I did eventually power through to Follow the Light’s climax (also disappointing, for reasons relating but not specific to the aforementioned not-actually-missing child issue), and the only thing that could tempt me back is some kind of dedicated free-sail side mode. It’s frustrating: a game that’s so good in places at weaving that sensation of impetus, of literally moving forward with the wind at your back, also being so willing to bog you down in busywork. And I’d rather be dashed on the sharpest rocks in Scandinavia than have to poke at one more circuit breaker.

Masters Of Albion is an early access game, and many of these frustrations are exactly the sort of kinks and bugs you would expect to be smoothed out with updates. [Early Access Impressions]

Aptly for my deficient problem-solving skills, if this is something the developers wanted to address, I don't know what the solution would be. More onscreen information, such as the ability to know how long it will take a group to reach a certain point in the maze, would make it easier to plan out your traps, but it might dispel all of the game's difficulty. Total information works in games like Into The Breach, but it doesn't mean every tactical game should be 100% predictable. In many games, the fuzziness and opportunity for mistakes is where you find the fun. Maybe then, instead, there needs to be a greater set of options for what you can do as a player when something does go wrong. Snatching a messy victory from a mistake-triggered defeat may be more enjoyable than a clean victory where you're watching your complex machine of interlinked traps do exactly what you planned. For that, Asterion will need to be more capable, because once your trap sequence is broken, it's already too late to fix.

Best of all, there are inverted maps that invest the terrain you insolently tumbled through with new deviousness. If you survive these and are up for more, the logical next port of call is the rather more technical White Knuckle. Or if you don't want to feel all spooked and depressed while spelunking, why not take a swing at lovely freebie Grimhook.

For this, it has my respect, and I don’t regret giving it my time. It just bears remembering, amid the dust, the quietness, and the boxes of unreliable memories, that the bookwriting values flexibility above the pursuit of a single, perfectly scribed chronicle.

I’ll end with this: I can confirm that during at least one race, you get the opportunity to drive around as a dog in sunglasses.

Crimson Desert is ludicrously overstuffed with mechanics and systems, a scant few of which are really quite excellent (picking up cats and catapulting off trees are the highlights), but the rest of which feel half-baked. And they're the ones that you spend all your time with. Believe me, I want to like the game. It would certainly make my job easier. But alas, I had a better time playing Starfield. - Ollie [Early Verdict]

It’s not quite Bestest Best material, then. But Planet of Lana 2 succeeds far, far more often than it dawdles. Its core puzzle-platforming benefits from some particularly canny mechanical improvements, scoring the unlikely achievement of becoming more complex without stumbling into head-stumping, teeth-grinding difficulty. And, once you escape those cold corridors, it’s even more of an audio-visual treat than the original. Still with, happily, a cat who actually listens to you.

I sank deep into Requiem when it was purposefully managing this tension vs purge dynamic. Grace’s elongated bouts of slow-paced stealth while hoarding ammo, evading ghouls and hiding from ceiling-dwelling abominations were like teetering on a precarious sheet of glass that I always just managed to scarper across. Leon’s brief symphonies of gory carnage were like taking a hammer to that glass. They complement each other so well. When Leon starts to dominate the game, there’s still fun to be had in spite of the dragging plot, but trudging through the darkest depths of Rhodes Hill is worth the price of admission alone. If that’s a glimpse at the future of Resident Evil, I want a bigger portion that I can really sink my teeth into.

Over the last third, Reanimal sheds its Silent Hillian pallor and veers a bit randomly into World War parody, with areas made up of trenches, stripped trees, and Futurist gutted cityscapes. In some ways these closing chapters are the heart of the game. Reanimal's zoological body horror appears to take heavy inspiration from the agony of animals during the World Wars – beasts of burden splintered and thrashing in the mud, lashed to artillery cannons or caught on the wire, entangled and transformed into vengeful, howling machines.

Of course, if the only critique I have about an indie game is "it's very good, but the developer's other works might be better," then we're in a nice position. The Dark Rites of Arkham is Call of Cthulhu in swell point and click form, and it's a solid weekend play for any fan of weird fiction. But perhaps for Postmodern Adventures' next effort, we can push the envelope farther. A tweaked engine, a different graphical style, a non-Eurocentric setting, maybe even a female protagonist? C'mon, let's make old Howard Phillips roll in his grave!

Whether that’s a dealbreaker, I’ll leave between you and your rig. If you can run it, though, Romeo is a Dead Man provides smiles, surprises, and memorable swordfights, especially once it warms up. It probably won’t go down as an all-timer in Grasshopper Manufacture’s ouvre, and in 20 years’ time, I doubt YouTube will be recommending me Romeo videos as often as it currently does Killer7’s Russian Roulette scene. But that’s fine: quality slashing and organic zombie gardening can still count for plenty.

That Kanda/Kagawa cloud hangs over Dark Ties and Kiwami 3, and expanding Yakuza 3 with minigames taken from later Like A Dragon games does nothing to dispel it. One moment, you can be merrily mashing away at baddies in the biker battles as the co-boss of a girl gang – which would feel refreshingly progressive in any other Like A Dragon game – but in the next you might need to consider adding Kanda and Hamazaki to your squad in order to win the next scrum. Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties is a serviceable remake in a vacuum, but it doesn't exist in isolation. Quirky charm and moreish busywork can’t distract from RGG’s questionable attitude to sexual assault.

It’s one of the first roguelites I’ve played where a bad roll of the dice leaves me excited, not deflated. Whether RNG blazes a path to success, or I’m handed Blasto, my chirpy Hunter cursed with a trait that gave him a zero movement stat, essentially paralysing him, I love the weird odyssey it sends me on. Whatever happens, I know I'll come back with a corker of a story. And it’ll almost certainly involve poo. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Wonky performance aside, Nioh 3 is excellent. It's not as elegant and practiced as FromSoftware's efforts, and I daresay that the creativity present in recent Chinese soulslikes like Black Myth: Wukong isn't matched here either. But it still warrants a Bestest Best, because what this game does do is deftly borrow from modern titles in a variety of genres, mingling their flavours into one delicate Miso soup. There's a word in Okinawan - chanpurū - which means to mix together. That's what Nioh 3 is - a chanpurū of influences that manages to entertain in a wonderful fashion. Even if you're biased against samurai like I am, it's still worth your while to fire this one up, tackle the Crucible, and cuddle a Chijiko or three. [RPS Bestest Bests]

There are still mysteries to uncover and sources to identify in my game, but after hitting two endings, it's difficult to regain that same headspace where I was lost in its world.

Much like the titular band, Unbeatable is a game that doesn’t always hit the right notes but exudes so much heart and enthusiasm that it’s hard not to fall in love. It’s a sincere celebration of the creative spirit that overcomes its own rough edges by getting everything right where it counts. This is a song you’ll want to stick on repeat.

The complexity here is that Horses is about the sexuality of younger people, even if none of the characters are actually minors. The Farmer is the way he is because of how he was raised - there are doodles and a home video that obviously date back to his early teenage years - and now, he is trying to pass those brutal values onto you. The moral is about how puritanism may reproduce across generations, even when taken to the extent that congress becomes impossible, which necessitates certain other, shambolically crude and fantastical approaches to securing a legacy. That your character is a legal adult is a technicality: the game frames you as a mute child, peering up at the Farmer while eating, struggling to say no by means of emojis and shakes of your head. It's easy to imagine the fable playing out exactly the same way if the protagonist were in their early to mid teens.

Routine is just a well-made sci-fi horror game. I wish I had a more elaborate closing note, but I've used up all my adjectives yammering about turbine noises and VHS-C. 2012 was a million years ago, but this elegantly cumbersome chillfest seems none the worse for the interruptions and extended spells in suspended animation. Congratulations, Lunar Software. You pulled off the moonshot. Now, let's get the hell out of here before that thing down the hall notices me typing.

You could probably reduce Morsels to the status of a well-made genre piece, a reverse Spelunky with a streak of Noita, but there's a pervasive uncertainty - I'm still not sure what those Goyalike children are for, after seven hours of play - and the sturdiness of the rogueliking isn't what makes this compelling. What makes it compelling is the story it tells about the roguelike, about generators and their supporting databases, here reinvented as treacherously fermenting landfill. This is the roguelike gone rancid in a time where roguelikes are as common as pigeons, stewed in the juices of overmuch creation.

Demonschool has a very clear intent in its design, and it succeeds in that intent with perfect marks. I adore the characters, setting, combat, side content, design, music, everything. As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going straight back to playing more of it. There’s just nothing that looks, sounds or plays quite like Demonschool, and I feel very fortunate to live in the same demon-free world as it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

I wish I could say I was surprised by the sloppiness of Black Ops 7's campaign, but the sad reality is it's part of a long-running pattern with Call of Duty's annualised releases that has only exacerbated in recent years, with direct sequels to the series' various offshoots feeling like warmed up leftovers from a twelve-month old meal. That said, it is still disappointing considering the comparative quality of the last two Black Ops campaigns, and at a time when old-fashioned linear shooters are extremely scarce, Black Ops 7's failure to offer up something even modestly enjoyable is keenly felt. [Campaign Review]

I can't help but compare Anno 117 to Anno 1800, which, after several years of chunky DLC, is one of the best and most complete city-builders of all time. Release-day Anno 117 was always going to feel slight by comparison. But I've already started four separate playthroughs focusing on different goods, and I've planned two more campaigns, including one where I'll build Rome's biggest ever naval fleet. That's a good sign. Anno 117 has solid bones to build on, and enough meat to go around.

I'm not yet deep enough to know whether Arc Raiders will feel this compelling at hour 100 or whether, in two months' time, I'll still be dreaming about it. For now, all I know is that its metallic hooks are in me, and I cannot stop playing.

Part of me yearned to finish this playthrough before giving my final verdict, but considering it took Naples a full century just to discover there is a "south" of the globe (omg), I'll just tell you now: it's confusing as heck and I like it. Even though I'm playing at the second-fastest speed with judicious pausing, I would likely need to play for another 40-50 hours to make it through the full span of history. This statement is both horrifying and exciting - a game that disrespects my time? Disrespect me more, my huge messy map monster.

While you can tinker with gear or unlock lockboxes, there aren’t any activities that can set up camp chats or even instances of companions getting up to interesting stuff you can join in on. Far from a dealbreaker, but something that would have been cool. Then again, they’re probably just avoiding listening to me moan about the locking of extra weapon quick-switch holster and healing primer slots to gear mods. It's a bit of a ballache, especially given the limited slots most gear has in comparison to the number of tweaks you can install. Sure, it forces you to pick and choose rather than equipping everything and achieving instant godhood, hand in hand with the levelling system, but is standing in the way of me adding a melee swatter to my regular rotation of normal gun/energy gun unless I ditch a more interesting ability really contributing much to the roleplaying?

More often you'll be gently ribbed by levels that reference the first game. The aforementioned shooting gallery's targets are effigies of the flying saucer, the monolith, and the briefly-erupting volcano from which you and they saved Muckingham. I very much enjoyed this, but I can imagine it has smaller returns if you didn't play the first game. The same is true of all those small changes I liked. But at the same time, if you didn't play PowerWash Simulator, you'll just come to PowerWash Simulator 2 as the best damn version of a game where you slowly waterblast crud off a toilet you ever did see. Not much to complain about there.

A cursory attempt to yank the story off the rails by picking every antisocial, confrontational dialogue option resulted in the plot following the exact same trajectory, with somewhat snippier interactions with the cast and a few new lines of incidental dialogue based on clan choice. Being an elder vampire means that people will put up with a LOT of your bullshit, it seems. Aside from some Fallout-esque epilogue slides based on your few choices, there's not much you can do to steer the story. Not an inherent flaw if you're willing to judge this game on its own terms, but a final nail in the coffin for those hoping Troika's legacy lives on through this game.