And once the final mission's done there's a scamper up the difficulty levels, alongside endless, custom and time attack modes, the latter of which works a bit like speed chess, but with people getting whacked over the head. In truth, while pleasant, this is a covering of the bases that Invisible, Inc doesn't really need. Much like the lives of one of its secret agents, this is a game defined by short, sharp thrills. It's so filled with purpose that is has no need to outstay its welcome.
This is the strangest, most wilful game Intelligent Systems has ever made - and that's part of its greatness.
And then there's that one special audio cue: pok! You know that sound. You know it! It's the rounded, punchy, friendly smack of a bat connecting with a ball that was already doing around 90. Close your eyes and you can see the aftermath: the heads tilted skyward, the arms dropping to the side. No need to chase after that one. Home run.
Behind the stylish black and white art is a puzzle-platformer that really wants you to enjoy yourself.
Like most roguelikes, though, the true game is about fighting back against the randomness, and you do this with each lesson you learn about the sorts of augmentations to prioritise, and each trick you uncover for minimising battle scars and maximising scrap. If you've got the stomach for the learning curve, you can probably cut it in this army. And if you can, you'll discover a game that's tense and personable and clever.
Still, small beans in a game that is otherwise so elegantly put together. Starships isn't Civ, but it is Sid, and that's fine by me.
Speaking of replays, occasionally, on a very long pass, the ball will just freeze in the air, immobile as one turn ends and another begins. It's beautiful: so much attention focused on something so seemingly trivial. The ball hangs in space, while everyone on the ground rushes to switch up their plans to take into account where it's going to land. Adaptation, anticipation, creativity: this is what strategy is all about - and this is a game that really gets it.
The star of the show isn't your foes, though, and it certainly isn't the fascist 'goodies' you're cast as in this knockabout imperialist satire. The star of the show is the panic that's generated as you head into adventure, knowing that you're this close to screwing everything up for your team in a darkly hilarious manner.
Free from the claustrophobic Fordism that increasingly robs series like Assassin's Creed of their sense of wonder, this is a game that's taken shape at its own pace, and that has been allowed to find its own voice. Pick a point to aim for and jump. Jump!
Lumino City is an interesting design sketch, then, but the real building work is yet to be done.
The Temple of Osiris is a welcome throwback, and for the five or six hours it took me to barrel through the campaign, the rest of the world blinked away as the sands swept in and the ancient machinery started to turn. As with Osiris, I'm not sure Lara's reassemblage has gone entirely to plan, but the spirit remains intact - and the spirit is still strangely powerful.
For a game I've complained about a lot, I was pretty engaged with it at three in the morning yesterday, of course, shoot-'em-up headache setting in and an annulus of empty teacups starting to form. The problem, ultimately, is a philosophical one. I'm not sure if Lucid really gets the mentality behind this series, and that makes for a perfectly serviceable shooter when the lineage requires something more.
And yet beneath the mis-steps and the schmaltz, and beneath the dictatorial heft of the soundtrack - gorgeous and emotive, but laid on a little too heavily throughout - there's still that fascinating glimpse of a boy making the best of a lonely childhood. A boy in search of escape - escape from the empty world he's been granted and, perhaps, from the predictable narrative that's been imposed on it.
If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could voice the suspicion that a great many baseball caps were turned backwards in the echoing board room where this project was greenlit, but with the campaign done and the city freshly filled with challenges, I don't really feel like being uncharitable. Beneath the glorious tech, and once the writing relaxes a little, Sunset Overdrive's wonderfully lurid and heartfelt - a bit like playing an old 4AD album sleeve. If you get that reference, you'll probably get this, too.
Civilization has always had something to say about this stuff (and civilisation has always had something to say about this stuff) but Beyond Earth goes further than ever, suggesting that even if we do eventually live on Pluto, the distractions will have joined us there, and will probably have multiplied. When we get into space, the real danger - and the real wonder - will be the fact that we have brought ourselves along.
Kuru Kuru Kuruin meets gleefully silly FMV in this wonderfully tactile arcade game.
Sadly, the biggest problem with this whole package may be that Arrowhead has already made a truly great Gauntlet tribute anyway, and it was Magicka. There was a game with the freedom to choose its own first principles, while still having Gauntlet's mean-spirited playfulness baked into it. The difference, I suspect, is between being creatively inspired by the spirit and ethos of a legendary design, and being cast as a kind of well-intentioned caretaker.
Ultimate Evil feels like a good place to stand back and see what Diablo 3 actually looks like now, with the auction house dead and the first expansion bedded in. There has been time, hopefully, for players to set aside the game they wanted Diablo 3 to be and understand the game that it is.
New 'n' Tasty! is angry because it holds a cartoon mirror up to the injustices of the modern world: to every clothes factory that falls down or blows up because corners were cut in the race to make 99p T-shirts, and to every water supply privatised in the name of hamburgers or fizzy drinks. Graphics lose their luster. Design tricks become predictable and then forgettable. Injustice, it turns out, rarely goes out of fashion.
Lifeless Planet is bold and memorable and oddly sweet in the earnestness of its message and its preoccupations. It's a truly efficient payload. Fire it up and be transported.