A highly enjoyable introduction to the PlayStation 5 but also a charming celebration of the entire history of PlayStation, even if it’s something you’ll only ever play once.

The turn-based battles don’t fully convince but the new protagonist and bizarre mini-games still feel distinctively and entertainingly Yakuza.

A finale that only exacerbates the faults of the series up till now but the sheer audacity of the storytelling, and the goodwill built up over so many years, pushes it over the finishing line.

Loud, brash, brightly coloured tracks with a rousing selection of cars and racing styles in a game that’s much more about fun than serious simulation.

The least interesting use of the Until Dawn formula so far, with a tedious tale of 17th century witchcraft that fails to either scare or entertain.

It owes an obvious debt to Mirror’s Edge but this impressive new cyberpunk game surpasses its inspiration in terms of both combat and first person parkour.

After years out of the limelight Pikmin 3 has resprouted, with its mellow take on real-time strategy more enjoyable than ever, especially thanks to the expanded co-op options.

A disappointingly tame vision of a near future dystopia, that represents a perfectly competent use of the Ubisoft formula but falters in its attempts to add anything new to it.

It features some of the best moments from this generation of Pokémon but this final slice of DLC still suffers from a lack of substance and ambition.

Like most DLC it doesn’t introduce much in the way of new ideas but if you enjoyed Doom Eternal you’re going to love these new levels and their uncompromising challenge.

A labour of love that pays brilliantly inventive tribute to the platform genre and the 8 and 16-bit eras in general.

A wonderfully inventive attempt to bring Mario Kart into the real world, whose mere premise is enough to amuse and delight, despite some unavoidable practical limitations.

A disappointing sequel to The Dark Descent, but while the horror elements can seem mundane at times the storytelling and characterisation remain impressive.

A colourful, loot-orientated action role-player let down by over-simplified systems and levelling up that often feels inconsequential.

A cute, absorbing, and often clever survival game that, despite its flaws, is perfect lockdown fodder.

There’s no indication when you pass a checkpoint, so it’s easy to lose chunks of progress if you’re interrupted by a call or life, and the touch controls occasionally get in the way of solving puzzles, but it’s still a unique experience, albeit one marred by its own butterfly attention span.

With a minimalist 1960s art style, a capitalist-sceptic theme, and jazzy soundtrack it’s got style but continually having to restart levels because you made a wrong choice on the first day gets tired fast.

It’s entertaining enough while it lasts, but with puzzles that predominantly rely on trial and error or simple pattern recognition, there’s little to really get your teeth into.

There’s a nice weight and momentum to the rolling characters, you can play in four-player co-op if you have three Apple Arcade subscribing friends, and it has high production values, but its ideas never seem to go anywhere, as though the game had bigger plans that it ended up not getting around to.

Originally released on PC and consoles, the touch controls work absolutely fine, and while it lacks the ingenuity of Nintendo’s masterpieces, it’s a diverting and amusing role-playing game to have on your phone.

It’s good looking, and you’re not forced to watch as many ads as you are in Archero, but on the minus side it’s also not nearly as much fun.

A studied recreation of Crash Bandicoot’s halcyon days, that does little to innovate the formula but still offers a fun and varied slice of 90s style platforming.

A charmingly offbeat exploration and object finding game which is at least as much about its characters and their stories as it is the mechanics of your search.

Probably the most innovative FIFA in years, that leaves the door open for further improvement in the next gen – even if the grim shadow of Ultimate Team is never likely to leave.

An unexpectedly involved space combat simulator that manages to replicate the thrills of the 90s X-Wing and TIE Fighter games with surprising clarity – and an excellent VR mode.

A good looking and competent retread of a second rate original, which improves on everything from the graphics to the driving model, whilst maintaining the game’s cinematic essence.

Super Mario Bros. doesn’t suit the battle royale formula as well as Tetris, but this is still a fun novelty that neatly demonstrates the ageless virtues of the original game.

A simple but enjoyable party game that’s very easy to pick up and play with friends – and a considerably better video game than last year’s WWE 2K20.

Serious Sam is looking seriously tired, with a new sequel that makes only the most perfunctory attempt to doing anything new for the franchise or shooters in general.

Nothing less or more than what was promised. Still the best football game around but its problems feel more glaring a year later.

A hell of a good roguelike, supported by a surprisingly strong narrative that provides just as much motivation to persevere as the excellent combat system.

Not at all what you’d expect from the makers of Dragon’s Crown, but as well as the expectedly beautiful artwork this has some of the most engaging high school melodrama this side of Persona.

An excellent sequel to one of indie gaming’s most enduring stars, that changes just enough to keep things interesting without losing the magic of the original.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars is not a very good compilation but two of the three games it contains are exceptional, one more from a historical perspective, the other from every angle imaginable. These are games that everyone owes it to themselves to play, and if the medium for doing so is this rather underwhelming collection that’s still far better than nothing at all.

A staggeringly inept attempt to clone Super Smash Bros. and populate it with indie characters, whose only achievement is to make you appreciate the real thing even more.

It would be one thing if this was just NBA 2K20 with some minor changes but this rips the heart out of last year’s game solely to appeal to competitive online players, with many much-loved features stripped back or not included at all.

It’s a strange and beautiful game, although one you’ll need to approach with an open mind and absolutely no sense of hurry.

Elite Squad is a blandly generic gacha game, with tedious, tactics-free, but mercifully brief gun battles tacked onto the front end.

It’s a good looking game, but without the capacity to make enough of your own decisions in the opening hours, each attempt feels identical to the last, holding back the possibility of any real strategic experimentation.

Although all the combos, stances and weapons make it to the small screen, the touch controls are no match for a proper controller, instantly putting mobile players at a disadvantage in the game’s all-platform cross-play matches. Still, for a totally free game with only cosmetic microtransactions, you’d have to be an inveterate choosing beggar to complain too loudly.

Surprisingly dark, despite its protagonists’ youth and manga cuteness, the narrative branching in all sorts of semi-lethal directions as you test the game’s capacity for characters to lie, manipulate, and double cross their junior school chums.

The in-your-face visuals distort and strobe when you collide with walls or objects, giving the whole enterprise a migraine-inducing quality that actually goes quite well with its savage difficulty level. If you suffer from photosensitive epilepsy, this is a game you might want to avoid.

It’s a surprisingly expansive mobile interpretation of its older sibling, your clone pilot gradually earning and learning new skills, and with that the ability to fly better spacecraft. Ship-to-ship combat takes place at huge range in the empty blackness of space, but it’s nevertheless satisfying blowing away space pirates with your slowly improving arsenal.

Gorgeous pixel art graphics and one of the best turn-based combat systems of recent years can’t quite make up for an obnoxious script and frustrating role-playing elements.

A jumbled mess that’s trying to be at least three different types of game at once, drowning out the enjoyable combat with a tsunami of repetition and meaningless loot.

A stripped-down, glorious-looking remake that updates the original two games in just the right way to make them feel fresh and exciting again.

A terrifying vision of future America, that already seems worryingly accurate, and also one of the most open-ended role-playing games of recent years, with a smart line in dark comedy.

An inferior experience to PC and Oculus, not in terms of graphics but the frustrating PlayStation Move controllers that make wielding a lightsaber more a pain than a pleasure.

A stale series stuck in its own Groundhog Day almost redeems itself with The Yard and will entertain casual football fans, but mediocrity seeps into almost every mode in another backwards step for the franchise.

Technically impeccable and fantastic to behold, 2K’s first PGA Tour game is already the best golf sim currently available.

Dontnod continues to lead the world in terms of character diversity and representation, and while Tell Me Why’s story can sometimes lack drama it’s still engagingly interactive.

A solidly made and entertaining racing game with loads to unlock, whose minor graphical shortcomings and sim-lite handling do nothing to interfere with long term appeal.

The original was hardly viewed as a classic even at the time and while a lot of work has gone into this remaster it can’t hide the game’s intrinsic shallowness and repetition.

A wonderfully cheerful rhythm action game that channels the best of Jet Set Radio and Parappa the Rapper but still maintains its own distinctive style.

A flawed attempt to adapt the show, that struggles when it comes to storytelling but has the makings of a great heist game.

In the end we’ve come to believe that maybe the trolling theory is accurate and that this is all one big joke carried out by Microsoft, Rare, and Dlala Studios. Either way, we spent the entire time being frustrated, bewildered, and only very occasionally entertained. We don’t think our experience would’ve been improved if we did happen to be big Battletoads groupies though, as this doesn’t seem like something fans, or indeed anyone else, would enjoy.

An utterly charming and perfectly paced mini-adventure that packs in more character, emotion, and sense of wonder than most 30 hour epics.

The best Dark Souls clone so far features a number of interesting new ideas and also offers an experience that is easier to acclimatise to for new players.

If you play it for free this is an excellent introduction to the concept of Total War, but as a paid-for product it’s a sometimes awkward mix of fact and fiction, old problems and new.

It looks and sounds great but this post-apocalyptic rhythm action game lacks that little extra kick to make it a genuine classic.

Sony’s first experiment on the PC is just that, with a disappointingly glitchy port of one of the PlayStation 4’s most technically advanced exclusives.

Clocking in at under an hour, with no challenge and a story that is at best highly confusing, Arrog is beautiful but strangely empty.

Amanita’s distinctive art style and wonderfully expressive characters, whose movements and expressions convey chapters’ worth of emotion, are as effective as ever, even if the ladder mazes and robot baiting eventually get to feel a bit samey.

Felix moves beautifully, and the game’s narrated by the eternally sonorous Patrick Stewart, but it suffers from a patchy difficulty level, supplying five-ish hours of mildly frustrating and often repetitive puzzling.

Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem as the rest of its genre, namely relying on random-seeming and counter-intuitive combinations of equipment to overcome many of its problems. YouTube will get you unstuck but cheating your way through feels as hollow as it always does.

Telling the story of Meve, queen of Lyria, and replete with familiar characters from the games and books, Thronebreaker’s games of Gwent mix standard one-on-one matches with a plethora of puzzle levels, each with its own set of rules and constraints. The result is a rich and varied tactical tour de force, comprising dozens of hours of entertainment backed up by a story that’s as twisted and interesting as Witcher fans have come to expect.

There is a satisfaction to completing stages with all three bonus goals intact, but the game’s glacial pace and realistic but intrinsically clunky onscreen controls, that offer no option to connect a controller, will not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Another deeply disappointing Fast & Furious game that’s all the more upsetting because of the obvious talent it wastes in terms of both developer and cast.

Exactly the sort of fun, colourful, and purposefully silly multiplayer game the world needs right now, even if it’s not exactly the most polished video game of the year.

Skater XL has a mid-budget price point and comes from a small indie outfit from which you wouldn’t expect triple-A polish and heft. It also has a substantial community busy designing mods and items for it, too. But unless you’re a truly fanatical skateboarder in real-life, your most likely reaction to buying it and booting it up is likely to be: ‘Is that it?’. It’s an exemplary control system in search of a game.

Another ineffectual attempt to transpose the Dark Souls gameplay and atmosphere into a sci-fi setting, although the split-screen mode is an interesting novelty.

Grounded shows great promise, and apparently a large community is already at work helping Obsidian to hone it (which is the main point behind its appearance in Early Access). It has all the ingredients required to make it a cult hit and you can only hope that Obsidian will finish it off sooner rather than later.

One of the best 2D shooters of the modern era is also one of the most visually distinctive games of the whole generation, and a stunning work of imagination on every level.

An impressively original take on XCOM style turn-based strategy that gains in depth and versatility what it loses in accessibility, with some of the best boss encounters of the year.

One of the most impressive technical achievements on the Switch, which even manages to make improvement to the PC original – although it’s rather expensive and the original is beginning to show its age in design terms.

Playing as an alien monstrosity is a great idea, and at times works well, but the fiddly controls and awkward mix of gameplay ideas doesn’t gel together well.

As far as being an early access game goes, you’d barely guess in terms of normal gameplay, as while there are a few bugs and glitches it’s nothing compared to how most AAA games launch nowadays. However, the further you start to explore away from the town the more missing content and blocked-off areas there are, waiting for a future update and the final release. We’re never fans of early access precisely because of things like that but if you take the current state of the game as an extended demo then we can definitely say that Ooblets is already growing us.

A stylishly presented, adult-themed adventure that explores the night life of Paris in thought-provoking but agreeably quirky detail.

One of the most relentlessly charming video games ever made and the best Paper Mario since The Thousand-Year Door.

A competent but shallow and overfamiliar attempt to replicate Assassin’s Creed style open world adventure in the world of 13th century samurai.

The coronavirus has made its themes more relevant than ever and while there are many odd decisions, in terms of plot and game design, the overall experience remains strangely engrossing.

Despite its elegant art style and stirring musical score, it’s crushingly dull. The narratives don’t branch, and with auto-fight turned on, your role is reduced to that of spectator rather than player, and no amount of fourth wall-breaking humour or twisted fairy tale storylines make up for the boredom at its core.

The light touch of the writing offsets the slightly melancholy content, and its Emerald Isle setting makes for a welcome break from the usual Americana, fantasy violence, and crime fighting.

Although frequently compared to Zelda games, and indeed sharing a similar structure and pastoral charm, it unfortunately lacks Nintendo’s magic and feels plodding and workaday despite its undoubtedly lofty production values.

Earn XP to level up, unlocking new creatures, equipment, heroes, and bigger maps. While finding a decent weapon early on can make a big difference, the randomness isn’t too brutal, and the game gets more interesting as you progress, with more characters and larger levels forcing you to make judicious use of each hero’s skills to survive.

It’s exquisitely designed, both graphically and in terms of its ruleset, and gives the distinct impression of being a labour of love. It’s also monumentally addictive and despite its high – at least for mobile – price is an essential purchase. The Android version is due for release later this year.

It’s still a dialogue-heavy adventure set in a dystopian, cyberpunk future, and maintains its Broken Sword-esque sense of humour and charmingly British sensibilities. Sadly, it also suffers from the same peccadilloes as its ancient forebear. Chief amongst those is the need to figure out sometimes non-intuitive sequences of actions to solve its puzzles, and sitting through reams of chat that sometimes isn’t quite as amusing as it imagines. It’s still worth it for the sweet pang of nostalgia though.

It can’t match FTL’s perfection, and its assortment of 300 events start repeating much earlier than you’d imagine, a problem exacerbated by how story-focused it is, making the repetition particularly glaring. It’s still very good though, with a solid script and beautiful pixel art styling.

A technical disaster in almost every conceivable way, which obscures not only the hilarious characters but the fact that the game is considerably less compelling and nuanced than the original.

Interesting plot and story concept, fantastically versatile 2D combat, and some of the best dungeon puzzling outside of a Zelda game. Gorgeous graphics and soundtrack.

Codemasters’ stewardship of the F1 licence finally gets into top gear with a thrillingly rigorous simulation that also makes every effort to make its appeal as broad as possible.

An impressively ambitious, and consistently enjoyable, VR action game that embraces all aspects of the Iron Man character and is only let down by technical limitations.

Putting all the best content behind a pay wall seems a very unwise decision but the breezy insanity of Trackmania still shines through and the potential of the track designer is immense.

Your desire to carry on shrinks with every match, giving the game a perilously short half-life. This is only a beta, where almost everyone is as unfamiliar with the game and its legacy as each other, so perhaps the game’s virtues will become more obvious once players have had time to get more practice in and formulate appropriate strategies. But at the moment it’s an exhaustingly dull experience that quickly has you wondering why you don’t just switch it off and play one of the dozens of superior alternatives available. Admittedly, they won’t be free but as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. [Beta review]

It’s very much showing its age, but this remaster does just enough to prove that Racer would’ve been a good game with or without the Star Wars licence.

Reasonably good value for money and a better open world environment than the original but with very little story or structure, Pokémon’s first expansion feels disappointingly hollow.

If you’re going to make a console compilation and leave out what is arguably the best entry then it’s hard not to see that as a missed opportunity.

Given the price and the fact that the compilation still isn’t completely comprehensive this is a hard sell for all but the most obsessive Darius fans and we’re really not sure how many of them there are in the world.