The open-world approach of the single-player and the good number of alternative challenges make LEGO 2K Drive a good alternative to the usual Mario Kart. Visual Concepts may lack some experience to achieve Nintendo's sublime track-design, but the start of this potential new franchise is more than good.

Dune: Spice Wars is an excellent Dune-licensed RTS. The approach to the game mechanics is fresh and functional, net of some various imbalances.

FAR: Changing Tides will give you time and space to think of what it means to go through a journey and question your ideas around home and belonging. After you finish it, you will not forget you have played this game. In a good way.

Black Desert Online has proven to be a real, nice surprise: an action title that hides a top-notch managerial, with tons of activities to keep you busy. It's a title worth to be tried, but only if you're ready to invest a lot of time, patience and dedication.

A good zombie slayer, heir to one of the first games of the genre in virtual reality. Arizona Sunshine 2 uses some references – dog à la Fallout, TLoU-style zombie mutations, mainly – to increase the fun and game solutions. It's a shame for a visual design that took into account the all-in-one versions of the game, especially in outdoor scenarios, and the graphic limitations are also felt on PS VR2 and PC. Better show, but not as much as it could have been.

Quotation forthcoming.

One of the most beloved games is finally back, not without some flaws but overflowing with content capable of sticking us to the screen for weeks to come. A fantastic open world, alive, populated by believable NPCs that will lead us along a well-told story with various side quests to face in order to obtain a particular item or just for the pleasure of exploring the Zone. Superbly crafted maps worthy of a PvP shooter go hand in hand with survival horror atmosphere and gameplay. Some features, such as crafting and food management, are barely sketched out, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will succeed in breaking through the hearts of all first person RPG fans.

Escape from Tarkov is a solid extraction shooter born in 2017. Despite its technical limitations and uneven balance, version 1.0 confirms it as a unique, intense, and persistently engaging hardcore tactical FPS. It's not for everyone, but that's precisely what makes it special.

Psychic Specters is a sort of YO-KAI WATCH 2 Definitive Edition, that adds more and more contents: a perfect game for those who haven't played the main game yet, dispensable for everyone else.

Wasteland 3: The Battle of Steeltown offers enough content to intrigue even the most hardened Rangers. It doesn't last long, but the quality/price ratio is definitely excellent.

Rise of the Ronin on PC confirms the strengths highlighted upon its arrival on PlayStation 5: an open world that was perhaps too banal is lifted up by a satisfying combat and progression system against the backdrop of a compelling and exciting narrative, set during one of the most particular periods in Japanese history. The technical limitations encountered on the SONY console are fortunately a bad memory, and this not insignificant element makes Rise of the Ronin on PC the ideal choice for venturing into the Bakumatsu era.

Punch Club is an enjoyable experience, with nice retro graphics and a lot of homages to the action movies of the '80s. The gameplay is captivating but pretty slow, though, and it works best on smartphones and tablets (where it's already available).

Farming Simulator 19 lets the player live all the ups and downs of the rural life. Quality and quantity of vehicles, animals and crops is outstanding, while everything else seems a bit shallow. As always, this is a nice simulator game and it can also be addictive.

Livelock is more linear and simple than other sci-fi top-down shooter influenced by Diablo, but it's also one of the best in terms of visual design and pure fun factor.

I didn't start out with the best of expectations, but The Smufs Mission Villeaf turned out to be a nice little game! For a few hours it brought me back to the age when I hastily dined to leave my parents to their sad newsreel, and went to watch the Smurfs on the TV in my room. The graphic rendering of the characters is commendable (certainly more rounded than that of the two recent films) and the soundtrack a small masterpiece.

Winter's family nightmare comes to an end in this first and last DLC for Resident Evil Village, that delivers a new, short but intriguing story for Rose, the third person view option and a bunch of Mercenaries mode contents. Unmissable if you want to bite another chunk of meat from Capcom's latest horror.

Bread & Fred is hard in solo, almost impossible in co-op, it still manages to be a lot of fun provided you have a lot of patience and understanding with your partner. Dedicated to those who love extreme platformers, but casual players might find it too frustrating.

3D SEGA Classics Collection is a decent compilation, without heavyweights like Out Run or Super Hang-On, but with a strong personality as well.

NHL 26 delivers a mixed experience. The game shows flashes of brilliance, thanks to a solid gameplay rhythm and a fair amount of on-ice spectacle, but it's still weighed down by a range of persistent issues. These flaws, while sometimes minor, can become increasingly frustrating over the course of a full season, especially for dedicated players. The revamped Be a Pro career mode is a welcome improvement, addressing several weaknesses from previous iterations. However, the rest of the game modes offer little evolution, largely recycling content and features from last year without introducing meaningful innovations.

R-Type Final 2 is an aesthetically brilliant ‘reboot’ of the classic arcade game by Irem Corporation. Old players will feel at home, either when approaching the game with the strategies of the past, or when they try to change habits by exploring the new possibilities offered by the game.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is one of the best stories ever told by a video game, with a clever mix of mystery and science fiction. All the characters are credible although stereotyped, and the twists chase each other unpredictably while maintaining coherence with the narrative. Excellent technical realization, editing worthy of a television series and good acting support the plot that requires important decisions capable of influencing future events and personal relationships. The excessive ease in the progression could discourage those looking for a challenging game, but perhaps it is time to turn the page and embrace the new generation adventures.

Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered does a good job overall of modernizing a video game from over twenty years ago. The narrative charm of the saga remains intact, and the "quality of life" options—most notably the fully 3D camera—help to at least partially freshen up a gameplay afflicted by severe repetitiveness. It is a pity about some overly invasive aesthetic tweaks, primarily regarding the lighting, which ruin the decadent gothic atmosphere of the original. An original that, fortunately, is always right there: you just need to press two buttons to switch to the 2003 release, which has remained almost entirely intact, for better or worse.

An aesthetically pleasing, fast-paced, and appropriately challenging FPS with platforming/parkour elements and a strong nod to the Metroid Prime series. The developers at Ruiner have already demonstrated their talent and demonstrate their prowess in creating atmospheric, futuristic adventures with incredibly captivating gameplay ideas.

An Hades-style roguelike action game with the immortal Ninja Turtles... what could possibly go wrong? Nothing, in fact Super Evil Megacorp's take on the genre is definitely fun and accessible, with with an unmissable 4-players couch-coop mode. Splinter Fate reiterates (almost) all the right formulas already seen in similar titles, without daring anything new and proposing a tech compartment that could have been decidedly more ‘pushed’.

Batman: Return to Arkham is a wasted opportunity. The two games are enjoyable even today, but the port by Virtuos Games is technically outrageous.

GreeFall: Gold Edition is an update that offers more defined textures and adds 4K and 60fps support. A good addition to Spiders’ best game yet.

When it first came out almost five years ago, Hard Reset was a pretty standard old-school shooter, with decent gameplay and a generic sci-fi atmosphere. The Remastered version does not improve a lot; the new katana in particular is pretty useless, if not detrimental, to the gameplay, and the graphics improvements are negligible.

Dread Delusion is an homage to the open world RPGs of the past, in which many times intuition and correct interpretation of texts were worth as much as skill with swords, bows and fireballs. A question arises, however: does this still apply today? Certainly not for everyone. Low-resolution textures and models with very few polygons certainly work well in boomer shooters, slightly less in games in which the environments are key components of the experience. Still, the story is very interesting to follow, and if you get past the overly basic combat system it can engage you for a fair amount of hours.