaws, but it's still well worth a visit.

Frostpunk 2 successfully expands on everything that the original brutal city builder had, and its larger scale, great story campaign, and new faction system are as "fun" as a calamity reduction simulator can get.

A brilliant but all too brief sample of Miles Morales' superhero life.

If you're new to Hotline Miami, and you want to play on handheld, you should definitely check the game out on Vita. If you have a PC, though, that remains the best way to play the game on a big screen, as the controls work better with a mouse and keyboard.

A great departure from the core Forza Motorsport titles. If you're blindly walking into the game without knowing that it's less sim-driven and far more of a fun arcade racer with many of Forza's trademark trappings--rewinds, color-coded tracking, and customization--you're likely in for a rude awakening. It's got its bumpy patches, but if you're interested in playing a long, deep, and rewarding racer, Forza Horizon is a game worth putting in the mileage on.

The perfect blend of narrative and gameplay, coherency and strangeness, Control is a game we’ll be talking about for generations.

Stick of Truth is South Park's Arkham Asylum--a triumph of a licensed game that manages to fit in line with the franchise while paving new ground in gaming. In this case, the new ground is dick jokes, but--still--innovation is innovation.

Armored Edition is a great way to finally appreciate the game along with a majority of its DLC. However, the Wii U port isn't preferable to Game of the Year versions you'll find on PS3 and 360. Armored Edition utilizes the GamePad better than some other AAA games being ported to the system, but that's still not enough to make this the definitive release, or one you should go out of your way to play.

A fun and thrilling wrap-up for the series. While it has its share of wonky sections--it's bloated with too many features and collectibles, its pacing is off, and the Desmond sections fall short of expectations--it truly captures the thrills that have made the series so successful.

Using the GamePad screen to play gives the best experience and also frees up the TV for other use, which has proven to be an unexpected bonus of the Wii U overall. If it weren't for the choppy framerate of the standard game modes, NBA 2K13 would be a contender for the best sports game on the platform.

Pragmata is nostalgia wrapped in a shiny new spacesuit with plenty of cool tricks up its pressurized sleeve. It's good to see Capcom returning to its quirky action beat, with an impressive host of weaponry, upgrades, combat hacks, and base-building as the sci-fi adventure moves through beautifully-conceptualized biomes. The visual and stylistic elements definitely give me deja-vu at times, and I could do without its heavy-handed themes battering me over the head, but beneath all that polished titanium sits a profound tale of humanity I'll not soon forget.

A highly polished iteration of Smash Bros. that plays great on its own. But when you're afflicted by latency problems in local multiplayer, you'll suddenly become painfully aware of the 3DS version's critical shortcomings.

A few iffy visuals and lingering shortcomings aren’t enough to keep this collection down. Boasting stellar gameplay, a still-epic storyline, and a fully realized FFX compilation, Remaster has plenty to offer new fans and old alike.

A varied and charming platformer, only blighted when it lets players get a little overpowered.

A long-overdue return to form that finally surpasses Pro Evo's PS2 glory days – and, assuming presentation woes are fixed, lays the foundations for an all-new footballing empire.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a masterwork of narrative and character, positing impactful questions while grounding everything against a backdrop of superb card-building intertwining with its story and moral dilemmas.

Jusant is a wonderful, meditative puzzle adventure framed around climbing that effectively draws you into its mysterious world. With creative level designs that make the most of the vertical tower setting, the climbing mechanics are fun and intuitive, and the pacing keeps its feeling too repetitive overall.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a smart sequel in that it takes everything that worked from the stellar first and expands, but the novelty of the original – which was quietly transformative for anyone interested in the genre – is a difficult lightning to capture in a bottle twice. It works, and works well, but the success of Citizen Sleeper also set the bar impossibly high.

Whichever version you choose, though, the action is top-notch awesome. With the series' clever design and sense of humor fully restored, The Two Thrones is a stellar return to form for Prince of Persia.

The lack of map variety hurts Chariots more than a similar paucity has hurt previous episodes, because Chariots is, overall, a bit slow.

With spectacular comic book presentation, some of the most chaotic action in any game ever and sufficient technical depth to keep even ultra hardcore fight fans happy, this is the impossible - a worthy successor to Marvel vs Capcom 2.

Machinarium's distinct visual style and seamless animations are etched with a staggering level of detail, and few games come close to possessing the sheer beauty found here.

Nioh 2 might play it safe in some respects, but the fluidity, depth and intensity of its combat is incredible.

A well-functioning port of a brilliant game with an unexpected identity crisis. Given the availability of other platforms, the visual compromise makes this technical marvel a difficult sell to first-timers and veterans.

Between the price, the modes, and the online play, it's a gem.

Anyone with half a heart will absolutely fall in love with the characters, the graphics, the dialogue, the old-school shout-outs to previous games, the little visual effects lingering in the skies of every world... the love just keeps plopping out of the speakers at an incredible rate. For every annoying, excessively long fetch quest or mundane puzzle, there's a huge, cutesy payoff that makes all the trouble worthwhile.

Mental deficiencies aside, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is an enjoyable game with a wonderfully-written storyline. So few games succeed at making us exercise our brains; you’d be blockheads not to give this one a go.

While a bit disappointing on the mini-game front, Yakuza 0 remains as strange and charming as ever, with the best story and combat the series has seen in years.

It's this severe push for gamers to be determined and persistent enough to explore every nook and cranny in Dead Rising that makes it either a splendid, geeky Pandora's Box full of unrelenting challenge and rewards or controller-smashingly difficult because of its hardcore mentality.

Masterfully balances the needs of old and new players alike – but online teething problems are a curveball Sony has to overcome for the game to truly prosper.

Hunters is strictly for the hardcore, bloodthirsty gamers who live for fragfests. Moving Metroid from a slow-paced adventure to a nail-biting wrecking ball of explosions was a risky trick, but damn did it ever work.

Evolved beyond what anyone imagined, Destiny 2 realises the FPS-RPG dream with a richness, warmth, and player-minded benevolence that needs to be played to be truly understood.

Mario Kart 7 is THE game the 3DS has been in dire need of. Sadly, it raises the bar so high for almost everything else, most 3DS games don't even look like they belong on the same system.

Even with our small list of complaints – add sluggish menus and lack of meaningful updates to Road To Glory and TeamBuilder to them – NCAA Football 11 is a triumph. It's the best college football game we've ever played, offering a tremendous experience to gridiron fans.

An excellent way to experience Death's adventure. There haven't been any significant changes from the Xbox and PS3 versions. The combat is still thrilling, the dungeons are lengthy and challenging, and the loot hoarding is addictive.

The Metallica integration goes deeper than the music itself – the band members all appear in the game, although career mode finds you playing not as anyone IN Metallica, but as the band opening for them while on tour.

Even if it's not brand new, Pikmin 3 Deluxe deserves a place in your Nintendo Switch library.

The Alters is both immense in scope and deeply introspective. 11 Bit Studios has once again found the humanist side in a genre rooted in systems and management. It's a fantastic base builder and survival sim, but what makes The Alters truly brilliant is how these systems are underlined with vulnerable, emotional moments – like holes being punctured in your space suit.

A whopper of an NFL game to play this season, with more good stuff to experience than most of us will ever get to.

BattleBlock Theater is filled with absurdity, fart jokes, and curious characters that will easily suck you into a colorful world. Its stages are creative and get more complex as you get used to its mechanics and controls and offer enough challenge and funny dialogue to keep you amused. Play it alone and you’ll laugh; play it with a friend (and push him off a ledge) and you’ll laugh even more.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow reinvigorates the franchise by borrowing from other games, adding its own wonderful magic system, and ratcheting up the epic factor to ludicrous degrees. It's huge in scope, length, and depth, and it's polished with obvious love and passion.

Despite a few niggling issues, Out There's melancholy atmosphere and challenging resource management will have you coming back for seconds. And thirds.

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl are not only the best Pokemon games yet, but some of most enjoyable on the DS.

The Rise of the Golden Idol wonderfully evolves on the original with some truly devious cases that empower you to feel like a genius as you piece everything together and read between the lines. Loads of details make this best played with a notebook to hand, each case stretching you to think in genuinely fresh directions.

With the extra time, the developers were able to truly polish the game, bring forth a game that, while flawed, doesn't have any glaring issues. It's more accessible without losing any of the complexity, it's deeper without being isolating, and it's bursting with content, even if we wish the content was implemented better.

The Wolf Among Us is a game that exceeds expectations, providing an intriguing, painful, and thought-provoking journey that everyone should experience at least once.

With breakneck racing thrills and impeccable presentation, this ranks up there with The Last Of Us Remastered as the best redux on PS4.

Brave New World might not feel incredibly new or brave, but it's an impressive expansion that any Civilization V fan should enjoy.

Aesthetically scintillating, but equally enthralling in its immense depth, Geometry Wars 3 is a sequel whose design insight is matched only by its endlessly creative sense of fun. Close to perfect.

Despite some wonky tie-ins with the film, this is a gorgeous, thoroughly great platformer and a worthy reboot for Ratchet & Clank.

PS4’s biggest sports exclusive delivers a moonshot home run, thanks to perfectly balanced fundamentals, astonishingly lifelike presentation, and little details that few rivals – past or present – have come close to getting right.

Football Manager 2021 may not revolutionise the series, but instead it adds countless quality-of-life improvements – including ones to the match engine – that make it the best Football Manager game to date.

The way Kirby and the Forgotten builds on the traditions of the series really makes it feel like we've entered into a new era for the pink puffball. The bigger, more open 3D setting full of challenges and inventive features makes this an unmissable adventure for long-time fans. And for newcomers, I can't think of a better introduction. There's just no holding back my excitement about what the future may hold for the series going forward. Kirby and the Forgotten Land truly is a delight from start to finish.

Your enjoyment of Mortal Kombat on Vita will depend on whether or not you've already played the identical console version, and how much you like tapping the touch screen to make people's heads explode. Mortal Kombat remains faithful to its console counterpart, and is an equally entertaining, albeit sometimes uglier, addition to the family.

The core shooting action is so strong that these complaints fall by the wayside. F.E.A.R. is a game about shooting things, and once you get your hands on its triggers, you'll find that you won't want to let go.

An amazing marriage of world-class storytelling and strategic card gaming, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a fantastic RPG in its own right.

Far Cry 3 remains the series’ peak, but Far Cry 4 is a lovely-looking, accomplished offering that suffers from lacklustre writing and an odd lack of purpose.

Shadow Gambit is a fiendishly fun stealth strategy game that does precisely what it says on the tin. With stunning voice acting, atmospheric maps, and no shortage of ways to solve the sandbox puzzles in each one, you'll be so bewitched by the world and its charming cast of characters that the muddy plot can almost be forgiven.

Ignoring the Wi-Fi Connection stuff, there’s still so much to see and do it’s hard to imagine gamers not absolutely devouring all the hidden details and ultra-rare items just to say “I did it.”

Once you understand enemy attack patterns and the game’s slightly slower than you’d expect timing, the level of challenge decreases dramatically. This, combined with the fact that Elika literally won’t let you die, could make things feel too easy and auto-piloted for some die-hard hardcore players.

Death Stranding: Director's Cut is like going for a hike through the most haunting beautiful woodland you could possibly imagine, only for a guy in a cinema-quality Jason Voorhees costume to leap out at you unexpectedly from behind some trees and try to shove you into the mud. Naturally, the surprise creates some tension the first time around. Maybe the second time it happens too. But eventually that tension transitions into annoyance. That annoyance quickly into embarrassment for everyone involved. That dichotomy between Death Stranding's two halves has only been further exposed by the Director's Cut. Exploring its wondrous world is an experience quite unlike any other, but it is so routinely shattered by stilted combat and pantomime villains that you'll routinely wonder whether it's worth the effort.

One of the best adventure games on console, with a fantastic blend of action and exploration. The Definitive Edition really is definitive, but isn't worth a repeat buy for those who've already experienced Lara's story.

Not the transformative experience offered by this year's PES, but still unmatched in the genre for atmosphere, licenses, and finer details.

InFamous shows huge potential, but it’s ultimately held back from greatness by too-sticky controls and its surprisingly bland ruin of a city. It’s still fun, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in the strongly hinted-at sequel.

Marvel Snap is a wonderfully intuitive card game that is simple to play, easy to learn, and satisfying to master. Games may take just six minutes to play, but there's a depth of strategy and breadth of variance here that is truly awesome.

For quick-to-play, compelling arcade action - complete with a two-player head to head mode - it's hard to imagine a better package. Don't miss this one.

Worth buying for its superb rally sim alone. But the returning racing modes are bland, frustrating and unsatisfying.

Massively-multiplayer online games are always a work-in-progress, so it's not surprising that Star Wars: The Old Republic's launch wasn't flawless. What matters is that it's an extremely satisfying experience that sets the stage for a bright future, so long as BioWare continues to support the game for the coming years with constant updates.

[An] incredibly fresh and successful take on skating controls, as well as a wide-open city with six-player online options (we liked the Deathraces and the Spot Battles). Skate is logical, authentic, and blissfully organic. Robots need not apply.

Mario + Rabbids gives you the action and strategy of XCOM in a way that does justice both to Mario and to the Rabbid’s kooky style. Ubi’s big E3 surprise is an unmissable Switch game.

A sequel with smarts and style, Crash Bandicoot 4 proves there's still life in the old Bandicoot yet. It's about time indeed.

There's a lot to do - and by "do", we mean, "explode" - and that's exactly what the Ratchet & Clank games are all about.

Bomberman’s always been about party-style multiplayer, anyway. And as such, Bomberman Live delivers where it counts.

Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom is the RPG adventure that's like shooting sunshine right into your veins. So clear your calendar, because Level-5 is about fill it with monsters, magic, and city management.

If you're one of the unlucky saps who have yet to be caught in Peggle's addictive grasp, the affordable, content-packed Peggle Dual Shot may be the best gateway to this enduringly enjoyable franchise.

Demon Tides invites me to a sunny vibes open world filled with platforming islands to master, and allows me to build my own kit of platforming vibes to break them apart. At times, a bit more structure would be appreciated, especially when it comes to progression, but otherwise the looseness is all part of the charm for this super slick jumper. Demon Tides has easily become a high watermark in my 3D platformer pantheon.

An astounding technical achievement. It's one of the best-looking games ever, and it knows how to bring the spectacle. Its single-player provides a playground for the joyous nanosuit powers, although some buggy AI and generic aliens keep the campaign from soaring as high as it could have. The multiplayer, meanwhile, is a fantastic buffet of playstyles that rewards the creative player.

Rare Replay is an incredibly high-value retro compilation, which adds to its impressive (but sadly not exhaustive) line-up of classics with new ways to play and interesting bonus content.

While not particularly revolutionary, there's a lot to like about Anno 117. If you get your teeth into the game's complexity, you'll find yourself investing a lot of time into spreading Roman ways across your islands and growing your settlements from tiny villages to grand cities.

OlliOlli World expands the series' formula with great success, effortlessly generating competition with a relentless sense of forward momentum.

By turning your every death into the start of a personal vendetta, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor makes you that much more invested in its open-world. The savage combat and satisfying stealth are just the means to exacting your ultimate revenge.

A terminally cute game, so while almost guaranteed to suck the kiddies in, it's a tough sell for the trigger-happy Halo crowd. It's also fairly short if your goal is getting every pinata in the game to become a resident in your garden.

True to its central idea, Ball x Pit is a great blend of Breakout-style combat and frantic, Vampire Survivors-esque progression. At its height, it's a flow state-inducing assault on the senses that makes great work of its Evolution mechanic to craft deeply stylish builds, but it eventually grinds to a halt thanks to a bloated progression system.

If you skipped Sun and Moon last year, Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are must-buys. Sci-fi storytelling, plenty of new content and adorable critters all included, but feels too soon a release to make the most of the innovation.