The Outer Worlds is not only a breath of fresh air and easily one of Obsidian's best ever games, but it's an experience that can truly wear the player choice badge with pride. From the RPG elements to how you play, The Outer Worlds truly is your adventure. Just don't kill anyone's parents in it, okay?
The Bradwell Conspiracy is a game whose lofty concept doesn't quite match its execution. Its light, fairly arbitrary puzzles aren't particularly challenging, but its strong narrative is deployed almost perfectly throughout to weave them all together. The Bradwell Conspiracy is still an enjoyable journey, however, and certainly worthy of your time.
'Anime Dark Souls' was its billing, but it's not until Code Vein breaks free of the tried-and-tested formula that it shines brightly. With a difficulty balance that stretches from a leisurely stroll to hair-tearing madness, it's hard to know who this game is for. Code Vein is fun, though. Really, really fun, and a great place to start for anyone keen to dip their toe into a more chilled and relaxed Souls-like title.
On the pitch, as always, Konami almost gets it bang on with eFootball PES 2020, but off the pitch it's seriously lacking in the balance and depth department.
Control is another absolute hit from Remedy, one that delivers from both a gameplay and narrative perspective. One of the generation's most intriguing game worlds and almost perfect pacing, the only thing that holds Control back from being an all-time classic is its unfortunate and frustrating technical issues.
My Time At Portia is one of the most wholesome, relaxing and chilled experiences of this generation. It's the perfect post-Sekiro experience, with a cast of wonderful characters, and a beautifully picturesque world with tons of activities to occupy your time. Sure, it's very much like Stardew Valley, but the emphasis on engineering over farming makes it its own beast. The loops might not be as alluring as Stardew's, but it's game that you won't regret playing, and will satisfy your inner soul.
Aside from that, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is FromSoftware’s most stylish title, one that oozes class and flair from the moment you pick up the controller to the moment you embed that very same controller into the drywall.
The Division 2 is almost certainly a step up from its predecessor, offering more content than you can shake a stick at and enough tweaks to make it feel somewhat fresh. While Massive has attempted to rectify the issues of the original, it hasn't quite managed that yet: yes, enemies are still kind of bullet-spongey and the missions can get quite repetitive after a while, but aside from that, The Division 2 is an impressive follow-up, building upon what was already a solid foundation.
Anthem is a game that despite poor optimisation, agonising load times, bizarre design decisions and an unbalanced loot system, can actually be a lot of fun to play. The open-world, story, characters and combat are all solid, the rest, not so much. Anthem has potential to be a good game, it just isn’t right now. It could be one day though.
The term 'more of the same' is bandied about a lot in this industry, but when it comes to Crackdown 3, it is absolutely more of the same. With a few tweaks here and there, and a new city, there's no doubting that the gameplay still absolutely holds up. The structure and busywork tasks issues still persist from previous iterations though, which is perhaps the most disappointing aspect. Fun but repetitive best sums up Crackdown 3.
Genesis Alpha One has some really cool ideas going for it, unfortunately they're outweighed by repetitive busywork that you easily get bogged down in. Sure, it's an interesting strategy game at times, but the grind is just too damn much!
Darksiders III's shift to a more Dark-Soulsy experience seems to fit perfectly within the Darksiders universe. The third outing in the franchise is a solid effort by Gunfire Games – one of my favourite gaming experiences of the year, in fact – let down only by some shaky traversal mechanics, a dodgy compass and some downright unpleasant frame-rate issues.
Fallout 76 is effectively about base-construction, survival and world-building, not the story and your part in it, which isn’t a bad thing. The execution is though.
Hitman 2 is a solid follow-up to our 2016 Game of Year, delivering five huge killer sandboxes to explore to your heart's content. Yes, the maps might not be as unique as iterations gone-by and there is seemingly fewer than normal, but boy, are they great maps. Factor in Contracts mode and the excellent Ghost Mode, and Hitman 2 is very much worth your time. Where else can you dress up as a mascot or get involved in a poisonous drinking game to take down a target? Answer: no-bloody-where!
Divinity Original Sin 2: Definitive Edition is a fine installment in the Divinity series and despite a few odd design decisions and the balance being completely out of whack, it's still a truly memorable and enjoyable experience.
We Happy Few is a case of quantity over quality. A by-the-numbers venture whose game world seems to have been populated by a script rather than being handcrafted. Despite moments of what could only be described as brilliance, We Happy Few is full of fetch quests, boring busy-work and some of the most baffling design decisions in the history of video games. Oh, and it's broken as shit too. Happy? Not really, no.
The Crew 2 feels like a missed opportunity for Ubisoft after what was a decent start for the franchise in 2014. It's a racing game with some interesting ideas, but the new main additions frankly aren't entertaining enough and there's too much of a focus on quantity over quality.
Jurassic World: Evolution might not be the deepest RTS out there in terms of options and mechanics, but as far as Jurassic Park experiences go, this is probably the best one that exists out there.
State of Decay 2 is a perfectly fine game. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, it may be buggy and it might be a step back from the original, but it is nevertheless still a fun game, albeit one that doesn't really motivate you to keep playing. To keep grinding. I imagine it's what a real zombie apocalypse would be like, we just wanted more from a game about it.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a harrowing journey into the fragility of the mind. It's a masterpiece in storytelling, and while the game mechanics itself might not complement that throughout, they do a decent job of allowing Ninja Theory to deliver a mature story revolving around a sensitive subject matter. We hope that this opens up the door for more budget priced triple-A experiences, because this one was one hell of a ride!