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

I’ve absolutely loved this. It’s so refined, so well crafted, so supremely gory for something with such deceptively simple presentation, and has a difficulty pitch that feels always challenging, but remarkably fair. At a measly £11, you’d be silly not to give it a go. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Abandon Ship can’t escape FTL’s shadow. It’s too similar to avoid being judged based on the high bar its spacefaring cousin set, but it falls far too short of that bar for me to like it. Turns out those water pumps aren’t worth manning after all.

Mostly good, sometimes bad, never ugly. A prequel to a story that never made it to PC and which, honestly, makes me jealous of people coming to it for the first time. But even as someone who has spent a huge amount of time in this world, it’s a trip I’m more than happy to be taking again. A staggering technical achievement; a deliciously gooey shooter; the most accurate mud simulator outside of actual mud; a great advert for the healing power of peaches. However you approach Red Dead Redemption 2, there’s something to impress here. And on PC, it’s at its most impressive. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Most of all, Manifold Garden makes me break out in a cold sweat. I cannot help but imagine myself, trapped in an endless kaleidoscope. Running through corridor after identical corridor. Walking out of a room and finding myself on a pyramid of steps without end. Just running around the same strange building, and only seeing more of that building. Forever. I cannot imagine a worse horror. Argh. Good puzzles, though.

It’s buggy, intermittently opaque, frequently saccharine, and – barring an eleventh hour miracle – it’s my undisputed game of the year. Because here’s the thing: it’s a game where you can build your own zoo. And by thunder, it delivers on that promise. [RPS Bestest Bests]

If you reckon a tense, varied, visually impressive and mechanically gripping campaign is enough to sweeten the sour taste of its politics, that’s fine. That’s about the page I’m on. If you’re ready for another dunk in COD’s multiplayer gunge, the tank’s right there. The gunge is good as ever, and there’s no need to play in Ground War’s side-pit if you don’t want to. Personally, though? I’m gunged out. Modern Warfare delivers pretty n’ twitchy low-stakes shootouts, but my tastes have changed while COD has not.

But while all of the principal cast do a smashing job, Dave Fennoy’s Satan is probably the (morning) star of the show.

I’ve had a very splendid time with this, and have much splendid time left with it. A proper fine achievement, and a game worthy of measuring against the mighty Metroid.

I rather liked its undemanding nature, as it meant I was better able to enjoy this five hour romp and relish its superb character work. Yes, it’s a rather slight detective game compared to your heavyweights of the genre, but its winsome cast, gorgeous music and sharp writing go a long way to make up for it.

The Outer Worlds is alright, innit. It’s good fun. Sit back and let the orange and neon wash over you. Boo the cartoonishly evil corporations. Exhale through your nose at their Diet Toothpaste. I bet I’ll play it again, in fact. But you can tell it could have been great, if it had taken a few more risks. Real space cowboys take risks, don’t they?

Kine might organise itself like a musical composition, but it also keeps you at arm’s length from the music. You’re here to move the performers around, not strut your stuff. Perhaps the moral of the story there is that raw talent only gets you so far; that the biggest stars took off not just because they had the best tunes, but because they had managers who knew how to move them up the ladder. Or perhaps this is just a game that, for all its enormous cleverness and warmth, hasn’t quite put the pieces together.

A masterpiece, but flawed, and proof positive that if ZA/UM can do flawed masterpiece for their first outing, they might already be chipping away the flaws in time for their next.

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.

It’s weird to say it, but Shadowkeep’s problem is that a lot of the problems and hard questions that Destiny 2’s first year threw up have been solved since the Forsaken expansion a year ago. Shadowkeep hasn’t had to fix anything, only attend the age-old challenge of keeping players on the Destiny treadmill. As a result, everything feels awfully familiar, from the big events right down to the quest types, which are still largely about earning currency to buy a quest that wins you a roll on a new item of gear.

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.

Each character class I’ve found so far has been really distinct, and I still have a few to encounter. Warsaw has the makings of a genuinely fascinating, unyielding tactical game with a lot of heart and reverence for the events it’s based on. Still, as is, it’s currently a hard sell unless you’re really intent on a challenge that, while thematically resonant, often feels more arbitrary than it is complex.

Indivisible may lack the number-crunching aspects of Disgaea, but it embodies the same sense of earnest cheer. It won’t change your life, but it’s a pleasant romp, extremely pretty, and clearly made with a lot of love. All good stuff.

The game makes a fairly decent fist of infantry combat, comes with some nicely crafted maps, and inherits CC’s natural elegance and approachability, but falls short in too many core areas to earn a positive review from someone who has Combat Mission, Graviteam Tactics, and Armored Brigade ready and waiting in his amusement arsenal.

In 2019, a massive and meticulously-crafted open world just doesn’t cut it. Any life breathed into Ghost Recon Breakpoint will have to be pumped into it by you and your friends, and you’d do better to save your breath for other games.

Neo Cab is certainly strongly anti-corporate. I already agree with that, so I don’t know if Neo Cab has the power to change minds. But it does excel at capturing how messy things are becoming. How it can be difficult to know what the right thing to do even is. How some people have more breathing room to be ‘good’ than others.

The important questions are whether it replicates the fun of the tabletop game – at least for the rank and file of casual players like me – and whether it’s a good PC game. The answer to both is a resounding yes.

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.

It’s such a warm game. Touching and heartfelt, masterfully capturing the cosy excitement of the places and stories we explore as children.

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.

The result is a visually stunning game, belying its origins as a creation of two animators, alongside some delightful writing, weaving a complexity of narrative that completely surprised me. But one that offers the player far too little actual investigating, and in the end, far too much tiresome wandering. And then doesn’t end. Although this review now must.

Overland isn’t that one friend on a road trip who has packed emergency supplies, and has the itinerary worked out to the hour. It’s the scarred, weather-chafed drifter you picked up along the way, and who’s seen things, man. The guy you’ll end up asking for just one more story, even though the last one they told stung so hard you swore you’d never ask again.

Nora is wonderful. [RPS Bestest Bests]