I still would recommend The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me on release if you can handle the technical issues at present. If Supermassive Games manages to implement some updates and fix the performance issues, then I’d perhaps even recommend it – highly! – to seasoned horror fans. In spite of its flaws, The Devil in Me tells a riveting tale of a horrific killer in a thoughtful manner, opens up important discussions about human obsession with sanctifying spectacles, and it shows great potential for the future of the series. It’s just a shame about… everything else.

Like real world F1 at the moment, F1 24’s a bit of a mixed bag, but it feels like, if it can be built on going forwards, it could be the starting point for something you won’t feel quite as much like you can skip out on and not miss much.

It’s an extremely funny, well-made, and once-traditional co-op game stuck in a live service cage that makes it sadder and more tiring as time goes on. Will the most demanding content in the game convince players to stick around and actually engage with the ‘numbers go up’ systems? I don’t think so, but I’m not writing it off just yet.

So overall, with all things considered, is Rainbow Six: Extraction a good game? Yeah, it’s alright. For my tastes, it doesn’t quite go far enough in some places, and it has lost a bit of that identity that makes Rainbow Six games special, but if you’ve got a few friends who are curious about it then you’ll have a blast jumping into it. It retains that slow, methodical gameplay that is so addictive to a certain kind of player, so I have no doubts that this game will remain a weekly venture for a community out there, somewhere. Whether or not it can retain that playerbase is something we’ll have to keep an eye on.

While it resembles its predecessors - osciliating between stealth and shooting, its domestic spaces filled with scattered stories to piece together - the results are soggier than usual. Don’t get me wrong: Redfall is a good open world FPS you can enjoy for dozens of hours with friends. But it’s a noticeable step down from the high perch occupied by Corvo and Colt. It’s the first missable Arkane game in an age.

Ultimately, the game's story is a fun one that does touch on some heavier themes, too. But it's the collective action at Spino that helps it feel special. Sand Land feels like a game that you can't believe wasn't originally released on the PS2. It's the fact that you can so strongly feel Toriyama within the game that that results in it feeling like a wonderful, imperfect send-off for one of the most influential artists ever. It won't knock your socks off, and I doubt it will be part of the game of the year conversations further down the road. But I don't care. I'm just happy to step into an old, but new, Toriyama world once last time.

You can see the make-up of a good game at the heart of Thymesia, but it seems the team was only capable of delivering a prototype; the building blocks of something greater, before it tapped out. You can easily spend ten-ish hours with the game, and potentially longer if you decide to experiment with builds, but at $25 (or $22.49 with the launch week discount), it might be a hard sell.

A-Train: All Aboard! Tourism won’t be for everyone. That’s not just because it’s part of a niche genre – it’s also because of the way it’s structured and the time commitment to truly get into it and dig deep into the ‘good stuff’. It never quite goes off the rails, but sometimes you’ll wish the journey could be a little quicker – and not everyone will be able to stick it out. If you manage that – and more fervent fans of transport sims should be able to do that – there’s a bit of a hidden gem here.

It has its moments, but like Jin Sakai in the opening hours, the past holds it back. It’s Open World: The Video Game. It’s far too easy, too - the lack of consequence for failure makes it feel like you’re just going through the motions. If you’ll excuse the wind-based pun, it’s a breeze. While playing it, I often found my mind wandering. By the third and final act, I just wanted it to be over. Like the samurai, Ghost of Tsushima feels like a relic of a bygone era.

It’s a shame, then, that some of the level design choices don’t really pair up with the engine Toys for Bob has built this love-letter to 90s platforming games in. Loose and floaty physics, an abundance of different mechanics that often feel part-baked, and some design choices that feel sadistic – rather than simply difficult – leave this approach to Crash Bandicoot feeling less like a true sequel, and more like a licensed spin-off.

I am hopeful that 2042 will be a more interesting Battlefield game at some point next year, but having been through varying degrees of rough launches with this series - from BF 2142 through BF 5 - I can’t say I have the stamina to perform the dance of chastising DICE for technical problems and missing features, only to turn around and celebrate when the game is inevitably ‘good now, actually’ a year into it.

It’s another year, another pretty mixed bag, even if it does feel like things might be trending in a slightly more positive direction. Here’s the thing though, like those Seahawks, things’ll only keep running in place unless Madden can offer some more meaningful change going forwards. Here’s hoping having the series’ cheeky sibling back on the block, with its marching bands and moral quandaries about exploitation, can help spur that shift.

Shattered Space was a chance for Bethesda to do some stuff that’d make quibbling about where you can spend five hours building a little house surrounded by mineral extractors a lot less important than it was in the base game. It was a golden opportunity to take the great ideas Bethesda’d had when devising a faction that’d grabbed players’ attention, and bring them to life with a bunch of either the classic Bethesda magic, or a new mojo that the studio could carry on into the great games it may well add to an already storied legacy in the future. Instead, anyone returning to Starfield after all the time they’ve spent with what remains a very marmite base game will likely be left feeling much the same way they did about all those hours when they get done playing what could have been a home run return to star form.

Pokemon Sword & Shield is all too often a bit disappointing, and in some places actually feels a little unfinished, but it also fully provides that warm, fuzzy feeling that one expects from the series. Crucially, even through frustration, never once did I think about putting it down, which is to its credit.

Pokemon Sword & Shield is all too often a bit disappointing, and in some places actually feels a little unfinished, but it also fully provides that warm, fuzzy feeling that one expects from the series. Crucially, even through frustration, never once did I think about putting it down, which is to its credit.

Pokemon Sword & Shield is all too often a bit disappointing, and in some places actually feels a little unfinished, but it also fully provides that warm, fuzzy feeling that one expects from the series. Crucially, even through frustration, never once did I think about putting it down, which is to its credit.

If you do manage to hold out, you will be rewarded with flashes of brilliance, it’s just that those flashes are buried as deep as the core story is buried in the endless dialogue.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is full of heart and soul. It’s also got some great ideas. Conversely, many of those ideas feel like they struggle to get out of first gear - and those that do find it harder still to make it to third. Sometimes the cleverest ideas are undermined by other systems or decisions. Simultaneously feeling polished to within an inch of its life in places and utterly half-baked in others, it’s as baffling as it is engaging; as frustrating as it is fascinating.

If you’re after action and full-on horror, The Medium will likely leave you wanting, and considerably so. This is more of a slow burn, the twisted plot unravelling over six to eight hours. I found the pacing to be ideal, with the game throwing just enough moments of high intensity into the mix to keep things interesting. There is a big bad of sorts, but don’t expect traditional boss fights, with encounters being designed to be intimidating and scary rather than difficult. Bloober clearly wanted everyone to be able to see this story through to its conclusion.

Flawed though it may be, sometimes a distinctly B-tier game is exactly what the doctor ordered – especially at this time of year, in a sea of mega-hyped triple-A. You have to know what you’re getting into, accepting the poor narrative and slightly botched execution of some of its cleverer ideas, but Code Vein still has a recent amount to like. Come for the combat and the intriguing blood code system – and stay for it. The rest? Well, hopefully it’ll be better next time.

Your mileage with WarioWare: Move It will inevitably vary. What do you want from this game? If you want the classic microgames experience, it isn’t really here. If you want a killer multiplayer game to play with the family over the holiday season (assuming everyone is able-bodied), it’ll be ideal. I can’t wait to play this more with friends. But I don’t see any reason to boot it on my own again any time soon.

Those that have seen the secret ending for Kingdom Hearts 3 know that Kingdom Hearts 4 could very well be series director Tetsuya Nomura's attempt at making his vision of Versus 13 made real, but I'm so glad that we have Reynatis as another interpretation of that vision, and to be honest, I hope even more developers make their own interpretations of Versus 13. Reynatis is a reality based on fantasy, and though it's far from perfect, that's enough for me.

There’s a good game under all the rubble and perplexing business decisions (such as not giving it out in PS Plus Extra), but why should you put up with all these frustrations when the game doesn’t a have distinct identity and there are better alternatives available for free right now?

Wild Hearts often feels like a game that doesn’t want to be played. It’s fussy, it’s janky, and it constantly trips itself up. An erratic gameplay loop, an absolute bastard of a camera, and some ill-conceived weapon gimmicks prevent Koei Tecmo and EA’s experimental hunting joint from ever really succeeding where its genre rivals have. It’s ironic that building is such a core part of this game: if this is the start of a series, Omega Force has laid down some important groundwork, but it needs to do make some serious structural revisions from the foundations up if it ever wants to look eye-to-eye with Capcom’s imposing juggernaut.

However you feel about Evil West, the $50/$60 asking price is too steep for what’s on offer: the nature of its level design, limited enemy variety, and forgettable story will get in the way of your enjoyment, even if you’re only there for the combat. As engaging as it is, that action just doesn’t make up for Evil West’s shortcomings elsewhere.

Warzone is, like its skull-masked, kevlar-tucking “operators”, entirely solid. It bloody well should be, given its pedigree. But there is remarkably little interesting here – aside from flourishes like the sinister gulag section – to command our attention. It’s not particularly beautiful, and makes up for that with enormity. Sure, this is a CoD game we’re talking about, so fantastical theme park aesthetics were never an option, but nevertheless there’s a lack of character here that is in no short supply in other games of this genre.

Solar Ash deserves props for its world design, the fluidity of movement when you're in the groove, and the sense of scale on display, so it's somewhat painful to be down on it to the degree I am. It's not far from being a bit special, the kind of indie gem that everyone has to play, but it's unfortunately just not quite there. There's still a great deal of fun to be had here, and your mileage with the mechanics might be better, but for me Solar Ash is so focused on delivering flow, it forgot that you don't want to go on the same walk every day.

Slicing through mobs to trade up my weapons is fun, and sometimes an amusing line of dialogue makes everything seem great again. Gearbox could’ve done a lot more with the next installment in the Borderlands' series than this. It all got old, too quickly, and it made me just want to boot up Borderlands 2 with my friends again, instead.