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.
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.
Minor improvements and additions run throughout the game though, along with bigger changes in the single-player and new Salmon Run mode, and Splatoon 2 is an easy recommendation for newbies and veterans alike.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lives up to its name - with more characters, stages, and gameplay modes than ever before - for better and for worse
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
Tacoma is as thoughtful and introspective as you'd hope, effortlessly pairing lofty sci-fi ideas with grounded personal stories and diverse characters. Your time on the Tacoma space station may be brief, but it's undeniably satisfying exploring the station and its interactive AR recordings, and there's enough intrigue to the plot to keep you guessing to the end.
How long the appeal lasts might depend on how successfully Nintendo expands the rather slight fighter roster, but right now Arms is a very welcome addition to the Switch lineup.
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.
If you're a series sceptic, it likely won't win you over - at least not unless you can force your way through the first ten hours - but fans looking for a Greek epic to invest a couple hundred hours in will find a rich world, a frankly ludicrous amount of content, and a welcome step forward for Assassin's Creed.
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
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.
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.
Get Even's ambition has a tendency to outstrip its reach, but it's always worth encouraging games willing to try and push the medium's limits. Slightly uneven gunplay and a few clichéd story beats aside, Get Even is consistently memorable, interesting, and surprising, and for that alone it's worth your time.
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
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.
A Way Out falls short of what it could - and should - be, but there are flickers of brilliance. And with the best part of ten hours of gameplay for two people, for half the price of an average game, it's definitely worth giving it a go over the weekend - just lower your expectations a little.
David Cage's games have a reputation for being ambitious failures, outsized vision let down by time, technology, or videogame conventions. Detroit: Become Human is more of the same - but by that very nature feels less ambitious than before, while simultaneously bringing Cage's failings as a writer even further into the spotlight. This is clunky, awkward, and only fleetingly interesting once you look past the shiny surface. Androids may be alive, but Detroit: Become Human certainly isn't.
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.
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.
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.