Octopath Traveler 2 is an easy recommendation for old-school Japanese RPG nerds - and might even entice the odd newcomer. I wouldn’t quite recommend it over Live A Live, another 2D-HD gem - but it’s pretty lovely nevertheless.

Like a Dragon: Ishin in my eyes earns the lofty score I’m giving it. The game is the most fun I’ve had with a single player game in years, and getting a review code for it the same day as Hi-Fi Rush left me spoiled, incredibly tired, and astoundingly happy. It’s worth your time and your money.

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.

It’s undoubtedly the most spectacular VR game I’ve ever played, it’s got plenty of cool gameplay moments that show off the controllers, and it’s a full-on game to play through, but it’s also a bit tedious at times, and boring at others.

This is a top-tier rhythm action game that’s pitched as a love letter to the Final Fantasy series, brimming with content and packed with love and care. But – like some of the more ambitious double-albums out there – it sometimes feels like quantity over quality, as you trudge through some of the less well thought-out note maps in order to get to the ones you know will inspire you. Some will have more patience for that than others. Given that I’ve already played through Blue Fields about 20 times, I’ll leave you to figure out where I land on that.

Dead Space doesn’t just place you into the role of Isaac Clarke, it forces you into his head, too. You’re constantly questioning if the apparitions he is seeing are real, and his physical reaction to the unbelievable events aboard the space ship only fuel yours further. You are completely at the whim of the USG Ishimura, and it never lets you forget that. Ultimately, Dead Space is a game that a lot of horror developers can learn from when it comes to creating suspense and a feeling of dread in its players. And as far as remakes go, Dead Space has me thoroughly pining over a decade-old series. That’s a success, if you ask me.

In the cut-throat race for your attention, Forspoken feels like a new IP that’s trying to run full pelt alongside heavy-hitting franchises from other big publishers. But it ploughs, shin-first, through every hurdle along the way. Its stuttering start belies a combat system that’s worth investing the effort to learn, but takes so long to get up to full speed that it’s already on borrowed time.

In some ways, that focus-shift back to SRPG fundamentals feels like a possible course correction after the significant ‘Personafication’ of Three Houses. On the other hand, this game still feels like it strives to marry old-school Fire Emblem with those new ideas. As a fan of older Fire Emblem and strategy games in general, I was thrilled to see the depth of combat and the level to which you can make battling your absolute focus. That’s still true even if Engage doesn’t quite get the balance in its execution right in a way that might put a small subset of Three Houses lovers off. It’s still a tremendously satisfying experience, mind. It’s engaging - sorry, I had to get it in – and an easy recommendation.

Repackaged into one of the sharpest Remaster releases I’ve ever seen, it’s a relatively irresistible package - warts and all. The blemishes upon its carefully airbrushed visage are, in many ways, part of the charm. This is a joyous little time capsule of 2000s Square - and perhaps a curious aperitif before Remake part 2. It’s easy to recommend.

This isn’t to say there isn’t a good game oozing within the sticky flesh of this Frankenstein, though; it just feels like it’s not what Striking Distance wanted it to be. It’s not the next step in horror gaming, the evolution of Dead Space, or a proposition unlike anything you’ve seen before – it’s the opposite. An amalgam, less than the sum of its parts, whose main focus becomes overwrought and frustrating by the time you’re halfway through its short run-time. The scariest thing about The Callisto Protocol, sadly, is all the potential that’s been wasted on a small moon in Jupiter’s orbit.

Midnight Suns is honestly a brilliant bloody time: an extremely fun tactical RPG nestled amongst an adorably wholesome relationship simulator. A superhero game which understands that the appeal of comics is often much less about punching Venom than it is about seeing a bunch of daft looking folk cutting about in a big house, being nice to each other, bickering about leaving towels on the floor. Real stuff. Relatable stuff. The stuff of life.

All in all, I came away pleasantly surprised by The Knight Witch. At a time where so many games are vying for your time and attention, a neatly packed present of an indie, clearly made by a team that knows what it's doing and a quirk not found elsewhere makes for a great refresher. While I don’t believe it quite makes the cut as a classic, nor will it make many game of the year lists, it is still well worth your time. Personally, I think Super Mega Team is a studio I'll be keeping track of from here one out.

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.

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.

Perhaps the best thing I can say is that this game feels more like the anime than ever. Part of that is down to the art, which continues to advance closer to the TV show. Part of that is down to the sense of openness, which imparts a real feeling that this is your adventure, and not just a rollercoaster where you experience somebody else’s. On balance, Legends: Areus probably just pips it based on the novelty factor of its entirely different approach, but Scarlet & Violet is a delightful vibe – and that vibe is difficult to diminish. What a year to be a Pokemon fan!

Perhaps the best thing I can say is that this game feels more like the anime than ever. Part of that is down to the art, which continues to advance closer to the TV show. Part of that is down to the sense of openness, which imparts a real feeling that this is your adventure, and not just a rollercoaster where you experience somebody else’s. On balance, Legends: Areus probably just pips it based on the novelty factor of its entirely different approach, but Scarlet & Violet is a delightful vibe – and that vibe is difficult to diminish. What a year to be a Pokemon fan!

Bloody Ties is a fun DLC, especially if you enjoyed the side activities in the main game, but it’s hard not to think Dying Light 2’s first expansion could have benefited from a bit more time - even after the delays - to help it live up to its full potential.

This one game about an entitled goat does everything I wish the original Goat Simulator did and more. The goatfits, the whimsical joy of discovering a level like the Cellar of Doom, and witnessing just how much disarray one uncontrollable goat can cause will make Goat Simulator 3 one of the best co-op games to sit back and reset with. Watch this space, because me and Pilgor are quite the unstoppable duo – and this won’t be the last you see of us.

In truth, I’m not the biggest thinker when it comes to media. I watch a film, read a book, play a game, and take what’s happened at face value. If meaning is hidden behind a 10k-post Reddit thread, then, well, maybe it wasn’t conveyed well enough. Somerville doesn’t have this problem. It’s affecting in all the right ways, and a game I really can’t recommend strongly enough.

Pentiment is about that phenomenon, and also a manifestation of it. It's one of the most engaging and accessible works of living history ever commissioned, and the fact that it exists at all - let alone as a major platform holder's first-party RPG heading into the Christmas season - is a miracle worthy of the saints.

In a world where we've seen Square Enix fall down with remasters (examples include the lacklustre Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and the egregious Kingdom Hearts on Switch), Tactics Ogre: Reborn highlights something special – a change of the guard, so to speak, that bodes remarkably well for the rest of the publisher's classic RPG oeuvre.

So much information is communicated to you so naturally by subtle things – the clunk of an inert attack on an armoured enemy, or the slight twinkle of a fully-charged swing – that finding your own style within the skillset is instinctive. And that’s without the jarring stops and slowdowns that give knuckle-cracking impact to every hit and have you throwing yourself into each shot, like a football manager kicking every ball for their team on the sidelines. You get the biggest sense of this in the many, passionately fierce boss fights that punctuate the game. They do a great job of incorporating unique mechanics without coming off as cheap or overly simple. And, really, these boss fights are emblematic of what makes God of War Ragnarok great: they’re hugely successful meldings of an involving story and brutal action that not only produce an eye-popping, absorbing spectacle, but an impassioned investment in the outcome as well.

Modern Warfare 2’s campaign is a cocktail of modern mechanics, updated characters, and callbacks to classic missions and villains. By the end of it, the campaign ends up saying little of substance. And though that is certainly true of its predecessor, it at least had the gall to try. Despite that, it’s Call of Duty’s most interesting campaign on a purely mechanical level, and bodes well for a future beyond annualised six-hour campaigns. There are far greater heights this could reach if it was allowed to exist as a new STALKER or Fallout – and I hope we get some form of that from Infinity Ward. [Campaign Review = 80]

As a game, and as a tonic for people sick of buying season passes and DLC, Bayonetta 3 is an essential romp; a love-letter to classic Nintendo games that delight in making you laugh, smirk, and feel like an absolute badass. PlatinumGames has misfired a little lately, but with this fitting conclusion to the original Bayonetta trilogy, the studio proves it can still fire on all cylinders and then some. This might just be one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch.

Look, if you want to jump around and punch people, there are hundreds of other games. If you’re really keen to play a DC action game, featuring a modern and admittedly brave step away from the big black bat, then Gotham Knights is fine enough. It’s just that in the shadow of former Batman titles, in the shadow of Batman himself, it doesn’t impress. It disappoints.

Rats are often embodied by their desperation; as creatures that’d wear their own claws away by scratching desperately to survive, or eat through the hot, wet meat of a living person in the blind hope they’ll see freedom once again. Requiem feels like a game that isn’t just built around rats, but based on them. It asks: ‘what would it be like if the rat under the bowl had a conscience’? And its comment on the nature of humanity – and how similar we may or may not be to chattering, mindless vermin – will stay with me for years to come. Asobo should be proud of what it achieved in this game, as depressing and engrossing as it is.

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope delivered the most fun I’ve had in a Mario game or a Ubisoft game since Mario Odyssey, and is a game I’m going to keep going back to in a perhaps misguided attempt to polish off all the side missions. This really feels like the best of both worlds type experience, and is a triple-jump-sized leap over the original (which was by no means a bad game). I’m already looking forward to seeing what is added post-release, and what the dev team decides to do to shake things up in a third entry. A lovely, nice game it’ll be, I’m sure.

FIFA 23 is still utterly engrossing, wildly frustrating, uncannily realistic and very silly. It’s endlessly playable but, just like real football, the search for the perfect blueprint goes on.