Changes on the battlefield don't make for a Total War experience to match historical and Warhammer entrants, but there's still a deeply involving strategic layer in Three Kingdoms that sits well with its licence.

With excellent maps, slick and expressive movement, and the superb new Overload mode, Black Ops 7’s core multiplayer experience is brilliant. Zombies fans have plenty to sink their teeth into, even if a lot of its modes return from past games. BO7’s campaign, however, is its biggest disappointment, and its Endgame experiment mostly falls flat.

Some creaky design concepts that don't hold up well and a slipshod PC port hold Nier Replicant back from greatness on PC.

Built on the foundations of several fantastic games, and those qualities remain – but you already own them. F1 22 simply doesn’t offer enough for a full-price purchase.

A handsome, thoughtful blend of shooting and stealth that delights with its choice-driven play. Though it can feel painfully rushed at times, which is a shame.

The System Shock remake is the best way to play the PC classic, making it an enjoyable first-person experience for the modern age. However, it still clings to some somewhat outdated mechanics that will frustrate newcomers.

The problems inherent to stealth games hold back Commandos Origins, but it's still a high-stakes, high-intensity RTS where even the smallest action can feel meaningful. Meticulous, difficult, and demanding, it will test your patience as much as your tactical insight, but when you finally get it right, Commandos Origins is rewarding.

Immortals Fenyx Rising's open-world is a constant delight to explore, even if it struggles to balance history and humour.

Beautiful scenery, strong characters, and inventive mechanics give Crucible a solid foundation - one undermined by poor communication between players and from Relentless Studios.

With a campaign that takes a swing, the return of secret-packed, round-based Zombies, and multiplayer that makes some genuine improvements over years gone by, Black Ops 6 is a solid package that will please longtime fans and entice more than a few newcomers.

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.

Superbly written characters, the dark allure of its world, and an engrossing main story make up for Weird West’s wonky action.

Starfield is a true behemoth of an RPG, and in many ways it’s the logical endpoint of Bethesda Game Studios’ well-worn formula. However, its massive scope pushes this formula to the absolute limit and the cracks begin to show, from feature creep to the stop-start nature of its exploration. Dedicated Bethesda fans are sure to get their fill, but this interstellar adventure never leaves the atmosphere.

That’s the thing about Beyond Earth: I feel like for every considered, clever addition to Civ’s formula, there’s always a near miss. War is fun, but the AI is not. Aliens are novel, but humans are dreary. I enjoyed playing it, I’m still playing, but it just hasn’t gripped me like previous games. I want it to be better, more interesting, than it is.

I think criticising it for being ugly and short is to miss the point. This is a no holds barred novelty amusement. It is stupid and dumb and very, very fun.

The Lamplighters League attempts to deviate from tradition, promoting creativity over power, but ultimately falls short. However, its simplicity puts it into the more approachable realms of turn-based tactical games and is a great choice for anyone looking to try the genre for the first time.

Competent and challenging but not especially deep, this Cold War tactical romp also tends to get a bit dry and repetitive at times.

Democracy 3 demands a particular mindset to appreciate, where one’s eye is not constantly fixed on winning elections, but it’s a grand political adventure for those willing to experience a story told by numbers and polls. There’s also a surprising, understated beauty about how everything is seamlessly tied together, with every decision echoing throughout the elegant spiderweb.

If you’ve been away from the F1 series for a year or longer, or just want the definitive F1 game from this hardware generation, F1 2013 is an easy pick. It is the best this series has ever been in all the ways that count, and historical cars and tracks are a wonderful bonus.

With some strong new ideas and often solid core design, Lords of the Fallen is an enjoyably grimdark soulslike. That said, Hexworks’ debut release borrows a lot from Dark Souls, and while this makes for a good baseline, it could do more to escape the shadow of better games.

Frustrating technical issues hold Darktide back from being the definitive Warhammer 40,000 experience on PC.

Both its greatest strength and biggest weakness, the precision that Broken Arrow demands often chokes its more abstract qualities. It's a stark spectacle with nasty, legitimately cynical overtones, but its unwillingness to compromise aesthetically and tonally almost makes it mechanically inflexible, to the point that the player often doesn't feel included in the strategy making whatsoever.

Unfortunately, Heat Signature’s structure lets it down somewhat. It becomes a repetitive grind, broken up by the occasional amazing moment. The procedural generation makes it feel special, randomly creating an environment for these unique anecdotes, but it is a double-edged sword as there are a multitude of uneventful missions in-between. Still, it all feels worth it for those moments when there are a few seconds left on the clock and you are forced to take desperate action.

While the throwback graphics and simplistic combat won't appeal to many, the authentic and original story and endlessly fascinating world make Dread Delusion feel like a long-lost cult classic.

And here’s the rub: every addition, every sub-system, every mechanic is subservient to War. War is what Total War is really about. Everything else not directly related to conflict comes across as ancillary. Rome II is a game for warmongers, on both the campaign map and, obviously, on the battlefield. When peace is happening, nothing is happening. When war is happening, Rome comes alive.

Despite taking cues from other open world games, ones nobody could ever accuse of being fresh, Techland has molded these borrowed parts into something that is occasionally formidable. Dying Light never quite shakes off the spectre of these other games, but it doesn’t play it as safe, presenting a world that is infinitely more deadly and fraught with tension.

Three Kingdoms' first piece of DLC is largely more of the same, but that's no bad thing when the base experience is so good.

Lichdom: Battlemage’s magic system is second to none, and it carries the game. It does one thing exceptionally well, while the rest of the game languishes a bit.