Baldur’s Gate 3’s world is beautiful, layered, and complex, and challenges you to attack it how you want. The story is compelling, giving your decisions a weight rarely seen in games of this scope. It is a marvel, and easily one of the best RPGs ever made.

A supercut of FromSoft's very best work, transported to a totally new space. Elden Ring is not only a masterpiece by its developer's lofty standards, but in packing so much density into the Lands Between, it lights the path ahead for open-world games in general.

Perhaps The Witcher 3 could have done with another month or so of extra development to work out the kinks, but even without the extra time it’s an enormously impressive game that proves, in case there was any doubt, that gargantuan games don’t need to be stuffed with forgettable filler guff.

Confidently serves as both a vindication for the magic VR can bring to gaming, and a satisfying new entry in the beloved Half-Life series.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 stands as a remarkable example of three genres: the classic roleplaying game, the online arena battler, and the tabletop-style adventure enabler. If its campaign fails to shake off some of Larian’s unfriendlier habits, those flaws are mitigated by the ways in which the studio have shaped a genre moulded by nostalgia into genuinely new forms - changing more than just the keyboard shortcuts for the better.

Big, brash, and surprisingly poignant, God of War arrives on PC in fine shape. Don't pass up this chance to play a console classic.

PC is the best place to play last year’s best game. It’s massive yet loses no focus, epic on every level, and combines Rockstar’s penchant for immense detail with a surprising amount of heart.

Few other roguelikes build around the genre's cyclical nature, both mechanically and narratively, as successfully as Hades. A punchy and fresh presentation of Greek myth is another touch that ensures its appeal will go well beyond genre fans.

This is the first Street Fighter game in a long time where it feels like players of all skill levels are welcome. While World Tour mode is disappointing, the sheer scope of SF6 means you don’t need to wait for the inevitable Ultra Edition before jumping in.

Wildly inventive, tantalisingly mysterious, and ethereally beautiful, Blue Prince is easily one of the best puzzle games I've ever played.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree sits proudly among the best videogame expansions of all time thanks to its sense of adventure, epic boss battles, and ambitious new additions.

An expansion that's better than it has any right to be, Endwalker succeeds at wrapping up a decade-long story arc providing a satisfying send-off for players.

Metaphor ReFantazio is the culmination of everything that makes Atlus’ turn-based RPGs so special. Sporting a fantastic cast of instantly lovable characters, a gripping tale that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster, and a robust evolution of its combat systems, Metaphor ReFantazio is a must-play for anyone with even a passing interest in JRPGs.

It was inevitable that The Witcher 3 would close on a high, but few will have expected what they’ll find in Blood & Wine.

Against the Storm is a prime example of what can happen when a small team has clear inspiration, passion, and a willingness to collaborate with its players. It’s a brilliant mix of roguelike, strategy, and small-scale city building that will hook you from the jump.

A visionary, landmark release that's built with the long haul in mind. It will take a while for PC hardware to catch up with the game's potential, but despite some early technical turbulence the experience remains dazzling.

Tekken 8 improves on its predecessor with a complete graphics overhaul, drastically improved netcode, and a robust base game package featuring 32 characters and 16 stages. With DLC fighters already in the pipeline, there’s more than enough content to keep fighting game fans packing punches for the foreseeable future.

Familiar, excellent, and polished to a degree that hardly seems possible. If you love taking vintage Porsches for joyrides through environments that’d have a poet bawling then you're going to be very happy here.

Successfully modernises the medieval strategy series, preserving much of what's good and adding some interesting new ideas. While it still needs to iron out a few details, it's a worthy successor to the series' august crown.

Resident Evil 4 Remake improves on the visuals, mechanics, and moment-to-moment experience of one of the best games ever made, but the source material casts an inescapable shadow, both in its renown and its treatment of its leading woman.

Despite its occasionally confounding UI and weak level design, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an essential turn-based RPG that is both a love letter to its inspirations and a potential vision of the genre's future.

An utterly original RPG that sets new genre standards for exploration and conversation systems, and a brilliantly written tragicomedy about our inability to release the linchpins of our identity. Even when they hurt us.

It’s a marriage of phenomenal world design and impressively tight mechanics.

A teasing blend of punishment and reward that will delight roguelike fans whether they played the first or not, Mossmouth's great achievement is in adding so much depth and scope without overcomplicating the formula.

Despite its confusing fast travel system and misbehaving yo-yo, Animal Well is a bizarre yet brilliant neon-bathed adventure, characterized by tricky puzzles, intense platforming, and a host of cute animals - almost all of which are out to kill you.

While the story's over-reliance on genre tropes keeps it from being truly groundbreaking, it's still among the best in MMOs, as is the new content. Shadowbringers is a great experience that could've been an amazing one.

Team Cherry has done the impossible. In the face of colossal expectation, it has bottled lightning twice. Silksong is a masterpiece, not because it’s bigger and better than what came before, but because it doesn’t lose itself in trying to escape Hollow Knight’s shadow. Its massive scope extends beyond Team Cherry’s initial influences to become a definitive Metroidvania epic that challenges players to rise to the occasion.

Offering a stunning visual upgrade, a great new story, and a hugely rewarding combat system, Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance is officially the best and only way to play Atlus' beloved JRPG.

Hazelight Studios has outdone itself with Split Fiction by innovating and expanding upon its earlier work. Mio and Zoe’s worlds are fully realized locales that pay loving homage to their real-life inspirations, and the optional Side Stories prompt many a smile. It's an impactful look at the creative writing process and an essential co-op adventure.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is an RPG unlike any other, reaching through time, space, and the screen to leave a mark on you in a way few other games can. Some of its open-world design is outdated and uninspired, and it can be irritatingly stop-start at points, but the emotional highs help it to overcome these flaws. You owe it to yourself to play Rebirth, and this new PC version is the best way to do it.

Alan Wake 2 is a marvel, serving up intense gameplay, a twisty, dark story, and more secrets and surprises than you could possibly imagine. Remedy has outdone itself here, delivering a truly remarkable experience.

Capcom’s remake is a spectacularly gory game that brings a classic in line with horror titles of today, and only at the loss of some of the original’s beloved goofiness.

Few games are as endearing in their madness as Devil May Cry 5. It’s deeply old-school and made for fans first, but its new character will entertain newcomers and keep them coming back for more.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the end result of two decades of iteration from Ryu Ga Gotoku and the studio's best game yet. Sprawling but never bloated, it remains captivating from beginning to end across both its main narrative and bountiful side adventures, almost never missing a beat.

You start off as a weak, undead wanderer and eventually grow into a being that can kill god-like monsters, and it’s not because the game’s narrative needs you to be that powerful, but because you’ve worked so very hard to get to that point. It’s an incredible feeling, and makes Dark Souls III an incredible game.

Obsidian had a daunting task before them: to make a spiritual successor to a series of games that are inextricably tangled up in nostalgia, over a decade after the height of those games’ popularity. This is not the Baldur’s Gate of 2015, it’s Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale, the best parts of the lot of them wrapped up in something new and brilliant.

An intricate and highly replayable game that shines across both of its genres, MegaCrit’s debut combines a simple premise with near-flawless mechanical execution.

A rare sequel that improves on the original in every meaningful way. It's packed to the brim with beautiful worlds and surprising interactions, and its colourful cast is equal parts funny, believable, and sympathetic. Double Fine is rarely wide of the mark, but this time it hit the bullseye.

Phantom Liberty is a fitting send off for V, Night City, and Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole. After a rocky launch, CD Projekt Red has delivered with an incredibly dense and impactful expansion to one of the medium's best cityscapes, even if the narrative choices on offer hold it back a smidge.

Destiny 2: The Final Shape ties up a decade's worth of story, conflict, and relationships in the most engaging and emotionally satisfying way possible. Bungie's best-in-class narrative team has outdone itself, the combat and gunplay sit at the pinnacle of the FPS genre, and I've ultimately never played anything like it.

Horizon Forbidden West is utterly gorgeous and builds on the original's intense combat, but a lack of ambition and a flat narrative hold it back as a sequel. It provides more of the first game but bigger, with a few new inclusions struggling against the tidal wave of familiarity.

Resident Evil Requiem stuffs three decades of fan service into a single package, all while maintaining its place as a mainline entry to the series. While it’s not without its tedium, and the new protagonist takes a minute to find her feet, Requiem finally strikes the balance between action and horror that Capcom’s wrestled with for all these years.

Whether you’re a new player experiencing it for the first time or a veteran on your latest playthrough, Persona 3 Reload is the best way to play the classic JRPG, even if it’s missing some key content.

A memorable core cast, often hilarious side quests, and a gripping main narrative make Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 a must-play medieval RPG, despite its late-game progression woes and rough edges.

A masterclass in open-world game design and a thrilling samurai epic in its own right, Ghost of Tsushima is a must-play on PC.

In its new expansion, XCOM 2 makes people of its soldiers and turns its aliens into personalities. It cares about the individual. But that’s only so you feel the loss of your bonds more keenly, and hate the enemy more personally. In War of the Chosen, Firaxis are being kind to be cruel.

Boasting the best swordfighting in the business, Sekiro is a game of rare but deserved self-assurance. You’ll despair as it breaks you down, but then you’ll exult as it builds you up. It’s a journey like little else in gaming, and if you’re up for the challenge, you absolutely have to play it.

To review it is to appraise the enormity of the human spirit of exploration, to rate the drive that spurred us to flop up out of the ocean and then up a tree and then back down again and then over some mountains and through some deserts and then off up into the heavens...I love space and Kerbal Space Program.

Mewgenics offers more depth and ingenuity than any strategy game I've played in years. It is also terminally unfunny, with an aesthetic, theme, and cast of characters that consistently miss the mark. If you can square yourself with the humor, there is a genuinely great game waiting here.

For better and for worse, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a faithful reimagining of Hideaki Itsuno’s flawed yet ambitious action-RPG. Those who rise to the challenge of meeting it on its own terms are suitably rewarded, but a deluge of trash mobs, restrictive fast travel, and endemic hardware issues will be a dealbreaker for many.

A haunting journey through a woodland with a real sense of place, but its breadth of mechanics silts up the pacing.

A lumbering historical murder mystery with little regard for tension or pacing, but one that packs in such dense detail you can’t help but respect it. Pentiment immerses you in 1500s Bavaria and that’s the main event.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the successor that Capcom’s best-selling game deserves. It improves on almost every aspect of World to deliver a tremendous adventure that, if you can make it over the steep initial learning curve, remains the most rewarding action RPG around.

That this story of desperation and ingenuity should come from Firaxis, who had no cause to be ingenious, who weren't desperate but instead buoyed by the hard-won success of Enemy Unknown, is all the more remarkable. The studio is known for handing new iterations of Civ off to younger, less-proven designers, but this is braver still. XCOM 2 is no iteration at all, but an inspired rework. A new underdog story that requires new, underhand tactics.

With the launch of Halo 3, the Master Chief Collection on PC has reached its pinnacle. The end of the original trilogy is the high point of the series, and the collection itself is finally moving past its technical issues.

Hearthstone is a wonderful game. Nostalgic, simple and best of all: fun. This is the best online collectible card game you can play. Just be careful how much you spend in it.

Respawn’s game elevates its entire genre, doing away with its failings while innovating upon its strengths. From out of nowhere, it’s become the prodigious new face of a worldwide phenomenon.

It'll take a few balance patches and expansions before it achieves absolute perfection, but the list of wholesale changes Civ VI brings to the storied formula makes for an instantly sumptuous strategy treat.

An exceptionally good update to Codemasters' increasingly polished and wide-reaching racing series.

Simply put, Monster Hunter: World is one the finest action RPGs ever made and a unique, rich co-op title to boot. Spectacular and deep in equal measure, with the technical improvements of the PC version, it's happy hunting all round.

It’s an extraordinary game. One that you’ll feel faintly lost in at first, while its many systems permeate your grey matter. But all the while its story unfolds and reveals new wrinkles, the sense of place growing deeper. The mechanics underpinning everything in Pillars II have shifted marginally towards accessibility, but that still leaves a huge amount of room for brutal challenge levels to its combat - and, crucially, it’s scalable enough that you can whack down the challenge, ignore your party composition, leave the pause key unpressed, and enjoy the adventure.

Id stumbles very occasionally in its ambition to expand on 2016, but you won’t care when you’re enjoying the best combat in shooters. Pure, animalistic catharsis.

With a beautiful Blighty and an innovative season-based online endgame, Horizon 4 is a wonderfully polished, thoroughly modern racer. Sadly, it doesn’t feel quite as progressive or impactful as its Aussie predecessor, and there’s a sense the sandbox series is ever so slightly coasting on its laurels.

Another fine outing for Agent 47, and a fitting, hopefully brief, farewell to one of the best stealth series of the last decade.

Sea of Stars is a worthy pseudo-spiritual successor to some of the greatest JRPGs ever made. It improves on what made those games so special by modernizing their magic through balanced and engaging turn-based combat wrapped up in an enthralling world to explore.

Pragmata is a truly unique and wonderful third-person shooter. It’s a throwback to linear action games of old, and thankfully its undercooked story isn't enough to diminish the quality of the brilliant hacking focused action.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is a marvel for fans of the series and newcomers alike, combining brain-teasing puzzles and scrappy action in the way only Indy can. A majestic use of the license, this is the gold standard for movie-adjacent videogames going forward.

In TowerFall Ascension, there are no inevitable deaths. Every time you stare down the shaft of the Grim Reaper’s arrow, there’s always a way out. You just have to be smart and quick enough to put a plan into action before someone nails you to the wall first.

Its approachability and poppy, colourful presentation make diving into densely packed levels and chasing high scores feel like a warm hug before the white-knuckle drop in.

A true tour de force from Arkane that is bound to be one of the year's best and most important games.

You have to admire Blizzard's approach to Diablo III. They fixed it. The game itself now absolutely superb. Reaper of Souls finishes the job.

The influence of the classics, Ultima VII, Baldur’s Gate II, they’re in there, but Original Sin is very much its own, unique grand adventure.

Motive's Dead Space Remake is a gloriously grotesque glow-up that embraces the original horror game's robust formula, and only a slight amount of jank keeps it from achieving perfection.

The Silent Hill 2 remake is a solid, respectful reimagining of a horror classic. The sound design is perhaps even more spectacular here, but modern graphics clean up some of the grit and grime, while overextended exploration and frequent cutscenes take away from the original's claustrophobia and fear.

Iceborne is a little bit more of everything that makes Monster Hunter so enjoyable. The pace drags at times, but that's easy to forgive amid dozens of hours of cool new monsters to slay.

Neva is a poignant platformer that's a worthy successor to the award-winning Gris. Its intricate and stunning Ghibliesque world is a visual marvel, and while its combat isn't wholly free from frustration, its stirring narrative ensures no dry eye in the room.

Failbetter continues to revolutionise the RPG - not by burning it all down, but by slipping pages of prose into every crevice it can.

This is a rich and thoughtful strategy game that is a joy to engage with at practically every level, and a new high-water mark of ambition and quality for Creative Assembly.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered swings on to PC with a marvellous port which is undoubtedly the best way to play the former PlayStation exclusive.

Armored Core 6 is easily one of the best mech games around, with blisteringly fast combat and a big focus on customization, even if its difficulty is lacking and repetition sets in before the end.

Perfectly distilling the Horizon formula, Playground Games have produced a racer that's varied, exciting and gorgeous to look at - and arguably the best of the generation.

Putting aside the superb plot, Square have made it easier than ever to catch up: main scenario quests have had their experience rewards doubled, and also provide high level equipment. You’ll also be put in priority queues for dungeons and story instances to get you through them hassle free.

Regardless of if you’ve played the first game or not, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a journey you should embark on. Few games offer thrills in such a well-crafted, honed package. There’s simply not a single moment when the game doesn’t feel like it’s not giving its all. Rise of the Tomb Raider truly makes you feel like Lara Croft: a bow-wielding, mountain scaling, bear-slaughtering, cave diving mad lady with more curiosity than can be healthy. And that feeling is just wonderful.

Diablo 4 embodies the essence of what makes Diablo so great, taking the best elements of its predecessors and sewing them together to create an ever-changing, ever-evolving chimera that we can’t wait to play for years to come.

Total War games past have expanded, changed and morphed over time and this will doubtless be similar. As it stands, Warhammer is a worthy addition to the series, particularly as a melding of two universes we’ve long wanted to see collide. And before long, as the patches roll in, it could be even more than that.

Thanks to a beautifully realised setting and some genuinely innovative combat additions, Monster Hunter Rise is fun from start to finish. If you haven’t played a Monster Hunter game yet, this is the best one to start with.

As thrilling as it is boring, as fantastic as it is mundane, but one thing’s for sure - there’s truly nothing else like it.

Challenges Forsaken for the title of best-ever Destiny expansion, and has much stronger foundations to build upon. Destiny 2 was already in a good spot, but Witch Queen represents a new peak for Bungie's oft-imitated, never-dethroned looter shooter.

And that’s maybe Titanfall’s biggest, and most forgivable flaw: it looks less interesting and novel than it actually is. It’s such a fresh take on the military shooter, splitting the difference between the more deliberate pace of games like Battlefield and Call of Duty and the kinetic excitement of games like Tribes or even Counter-Strike. It just takes a while to see that, because Titanfall’s presentation is so conservative.

From giving PC players split-screen, to flawless frame-rates on mid-high-end rigs (Radeon R9 390X GPU, i7-4790k CPU, 16GB DDR3 RAM here) and bug-free performance, to a multiplayer mode that doesn't split its community with an insidious season pass, Gears of War 4 4 is progressive not only for its series, but for the entire industry.

Her Story is a captivating experiment in stripped down storytelling and the best use of FMV that I’ve ever had the good fortune to encounter.

Inconsistent performance aside, Dishonored 2 is a marvel. It’s a magnet for positive adjectives, setting a new and extremely lofty bar for future stealth games.

Riven's remake somehow achieves the impossible - all at once rewarding the nostalgia and support of long-time fans, embracing wild creativity, and fully realizing the needs of a modern audience. The 1997 classic is reborn as one of the year's best puzzle games.

The key takeaway is that Mass Effect fans will be happy; this is the same Mass Effect we fell in love with all those years ago, painstakingly polished and wrapped up in a neat ribbon. To those who have never played before, though, fair warning: for all its charm, Mass Effect Legendary Edition still plays like a game from the ’00s. But if you like RPG games with rich sci-fi settings then you’ll have a ball. [Impressions]

If you want a good shooter, play Wolfenstein 2. If you want an incredible single-player story, play Wolfenstein 2.

A triumphant step forward for Total War on almost every front, boasting not just the best and most diverse single-player campaigns ever, but a revolution in multiplayer too.

Sons of the Forest is an utterly engrossing game, and in losing myself in it, hours went by as I explored. For me, the main concerns are in content density, lack of direction, and a lingering feeling of being unfinished which, to be fair, is totally understandable from an early-access title. The building is a little clunky. There are visual issues with certain animations. It’s also given way to many hilarious glitches, including a physics issue that launched my character into the sky while chopping down a tree. If you can tolerate these issues, it’s absolutely still worth playing. [Review in Progress]

A well-judged modern adaptation of one of gaming’s all-time great adventures. The PC port doesn’t push beyond the PS5’s limits though, and who knows how many releases will conclude this remake.