And, yes, the handful of marquee moments spent running from or tussling with gargantuan creatures are spectacular. I will never turn my back on a pelican again as long as I live. Throughout, Reanimal drip-feeds clues to compelling mysteries surrounding the nature of its world and the children’s place within it. A shame, then, that it whiffs its apparent swing at recapturing the gut-punch of Little Nightmares II’s ending.

Much as our heroes are caught between two worlds, Fantasian has one foot in design dogma while the other paddles around cautiously in new ideas. The result is a lengthy and sumptuous genre piece, the equivalent of a good Netflix movie that you probably wouldn’t watch at the cinema. These days, that’s more of a compliment than it used to be.

Reigns Beyond works as a madcap space caper that you can dip into for 10 minutes at a time, and the wit and pace of the dialogue are impressive. But I did wonder why I was part of a band. Sometimes when you land on a planet you’ll play a gig, but these musical interludes are repetitive, unchallenging and inconsequential. It’s funny and surprisingly wide-ranging as a space-team comedy, but as a band buddy comedy it’s comparatively shallow. I also wonder whether the name isn’t holding it back at this point: Reigns made sense when it was a game about being a variably competent monarch, but it doesn’t scream comedy sci-fi, and I think it will end up passing a lot of people by as a result – a minor tragedy, as you won’t find anything else like these few hours of spacefaring silliness for under a fiver.

The intrigues that play out between its often bizarre but always interesting characters and factions, and underwater sequences that see Reed in a 1920s diving suit, are highly absorbing. Its narrative puts the boot into religious cults, and Lovecraft would surely not have approved of its ruminations on racism. It also tackles Depression-era deprivation, which is pretty apposite in today’s world. The Sinking City is original, commendably thought-provoking and deliciously gothic, but aspects of it feel either half-finished or ill thought-out. Had it pruned just a little of its ambition, it could have had more than cult appeal.

With rewards for completing each stage within a set number of moves, there are incentives for perfecting your approach too. But the game’s tutorials linger well into the game’s 40-hour runtime, and combined with a bland storyline, basic environments and a persistently low challenge, it’s a game that will only appeal to the series’ most committed followers.

The innovation of players running around after their shots is fun but you may find yourself longing for a leisurely stroll over the course.

Really, it’s the kind of game that’s best enjoyed when you don’t think about it very hard. It’ll make 12-15 hours disappear in an ever-escalating sequence of rooftop-spanning leaps of faith, easily conquered shootouts and cartoonish face-offs against supervillains and giant robots. It’s as moreish as popcorn, and exactly as substantial.

Whether your guests’ stay is pleasant or not rarely makes a difference, so the management elements feel like stepping stones to the story Bear and Breakfast actually wants to tell. Hank is a sweet Bear and his friends are memorable enough, but in its storytelling the game seems to introduce and abandon characters for long periods of time. It is a simulation that requires patience in a genre that usually gives players loads to do – it’s a management game that’s obsessed with managing its players, rather than letting them exercise control.

Hunters is not quite as much fun as playing Overwatch … or watching Star Wars. It could have done with some truly original features, or more movie content tied in with the gameplay. Instead, it is a decent team shooter that you can play on Switch or mobile, and swap your progress between the two, so you never have to go more than a few moments without levelling up a wookiee. Yes, it tries to bamboozle you with many quests, challenges and blinking icons on the menu screen so that you inevitably fold and buy a £10 season pass, but you can definitely defeat the game’s Jedi mind tricks and have a blast without paying. The force is strong in this one, but not THAT strong.

As a piece of merchandise, this does the job it needs to. As a video game, it's anything but Brave.

Both longtime RTS fans and Age of Empires vets will find things to love here, a comfy if well-worn tactician’s armchair to slip into, spiffed up, and with a few shining surprises stuffed down the sides. But it all comes at such a premium, and with campaigns geared so heavily as tutorials for the multiplayer, it’s hard to wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone not already invested.

Thief feels unwieldy at times, although it's not the travesty some reviewers are making it out to be. It's a beautiful stealth game that's fun to play in bursts, but it's hard to recommend it without reservations.

Revealed to little fanfare at last year’s The Game Awards, Bayonetta Origins was the game that no one expected, and even fewer wanted. For some then, its mere existence is akin to Bayo blasphemy, yet in truth, this spin-off is far from the disaster many expected. While it never comes close to the highs of last year’s Bayonetta 3, it’s still a charming curio for fans and more importantly – a fantastic introduction to the genre for younger players.

I wanted more: more depth, more interaction, more complexity; a hero's journey with more at stake than flowers.

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

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.

While No Fate doesn’t move the needle for Terminator games as much as I’d like, it succeeds in resetting the clock for the series’ interactive arm. It’s a pointed reminder that Terminator has gaming greatness within it.

This brief, raw and unsettling reimagining of a celebrated environmentalist’s campaign against pesticides presents a sickly vision of nature contaminated by humans.

It's rarely an enjoyable experience, but within that, Catherine perhaps poses its greatest puzzle of all: does a video game always need to be enjoyable to be worthwhile?

Habitat destruction is something we’re surely all aware of – we’ve all seen the heartbreaking footage of animals left stranded in tiny patches of forest, surrounded by roads and industry. Beyond the Trees reinforces its ecological message through its visuals and through play, and though this might not be many players’ introduction to this pressing real-world issue, it is a new way to look at it, and a new way to engender sympathy. Developer Broken Rules has done its research here, both on the creatures themselves and the places they call home. No matter how many people feel moved to donate to conservation charities after playing, this game will have made a difference through its advocacy.

Ultimately, it feels almost disrespectful that Tolkien's rich and evocative mythology should be reduced to collecting "Gandalf Tokens" and bowdlerising one of the 20th century's greatest mythologies. The pity is that that Aragorn's Quest works well enough to prove that LOTR does indeed have the makings of an epic RPG. Unfortunately, this isn't it.

But I think my major reservation was about the overall size of the game. On the basis that you might know two thirds of the songs on offer and like maybe one third, with only 30 songs it does feel like you could easily become bored.

Here, Game Freak draws up an exciting new open-world blueprint for the Pokémon franchise, but appears to have lacked the time and knowhow to deliver it to spec. Compare this with June’s gorgeous Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which runs on the same console, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re beta testing an open-world Pokémon. With more time in the oven, this could have been genuinely exciting. As it stands, this fun-filled adventure asks you to put up with an awful lot more of the rough than the smooth.

Here, Game Freak draws up an exciting new open-world blueprint for the Pokémon franchise, but appears to have lacked the time and knowhow to deliver it to spec. Compare this with June’s gorgeous Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which runs on the same console, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re beta testing an open-world Pokémon. With more time in the oven, this could have been genuinely exciting. As it stands, this fun-filled adventure asks you to put up with an awful lot more of the rough than the smooth.

Comfort would increasingly slip into boredom as I watched the timers on my machines creep down. More than once I left my PC to make a cup of tea, letting the game run and the timers tick by themselves. I could feel the game’s pacing jarring with my own tempo of play, but, despite that, I’m constantly drawn back to Portia. This kind of relaxing escapism is exactly what’s needed when the real world feels like such an endless mess.

There are great individual moments in Far Cry 5. The gunplay is excellent, its unpredictable world generates daring stories of accidental heroism, and when it leans into the whole red-blooded American patriotism schtick, it’s genuinely funny. It doesn’t always fit together as well as it should, sometimes forcing the player to work around the game rather than with it – but the wildly vacillating tone is the bigger issue. It’s at once disorienting and noncommittal. Paradoxically, this is an extreme satire of modern America that says pretty much nothing about it.

Let's hope the 30th Anniversary package is a bit more ambitious.

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.

Does Cyberpunk 2077 live up to the hype? Is it significantly deeper than Watch Dogs: Legion or Yakuza: Like a Dragon? Is it as good as Grand Theft Auto V? The answer to all of these questions is no. The sheer size of the world, its astonishing architecture, its set-piece battles, its stylistic bravado – all are testament to the efforts of a talented workforce. But you have to play by its rules, accepting Night City’s xenophobia and misogyny as unavoidable fictive components. Unlike Los Santos, this is not a multifaceted sandbox where you’re free to create whole new activities unforeseen by the designers. You’re there to do missions and side-missions, and the world only yields thus far. You’re always a tourist, never a citizen...In this way, Cyberpunk 2077 resembles a vast, futuristic Las Vegas. You come here and have a hell of a week, but then you wake up one morning feeling jaded and complicit, and you realise that the glitzy signs lead nowhere, the noise is meaningless, and when you look beyond the strip, there is only desert.

A crowd-pleasing game, which offers only glimpses of what could be if this team were only allowed to take some braver risks with Croft’s next expedition.

Sniper V2 Elite is something of an anachronism too, a middle-tier boxed game that lacks the budget or refinement of a blockbuster, but enjoys far more craft and spark than a budget release.

There is a lot of soul in The Collage Atlas, and a lot of beauty. Aesthetically, it is extraordinary, and worth playing just to gawp at. It lacks direction, and might have been more affecting without words – but a few hours’ wander through its dreamscapes filled me with admiration for its creator’s artistic talent.

This attempt to cosy-fi an immersive sim game is full of ‘zany’ gags as you rescue cats from a spaceship, but it gets a bit too saccharine.

Sadly a lack of anything approaching a decent story means the action can feel like a grind, especially when played offline.

It is, at least, pretty original, and getting to grips with your submarines' controls is both fun and satisfying. We would, though, have preferred to see it priced more realistically to reflect its brevity. It's true that it simply wouldn't work on any console other than the 3DS, but it's by no means an essential purchase.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is the video game equivalent of an old war film that you’ve seen many times before, but still enjoy watching with a feeling of nostalgic comfort that armed conflict perhaps should not provide. It won’t set the world alight, but gives you the opportunity to blow a lot of it up – which is, after all, what we want from this series.

It’s unfortunate that Empire of Sin has arrived in town with holes in its waistcoat, but I don’t believe its problems are beyond fixing, and it’s got moxie that ultimately shines through the flaws.

Shortcomings aside, Ivy the Kiwi is a solid, above-average casual game that's likely to have platformer fans hooked, for a few hours at least.

There are certainly rough edges aplenty to be picked at, but also a deep love of the source material; everything from the voice-acting to the detail on gun barrels is steeped in that grim 40K atmosphere. The look and feel of this Space Hulk delights the boy in me, who long ago abandoned Games Workshop but never quite lost faith in the Imperium of Man.

Like the sport itself, it is modest, yet dignified.

Knack isn't a bad game: there is satisfaction to be derived from it, some of the gameplay is genuinely good fun (at its best moments, it does begin to acquire an air reminiscent of a more ponderous Crash Bandicoot), and it's one of the longer games to emerge in recent years, so will at least keep youngsters occupied for decent periods of time. But neither is it a particularly good game, which is hugely disappointing given that it's supposed to be one of the flagship reasons for buying a PlayStation 4.

The Ascent is an atmospheric power fantasy, a cinematic cyberpunk escape where you can disengage your brain and indulge in copious virtual violence. If you’re a Game Pass subscriber, it’s worth a try – at £25, it’s harder to recommend.

Technical wobbliness doesn’t always denote a bad game. The sheer charm of the writing, delightful golfing and the warmth of the world compensate for the rough edges. It’s a generously big game, too – imperfect, but special nonetheless.

The underlying issue with Dustborn is the balancing act between serious topics and the supernatural, as well as its clear desire to alternate between fun moments, activism and drama – a balance it ultimately can’t hit. For example, a tragedy for an entire community is followed by a birthday party for a raccoon. I had a better time once I stopped taking it seriously, because the standout moments happen when Dustborn leans into the silliness of its supernatural storyline. With Dustborn, you may expect a tense trek across the US, but what you really end up with is the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie, and that is OK.

Somerville is the only game that has ever had me hiding from aliens in a grimy festival Portaloo. Yet its last-ditch attempt at a galaxy-brain sci-fi ending lands with a disappointing thud. While its head-scratcher finale leaves you wishing its nonverbal narrative was a little more verbal, Somerville remains a masterclass in minimal storytelling; a series of memorable, haunting vignettes.

This mixtape, then, plays it safe, curating a crowd-pleasing compilation of teenage tropes and homages to coming-of-age cinema. It’s a beautiful and inventively silly series of musical vignettes – but without any real conflict at its core, the adventure fails to match the memorable heights of Life Is Strange. Much like an evening spent scrolling through classic music videos on YouTube, there’s a simple, nostalgic joy to be found. But once this four-hour spectacle is over, you might be left wishing that you’d spent your time more wisely.

It's always been more fun playing with friends than spending time alone with the rabbids – diluting their shouty impact makes them a little more palatable – that seems to be underlined with this collection.

At the moment – three weeks of regular play and barely scratching the surface – I'm erring on the side of caution with this score. Ask me again when I've made it to Hawaii and I suspect it may creep up a little.

Unfortunately, while it's energetic fun in parts, there's a series of near-vertical blips where the learning curve should be.

Teenage boys will absolutely hate it. But when viewed as a platform game for kids, it's pretty impressive. Kirby first emerged in 1992; only now has his existence been justified.

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.

Safe to say, it isn't the future of first-person shooters. But it is great fun.

Just like a certain big budget Activision sci-fi shooter, Battlefront is simply the opening skirmish in an ever-expanding galactic conflict. Star Wars fans: it is your Destiny.

Eidos Montreal’s near-future thriller presents a visually impressive dystopian playground, but a wonky narrative and some shoddy touches tarnish its potential.

It's not the best racing game around – it's not particularly unique or innovative, the "plot", as it is, in story mode isn't engaging or well told, the soundtrack is undistinguished, but its flaws are forgiven thanks to its great looks and fantastic playability.

There's a lot to like about The Wreckateer; it's a fun, if slightly lightweight offering, and its Kinect controls are well implemented. But as good as it is, The Wreckateer won't win over anyone who isn't already convinced by Kinect. It looks like players may have to wait for the next generation of consoles before that's even possible.

It lacks the depth of Toy Story 3 but Tangled on the Wii certainly won't disappoint the young audience it is aimed at. Parents will enjoy helping out, and for what it is, Tangled is definitely worth a look.

Smashing two dimensions together should be the stuff of ambitious prog-rock albums, but Infinite seems determined to steer towards the middle of the road.

Cindy’s design is laughable, but she draws attention to a broader problem with the game: its overwhelming maleness.

The soundtrack is one of the best of the year, and it’s incredibly stylish. But the sheer gory, numerical compulsion at its core gets more terrifying the more you consider how much sway this manic impulse toward numb, exploitative accumulation holds in our own world. Dystopias like this used to feel creepily prescient. Now, they just feel terrifyingly honest.

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.

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.

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.

Despite being written by John Milius, the characters lack any hint of personality, though, and ultimately the single-player campaign is short and disappointing.

Melody of Moominvalley is simple and unchallenging, and also disappointingly short – you can see almost everything within a day’s play. And yet it’s all put together with such care that it’s difficult to begrudge these shortcomings. The licence is everything: spending a short time in a faithfully evoked version of Tove Jansson’s strange and memorable world is worth the entrance fee.

When a Sega marketing executive came up with the nonsense phrase “blast processing” to “explain” the technical capabilities of the Mega Drive, it’s now clear they experienced some sort of messianic premonition. Sonic Frontiers is blast processing in video game form: anarchic, careless, silly, exciting, meaningless, wonderful. What a daft and incredible ride.

Black Ops II isn't a lazy annual update – it deserves credit for trying to play around with gaming's most winning formula. Yet this engine is showing its age, creaking at times as the jets fly overhead. Its new strategy levels don't need strategy. And the best parts are tweaked copies of what has been before. In the end, Black Ops II doesn't give us meaningful innovation, and it suggests COD's future success will depend on much more than fiddling around with the past.

Try as I might, I just can't hate it.

It’s a satisfying experience as you glide gracefully over the ocean, but too often the dogfighting and bombing runs play out as erratic scrambles.

Second Son comes off as gorgeous, carefree fun, but a disappointing next-gen entry. The combat is as fast-paced and open to experimentation as it's ever been, but there is never the same sense of real power that the previous games delivered. Sucker Punch clearly wanted to create a big-hearted hero in Delsin, but there's a surprising lack of soul in everything else.

MGO’s fundamentals are great, and the experience it can create in the best modes is nothing short of exceptional. But these are high points in what is otherwise a polished but meagre offering, a multiplayer mode that feels lacking in depth and longevity. MGSV’s singleplayer saw Kojima Productions over-deliver and leave with a bang. In such company, the LA studio’s MGO is little more than a whimper.

While Saints Row is messy, buggy, silly and often derivative, it also recalls a time in the early 2000s when the open world genre was a haphazard, joyful space with none of the codified, dopamine-fracking precision of modern titles. There are, in this frisky reboot, the ghosts of titles such as True Crime: Streets of LA, State of Emergency, The Getaway and Runabout – patchy, imperfect but gripping experiments in player agency that didn’t quite understand the conventions, but had a bash anyway. To me that is a far more interesting set of stablemates than the last couple of Saints Row titles. To me, this is a preposterously fun video game, despite its many faults, or more accurately, because of them.

Interactive possibilities make this dorky tale about a small-town psychic musician strangely absorbing.

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

Just like the numpties on Grand Designs, Happy Home Designer doesn’t really know what it wants, and it suffers for it. It can’t possibly be the newest Animal Crossing – it’s far too small. It’s a pretty good, if simple, home decorating game, but not as a full, standalone release.

Ultimately, high production values and variety raises Kinect Star Wars above mediocrity, but it only delivers tantalising glimpses of the kind of game both the controller and the franchise badly needed.

Borderlands 4 is a big game – the main storyline takes 20 to 30 hours to complete, and there’s plenty to do afterwards. It is not entirely frictionless: sometimes you need to traverse huge distances in its missions, and the directional indicator that helps you along the way is annoyingly erratic. And it has been buggy at launch: playing on PC, it has occasionally crashed on me, even after a huge patch, and early players have reported problems with stuttering and other performance issues. But Borderlands needed to grow up a bit, and that’s exactly what it has done, without losing its essential charm. Its top-quality shooter action might be comfortably familiar, but it’s also an awful lot less annoying than it used to be.

The Chinese term “kung fu” roughly translates as “a skill acquired through hard work and practice”. Sifu might just be the purest expression of the concept that games have ever seen. The journey is brutal. It is not for the faint of heart, nor the short of patience. But those prepared to rise to the challenge will find that something spectacular comes after the pain. Is it worth the hardship? Ask me when the wounds have healed.

There are still moments when you unfairly plummet from first to sixth in three seconds, but that frustration is as much a part of this genre as cartoonish platforming heroes looking for a lucrative side gig. Just go with the flow.

There’s much to enjoy in this sequel to the trailblazing female-led narrative game, but inconsistent characterisation lets it down.

There is a genuinely brilliant strategy game lurking under all this flimsy Nintendo wrapping. For younger audiences, these complaints probably won’t matter, but for the fully-grown Nintendo faithful, Sparks of Hope’s paper-thin narrative, juvenile jokes and disappointing hub worlds are hard to ignore, despite the fantastic fights.

But despite the rewarding interplay between various stats and buffs, and the laudable sensation that, even very early on, you have access to the sort of freedom in character and combat customisation that’s typically locked away for hours in similar games, Diablo 4 feels … toylike. Strip away the hellish screams and scarily convincing Halloween costumes, and what’s left is the video game equivalent of hyper-palatable junk food, albeit with myriad colourful warnings on the packaging.

What Lego Jurassic doesn’t do is innovate on the previous Lego games a great deal – nor does it really need to. This is aimed squarely at children – or more specifically at parents who want to share some nostalgia with their kids while making use of the perfect drop-in/drop-out co-operative option.

It's a game in which an early sense of delight and intrigue soon turns to weariness, the standout scenes and ideas failing to compensate for an increasing sense of deja vu with each new wall run and puzzle, wrapped in a tired storyline that does little to propel you forward. In the end, it's the zombies that make you flee to the conclusion, rather than the design that draws you towards it – a subtle distinction perhaps, but a crucial one.

Those with a less all-consuming enthusiasm for all things on four wheels will find it provides more frustration than enjoyment.

While the different games offer some variety, there's simply not enough to differentiate between them.

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.

Final Fantasy Explorers most certainly isn’t the game that will turn those who have always wondered what Final Fantasy is all about onto the franchise. It does at least provide something new to play on the legions of 3DSes out there, at a time when owners have been particularly ill-served. For confirmed fans it offers a nice, gentle, if non-archetypal, means of re-entering the Final Fantasy universe, whetting their appetites for Final Fantasy XV and VII.

A cunning combination of word search, Tetris and those kids' puzzles with the slidey tiles, Word Soup is simple enough to grasp on a short commute, but suitably addictive to last a long-haul flight.

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.

More generally there is much better access to tactics and strategy, with players able to manipulate their team's position and lineups to an almost Football Manager-style degree.

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.

There's a great live version of Paranoid featuring both Ozzy and Metallica, but the basic track has been used before – suggesting that without innovation in other departments, the series is simply running out of guitar styles to ape.

Uncover a grim conspiracy and sweet-talk snooty bears in this genre-hopping indie game.

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.

By the end, there wasn’t a lot that felt new – but I had phantom hand cramps from swinging that electrified baton, and a powerful need to sit down and have a cup of tea. I felt as if I’d survived – which is just what this game is going for.

This game shows tremendous love for all things Spider-Man, and the ending packs a punch he would be proud of. But Insomniac relies too much on its hero to elevate the world built around him, with the result that the game wears thin some time before its powerful conclusion.

Hang in there through the repetition, though, and it turns out that there’s more to this than internet dog jokes and fetch quests. The combination of wandering and postmodernism put me in a contemplative mood anyway, presumably by design, and the wistful conversations with Krista, in which the couple gently nurture a long-distance relationship, have tenderness and pathos that kept me coming back. As a joke game, this has the expected issues, but ultimately it’s a flight I’m glad I didn’t miss.