If you play Call of Duty for the campaigns, you might be disappointed, but if you're like pretty much everyone else and play everything else the smash-hit franchise has to offer, it might be a fun distraction. However, if you're totally new, it's probably not worth your time just for this. In fact, the question is more likely: does Call of Duty even need a campaign mode anymore?
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War's campaign is tight, slick, and lots of fun, it almost avoids getting totally bogged down with militaristic mumbo jumbo, thanks to a barmy plot, and fun, albeit cliched characters, and most importantly, genuinely creative and impressive gameplay mechanics, that don't involve shooting. Sure it's as short as ever, but given it's one part of the package that includes zombies and multiplayer, it's easily the best Call of Duty story for many years, and perhaps one of the best shoot-em-up campaigns, too.
Overall, The Last of Us 2 is going to be divisive. Naughty Dog has made brave narrative choices for its difficult second album, which we massively respect. We would just have liked to have seen the same applied to the gameplay. It's still solid and thrilling, and if you loved the first game, this is a must-play.
Overall, Resident Evil 3's gameplay is solid, fun and thrilling, it's definitely worth playing at some point, but tragically it's all too short lived.
It pains us to say this, but Death Stranding is more like an elaborate sim for being a one-man Amazon Prime delivery service for the whole of America. Despite the beautiful graphics, masterful soundtrack, solid voice acting and fun combat, it's not enough to counterbalance how much of a chore lugging around boxes is.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is an absolute undisputed classic and a legend in the making, plus with Red Dead Online on the horizon, it looks like our adventures in the wild west are just beginning.
There's a great story, beautiful graphics, excellent voice acting and simply lots of fun to play. There's lots of DLC on the way and potential for sequels, so we'll definitely get caught in this spider's web again.
God of War's reboot is a triumph.
The core mechanics are strong and locations are stunning, but the game's pacing and surprising lack of gunplay seems like a bit of a missed opportunity that makes the gaps in action even more apparent. Nevertheless, we're sure fans of the previous games will enjoy closing out the trilogy.
Horizon: Zero Dawn is simply great fun to play – the open world and fantastic enemies make it easy to get on board with the surreal premise which Guerrilla Games has crafted. The challenging gameplay always tempts you to push past the next mountain, through new cities or delving into caves to discover new beasts, secrets and gear.
If you can find a team of friends to enlist into your squad, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands is, well, wild. However, the sheer amount of travelling, planning and stealth required for numerous missions doesn't lend itself to online co-op with random drop-in muggles.