With at most 6 hours of playtime, Somerville could perhaps have been just a tiny bit longer to set up its ending more elegantly. Controversial, I know, but after everything I went through with this family, none of the goodbyes Somerville offered really left me as satisfied as the rest.

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.

Astroneer’s been in early access for over two years, and there is a sense that this release version contracted a mild case of That’ll-do-itis, rather than going to the new places it might have done. Sure, a ballpit offers more long-term play value if there’s hatch on its bottom that opens up into a world of dinosaurs, spacefighters and alien civil wars. Sometimes, though, all you wanna do is jump into a ballpit.

A really splendid example of the form, with enough original ideas of its own within the standard to make it interesting. It’s a good, solid game, that’s occasionally extremely tough, but always fair. The pixel art is lovely, and although the backgrounds are a little bland, animations go a good way to make up for that. Lovers of chiptunes will delight in its soundtrack, authentic to the 8-bit era, and well composed. It’s the sort of game that deserves to stand out, not get lost in the mix.

A catalogue of mini-objectives and quests gives the otherwise aimless sandbox a bit of a backbone too, and even though tasks can be broadly categorised into moving things from one place to another, or collecting stuff, or licking things, there’s variety and creativity to be found in each. Goat Simulator 3 has limited appeal baked right into it, but it’s unfair to dismiss the game as purely YouTube-baiting viral silliness. Underneath all of the goat nonsense and fart noises, there’s an intelligently constructed toy chest. Underneath that? More nonsense and fart noises.

It feels like Shadow Warrior 3 puts a bigger focus on consistency than complexity. The moment you enter an arena it’s obvious what you can do because the areas all follow the same rules. You can predict where your grappling hook will go, what enemies will appear, and so on. But Shadow Warrior 3 soon stops throwing new challenges your way, and there’s very little to be mastered to sustain your attention till the end. It’s so repetitive that it becomes impossible to avoid confronting its other negative qualities until, as Lo Wang would say, they fill the room like a wet fart.

Fortunately, the bland campaign and narrative aren't quite dead weight, as Phantom Brigade's mechs are very satisfying to blow apart. Even melee, rendered incredibly unreliable by its utterly opaque timeline representation, becomes worth it for the times when you'll smash three enemies in one swing, then sprint off to flank another as a missile your other guy launched last turn lands in your wake. The replay controls are annoyingly inconsistent, but it's still a joy to watch them, and nailbiting to see your mech flee from a minigun barrage, or stumble from a lucky sniper shot. Phantom Brigade's personality may be lacking, but it doesn't get in the way of solving those chaotic tactical puzzles, or the timeless satisfaction of sitting back once everything's decided and watching your exploders do their thing.

Most of all, I marvel at how well it’s done snakes (snakes, like snakes). This could, as I say, have been all comic pratfalls and Goat Simulator destruction, but instead it’s an extremely careful study in how snakes navigate their bizarre bodies around, then transplanted into broadly well-done puzzle-places. I feel in awe of how well-realised this is, almost more than I actually enjoy it. I really do enjoy it though, so much so that I ended up picking it up for my Switch too (making it only the second game I own for Nintendo’s latest toy). Snake Pass gets an easy pass from me.

RAD is a good time, and it overcame a lot of my initial reservations. I just wish it wasn’t so built on chance, and the all-too-1980s misery of playing through the same parts dozens of times to get to the bits I want.

I really loved it, both as a game but also as a way of facilitating time with friends. The biggest part for me was that sense that everyone had a role. In a lot of co-op or team-based multiplayer games I play you get people who take on the captain role and that can leave other players a bit… backgroundy. With this it felt like you had to have everyone involved because of how the information passing works and how the time constraints work. That sensation might diminish quickly as the group gets bigger or if people are shouting over one another but for the three of us it was really gratifying.

I love this whole genre, this found phone genre that if I call a genre enough will magically become a real genre.

Some of you will no doubt get a kick out of his speedrunning, memory-testing antics. For me, though, even Felix’s sweet, sweet dance moves can’t throw the game’s glaring design flaws into shadow.

Glitchhikers is an interesting place to explore, a suspended cat's cradle with weird art and angles that are more effective prompts for thoughts than any of the voice overs about place and meaning. When it's silent you have to have strange ideas to fill it up. But Glitchhikers as a whole feels less like a series of dreamy conversations and more a series of lectures being delivered at you by a self-conscious writer.

Trek To Yomi doesn't quite reach the heights I'd hoped, in all honesty. The game's combat can't match its beauty, but it's a journey worth embarking on if you're after a bitesize story of revenge – who doesn't love revenge? - that's got some of the most striking visuals around. This rings especially true if you've got Game Pass, as it makes for a perfect package filled with pretty things.

The Chant gets a bit predictable, in other words, both in terms of the story and the weirdness. For me the intelligent things it does didn't quite balance that out, which makes it, once again, a game that would work really well for Game Pass.

Rising is definitely not the required must-play you need to absorb beforehand. After all, we don't even know what role CJ, Isha and walking talking kangaroo Garoo (yes, really) will even play in Hundred Heroes yet, let alone whether they'll be interesting enough to warrant buying a whole prequel game for (and on the strength of this current evidence, almost certainly not). Instead, I'd wait and see what their deal is in Hundred Heroes before bothering with this one, and only then if you're really desperate for some switch-off-brain button mashing fan service. It does have the added benefit of being on Game Pass if you're really curious, although whether it will still be here once Hundred Heroes comes out remains to be seen. Still, as we discussed at the beginning of this review, there are some things in life that are just better off forgotten.

It's a far cry from Messhof's previous works - the incomparable Nidhogg remains one of the best fighting games of all time. And I'll admit it feels a bit weird to set Wheel World's sweet and ultimately harmless roamaround racing next to the snarling energy and electro fury of the fencing worm and its serpentine sequel. But that redefining of studio style feels inevitable when it expands beyond its origins - Messhof used to be a moniker for solo developer Mark Essen, but is now the name of his broader indie studio made up of many Messhoffers. If you're going in expecting something similar to Nidhogg in tone, vibe, and surreality, you'll only find trace amounts. But if you go in with a heart open to easygoing races and good music, Wheel World will quickly coast you through.

Loot Rascals is a smart piece of game design executed with delightful style. Even so, it feels as though the mechanics overwhelm all else – I do think it would benefit from offering more structure and goals in order to then earn the daily-play status it clearly desires.

Automachef is a great little thing when you adjust to its rhythms, and it’s entirely to blame for my abysmal lunch habits.

Some may not agree, arguing that Hoa is more style than substance. But if that is to be Hoa's fate, then what style! The Ni No Kuni series may look more like Studio Ghibli films-turned-into-games, but Hoa's pre-occupation with nature, the environment, impossibly cute bugs and robots and heart-swelling piano music makes it a much truer successor to the interactive Ghibli crown in my eyes, possibly more so than anything else I've ever played. Much like the moment when troubled monster No Face slips into a steaming hot bath in Spirited Away, Hoa is a balm for both mind and soul in a year like this, at once a deep, soothing snuggle into Totoro's furry belly and a triumphant run across the raging waves with Ponyo. It may not have the bite of Princess Mononoke's wolf queen Moro or the nostalgic poignancy of an Only Yesterday, perhaps, but this is nevertheless a promising first outing from Skrollcat Studio, and marks them out as ones to watch going forward.

I’m looking forward to more surprises, which isn’t as banal a statement as it sounds: it means I’m going to keep playing once I’m done with this review, which is pretty much the best praise a game can get. I want to be WeebPeepoClown, except also maybe not exactly like WeebPeepoClown. On a hunch I just checked the leaderboard, and it turns out he’s the 47th best player in the world. Lord knows what he was doing in one of my matches, but I’m glad he was there to show me the path to greatness. The combat’s frustrations can be overcome, though it’s a learning curve not everyone will want to scale - even if they can do that as an acrobatic warrior with a grappling hook.

It's a forgiving Metroidvania that doesn't surprise all that often, but hits the spot for platforming fans and those who enjoy carefully considered backtracking. I'd also say it's not a bad starting point if you're looking to get into Metroidvanias but don't know where to start. It'll teach you the ropes without overwhelming you, with plenty of room to save and switch things up if you're struggling.

So there Sublevel Zero lies, this peculiar mix of instantly entertaining and disappointingly hollow. Tidying up the crafting, and making it meaningful, would add a lot. And gosh, it desperately needs a rethink about those unexplained, unpredictable dead-ends. But heck, I want to keep on playing anyway.

This is good VR. Let there be more of it. [Tested with Oculus Rift]

Without the weird Lovecraftian bits, this is a slightly janky, slightly grindy detective game that does some interesting things in a very atmospheric depiction of a profoundly depressed town. Taking them into account, I don’t know! I was confused and uncharmed by the whole thing, but I still haven’t untangled my brainnoodles. At least I’ve told you how they got tangled. Goodness, I was very interested in The Sinking City. I really wanted to love it. But I’m afraid rain may have stopped play this time.

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.

At first glance Beat Cop looks like something akin to the Sierra Police Quest games of the late 80s/early 90s, a combination of point-and-click adventure and fiddly paperwork procedural. Ooh, intriguing. But just a few minutes in it becomes apparent this is far closer to a Diner Dash-like frantic management games, with swearing. Just, not a particular good version of the format.

So, some of White Shadows' individual parts are flawed, but I did really enjoy my time with it. If you don't really mind the game's simple puzzles and you're willing to ignore the exposition dump at the end, I'd recommend it. White Shadows offers two hours of creative, chilling designs, joyous musical set pieces and enough screen-shottable sights to fill your hard drive.

If XCOM and Heroes of Might and Magic meets Star Trek/Farscape appeals to you (it does, doesn’t it?), and you’re happy to force your way past some initially confusing issues with the interface, you’ll almost certainly enjoy Halcyon 6. I have, despite my gripes, but it’s less than the sum of all those parts that I couldn’t help but see the edges of as I played, and I was longing for more engaging combat long before the end. Even if the galaxy continues to grow, I don’t think I’ll return even.

It's very much a middling time, in other words. Atlas Fallen fulfils the joy of picking up a pre-owned six-out-of-ten at GameStation and going with whatever happens on screen. You'll teeter on a knife edge mentally, as you accept its tedious fetch quests and just fine platforming fare, perhaps occasionally letting out your frustration with a quit to menu as boss fights take the piss, or a quest once again asks you to fetch yet more crystals. Still, the combat is surprisingly robust and its momentum schtick is a proper thrill once you've got the flow down. If anything, it's the combat that'll make you stick around. That is, until you realise there's a lot of other good open world games you could be playing instead of Atlas Fallen.

It all ends up feeling like someone pushed a cult classic console gem through a shredder and filled in the space between the strips with silica gel and sausage rusk and self-assessment forms. But its saving grace lies in the fact that it doesn’t feel cynical as much as it feels adherent, almost like its trapped under a pile of norms and necessaries needed for it to exist in the first place. Maybe you'll fancy enduring long enough to find the places where it pokes its curious little head out from under that rubble. The little robot was for mining ore, by the way, so it might help.

It's a real shame that Knuckle Sandwich's combat is beyond frustrating, because it's a huge part of uncovering the mysteries lurking within Bright City. If it gets rebalanced later down the line, then it would undo a lot of why I'd hesitate to recommend the game right now. I simply don't think the kooky residents and wonderful visuals can make up for fights that'll raise your blood pressure to dangerous levels. Here's hoping things change.

I'm sure I could do things more efficiently. The forge in particular seems vital. This is a building that smushes two villagers together to create a special hybrid rollcube, potentially removing a lot of reroll inefficiency and condensing two roles. With certain limitations, you can even keep them for use in later playthroughs. Dice Legacy encourages experimentation, it says in its opening screen, and I appreciate a game suggesting an ethos like this upfront. But though after many failures and one victory I'm armed with more knowledge and several theories on how to play it better, the prospect of going through all this again is the kind of legacy that makes me glad I don't have kids.

While ARK can be a lot of fun – grabbing another player off of a raptor with an Argentavis feels bloody brilliant – it’s rarely worth the hours of tedium. If you can spare the 100 or so hours it takes to get your teeth into it then I’d recommend you spend them elsewhere.

It’s too fixated on traditional jump scares to embrace the twisted, palpitating gut of its story about a flawed protagonist and his struggles with inner demons.

That it ultimately collapses into a string of unpleasant platforming sequences that the core design simply can’t sustain means I grew to loathe Crossing Souls, once it entirely abandoned its redeeming features for everything it couldn’t get right.

Overall, Last Stop feels like a game of unfortunate inconsistency. That's not for lack of effort, I have to stress. On the contrary, I get the feeling that Variable State could have really let rip with this if only they'd had more time, money and resources, along with the robust production and editing processes that goes along with that (and that's not just because I'd have loved to play the fourth, although sadly cut, Junji Ito-inspired story either, I promise). In that sense, Last Stop is probably the opposite of Black Mirror and Doctor Who... but one I'm glad I saw through to the end regardless.

What's here is definitely good, and I'd play more of it if there was a second campaign, or more than just two bonus missions. It just plain needs more, be it in volume or flavour, to push me beyond a moderate recommendation.

Those golden-era JRPGs are beloved because they were packed with memorable locations, characters, and combat. I Am Setsuna unfortunately falls short on all three counts, and instead delivers an average and forgettable adventure, albeit one with wonderful music.

Make no mistake, Brigador is a toybox first and foremost – assemble your dream mech or deathtank, take it out for a spin in Bladerunnerville, trash everything, have a bloody great fight. A few UI frustrations can’t take away the innate pleasure of that, especially when it looks so delightfully, tangibly model-like too. It’s not Mechwarrior, no, but it scratches pretty much every other mech itch going, and with style.

But by the end, Maquette had thoroughly rinsed both its gimmick and its story. Much like Michael and Kenzie's relationship, it started off good, but wore me down as time went on. A far cry from Season 6 of Married At First Sight: Australia.

I’m really enjoying this. It’s worth noting that I’ve not played as much of the final version as I’d like to, and it could still go wrong later on – I’ll certainly be updating regarding that. But as it is, this is all rather fun.

The quality of the writing itself was fine, and genuinely made me smile in places. I just think it’s a tricky subject to wade into without a coherent plan for what should be said. And I know “it’s just a game,” etc., but when sharks are as perilously threatened as they are, and one of the big reasons is that people think of them as a threat to be annihilated, it’s just a bit depressing to see the idea celebrated. And whatever might be claimed about the game’s writing undermining that, I’m sorry, but that’s what it does. Maybe I’d care less if Maneater was fun enough overall to earn a pass. But as you’ve hopefully gathered by now, it’s not.

Quantum League is a delightfully inventive, smart, and surprising gem. I’d love to see a future where not just competitive FPS fans, but anyone with an interest in game design has at least given it a go. I also wouldn’t mind seeing a future where they nerf the grenade launcher. [Early Access Review]

That's kind of par for the course in dating sims, though, innit? You get to smooch who you like. That's the thrill! If it's a good dating sim, it'll trick you into feeling like there are consequences, and because Boyfriend Dungeon is very good at that. I also stand by my assessment that because of the additional literal layer to "using" characters, it is the most realistic video game romances have ever been) I was just sort of expecting to be called out at the end. I deserved it! And I'm a bit sad that I wasn't. It turns out that truly, the biggest weapon of all... was me. But if you like dating sims, this is a rollicking good time that offers more action and less passivity than your standard genre stuff. All I want from Boyfriend Dungeon is, basically, more of it. Better, faster, stronger. Sharper...

Arkham Knight is the sweet spot between the ‘all cowl and no codpiece’ rigmarole of Arkham City and the tight claustrophobic construction of Arkham Asylum. It’s not as solid as the latter but it manages to have more variety and more focus than the former. It’s a beautiful game as well, ditching some of the swollen stylised body types of its predecessors and finding a more cohesive neon-gothic, blimps and all.

Even without acknowledging the unusually huge difficulties Kiro’o faced in getting it released at all, Aurion suffers a major blow but stands up as an original, memorable, and rewarding game that deserves every success.

Tokyo 42 is an inventive and strikingly attractive game, with a very natural blend of stealth, combat and figuring out a path, unfortunately hamstrung somewhat by absolute fealty to its isometric perspective. I alternated between the beautiful tension of sneaking through busy places (personally, I incline towards the silent kills of a katana rather than the Syndicate-esque mass destruction of miniguns and rocket launchers) and the jaw-clenched annoyance of death-by-camera. An impressive accomplishment, but sometimes a grating one too.

There's a moment in the second major region when you find yourself at the summit of what is effectively a massive slide, a giddy slope among cliffs thickly lined with rotting crossbowmen. I whooped and slithered all the way to the campsite at the bottom, then located a skull plinth and set about cleansing the heights and discovering more plinths, till at last I could traverse the whole mountainside without getting my feet dirty. It provoked an emotion I hadn't quite felt in Flintlock before: not just admiration of the sturdy craft on show, but delight.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes Ian Loredump shows up uninvited and ruins everything.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is essentially a collection of subplots for their own sake, largely set in stone. But they’re written with talent and confidence and I would gladly read some more.

It starts to fall apart if you look hard at the minutiae: the simplistic economy, infrastructure development, and the somewhat directionless AI. It’s charming and evocative, but the more I play it, the less substantial it gets.

Human: Fall Flat is unquestionably charming, and tremendous fun when it’s not annoying me so much I want to find the developers and put staples in their toes.

There’s definitely a nice idea in playing as a tech support trapped behind deploying stock phrases, as some larger story unfolds about you, but Tech Support: Error Unknown just doesn’t deliver it.

For terrible husk-people with no love in their heart, it’s a little harder to be forgiving of Disney Dreamlight Valley in its current state. Glitches are to be expected in early access, but quest-ending bugs and repetitive grinding put this life simulator on unsteady footing out of the gate. You’d have hoped Disney has deep enough pockets to spring for more voice-acting and properly animated cutscenes too, and the extortionate price of some of Scrooge McDuck’s items should give parents an early sense of unease. The game will be free-to-play when it launches in 2023, and the game’s monetisation mechanics aren’t yet implemented. [Early Access Review]

It’s a robust piece of design that you could well consider a triumph, given just how many ways in which the concept of an ARPG based on a construction game phenomenon could have ended in disaster. And I’m confident in recommending it as worth its price to even the most jaded click-stabber, especially one with even a passing familiarity with Minecraft. But the fact it’s been executed so competently leaves me wishing the developers had been a bit more reckless, frankly. A bit more experimental, in adapting its parent property to an alien genre. Because while the results might have been profoundly weird, it’s weird things – like Minecraft itself was, when it first appeared – that change the landscape of gaming.

It’s just the content, I suppose, that doesn’t charm me any more. It was like playing the FPS version of a top down ARPG like Diablo or Wolcen. Yeah, I’ll shoot the waves of oncoming enemies. No, I don’t particularly need to know why. I’ll do it again in another mission in a minute. Blah blah blah, strip club, blah blah blah, chop shop. Oh Saints Row. It is not you that have changed, but I.

I’ve had such a splendid time just mellowing and wallowing in Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles, not needing to care why it has such a terrible name, not being rushed along, or nagged to do anything. [RPS Recommended]

It really does have the best of intentions though, and if you’re a mega-fan rather than just someone with fond but not entirely specific memories, I suspect you’ll tap right into the rich vein of Fighting Fantasy love here. Me, I need a little more.

Probably the biggest benefit of playing Tomb Raider via these remasters is that they'll allow you to quicksave anywhere, and there's a way to map that quicksave to a multi-button shortcut. But from a purely aesthetic perspective, there is something needless and gestalt about it all. Lara Croft has not aged gracefully, which is fine - in the long run none of us will. But putting her through this TikTok filter and dismantling her tank treads has not made her knees any healthier, her stories more memorable, or her past any more playable. Only the most feverish crypt botherer should follow her into this ominously high-definition temple.

I dearly hope this receives a huge patch. Perhaps fistfuls of bandages and a full body cast. This could be a three-hour wonder, a really truly beautiful work to be lauded. Gosh I wish I could have written the review its unmangled form deserves. As it is, it’s very hard to recommend spending £12 on – already a tough call for such a short game.

And it’s a world to spend time in, too, not just turn up and smash a few pots and hoard a few coins. Take it slow, says Garden Story. Yes, peril approaches, but fences need fixing just as monsters need slaying. Fighting to save the world is a lofty abstract. Instead, fight to save the soil and the sky, the frogs and the flowers, the wise cacti and the talking pickles. Fight like only a grape in a green bucket hat armed with a parasol can.

It might not be quite up there with The Room as an all-time puzzle classic, but it's probably the closest we've come to a spiritual successor in quite some time.

And that’s the thing that most frustrates me about Growbot. It squanders much of its potential. When things click, Growbot can be magical, but for all those wondersome moments, there are more that come to a jarring, juddering halt. If you’re good at puzzles and have a good ear, then you may well have a better time with Growbot than I did, but I suspect its hint system will leave you equally irked. I wish the game was as beautiful to play as it is to look at.

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.

Halo Wars 2 is simultaneously conservative and inventive. It’s definitely trying to evoke traditional RTS games – which is not entirely a bad thing given the recent dearth of them – especially when it comes to the campaign, but elements like base construction and Blitz mode make it stand out enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re just going through the motions for the hundredth time. A clumsy UI and weird, sometimes fixed, keybindings and controls reveal its console heritage, but there are a surprising number of benefits to that side of the design.

The world of Scorn is singular, and carefully constructed, and intelligent. The way you're left to explore - and the way you can get through it without any help whatsoever - is a 10/10 bit of game design. But the most upsetting parts are upsetting by accident rather than intention. I think as many people should play it as possible, but I can't say you'll enjoy it. I'm really glad it's coming to Game Pass.

A minor diversion at best, without the comic timing or cunning to turn anyone to a life of crime. A weekend of crime, perhaps, at most.

The thing is, though, that I don't exactly hate it. I've chosen to be a carpenter and spend a lot of my days in the forest, strip cutting the whole place with a song in my heart and the sun at my back. There are a truly dizzying number of achievements in New World, and I've got my sights set on the Master Carpenter one, partly out of spite at this point. And, you know, a good MMO should facilitate you playing how you want. It's just, I do also really want to do the dungeons. [Review in Progress]

If you’re the kind of person who wishes it still was the eighties and likes the idea of revisiting a button-mashing romp, warts and all, you’ll find a lot to like about this one. But even so, you might find it wearing thin after a while. After all, even the Age of Nostalgia must come to an end.

Competent enough as these things go, but far less suited to manic action-comedy than it is to languid angst and survival.

Zoria is doing a lot of stuff. It'll remind you of Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Lord Of The Rings, even Terry Brooks' weird fantasy books, and a bunch of it is done well, and in interesting ways. But in other cases the ambition has stretched beyond breaking point. But you kind of love your terrier even though it pisses on your cushions sometimes, right?

I'd wager you'll have hunnerpercented Storyteller in two hours max, which will sound like mana from heaven to some, but may disappoint you if you've been waiting for Storyteller for over a decade.

I’m not sure Taur has enough depth or variety to justify that £20 price tag, but it is good for picking up in half-hour bouts and knowing you can make a decent chunk of progress. Like Into the Breach, it’s easy to engage with without being mindless, although it lacks the balance and subtle ingenuity of Subset Games’ mini-masterpiece.

At its heart, Pathologic 2 is a frustrating game. Ten times more interesting than your average immersive sim (probably the genre it belongs), yet hundreds of times less inviting. It has perhaps successfully replicated its predecessor in being an artful mess. But whether you’re up for the art depends on how much of the mess you can stomach. For me, the answer is: no more.

This is a game that has a lot of talent stacked up behind it. It’s just that for me, it ended up amounting to slightly less than the sum of its parts.

Shadows Of The Damned: Hella Remastered will no doubt please fans of the original, as it doesn't touch the demonic meat and bones of the original besides giving them a bit of a face lift. For those coming in fresh, it's a fairly good time, but only until you start noticing its nastiness. I respect its zaniness and its double-A feel from yesteryear, but I also despise how its characters and its world portray women. I wish that attitude had been tossed in the bin and 'remastered' instead, honestly.

As critical as I’ve been, considering its age, Fatal Frame really is an alright game. It’s the kind of thing I could see a younger me playing in windowed-mode while listening to a podcast, chatting on Discord, and eating a bag of sour candy in my dorm room. These days, though, I really only have time for games that bring a little more to the table, and Fatal Frame, like its protagonists, is very much stuck in the past.

Still, like an invincible slasher villain or an anime protagonist, the Supermassive formula clearly hasn’t reached its final form yet. It feels like they’ve filled this one with new ideas without properly fleshing them out, just to see what resonates with players most to take forward. And feeling like a test audience for a format, rather than the final audience for a confident, complete work, is a bit of a strange feeling. “I’m not some fucking lab rat!” shouts Jamie, while the killer slides moving hotel walls about. And honestly: mood.

Coming off of playing hundreds of hours of the sprawling Elden Ring, particularly the DLC, it was refreshing to play a Soulslike with a more manageable length and back to basics approach. The unusual setting and beautiful, appropriately shortcut-stuffed environments were a delight to adventure through. While you have to actively embrace the intricacies of the systems on offer, they’re smart, inventive, and I hope to see some of the ideas built on in the future. Enotria is the epitome of the AA game, with all the good and bad that comes with it.

Blair Witch is lumbering and predictable, as horror often is, and the rattling moments come mostly from jumpscares. The rest is a tepid sort of horror.

Too much of the game is spent being annoyed by having to slowly trudge between levers – a crime as old as gaming itself – only to allow it its little follies. The acting is splendid, the writing decent, and as I’ve said, the graphics a fabulous showing off within the Unreal Engine. But in its short time, it frustrates too often, and tries to do too much.

Altogether, Affogato does a reasonable impression of all three types of game it's trying to emulate here, but it also spreads itself too thin in the process. Each part of its demonic triumvirate lacks the full-bodied flavour that really makes them sing when they're viewed in isolation, and while I've enjoyed it plenty over its 15-odd hour runtime, it's mostly just left me hungry for the real thing. It will no doubt be someone's cuppa joe, but I'm not sure it's mine.

Even if you don’t care about disjointed storytelling, repetitive levels or cringe-worthy jokes, I can’t recommend Youngblood. If you’re desperate to shoot bads with a bud, go play Borderlands, Destiny 2, or Far Cry flipping Five instead. MachineGames clearly felt the need to tread some water before Wolfenstein 3, but they damn near wind up drowning.

Much like 80 Days, Sorcery stands as a great example of what text can do, the more fun bits of gamebooks between the bullshit bits, and an excellent classic adventure that soon becomes a fascinating modern RPG in its own right. No dice, scribbled margin notes, or agonising little paper-cuts required.

To me it feels far more like an expansion pack than a whole new game, slightly improving the cutesy graphics and adding in a couple of extra construction materials, but even then it all overlaps a little too closely with the original. A sequel to a game that already looked awfully similar to another series seems like something that should have iterated a great deal further by now. I certainly recommend checking out people’s most elaborate and daft bridges on YouTube – as for creating them yourself, it’s harder to get excited about.

It certainly shows greater signs of life than Deliver Us The Moon (which I'd still recommend playing beforehand if you have the chance, even though it's not strictly necessary in order to appreciate what's going on here), and while it might not be as polished or glamourous as other space games launching this year, it's a worthy continuation of KeokeN's thoughtful sci-fi series nonetheless. The future it depicts may be bleak, but this is a world you'll be glad to escape to, even if it's only for a little while.

Overall, Ashes isn’t bad, it’s just very plain. Gorgeous, but plain. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before and done better. [Single-player review]

I don’t know if droves follow it to Appalachia. But for hardy and forgiving treasure seekers, while there might not be much gold in them thar hills, there’s at least company now.

Battleborn isn’t a bad game in the sense that it lacks work or effort – the team has clearly put in the hours – it’s just that, for me, it’s an uninspiring result which can’t justify its hefty price tag.

As far as Rainbow Six Extraction goes as a whole, I think there's a lot of good here. The missions are challenging, the aliens are clever, and the progression system is rewarding enough to keep you interested. Nothing is going to blow you away or keep you playing for hours on end, but it works as an FPS you can have a really fun time with on occasion. Sometimes that's all you really need, isn't it?

Sanctus Reach’s unit and faction design and flexible mechanics deserve a much better campaign and fewer constantly recycled objectives.

After years of seeing the same thing, it has become clear that Ubi games cannot function on the strength of their formula alone. And they certainly can’t rely on the strength of your mate Greg. They need some hook and less bait. At the very least they need decent story-telling or likeable characters. However, the principal problem that will forever plague this developer is that the transparency and rigidity of their formula will always hinder them. You can always see it skulking over the surface of the game, like a man in stars and stripes facepaint trying to sneak into a cocaine warehouse. It has been detected: insta-fail.

Ultimately, it just makes Outcast: A New Beginning feel very tired and generic - an open world that might have impressed a decade ago, but now comes across as a game both out of time and out of favour. A small word on the game's performance, too, before I close, which (politely) runs like arse. Aside from frequent stutters when moving to new areas at speed, there were also moments where the frame rate had a full-on meltdown, descending into a farcical slideshow. Publishers THQ Nordic have assured me that optimisation patches are incoming for launch day, but oof, the review build was not a pretty sight at times, lemme tell ya. Even without these performance issues, though, Outcast: A New Beginning has bigger, more fundamental problems lying at its heart. It may finally look like the Adelpha you dreamed about 25 years ago, but this weary sequel has never felt more alienating.

For me to enjoy turn-based sneakery, I need more information. Naughty Police is a game where simply moving from A to B is riddled with uncertainty, and the cost of being spotted too often boils down to repetitive busywork. It’s not a price I’m willing to pay.

If you can get it for £4 – and as noted above, you can during most Steam sales – Crysis is worth returning to for at least its first few hours. If you’ve never played it before, I reckon it’d be worth playing all the way to its end. But Crysis Remastered’s spit-polished nanosuit can’t redeem the game’s aging design, or justify the Maximum Price.

It all just starts to feel like you're endlessly spinning plates without any real end in sight. Each campaign scenario is more of the same, too, offering little more than a change in starting position and faction type. For some, £15/$20 will be a more than adequate price of entry for that. But it also feels like Bulwark is on the cusp of something greater, like it's aiming to be an Anno but never quite getting there in the process. It ultimately spreads itself too thin, doing lots of things well without being brilliant, and lacks the depth and momentum to make it feel satisfying on a strategic level. It's a citybuilder that hums along quietly, but lethargically, sputtering occasionally as you change gears, and eventually petering out altogether as both you and the game become completely and utterly exhausted by it all.

I urge you to give this game a go, I get this deep satisfaction from parting the curtains. Don't sleep on Hauntii, for goodness sake. [RPS Bestest Bests]