But perhaps it's more appropriate to just play it once, and embrace the disorder. My current city is an absolute disgrace, with teahouses and crystalisers, forts and fogbreakers scattered all over like flies in a knotted cobweb. Still, I love being here. I look at the little bridges the townsfolk have built over some of the pits, at the rust that clings amorously to my habitat layer, at the loaves of spaceships lifting off from the pads, at all the dents and compromises inflicted by the dice. And I think: what an amazing place we've all built together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scores are obviously anathema to what we do at RPS, although I'm not so strong a person that I can avoid pointing out that if someone were to show me a picture of original series protagonist Six right now, I'd nod sagely and say "indeed". Again, there's a couple of really inspired scenes and more than a couple of arresting sights here, good enough to drag me from 'meh' to 'oh damn!' a few times. It plays like what it is, really: a cover act. A tribute. A flatpack knock-off of a trendy piece. Good quality. Well built. You could hit it with a wrench and it'd barely shake. Then again, I do have to ask whether it's a good thing that I find myself assessing a game like a piece of furniture.

The game's online sandbox spaces have an eerie vitality in their mangling together of realism and colour-coded objective design. I am perennially fascinated by how the swarm thinks in Battlefield online, how that little pebble tumbling through a gap in the fortifications becomes an avalanche. Add a narrative component, however, and you create expectations of meaningful context, consequence and even introspection that the creators of military shooters are seldom able to fulfil.

Regardless of the implements you use to battle your way through Hades 2’s beautifully illustrated regions, my favourite of which is a clever series of fights across the decks of ships in the Rift of Thessaly, as of 1.0 you can finally achieve Hades 2’s much-hyped true ending. How is it? Well, I’ll try not to stray too far into spoiler territory (though consider this your spoiler warning), but I think it’s one that might prove a bit polarising. On the one hand, Hades has always been a series about bringing families back together, and on that front the ending delivers no matter which way you slice it. On the other, given how often the motto "Death to Chronos" is repeated throughout, the manner in which he ends up defeated arguably isn’t as satisfying a form of retribution as is built up over all of those hours.

While The Beast was fun to binge through in a few days (around 21 hours, with plenty more side-quests still left to do), I feel like I've had my fill of Techland's specific brand of open-world design for now. But if the zombie parkour itch hits again, I think it says something that I'll probably return to Dying Light 2's sprawling cityscape over another scenic alpine excursion.

There's nothing I love more in life than a piece of art that triggers a desire for discussion, and in the face of my own assumptions, Silent Hill f has done that for me. Its combat, its new setting, or even its subject matter might not do that for you, but the bottom line is, it turns out that even after all these years, Silent Hill can still strike up an exciting conversation.

Borderlands 4 takes everything that worked about the previous games, removes the majority of the hindrances (cough Claptrap cough), and refines its RPG aspects, all of which make this easily the best Borderlands I’ve ever played. It has its share of issues: not just the tech stuff, but also what sometimes feels like endless travelling and the overabundance of terrible weapons. But what is Borderlands, even a much-improved one, without its billions of garbage guns?

The satisfaction of a fully-ticked list kept me going to the end, and I happily lingered for a few more hours to identify objects I'd missed. The highs of Strange Antiquities – and there are many – match those of anything else I've played this year, and surely put it up there with Blue Prince among the best puzzle games of 2025. It is fiendish and delightful, and hopefully, one of many more Strange games to come. [RPS Bestest Bests]

All in all, it’s the usual fridge full of good and bad ingredients, making for a soup that tastes slightly different to last year’s - but not noticeably superior. As such, unless there's a specific change you like the sound of, 2K26 is probably a year to skip. It’s best summed up by its version of The City - the explorable hub where MyPlayers wander around and join impromptu street games. Rather than 2K25’s ridiculously extravagant urban sprawl, complete with pirate ship area, mech workshop and Michael Jordan-themed coliseum, this time, almost everything is tightly packed into a nondescript shopping centre and park.

Silksong, I can and will get mad at you. But I can’t STAY mad at you. You brilliant, beautiful bastard of a game.

And I love it, honestly. It made me feel like fighting. But god, if anything could convince you that, really, there are no new stories, then what better than a game that presents itself as subversion, and ends up in exactly the same place as everything else.

The invisible orchestra is another kind of herd that mirrors the one you drive before you – sometimes devolving to individual performers when your beasts are scattered, only to gather itself furiously when the Calicorns are in full flight. It’s a lovely audible modelling of a disorderly group of beings in motion. It’s also an audible expression of your power over those beings and the limits of their simulated autonomy.

I respect Hangar 13 for not feeling like they had to join in today’s arms race of ever-balooning open world/action things and sticking to their stated principles in doing so. Though, I think the manner in which they’ve executed that vision has its eyes too firmly glued to the rear view mirror. This isn't a game that pulls the best bits from how things were done back in the day and melds that with positive innovations developed since that point to create a middle ground that could represent a better way forwards. The Old Country feels stuck in the past.

I should also stress that none of this difficulty tweaking eventually fixed my disappointment about the loss of early levels' sense of fluency. In games like this, where a steady flow is gained by practice, I sometimes wonder: what is the least amount of practice I must invest before I feel that sense of flow? In early sequences, Ragebound asks very little investment: you quickly earn a basic understanding of all the dashing, dodging, slashing, and boinging required to bloodstomp through an average level with a speedrunner's abandon.

Personally, I look at it and see a game that only barely iterates, even slipping backwards on gun design and tech fidelity, and that’s just not an appealing approach during what often seems like a golden age for more ambitious co-op shooters. Helldivers 2 deftly balances large-scale warfare with slapstick comedy. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a deceptively deep and immaculately presented horde brawler. And Deep Rock Galactic has good-natured teamplay down to a science, thanks in part to its own clever arsenal of sci-fi tools and weaponry. Killing Floor 3? That has a good headshot and a plus-2% foregrip.

Sometimes working out how you feel about something is best done by imagining how you'll talk about it in the future if someone mentions it. "Oh yeah, S.p.l.i.t! F.cked up, that one," I'll say. "Play it for sure, though". I'll say that because there's more than despair here. There's an ailing sort of triumph, too.

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.

There is a contagious fury in Hell Clock's bones, louder than its flaws or features list. Pajeú staggers, weakened, through a razed village in a storm. When he returns, he is the storm. Still spinning, still winning, made of wrath and gunsmoke and a circle of blades and lightning that just keeps expanding with every suspiciously perfect upgrade. I am certain there are numbers under the hood, stewing like the spirits of avenging dead, nudging the RNG just so. Much obliged, furious ghosts. One more run it is, then.

Between the emotional core centering around Mick and his family, the B-movie batshit tinfoil sci-fi stuff, and the eventual revelations that tie everything together in both theme and plot, there are a lot of elements jostling for space and time in The Drifter. It's impressive that it manages to wrap things coherently, nevermind the satisfying and touching way it does. Ultimately, it's a good story, well told, that knows when to lay on the head scratchers and when to ferry you along with simple tasks. I just hope Mick's actor remembered to combine honey and lemon with tea after recording.

This isn't a full review of Eriksholm, simply because after five or so hours, I didn't fancy playing any more. Maybe it gets amazing after five hours and one minute. Oh, I still don't like it. Yeah but what if it gets amazing after five hours and two minutes? You can probably tell by now this is sunk cost at its silliest. Lots of games to review, and I have to draw the line somewhere. So, here's some impressions based on the time I did spend with it. Apologies to Erik, I'm sure he's very nice.

In some sense judging Mecha Break for these free-to-play foibles is a pity. Because buried beneath the weedlike mass of microtransactions, the noise of lootboxes opening, the lecherous lingering over chests and butts, and the legion of screens popping up to flummox you with unintelligible currencies, there is a slight but glowing core: a decent multiplayer action game with a lot of admittedly cool robots. It is a shame this core is housed in the greebly shell of a desperate salesbot, hawking at you every step of the way. Mecha Break upsells to you even as you leave - quit the game, and there is an advert to follow it on social media. Mate, I can barely follow what you said in the briefing room.

This isn't a criticism as much an attempt at elucidating what you're getting here, and perhaps an acknowledgement that cyberpunk as a genre probably once held some aspirations to be a bit more insightful and incisive than whatever very fun but ultimately slightly goofy and perpetually unsurprising pastiche we end up with in many cases, even if you can hardly blame it for abandoning attempted prescience when we live in a state of ketamine-droopy tech mogul grins proudly announcing their investments in the The Torment Nexus v2.1.6. Making you feel cool probably isn't the most important thing a cyberpunk game can do. Nonetheless, CK:F is pretty great at it.

It's telling that the missing feature I desire most is not an emote or a graphics setting or a - pffft - "mandatory pass". But just some way to auto-rematch, so I don't have to tap Y at the end of every game within a 10-second countdown to re-enter the queue for another game. This is how moreish (and perfectly named) Rematch is. My biggest complaint is that I'm sick of the game asking "Do you want to play again?" Of course I do.

I've been thinking about this idea a lot as I finished To A T (it clocks in at about 4-5 hours). It is full of moments when the controls change, and you must move them in some new way to brush your teeth, eat food, or whirl like a ballerina. The immediacy of game controls is something that necessarily gets lost the further this game travels into it's almost entirely non-playable final episode. But it otherwise resists the trappings of modern games that remove us from that body-to-button feeling. There's no cluttered UI or silly systems of meta-progression. Like other games by the same creators, To A T understands that the most basic unit of wonder games can offer is still: press button to move shapes.

The game's need to be a reasonably performant piece of management software means that it can't quite be a fluid and believable third-person action game. The spacebase is sort of a glorified menu (though there are proper menus as well) and menus need to be responsive, so the elevator whips you between levels with what ought to be bone-rupturing speed. The lesser Jans should be scraping Jan Prime off the ceiling every time he uses it, and the fact that this doesn't happen seems appropriate to a story that can't determine whether you're a human being or one among many grades of mass-produced screwdriver.

Right now, it’s lacking, and not just in musical numbers.

So, yeah. Not for me. Which is a shame, because I'm certain that if I kept playing, I'd keep finding more things that made me laugh or smile or spark more curiosity about the town's mysteries, but I'm not willing to push through any more of this cold and oddly soulless churn to see them right now. As a functional open map, it's a treat-sprinkled diorama. Static and mundane. As a management sim, the busywork is simultaneously so insistent and so lacking in complexity or choice that I ended up on a sort of trudging, mildly annoyed autopilot, like an underpaid shopping centre security guard on a deflated Segway. Deflating to say the least.

As survival games go, however, I cannot call it "bad". Fair warning: there are weird glitches and choppiness (one bug saw me backdashing every time I exited the inventory screen). And I had to abandon playing on a controller because of the obnoxious virtual cursor in menus. But this wasn't enough to interrupt my bloodsucking. Awakening is dense with lore, and loyal to the childlike "sand is lava" flavours of Dune. I've enjoyed it for the strength of its world, and I admire how straightforwardly Funcom have adapted the memorable features of Herbert's fiction in exactly the most sensible way. If you walked out of the cinema after the Dune movies of recent years only to have your thoughts and dreams peppered with imagery from those films, then this is probably one of the best ways to visit and inhabit that distant desert. Just so long as you acknowledge, going in, that you'll be doing a lot more rock mining, water farming, and unexpected laughing than Timothee ever did.

There are some potholes, sure. That story is borderline insufferable, tutorials don't do a great job of explaining things, and there's some bugginess. I only got a fraction of the cash I was supposed to earn from some missions, for example, which made it difficult to progress up that ladder of nice vehicles. But even so, I'm left with the impression of a racing game punching far above its weight and landing an impressive number of blows. If I knew more about drifting as a motorhobby, I might say something big and powerful like "this is the definitive game of a racing subculture!" But I'll let some other bumpernerd put that label on it. I wouldn't want to upset all the fans of Night-Runners or Togue Shakai. Regardless of where it fits in its racing niche, JDM may not yet be fully tuned, but it has rolled out of the garage in fine form.

Of every choice I made in Many Nights A Whisper, I am open to learning what this says about me the least. I really wanted to nail that shot, and what kind of selfish fool ignores such an obvious advantage with so much riding on success? This isn't about me, I reason. Of course, it's actually been about me the whole time.

All of these facets weave together to make Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer one of the most engrossing adventures I've played in a long while. It's heavily reliant on extending the narrative of its forebear, however, and like the Kathy Rain 1 Director's Cut, many of its more interesting twists and turns exist to iron out the rough patches of plot from the first game. But sequels don't necessarily need to be fully standalone experiences, and you can probably blast through both Kathy Rain 1 and 2 in the span of a long weekend. If that sounds favourable, give Kathy a go. A detective has indeed been born, and as a femme Gabriel Knight, she carries the torch of a niche genre in fine form.

If I had lots of free time, I would probably enjoy it a lot more. But I don't, so tipping over with a cargo bay full of steel beams makes me frown, where it might have otherwise made me laugh. This, I think, is another issue. RoadCraft is a podcast game, in the same vein as Truck Simulator or Elite: Dangerous. There's a big place for games like this in the world, sims that excel in delivering a specific kind of wonderful and comforting boredom. Slow tasks that act as a reassuring sedative in the manic whorl of life. But RoadCraft's start-and-go flow makes it a bumpier ride for me. I was falling asleep, but I never quite drifted off into its promised dreamland.

I think of the themes FromSoft's Miyazaki is so fond of revisiting, of monarchs clinging on to life and power well past their time, and becoming something warped and hollow in the process. And I can't help but see an exhaustion in Nightreign, despite splotches of sprightly inventiveness. I'm left asking why I should want to throw myself at these bosses once again, absent much of the delight or discovery that would give these challenges context. Instead, this is challenge for challenge's sake. A stripped-off part of FromSoft's creative identity with little appeal absent the whole. And ultimately, I'm left wishing they'd sit back down at the bonfire and have a good, long rest, until a real spark makes itself known again.

Heaven is only a fleeting fiction, next to the protean immensity of the deck.

If you reckon you've got a higher tolerance for battering the 'skip dialogue' button though, by all means go for it. There is, as I say, some excellent, dumb fun to be had here.

It can feel disconcertingly ordinary to interact with until it hits with you a new snippet of muscular, wispy prose: a huge abandoned excavator is a 'monstrous aggregate'. Ancient despair is teased out with oblique hints and concrete modernism. You keep marking days on your calender, you're told, despite losing any real sense of time. You can feel the weight of the earth's layers above you but any real concept of a surface feels like a distant idea: 'up' only of any real consequences to let you know where down is. Do I want to play more? Not especially. Will I be thinking about it for a good while? Yes! It's come for the vibes, stay for the vibes, essentially. Still, pretty singular as far as vibes go.

It's a smart roguelike for anyone who loves the core ingredients, but not everything lines up.

The one thought that kept occurring to me during my first playthrough was this: I can't wait to collect everything and get all the upgrades so I can stop worrying about sniffing out air vents and puzzles, switch my brain off, and just play some goshdarn Doom. It took me about halfway through my next run before I realised something: all this exploration, all this bloody gold collecting, it's not something you're supposed to do once as a fun extra before the real game starts. It's an integral part of the cadence of a game that veers repetitive and thin without it. There's just plain less to do here. Less to combat. Less reason to replay levels. This is a solid enough FPS that I don't regret playing - sometimes, it's downright captivating - but between the mech, the dragon, and all the medieval armour, something vital has been crushed under all that extra weight.

Maybe I'm so enamoured by Despolete because football has been a constant companion in my own life. My childhood memories are inextricable from hundreds of hours spent playing Sensible Soccer, or from kickabouts at the park in which my friends and I provided our own colour commentary and adopted the roles of regens from our Championship Mananger campaigns. When I dreamed, I too dreamed of football. I think if you've never had that kind of relationship with the sport, Despelote might help explain to you what it means to the people who do. I think in particular it might be an antidote to a UK football culture often defined solely by the megabucks Premier League, with its millionaire players and state-sponsored sportswashing projects. [RPS Bestest Bests]

I think this is basically for two types of people: those who played Oblivion back in the day and think they'll get a real kick out of the updates, and those who just can't deal with the way classic Oblivion looks and controls. It's a game for the curious, for the nostalgic, and for those that want to be part of meme-stuffed zeitgeist moment. It's that last point I imagine Bethesda are banking on, barging themselves back into cultural relevancy on the back of Virtuos's hard work like the cheeky gits they are. If you're hungry for a gorgeous medieval open world to get properly lost in, you're still much better off with something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. But if you ever wondered what Skyrim would be like if it was less existentially grey by every metric, there really isn't a substitute for the undeniable charm that Virtuos have so cannily preserved here.

Even outside of those giggling japes, there are endless smile-raisers. The inventive playfulness of Blendo is on full display. There's a James Bond styled opening song that you walk through as the credits roll. Exposition chats are accompanied by an old-fashioned projector that lights up the room with figures and diagrams. Finish a level and the game will sing "Niii-naaaaaaa!" in celebration. It's got so many little flourishes like this. Granted, I'm predisposed to love a Blendo Game, after the smash cuts of early free games like Thirty Flights Of Loving, and the hacker heisting of Cowboy. But if you haven't played anything from this studio before, Nina Pasadena's sci-fi jokeathon is certainly the place to start.

Very occasionally, I'll play an RPG that makes me feel ten again. Rebirth. Cris Tales. Revisiting Suikoden. Years come, the big number ticks down, and comfortable appreciation replaces the spellbound enchantment of being told a story, of being swept off to a new world. Of playing Final Fantasy 8 in that special edition shirt that Ben Starr likes to wear that I wish I'd kept because I bet it's worth a bloody fortune now. You wait for a game to bring you back there, mostly certain you've moved passed the capacity to feel that way because you now have the sort of adult concerns that cause you ask how much a shirt might be worth on Ebay. I can't say if Clair Obscur will work its magic on everyone the same way, but it certainly did for me. I'm still not ready to leave, honestly. What a special and rare thing this is: a story that feels like someone wanted to tell it so badly it hurt. [RPS Bestest Bests]

I also don’t want it to sound like that bit of collectible busywork spoils what is ultimately a very good mix of satisfying snapping and eyes-agog wandering. You can always just capture the requisite frames while you’re passing by, looking for your own shots, and - truth be told - the striking vistas you’ll win access to are very much worth a spot of picture-matching. Come for the lessons, stay for the landscapes.

If you hadn't gotten the message by now, Blue Prince is a marvel. [RPS Bestest Bests]

There is, to the abhorrence of some onlookers, a deep hunger for this kind of rampant simulation of militarism and madness. Whether that hunger is sated with this early access version, I don't know. I still haven't gotten past the "Apartment Wars" quest which sees you choose between corpo pondlife or raver dirtbags. I cannot discount the endless empty rooms with hideously clashing textures, but it is also difficult, given the nature of a Consumer Softproducts blaster, to tell what is an unfinished area, and what is just meant to look unfinished. I won't discuss the surprising price tag any further, other than to say I recently spent the same amount of cash on a wrench, and I can say with solemn certainty that the bright moving images about getting my head shot off are more interesting. [Early Access Review]

My own enjoyment of Rosewater feels like a contagion in that way. Not just from the joy that palpably went into its creation, or the fact that the star-studded voice cast (including Arthur Morgan and the narrator of Baldur’s Gate 3) clearly had the time of their lives. I enjoy it because it reminds me of the games I could spend a month on back in the aughts. Other times, though - when I’ve spent a half hour wandering around, exhausting dialogue options in hopes of connecting the dots that will let me move on - I’m reminded of the adventure games I’ve played in the intervening decade which iron out the snags that Rosewater so often gets stuck on.

I feel about Wreckfest 2 how I recently felt about Space Engineers 2. In that it has an impressively strong frame and wonderful motor, yet really requires some seats and mirror dice and maybe a leather wheel guard to make it truly capable of holding your attention. I like it, and yet I cannot honestly recommend that you buy it. Early access games come in all shapes and sizes. But at the end of the road, one of my jobs (aside from going full throttle on automobile analogies) is to guard your wallet somewhat. Though I like the feeling of Wreckfest 2 in my mitts, I wouldn't shell out 25 quid for the limited hours of bouncy, crashy fun it can grant you. Some view money splashed on something like this as a buy-in cost, an investment, the ultimate act of pre-ordering. I've never been one of those people - when I fork over my lunch money I do want something approaching a game. Wreckfest 2, even with its horsepower, heft, and hellish good looks, doesn't currently offer me more than an evening of messing about. [Early Access Review]

As someone who loves the genre, I can forgive so many of Khazan’s defects because of this fierceness. But I can’t deny that the game has plenty of weaknesses outside of those pitched battles. If it was a more concise adventure (a full playthrough will set you back around 80 hours), a lot of the issues I’ve mentioned might not seem like such a big deal. Instead, it leaves me feeling conflicted. I'm caught between lamenting its laborious (and often rehashed) campaign, while truly celebrating its gratifying, in-depth combat. There are some bruising boss fight treasures buried in Khazan for any tough-knuckled soulslike fans, it’s just a shame you have to dig through mounds of uninteresting levels and scores of samey enemies to reach them.

It's a shame that next to the investigating, Atomfall’s shooting, sneaking, and cricket batting don’t deliver the same joys. Still, they’re competent enough not to get in the way, and with a little finesse it’s possible to enjoy extended bouts of that rich, intricate sleuthing without doing a single violence at all. Don’t let those village pub bores get you down: there are far worse places for a forgetful soldier-detective to be.

The setting will largely dictate whether or not it speaks to you. I found it more appealing than the other big Creeds of recent times. I lasted mere hours in Odyssey's ancient Greece, and the same for Valhalla's 9th century England, but much longer in Mirage's golden age Baghdad. That simply comes down to being more into Islamic architecture than Greek myths or Viking longboats. Assassin's Creed, for all its faults and weaknesses, is as close as video games can get to time travel tourism. I'm glad I went on another trip.

I am willing to forgive Expelled! a few glitches in the matrix given the juiciness of its plot and the energy of its telling. I've ultimately had near seven hours of engaging fun with it, which feels ample. Now, far from its golden age inspirations, I'm relying upon that more modern phenomenon: internet sleuths. Solve this case for me so I can watch it on YouTube.

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.

I was half expecting Suikoden to feel childish but it doesn't. Instead: a prodigious, precocious sprog. A genre in its infancy and prime at once. Sheer fuckin' magic. Two of the most uplifting, absorbing, tragic and sweet JRPG stories ever penned. This is what the human soul is best at.

Story aside, I liked the bits where it was clearly taking a breather to let you screw each other in various ways. Or have a deathmatch. The parts where it winked at you: "We're presenting this as a trust exercise but it's actually so you can let your mate's head bounce off the carpet and cackle about it".

The major design changes in Civ 7 address important criticisms of earlier versions and help to ensure that players are faced with challenges, not tedium, even as the game progresses - albeit at some loss. By the time I wrote this review, I had spent more than 50 hours playing the game - proof enough that despite its flaws, Civilization 7 sustains that “one more turn!” desire to plow through history and see what happens next.

I'm left impressed by Two Point Museum more than I actually enjoyed playing it. It's as thematically endearing as ever (sans the above), crammed with detail, and the new design customisation features are brilliant. But I also think it should have slammed the breaks on shoving in so many new, granular systems. It doesn't take long before you're pulled in too many directions and distracted from the stuff that's actually enjoyable. It makes the game feel sludgier and more calculated and tiresome than its novel and bright coating deserves.

Some of that is Rama's fault, and some of that is the game's, and some of it, again, is my fault for being older than Rama and perhaps, having more in common with him than I care to admit. I suspect that if you are not me, you might relish this more, but please be prepared for a lot of emotional labour.

Wilds is once again a game of hunger and hunting, self-providing, and grinding your nights away against the whetstone of loot. Therein lies both the appeal and danger of Monster Hunter games. They are stuffed with compelling completionist catnip, yet wrapped in a philosophy of busywork. You are killing a very cool monster to get better gloves so you can kill another cool monster for more gloves. I mean, yes, that is video games writ large. And it keeps me sustained on the hamster wheel for a while. I too desire a fashionable suit for my intolerable cat.

The villains are better, the combat feels weightier, it looks better. To top it off, it's cheaper. I don't regret spending time with Majima again but, 'free' NG+ or no, if I'd paid full price for this thing I'd feel well and truly hornswoggled.

Lost Records is bland, derivative, lacks momentum, does not reward player agency, and it twice made me cringe so hard I had to look away from the screen. I wish it was half as long as it is. I wish it had learned to let go of the ideas that have lost their power, like Sarah does in Labyrinth. I wish it had learned you can tell your coming-of-age story about a teenage girl with energy and originality... like Labyrinth. I am, despite all of that, looking forward to finding out whether any of it pays off when the second and final part releases on April 15th.

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.

This might be the most beautiful, intricately hand-crafted open-ish world in gaming. I wish I was more excited to spend time in it.

With great power comes diminished replayability, but that’s fine. Diceomancer is here for a good time, not a long time, and that’s part of what makes it worth yours. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It's been over a month since I finished Proverbs and I'm better now. Would I recommend anyone play it? I don't know! It is £7.49 for 35 hours of smooth-brained entertainment and/or makework, depending on your perspective. It's an anti-social jigsaw, a craft project that is not an act of creation but of erasure, a time skip to Monday morning. I don't know if I should recommend Proverbs to you or warn you to steer clear and to avoid flowing away forever.

Upgrading your car is surprisingly varied. [RPS Bestest Bests]

This is an ambitious, confident debut by a small team that is swinging for the fences. When a game like this arrives, bubbling up improbably from an industry that all too often rewards one million-dollar-sequel after another, it stands to be celebrated. I’d go out into the glittering ruins of Dynevron and rumble into a boss fight and then, somehow, lose the boss, and get sidetracked by some flowers I needed to find, and then go and unlock a teleport gate, and then organically find the boss again stomping obstinately past a fallen cupola, and I’d think "this is a blast, I’m having a blast, this is great." And sure, I don’t tremendously care about any of these people, and it’s never been less physically satisfying to swing a sword at these dogs, but right about then I notice that there’s this beautiful cliff about ten feet away and I can pick things up with my mind and in a matter of seconds all my problems have been forgotten.

The difference is that when Mantel's story begins, Cromwell has already levelled up all the associated skilltrees and entered the postgame. Far from being a charming show of tenacity and pluck - the kind of thing that gets you called a "good man" by your betters - his supreme competence makes him both awe-inspiring and sinister, while setting the scene for his undoing. There is, in fact, a closer parallel to Cromwell in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, an older man with a gift for the gab who you'll fleetingly control while pursuing the main quest. Perhaps that's who Henry needs to become in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 3.

It often loses itself in the long spool of its main quest, in the runaway passages that could have been shorter, and in the stories of characters who sometimes feel like they're hijacking your tale, turning it into a choose-their-own-adventure. But Citizen Sleeper 2 still manages to deliver some heartfelt moments in a sci-fi world that feels more colourful than the likes of Starfield (again), despite being the work of a much smaller team over far less time. It's finely made sci-fi, even if I still prefer the noodles on Erlin's Eye.

Early access makes blank spaces obvious to long-serving fans, who will rightly look back at the first Space Engineers and observe that it still does ten times as much for roughly half the price. There's good reason to be hopeful that this sequel will become the definitive way to weld together planet-hopping death traps for your pals. But I wouldn't blame any astronauts out there for staying planetside until there's a little more to see. [Early Access Review]

The reality is that I've had a great time over the past week, learning routes and outpacing strangers. I also know that I've barely scratched the surface of the kinds of times more adept players will achieve, and hardly touched the mid-air trick system at all. I will continue to hit the slopes for the fun of attaining that snowy flow state, even if only for brief moments before the tree of frustration clobbers me in the face again.