Bugsnax is a faintly naughty, but never crass adventure that feels simultaneously like a love letter to, and a sharply observed satire of, the games that inspired it.
Iron Harvest is a throwback to one of the last golden ages of the genre, often feeling as old fashioned and crusty as that association entails, but frequently reminding us of the essential appeal of extremely large robots chilling out in timelines where they shouldn’t be.
It’s as close to a perfect restoration as you’ll get, and the treatment these genre-defining games deserve.
There’s a really excellent Predator in here, waiting to be set free.
Disaster Report 4 depicts a strange and consequence-averse crisis, in which you’re usually little more than a hapless observer.
Wolfenstein is a masterpiece of its genre. It does good shooting men. But it’s more than that, it’s an effortlessly melancholy adventure that doesn’t drown in its own bombast. It’s like finding out that a superstar footballer is a poet, or finding your dog pressing flowers. It’s a game with hidden depths that you’re invited to explore, but ones that never overshadow the thing it’s best at.
Daily Challenges and split-screen multiplayer and pro-versions of tracks and a really cool soundtrack are all other things that OlliOlli 2 has going for it. It's an improvement on the scrappier feeling original, introducing that one tiny combo-blending manual trick that transforms the game into a profoundly new-feeling and lovely thing.
I love space and Kerbal Space Program.
Elite: Dangerous is a beautiful arcade experience, plugged into an empty galaxy, one so big and bold that it might trick you into thinking there's more to see and do than there really is. You'll probably love it anyway.
And with the game's unwavering deference to the film's cinematic world building and detail, and its skillful adherence to Ridley Scott's original vision, Alien: Isolation is quite easily the best Alien game ever made too.