Chris Tapsell
Much like its endless enemies, Darktide's many small issues add up to a real nuisance - but stupendous atmosphere and vicious action just about prevails.
Much like its heroes, God of War: Ragnarök learns to love itself for what it truly is: gargantuan, excessive, and wonderfully absurd.
A lean and tightly-restrained mashup of more than just Rock Band and Doom, Metal: Hellsinger captures the earnest spirit of an underloved genre.
Sam Barlow's epic mystery of self-reference and cinema is an elaborate, ingenious enigma - one that would be even better if it didn't want to be solved.
That, above all, is the reason to play Milky Way Prince, and the reason why it exists. Games of this subject matter can at times feel like a kind of development-as-therapy, where the creator exorcises a daemon through the retelling of a personal trauma. That can be an almighty powerful experience; it can also, on occasion, feel a little crass. Milky Way Prince moves somewhere beyond that, to a place where it can resonate with, and ideally also challenge its audience. But subject matter aside, you should play this for the same reason you might watch the early, uneven short-features of great directors, or read the first scrappy, hundred-page novels of a favourite author: to experience a prodigal talent, just as they begin to discover what they can do.
There is real anguish and intimacy here, real experience, real softness, pensiveness, complexity of thought, from the deeply clever, immaculately balanced systems to its extraordinarily well-realised art, static drawings of those characters that each feel like a glossy, coffee table magazine cover of their own, such is the incredible texture, colour, posture, pain behind the eyes. Citizen Sleeper is speaking to you, but in this case I really recommend you simply listen - not least because there's depth to be found in your own silence, and because the things it does have to say are absolutely worth hearing.
Norco is a beautiful, surprising, human, and utterly magnetic debut.
Warhammer 3 is Creative Assembly's most maximalist, chaotic, and arguably best game to date. But it'll ask a lot of you in return.
Inspired as much by Pok'mon Go as it is Breath of the Wild, Pok'mon Legends: Arceus is flimsy and compulsive - and exhilaratingly new.
Halo Infinite's multiplayer sees the series emerge from its decade-long existential crisis as something radically familiar.
History repeats itself with a joyful, educational flourish in Age of Empires 4, a game of sweet simplicity and bottomless depth.
Football Manager 2022 ramps up the emphasis on the modernness of today's game. It's the most accurate, most joyfully compulsive entry yet.
Back 4 Blood is a strange mix of old and new, but it works. The result is a delightfully scrappy hang-out shooter.
With Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Sony's charmers-in-chief deliver another lesson in laid-back, unpretentious fun.
In Returnal, Housemarque builds a game on both euphoric highs and confounding lows.
An eerie, hypnotic sleuther - and a cracking first effort from a miniature team.
Exceptional characters, heartfelt storytelling and enjoyable action threaten to be engulfed by endless bugs and hasty, uneven design.
New tricks will make the headlines, but Sports Interactive's best move is to breathe new life into the brilliance that's already there.
With some imperfections, Toys For Bob delivers an enjoyable, goofy, deviously challenging and occasionally genius sequel.
Riot Games delivers a masterclass in competitive integrity, soulless precision and zealous, life-consuming obsession.