After a disappointing showing with Battlefield 2042, Battlefield 6 rights the ship and gets the franchise back on track. Everything we hated about 2042 has been remedied here.

Alien: Rogue Incursion isn’t top-class, but it roots you in your surroundings, and, even without a clamp-on headset, you feel enveloped.

A solid detective yarn with decent puzzles and a procession of absorbing mysteries to unravel, Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile is an intricate and enjoyable, albeit slightly shabbily presented, adventure with a slightly unusual 1970s style.

An inviting and enjoyable dose of brutal co-op combat and platforming laced with British humour, King of Meat wants you to entertain a baying TV audience for glory, and in turn, it succeeds in entertaining you, too.

Boasting chaotic and fun survivor-like auto shooter action with added mining, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is one of the finest examples the genre has to offer. If survivor games like Vampire Survivor and its ilk are your poison, then I'd recommend drinking this one up.

Sonic and co.'s best kart outing to date, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds comes close to achieving Mario Kart levels of fun, with enjoyable drifting and power-up based combat, as well as a neat gimmick in those realm-shifting 'world ring' portals that drop on the track. This is a bright and breezy blast.

Building upon what makes the series unique, Borderlands 4 is a triumphant dose of looter-shooter mayhem, with ample depth to match its fast and frantic gunplay.

Silent Hill f is a strange concoction. It should be played, if you are a fan, but it suffers a lack of first-rate scares.

EA Sports FC 26 is a matter of refinement over revolution in all facets of the game. It’s a slight change in course rather than EA Vancouver plotting a completely new course, and while it’s probably the best iteration of FC yet, a lot maybe put off by the price of admission for what is essentially a fresh lick of paint.

Earthion is a dream of future past, a late-career gem from Yuzo Koshiro, and a sharp-edged shooter that keeps you coming back.

A hotchpotch of ideas and themes, Karma: The Dark World is a horror experience that doesn't quite manage to come together in a satisfying, coherent fashion. As such, it emerges as a frustrating, confounding thing, albeit one that displays brief flashes of potential. There's the kernel of something great here, but the execution ultimately falls short. On Xbox Series X|S, it's also hamstrung by frame rate issues.

If you want to pass an afternoon with a friend and a couple of laughs, LEGO Voyagers will do fine.

After all this while, Team Cherry has come back and done it again. Hollow Knight: Silksong is a fiendish metroidvania that repays your close attention and your stress with rich sights and sounds.

Imbued with a similarly offbeat humour as Starship Troopers and just as gleefully silly and violent, Helldivers 2 also happens to be a fantastic bug blasting co-op shooter, whether played with friends or strangers. It's a thing of beauty.

It might not feel all that different to NBA 2K25, but there are enough refinements and new things in NBA 2K26 to make this year's game more than worthwhile. If you're a fan of hoops, then the lure of a new MyCareer, more MyTeam, and the always great NBA Eras, will no doubt prove irresistible.

Heading Out does the visual novel stuff perfectly well, but it fails to nail the breezy sense of freedom that should come with cruising the open roads of America. Flighty vehicle handling makes the driving part of the game an annoyance rather than something to revel in and enjoy.

For those that relish this style of survival horror, there is fun to be had in Cronos: The New Dawn, but only for a time.

Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will likely be seen less as the definitive way to play than as simply another way to play. Its reverence for the original makes this one feel oddly anticlimactic.

A compelling and absorbing action game free of handholding, Hell is Us pulls you in with a gritty narrative and setting, then holds your attention with smart puzzles, solid combat, and a dark, dystopian story.

A masterclass in how to resurrect a dormant and beloved series. Like Streets of Rage 4 before it, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is another beautiful, fluid, and endlessly gratifying game that stays true to its classic forebears, while providing something that feels fresh and vital. Superlative stuff.

A departure from its open world roots doesn't mean Mafia: The Old Country is any less grand in narrative scope than its predecessors. Not only does Hangar 13 tell a good story, it also delivers solid action and stealth, in an impressively detailed and evocative 1900s Sicily setting.

The Toaplan Arcade Collection is an absolute must for arcade gaming buffs and action game purists alike, and it offers a great opportunity for newcomers to check out some two-player classics. However, it is a bit disappointing that the collection comes with no supplementary materials. Plus, there's no getting around the fact that some of these arcade games just aren't very good!

If you missed it on PS5 and PC two years ago, then you owe it to yourself to seek out Viewfinder on Xbox. It's a cracking, utterly unique first-person puzzler, more than deserving of your time.

Decades on, Gradius still proves enormously addictive and exciting. Gradius Origins is a great way to discover how the '80s and '90s shmup trailblazer helped to define a genre, with seven games that still hold up today.

Yes, there are better co-op shooters out there, and many of those provide similar levels of relentless violence, but Killing Floor 3 deftly manages to conjure some pretty unique, gory thrills of its own.

I would be surprised if Ragebound is not the best of Koei’s Ninja Gaiden revivals in 2025.

There are just enough flourishes, mechanical and artistic, to turn your head, but whether Wuchang: Fallen Feathers will keep your gaze is another matter.

Monument Valley 3 is a very pleasant and enjoyable perspective-shifting puzzler, that despite being a bit short and simplistic, is nonetheless a nice way to spend a couple of hours.