A Hat in Time won't wow you out of the gates, but if you can plough through the mud, you'll find an enjoyable 3D platformer with a goofy personality.
For those looking to rise through the ranks from amateur to professional football, or start at the elite clubs and prove your mettle, Football Manager 2018 provides more immersion – and demands even more dedication – than any other game in its class.
The end-to-end gameplay of Pro Evolution Soccer is a double-edged sword. It's the reason it's so exciting to play – goal fests are, by their very nature – but it also contributes into making a game that feels unrealistic at best. And then there's Konami and its licensing troubles, which seems to further deteriorate each year.
Ultimately, it makes for a new Dirt chapter that doesn't share the ethos of its numbered predecessors, and it doesn't feel right for the game to be called Dirt 4. That's not to say the game isn't good; fans of Dirt Rally, Project Cars, and other simulation titles will find enough to enjoy here. But if you're getting into Dirt 4 to relive the joys of the earlier hits, this is the wrong game.
There's still a lot to admire here, especially the attention to sound design – from the satisfying clink of the cuffs every time you apprehend an offender, the patter of rain on windows and the windows themselves being drawn, and the jazz offering that accompanies and soothes you as you try to put an end to gruesome happenings. Unfortunately, once those turn into background wallpaper, the omissions only hurt more.
Much of what the game shows or talks about has been discussed elsewhere in the past. That too in a better fashion, to be completely honest. Nevertheless, it's present here in a well-packaged puzzle entry that is by no means revolutionary, but still manages to do enough to not come across as a poor rehash. Helped by terrific voice acting and accompanied by a tense soundtrack, The Turing Test is an admirable effort.
For Honor is a truly engaging experience when you're out on the battlefield, and playing mind-games with your opponents. It goes beyond its contemporaries by adding depth to combat in a way that feels true to reality. But all of its niceties threaten to be overshadowed by the poor taste of the non-playable elements, which seem to be becoming a bit of norm with top-tier video games.
Its insistence at not providing answers and straying away from the safety of regular rewards can be off-putting. The Witness wants to be more than a game filled with puzzles, but Blow's singular vision lets it down.
Ultimately, the new Mario + Rabbids game is a solid sequel to the five-plus-year-old Kingdom Battle, though Ubisoft's attempts to give it an open world spin end up with mixed results.
All these improvements — permadeath, DualSense, and most of all, the graphical upgrades — come at a significant cost.
[Far Cry 6] is happy in its groove, delivering a fun and immersive Latin American experience, an open world sandbox you can mess around in, and giving you the tools to do what you want. Better yet, it lets you enjoy all of that with a friend.
Watch Dogs: Legion lacks a soul. It's also a passive game, since there's no active push-and-pull. Albion took over London, and now you push them out one borough at a time.
FIFA 21 is full of goals. With FIFA, EA Sports is constantly engaged in a balancing act between attack vs defence. And it's a process that continues after release, with some FIFA titles transforming into a whole new beast by the time we're ready for the next annual iteration. At launch, FIFA 21 is a goal fest. I've had a lot of high-scoring games on FIFA 21 where the result looks more like cricket scores, and I've also broken my personal best scoring record, with a final score of 20-0.
Ghost of Tsushima falls a bit short. The narrative blocks and storytelling are too straightforward. To add to that, the side-quest bloat seeps the narrative of its pacing
Volta would have certainly kept the FIFA 20 team busy what with the new assets and all that, but since the game doesn't need the same thought and strategy like its big brother, it's in service of a product that's ultimately less than the sum of its parts.
FIFA 19 has some welcome additions that bring it closer to the sport.
Rise and Fall continues Civilization 6's aim to deconstruct its complex structure, making it leaner and more approachable for a larger audience.
It's not going to challenge you, and it can be a tad confusing at times, but Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 is a fun-filled adventure worth diving into.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm shows that it understands what pulled people into the nostalgia-fuelled Arcadia Bay, and creates an emotionally-charged intriguing opening chapter to a story that we'll be keeping an eye on.
Overall though, the ex-LucasArts game veterans have created an appealing, and effective love letter to the movement they started back in the day. If you loved growing up with those titles, your decision has most likely already been made. For everyone else, Thimbleweed Park's darkly humorous and self-referential approach, in combination with its oddball bunch of characters – everyone will have a different favourite – makes it an adventure well-worth pointing your cursor at.