Lumino City really has only one flaw: its cracking puzzles and amazing architecture aren't matched by a similarly memorable story.

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.

Burial at Sea has a real pacing problem, stemming from the very literal segregation of its narrative and combat sections. It makes you finish your meat before your can start on your vegetables, where the metaphorical meat is the talking and the vegetables are the shooting.

Solo Leveling Arise is authentic to its anime and webtoon inspirations, but it's too grindy, frustrating, and repetitive to come close to rivaling the best gacha games.

The Sims 4 is good, if a bit plain when compared with the exploding circus of colourful content that festoons previous games in the series, expansion packs littered with dogs and ghosts and hobbies and holidays that are now nowhere to be found...We're back to a clean sheet, and it's arguably the cleanest, most stable and most ready-to-be-built upon sheet Maxis have yet laid down.

Shadows of the Damned Hella Remastered is a crude, mean-spirited, and dangerously unfunny trip down memory lane with a grating cast, middling gunplay, and only the most minor of visual enhancements.

For fans of asymmetrical multiplayer games, Killer Klowns from Outer Space does what many others before have not, almost perfecting the likes of balance, down time, and match length, and it deserves to be considered among the best in the genre. Illfonic’s game fills the gap left by Friday the 13th and checks every box in style, but its lesser-known IP may prevent well-deserved longevity.

Considering it’s ‘only’ a spin-off, this is a riotously fun and well-designed entry in the series - however, it’s built with co-op in mind. Solo play is viable, but play with a friend, and you’ll both have one of the best shooter experiences of the year so far.

This is a game which looks spectacular, sounds downright amazing, implements engaging systems and ticks all of the What Makes A Good Real-time Strategy Game boxes, however its true beauty comes from the moments I’ve experienced that you never will and vice versa. With more campaign episodes due further down the line, not to mention modding and Steam Workshop support, it seems Ashes of the Singularity can only get better.

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is still lumbered with some of the quirks of its ‘90s origins. This is understandable - it is a remaster, not a remake - but those quirks do cause some friction. Beneath them, though, the underlying gameplay remains as solid as a fully upgraded phalanx. Indeed, some of its ideas are almost as fresh today as they were 20 years ago, which says something rather damning about the genre as a whole. The game also looks and sounds terrific, and fans of the original will be delighted.

Ubisoft's PvE shooter fails to extract the best out of Rainbow Six Siege's gameplay mechanics, and the result is a repetitive, mostly bland co-op assignment.

Broken Sword 5 will slowly worm itself into your affections if you expose yourself to its ever so gentle humour for long enough.

Proof that bad writing can ruin anything, Ghost Recon Wildlands feels like the death knell for a particular style of open-world game. Occasionally great moments, like the co-op play and the Sync Shot, are sadly drowned out.

At the moment it’s functional, sometimes fun, but only something that should really be considered if you’ve got three chums who are guaranteed to play with you. Even then, you might be better off with the original Magicka and its slew of DLC or Wizard Wars, which is free-to-play.

Simple and beautiful to look at, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is a pleasant distraction but lacks the depth in its combat and economy to stay interesting for very long.

If anything I took on the role of a benevolent eccentric, building a park and bringing long-dead creatures back to life for my own pleasure and fascination, not to gouge the wallets of the people drawn to the creatures I was so captured by. Basically, what I’m getting at is that Jurassic World Evolution made me into John Hammond.

Millennia is a fresh take on the 4X genre that offers a reactive approach to building your nation throughout history, but a few key issues keep it from greatness.

The mission design and story can grate at times, but this is a devilishly fun homage to Diablo 3 and Warhammer Fantasy you’ll want to get your friends in on.

Star Hammer’s combat systems are truly exceptional, but they’re trapped in a bland, forgettable campaign.

You may get a laugh or two, but it’s an otherwise poor shooter that thinks large numbers of enemies are difficulty spikes and distractions will make people forget about the soft locks, crashes, and lack of accessibility options.

Shadows of Doubt is an intricate simulation of a grim corporate world that handles player freedom on a level you rarely see. The fascination wears thin as you delve deeper into the seedy underworld, but the initial intrigue alone is worth the price of entry.

If the filler were stripped out Foul Play would only be a two hour game but it would be two hours flush with ideas instead of five hours sprinkled with them. It would make for a more appealing co-op game, too. You won’t find yourselves saying “Just one more act,” you’ll be loading up Castle Crashers.

The return of classic Assassin's Creed infiltration missions makes this DLC a worthwhile trip for long-time fans and recent devotees alike, although not all of its new ideas work quite so well.

State of Decay 2 is a strong sequel that, bugs and odd design decisions aside, expands on the innovative original in all the right places. The larger map might not add much, but the game is deeper and more refined. I found that the best stories in State of Decay 2 were the ones I wrote myself but, while the game can stand on its own in single-player, I look forward to doing that even more with friends.

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.

This new space 4X game is nothing novel, but Stardock’s latest release builds on classic strategy mechanics while giving them a contemporary, intergalactic twist.

Most of the time it revels in being mediocre and cowardly by the numbers rather than outright terrible, though there are moments where it manages to be both. If this isn’t a wake up call, showing once and for all that churning out more or less the same stuff year after year only serves to dilute the quality of a franchise, then I don’t know what is. It’s completely shameless, and it’s undoubtedly going to sell phenomenally well.

It’s one of those ‘good game buried in here somewhere’ experiences. Tonally it’s all over the place, and its design may as well be from the dark ages at this point. But there’s an alternate universe in which the likeable, upgradeable Agents and gratifying gear-gating are instead married to interesting, varied missions and an atmospheric open-world. That is what it would have taken for Agents of Mayhem to shine, and the most bizarre thing about its actual execution is how deliberately Volition seem to have shot for mediocrity. This doesn’t feel like a game hampered by ineptitude, but instead by a misunderstanding - or plain indecision - as to who it’s actually intended for.