As with Fullbright’s previous game, Gone Home, Tacoma won’t be for everyone, but it’s a masterclass in environmental and gradual storytelling. It weaves an intriguing story against the backdrop of a believable near-future culture. I think its linearity combined with my extensive exploration means I won’t replay it unless I suddenly think of a question I want answered or until I’ve forgotten a sufficient amount that it feels like a new discovery. But that’s not a criticism. I got everything I wanted from that playthrough and I loved it. [RPS Recommended]

There's a pure, authentic, passion for game development in Tchia that I’ve not felt in a long time. What a wonderful game. [RPS Bestest Bests]

I'm super into it. It's crunchy but friendly, playfully secretive, and familiar in many ways but nonetheless refreshing. I lost half a day to "fact checking and screenshots" for sheer desire to keep playing, and a few minor issues aside, my only real problem is that there's only one of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the guns feel great and the maps are equally well designed, but I need more, Treyarch. I can’t even customise my Operator, and there’s like, hardly any to choose from really. It didn’t take me long to unlock practically every weapon and see every map, and I can’t envision myself sticking around for too much longer if the game doesn’t get updated pronto. And I think this is the heart of the issue. It’s like Cold War has stalled on the way to a patch it scheduled in advance to save time, and we’re now just awkward passengers growing more impatient as we wait for it to lurch forwards. [Multiplayer review]

It is a game of surprising depth, and while Röki’s point and click backbone may prevent it from delivering the constant, one-two gut punches we saw in the likes of Edith Finch, this is certainly one of the closest attempts at capturing its mechanics-led story structure I’ve seen since. I thought Röki was going to be a cute and throwaway little puzzle game with a light adventure wrapping, but Polygon Treehouse have gone so much further, and so much deeper than I was expecting. Like all great folklore stories, there is a quiet devastation lurking beneath Röki’s picturebook world, elevating this mythic tale of gods and monsters into the pantheon of all-time adventure game greats. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s still very much an involved strategy game, and not one that transcends its genre enough to convert players with perpetually itchy feet and twitchy thumbs. If painstakingly planning out breaches down to the literal tenth of a second doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll want to look elsewhere. For all you really cool strategy fans, though, fill your cyberpunk boots.

None of the irritating things are huge, and in a few patches time Sable will probably be in much better shape. But right now, there are a lot of small irritants to get under your skin all at once. It is, I'd venture to say, a perfect Game Pass game. I simultaneously loved the beauty and strangeness of Sable's world, but was tormented by having to exist in it.

Mirage takes the good bits from what the series has become in decades of not being a stealth RPG, polishes them up a bit, and puts them together with some of the best bits from the early games in the series, in a neat little package. It's smaller, sure, but you don't miss out on anything, and when you've finished you don't feel like you wasted any time. This is how big companies should make better games.

I do think it is too “hurt me plenty” for me, only just. The sensation of being slapped right back to the start every time and having to repeat the opening level is as likely to produce a frustrated sigh as it is to inspire a “one more go” mentality. In this case, new minibosses have started to appear to offer some variety. But I’m probably bowing out, at least for the time being. That’s okay. I can appreciate the knuckle-cracking attitude of improvement-by-death while also being ready to lay down my demon razor and die no more. You win this one, ScourgeBringer.

As a faction, however, the Wood Elves are a worthy addition to Total War: Warhammer’s burgeoning list of fantastical armies. Distinct and terribly tricky, they make the game feel new again, while forcing half-arsed commanders like myself to up our game.

It’s also really fascinating to play with a nearly four-year-old, who just can’t get his head around playing as the baddies, and incessantly asking, “So is HE a goodie?”, “But is SHE a goodie?!” with every introduced character, not quite able to grasp the complexity, but then suddenly shouting encouragement to help break everyone out of prison. I think I might have broken him.

Old Man’s Journey is a game with all of these prickles of delight but where the interstitial matter often feels humdrum. It’s short enough that you can still pick those delights out even if you’re not satisfied with the rest of the interactions, but you can’t help but wonder, what if it had found a way to make the whole thing shine?

Conquest, it turned out, was the easiest bit of the game. Maintaining civilisation afterwards was where the real skill came in. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Hob is like a beautiful example of how to make a third-person action game. Like a filmmaker who has learned every detail of cinematography, direction, lighting and set dressing, but never thought to care about the script. In that, I found it impossible to escape the sense of lack that pervades its beauty, both in an overall motivation (beyond “because it’s there”), and in the “why?” of everything you do. It’s fun to play, it’s often extremely clever, but – well – it lacks at the same time too.

Some will no doubt chafe against the fact there's not more to do here, but for me Dome Keeper is fast becoming my new Dorfromantik - which is ironic considering its original Ludum Dare prototype was formerly known as Dome Romantik. Ultimately, it's a chill, calming survival game with just the right frisson of tension to keep things interesting between waves, and navigating its myriad upgrade options against the increasing escalation of its beautifully paced danger levels is always a thrilling treat. It's the type of game I can see myself booting up to unwind with at the end of the day, especially when it plays so well on the Steam Deck, too. It's really sunk its claws into me over the last few weeks, and just like its morass of creepy shadow monsters, has smashed its way right into my heart and completely disarmed me. It's a real keeper, all right.

Ultimately, Mortal Shell will make you want to headbutt your monitor out of sheer frustration. The puzzling nature of the map, the repetitive placement of enemies, the lack of options all coalesce into a big arm that holds the game back from being really good, to just good. No matter times I try and swat it away with thoughts of the meaty combat, that arm simply won’t budge.

I am going to give it a “Holy gherkins: It’s got couch co-op!” award, because couch co-op is a beautiful feature that deserves nothing but praise, in a thoroughly confident and largely successful game that seems solely designed for you and some mates to laugh with it, at it, and at yourselves until the frogs come home. It’s camp, sure, but as Susan Sontag put it, “Oh no! The bugs, they’re everywhere! The frogs! They’re too big!”

Has the world moved on from Pharaoh? You bet your dynastic ass. It doesn't have the complex AI interactions of storybuilders like RimWorld, you don't have loads of different advisors relaying tensions around the city, or worries about public utilities in the same way as a Cities Skylines, and it's probably not as inventive in some ways as the new class of city builders like Timberborn, Foundation or The Wandering Village. In 2023 any kind of Pharaoh, even one with an impressively rebuilt tomb, is still a very well preserved old king. But what a king it was, and A New Era preserves it very well. How can you not feel a bit magic building a giant statue of a cat in the middle of your desert city?

Overall, I don’t know exactly how I feel about For Honor. It sometimes feels like a Ubisoft hired a bunch of scientists in white coats to observe Dark Souls PvP from behind reinforced perspex and experiment on it with Dota DNA in a mad attempt to recreate a tame monster in a safe environment for their own nefarious ends (profit). What they’ve made is an interesting chimera, something that is both more accessible but sometimes just as unforgiving.

I've been playing management games for a long time, and it feels odd that Planet Coaster 2 should make me feel so stupid. The method of building something as simple as a set of restrooms is elaborate and sticky, and requires so much returning to a side menu to resize grids or twiddle the angles that my brain just starts to reject it. Like I say, more patient Planetfans might feel the pain of this troublesome interface less keenly. If that's you and you're willing to risk a face full of chlorinated slider bars, then dive right in. But for new players like me, it's a painful belly flop.

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.

Persona 5 had such a strong sense of cohesion, with the deliberate pacing of the combat matching the slow burn of story development, which is just absent in Strikers. It's not that Persona 5 Strikers does anything badly. I'm just unsure why Atlus felt the need to give it the Musou treatment. If you want to make a Musou game, make a Musou game. If you want to make an excellent Persona game... make a Persona game, innit.

Where Weird West breaks away from its RPG forebears is in its rejection of turn-based fighting. Instead, it controls like a twin-stick shooter, asking you to aim and react under pressure. That might be a dealbreaker for some genre fans, but the messiness of open combat is balanced by three things: the ability to gather an AI posse about yourself, a hefty kick for knockbacks, and a Max Payne-ish dive that stretches out the seconds, giving you extra time to swing your shotgun in the right direction.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a nearly flawless remaster of a mixed bag that I’m still incredibly fond of, even after so many deaths. These games might not be nearly as genre-defining as they seemed in the ‘90s, and we probably got carried away because 3D platforming was new and exciting, but they’re still so full of character and silliness that it’s hard not to be charmed.

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.

It’s rare that a developer is able to wrestle this kind of ambitious technical witchery into the shape of an actual game, but Noita pulls it off. Fast and loose, or tight and controlled? It doesn’t matter, I’m having fun either way.

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.

There is so much else that is impressive and charming about Veilguard. The absurdly elaborate and expensive finales that cap off companion questlines; lavish, unique areas rolled out for a visit or two then never again. How story moments of real threat and menace stopped me in my tracks, because it turned out that Bioware wasn’t disinterested in this stuff, just saving it for when it really counted. The fantastic prose and worldbuilding in the huge glossary, filled as you find notes and items.