It certainly shows greater signs of life than Deliver Us The Moon (which I'd still recommend playing beforehand if you have the chance, even though it's not strictly necessary in order to appreciate what's going on here), and while it might not be as polished or glamourous as other space games launching this year, it's a worthy continuation of KeokeN's thoughtful sci-fi series nonetheless. The future it depicts may be bleak, but this is a world you'll be glad to escape to, even if it's only for a little while.

There's no incentive to actually fu.king do anything, and in between the things you can't be arsed to do are just vaste swathes of nothing. I'm convinced everything in Forspoken would be 100% improved if it was about 60% smaller. The world would be compact, but it would be dense, more interesting, and appropriately scoped. It might have characters in it beyond the same few urchins standing on the streets in Cipal dong one of three "I'm scared" poses, and cutscenes that don't have a fade to black every five seconds for no apparent reason. It's so annoying, because I think a lot of the core ideas here are very cool, and it's one of those games where I want a sequel where they do everything better. Given the nature of these things, I expect we never will.

Ultimately, Season is a mercurial game that will likely hit different for everyone who plays it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Mahokenshi was just too much of a drag to be truly enjoyable. It has its moments, for sure, and those who thrive on the crushing rhythms of Soulslike games may get more out of this than I did. But when you know those sweet card synergies you just discovered will be brushed away again at the start of the next mission, you begin to feel less like the godly heroes you're meant to be inhabiting, and more like some wandering scrub blundering their way through the fickle realms of chance. Lady Luck is a cruel mistress in the world of Mahokenshi, and I could never quite shake the feeling it was holding its cards a little too close to its chest.

The best thing about A Space For the Unbound, though, is that it takes a supernatural teen drama gives it real heart. Mojiken were already masters of telling bittersweet stories in miniature, but I'm pleased to report that sense of longing, sincerity and earnestness hasn't been lost in their transition to making a larger game with a larger scope. A Space For The Unbound may be more ambitious than their previous work, but it still feels distinctly Mojiken, and that's something to be celebrated. What a wonderful start to 2023.

As it stands you’ll need not only a wealth of city building experience, but also - more importantly - a bottomless well of patience in order to fully enjoy this space colony sim.

Maybe Aquatico is more satisfying on higher difficulty levels and maybe campaigns will be introduced in future updates (though I haven’t found anything from the developers indicating that is the case). All I can do, though, is review the game in front of me: it’s pretty but lifeless.

Lil Gator Game is a short, simple, and sweet adventure about a kid who just wants to play with their sister. That noble quest sends them on an endearing adventure around a truly beautiful island, and it's packed with a bunch of playful NPCs who are simply out to have fun. Their whimsical, comedic nature sucked me in - similar to the Frog Detective series - and pairing that with the simple-yet-engrossing exploration of this gorgeous island perhaps makes the aforementioned A Short Hike the better comparison. It wasn't long before I found myself swinging from trees, skating down mountains, and hunting for more weird toys and funny characters with which to play and chat. Lil Gator Game is all about finding joy, and pairing that goal with the warm tones, joyful music, and natural backdrop made for a surprisingly grounding experience that's sure to stick with me as a favourite of 2022. [RPS Bestest Bests]

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

So yes, while there are some bits of Crisis Core worth salvaging for a modern, overdue tune-up, Square Enix and co-developers Tose Co Ltd simply don't go far enough in bringing this up to date for a post-Remake audience.

It’s a fun and original concept, stretched so thinly that it’s snapped back and pinged us in the eye. We deserve to be underwhelmed by it, and its creator should be lauded as a prodigy of the horror genre all the same.

Ixion is a properly great blend of management sim and sci-fi storytelling. There are a lot of games clamouring for my attention right now, Darktide, The Callisto Protocol, that new God of War over on the devil's PC to name a few. But throughout my time with Ixion, I was never tempted to sack it off for those bigger, flashier games, which is a testament to its meticulous design, and its engrossing tale of humanity's search for a new celestial roof to sleep under.

Dwarf Fortress is a long-term investment. Playing it is a skill that you need to hone, it requires research and planning. It’s almost a hobby in itself, demanding time and effort. Even in this much more approachable form, it still isn’t a game for everyone, but for a particular flavour of colony simmer, it’s catnip. It’s massive and messy and beautiful, and now I can put it down while I’m hyper-fixating on Star Wars or the next big Marvel drop, and not have to worry about starting over from scratch again when I come back to it later.

I compare Kynseed to pick-n-mix intentionally. The disparate parts of it do, as concepts, mostly go together. It isn’t thoughtless or careless, but it promises more than it can offer right now. You could indulge yourself in some very precise aspect of it and try not to touch the parts of it that aren’t working, but you’d have to pick your way through carefully. It’s an intriguing promise, though, and I can see it being an incredibly captivating game – when it’s finished.

I'd probably enjoy it more on PC than console. But the thing is, it's not just that the game runs badly. There are a bunch of smaller annoyances I noted on both platforms. Enemies might grow tentacles as a prelude to mutating into something worse, and you're supposed to shoot or smash them to stop it - except I could never tell when I actually managed it. The different varieties of enemies don't make substantially different noises, so you can't quickly read a situation as you can in, e.g., Left 4 Dead. If you start inputting your dodge too early, the game defaults back to movement controls and you start to strafe, which is annoying. The quick-kill prompt just flat out doesn't appear if you have your gun out, but your gun is also your torch so you have it out almost all the time. I was looking forward to The Callisto Protocol, and I want this dog to hunt. I don't think it can right now.

It's a large and sprawling adventure, but there's no 'if's, 'but's or 'maybe's about it. Percentages be damned: this is a guaranteed hit for Marvel and strategy fans alike. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Perhaps my biggest gripe with Warzone and DMZ are the many launch woes, which feel like the game's servers are teetering on an active tectonic plate. Some matches are stuttery, elastic messes. Small grievances only serve to back up my theory that the game's backend also slides over a molten layer of rock, like when I'm queuing up for a DMZ match but seeing the "Battle Royale Quads" matchmaking whirr away, or finishing a match of Warzone and not even seeing how much EXP I earned and what levelled up. I've had important AI enemies fall through the floor in DMZ and Strongholds not even work as intended. One time I queued up for Warzone duos but it placed us in a borked quads, so I went to revive my teammate and it wouldn't let me. Sigh.

Still, like an invincible slasher villain or an anime protagonist, the Supermassive formula clearly hasn’t reached its final form yet. It feels like they’ve filled this one with new ideas without properly fleshing them out, just to see what resonates with players most to take forward. And feeling like a test audience for a format, rather than the final audience for a confident, complete work, is a bit of a strange feeling. “I’m not some fucking lab rat!” shouts Jamie, while the killer slides moving hotel walls about. And honestly: mood.

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.

I can’t recommend Pentiment enough. It’s an enthralling murder mystery (with a satisfying conclusion, I might add) and its use of Europe’s rich history during the 16th century as a backdrop is incredibly astute for a detective tale focused on faith and truth. Pentiment can sit nicely next to the likes of Paradise Killer, Disco Elysium, and Return Of The Obra Dinn as some of the best mystery games on PC. This is definitely one for the history books. [RPS Bestest Bests]

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.

Sonic Frontiers is a really bizarre video game. Don't set your expectations too high and it's a fun time zipping around a few open zones. Yet, it's a deeply annoying and incredibly janky experience if you want to inject some urgency into Sonic and get him from point A to point B with precision and purpose. In many ways, it's a great foundation for a sequel, as there's so much potential here which only needs a bit of fine-tuning to get Sonic from simple to super.

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.

Floodland brings a nice personal twist to the city-building genre, with the people and the calamity they survived hounding your every move and decision. Blending clans and integrating societies into one another is another deft touch, giving added weight to every pivotal decision. Where Floodland falls down a little is forcing the player to react to periodic roadblocks with an increasingly tight bottleneck of production, somewhat hampering creativity in favour of a set path. It’s not a dealbreaker by any means though.

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.

So yes, there are flaws and niggles that come with it being almost 30 years old, but Tactics Ogre: Reborn remains one of the great strategy classics for good reason - and to finally see it come to PC and other modern platforms where everyone can enjoy its densely plotted tactical machinations is well worth celebrating. In another timeline, maybe, we might have seen this receive a more luscious HD-2D makeover (the game's 'Lawful' route, perhaps), but as it stands, this thoroughly 'Neutral' remaster still has plenty to admire and sink your teeth into - particularly if you're planning to play it on Steam Deck, where it works surprisingly well (bar a few touchscreen annoyances on the main map screen), despite not being fully verified yet.

A Little To The Left surpassed my tidying expectations. Feeling that jolt of satisfaction never gets tired, and the sheer variety of puzzles keeps things interesting. It’s a game with lots of little surprises, right up until the very end where the game takes a surprising, but welcome, magical realist turn. With its charming visuals and playfuy soundtrack, its a puzzle game that feels like the complete package.

How To Say Goodbye doesn’t try to make grand statements about life and death. You get out of it what you like. It’s a short, cozy adventure about how death sucks, and how losing people sucks, and how grief sucks. And I appreciate that simple sentiment.