With this time-spanning opus, Remedy Entertainment hoped to unite narrative gaming and linear television for its Xbox One title. But neither comes out of the experiment well.

Arms is a good starter fighting game, both for players and for Nintendo. Hopefully future updates will give the inevitable franchise a bit more bounce.

Like its predecessor, it does an excellent job of staying faithful to the Star Wars universe, right down to the sound effects. Even the way the much-maligned Jar Jar Binks feels like a wry nod to fellow fans.

For those who think they don’t know enough about the war, 11-11: Memories Retold paints a picture of the time. Aardman Animations, development partner DigixArt and publisher Bandai Namco have harnessed the power of video games to create a fitting accompaniment to the centenary of Armistice Day.

In introducing cooperative multiplayer, it has opened up an entirely new way to experience the adorable conceit of yarn characters making their way through a gigantic human world – but in freeing up movement and removing some of the friction, it has lost a little of the original’s focus and heart.

With real travel compromised right now, tagging along with Signs of the Sojourner’s caravan is one way to experience the sights and smells of new streets.

This game made me feel like a swashbuckling stranger in a foreign land for a couple of evenings, and left me wanting more. What’s there is lean and sometimes exquisite, but there wasn’t time to fully explore the different weapons (or try on all those dapper hats) before Faraday’s adventure came to an end after around six hours. I could have spent twice as long exploring this beautiful and mysterious creation, but I’m grateful nonetheless for the journey I’ve had.

Quantum Conundrum feels like the PC's answer to a smartphone app – a simple idea, well executed but never quite reaching the level of a "real" game. You'll play it for a few hours, enjoying the experience and then suddenly think: "Well, that's enough of that," and never go back. It is what it is; a small slice of casual gaming at a slightly inflated price.

The doors of Sherlock’s decrepit, abandoned family manor unlock for him as he remembers more, slowly piecing together what happened to his mother. You can populate this place with paintings, furniture and possessions, filling out its character and history, a decent metaphor for your progress through the story and the game. This is a lively world, with wonderful smaller mysteries and an overarching story that brings you closer to its famous main character and his personal history. While there are some technical issues, and the game understandably lacks the glossy polish of bigger-budget titles, this is nonetheless something that I’ve been wanting for a long time: a properly open-world interactive detective story.

All told, there's weeks of fun in this package. As you'd expect. It's fun and funny. As you'd expect. I'm utterly hooked. As you'd expect. Can we have Lego Matrix next? Please?

XCOM: Chimera Squad is essentially the Agents of Shield to XCOM 2’s Avengers. It gently plays with the formula, and tells the peripheral stories of a much wider world on a much tighter budget and with much smaller stakes. In other words, it’s XCOM but chilled – and, in these desperate times, that’s just fine.

It’s a game to be picked at with a sense of leisurely satisfaction, as if working loose a complicated knot. The effect is gently soothing, in the way of a jigsaw, but, when it comes to arranging your artworks, a little more scope for creative flair.

What you’re left with is a game whose best ideas are all optics. The fairytale southern style plays out like a modern, YA take on Toni Morrison’s fiction while summoning some of the whimsical, damaged beauty of 2012’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. The soundtrack is a rambunctious collage of howling blues, twanging folk and lilting jazz. Compulsion Games bottled much southern magic during the making of this seemingly risky gambit for Microsoft, yet failed to take risks where it really mattered: this unique setting deserved more.

There has never been a better way to confront, or indulge, your inner assassin.

If you buy a WiiU, you'll simply need to get a copy of ZombiU. It's a true survival-horror game, channelling the heart-in-mouth claustrophobia of early Resident Evils and Alone In The Dark, and adding Dark Souls' refusal to compromise as the icing on top. Play it in a darkened room, and you'll remember what gaming is all about.

If you see PewDiePie as an annoying bell-end who deserves a sceptic toe, you’re unlikely to shell out £3.99 on his game – even if its quality means you’d probably enjoy it much more than you do his videos...Equally, if you’re one of his fans, this is £3.99 well spent, with plenty of potential for replayability using the different characters and power-ups, as well as taking on the higher difficulty levels.

Zenless Zone Zero is stylish, silly and exciting, and promises years of fresh stories and an endless conveyor belt of shiny toys to seduce you. You pay for it somehow, either with your time or your money, but for me at least, it feels like a fair exchange.

This unquestionably beautiful game about saving a planet from an encroaching black hole boldly goes where few have remained awake.

Quite a few of the later puzzles rely on reaction times alongside forward planning, and since they’re often bigger than those earlier in the game, it’s far more frustrating to have to restart because of a mistimed jump-and-switch or accidental misfire. For the first few hours, however, Hue’s puzzles are concise, inventive, and surprising. For that, at this price, Hue is an experiment worth experiencing.

The result is a game about mythology that somehow lacks a sense of mystery. It’s fun to play and I dare say I will keep chipping away at it for weeks to come, but say what you want about Norwich in the dark ages – at least there was real depth beneath all that mud.

Running at a breathless 60-frames-per-second and with tiny loading times, Hotshot Racing is a slick callback to a much-loved era of racing games made by people who are clearly passionate and knowledgeable about the genre. Older players will get all the references, and newcomers will enjoy a bright, exhilarating game that forgoes modern frills for pure, seamless racing entertainment.

There just isn’t very much to do in The Pathless: you run across empty fields for a while, before solving a small variety of puzzles. Boss battles, with their blend of dashing, fighting and light brainwork, drive home that the Giant Squid formula works best in small doses. The score is reduced to sparse percussion in the open field, and the world itself doesn’t offer much in terms of visual variety or secrets to uncover. The problem isn’t the rudimentary gameplay itself, but how The Pathless tries to stretch its few puzzles across several hours. I was bored after the first hour, and no new ideas or clever twists arrived to rescue me from torpor.

As Dusk Falls comfortably exceeds the standard of its genre when it comes to plotting, characterisation, performance and the impressive malleability of the story. It’s a story about trauma and what it takes to overcome it, really; reluctant teen criminal Jay Holt stayed with me, particularly, touchingly innocent despite what he’s been exposed to in his life. Narrative games exist outside of gaming’s old technological arms race, now, and because we’re not focusing so much on how realistic they look, they’re free to tell much better stories.

Filled with lovely details, perfectly constructed and often genuinely funny, Game Builder Garage is another excellent Nintendo creative tool, which quietly teaches you why its games are so good. It’s a totally closed experience, so you only have access to the materials it provides, but that makes it safe for families, and forces you to be imaginative in how you employ (and break) the rules. You won’t learn how to code in C from playing this game, but you will begin to understand how games are designed and how the logic of a game program works. If these are things you want to know about, there is no better teacher than Nintendo.

Fifa Street's new cooler, slicker presentation sits better with the game than I first imagined. Yes, it's a far cry from the arcade-like iterations of yesteryear, but in truth it's all the better for it.

A solid enough title – but it's certainly not a game for the casual console golfer.

Season’s unwillingness to paint the world in anything but the broadest strokes (“The country’s expansion caused a war. Internationalism was breaking down”) and penchant for flowery but meaningless language may have been influenced by a troubled development history. Part of Season’s development cycle was marked by allegations of workplace harassment and disorganised leadership, which became public in 2021. The game is enamoured with ideas of community and culture, but in appropriating real culture and removing it from context, it robs itself of its own message.

Destiny, isn’t just set in space, it an allegory of space. It is beautiful and fascinating, but oh so cold and immense, and the past engulfs everything.

The most fun you’ll have is playing with a bunch of friends in the same room, but there’s also an online mode which offers ranked or friendly games. However you choose to play, the game exudes childlike charm while hiding layers of depth beneath its chaotic exterior. You can spend hours practising perfectly timed drop shots, mastering spin and getting your positioning just right, and figuring out which fever rackets best suit your style of play is an involving process. It is, in short, exactly what you want and expect from a Nintendo sports title – something for everyone, and then something more for those who decide to go pro.

It’s what you’d expect from the people who made Gone Home, but that’s no bad thing.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War does everything it needs to with polish and zeal, and those who plan to spend the next year levelling up through its multiplayer ranks won’t be disappointed if they get this for Christmas (although they might have liked a few more maps than the currently available eight). But given how disruptive March’s battle-royale Call of Duty game Warzone has been, both as a competitor to Fortnite and Apex Legends and as a new meeting place for CoD fans, Cold War could definitely have used some more innovation. The campaign hints at it, and the 1981 setting offered so much promise, but, sadly, this is not the subversive goth-punk krautrock shooter I was waiting for.

The primal glee that comes from being cast, for a moment, as the Ur-hunter in a world of cringing prey barely diminishes during the course of the game, and it’s deeply pleasing to master the kind of dripping echoic domain which, in most film and fiction, must be merely survived.

In returning to its roots, Ubisoft has made a more focused Assassin’s Creed, one that those with limited time have a hope of completing. And in setting all the action in a single city and its surrounding countryside, the team has packed its sidestreets with fascinating snapshots of life – such as heated hagglers bickering in the bazaar, musicians drawing a crowd beside a mosque and pigeon fanciers feeding their birds on a rooftop aviary. Ubisoft lets down the liveliness of its world with a well-trodden story, but after a string of formless open-world games, Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a stab in the right direction.

While there's some genuine heart and originality in Spec Ops: The Line, the experience of playing the game is just too hit and miss for me to recommend it unreservedly.

There is a simple joy in watching your score accumulate via outlandish multipliers, and while the physical aspect of the game is entirely passive, there is a world of strategy to be explored in figuring out the most beneficial arrangement of bumpers in the 55 spaces on the board. A deceptively simple, obsession-forming challenge, then, to start the year.

EA Sports FC 25 is perhaps not the major structural leap forward that its predecessor was – it is, to use the classic phrase, an evolution not a revolution. To get the most out of its major new technical features, you’ll need to really dig down into the depths of the pre-match menu systems – and that’s not for everybody. Meanwhile, Ultimate Teams is as problematic as ever with its carefully greased compulsion loop of in-game purchases and micro-improvements to your fantasy squad.

Replaced’s most memorable stretch sees Warren sneaking back into the heavily guarded facility where the adventure began. You crouch amid tall, swaying grass and boggy marsh while being stalked by futuristic choppers that can end your life with a single, booming bullet. A gigantic wall looms in the background, rendered as an imposing black silhouette. For much of its 10-hour run time, Replaced seems content with replicating cyberpunk leitmotifs in pretty pixel-art fashion without adding much of its own. But this supersized, militarised fortification sees the game extend its purview, powerfully evoking the Mexico-US border wall and the West Bank barrier.

It is the striking cel-shaded design, though, that elevates Röki just above games such as Year Walk, which is similarly inspired by Scandinavian folklore. The design enhances minor artistic details – whether it’s snow glistening on a treetop or a hostile character’s imposing shadow – to create a more involving experience. Röki’s pleasing aesthetics are well-matched by an absorbing story that always keeps you on your guard.

This is a barren world, but rendered exquisitely, drawing careful inspiration from French cartoonist Jean “Moebius” Giraud in its blend of space and intricacy. Exploring its crannies delivers a slow-burn joy. Developed by a small team from north London (Shedworks, because the two founders began work in a garden shed), Sable is an unusual expression of the so-called “open world” – the dominant video game genre today. Most lead you in certain directions, ensuring you approach landmarks from the best angles, matching every plot beat with a suitable musical flourish. Here, by contrast, you are totally free to explore wherever, whenever, however you wish. There are whispered points of interest, but there is no wearying to-do list, and as such your journey and destination are uniquely, wonderfully personal.

This is a promising return to golf for EA Sports. It’s slow of pace, it’s tough to get into, and it’s a little staid and fuddy-duddy at times (most of the background music makes you feel like you’re on hold to a financial service call centre), but the accuracy of the ball physics, the huge range of shots and the highly tactical nature of the play gives serious players the challenge and realism they want. I wish there was a smoother on-ramp for beginners, or a much more basic arcade mode for those who want to thrash through a few holes with pals, but this is a sim after all and when it comes to sport, EA does not mess around.

Not since Mirror’s Edge has first-person movement felt this good.

It's true that, at times, it feels a bit disjointed, the dialogue is occasionally annoyingly clunky and given that it has no online element, you could argue that it's hopelessly old-fashioned. But if you like the sort of gameplay that Resident Evil offers, it will bring you a lot of enjoyment, more or less from start to finish.

Rome: Total War is one of the most brilliant games I've ever played. Total War: Rome II inverts far more than the name. This does not channel the greatest military empire in history so much as the pale shadow of its ending; a bloated, technically corrupt and unfocused mess.

Transport Fever 2 doesn’t need to be a firebrand vehicle for climate activism, but having such themes inform the systems more closely would give it a little more personality and relevance. As it stands, this is a pleasant if not particularly distinctive game that may provide frustrated commuters with hours of transport therapy.

Now it feels like the physics, AI and animation have come together in a way that makes even these ridiculous moments feel naturalistic and pleasurable. The first Fifa on the Mega Drive billed itself as an authentic experience of real sport, real drama, real spectacle. It wasn’t then, but perhaps, in this final iteration … it is now.

By presenting unsolvable yet feasible questions in rapid succession, under a time limit, it reveals the flaws and inconsistencies in every person’s moral scaffolding. Unless you cleave to an inflexible rule to, say, never intervene in a way that will threaten life, or to always minimise fatalities, you are likely to find yourself assuming contradictory positions. In this way, Trolley Problem, Inc succeeds in being both absurd and provocative.

That dearth of fun is the crux here. As the series finally begins to carve out an identity for itself, shed the dead-weight of its futuristic fluff of a sub-plot, and really let fly with its caricatural depiction of human history, it’s simultaneously failing to keep up with even middling mechanical, technical and design standards. With searing irony, the series feels more historic with each profit-driven iteration.

There is lots to do in this huge and beautiful fantasy world, but inconsistent writing and muted combat dull its blade.

The cute monster battling fun is extremely familiar, but Yo-Kai watch has plenty of its own charm.

If you’ve played a zombie game in the past decade, this mishmash of tattered post-apocalyptic stereotypes will feel all too familiar.

Everybody's Golf doesn't do anything particularly new or revolutionary, but it does what it does very well indeed.

Thirteen years is a long time to wait for a new tennis sim, but TopSpin 2K25 is worth it. If there’s one thing that this game teaches you, it’s the value of determined patience. Well, that and the fact that you can match pink Lycra with yellow sunglasses and look amazing.

The Stillness of the Wind is not quite as elegant as it could be; the writing is heavy handed and confusing dream sequences don’t contribute much to its atmosphere of contemplative loneliness. Yet this unusual game encourages thinking about old age in a unique and provocative way.

It wants us to take its medieval world seriously, but also wants it to be a playground, and it constantly struggles to balance these two sides of its personality. If you can embrace its quirks, it’s easy enough to lose yourself in its luscious and dynamic medieval landscape, but you’re unlikely to emerge with much insight into the historical period that it so faithfully depicts.

Like the similarly experimental Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Primal takes a torch to the established Far Cry template, yet it still feels every inch a Far Cry game. The graphics, controls, hunting, map and resource-collection are all recognisable – to such a striking extent that it makes you wonder what it would be like to play through an old version of Far Cry, using just the bow and ignoring all vehicles. Whether by accident, design or an emotive response to criticism of Far Cry 4, Ubisoft, via Primal, has given the franchise a huge new shot of vitality and freshness.

Twelve Minutes is not the first game to explore the concept of the time loop. Zelda, Ephemeral Fantasia and Returnal have all been there. However, as a stylish, twisted take on movies such as Rear Window, Eyes Wide Shut and Chinatown, it is an engrossing experience that marries noir sensibilities and puzzle gameplay into a dense Freudian nightmare.

This is a simple game, artfully told.

The most frustrating thing is that there is the kernel of something great here. Despite the time-travel conceit, Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t remotely original – you’ll swear you’ve skulked the darkened corridors of these very hospitals, factories and apartment blocks before – but it looks stunning in places, plays well once you’ve upgraded your weapons, and there are spooksome moments and satisfying puzzles peppered throughout. When everything clicks, it is the engrossing, icky body-horror creepshow you want it to be. But then it will throw you into another exhausting death room full of bullet-sponge ghouls, and you’ll soon be filled with irritation instead of dread.

Selecting a dinosaur zooms the camera in from the top-down, god’s-eye-view to track it as it plods around its enclosure, grazing, drinking from a watering hole or occasionally battling a member of the pack for dominance. Each dinosaur comes with a multimillion year history including detailed accounts of what it ate and where it lived. Even though you’re sat in your living room, Frontier Developments’ magic is in transporting us – through lifelike animations, through snuffling grunts, through the soppy look in a stegosaurus’s eyes – to where we all wanted to be in 1993: standing in a real Jurassic Park, watching these impossibly majestic creatures.

Hyrule Warriors ought not to work – it smacks of Nintendo’s desperation to get any sort of game out for its overlooked machine – but it will certainly delight the faithful fans, and manages to remain utterly true to the world of Zelda while offering really fresh-feeling gameplay.

I haven’t played a game as odd as Legion in a very long time. Unlike the glossy, beautiful, but samey open-worlds that have dominated the genre in the past few years, it is ambitious, imperfect and unashamedly weird. To me it’s a fascinating, flawed, well-intentioned experiment in what a game can have to say, and how it can say it, while still conforming to the established fun-first template of an open-world action game. London’s landmarks are all here, from the Tower to the Eye, but rather than reducing the city to a pretty backdrop for generic madcap violence, it lets you find your own fun – or even your own meaning – in what you do there.

The archeologist’s earliest adventures show their age in more ways than one, but this revival preserves enough of the games’ treasured elements to keep purists happy.

EA Sports FC 24 may be wearing a new strip but it remains the superlative football sim of our time.

In our era of coldly distanced technological combat, of armoured police vehicles on city streets, of protests bloodily subdued, we might ask why such violent delights as Modern Warfare still have a place on the entertainment calendar. It’s something I’ve pondered over the many hours I’ve spent thoroughly enjoying this ludicrous game. It is something I will perhaps go on to think through in the many, many hours to come.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a strange and vaguely disappointing game, but not a bad one.

Players able to look past the flaws will find one of the most pure, visceral action games available on current machines.

Captain Spirit is only clumsy occasionally; as a whole it is affecting, sweet and memorable. It is a free taster of a forthcoming game from the same developer, Life Is Strange 2, but more than just an advert or a demo, it is its own short story about an everyday tragedy.

Like any good puzzle game, there is special satisfaction in working out a solution to a conundrum that has stumped you, and that’s the best reward in the game. Call of the Sea ramps up the story towards the end, but I cared far more about the clues than Norah and Harry’s tale. It frustrates as the best puzzles often do, but no solutions feel unearned or gimmicky. This is definitely one for the pencil-chewers to check out.

It is surprising, and not a little depressing, that all people want to talk about with this game is the running time.

No other game this year will make you an accomplice in a dastardly raccoon plot to take over a town.

A genuinely likable new lead and intense attention to the mythology of the Star Wars films made this a nostalgic thrill.

Rebirth will feel familiar to anyone who played The Dark Descent 10 years ago, but Frictional still know how to set up a damn good scare. A level set inside crumbling Roman catacombs had me feeling wrung-out with anxiety by its heartstopping end. Just because it’s curled up in the darkness, don’t make the mistake of assuming that the monster is dead.

All Stars will put a smile on the face of any lapsed wrestling fan pining for the simple, undemanding action of the WWF games of yore. Still, it's hard to justify paying the full RRP for a game that seems to go out of its way to have as little depth as possible.

Fable's greatest problem is that it sets such high standards in some areas that the gaps elsewhere seem all the more noticeable.

Strategy game preserves the structure and jokey vibe of the 2004 classic but adds 2021 slickness and scope.

I wanted to love this game. On paper it is outrageous. Strange Scaffold, the developer, is known for the weird – notably Clickholding, which is sinister, experimental and truly queries what a game is in its execution (there is a lot of clicking, and being watched in the action of clicking). Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 certainly is creepy, and set in a mansion, and does have dinosaurs and some really satisfying puzzles. It also has some great ideas and isn’t quite a failed experiment. While it doesn’t bend reality in the way that it seems to want to, it aims high, and if the player can manage the places where the aesthetic falls short, they’ll have a great time. They might even meet a nice, blond dinosaur they can take home with them.

If last year’s Unpacking has left you craving more mess to mess with, then A Little to the Left is an obvious next port of call. We’re witnessing the birth of a new genre, the tidy ’em up. Judging by how expertly these games tap into the innate human desire for order, expect many more examples to follow.

The first big project from a team of Spanish developers working out of an attic in Seville, Crossing Souls is a passionately made ode to an era, even if it occasionally feels underwhelming. From the plucky 2D characters to the synthesised background music to the dated-looking cartoon cutscenes, it captures the 80s perfectly. There is nothing original about this game, but that is why I enjoyed it.

I've never been wholly impressed by the "sport", you have to give the developers credit for producing an epic and highly competitive experience you'll probably still be enjoying with your mates long after Christmas.

The Evil Within will give survival horror purists a rare contemporary pleasure fix. But be warned: if you prize smooth, silky action above all else, it will drive you insane.

Swapping freedom and tactical depth for twitch-based thrills and teamwork has certainly made it a viable multi-platform release...However, those with longer memories may argue that rebooting Syndicate as yet another FPS, complete with identikit hero, is a bit like remaking Citizen Kane as a rom-com starring Adam Sandler. For all its multiplayer merits, I'm afraid I'm with the Luddites on this one.

This spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio has the same stylish look and feel, though with better gameplay for the outlaw street gang.

DiRT Showdown isn't going to change the world – it's a frothy, tongue-in-cheek driving game with pretensions towards nothing beyond providing entertainment. But it does that in spades, with considerable technical accomplishment.

Those who are prepared to forgive El Shaddai its eccentricities will truly adore it. This game is capable of garnering cult-like worship, which in a way is fitting, given its source material.

There is both too much and too little going on in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie at any given time. It is a game of many parts that don’t come together – an interesting design study packaged in a mildly boring game.

Like the best punk records, No More Heroes 3 is a grower. Its messy and unpolished gameplay can be completely offputting, but a scrappy, anarchic joy courses through it. For those with a love for gaming’s weirder side and nostalgia for a time where most games were endearingly unpolished, this will suit nicely. For many modern gamers, though, reaching the best sections will require more patience than it’s worth.

It’s unsettling and unconventional, and I was totally unable to turn away.

It may not banish Lego-fatigue from hardcore gamers, but Lego Star Wars III adds enough polish and variety to make it appealing to budding Jedi of all ages.

I enjoyed the couple of afternoons I spent with Flock – I only wish there were more of it. A couple of really interesting little environmental puzzles made me wish to find others hidden around the uplands. Most of the creatures can be found quite easily, but just a few required some enjoyable deduction from a single sentence in the field guide. Once or twice, a creature in my entourage pointed me towards another, or helped me search something out, but most of them do nothing except follow you around. I couldn’t help but imagine a just slightly more ambitious version of this game, in which key beasties bestowed interesting abilities, with races or challenges to give you something to do with your friends once you’d filled out the field guide. But after less than five hours I’d done everything there was to do.

The main Hunt gametype is an exceptional experience that, although featuring some familiar mechanics, feels unlike anything else in the genre. The matches have huge diversity, and all create some thrilling rhythm from the mix of hunting and chasing and fighting.

Sonic is still straight up one of the most aggravating characters in any game on any platform.

It's nice to see such a rich franchise reinvented, but lets hope for more ambition and invention in the episodes that follow.

The very purity of purpose which makes the game such a fine arcade killbox also renders it unengaging on any level that isn't soggy and littered with stray organs. So while as a destruction simulator Prototype 2 scores very highly, there's a chance that, just like those toddlers in the dirt, you'll get bored after a short while and wander away.

This year builds on that quiet evolution but also brings a wealth of new and exciting additions, with its Legends of the Majors mode alone making it a worthwhile purchase.

MoH is certainly better for its shift from WW2 to modern warfare, but veterans who recall the salad days of the series may be expecting more.

Capcom's intentions are simple: to move Resi into the mainstream action zone, and give players as much bang as possible for their buck. It is an unsophisticated experience. If you want to be terrified, or use your brain, Resi 6 isn't the game. But if you just want to spray monster brains all over the place, while occasionally cooing at some gorgeous scenery, Resi 6 delivers in several spades.

It’s testament to Just Cause that I had no hesitation pushing through its annoyances; the surroundings are so exquisite that sometimes it’s worth enduring the slideshow for the canapes and champagne. This is a sumptuous world teeming with stuff to do.

Everything gets a laugh at least first time, followed by the satisfaction of figuring out how to do whatever you've been tasked with. The really stupid thing? This brilliant piece of idiocy is a freebie, available as a launch title for the pre-order crowd and then to everyone (for nothing) come May.