So yes, GreedFall is better than The Technomancer. But being better than The Technomancer isn’t exactly the hardest thing in the world. And despite its clear attempts to be, GreedFall isn’t better than the BioWare classics either. This is a step in the right direction for Spiders, but they still have a lot of work to do.

Mobile, high-stakes combat tied to interesting, ever-expanding abilities is a recipe that can withstand slightly repetitive enemy design and shoddy environments. I still feel the pull to keep playing, to unearth new classes and experiment with all the ways I can mash them together. The only good part of Code Vein is its combat, but for me, that turns out to be enough.

From the first bundle of hours, it’s pretty clear it’s not deserving of a whopping £55. [First few hours impressions]

The biggest drawback to Snowfall, much like After Dark, is that it will probably find a way to clash with one or two of your favourite custom additions. But if you’re a modder, I guess you already live life on the edge. Otherwise, it’s a charming and worthwhile expansion for what is already an excellent city-builder. I have nothing but warmth for it in my heart.

I like Western Front, for sure. Its frustrations detract from a good experience rather than overwriting it, and it's more entertaining than the theme suggests, without feeling glib or shallow. It's a solid go at a difficult niche, blending tactics and strategy well, but is best enjoyed on its own terms, and with perhaps a little more patience than I have.

The result is a game that despite such lovely art, really splendid voice acting from the two leads, and an amazing score, just doesn’t hold together. It’s annoying more than it’s funny, it’s frustrating more than it’s clever, and it’s just so damned incohesive.

It's weird and funny - at times actually laugh-out-loud funny - the music is an absolute bop, and as you progress you uncover how walking turnips and onions came to be. And every single thing in this game would make a really great plushie toy. But I can also see some people getting so annoyed by a boss fight that they never go back to the game, and then they'd never see some of the most fun bits. And that's a real shame.

It will always be described as "Halo meets Portal" and not "John 117 discovers the art of MC Escher" or "Elmer Fudd gets a 360 no-scope". And that's fine. How a shooter is glibly summarised doesn't matter when it's got this many split-seconds of satisfaction. When you headshot a poor sap across the map just as he steps through his portal and then see the limp corpse fall right in front of you, you aren't thinking, "Huh, neat gimmick". You're thinking: "Ha ha ha ha ha". And then you're being biffed 30 feet into the air by an ambusher with a Big Flipping Bat. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s a tougher, bigger, deeper and more elaborate evolution of an already great idea.

What we don’t have is Ubisoft Reflections reaching for something new, something innovative, something surprising.

With at most 6 hours of playtime, Somerville could perhaps have been just a tiny bit longer to set up its ending more elegantly. Controversial, I know, but after everything I went through with this family, none of the goodbyes Somerville offered really left me as satisfied as the rest.

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.

Astroneer’s been in early access for over two years, and there is a sense that this release version contracted a mild case of That’ll-do-itis, rather than going to the new places it might have done. Sure, a ballpit offers more long-term play value if there’s hatch on its bottom that opens up into a world of dinosaurs, spacefighters and alien civil wars. Sometimes, though, all you wanna do is jump into a ballpit.

A really splendid example of the form, with enough original ideas of its own within the standard to make it interesting. It’s a good, solid game, that’s occasionally extremely tough, but always fair. The pixel art is lovely, and although the backgrounds are a little bland, animations go a good way to make up for that. Lovers of chiptunes will delight in its soundtrack, authentic to the 8-bit era, and well composed. It’s the sort of game that deserves to stand out, not get lost in the mix.

A catalogue of mini-objectives and quests gives the otherwise aimless sandbox a bit of a backbone too, and even though tasks can be broadly categorised into moving things from one place to another, or collecting stuff, or licking things, there’s variety and creativity to be found in each. Goat Simulator 3 has limited appeal baked right into it, but it’s unfair to dismiss the game as purely YouTube-baiting viral silliness. Underneath all of the goat nonsense and fart noises, there’s an intelligently constructed toy chest. Underneath that? More nonsense and fart noises.

It feels like Shadow Warrior 3 puts a bigger focus on consistency than complexity. The moment you enter an arena it’s obvious what you can do because the areas all follow the same rules. You can predict where your grappling hook will go, what enemies will appear, and so on. But Shadow Warrior 3 soon stops throwing new challenges your way, and there’s very little to be mastered to sustain your attention till the end. It’s so repetitive that it becomes impossible to avoid confronting its other negative qualities until, as Lo Wang would say, they fill the room like a wet fart.

Fortunately, the bland campaign and narrative aren't quite dead weight, as Phantom Brigade's mechs are very satisfying to blow apart. Even melee, rendered incredibly unreliable by its utterly opaque timeline representation, becomes worth it for the times when you'll smash three enemies in one swing, then sprint off to flank another as a missile your other guy launched last turn lands in your wake. The replay controls are annoyingly inconsistent, but it's still a joy to watch them, and nailbiting to see your mech flee from a minigun barrage, or stumble from a lucky sniper shot. Phantom Brigade's personality may be lacking, but it doesn't get in the way of solving those chaotic tactical puzzles, or the timeless satisfaction of sitting back once everything's decided and watching your exploders do their thing.

Most of all, I marvel at how well it’s done snakes (snakes, like snakes). This could, as I say, have been all comic pratfalls and Goat Simulator destruction, but instead it’s an extremely careful study in how snakes navigate their bizarre bodies around, then transplanted into broadly well-done puzzle-places. I feel in awe of how well-realised this is, almost more than I actually enjoy it. I really do enjoy it though, so much so that I ended up picking it up for my Switch too (making it only the second game I own for Nintendo’s latest toy). Snake Pass gets an easy pass from me.

RAD is a good time, and it overcame a lot of my initial reservations. I just wish it wasn’t so built on chance, and the all-too-1980s misery of playing through the same parts dozens of times to get to the bits I want.

I really loved it, both as a game but also as a way of facilitating time with friends. The biggest part for me was that sense that everyone had a role. In a lot of co-op or team-based multiplayer games I play you get people who take on the captain role and that can leave other players a bit… backgroundy. With this it felt like you had to have everyone involved because of how the information passing works and how the time constraints work. That sensation might diminish quickly as the group gets bigger or if people are shouting over one another but for the three of us it was really gratifying.

I love this whole genre, this found phone genre that if I call a genre enough will magically become a real genre.

Some of you will no doubt get a kick out of his speedrunning, memory-testing antics. For me, though, even Felix’s sweet, sweet dance moves can’t throw the game’s glaring design flaws into shadow.

Glitchhikers is an interesting place to explore, a suspended cat's cradle with weird art and angles that are more effective prompts for thoughts than any of the voice overs about place and meaning. When it's silent you have to have strange ideas to fill it up. But Glitchhikers as a whole feels less like a series of dreamy conversations and more a series of lectures being delivered at you by a self-conscious writer.

Trek To Yomi doesn't quite reach the heights I'd hoped, in all honesty. The game's combat can't match its beauty, but it's a journey worth embarking on if you're after a bitesize story of revenge – who doesn't love revenge? - that's got some of the most striking visuals around. This rings especially true if you've got Game Pass, as it makes for a perfect package filled with pretty things.

The Chant gets a bit predictable, in other words, both in terms of the story and the weirdness. For me the intelligent things it does didn't quite balance that out, which makes it, once again, a game that would work really well for Game Pass.

Rising is definitely not the required must-play you need to absorb beforehand. After all, we don't even know what role CJ, Isha and walking talking kangaroo Garoo (yes, really) will even play in Hundred Heroes yet, let alone whether they'll be interesting enough to warrant buying a whole prequel game for (and on the strength of this current evidence, almost certainly not). Instead, I'd wait and see what their deal is in Hundred Heroes before bothering with this one, and only then if you're really desperate for some switch-off-brain button mashing fan service. It does have the added benefit of being on Game Pass if you're really curious, although whether it will still be here once Hundred Heroes comes out remains to be seen. Still, as we discussed at the beginning of this review, there are some things in life that are just better off forgotten.

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.

Loot Rascals is a smart piece of game design executed with delightful style. Even so, it feels as though the mechanics overwhelm all else – I do think it would benefit from offering more structure and goals in order to then earn the daily-play status it clearly desires.