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.

Alan Wake 2 is a strange, imaginative, and truly ambitious sequel that never fails to upend your expectations. While some of the bigger concepts presented by Remedy Entertainment lack refinement, a few rough edges don't detract from a consistently confident and startlingly original adventure. You won't find anything else quite like Alan Wake 2 this generation.

Building on the excellent cyberpunk parkour of its predecessor, Ghostrunner 2 is the best freerunning game available, despite some ill-advised attempts to push the boundaries of its world

Cities: Skylines 2 offers the foundation of a world-class city-building game, with a wide array of features, smart quality-of-life improvements, and a genuinely impressive simulation to help bring your town to life. But its promise is completely overshadowed by its technical problems, dragging a fantastic core experience down into frustration and disappointment.

Hellboy Web of Wyrd does a fantastic job of drawing you into the dark, sullen, and highly strange world born by Mike Mignola, but the roguelike structure that underpins this brawler's progression and structure doesn't offer enough challenge or variation to become truly compulsive. A solid first effort in need of refinement and iteration.

Move over Elephant Mario, the true star of Super Mario Bros. Wonder are the Wonder Flowers themselves, which continuously add the unexpected to an altogether brilliant 2D platformer. Okay, Elephant Mario's pretty amazing too.

Marvel's Spider-Man 2 improves on its predecessor across the board, while saluting the superhero genre over the last 30 years as a whole. With a captivating narrative and unrivaled spectacle, it's the quintessential superhero game, in story and mechanical terms.

Endless Dungeon is an entertaining, polished, and finely-tuned roguelike, expertly blending action and tactics to fill each trip with dozens of impactful micro-decisions. While visibility can be an issue during packed battles, presentation overall is bright and clean, and supported by some classy character design. Co-op play is the icing on an already tasty cake.

Sonic Superstars is like a modern version of the Genesis classics, with all the good and bad that entails. The four-player, same-screen co-op functionality works surprisingly well, and the new Emerald powers keep things fresh. While it isn't as good as Sonic Mania, Superstars is a fresh twist on classic Sonic action.

Lords of the Fallen just about justifies the return of this forgotten franchise by being basically fine. It has a few clever ideas and a whole bunch of very predictable ones, ultimately resulting in a soulslike experience that won't feel particularly new or fresh, but rarely offends or goes too far wrong.

Not just great for a free-to-play game, Honkai: Star Rail is a genuinely fantastic RPG with slick combat and an engaging story loaded with content. The biggest caveat is, while generous, its gacha system may tempt some players into unwise purchases.

Detective Pikachu Returns is more adventures with the charming electric mouse from the original, but the straightforward investigation mechanics can be incredibly frustrating in a game that wouldn't look out of place on the Wii U.

Ubisoft Bordeaux has delivered exactly what it promised. Assassin's Creed Mirage is a compact, stealth-focused adventure that punishes anyone trying to go in loud, and it does so in a world that's always a delight to explore (and be chased through).

The game engine here is demonstrably better than Forza Motorsport 7's but, in terms of breadth of gameplay, presentation, general excitement, and enjoyment gleaned from racing the AI cars, the older, now-deleted Forza Motorsport 7 is clearly superior. More content including tracks and event series will be added over time, so it will certainly improve, but right now the career mode here is so sedate and one-note, it's hard to recommend Forza Motorsport's offline mode over any of its peers.

Competent and stylish in its real-time strategy, The Lamplighters League puts an art deco spin on a simplified XCOM formula, but is let down by real-time segments that dilute and distract from its core offering.

Not to get too lofty, but you know how a musician's ears have been trained to pick up elements in music – I honestly felt like that during the last stretch of Cocoon's puzzles. I knew what the game wanted from me and I followed. It's a silent language that you learn to translate. Cocoon cuts out all the noise, and the result is one of the best puzzle adventure games of 2023. I've learned to pick up Cocoon's silent harmonies, and they're beautiful.

The Expanse: A Telltale Series makes for a compelling prequel to the show with a few glaring issues outshone by complex, engaging characters.

Despite leaning a little too heavily on fan-servicing familiarity, Payday 3 proves there's still fun to be squeezed from its well-honed heisting template yet.

The most playable FIFA – oops! – in years. This is an encouraging new start for the EA Sports FC franchise, with Ultimate Team innovations truly standing out, and PlayStyles adding a smart new wrinkle to the on-turf action.

Witchfire enters early access with a bright future ahead of it. While there's certainly some rough edges, The Astronauts has assembled the skeleton of a capable fusion between FPS sensibilities and roguelite punishments, and I'm keen to see how it evolves over time from here. [Early Access review]

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty is the culmination of CD Projekt Red's efforts to right the wrongs of a challenging launch, with this premium expansion combining with Update 2.0 for a total revitalization of Night City. This is Cyberpunk 2077 at its best, and with the price of entry this low you've got no excuse not to dive back in.

A fizzy addition to the party game canon, Party Animals brings ample amounts of chaos and chuckles, with an uneven mix of modes highlighting the physic fighting shortcomings. Still, it's never not fun to hurl a friend off a speeding train and see them shrink into the distance.

Mortal Kombat 1 is a superbly presented fighting game with something to offer players of all experience and familiarity with NetherRealm's sprawling MK universe. The Kameo fighter system injects new strategic depth into combat, the rebooted timeline feeds a ridiculous story, and the suite of game modes are both varied and well made.

For those migrating away from Friday the 13th: The Game, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre could prove to be a welcome alternative. While this new multiplayer horror game certainly shows promise, my earliest hours with the family have been hindered by needless friction. It's occasionally thrilling, but often frustrating.

An open world racer that gets better the more you play it, revealing a wealth of high-quality racing in a beautiful, technically spectacular Hawaii. While it lacks originality, it is better than Forza Horizon 5 in several ways.

Inventive, challenging, and deliciously dark, Lies of P retains the core structures of similar action RPGs while adding new surprises to the mix. The potential for richer character builds and depth of choice for the player is bolstered by a haunting narrative that, despite the clunk of certain new mechanics, cements the experience as a powerful contender on the Soulslike scene.

Fae Farm is a low-stakes, inclusive, and supremely cozy farming sim that delivers some uniquely interconnected features in a neat and accessible way. It's a narratively charged, explorative experience, and a shining example of devs having learned from the mistakes of other farming sims.

Goodbye Volcano High is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama about a group of teen dinosaurs confronted with an uncertain future. Dreamy pop ballads and an absorbing dialogue system offer a gateway into an introspective story about being young, queer, and chasing your dreams in the face of impending disaster.