King of Seas is a delightfully chill and humorous title that’s best experienced on a Sunday afternoon as you wish you were a swashbuckling pirate taking down warships with enormous cannons. Whilst the combat can be fiddly and the procedural nature may play with your sense of direction somewhat, there’s plenty to enjoy in this light-hearted sea tale.
Lost Words: Beyond The Page is a heartbreaking, beautiful tale, dealing in grief, depression and escaping into our own perfect worlds to escape the sadness of reality. Do yourself a favour and bring this story to life.
A must for any Doctor Who fan, The Lonely Assassins is a captivating and exciting found phone adventure that will delight the hardcore. Far and away the best Doctor Who game ever made.
A delightful central relationship gives this love story RPG wings, but generic survival beats and somewhat empty worlds leaves Haven not quite the essential indie experience we were hoping for.
Spirit of the North remains a beautiful but hollow experience on PS5. The 4K 60 frames upgrade is glorious to behold, but the lack of DualSense integration in a game that’s crying out for it and hangups from the last-gen version makes it difficult to recommend.
Planet Coaster arrives on consoles in scintillating form, offering up near-unlimited options to create the theme park of your dreams with ease. If there’s a hidden gem in the PS5 launch line-up, this is it.
LiftOff: Drone Racing is made for the fans and that’s a solid enough reason for me to recommend it. If you were waiting on this one, you won’t be disappointed.
An absolutely barnstorming return to the main stage for Harmonix, who have seemingly taken everything they’ve learned from eighteen years in the genre to create a fantastically creative, inventive and hands-stuck-to-the-controller levels of addictive rhythm video game, the kind of which has been sorely missed.
Spellbreak does more than enough to allow it to stand out in a stuffed genre and offers a terrific variety in its weapon options. There’s absolutely something here if you’re looking for a Royale without shotguns. Don’t sleep on it.
The console versions of Cloudpunk then are, at the time of writing, buggy and a little broken in places they shouldn’t be, but if you’re lucky enough to power through without any major issues, you’ll lose hours to the fantastic narrative, terrific central character performances and gorgeous neon-soaked visuals.
There’s so much work to be done to make FIFA a viable contender again as a genuinely great sports game. The sad part is, I don’t think EA Sports really care anymore.
Space Crew shares the DNA of its predecessor Bomber Crew and utilises its strengths in interesting and engaging ways, and is a worthy follow up, though the fiddly controller mapping means you really should be playing this on a PC.
Star Wars Squadrons is a terrific dogfighter, reminding you beyond anything else that Star Wars, when done properly, is supposed to be really, really fun.
Let’s Sing Queen offers a wonderful playlist with the series flourishes we’ve come to expect. It’s hardly a game-changer, but you can’t argue with the quality of the songs included. If you ever get the inclination to feel like a rocket ship on its way to Mars, you can’t go wrong here. Go make the rockin’ world go round.
Whilst there’s barely been any kind of update to the visuals and the complication of moving PC controls to a controller is present and correct, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Complete Edition is a delight, purely because it’s always been a damn fun video game and in that regard, like everything else about this game, nothing has changed.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps improves upon its predecessor in every way, and is perhaps the most accomplished Switch port so far. Completely and utterly essential.
his Season Update experiment makes you wonder why this hasn’t been the norm for football games for years. If this is the future of the genre, sign me up. EA should be looking over their shoulder. PES has retaken the crown.
Journey of the Broken Circle is beautiful and written well with some delightful dialogue, hampered by the actual video game bit, which doesn’t really measure up to its presentation and story. It’s a shame, because otherwise it’s a pleasant enough journey with something important to say.
Peril on Gorgon plays it very safe, which may frustrate players who were looking for it to mix up the formula. For people like me though, who just wanted a reason to take control of the Unreliable once again and tear it across Halcion, this is exactly what you’re after.
One of the more disappointing games of the year, Tamarin is pretty to look at but dead behind the eyes, offering very little to win over fans of Rare’s golden age.