Taking inspiration from Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Lies of P leads the pack of FromSoftware imitators. It has an intriguing and arresting world and some brutal, assured combat. With a hollow hero in the middle.
With the license gone this is the beginning of a new era, but it feels like business as usual - for better and for worse.
An open-world Hawaii and a generously spirited racer, chafed by always-online irritations and a lack of originality.
A Legofied open-world racer of bright humour and drift-heavy handling, scuffed by baggage and busywork.
Frankly, it’s a relief to see real neck-biters treated with the proper pulp care. Arkane Austin gets right to it: teeth, claws, and clear agendas.
Nonetheless, even when the trappings are more traditional, as they are in Return to Dreamland Deluxe, Kirby is Kirby.
Other than its sudden release, there are precious few surprises in Metroid Prime Remastered, but that's not a criticism. The original is so precious that it's near-impossible to find fault over such a straight-up remaster.
Neither a reinvention of the series nor a return to its roots, Fire Emblem Engage finds a comfortable middle ground. It's another polished skirmish (with Suikoden-like town planning on the side) that will keep Fire Emblem fans happy, but its lacklustre plot and lack of branching choice (like Three Houses) ultimately hold it back.
With its close-hugging third-person camera and its mood of air-locked foreboding, it's hard not to judge The Callisto Protocol through a lens tinted by Glen Schofield's earlier creation, Dead Space. And while its more violent tendencies diminish the tension somewhat, there's still plenty to recommend here.
This XCOM meets X-Men effort from Firaxis isn't flawless, but its a fantasy dinner party of superheroes elevates the experience above its formulaic story and forgettable hero.
If Ragnarök spells the end of God of War, as both its themes and talk from Santa Monica Studio suggest, then it will serve as a fitting end for Kratos. Not just because it would make an impressive swansong for the God of War, but because that level of weariness and relief that Kratos feels from completing his lengthy endeavours is, by its end, projected onto the player, completing theirs.
Bayonetta 3 is an awful lot more, but it's also an awful lot more of the same. It's a game that revels in its spirited too-muchness.
With its striking production values and next-gen rat rendering, it's hard escaping the notion that A Plague Tale: Requiem is, like Microsoft Flight Simulator before it, more of a tech demo or portfolio piece for Asobo Studio. But for fans of the original, the prospect of more of the same – only bigger and flashier, and without the 'Allo 'Allo! accents – is certainly enticing.
In the end, Gotham Knights is, like the studio’s earlier contribution to the saga, Batman: Arkham Origins, a decent game haunted by the notion of not being the main event.
Most video games that model themselves on H.R. Giger's biomechanical monstrosities are purely aesthetic. Scorn wears its influences not on its sleeves, but inside them; a mass of ooze and darkness and gnarly, desiccated things; a grimly singular puzzle, but perhaps one that didn't need the combat to deliver its horrors home.
They say you can't go home again, and there are few wells more daunting to return to than Monkey Island. But with Gilbert at the helm and Grossman by his side, Return to Monkey Island really is the full monkey.
In a medium preoccupied with guns and bombs and violent, power-fantasy notions of heroism, Gerda: A Flame in Winter treads a quieter path through its World War II setting, and is perhaps all the more powerful for it.
The Last of Us Part I is a beautiful thing to behold, honouring your recollection by surpassing it.
Sam Barlow's Immortality switches digital footage for celluloid film, and it's a better fit. His fixation with scrambled narratives has found its natural home, not in the realm of computers, those ghost-free machines, but here, on coils of vulnerable tape.
Indeed, there remains about Saints Row the air of a slightly desperate brainstorming session.