Consider the real promise of the game then, the underlying fantasy. How thoroughly can you make this talking rat regret its life choices? That’s still a fantastic sell.

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.

I think this is precisely why I'm so frustrated with HighFleet. There's a brilliant game in here somewhere, but in its present state it's buried under endless frustrations and restrictions that do little but irritate me and cut me off from engaging with it the way I want to. I hate that I don't love it except in infrequent moments of greatness, and that the frustrations keep piling on at the same rate as I find more impressive details about it. It's kitted out for the stars, but just needs another tune-up or two to escape the atmosphere.

If you were hoping for a new squad-based game with the finesse of XCOM, or the many tactical choices of Jagged Alliance 2, this is not it. Mordheim is dumb. Mordheim is flawed. Mordheim tries hard and doesn’t succeed. This is not a happy Christmas, everyone, but the misshapen horror of Faschnat. It’s your present from Krampus.

As it is, it’s a lovely, fun game that too frequently reminds me of its mistakes. And despite that, I want to keep playing. Which is probably rather important.

It's idealistic and earnest. Cris Tales has bundles of heart, but I never found it too cloying or saccharine.

For a game about spies, Phantom Doctrine is atrocious at providing you with information. It doesn’t set up its pieces in an interesting way, it just pretends to – and while it has some neat ideas I haven’t gone into detail on, that’s because I so rarely needed to engage with them.

On high difficulty, class roles and weapon choices form a complex interdependent mechanism.

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.

It’s extremely funny...What a very lovely thing. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Its corpo dystopia may be further along the tech ladder than we are, but I take heart in the fact that Flat Eye's still only set in 2022. If they can course correct away from several world-ending visions of what's to come, perhaps we can too.

Coziness is a choice, though, and Tiny Glade initially reminded me of that old quote from Ford about the Model T - you know, the fact that the car came in any colour you wanted as long as it was black. For my first few hours I worried that Tiny Glade offered any vista as long as it was twee. But the more I play, the more I’m sure that’s not really true. My personal limits are tweeness, but I'm inclined to believe that’s me rather than the game. To put it another way, I can’t wait to see what real talent does with this lovely thing.

You’ll have a good time with Dead Rising 4. But you won’t feel as though you earned it.

You get to be methodical. Curious. Work through all the different species you need to research. Log all the specimens you need. Update all the taxonomies until you know everything you can about this world. You can order it all, and order your mind. You can imagine Ellery’s careful steps. You listen to the deep, slow breath of the ocean rolling overhead and around you. Ah. Lovely. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Devastation’s too throwaway to be a game many of us will still be talking about beyond this month, but it’s a blast, and not simply on a guilty pleasure basis.

Is it a must-have VR title? No. But there are precious few of those. It is a pretty decent VR title though, with a strong conceit and pleasant scenery. That makes it notable enough. To be honest, what it really needs is support for sticking your arms out at your side and flapping around like Big Bird, but perhaps the later Vive version and/or Oculus Touch support might let us live out our Michael Keaton mid-life crisis fantasies.

Harvestella is far more than the sum of its unexceptional parts. Almost every aspect of it just does the job it’s supposed to do, but it all slots together so well that it becomes a compulsively enjoyable experience. If you’re looking for a meaty JRPG to gobble up in palatable chunks over the ever-longer nights, you absolutely cannot go wrong with this one.

Even playing by yourself, though, I'd give The Ascent a hearty recommendation if you're after a fun, shooty RPG in a stunning cyberpunk universe. Just bear with its wild difficulty spikes and slow-burn early game, because it does become more engaging once you finally transform into an actual cyborg with a hydraulic fist for a hand.

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.

Headlander’s hugely charming, basically, and though it doesn’t run too far with the humour of its concept, it absolutely makes the gimmick work from a play point of view. It’s got more steam in its engine than other recent, similarly high-concept Double Fine endeavours too, working hard to stay vibrant throughout.

I haven't had the performance issues everyone's been fretting about, for what that's worth. It ran absolutely fine on “medium” with my usual anti-blur options, until I put everything up to "high" again for screenshots and it became both uglier and much slower. Colossal Order have been quick to issue acknowledgements and a second review build of graphical fixes, and “intend for these performance improvements to be delivered at or very shortly after launch”. But glitches that only happen in fancy mode matter little to me, and will probably come out in the wash.

Catalyst occasionally infuriated me, and at other times simply passed me by in a blur, but on the whole I enjoyed my time with it. The movement is still wonderful. The world is still beautiful. There’s still nothing else quite like it. It’s better than the first game in most ways and there are still umpteen ideas in here crying out for a better implementation. So I’ll end in the spirit of the game, with a refined version of what I said last time: Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is good and you should probably play it, but damn, it could have been superb.

If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”

At its best, Dead in Vinland is compulsive, and a great example of systemic roguelike storytelling. Just be prepared to scratch your beard constantly at some baffling writing decisions. Or, be prepared to buy a fake beard, I guess. All Viking games should now come with beards. New rule. You heard it here first. Also, mead. And an axe. You’d think we’d be able to download axes by now.

Some foundations are laid that might make for stronger follow-ups, but as it stands Batman does not have the emotional punch of The Walking Dead’s better episodes, the intriguing oddness of Wolf Among Us or the shockingly heavy consequences of Game Of Thrones, and worst of all it makes cracks in Telltale’s aged wall highly obvious. I should not feel bored in a Batman game, but bored is what I felt for most of it. Bring back Joel Schumacher, all is forgiven.

That story, of a vast civilian population forced into a total war footing, Partisans tells very well indeed. If you’ve got even a passing interest in the war on the Eastern front, or you enjoyed the various Commandos, Desperados and Shadow Tacticses of this world, I’d recommend it without hesitation. This machine kills fascists, one quicksave at a time.

Where 2KDrive shines is in its races, which ironically, feel freer than its open world.

Thing is, Marvel Rivals can still be an incredibly accessible hero shooter, one that does allow people who don't care as much as me about Competitive Stuff to just hammer buttons and play as muscular people who frequent the screens of the Odeon as much as Kojima spends his time 3D scanning beautiful people. There isn't anything wrong in that! In fact, I think this is great. People can just hop in and have fun in a free game that doesn't even seem particularly predatory in its microtransactions...The extra thing is, Marvel Rivals is also a PVP hero shooter that lacks the restraint of Overwatch and turns matches into slightly formless blenders as a result. The fact I can't remember any of the map names is a testament to this, where normally I'd have those sightlines and chokepoints memorised. It won't be a surprise to you that I won't be sticking with the game. and if you're someone after The Next Competitive Timesink, I don't think you will either.