If you’re looking for a charming, visually-spectacular, mechanically-satisfying platform-puzzler, that’s exponentially better with friends, Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince offers up tons of content at half the price of a typical big-budget release.
The Surge 2 doesn’t feel like a massive technological step forward from the original, but on the narrative and gameplay front, it exceeds or refines the experience. Jericho City is a joy to explore, the narrative is more complex, bosses more numerous, and the excellent combat and progression system still engaging.
Despite a small development team and limited budget, a lot of thought and effort has gone into designing the interwoven narrative and gameplay elements in GreedFall, with nothing feeling underutilised or overdone.
The sights and sounds of the forest keep you unsettled, Ellis’ flashbacks and conversations slowly unravel his past, puzzling and combat is nicely interspersed with exploration, and Bullet is one of my new favourite animal companions in a video game.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood is a great coop experience that manages to retain several elements of the prior Wolfenstein games – the gunplay, the characters, the excellent writing, and presentation – but changes up the mission-flow, enemy encounters, and the levelling mechanics to better facilitate a faster-paced game.
Blazing Chrome is a must-buy for retro fans. It looks and plays great - albeit with a few frustrating aspects inherent to the genre - and is even more fun, and chaotic, in coop.
They Are Billions on console is still a great survival RTS, but is let down by poor controls and variable performance. Despite those issues, I’d recommend it to RTS fans craving new content (it's not as though we get many RTS games on console), but take note it still requires some work.
Void Bastards is great fun in short bursts but is, unfortunately, let down by the limited scope of its environments, with no unique ships or even distinct "boss" encounters.
Fade to Silence still needs work. It has a solid foundation of survival and crafting mechanics, coupled with great visuals, but is let down by an incoherent story, awful combat, and the glitches that go with it.
Metro Exodus demands patience and prior knowledge if you’re looking to appreciate every narrative moment, and the control scheme is likely to confound new players, but it’s an essential purchase to fans of the prior games that want to see Artyom’s journey through to the end.