For now, The Finals is the most exciting multiplayer shooter launch I've played in years. It's a clever blend of old-fashioned generosity and new-fangled technology, and it's exciting enough at its core to offer delight and drama no matter your unlocks or skill level. I'm going to play it right now.

There's still plenty to like and admire about Planet Of Lana. It may not deviate much from the puzzle-platforming playbook, but its cinematic action sequences and environments are worth your six hours. It doesn’t quite reach the highs of Ori And The Blind Forest and Limbo and the like, but it’s a solid sci-fi tale and a wonderful debut from Wishfully. I'm excited to see what those folks do next.

I just wish it was better structured to deliver that a conclusion without collapsing on itself at the last hurdle. Because there are hints of something wider at play here. It just does a terrible job of pulling it all together, which can leave Octopath Traveler feeling like a big old anticlimax. I both love it and hate it in equal measure, although I must say the PC version’s gorgeous 60fps is absolutely to die for after chugging through it on the Switch. It makes me all the more inclined to give it a sort of sneaky thumbs up, but in the end I think even JRPG die hards will find this a bit of a slog.

There’s a climactic rush at the end of the game’s 20-hour runtime, but for the majority, Dungeons of Hinterberg is wonderfully laid-back. There are so many games that romanticize leaving your busy life and escaping to the wilderness, but here the topic is explored in an authentic and genuine way. There’s a lesson here about how rest is fundamental to health and happiness, but I also love how the game communicates that. It’s a gentle, reflective fantasy adventure that’ll have you reaching for your hiking boots.

If you’ve never Nidhogged before, this might be the best place to start since you’ll almost certainly be able to find a non-laggy game much more quickly, but it’s missing some of the original’s elegance, and not just in the visual department.

While my fellow lovers of supernatural storytelling and occult life simulation will get a huge kick out of playing with Werewolves, I doubt it's going to do much to convert those who would rather see The Sims as a slice of life. Fundamentally, this pack doesn't change anything about how occult life states behave in The Sims 4, and they're still going to feel intrusive if you'd rather not have them in your game. But if you are a fan of the weirder side of Sim life, then I have a feeling Werewolves is going to be an essential add-on.

Largely, though, Catherine Classic is a pretty fantastic rerelease of a cult hit that people have nattered on about endlessly since its debut. Being able to finally play it on PC is wonderful, and having other game modes — Babel, where you unlock harder stages by getting gold trophies on normal or hard mode in the campaign, and Colosseum, a competitive multiplayer mode — gives it a lot of replay value.

It's also just very nice to look at. You can zoom right in to watch the trains pass one another, loaded with goods, and horses galloping along by the completed tracks. It's a bit like going to a model railway, except one you built yourself. You want to build beautiful railways, you want to build a luxury passenger train that winds around a mountain path rather than smashes down it with a steep bridge. You want to make your great design part of the landscape - there's a level in a forest that rewards you for not destroying any trees (and each tree destroyed in the forest stage costs money). Station To Station is a short but lovely puzzle game, perfectly balanced, and you'll play it in pursuit of a more beautiful engine. [RPS Bestest Bests]

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.

Given the lack of a Sim City 2000-style ‘apocalypse now’ button, the scenarios are also a fine way to simply enjoy/scream at the disasters. The dam one, particularly, is a goofy-horrible treat. A meteor slams into the water, which promptly mushrooms over the dam and totally swamps the city beneath it. It’s proper disaster movie stuff: cars screeching to a halt to avoid a rising tide, the waters sweeping people away, the lights slowly dying.

After sifting NieR Replicant for golden nuggets of story for nearly 30 hours, the fifth and final playthrough is the big payoff. A glimmering chunk that's worth all that pain. The game becomes unpredictable again, as if you only had a second of time to celebrate your find before crashing through a sinkole into a throng of earth and cables. It was brief, but stirring stuff. That is, if you're into NieR's story. If you're not, then I highly doubt you'll have the patience to complete this game five times. There is no other way to describe it other than a big commitment. Almost all aspects of this game wore thin over time, until at one point the only thing that kept me going was sheer force of will. I'm very glad I hung on in there, but I do wonder how many people will bother.

Mostly, I really like the high drama and high fantasy of Last Epoch. It's much less depressing to stare at for hours as you blast mercenaries and ice wolves into trembling ragdoll corpses that some of its contemporaries, and the the mid-complexity crafting and gear systems, along with the character building, makes it easy and, dare I say it, actually fun to engage with minor percentage increases. I never thought I'd see the day.

Minor issues aside, I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed a long-form point-and-click adventure this much. It reminds me why I love the genre so much.[Recommended]

A game that offers us both a memorable journey and a place to call home. Of course, how much meaning can one have without the other? Far: Lone Sails gave me a wistful sense of both that I won’t soon forget. [RPS Recommended]

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.

Despite its flaws, Tales of Berseria has numerous interesting stories to tell. If the developers had cut the flab and focused almost exclusively on the cast of characters – with some combat thrown in – then I think this would have been a must-play. As it is, I think it’s still worth playing if you’re a fan of story-focused JRPGs, as long as you know you’re strapped in for the long haul. I felt more connected with the game’s characters than I have to any group in a long time, and it’s worth putting up with a few hours of pain for that pay off.

Goodness me, Kingsway is clever. It’s clever in so, so many ways. It’s clever in its absolutely spectacular presentation, but it’s far too clever to let that just be a gimmick – its peculiar appearance as a mid-90s Windows desktop could so easily have been a cute idea that hid an ordinary roguelite RPG, but instead it so very brilliantly influences how you play, and indeed the foibles of such an interface become crucial to how you experience it. It’s also really bloody tough.

Byt gosh it’s fyn. It’s ytterly ridicyloys, bombarding yoy with new items like nothing else, jyst constantly asking yoy to go have some fyn. “How aboyt trying that level with this?!” Okay! “Now this!” Syre thing! And that’s enoygh.

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.

Although there are some elements that could've been improved with more time to bubble on the stove, Venba's visual novel-style conversations and gorgeous cooking puzzles complement each other perfectly. The result is a heartwarming love letter to immigrant parents, Tamil culture, and the food that raised us.

A MOBA in a non-cutesy, non-fantasy setting, with just enough respect for the genre’s tradition while having the courage to keep things slow, uncomplicated and strategic. Here’s that slap on the back, space videogame. You deserve it.

A fantastic co-op brainteaser that's perfect material for catch-ups and corporate days. Seriously, replace team-bonding sessions with a puzzle-tower and you're golden.

That it successfully pulls off big ideas while ostensibly criticising the danger of big ideas is perhaps a better way to end, and a better reflection of the admiration and fondness I feel for The Magic Circle despite its shortcomings. Or are they?

It feels consistent. It’s workmanlike without being uninspired, fascinating without being flashy. It’s like a loveable cockney chimney sweep with a sparkle in its eye. It might be too mundane to scratch the itch for high adventure, but if you’re feverish for a grounded low fantasy ramble with the occasional giant rat, Wartales will cure ya. Also, apropos of nothing: I still haven’t played Battle Brothers yet, so I don’t know. Go away.

Despite some characterisation wobbles and a somewhat perfunctory final mile, STASIS is the best adventure game I’ve played in years. It’s also one of the most impressive horror games I’ve played lately. The tiny team behind it have done remarkable things, far in excess of what many, much larger studios seem capable of. Those studios should be afraid – be very afraid.

I can gripe about Trepang2's tone and I can shrug at its plot and I can pout about its length but that's all fine, really. Criticisms fade when I launch it to double-check a detail then get lost bursting heads for 20 minutes before remembering I have a review to finish. I already fancy returning to check out higher difficulty levels or the many cheats and modifiers unlocked after finishing the game (ranging from 'Only Headshots Kill' to 'Squeaky Voices'), or just to shoot faces all over again. Oh, I do enjoy shooting these faces! I'm hoping new missions might follow if it does well, or even that 2005 FPS staple, an expansion pack.

By the time I launched my final rocket from Terra Nil, I was happy to leave it behind. It certainly feels refreshing in the citybuilding genre, which is so often focused on creating infinite growth and bustling metropolises, nature be damned, but ultimately, it's still a game about chasing numbers, and filling meters that allow you to progress. That alone could be comforting, some much needed calm in a busy world as you create a lush landscape, but I found its repetitive nature was more frustrating than relaxing. Topped off with a level that shifts the focus from its previously hopeful tone to one of somber silence as you suck away the radiation, Terra Nil struggles to cement its identity as the calm, meditative puzzler that it seems on the surface.

It can be tricky to assess the balance in a genre that relies on making you feel hopeless, threatened and, yes, a little bit tilted occasionally. Resources feel plentiful, initially, and so I feasted until famine struck and I had to abandon my first run, which honestly just made me respect Conscript more for committing to it. If this isn’t your bag, there’s four difficulty settings, plus options to enable checkpoints and unlimited saves - in saferooms still, but without needing to use an ink consumable. Also included are mainstays like playthrough ranks and unlockable costumes. And - ohoho! - an honest-to-god digital manual, complete with a blank notes page. Love it. The way I just structured that paragraph now necessitates I make it clear I’m not just saying this because of the manual, but: Conscript is good survival horror. Fill your boots. Check for rats first though, innit.