It’s a really well made and sometimes great portion of turn-based tactics, but more often than not, it was frustration rather than strategy that drove me to go maximum boyo.

It’s Size Five’s masterpiece. [RPS Bestest Bests]

The most glaring problem is how The Suicide Of Rachel Foster fails to meaningfully engage with its central themes.

Off-Peak deserved to be something less arbitrary than a point and click. Or it deserved a player with better taste than me. But given how much I’ve had to say in praise of both this and Frog Detective 2, the only two point and click games I’ve played in the last couple of years, I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps I just don’t dislike as many things as I thought I did. It’s always good to shed your prejudices, and Tales From Off-Peak City helped me unload a good few.

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.

Reforged, like a lot of remasters today, is good for a run around if all you wanted was to give your nostalgia a long leash – long enough to punch some elves in the face, say. But if Warcraft III was a game you not only once loved, but love still; if it’s a game you’ve been playing for the better part of 20 years… Well. It’s not hard to see how Reforged could end up being a bit of a disappointment.

Some games are like chips. Even if you’ve got pals to play with, maybe wait until this one comes as cheap.

Kalypso and Yippee seem determined to banish memories of the ropey release build (As I type this, my install is being modified by a fresh 1GB patch – 1.08) as quickly as they can. If they stay the course and keep delivering fixes at the current rate, by March, Commandos 2 HD Remaster could be entirely error free. I’m reasonably confident the repairs will be completed satisfactorily. Whether Pyro’s masterpiece will ever get back the minuscule black crosses and red circles, it wore, without controversy, for nigh-on twenty years, remains to be seen.

It’s a good way to relax for a few hours.

I believe, even though there is an ending, that the Zero is a loop, and I am just another ghost that echoes around it forever. For it was – it is – unforgettable. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Praetorians HD Remaster looks better than its predecessor, but honestly, still looks like a mobile game I’d find in a promoted tweet, alongside a vague imperative like “defend your empire!”.

Predictable and nice, if you like that sort of thing, but quick to go stale.

I can’t shake the frustration that the Savage Planet could have been something more, but that might be because I’ve been spoiled through reading reams of outlandish sci-fi. It’s populated by the pulpy bug-eyed monsters of the fifties, rather than the oddities dreamt up by the likes of Iain Banks or Greg Egan. Or Liu Cixin. Or China Miéville. Or Ted Chiang. Or Peter Watts.

Oblique though it may be, there’s an extraordinary simulation at work here – one that refuses to be gamed, and teaches you that transport is a service, rather than a money-printing exercise. In my experience, a great management game is distinguished by its central lesson, and Transport Fever 2 has one worth learning.

Vestaria Saga is a merciless game. It can be wonky. Unpolished. Occasionally frustrating. But I know a particular subset of players won’t care, because this is a new, old, Fire Emblem, and nobody but Shouzo Kaga makes games like this anymore. Have fun with it, then, if you suspect you fall into that group. Enjoy this beautiful mess.

Quotation forthcoming.

I do enjoy Minilaw. I find its mistakes frustrating precisely because it’s otherwise a tonne of fun to play. It looks gorgeous, the sound and music are first rate, and when it works, gunning attackers down feels great. I light up when I see someone standing foolishly close to a ledge, and prioritise running towards them to line up a kick above far bigger threats, just because hoofing them off is so entertaining. I want to find an excuse to stop here so I can start playing it again, which is a sure sign it’s doing the important things right. But I’m resigned to recommending it only after an annoyed sigh, and a disclamatory “well…” about the clunky controls.

It would be unfair to single out AO Tennis 2 for replicating the banality of tennis when every sports ’em up has the same conceptual flaw.

I think Sayonara Wild Hearts reminded me of all the cool things I’ve liked over the years, because it’s not saying anything deeper than “Cool things are f.cking great, and being cool is great too.” Which is fine. It’s all said in this incredibly alluring wash of pink and blue and purple, this brief flowerbloom of a game, this stylish, inescapably cool thing that references Tarot without, you know, trying too hard about it.

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.

Iceborne is an essential expansion for a game that is paradoxically both enormous and niche. [RPS Bestest Bests]

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.

Frog Detective 2 is a game you can hold in your head all at once, and cherish. I think it’s great.

Paranoia is geared towards this kind of playful arguments and collaborative storytelling more than it is simulation. You can’t easily replicate scenarios like the above in a video game, so to port the setting into a standard computer RPG requires… more. I do wish Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory had been a bit more daring in the attempt.

Ultimately, even if more of the jokes had landed, they wouldn’t have been enough to carry the game they’re crushed under. I’m aware that repetition in games gets rubbed in by playing long stints for review. Perhaps it all would have been less tiresome if I’d experienced it in the small bursts the original mobile version of DD was designed for. But repetition in general isn’t good game design. It needs to be spiced up with novelty or thought, and the actual dungeons of Dandy Dungeon don’t pack enough of either.

If you’ve been waiting for a full-on simulation with all the bells and textbooks, and nothing less will satisfy you, Mechwarrior 5 isn’t going to cut it. For everyone else though, it’s bloody excellent.

Genesis is so unashamedly mid-tier (and I don’t mean this pejoratively, it’s great to see this sort of budget project surfacing again), and so overflowing with proud mid-decade nostalgia, that it’s easy to overlook its annoyances.

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.

There’s slow-burn greatness in Phoenix Point. It’s a game where you might be exploring a site, bracing for ambush, but instead find an abandoned theme park dedicated to a novelty boy band of hedge fund managers called the Lucrative Lads. Where you dread the thud of a parasitic worm dropping from a roof to the ground at your feet. Where the cold utilitarianism trained by XCOM slowly melts, and ideology begins to influence your diplomacy. It’s warmer, stranger, than its genremates. But it’s harder work to enjoy. Like its most outlandish guns and powerful armours, it takes a few hours’ research to get there.

This is an often boring and sometimes brilliant game, where the brilliance depends on the boredom. If that’s too risky a pitch for a full-priced ticket on Suzuki’s time machine, maybe try the originals first (both are on Xbox Game Pass for PC). For better and for worse, Shenmue III is a perfect continuation.

Overall, I don’t think Atelier Ryza is the kind of game that’s going to change many minds. Though it ended up surprising me, I would argue that I’m the prime audience for it: a lifelong JRPG fan who enjoys dabbling in games with light sim mechanics.

Bum-bo may have to deal with a lot of crap, but it’s all well worth pushing through.

Fallen Order wants you to feel like a fighty, telepathic space priest, and for about 20 hours or so, it does that. Stick with it, and you might also find a cool, yellow lightsaber.

Overall, despite all the frustrations, I enjoyed being a broody detective cat. I just wish the game itself was as strong as the story it was trying to tell.

The nicest thing I can say about Terminator: Resistance is that if a Terminator were sent back in time to wipe out its code, the timeline of gaming in general would almost certainly proceed unchanged.

The very nature of play makes even more drastic transitions.

It’s an accomplishment, and it’s certainly better and more original than the vast bulk of games in the physics-gimmick subgenre, but I respect it a lot more than I like it.

One of the few criticisms I can level at this close-to-perfect piece of hexiana is that the campaign chapters sometimes don’t dovetail as neatly as they might. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Age Of Empires 2 is a much bigger game these days. And it’s been improved meaningfully enough that this is much more than just a bundle deal with increased resolution. But would I still recommend it to someone who never played an Age game back in the day, and has no nostalgia to buoy them? Well, yes. The RTS genre is a strangely empty thing these days, and there’s certainly not many games being made in the AoE2 mould.

The appeal of being a humble, vulnerable bee going about their business in a more detailed, freeform way seems obvious. Bee Simulator has its upsides, but this just isn’t the one. My bee t-shirt, and I, are still waiting.

From the first bundle of hours, it’s pretty clear it’s not deserving of a whopping £55. [First few hours impressions]

I’ve absolutely loved this. It’s so refined, so well crafted, so supremely gory for something with such deceptively simple presentation, and has a difficulty pitch that feels always challenging, but remarkably fair. At a measly £11, you’d be silly not to give it a go. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Abandon Ship can’t escape FTL’s shadow. It’s too similar to avoid being judged based on the high bar its spacefaring cousin set, but it falls far too short of that bar for me to like it. Turns out those water pumps aren’t worth manning after all.

Mostly good, sometimes bad, never ugly. A prequel to a story that never made it to PC and which, honestly, makes me jealous of people coming to it for the first time. But even as someone who has spent a huge amount of time in this world, it’s a trip I’m more than happy to be taking again. A staggering technical achievement; a deliciously gooey shooter; the most accurate mud simulator outside of actual mud; a great advert for the healing power of peaches. However you approach Red Dead Redemption 2, there’s something to impress here. And on PC, it’s at its most impressive. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Most of all, Manifold Garden makes me break out in a cold sweat. I cannot help but imagine myself, trapped in an endless kaleidoscope. Running through corridor after identical corridor. Walking out of a room and finding myself on a pyramid of steps without end. Just running around the same strange building, and only seeing more of that building. Forever. I cannot imagine a worse horror. Argh. Good puzzles, though.

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]

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.

But while all of the principal cast do a smashing job, Dave Fennoy’s Satan is probably the (morning) star of the show.

I’ve had a very splendid time with this, and have much splendid time left with it. A proper fine achievement, and a game worthy of measuring against the mighty Metroid.

I rather liked its undemanding nature, as it meant I was better able to enjoy this five hour romp and relish its superb character work. Yes, it’s a rather slight detective game compared to your heavyweights of the genre, but its winsome cast, gorgeous music and sharp writing go a long way to make up for it.

The Outer Worlds is alright, innit. It’s good fun. Sit back and let the orange and neon wash over you. Boo the cartoonishly evil corporations. Exhale through your nose at their Diet Toothpaste. I bet I’ll play it again, in fact. But you can tell it could have been great, if it had taken a few more risks. Real space cowboys take risks, don’t they?

Kine might organise itself like a musical composition, but it also keeps you at arm’s length from the music. You’re here to move the performers around, not strut your stuff. Perhaps the moral of the story there is that raw talent only gets you so far; that the biggest stars took off not just because they had the best tunes, but because they had managers who knew how to move them up the ladder. Or perhaps this is just a game that, for all its enormous cleverness and warmth, hasn’t quite put the pieces together.

A masterpiece, but flawed, and proof positive that if ZA/UM can do flawed masterpiece for their first outing, they might already be chipping away the flaws in time for their next.

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.

It’s weird to say it, but Shadowkeep’s problem is that a lot of the problems and hard questions that Destiny 2’s first year threw up have been solved since the Forsaken expansion a year ago. Shadowkeep hasn’t had to fix anything, only attend the age-old challenge of keeping players on the Destiny treadmill. As a result, everything feels awfully familiar, from the big events right down to the quest types, which are still largely about earning currency to buy a quest that wins you a roll on a new item of gear.

I had a great time with John Wick Hex. It tiptoes the line between tactics and puzzler in an engaging way, has a ton of character, and feels exactly as minimal as it needs to be: you pick up a working vocabulary of Wickensian tricks, just in time to be tested on them. Its slip-ups tend to just make it more charming, while most repetition can be offset by going for challenges that ask you to play quicker and smarter.

Each character class I’ve found so far has been really distinct, and I still have a few to encounter. Warsaw has the makings of a genuinely fascinating, unyielding tactical game with a lot of heart and reverence for the events it’s based on. Still, as is, it’s currently a hard sell unless you’re really intent on a challenge that, while thematically resonant, often feels more arbitrary than it is complex.

Indivisible may lack the number-crunching aspects of Disgaea, but it embodies the same sense of earnest cheer. It won’t change your life, but it’s a pleasant romp, extremely pretty, and clearly made with a lot of love. All good stuff.

The game makes a fairly decent fist of infantry combat, comes with some nicely crafted maps, and inherits CC’s natural elegance and approachability, but falls short in too many core areas to earn a positive review from someone who has Combat Mission, Graviteam Tactics, and Armored Brigade ready and waiting in his amusement arsenal.

In 2019, a massive and meticulously-crafted open world just doesn’t cut it. Any life breathed into Ghost Recon Breakpoint will have to be pumped into it by you and your friends, and you’d do better to save your breath for other games.

Neo Cab is certainly strongly anti-corporate. I already agree with that, so I don’t know if Neo Cab has the power to change minds. But it does excel at capturing how messy things are becoming. How it can be difficult to know what the right thing to do even is. How some people have more breathing room to be ‘good’ than others.

The important questions are whether it replicates the fun of the tabletop game – at least for the rank and file of casual players like me – and whether it’s a good PC game. The answer to both is a resounding yes.

Mobile, high-stakes combat tied to interesting, ever-expanding abilities is a recipe that can withstand slightly repetitive enemy design and shoddy environments. I still feel the pull to keep playing, to unearth new classes and experiment with all the ways I can mash them together. The only good part of Code Vein is its combat, but for me, that turns out to be enough.

It’s such a warm game. Touching and heartfelt, masterfully capturing the cosy excitement of the places and stories we explore as children.

It’s that rejection of fast travel and a devotion to twisting paths that makes this one of the purest devotees of an old Souls philosophy. The carefree amputation of half the city’s populace is keeping my fingers and thumbs entertained, sure, but the shortcuts and secrets are keeping my brain occupied, especially in the later parts. If you missed the first Surge, but always meant to take a look, hop into this one instead. Think of it as a shortcut to a better game.

The result is a visually stunning game, belying its origins as a creation of two animators, alongside some delightful writing, weaving a complexity of narrative that completely surprised me. But one that offers the player far too little actual investigating, and in the end, far too much tiresome wandering. And then doesn’t end. Although this review now must.

Overland isn’t that one friend on a road trip who has packed emergency supplies, and has the itinerary worked out to the hour. It’s the scarred, weather-chafed drifter you picked up along the way, and who’s seen things, man. The guy you’ll end up asking for just one more story, even though the last one they told stung so hard you swore you’d never ask again.

Nora is wonderful. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Despite having my skin crawl at almost everything Mr. Voice said, his breaking the fourth wall to rope the player into his scheme creates an awful sense of complicity. Thankfully, this is directly balanced by the joy whenever you can lead Misfortune into any small act of rebellion against him. It’s a giddy combination of adult smugness at getting one over on a rival combined with childish conspiratorial whispering under a blanket fort.

Brief as it may be, Untitled Goose Game leaves a lasting impression – much like the geese of my youth. Our honk-meister general is a devious and thrilling villain to behold, and the level of detail that’s been poured into each of his hapless victims only serves to make them all the more endearing when you come flying in and take a giant dump on their perfectly ordered lives. It’s also finally given me the answer to my age-old question about what the deal with geese is. They are, in short, horrible, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

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.

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’re at all intrigued by Ni No Kuni, I’d strongly advise you to just go and play Revenant Kingdom instead. It’s a far more enjoyable JRPG than Wrath of the White Witch, and it won’t make you feel like snapping your keyboard in two out of a white-hot fury of your own (if only because its actual mouse and keyboard controls are much easier to get to grips with in the first place).

Session feels back-to-front: so unblinkingly focused on the technical side of riding a skateboard that it’s overlooked everything that makes rolling around on a board actually fun. There’s plenty of room for skateboarding games less arcadey than anything with a Tony Hawk face on it, but this early version of Session is a bleak, sterile thing, and one that only serves as a painful reminder of my own lack of talent in most physical activities. [Premature Evaluation - Early Access Review]

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.

It’s not my favourite play of all time by any means, and I may never come back to it after my fascination fades. Even so, if I’m asked to come up with an example of a genuinely unique experience that shows what games are capable of in 2019, this is the block my internal Wilmot will bring forward from the tangled stacks of my memory. What it is, is entirely up to you. [RPS Bestest Bests]

So yes, GreedFall is better than The Technomancer. But being better than The Technomancer isn’t exactly the hardest thing in the world. And despite its clear attempts to be, GreedFall isn’t better than the BioWare classics either. This is a step in the right direction for Spiders, but they still have a lot of work to do.

Aside from the plot, I’d say most of what held my attention about Green Hell was how dazzlingly beautiful and technically impressive it was, but the more traditional survival elements are all solid enough that I look forward to playing more. So, it turns out that the jungle does indeed got fun, games, and whatever you may need, providing what you need has a very strong stick component.

My opinion of Children Of Morta has improved, and I can see it finding a happy audience. But if I wasn’t reviewing it I doubt I’d have got there. It leads with its worst foot and you have to grind for hours to drag the other one into the dance.

It’s the campaign crouching that impressed me the most, the way it dips its toe it a ‘light RPG’ direction. I’m enjoying this new trend of RPGs-but-not-RPGs; action games that borrow the language of the more complex genre – side quests, character levelling, exploration – but in such a way that there’s never any doubt you’ll miss a pixel of it. I’m thinking of things like Metro Exodus or Control; games which put you on a longish leash, but take you for a walk around a world that is so hand-crafted that it feels rude not to gobble the whole thing up. Gears 5 left my belly nice and fat, and keen for the next course.

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.

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.

It’s a shame, too, that so much of the game takes place on the rusty, pitch black tug, because when the lights are on, it looks fantastic. Items and textures are impressive, and the acting is very solid. I rarely get to play interactive fiction with such strong production values, especially with all the variation and replay value on offer. I’m on board. I enjoyed this one, and if Supermassive Games continue on trend, I’m optimistic for the rest of the series.

Ancestors is a mish-mash of ideas, some good, many awkward and poorly executed. Down another evolutionary branch, this might have been a solid ape sim about swinging from branch to branch and raising a family of hominids across the eras. But here, even the sometimes pleasing “floor is lava” tree-swinging can’t be saved from the slavering jaws of those clingy context-sensitive menus, nor the mess of barely explained HUD elements, nor the obnoxious video filters.

What I will praise highly is how Control indulges its own ludicrous nature every step of the way.

Telling Lies feels very much like Her Story 2, in the sense that a sequel is like the previous entry in a series but more: bigger, better, faster, stronger.

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.

The game offers an immediately recognisable concept, that manages to innovate and surprise, and it’s entirely unlike anything else I’ve played before. Just like a secret clubhouse, it’s likely to lose its allure if you spend all your time there – but it’s exciting as hell to to visit in a snatched moment.

With a bit more depth to the worldbuilding, and a bit more time spent on the dialogue and storyline, this game could have been an absolute gem on the narrative side.

There is a happy Saturday morning feel to Dicey Dungeons. It’s as if you’re munching on Coco Pops and watching cartoons, as you fiddle with some toy dice that came free in the cereal box. This is a sorta-deckbuilding game about being transformed into a walking, talking dice and battling creatures on a rigged game show for a chance to “SPIN THE WHEEL” (the wheel always lands on a skull). It’s a make-your-own-luck strategy game about micro-arithmetic, about adding up chump change into shiny pound coins, then flinging those pound coins straight at the forehead of a toothy cowboy. It’s not bad.

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.

Most of all, the simulated personalities, habits and appearances of the dupes themselves feel like complete wasted effort.

I’m still not sure if Bloodstained has made a dyed in the wool Metroidvania fan out of me, but it’s certainly the most fun I’ve had playing one in a while. Even if I am still salty about that ending, and learning the super-specific requirements, I didn’t immediately throw up my hands. In fact, it feels more like an excuse to try out more attack combinations, zip around the lovely areas, and hopefully find a new hairstyle that makes Miriam look even more like an anime magical girl.

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.

Beyond: Two Souls feels like a Frankenstein creature; a television show with interactivity jammed in for the sake of it. It’s an interminable cutscene that demands your input at every moment, constantly disrupting the flow of the story to do so, but doesn’t reward your actions with any kind of meaning. And being held hostage to every second only means you have a whole lot of time to think about how Ellen Page deserved better.

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

Getting a tidy markup on liquor and toys is not enough to entice me back, though. Not even to get another of the ten different endings. I’d happily give it another shot if it gets all its if-this-then-thats working, because it seems like it could be very good and fun and interesting, but right now I’m quite unwilling indeed.

Streets of Rogue is a small and cheerful antidote to the relatively plain-faced immersive sims of the blockbuster sort. It’s a daft miscellany of violent mobsters and unseen assassins, criss-crossing feuds and small mistakes that snowball into bloody knife fights. If you want a tiny, varied Deus Ex that will make you laugh, this is it. [RPS Bestest Bests]