The Last of Us Part II is not a perfect game, and it’s not even a particularly revolutionary one. But it is a great game.
Even as someone with no history on the streets (of rage) it’s clear that this is a labour of love, so I suspect franchise fans will find enough here to make it worth the purchase. The series is showing its age though, and while the aesthetic has been updated to suit the times, Streets of Rage 4 feels a little too rooted in its ‘90s heyday.
This is a different beast to the Resident Evil 2 remake - and a lesser one, in all honesty - but it's been stitched together with just as much love and attention to detail. They just decided to give it a flamethrower for good measure.
DOOM was one of the best games of 2016. DOOM Eternal is better. Only the truly puritanical will find anything to dislike in ripping and tearing through the hordes of Hell once again.
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is an easy game to recommend to fans of the series. No, it's not a masterpiece, but there's a lot to love and it's absolutely packed with fan service.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 is a slick reminder that Luigi remains Nintendo’s most wasted asset (sorry Waluigi fans), and he and the ghosts are as charming and characterful as anything in a mainline Mario game.
The Outer Worlds looks an awful lot like Fallout in space, but a bigger emphasis on roleplaying helps it feel different to the Bethesda beast, even if the satire occasionally falls flat
Ring Fit Adventure hits the sweet spot for an exercise title. There's enough depth to the RPG elements to keep you coming back day-in, day-out, without ever becoming so inaccessibly deep as to put anyone who's never touched Skyrim.
From top to bottom this is meant to make you feel like Keanu’s iconic assassin, and when it pulls off the trick Hex feels like nothing else out there. Unfortunately after a few hours the devs run out of surprises, and with a strictly limited moveset you'll likely become more aware of all the things that movie Wick does that his videogame counterpart simply can't.
Until Dawn was always best experienced with a friend there to shout at your bad decisions, and now you get to shout at each other instead. That’s progress.
The latest Cthulhu game has its charms, but mostly if you already love your Lovecraft - otherwise The Sinking City's rough edges might hold you at bay
This is the best Labo kit yet in just about every respect. The designs are more creative, the tech is more impressive, and there’s a breadth and depth of gameplay that none of the previous Labo sets can match.
The problem is that outside of the actual gameplay, everything else about Jump Force feels unfinished. The hub world is an utter disaster, the character creator feels flat, the roster is unbalanced, and you are almost guaranteed to give up on the story mode before you get to the end.
We only had a taste of what Anthem’s end-game has to offer, and we can’t wait to see what else the developer has in store for players over the coming weeks and months.
Resident Evil 2 is a remake done right: a labour of love built primarily for the fans, welcoming new players but only so long as they're willing to meet it in the middle
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lives up to its name - with more characters, stages, and gameplay modes than ever before - for better and for worse
Pokémon veterans will find a slighter, shallower experience than they're used to, and for them Let's Go will mostly be a curio and a tease of the franchise's future. But for the rest of us this is a friendly way to return to Kanto, stripping away the layers of fuss and features that have calcified over years of sequels to get back to the core of the Pokémon experience: exploring, battling, and catching 'em all.
We're excited to push ahead and delve deeper into Darkwater to find out more.
Starlink: Battle for Atlas is a fun, arcade-y revival of the spaceship shooter that's been filled out with a lot of extra open world stuff - both the good and the bad.
Once again Ubisoft has crafted a living, breathing world in its ancient Greek setting, and it's hard to resist the charms of exploring Greece and its myriad sunlit islands.