Usually, in the course of gameplay, a game's character becomes an avatar for you. But A Way Out accomplishes something far more subversive and bold. Eventually, for better or for worse, you become an avatar for your character.
A soft-science city-building game set on the red planet, Surviving Mars takes Elon Musk's dreams and makes them a reality. Occasionally clunky controls on the PS4 don't mar a game that adds the storyline of 'mysteries' to the usual resource gathering and settlement managing simulation, with a few twists.
A bloody good time-troubling tactical shooter though, even if I wish it had more space to explore the world, and more variety in the tasks and locations.
For me it ended up being more water than wine.
Dream Diary really does feel like a second-hand retelling of half-remembered and ill-understood nightmares, and I found my mind wandering on imaginings of its own to get as far as possible from these dreary dreams.
Rust is a strange, harsh game that's worth exploring – but only certain parts of it, and only for so long. I'll never commit to constructing my own fortress, but I'll happily knock on the door of one belonging to another player.
Rise and Fall adds, tweaks and expands, but it doesn't address some of the underlying issues, particularly those related to the AI. We're not quite in the new golden age yet.
Celeste is a difficult game about overcoming difficulties. Come for the challenge, stay for the joy of Madeline's company and the generosity of this wonderful game.
Even though being a whaler boils down into fairly basic and repetitive actions, there's a texture to Nantucket that I appreciate. It's a fine place to spend time, even if a lot of that time is spent against the grindstone. And the more I play, the more there is to do and see, I just wish it cut to the chase much more quickly.
In many ways, I feel the same way about Football Manager 2018 as I do about football in 2018. I love the sport, but I found so much of the talk around it and the personalities involved more than a little bit tiresome.
It's a game about raising your own level and mastering one of the finest combat systems ever put on a screen. It might be standing on the shoulders of Souls, but it's got its eyes on a very different destination.
In a week that has seen speculation about the future of this type of big budget singleplayer game, for all its flaws, this is a reminder of how powerful and vital they can be.
From its origin stories to its brief emergent narratives, few games let you take part in better tales than this one.
It's the Cronenbergian cyberpunk game I never knew I wanted, and it's shot right into my top ten of the year so far.
If you've never Nidhogged before, this might be the best place to start since you'll almost certainly be able to find a non-laggy game much more quickly, but it's missing some of the original's elegance, and not just in the visual department.
It may be slight, but it's delightful.
Caveblazers is superb and I'm looking forward to discovering all of its secrets, and to the local multiplayer add-on that's apparently coming soon. I can see myself playing for years to come.
There's not quite enough here to win me over completely, but there's more than enough to make the numerous trips I've made worthwhile, and part of the charm is in never knowing if there's anything left to discover.
Perception falls between two posts. It's premise is strong and the echolocation works well, but there simply isn't enough to do in that old house, other than knock on the walls and listen to tales of times gone by. It's a game that I wanted to like so much more than I do, partly because it's so visually appealing and partly because Cassie is such a likeable character. She deserves a better story for herself rather than to be an observer of other peoples' lives.
Shock tactics so persistently silly that they become the equivalent of a flaming bag of poo on a doorstep. I will always defend the right of horror fiction to be horrible, but never excuse it for being so dull in its depravity.