If you're already invested in the Remedy Connected Universe – that's Alan Wake, this sequel, and 2019's Control, thus far; officially, everything else is just an Easter Egg – then you will devour and adore Alan Wake 2. For everyone else it might feel like a slog, at times, through Alan's hackneyed writings and Remedy's penchant for mixed-media presentation, but this is still an excellent survival horror with many bright spots reflected in that signature flashlight.
If there is any criticism to be made of Jusant, it's that developer Don't Nod – no stranger to over-egging the narrative pudding at times – couldn't hold its tongue, filling the beautifully spartan climb with diaries, logs, and otherwise unnecessary lore. But the game's focus on its core climbing mechanics, and some of the finest art direction we've yet seen, still make this an essential journey.
In the earlier, sandy hours, that restlessness is a boon-the work of a developer surveying the drier sweeps of a genre and divining a bright pool of ideas.
I would prescribe The Pathless to anyone feeling numbed and locked by our days of inanition; it's perfect if you feel your home becoming an isle on the edge of the world.
What I didn't expect from the new Call of Duty was downtime, and the suggestion, at least in the first half, that guns, while great for going in blazing, can provide just as potent a thrill when holstered.
That's why, as much as Hitman III was a pleasure to play, it left me longing for the mood of the old games.
Who would have thought that the solution to madness might be marriage?
It's worth pointing out that few other studios have the confidence to take this approach to horror: not to jolt you with sudden frights or to ration your ammunition, but to probe and puncture your emotional ease by putting foulness in such close proximity to the childish.
Though it comes with a crop of upgrades, and its graphics have been brushed to a smooth shine, what it offers, despite its title, is the joy of the old.
If the DNA of Biomutant sparks a re-evolution of some of the genre's dull spots, perhaps we can forgive the dull spots present here.
The fun of playing these games, especially these days, lies in the director, Ryuchi Nishizawa, whose approach to genre was one of precise and genial disregard.
If I didn’t feel the sugary twinge of sentiment in Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, it is down to its pastel starkness.
The humour is thankfully intact, but the mysteries grow as ornate and heavily threaded as Sholmes’s overcoat.
No More Heroes III should be played, if for no other reason than it could have been made by nobody else.
True Colors is the best game in the series since Before the Storm, and it will satisfy your narrative craving for a time.
It offers an otherworldly break from the busyness of life, and, when you do return to Earth, you will do so with a smooth landing, and without stress.
Whether you demand more than comfort from your games will inform the way you see Kena: Bridge of Spirits; is it merely a graphically sumptuous example of design that you wish we would leave behind, or is it a vivifying tribute to a rich precursor legacy?
In Back 4 Blood, we have been given a finely tooled zombie shooter, but it lacks the power of the original.
Where Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy proves most winsome, however, is in its twining of the intergalactic and the terrestrial.
Its narrative is fractious and slight, compared to Sledgehammer’s previous work, but the chance for a chaotic, target-rich experience with friends exerts a stronger pull than usual.