As a simple one-and-done campaign run Ghostrunner isn’t at its best: the handiest tricks coming too late in the day and the towering death spikes overshadowing the good times around them. I couldn’t, for example, tell you anything of the story, as it’s delivered over comms during moments of intense concentration. I think it involves someone called Mara, but only because that’s the name on one of the boss fight health bars. But take that initial pass as a warm up lap, inuring yourself to some frustrations to come, and what follows finally delivers on the fun of the cyber ninja fantasy. Death number 1424 beckons.

Approach Everspace 2 like a single-player arcade space shooter with a 30 hour shelf life, rather than a Loot-Spewing Space Diablo you will play forever, and it’s enormously entertaining stuff. It’s like playing Freelancer for the first time again, or Colony Wars: Red Sun on a chipped PlayStation with the lid propped open.

The Pedestrian is surprising and astonishing and delighting, it’s true. But for about the first hour and the last. Still, in complete fairness, that does add up to about half of the total play time – and 50% surprising and delighting is pretty good going.

I’m not in for the long-haul, but I’m pleased to have a game where escape isn’t just a booby prize. And one with yet another terrifying spider.

Despite my misgivings, I think plenty of people with the right mindset and fast-twitch muscle fibers will enjoy Ghostrunner 2 and its demands. There's a lot of variety on offer here, whether that lies in options to slice foes or just veering between bikes and cyber realms and large areas. But for the rest of us who aren't as enamoured by relentless trial and error challenges, I'd find it a difficult one to recommend.

I thoroughly recommend it, for those looking for something erring much more toward the more casual end of the strategy world, the only region of the genre with which I’m comfortable. It’s bright, breezy, light and fun, and perhaps, after all, that’s enough.

It, itself, is a lovely story well told, with great humour, moments of genuine pathos, and plenty of intrigue. It hasn’t made an impact on me like its predecessor did, it doesn’t have the same weight, but it remains a superb time. You absolutely should play it if you’ve played To The Moon. If you haven’t, you should blooming well go and play that, and then this.

It’s pure agony at this point that they’re re-running the exact same bloody plots yet again for a third five-part series, as if they weren’t miserably worn out before even Telltale scooped them up off the floor and blew off the crust and fluff. That they’re not even trying to take the slightest new angle belies a barren and bereft production not worth dragging your own mutilated corpse through.

Children Of The Sun is not, we can agree, an especially subtle game (the girl has NO PEACE written on the back of her jacket), but I'm afraid I found these moments a bit silly, most especially the one where the girl has to walk through calf-high water in a dream void and kneel before successive cultists.

Firewatch is a rare and beautiful creation, that expands the possibilities for how a narrative game can be presented, without bombast or gimmick. It’s delicate, lovely, melancholy and wistful. And very, very funny. A masterful and entrancing experience.

I love it. There were times when I didn’t, mostly when I had to replay a section where I kept failing to line up what looked like a simple jump over and over, but by the end I was smitten. It’s a grotesque, horrid and eventually hopeful in its own morbid fashion, and despite many moments that feel like reimaginings or echoes from elsewhere, it has enough extraordinary images and sequences to stand alone. It’s precisely the kind of horror game I love – grotesque but not gross, and interested in thoughtful pacing and escalation rather than jumpscares and shocks. Also, linear though it is, there are some collectibles I’d like to hunt for and the whole game is short enough that I’ll happily play it again, or watch someone else playing.

It’s very funny, so busy with good ideas, and really damned strange.

At its best this is reminiscent of 80 Days, though it doesn't have quite the sense of wonder. But it is intricate and clever, very suited to the release on handheld and mobile that it's also getting (possibly more suited, if it comes to it), and an instant win if you know what you like and what you like is Inkle games. Overboard has a lovely frivolity, a sort of happy wink of a game to uplift a bit of lockdown gloom now we're back into summer - and that frivolity also belies the complexity underneath. Much like Veronica herself, who even now is, at my behest, stuffing her husband's clothes out of her porthole so she can steal a dolphin paperweight just because she damn well can.

It's disappointing that there are only three maps (no random maps at present), and the new themed buildings are usable only when map editing. I imagine its thriving mod scene will fill in those gaps. Biomes is a nice bonus. A bit underwhelming if you want to go all in, but completely skippable if you're fine with the default setting. Thus: it's fine, with potential to become more appealing over time. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Aside from those interface annoyances and the somewhat confusing compromises made to simplify roster management, I have been having a hell of a time with Darkest Dungeon 2. It might not scratch all of the same itches for me that its predecessor did, and some of the changes seem born of an overzealous devotion to streamlining everything, but it's also one of the most enjoyable roguelites I've thrown myself into on its own merits. The pacing is great, each decision along the road feels meaningful, most runs that aren't killed early on by horrible luck feel aptly rewarding, and the music, art, story, and narration create a singular and sorrowful set of vibes that are hard to top. Deck it out with some very interesting and often unconventional RPG classes and thematically-grounded party dynamics from the refined stress system, and I don't think I'll be letting the flame of this carriage burn low for a long time.

Chuchel is a creation of pure joy, an absolute masterclass in silliness, with pleasingly involved puzzles to boot. It’s a giant cuddle of a game, interesting to all ages, and with a manic edge that never slows down.

Burgerlords 3 is a game about clicking on things until they stop. It’s blessed with exquisite audiovisual design, it’s extremely annoying on several levels, and it’s compelling despite its boneheadedness. It takes a while to get up to speed compared with previous iterations, and it suffers from having missions stretched to the point of tedium for the sake of boasting a 30+ hour play time. But when it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s the most fun the series has been. At times, I even laughed out loud at the game’s script – which only made the rest of it, with all its dated meme references, poo lols and roaring bros, more frustrating.

Stranded: AD may not contain an entire galaxy’s worth of possibilities, but it knows how to keep you curious about your little patch of land, and it's a pleasure to watch your survivors feast on the fruits of their labour–whether they be beefberries, graincob, or buttermelons.

What it offers though is a solid combat system backed up with enough different flavours, little moments of triumph, pats on the head and surprises amongst the very, very quickly familiar terrain to be compelling, like a big bowl of popcorn sprinkled with chocolate. It’s unfortunate that as a hybrid, The Witcher 3 does so much more with a lot of the same elements.

Like any good recipe, Overcooked 2 is more than the sum of its parts. It’s fast-paced, hilarious, and just the right amount of stressful, and that all comes together into one of the most fun and moreish co-op games I’ve played in years. [RPS "Bestest Bests"]

Almost anybody can mine out 40 or 50 hours-worth of honest enjoyment from the quest to build Evermore, and I certainly encourage genre fans to take the plunge. Just don’t be surprised if it fails to make much of a lasting impression, like a sandcastle going out with the tide.

I think it's a success. It's a strong push to move the genre beyond the model we've been stagnating in for years that still acknowledges the strengths of that design (so far that it copies some things I wish it wouldn't, like the godawful panic system). It will be divisive for that, and may alienate the most obdurate of the purists too, neither of which it really deserves. Tonally, it's mostly a miss, and aspects of its UI like travel, merc selection, transferring, and splitting inventory need another quality-of-life pass. But the combat / strategy / management elements are enough to carry it through those disappointments, and I suspect to keep me coming back for quite some time.

Reach is decent. There are moments when the campaign shines, as you’re charging about to thumping rock music, zapping squishy enemies rather than plugging away at Elites. Or jumping onto tanks and punching them to death. There aren’t enough games nowadays that let you jump onto tanks and punch them to death.

So embrace the chaos, friends, because Daemonhunters is the absolute business. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s an undisputed heavyweight, and an experience I’d recommend to anyone.

If you reckon a tense, varied, visually impressive and mechanically gripping campaign is enough to sweeten the sour taste of its politics, that’s fine. That’s about the page I’m on. If you’re ready for another dunk in COD’s multiplayer gunge, the tank’s right there. The gunge is good as ever, and there’s no need to play in Ground War’s side-pit if you don’t want to. Personally, though? I’m gunged out. Modern Warfare delivers pretty n’ twitchy low-stakes shootouts, but my tastes have changed while COD has not.

Tails Of Iron is a fun world stuffed with detail and excellent frog smashing. Look into this rat's nice little face and see the face of a brutal killer.

As I understood the story, it left me satisfied, but it also left me 100% ready to watch an hour-long video essay on what I missed. But poems can move you as textures of language, ideas, and images, even if you don’t fully grasp their meaning, and Signalis definitely got me right in the feels. If you’ve got any affection for PS1 survival horror, queer android love stories, cold war paranoia aesthetics, retrofuturism, or cosmic horror when people who aren’t Lovecraft do far more interesting stuff with it, Signalis is a must play. [RPS Bestest Bests]

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?

I can see and respect what it's trying to do, absolutely. But the systems underpinning Ultros' ambitions simply aren't up to snuff to deliver them in a way that feels satisfying to play.

Stories Untold is bleak and disturbing, novel and experimental, and most importantly when doing all that, very clever. It’s smarter than you’ll realise, in fact. And why it’s smart is all in the experience of playing, not to be given away in the process of reviewing. A pain in the arse for me, but worth it for you.

It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and – barring an eleventh hour miracle – it’s my undisputed game of the year. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise. [RPS Bestest Bests]

A delightful, charming, and relaxing affair. It’s a Sunday afternoon television of a game, and goodness me, does that have a place. It’s funny, daft, and the look is incessantly fantastic. Backgrounds are beautifully drawn, characters are well animated, and the voice cast are all modestly strong. And it’s got Tom Baker in it. I had a thoroughly lovely time.

Beyond its success as a mood piece, it's tempting to recommend Exo One solely for its scenery. As a machine for generating desktop wallpapers or screensavers, it's first rate. Some of you, I feel, will love it for this alone. But as I said up top, maybe I just don't like sci-fi vistas as much as I thought I did. Long before Exo One's short three hours reached their conclusion, I just wanted it to be Exo Done.

Gunbrella is a short and intensely fun little shooter, whose biggest fault is occasionally luring you into wanting it to be something more than it actually is. What’s here is a bouncy, blasty, highly original 2D platformer with a silly and interesting weapon at its core, set in a filthy dirty steampunk western world, with dialogue that’s cute but not too cute, a catchy musical score and a screen that shakes just right when you fire your shotgun into a guy.

I don't feel very strongly about Age Of Empires. That might sound damning, but I'm someone with no particular stake in the series, perhaps even slightly biased against it. Yet I've never wanted to stop playing AoE 4 all week. It might not be a huge step forward, but it's a sure step in a genre whose comeback is long overdue, and it doesn’t appear to have ambitions beyond that. I'd like to see more clear innovation, I'd love an active pause and speed controls in single player at least, and a pull towards macromanagement, and a heap of smaller tweaks that may well come in time anyway. Fundamentally, the best I can say is that I enjoyed it more the better I got, I got steadily better the more I played, and I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

Once again, I've yet to play a SteamWorld game I didn't like. SteamWorld Heist 2 is not bucking that trend. After 15 hours I still haven't finished it, but my endgame sense is tingling and I'm eager to see it through. If I was asked to name the most reliably entertaining franchise in video games today, I would perhaps point to Thunderful's toybox and say simply: "Them 'uns". These games know what they're doing, they communicate it succinctly, and most importantly, they let the player happily move on when the game is finished. These are not games of "endless replayability", they are toys of endful playability, of conclusiveness, closure and clemency. If switching off after reaching an "ending" in a piece of Destiny 2 DLC is like finishing a McDonalds yet feeling hungry again two hours later, then watching the credits roll on a SteamWorld game is like finishing a decent home cooked meal and walking away full of unthinking contentment. I'm keen to keep sailing north, find a homey pub on the horizon, and eat that final dish.

Taken on its own terms, Battlefield V is an incredible achievement that’s absolutely worth your time and its AAA price tag. Taken in the context of every battle that’s gone before, what’s on sale is the all-too familiar fantasy of being one insignificant drop in a sea of raging war-soup. It’s a fantasy I’ve lived enough times already.

My Friend Pedro does let you realise the fantasy of conducting a bullet symphony while hanging upside down from a zipline, but like most fantasies, it doesn’t survive past the initial rush of blood to the head.

With the combat system and the way it’s actually trying to make a point with its exploration of social issues, The Fractured But Whole does improve on its predecessor in some ways, but it quickly starts to coast, relying too much on familiarity to get by. It’s still South Park, so we get to summon a drug-fueled Kyle’s dad to conduct a Heavy Metal bombing raid, and if you go into the back room of a church, yes, priests will try to have sex with you — it can be horrible and hilarious, just not as often as it needs to be to fill 15 hours.

The most perfect example of everything I’m trying to say here is this: Necrobarista ends on a pun. And that pun made me cry. [RPS Bestest Bests]

And let's face it, at little more than a fiver, there's simply no excuse not to give Ynglet a go. It's 90 minutes of pure, unbridled joy (more, if you attempt the bonus levels), and it's unlike anything else I've ever played. It's a bold, fun riot of colour and sound, and I only wish there was more of it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

There’s so much to love about Great God Grove. It’s the perfect example of a handcrafted game through and through, from its striking art style, strange lexicon, brilliant vacuum-based puzzle-solving, and haunting puppet work. There are several important messages to decipher in its surrealism. The game has a lot to say about deviation, power, art, censorship, and how it feels being a loser with no discernable life direction. It's like a kid’s show with an important message at its core, like if Sesame Street wanted to teach you about the manipulative pitfalls of idol worship. In this strange world, even gods fear being forgotten, but GGG won't have that problem as it's hands down one of the boldest games of 2024.

At its core, Company Of Heroes 3 is a rip-roaring return to form and then some for Relic's much loved RTS, and its stirring orchestral score will have you beating your chest and yelling hoo-rah like only the best toy soldier fantasies can. If Relic can iron out some of those lingering campaign niggles, this could easily be an all-timer for WWII strategy buffs, especially once its multiplayer kicks off in earnest in the coming days. It might be the kind of beach holiday that's riddled with mortar shells, machinegun fire and tank explosions, but whichever road you end up taking, this is one trip that's definitely going to be for the history books.

A Plague Tale has a story that’s way more detailed than the escape-to-safety romp I was expecting, involving bloodlines and ancient power, and one extremely evil leader of the Inquisition doing an extremely evil voice.

From here, the future of Dishonored isn’t clear, but if these were indeed my last days with the series, I’m glad and grateful they were spent playing a solid, focused stealth adventure set in a sometimes incomparably beautiful place. [RPS Recommended]

I like Hellblade 2, and without wishing to sound churlish, I'd definitely give it a whirl if I had a Game Pass subscription. But in a month that's included Animal Well and Crow Country and Cryptmaster and Little Kitty, Big City and Dread Delusion and Indika and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, dropping fifty notes on this shiny but safe sequel just seems daft. Amid such a cornucopia of imagination, Hellblade 2 needed to be more than just more Hellblade, to elevate the ideas of the first game and build them out. But for all its technical wizardry and narrative worth, more Hellblade is exactly what Hellblade 2 is.

GoNNER is this year’s Downwell – a neat, short-form action game that has found the perfect visual style to communicate its near-misses and big hits. Whether you want to show off by pushing its systems to the limits or play at a more relaxed and careful pace, basking in the gorgeous music, it’s an absolute delight.

If you get good enough at Sifu, you could probably run through the entire game without dying once. It’s the ultimate, get annoyed, put the game down, come back later and make tons of progress, type of game. I will say though, at one point, I was so frustrated with myself I thought I was going to eat my controller. Anyway, it nails so much on its first go that I desperately want this to be the start of a new genre. Sign me up for more. Make a Matrix spinoff if you’re feeling nuts! [RPS Bestest Bests]

A glimmering space crystal, including some great story elements, buried under a patina of lowest-common-denominator grime. A lovely bone, full of marrow, specially formulated for growing ogres. Don’t make the mistake I nearly made and disregard it: if you enjoy the tactical and strategic game styles it draws from, you’ll find a game that doesn’t go out of its way to innovate on either front, but one that performs a bloody lovely duet.

This remains the magical, bizarre, joyful and utterly peculiar game that earned its place in gaming history. It also remains very short (about four hours at a slow pace?), but also extremely replayable, with so many targets to meet. And it’s very funny, in a super-dark way.

The greedy part of me would appreciate a few more modes or units – the few faces do make it feel slightly small after a while – and, sure, I’d love to see what a four-player contest looks like. But by staying small it stays elegant, and that’s what makes Antihero such a pleasure.

Thing is, I can't pass judgment on Lost Ark until I've reached the endgame myself. Otherwise, it's a jarring party of blinged out pauldrons and alien map markers. The trouble with that is whether I've got it in me to cross the finish line. The grind and the game's aged MMORPG template refuse to budge, and I'm not sure it's something even its excellent combat can varnish over. Some may adore the EXP churn and relish the comfort of an MMO with familiar trappings, but if you're after an MMO that does something truly different, I remain uncertain. The endgame certainly seems filled with menial and moreish pastimes, but whether you've got the patience to get there is another matter entirely. I'm not sure I've got it in me, honestly. [Review in Progress]

Void Bastards is ultimately not more than the sum of the parts I outlined 1400 words ago, but it’s worth rummaging through all the same. Just like yer da said about the bins, when he finally found those Euros.

Black Myth: Wukong is a triumph. A surprising triumph in the sense that I can't quite believe it's as good as its drip feed of screens and trailers looked over the last few years. It's a generous Soulsy adventure hybrid that works within its limitations and delivers a beautiful challenge to be unpicked with a magical toolbox. Arguably, I'd say Black Myth's world sucked me in more than Elden Ring and Lies Of P, probably more so than anything I've played in ages! This is Game Science bursting onto the scene and saying: "You've got competition". And hey, I'm listening. You should be, too.

Northgard is simple in all the right ways, challenging not because of complexity but complacency – it’s harsh, but rarely unfair.

Heaving with all that content, and impressing on the pitch where it counts, this is the best FIFA has been in years. I won’t deny I’m more than a little in love with it. The highest praise I can give is that I wasn’t expecting to say that this year. Well played.

This is 100% a Gears Of War game, that also happens to be a top flight strategy effort. Arguably the best of its kind on the market, in fact, despite a bit of trouser trouble. It’s a spectacular thing to play through, and it’d be more than enough to merit the fifty quid price tag if it deleted itself on completion. Thankfully, however, the replay value is much greater than you’d expect. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Perhaps my biggest gripe with Warzone and DMZ are the many launch woes, which feel like the game's servers are teetering on an active tectonic plate. Some matches are stuttery, elastic messes. Small grievances only serve to back up my theory that the game's backend also slides over a molten layer of rock, like when I'm queuing up for a DMZ match but seeing the "Battle Royale Quads" matchmaking whirr away, or finishing a match of Warzone and not even seeing how much EXP I earned and what levelled up. I've had important AI enemies fall through the floor in DMZ and Strongholds not even work as intended. One time I queued up for Warzone duos but it placed us in a borked quads, so I went to revive my teammate and it wouldn't let me. Sigh.

Cursed To Golf has plenty of visual charm, and elements taken from its Flash game origins feel like a fun throwback. Unfortunately, though, it’s a bit of a swing and a miss for its roguelike elements.

So yes, Like A Dragon Ishin isn't going to convert those who dislike Yakuza. It still carries some of the series' historic frustrations and feels like a bit of a step backward when you compare it to Yakuza: Like A Dragon's turn-based shake-ups and modernisations. Although, a step backward isn't a bad thing at all! Ishin feels most like Yakuza 0 (my fave) that's sure to please longtime fans, and its standalone nature means that it is, without a doubt, one of the strongest starting points for newcomers. Now excuse me, I best get back to harvest my radishes.

Art nice. Game not nice. Maybe you’ll make a beautiful origami swan out of it, but all I ended up with was a pile of origami boulders.

My Time At Sandrock is Stardew Valley with a gun. It’s a compelling and lusciously detailed life simulator with an endlessly rewarding mine-and-build loop, and a set of diverse career paths so richly designed that it’s difficult to pursue them all. When I am 120 years old, suckling grey nutrient paste from a tube in my hovering retirement home, and they’ve finally invented the virtual reality world from that one episode of Black Mirror, I want you to put me into this eight out of ten game from 2022. Just duct tape a Steam Deck to my head if you have to, and watch as a nostalgic grin spreads across my withered, paste-dappled face. Oh yes, that’s the life for me. Take me there now. [Early Access Review]

In short, I'm still very much in love with Dorfromantik, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Its forever status is assured. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Even with these grumps about plot and characters, even with the sad lack of co-op or Forge mode at launch, this Halo ring is still a luscious national park devoted to rampage, Tarzan swings, hammer blows and big drums of plasma (my GOD these are fun to chuck). An open world Halo is something I didn't even realise I wanted. I'm glad I got it. It has taken the series a while to look outside its corridor shooting monoculture for inspiration. But now that developers 343 Industries have broadened that corridor to the width of plains and stretched it to the height of mountains, it'll be hard to go back. You can't drive a jeep full of snipers down a corridor.

From the interface to economics, it sports some of the best systems I’ve seen in a 4X game, and like Endless Legend, it’s simultaneously confident and experimental, finding new ways to spice up a genre that can too often be bland. [RPS Recommended]

Detroit is a perfect game to livestream, or play with three mates and half a bottle of tequila – but if you tell me you genuinely think the story is well done, I will immediately be sus that you, yourself, are an android poorly trying to replicate human behaviour.

For me, The Sims was always supposed to be a kind of corny ideal life, rather than a simulation of reality, and a Cottagecore expansion is such a good theme to do that with. In real life, getting up every day to collect eggs and clean out your hen house is a pain in the ass, and you can't make friends with birds without serious effort. But this lifestyle is realised in sunny technicolour in Cottage Living. Apart from anything else, it's reignited my desire to flood the feed with posts about The Sims. So you're welcome and/or sorry in advance.

If it didn’t look so similar to the completely splendid (if also marred by dull combat) Pillars Of Eternity, if those expectations weren’t weighing on it, perhaps there’d be even more leniency. But as it is, this is a decent enough RPG that feels like its wearing clothes that don’t quite fit.

It’s a much better game than last year’s edition though, the time in between having been spent on significant and healthy rewrites of AI processes at both the tactical and strategic levels. That it is the most visually appealing game in the series, in terms of both clarity off the pitch and improvements on the pitch, is a bonus.

In all, I’m pleased by my scrappy fights, and my tutelage of Hooves the horse man continues. One sad thing to note is that £50 is a high price, a fandom price, and that’s a pity.

Ultimately, Season is a mercurial game that will likely hit different for everyone who plays it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

But the community itself is the important bit. The characters aren’t voiced, but they feel like they are. The text bubbles are sometimes animated, sometimes shaking with trepidation, sometimes small like a whisper, sometimes big with anger. And each character speaks accompanied by a sound. Miu, who becomes a close friend, is a lithe, cat-like creature with pointed teeth, and she sounds like the delicate plucking of violin strings. Jell-A, a sentient fungoid growth, is the town’s subterranean scientist, and his voice is squishy, but with a side of liquid dripping and bubbling in a glass flask. It’s excellent work.

There’s a clever stealth game here, without question. I’d just like it so much more if it ramped up faster and cooled it with all the chest-thumping.

I love a game that can get under my skin like this, but ultimately it's the steady hand that developers Black Salt Games apply to the rest of this ship that makes Dredge such a tantalising prospect. It casts a wide net, but in the process catches the best and most accessible bits of survival horror, management and exploration games and serves them all up on a glowing, eldritch platter that's simply too good, and too moreish, to ignore. It's a special game, old Dredge, so whatever horrible nasties you might find out there, don't let this be the one that got away. [RPS Bestest Bests]

The Evil Within 2 feels like something of a departure from the first game, but also an extremely fitting follow-up. Its structure, enemy design, immaculate audio production and constant tension make it one of my favourite survival horror experiences to date, and while it doesn’t push the envelope in terms of providing anything new, it focuses on what it is and attempts to provide a definitive, well-produced classic survival horror experience. [RPS Recommended]

I trust Frictional implicitly to do very interesting things, but though Rebirth takes a run at a bunch of cool and alarming concepts, it feels like it’s juggling too many to do any one of them full justice. Rebirth hasn’t haunted me since closing it in a way that Soma did, for example. I kept waiting for the take on pregnancy anxiety to become something more than what it always is. I could feel it straining to against the ropes of previously established bullshit lore about orbs. Amnesia: Rebirth isn’t bad at all. You just get the sense that if it was called Rebirth it would have been better.

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.

There's an awful lot to admire about Card Shark. I want more games that do something original like this, that find beauty from odd angles and tell stories in new ways. But playing Card Shark like a real person - with breaks, and other things to do - is hard. If you can't count cards, and find rubbing your tummy while patting your head at all difficult, Card Shark will likely have you absolutely mogadored.

A bigger, better game than its predecessor in almost every respect, and one with a sense of journey and surprise to its gambling, fighting and dying, which makes it feel rather like a card-based, fantasy FTL. However, it has thrown out its most beautiful, meanest-eyed baby with the bath water in order to achieve that variety. Hand of Fate 2 wisely switches away from Hand Of Fate’s purity, which saves it from repetition but discards its trump card in the process.

Flinthook’s world is weird, with its space ghost pirates, animal ruffians and giant robots, but as colourful and crowded as some of these screenshots look, I’ve always found the rooms easy to read. That’s important because underneath all of the silliness and the roguelite elements, there’s a tight and challenging game that would be a delight even without its superb structure and flow. With that carefully crafted layer around it, Tribute have made one of the year’s best action games.

This looming dread, growing increasingly loom as the game goes on, is one of the most effective weapons in Hob's Barrows' arsenal of horror.

Oxenfree was an unexpected delight for me. Atmospheric, beautiful and with the ability to feel real connections between its characters.

The only reason I’m not giving Teardown a Bestest Best is because it’s still in Early Access, and I want to wait to see more of what it becomes. At this stage, it is a towering achievement in tearing down towers, and well worth your time. [Early Access review]

Wanderstop is meticulously thought out in both big- and small-picture ways, and that means it isn’t a straightforward game of a girl getting to put her hands in the soil and run a cute little café and be magically fixed. It’s a game that openly admits to not having all of the answers. It’s a game that feels like the process of working through something.

It’s pure agony at this point that they’re re-running the exact same bloody plots yet again for a third five-part series, as if they weren’t miserably worn out before even Telltale scooped them up off the floor and blew off the crust and fluff. That they’re not even trying to take the slightest new angle belies a barren and bereft production not worth dragging your own mutilated corpse through.

The Gardens Between is all about reminiscing. It plays like two friends talking about all the adventures they’ve had, with the conversation flowing as they remember details and go back over stories that’ve grown with the telling.

With few exceptions (the Black Mirror episode San Junipero comes to mind), stories about imaginary worlds tend to be self-critical about the fantasy they want to conjure. Fleeing into a fantasy world is a form of escapism that needs to be condemned, even when the challenges of the fantasy world are no easier than reality. The Lost Boys of Peter Pan return to their home. The kids in Narnia go back into the wardrobe. The annoying hero of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance destroys the game's setting to return to the real world. The fantasy can be tolerated only when it dares admit its self-indulgent nature, like in the isekai genre...Impostor Factory is another of those rare exceptions: a game that cheerfully posits that a fake, imaginary life can be as fulfilling, precious and valid as a real one. And isn't this why we all play videogames, after all?

Gathering Storm is a chunky collection of small remixes that amount to a big difference. All the same, I’m left feeling that the next Civ game, whatever it is, really needs a root and branch rethink rather than attempts to retroactively justify its existence through expensive expansion packs.

For all these little improvements, though, the time-honoured pursuit of watching a party of adventurers sprint across a map at a snail’s pace has been left untouched. And I know this might seem like a petty thing to complain about, but I’m dead serious. As I’ve stressed, between its surprising and inventive level design, its genuinely compelling character writing, and its various interlocked secondary games, Expeditions: Rome keeps you in a constant state of looking forward to what comes next. And unavoidably, that excitement dampens fast when you’re just sitting there waiting for people to move across a map.

I wish it had been easier, with a second layer of clues accessible beneath the basic pictograph conversations perhaps. I also wish I’d felt more of a connection with Dropsy himself and I have no doubt that some people will. He’s unfairly maligned and sweet, sure, but I’m far more interested in the barely suggested lives of some of the other characters.

Diplomacy Is Not An Option is a compelling little game with short-lived appeal for super serious strategy fans, but one with loads of character and entertaining physics. It’s a delightful merry-go-round of building stuff and defending stuff that sometimes handcuffs you to your merry-go-round horse and doesn’t let you off. [Early Access Review]

Honkai: Star Rail is still in its early stages but it’s incredibly good fun to play. With the promise of more planets to come, more characters to fall in love with, and more twists and turns than anyone can see coming, this is one train that’s worth riding.

Last Train Home's other great strength is that all its parts lead so naturally into each other that its considerable length goes by in hour long waltzes from assaulting a town, to upgrading your engine while the fishing expedition walks back, to driving to the next station, to buying some ammunition, to scavenging for fuel, to reaching the next chapter in a fictionalised history of remarkable events that seems now like the most obvious fit for a game ever. To make all this so fun and compelling without feeling tacky or overly sanitised is a remarkable achievement, and one I'm glad to recommend.

I deeply enjoy Wildfrost's bombastic builds, but I can’t help but feel that it’s trading in the promise of an exciting next run over making the current one more sustainable. Nevertheless, it’s still a genuinely fun game, with charming details and rewarding tactical combat, so I will, absolutely, be giving it more of my time.

Every aspect of Remnant II is excellent, and I've only just scratched the surface. If you're up for round two, you can "re-roll" the campaign, which completely rebuilds the game with a random collection of areas and bosses. You also have the ability to reroll planets if you wish, for those who just want an extra dose of their favourite area. Remnant II doubles down on everything its successor did, and the result is an incredible achievement. I’ll be playing it regularly for years to come. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s so alive, so intricate, and so graceful. I wonder if the difficulty will see it be a less celebrated game than the last two, but it really is a thing of beauty.

Saturnalia though? That's an experience you want to have. More and more I find myself skulking around the edges of the bell curve, looking for unusual things that provoke unusual feelings. Saturnalia is one. It's a pulse-raising, shiver-making, dark little whisper; a beautiful game. Sometimes tiny things go a little wrong in Saturnalia - dialogue triggering at slightly the wrong moment - but you'll hardly notice. It's a rare game that unsettles you enough to stop playing, but attracts you enough that you turn it back on almost immediately. A rare game that's so unapologetically specific, that doesn't seem to have diluted any part of itself. Rarest of all is a game that's truly unique, and makes you think "I haven't played anything like this before." [RPS Bestest Bests]