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.

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales has a few problems with pacing and a dry story in places, but otherwise it’s a decent singleplayer spin-off of Gwent and the cards are worth a shuffle.

It can a bit confounding at first, not to mention the ugliness of those grey boxes. But it doesn’t take long to realise that this is something special. A management game that feels like you’re in charge of people – beautiful, flawed people – instead of a handful of impersonal bots. And it’s those little people who will keep you going. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s frustrating that for all the improvements, Space Hulk: Tactics still trips over the same things as Full Control’s Space Hulk and Space: Hulk Ascension. It’s too slow, and the interface is far too fiddly for a game that punishes even tiny mistakes.

It’s very funny, so busy with good ideas, and really damned strange.

For players who grew up loving games like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, Pathfinder: Kingmaker might feel like sitting around a table with old friends. But I can’t stand DMs who prioritize the rules over the joy of telling a story.

It’s a tricky balance to master, relaxing but complex, yet Megaquarium manages to do it while making it look effortless. It’s a breezy, upbeat management game that nonetheless gives you lots to play with and plenty of room for experimentation. Plus, the fish are all cuties.

If you’ve built a sufficiently nice world for me to run around in, I like just running around in it. There’s a lot of busy work, an eagle, and stabbing people brutally through the throat. Sometimes when you jump off a high thing you land in a load of hay. So, so far, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a very good Assassin’s Creed game. Which is what we were all expecting, wasn’t it? Except this one lets me ignore all that and roleplay as a big buff Greek neighbourhood hero. I’m alright with that.

I’m really enjoying this. It’s worth noting that I’ve not played as much of the final version as I’d like to, and it could still go wrong later on – I’ll certainly be updating regarding that. But as it is, this is all rather fun.

Like the original before it, this is an enthralling game that occupies a very specific niche – one certainly worth delving into, as long as you have the stomach for its niggling imperfections.

Forza Horizon 4 is quickly turning into one of my favorite racing games. For me, it’s up there with iRacing, but for totally different reasons.

Classical education standards aside, this is certainly a mixed bag, but a very interesting one, and I’m certainly very pleased to have played it. If they could have ditched the dullest puzzles for more of the smartest, and had that jump feel a little less awkward, I think it would have shone. But it still glimmers rather nicely, and for a price that makes it worth it.

The Gardens Between is all about reminiscing. It plays like two friends talking about all the adventures they’ve had, with the conversation flowing as they remember details and go back over stories that’ve grown with the telling.

Heaving with all that content, and impressing on the pitch where it counts, this is the best FIFA has been in years. I won’t deny I’m more than a little in love with it. The highest praise I can give is that I wasn’t expecting to say that this year. Well played.

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.

There are ideas to celebrate, then, but this isn’t an entry that particularly excites or builds upon what we’ve already seen. If you love the NFL then you’re going to play this because of the lack of competition, but EA Sports needs to seriously think about how it’s going to evolve its Madden formula over the coming years. We can’t keep giving it the benefit of the doubt forever.

This works out as a great balance between the icon-ticking compulsion of a top tier Ubisoft game, with the puzzling chops from a team that have suddenly remembered they were the best in the business. It’s huge and detailed and stupid and probably most of all, fun. Problematic fun, without question.

Yep. It’s a good’un. Theme Hospital occupies a pretty special place in my gaming memories. The sense of relief and joy I got after my first hour with Two Point Hospital was palpable enough to turn into a pill, bottle, and then overcharge for. [RPS Bestest Bests]

A very middling execution of an extremely lovely idea.

Yoku’s Island Express feels to me like a palate cleanser. I played it in short bursts at the end of long days and was refreshed by it each time. It’s not rich enough in terms of its ideas and set-pieces to get under your skin and I likely won’t remember much of the details of my time with it a year from now, but I will remember that it provided me with easy, simple pleasure. I could use a few more games like that in my life.

The gorgeous Mexiverse and hotheaded combat and puzzles are entertaining, but overall Guacamelee! 2 lacks the tightness that made its predecessor such a hoot from start to finish.

The beginning is still as fun as a kick in the shin, but after that it just becomes a wondrous playground, and perhaps most crucially in light of the misery that is modern open world racers, one that just lets you get on with it. And now it’s slightly prettier, and runs in a window! Hurrah!

Despite some wonky physics, Flipping Death melds its platforming and puzzle elements seamlessly enough leave fans of both genres at least satisfied (though it’s more puzzle than platform). But the unique art style and comedic punches are what ultimately enticed me to stay in Flatwood Peaks a while longer.

It’s a real shame. If State of Mind was more minimalist in its plot, and focused on exploring and completing character arcs rather than absurd thought experiments, if it dealt with one or two of the themes of posthumanism, instead of six or seven all at once… we might have had something really special on our hands.

I’ve not gotten an enormous way through We Happy Few, because I’ve severely disliked the hours I’ve sunk into it. I think it’s probably, really, just a mediocre game, but it’s one that’s made me feel drained and discombobulated with its incoherence and that deeply peculiar atmosphere of feeling like it should be a great game, while never actually being one.

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.

It’s an exceptional space sim that’s happy to let you just while away the years, smuggling spice and getting into bar fights, all while this elaborate and galaxy-shaking space opera plays out behind you. It’s shining a spotlight on the Bossks of the universe, sort of just getting on with their job and sometimes being tangentially related to important stuff. [Bestest Bests]

This is an epic. A huge, ridiculously detailed adventure, that successfully borrows one of the most complex and complicating features of BioWare RPGs without screwing it up! [Bestest Bests]