It’s not just the sense that everything is aeons old, it’s that aeons seem to pass before your eyes, chapter to chapter. Brief combat encounters are tense but sparse, and neither a highlight nor detriment, although creature design is enjoyably gruesome. Not an acquired taste, then, but an unequivocally bitter one, engineered with such bold artistry you’ll wince as you go back in for seconds.

Like Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium, the writing here occasionally sacrifices clarity for floridity, although its ornate descriptions do add detail and texture to the rudimentary pixel art.

Despite the shift to a season battle pass, Overwatch 2 retains is character, its charm and its individuality. It is the pop-culture, day-glo, neon-scorched riposte to dingy military shooters, and its concentration on empowering team-minded players and tactics makes every match feel like an unexpectedly violent buddy comedy. It is what it has always been: the shooter for the rest of us, but now there’s more of it and it’s kinda sorta free. Happy hunting.

This version of Vertigo portrays women in a way that is seriously difficult to stomach in a post-#MeToo era. Here, women prey on an unsuspecting man using, for instance, sex and hypnosis to lure him in and do him harm. Male trauma is of course absolutely real, but this game doesn’t have the tools to examine it with the required care, and ends up essentially saying #MenToo – and doing a significant disservice to the body of cinematic work that inspires it.

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.

With a little more time in the oven, Food Truck Simulator could have been something really tasty. Unfortunately, in its current form, it will surely leave players feeling a little sick instead.

The result of the old team getting together again is a tale that retreads old paths but also clearly wants to be more than just an ode to a bygone era of video games. When Threepwood goes to an oracle, Voodoo Lady, for advice, she summarises the paradox this game faces: “You must walk the path, yet you have already walked the path.” Return to Monkey Island pulls off the trick of looking backwards and forwards at the same time, reminding us that the point-and-click adventure will never really die: it’s a zombie pirate that won’t stay in the ground for long.

Somewhere out there is a bigger, more vivid version of Metal: Hellsinger that could truly rock it with the FPS greats. Yet while Hellsinger’s art isn’t good enough to grace the black cotton T-shirts of an avid metal fan, its music certainly wouldn’t feel out of place in their record collection – and the way Hellsinger weaves this soundtrack into an infernal action experience makes it a thoroughly enjoyable twist on shooter convention.

I’ve been playing versions of this game on and off for seven years now, but the fun doesn’t wear off. Splatoon 3 doesn’t offer something different, it offers more: more fashions, more modes, more ways to spend time in its messy, chaotic universe, alone or together. It is delightful to be back.

Cowabunga Collection is a nunchuck-twirling, shuriken-hurling jaunt through a glorious five-year stretch of Konami’s rich history, a perfect complement to the recent indie brawler Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.

Two Point Campus isn’t entirely toothless: it pokes gentle fun at university life through a range of lightly cynical announcements about paying tuition fees and assignment extensions. Mainly, though, it is content to focus on the journey of learning and discovery that university is intended to provide, which it achieves in inventive, knockabout style. For all the game’s wry declarations, the one truest to its spirit is also the simplest: “Students are reminded to have the time of their lives.”

Despite its 90s origins, Live a Live feels novel, revitalising a genre that often feels too conservative. It’s a constantly shifting, time-travelling bonanza that foreshadows what Takita would perfect in 1995’s Chrono Trigger; 90s role-playing fans are now praying that it receives the same lavish remake treatment, alongside other classics of the time such as Final Fantasy VI. Live a Live is not without its faults, but in an age of fast-food entertainment that satiates without leaving a taste, this compendium is a curio that’s certainly worth your time.

It is populated with characters reminiscent of Jhonen Vasquez’s illustrations, combined with a gothic and botanical bestiary that calls Hollow Knight to mind. The writing, though, is sparse and unsettling, not quite void of humour but nor silly in the way one might expect. The overall effect is darkly, fascinatingly cute: mall-goth meets folk horror, and the perfect set dressing for elegant, sharp gameplay. Cult of the Lamb has already amassed over a million sales in the first week of its crusade, for good reason. There’s little doubt that the flock will only continue to grow.

I have never seen – or played – anything like it. It’s not a game that everyone will love, but I do think it’s one that everyone should play.

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.

Rollerdrome is about getting lost in a giddy gameplay trance. As the hypnotic electro pulsed with each turn of the half-pipe and slow-mo bullets tapered out of a well-timed flip, I was grinning like a goon. Yet where OlliOlli World offered a bountiful buffet of levels to grind across, Rollerdrome’s stingy stage selection left me hungry. Much like a lockdown fad, Rollerdrome offers a thrilling way to pass an afternoon or few, but once you’ve got your kicks, only the dedicated will still be donning their skates.

Arcade Paradise comes across as a little confused, sometimes: if the premise of the game is that you’re running an arcade in your father’s laundromat in secret, for instance, then why is your dad the one paying you bonuses for those daily gaming challenges? It has the feel of a game that changed shape a few times over the course of its development. Nonetheless, it is more than a collection of average arcade game tributes. Intentionally or not, it captures something of the ennui of young adulthood and 90s Gen X disillusionment with menial work – and how video games have always been a colourful escape from the boredom of everyday life.

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.

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.

This is a stunning-looking game, whether witnessed from the ground or the rooftops – I won’t spoil the cat’s journey, but the developer wrings copious novelty and some impressively creepy moments from this shut-off city in the seven-ish hours it takes to play through. It’s certainly far from twee, with the possible exception of the bucket-lifts that you can ride down from rooftops, paws and ears all poking out over the top – and those are so cute that they’re instantly forgivable.

From the stop-motion, claymation backgrounds that dress some tucked-away areas, to mind-bending stage transitions, and the commanding full orchestral score from composer Kristofer Maddigan, there’s not one aspect of The Delicious Last Course that feels undercooked.

Neon White’s chaotic presentation and somewhat puerile script conceals a game of taut design and striking imagination – a delicious test of skills that generously rewards commitment with exhilaration.

F1 22 is technically stunning, and that, combined with the chance to drive this year’s cars on this year’s tracks, should make it irresistible to Formula One fans. As long as they manage to ignore the egregious F1 Life.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes gives the series the whirlwind combat that its fantastical story deserves, while still allowing you to lovingly gaze at your favourite anime boy or girl at a picnic. It’s really the best of both worlds.

Stylish and minimalistic, this gentle, quietly demanding game offering escape and satisfaction will entertain for hours.

The Quarry’s charming writing and cinematic presentation make it an engrossing horror caper – even if this is, paradoxically, a game that’s often at its best when you’re not actively playing it.

Designed by Amanda Warner, who has collaborated on interactive projects for the WHO and the Gates Foundation, Influence, Inc feels like fiction, but it’s based on hard research and includes a bibliography of works such as Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and The Death of Truth by Michiko Kakutani. Your work soon becomes overwhelming (the interface struggles to communicate the minutiae of your projects as they grow in complexity), but this is a mesmerising window into the murky world made famous by Cambridge Analytica, and inhabited by countless others all working for clandestine clients, towards clandestine ends.

All this is beautifully brought to life with scribbly, expressive character portraits, wine-coloured backdrops and a cosy, mock-serious score that suggests a chamber-music troupe lurking just across the salon. Card Shark isn’t always this charming, however. Building the story around perfecting tricks makes for plenty of repetition, whether practising in the coach or restarting a scenario with little more than the shirt on your back. Nerial does its best to avoid a traditional game-over – you can actually cheat death – but it’s easy to imagine a better-resourced version of the game in which every loss sends you along a wholly different story branch. Still, mastering a new con is always worth the trial and error – as is the thrill of taking a duke to the cleaners.