Those tiring of Overwatch 2, Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, who want a fresh take on the format and have a penchant for Ubi franchises, have many happy hours of shooting, hiding and grinding for XP ahead.

There is a layer of kindness interwoven within the cruelty, implying that even the world’s greatest monsters were once human. In an increasingly divided age, this simple message of choosing empathy over hatred feels especially poignant. As monolithic megacorps shutter Bafta-winning studios, a game like Hellblade II deserves to be cherished. Who knows how many more such cerebral epics this risk-averse industry will produce.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a riveting puzzle game, which uses its eerie visuals and elusive story as an intrinsic element of the experience rather than a mere design affectation. It is a game that asks subtle questions about the nature of creativity and play, and later it takes a breathtakingly meta turn that will thrill those who remember Kojima’s tricks in the Metal Gear Solid series. It is also a meditation on the troubled relationship between art and commerce, and quite frankly, there could not be a more timely concern for a video game to explore.

Eiyuden Chronicle stands as a monument to his singular design sensibilities, and a testament to the power of a determined community, both within the game’s fiction, and by its very existence.

The mystery of Crow Country was far richer than I had anticipated: the story is very completely drawn, and isn’t without a little levity and playfulness in the face of the darkness. I found the final sequences really bold – committed to the strange and unsettling all the way through, it certainly sticks the landing. Crow Country is far more than a pastiche of the giants of the PS1 era – it is a real triumph in and of itself.

It’s into this rich version of Sea of Thieves that the PlayStation 5 embarks – the latest in a series of Microsoft first-party titles coming to Sony’s machine. And what newcomers will find is an absolutely perfect translation of the current Xbox version, retaining the mannered visual splendour, with its stunningly authentic water physics, luminous sunsets and enticingly tropical islands. Experienced players will be able to quickly and seamlessly link to their Xbox accounts, while cross-play between the consoles and the PC is similarly painless. At the start of the game, you chose a boat (sloop, brigantine or galleon), invite friends from the list or select an open crew to play with strangers (Rare runs its own message boards to help players meet up and organise a voyage together), and you’re off.

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.

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.

Botany Manor isn’t a long game, but it is immersive and relaxing. There are fantastic, upfront accessibility options for players who struggle with the motion sickness that can often come with first-person gameplay. There’s a classic feel to it: it has touches of Myst, and The Witness, but none of their heaviness. The challenges are never too frustrating. It is a perfect two-night experience, a trip into a surprisingly sunny past, a story sprinkled with secrets that gently connect us to Arabella, but never weigh the player down. Though the story never lets us get too close to her, helping her to complete these measured, sophisticated puzzles is truly satisfying and peaceful.

It will deliver a fun weekend of fart-infused chaos for anyone who misses the days when snowfall meant freedom.

Despite the enjoyable premise and high production values, Peach’s long-awaited star turn feels disappointingly patronising, one-dimensional and forgettable – the polar opposite of the Super Mario Bros film’s capable heroine. As the Nintendo Switch enters its twilight years, this was the perfect moment to give the Mushroom Kingdom monarch the celebration she so thoroughly deserved. Yet where Kirby received a Mario-worthy, Iliad-esque epic in Forgotten Land, this is more akin to a flimsy pop-up book.

If this review feels chaotic, then that’s a fair reflection of the game. It is mad, fun, fantastical chaos and I honestly love it. Before I started writing this, I had left my Arisen and her endearingly incompetent pawn in an ancient battleground patrolled by a dragon. We blasted it with a couple of ballista bolts, and then it flew over and crushed the ballista with a claw, at which point I realised we were somewhat outgunned here and ran for some castle ruins to hide from the creature. This seemed like a good idea until skeletal warriors rose from the ground, and I realised the castle is extremely haunted. I don’t know how we’ll get out of this situation. But I do know it will be an adventure.

After the excellent surrealist horror of Alan Wake 2, which revelled in its own strangeness while also delivering a clear, compelling story, Alone in the Dark is too staid, too clumsy, and too haphazard to invoke anything other than a shrug. The mystery surrounding Jeremy’s madness isn’t worth putting up with the ponderous unravelling, while the combat and puzzling are mere shadows of Resident Evil 2’s superior design. The curse, it seems, lives on.

You leave this stylish, compact and clever game feeling relieved to be free, but then an hour later as you sit at your computer answering endless work emails or grinding in some identikit live-service fantasy game, you have to ask yourself – am I really?

There’s a parable for sports franchises to follow here: taking a year off (as WWE did in 2020) can be a good thing. From the hilariously detailed character creator to the sensation of administering a German suplex, 2K24 hits its marks.

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.

It’s a delightfully silly journey, and a rare example of a truly iconoclastic video game emerging from a sea of derivatives.

Longtime fans will hungrily slurp up every morsel of sugary fan service here, savouring every extra moment spent with this hugely beloved cast. For Avalanche-loving diehards, this is a miracle of nostalgia-stirring dream fulfilment. Newcomers hoping to experience one of the medium’s most beloved stories in its new, modern form, however, should be prepared for some yawn-inducing lows alongside many Buster-sword swinging highs.

If its publisher Ubisoft continues to support it, Skull and Bones will attract a committed player base of sea-combat enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with their ships’ builds and facing off against each other, or teaming up to take on the intimidating fleets, cargo heists and sea monsters that lurk tens of hours in. If you are after a game that feels like a pirate adventure, though, you’re still better off with Black Flag.

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.

This is perhaps the most fun I’ve had from a pure co-op shooter since Left 4 Dead or the original horde mode in Gears of War – it is so precise, its gunplay so invigorating, its feedback and effects so generous. Everything about this game is ridiculous, including how good it is at what it sets out to do.

Ultimately, Warner Brothers live-service ambitions rob players of a remarkable comic-book caper. The result is a game that’s as confused as its titular characters. Just as these reluctant heroes find themselves battling against their villainous natures, Rocksteady’s storytelling ambition struggles to break free of its live-service trappings. Since its reveal as a looter shooter, the internet has declared Suicide Squad an abomination – the antithesis of the classics that Rocksteady once made. The reality is somewhere in between, a game that straddles both the brilliant and the banal. As Rocksteady is surely learning from Suicide Squad’s hostile fan reception, you either die a licensed game hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

As someone who has played Tekken since 1995, who once smashed a PlayStation controller to pieces trying to beat Kazuya Mishima in Tekken 2 and who, as a young games journalist, often found himself in the Official PlayStation Magazine games room taking countless screenshots of Yoshimitsu’s Helicopter Stomp, Tekken 8 is an orgiastic pleasure. It is both familiar and new, eccentric and intuitive, and it does what all great fighting games do: it makes you feel incredible when you pull off an elusive series of moves to almost balletic effect. Tekken used to be dismissed as a showy poser by Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter veterans, its combos seen as over-automated and inexpressive. But later Tekken titles have added subtle layers of complexity, and now Tekken 8 wants everyone to see how that works...The King of Iron Fist tournament is calling. It is time, once again, to answer

Infinite Wealth takes a few curious steps backward, but it gets so much right and once again dedicates itself to goofiness with such aplomb that it’s impossible not to get swept up in it – a true vacation from the darkness and drama of yakuza life.

Visual and haptical enhancements along with bonus content including new modes, cut stages and audio commentary from designers make this a required experience.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown isn’t a sequel or a prequel to any of the other games, it is a new journey for the series, and its first step is a confident leap. It’s not only that the most notable elements of the series’ different iterations – its setting, traps, time powers, and combat – all find a natural home in this new shape, it’s that it plays like one of the best games in its newly chosen genre, as good as a game as Metroid Dread or Hollow Knight, not an imitation of them. It’s been 13 years since the last wholly new Prince of Persia game; if this is its new direction, it is exciting to see where it will land.

Is this a realistic insight into property ownership and management? Probably not. But it yields a good time nonetheless, and one that obeying the property ladder advice of cutting out avocado toast might actually help you to afford.

This is a well-made Avatar game. If you’re fond of the James Cameron films, then you’re in for a real treat, while even Avatar apostates will probably find something to enjoy amid Pandora’s dense undergrowth. But there are better examples of this form, and if you’re not all-in on the Na’vi way of life, you’ll be gritting your teeth through their tedious stories.