In Doom's first moments you break free from metal restraints with your bare hands before smashing a demon's head in against the edge of a stone table.
As a piece of creative work, Total War: Warhammer is more than an ideal partnership between two iconic franchises. As well as nailing the look, feel and atmosphere of the Games Workshop universe, Creative Assembly has delivered a strategy game that will keep series fans busy for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours, while also giving Total War newcomers a good – if not quite perfect – leg-up into the world of deep, grand strategy. It adds new mechanics and refines old ones, and improves greatly on the series' terrible reputation for stability issues at launch.
Still, IO’s confident direction with this new Hitman is fantastic. As a sleepy dose of Mediterranean murder, Sapienza is inventive and complex, and delivers a level of replayability that should finally shush naysayers of its newfound episodic structure.
After enjoying almost a year of Early Access on PC, the final release is now available on PS4 and Xbox One, complete with a few dozen of history's most iconic cars from over 50-years of rally, a smattering of tracks from some of the world's most beautiful point-to-point hotspots. It's an impressive return to form; an intense, hardcore recreation of rally with an emphasis on careful trial and error rather than race and rewind.
A devilishly delightful return to form
Despite its less impressive iterations over the years, the Need for Speed name has delivered some truly excellent games - from Underground's street racing to Shift's wannabe-simulation, all the way to Hot Pursuit's absurd action. But rather than build upon this rich diverse history of fun, Ghost Games has sucked the fun out of a game that should epitomise the outlandishness of going really bloody fast. When you could be playing Driveclub, or Forza Horizon 2, or Project Cars, or even the beautiful and superiorly quick Forza Motorsport 6, offering a racer without speed? That's suicide.
This new adventure moves quickly, and feels like Wild Hunt in microcosm; cool moment after cool moment, condensed into a much shorter running time, with less cool distractions to pull you off in every which direction. Having less to do is no bad thing, and this story feels more focused and well paced as a result. Without adding an entirely new continent to explore - something the second expansion, Blood and Wine, promises to do in 2016 - CD Projekt Red still manages to ensure that this world feels interesting, that its characters are compelling, and that its stories are memorable and still have something to say, both narratively and thematically.
While titles like Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V have innovated on the open-world adventure, Syndicate is stuck in the past, in more ways than one
With competition from the likes of Driveclub and Project Cars, the franchise isn't quite the benchmark it once was, but it's damn good to see Turn 10 back on track with such impressive flair.
There's definitely a sense that, like Max himself, Avalanche's latest game has been left alone to find its own way to greatness. But the studio has given the series the attention to detail and authenticity that it deserves, and this is without doubt one of the most punchy examples of gaming post apocalyptia in quite some time.
The best on the track but the weakest everywhere else, F1 2015 is an inconsistent lapper.
Arkham Knight triumphs as a richly empowering comic book fantasy that sees its hero fail almost as much as he succeeds, making him the most believable, the most occasionally unlikeable, and ultimately the most heroic he's ever been.
Beautiful, bold and varied. Slightly Mad are uncompromising in their simulation.
LA Cops has some cool ideas, but the frustratingly shoddy execution works completely at odds with the experience the game is trying to create.
The game's only issues are minor – a reliance on a race discipline it doesn't quite master, and the fact that it really only builds on what we knew from the first game without ever striking out too far on its own. The Horizon offshoot has unshackled the Forza franchise, letting it run free into the wild, and this new adventure ensures that we don't take that freedom for granted.
It's a blast, no matter how easy. Kirby Triple Deluxe, like its namesake, has the fine-tuned ability to suck you right in, no matter who you are.
That's the nature of golf, then, but with the magic of Mario lining the seams, it feels like this game doesn't know quite where it wants to land.
In the end, Burial at Sea finishes on a much stronger, series-apt note than the one it began on, and it's impressive how Irrational Games drops curtains on its universe with something truly unexpected but wholly fitting. With so many extravagant worlds existing behind an infinite number of doors, you might feel sad that you only experienced two of them. It's credit to Irrational Games, then, that by the end the two is all we needed.
A likeable lead character and some beautiful visuals do their best to make up for an empty and frustrating world
As a near-decade old game, Resident Evil 4 is frequently amazing. As a first time player, there are more than a couple of moments that feel archaic, often frustrating to the point that you may give up playing. See it through to the end, however, and you'll come to realize just what an achievement Resident Evil 4 was for its time, and how well the large majority has held itself together across the last ten years.