The star of the show is Sapienza itself though. It’s a beautiful maze of possibilities, flowing toward the sea with vantage and access points sprinkled throughout. Wherever and whenever you create a disturbance, the ripples spread, causing all of the systems that make the game tick to trigger, and creating thrills and farce as they combine. I’m excited to see new targets and contracts as both the developers and players explore every nook and cranny of the town.

OPUS is very cute, and while the story obviously borrows heavily from elsewhere, and while the core mechanic will feel familiar to fans of Mass Effect, it was almost a lovely idea. I’d love to play OPUS Remastered, with the ideas elaborated upon, the ship clicking given more purpose, and a greater focus on those ambient puzzles. This remains interestingly strange, but never quite interesting enough.

More than anything, it’s left me with a wide grin and itchy fingers, and as soon as I’m done here I’ll be jumping right back into the game.

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.

The Average Everyday Adventures Of Samantha Browne is free, a really interesting little thing.

The Banner Saga 2 is a beautiful sequel. There are moments where, as I watch the drama unfold in the dialogue and cutscenes, I almost forget I’m playing a game that came out in this decade. There’s an evocative sense of timelessness about the story and world that few RPGs create. And now that the combat has become a strength and not a weakness, immersing myself in the richness of The Banner Saga’s dying world is almost as enchanting as cracking open the weathered pages of my favorite fantasy novels.

The story felt like work to experience. The best way I can think to sum up this feeling is to say I enjoyed Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture far more on PS4 and that was because after the first chapter I lay on the sofa watching and listening and luxuriating while my companion dealt with the controls.

So yes, goodness me yes, get hold of this. Get hold of the first two, too. But most of all, get this.

While this suite of options is probably something those playing on console will find interesting, I can’t see it appealing to all too many PC players – simply because there are already a multitude of Fallout 4 mods out there that do a similar, if not better, job for free.

As a ‘game’, well, I guess Apollo 11 isn’t answering any questions. As an often mesmerising and thrilling way to pass an evening, I’d point you at this long before I did the Vive’s headline acts such as The Lab and Job Simulator.

With Siege of Dragonspear, Beamdog has come on a long way. It’s not perfect, either at matching the style or being a great new RPG in its own right, and future games will need some heavy QA loving. But, as the company’s first big attempt to both follow in BioWare’s wake (the presence of former BioWare people notwithstanding), it’s a good start and at least a good first step to one day giving us that Baldur’s Gate 3 we’ve been waiting so long for – another nostalgia trip, but with a slightly more practiced eye on the future.

Overall, Ashes isn’t bad, it’s just very plain. Gorgeous, but plain. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done before and done better. [Single-player review]

The Vive floodgates opened up today: I’m hoping that, somewhere in the sprawl of new titles, I’ll find something that answers the lingering question: what kind of games am I going to play in VR in the longer term? The witty and inventive Job Simulator is an excellent shopfront display for Valve and HTC’s technology, but it is not by any means an answer to that question.

I’m not going to confess to you just how bad I am at Enter The Gungeon. But I think it’s testament to the superbly high quality of its construction that I’m not tiring of trying. This is the genre done right, although with an upbeat, uncruel approach that feels atmospherically more reminiscent of Rogue Legacy than, say, Nuclear Throne. It’s very silly in presentation, but very serious in pixel-perfect controls. Goodness knows if it’s good deeper in, but I’m having a brilliant time not finding out.

If this were to be the final Souls game, I’d be happy to say goodbye. It’s not quite the crowning achievement of the series but it’s a fantastically inventive and fluid interpretation of the formula. And perhaps that would make it a great first Souls game for somebody new to the series as well.

I’m so furious. I’ve ranted about boss fights SO many times, and argh, it’s happened again. A game I was absolutely adoring is now a game I can’t play at all, because of a wildly difficult boss fight.

It really is a lovely thing, offering a good amount of game for a tenner, rising above its own gimmick to be a little bit special.

Generally though, this is just Fallout at its flattest, with Ada a completely forgettable companion and another, Jezebel, nowhere near as much fun as her snarky introduction suggests she’s going to be. The final fight is particularly tedious, coming down to how fast you can kill robots, and more pressingly, whether you can kill them fast enough., in a series of waves at the end of an entirely too long dungeon with only the occasional point of creepy interest in underground labs and on monitors.

It’s so alive, so intricate, and so graceful. I wonder if the difficulty will see it be a less celebrated game than the last two, but it really is a thing of beauty.

A delightful, charming, and relaxing affair. It’s a Sunday afternoon television of a game, and goodness me, does that have a place. It’s funny, daft, and the look is incessantly fantastic. Backgrounds are beautifully drawn, characters are well animated, and the voice cast are all modestly strong. And it’s got Tom Baker in it. I had a thoroughly lovely time.

It’s still the smartest, most elegant, most entertaining adventure game ever made. And now, if you want, it looks new and sounds amazing.

I feel like, as much as I’m enjoying it, the side missions and gun farming only has a limited appeal once the story missions are over. And my stomach churns to think of making my way to the level cap just for the sake of ultimate completion. At level 26, I’m enjoying The Division. At level 30, I’m worried it’ll get repetitive.

There’s so much to see and explore, so many concepts to wrap my head around, that Black Desert Online is a truly memorable MMORPG—if not always a great one. It can be hard to embrace what it is instead of trying to force it to be what it isn’t, but Black Desert offered me a chance at escaping from the by-the-numbers slog that MMOs have become.

With all of that said, technical issues aside, it’s a relief to be playing a Hitman game that is built around the idea of social stealth. The execution may be flawed but it’s aiming in the right direction and the disguise system, which now tips you off when a particularly canny NPC is able to look past your clothes and see the face of a stranger, is as good as it’s ever been.

A rushed ending is really the game’s only let-down. A larger conspiracy, or more surprising reveal, might have given it a heftier punch. And it certainly needed a few more puzzles in the later stages, a bit more to do. But these are minor niggles in a really splendid adventure game of the sort we see too rarely. Grown up, well written, carefully paced, and genuinely interesting to explore.

Stardew Valley is the rare kind of imitation that breaks free of the boundaries of its inspiration, becoming more than just a clone but an experience that thrives independent of its origins.

Clearly the Deponia series is loved by enough people for them to keep making more of them, so I’m sure this will be as gleefully received as the rest. But it’s a nasty, stupid, and most damningly of all, badly constructed adventure game. The animations and art are lovely as ever, the music’s great, most of the voice actors are decent enough, but good grief, please, no more. Just make it stop.

I’ve had an enormous amount of fun playing this, obsessively clearing the map of icons, occasionally relenting and accepting I need to do one of the main quest threads to progress, riding around on the backs of mammoths, diving off cliffs into pools hundreds of feet below, wrestling crocodiles, being dazzled by sunsets, escaping labyrinthine caves, and using my “hunters vision” to track enormous beasts. It’s undeniably great fun, and unquestionably a huge achievement. Just a very, very recognisable one, for all the best and worst reasons.