Phoenix Point carries Gollop's legacy forward capably, if conservatively.
If you’re a little bit curious, or if you enjoyed any of the games with which it shares its DNA, Virginia may be one of the oddest and most fascinating things you’ve played in a long, long time. Vivid Virginia is a hell of a lot more than plain old “walking.”
The biggest drawback to Snowfall, much like After Dark, is that it will probably find a way to clash with one or two of your favourite custom additions. But if you're a modder, I guess you already live life on the edge. Otherwise, it's a charming and worthwhile expansion for what is already an excellent city-builder. I have nothing but warmth for it in my heart.
Blackbird Interactive crafts a worthy successor to the Homeworld classics, although it can lack a spark of its own.
But if you were hoping for a new squad-based game with the finesse of XCOM, or the many tactical choices of Jagged Alliance 2, this is not it. Mordheim is dumb. Mordheim is flawed. Mordheim tries hard and doesn't succeed. This is not a happy Christmas, everyone, but the misshapen horror of Faschnat. It's your present from Krampus.
Rebel Galaxy's rendition of space is full of possibilities - but they're all a little too dull and repetitive for it to really work.
Emerging from Early Access lean and focused, Prison Architect is one of the best management games in a long time.
A stylish and attractive neo-noir tactical game, Satellite Reign sadly ends up being frustratingly inconsistent.
The Sims 4 is both fresh and yet also predictable, pleasant, comfortable and rarely overstimulating. It's wobbly, and you can still see some of its joins, or hear the creaks as new parts settle into place. It's not likely to win over any new players, but it will satisfy a lot of its old ones. For many of its fans, it will feel like moving into a new home. They'll settle.
This game rewards the most patient of tacticians. If that's you - if you're the person with enough time units of your own - it will certainly satisfy. Xenonauts knows exactly who its audience is, exactly what it's aiming for and, while it may never achieve a wider appeal, it will capture that audience in a very familiar act of alien abduction.