Keza MacDonald
One of the brightest and cutest Mario games with a novel adventure as a side dish
This game made me feel like a swashbuckling stranger in a foreign land for a couple of evenings, and left me wanting more. What’s there is lean and sometimes exquisite, but there wasn’t time to fully explore the different weapons (or try on all those dapper hats) before Faraday’s adventure came to an end after around six hours. I could have spent twice as long exploring this beautiful and mysterious creation, but I’m grateful nonetheless for the journey I’ve had.
Precision and playfulness made the original irresistibly difficult, but this vindictive sequel feels more like a punishment
This free-with-the-console game is a ridiculously cute and charming tribute to 25 years of PlayStation history, games and hardware
I haven’t played a game as odd as Legion in a very long time. Unlike the glossy, beautiful, but samey open-worlds that have dominated the genre in the past few years, it is ambitious, imperfect and unashamedly weird. To me it’s a fascinating, flawed, well-intentioned experiment in what a game can have to say, and how it can say it, while still conforming to the established fun-first template of an open-world action game. London’s landmarks are all here, from the Tower to the Eye, but rather than reducing the city to a pretty backdrop for generic madcap violence, it lets you find your own fun – or even your own meaning – in what you do there.
This gripping adventure set in a hellish realm filled with gorgeous gods and monsters is well worth the years it took to make
Visually rich design brings cinematic scope to this historical action game, but when sword-fighting brings diminishing rewards, console yourself with a haiku
This intense game set in a post-disaster world poses moral questions about the motivations for violence and is brilliantly acted by its human contributors
Hurling yourself down a mountain on a bike has rarely been as much fun as in this sports game, which pairs serene scenery with thrilling challenge
This endearing game weaves a touching story of families and loss into a nostalgic odyssey through 80s seaside holidays