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.