Assassin's Creed Mirage is a short, sharp trip through the blood soaked streets of Baghdad. A welcome return to the series' roots, Mirage is a breath of fresh air in the endless sea of open world adventure games.
Prince of Persia was long in need of a resurrection, and in The Lost Crown, it's found it. Excellent platforming, clever puzzles and a huge map make one of the best Metroidvania's in years, and kicks off 2024 in style.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a serviceable open world game elevated by a stunning presentation. While the visuals will utterly wow you, it's a shame it doesn't introduce more original ideas.
While some of the slower elements of the original games have been fixed, and The Grand Underground makes up for the comparatively weak Pokédex, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl's new art style and a few other stumbles make this pair of games a somewhat disappointing retread of Generation 4. They're also very clearly in the shadow of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the upcoming open-world-like Pokemon game that has fans hoping it can take the series in exciting new directions beyond 20-year-old mechanics. If the remit of these remakes was to remain faithful to the original Gen 4 pair, we wish they'd also stuck to the pixel-art aesthetic. Aside from The Grand Underground – and the connectivity with the current games in the series – there's very little reason to play Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl over your original DS copies.
Despite its enjoyable campaign, Black Ops Cold War feels like an anachronistic package. The era of one game containing three completely disparate modes feels so long ago in the age of Warzone.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a completely inoffensive, if somewhat bland adventure that will mildly entertain for the duration of its runtime, but won’t live long in the memory.
There’s nothing wrong with a game about doing simple things, and enjoying a relaxing journey in between, but in Sable, we could never relax.
It seems backhanded to say that a game is only worth playing if you can find people to distract you from the actual game, but if your group wants something mindless to wind down after an intense night on Warzone or Rainbow Six: Siege, Back 4 Blood is ideal.
At launch, Call of Duty Vanguard feels like a solid step-up from Black Ops Cold War, but falls short of the benchmark that was Modern Warfare 2019.
Portal and Hazard Zone save 2042 from being a real low point in the series, which has swapped iconic, high octane moments for needless scale, without filling in any of that space.
We can’t recommend Rainbow Six Extraction if you’re planning on playing alone, especially on PlayStation platforms where you’re expected to pay £40 for the privilege, but if your regular gaming group is bored of the game you play every night, and they all have Game Pass, Extraction will provide laughs.
Dying Light 2: Stay Human feels like it lost its direction somewhere along the way. It begins as an interesting zombie game wherein the threat feels tangible, your character feels weak, and the world feels primed for a dynamic story. However, the further you get into the game, a lot of its early ideas feel sidelined for a generic zombie plot, uninspiring combat, and the absence of any kind of danger.
If you can suffer through the clunky menus, endless dull dialogue and 100 visits to the cafe, then there’s an excellent racing game somewhere hidden in Gran Turismo 7.
At times it feels like the game’s incredible art direction, music and visual style deserve a game that’s better mechanically, but when it all comes together, Ghostwire Tokyo is one of the more memorable recent games in the triple-A space, if you can ignore its gameplay stumbles.
A year from now we’re unlikely to be able to recount an incredible puzzle or ingenious solution, but Silt’s lasting impression of incredible art and perfectly pitched atmosphere will be giving us nightmares for some time.
This game should go down as one of the best sports games ever, instead it's a chilling reminder of the chokehold microtransactions have over the genre.
Fire Emblem Engage is a great strategy game, but we don’t think it’s a great modern Fire Emblem game. Whether the reverence for the social elements of Three Houses came as a surprise to the team or not, the dearth of those moments in Engage makes it feel like it’s missing half of its core at times. While the anniversary cameos will please the hardcore fans at first, we worry that, much like the weak social aspects, their largely minor impact on the game itself will disappoint.
More of a side-step than an evolution from Nioh 2, Wo Long is inventive and an adventure worth taking even if it’s technically suspect on PS5, but won’t live massively long in the memory once you’ve slain your final boss.
EA Sports FC 24 isn't the huge departure that we'd hoped for. While Ultimate Team devotees will likely be happy, the rest of the game feels like an afterthought in the transition away from the FIFA license.
Detective Pikachu is full of simple puzzes, witty dialogue and Pokemon to discover. It won't thrill older fans from a gameplay perspective, and it's visually inconsistent, but it will likely introduce throusands of young fans to a whole new genre of video games.