Company of Heroes 3 is an excellent game for veterans of the RTS genre and complete newbies who've never felt the rush of overseeing resources while micromanaging units on a virtual battlefield. Its double campaign feature provides two very distinct ways to experience the game, while the real-time strategy gameplay shows just how engaging and rewarding the genre can be if you give it the time and learn the systems in place.
Trek to Yomi presents its world through the lens of classic Japanese cinema, reinforcing its thematic exploration of self-reflection and overcoming failure with masterful presentation and design to form a captivating experience. Combat presents a satisfying learning curve that rewards carefully studying your opponents and mastering the moves in your arsenal, and while overall it can falter at times due to uneven pacing, it's well worth undertaking the trek yourself.
Weird West really is a wonderfully wild experience. Its mysterious and fantastical take on the American West is a unique change-up for a typically overdone setting, and the elements of black humour help to bear its bleakness. Many of the immersive sim elements gel well with the CRPG design to produce a living and reactive world, shaped by your gameplay and narrative choices. Some of its systems don't quite feel worked out yet, and it doesn't always stay consistent across its five episodes, but Weird West is a grand debut from WolfEye that understands the core of what it is to be an immersive sim.
TUNIC is a type of game that feels increasingly less common in this industry, and its dedication to upholding a mystery that it lets the player figure out themselves is commendable. It has an enchanting world that's well worth exploring for yourself, and the way it asks you to use the instruction manual is a breath of fresh air for engaging with a game. While it doesn't fully stick the landing thanks to some later combat sections that sour the experience, it's an undeniable gem of wondrous action-adventure.
Ultimately, Halo Infinite's multiplayer is a victim to its progression system, that stands in the way of the excellently refined core of the game. It's certain to be a mainstay for years as the developers work out the kinks and factor in the fan feedback. Their work still paid off though, because the gameplay of Halo Infinite is the best of any multiplayer shooter from recent memory. It's just sullied by the egregious implementation of artificial hurdles to that gameplay, which knocks a point or two off the score. Without this abhorrent progression? Halo Infinite would be one of the best multiplayer shooters of the last 10 years.
Fights In Tight Spaces is a fantastic example of a turn-based strategy game. There's so much depth to the mechanics and different strategies that can be utilised, that paired with the roguelike elements, makes for an endlessly replayable experience. The purposefully minimal presentation helps to make the combat the centrepiece of the game, highlighting the momentum and force of the fighting. It hardly reinvents the wheel, but it explores melee combat with a vehement focus that you don't often see, making for a tight fighting experience.
It's tempting for me to say that Prince of Persia is back with the release of The Lost Crown and leave it that. But that feels like a disservice to a game so boldly different from its predecessors because ultimately it's more than that. While it certainly still feels like a Prince of Persia game at the core, it stands on its own merits as a consistently brilliant and challenging Metroidvania experience, holding its own against some of the genre's very best.
While lacking the polish and production value that saw the genre float into the mainstream this year, Rogue Trader is a refreshing CRPG experience that values everything that makes games like these so special. It's impossibly expansive, full of rich characters and stories, complex without being over-encumbered, and so much more that doesn't fit into a snappy conclusion. Owlcat has really gone out of its way to bring the Warhammer 40K universe to life here, and in doing so, it's created one of the most memorable RPGs of the decade.
Beyond just claiming the title of the best Amnesia game to date, it's also one of the best survival horror experiences of recent times, and a perfect entry to spearhead the franchise's future into a new direction.
Iron Lung is a masterclass of how to effectively build tension and dread. It runs at just the right length to explore its minimal gameplay ideas, while remaining mysterious and opaque enough to feel larger than the immediate experience. It's well worth the time for those who enjoy experimental game concepts or suffocating atmospheres, and what lurks in the blood ocean may stick with you well past your playtime.
Victoria 3 is a niche game that at its core is about enacting social and political change through close internal management of your nation, and nothing on the market comes close to replicating it.