Cost of Hope is among the best DLCs to have crossed my path in my gaming career, and I'm genuinely grateful I got the chance to play and review it. An incredible story, new characters that genuinely grew on me, and a choice of paths that was harder to make than I expected; level design that blew me away, real variety in mission design, and plenty more besides make this DLC something people are going to talk about for a long time.
Once everything is ironed out, Starsand Island has my recommendation, and I hope that will happen sooner rather than later.
The Sinking City 2 is proof that survival-horror doesn't need to reinvent itself to leave a mark; it only needs a team that cares about what they're building, and Frogwares clearly do.
Kynseed asks what it means to actually live a life inside a video game, then backs it up with permanent death and inherited legacy, a premise strange enough that I didn't expect to fall for it as hard as I did.
Helix: Descent N Ascent is a game that doesn't reinvent the puzzle genre, but its wordless, monochrome approach to discovery is rare enough to be worth your time regardless.
The concept of Lunarium as a small Souls-like is just genius. It's just too bad the game won't be defined by the idea, but rather by loads of bugs and unrealised potential.
The Alters: Last Variable is precisely what a DLC should be, and I mean that as sincere praise and not just an empty compliment. It doesn't chase the "basically a sequel" trend other studios have been leaning into. It takes a loose thread from the base game's ending, builds a smaller, sharper story around it, and hands you back every mechanic you remember, whether you like them or not
The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales is a confident, good-looking swing at something quite different for Square Enix's HD-2D lineup. The combat is satisfying, the visuals are some of the best pixel-inspired work I've seen on PS5, and the performance never got in the way of any of it.
Nearly perfect back then, genuinely perfect now: Black Flag Resynced is proof that Assassin's Creed franchise still has its soul.
The biggest expansion yet for globally popular Dave the Diver trades the Blue Hole for a jungle lake and somehow ends up feeling like a sequel rather than a DLC.
With patches and patience, Gothic 1 Remake could become essential. Right now, it is a promising and frustrating experience in roughly equal measure.
IO Interactive’s long-awaited James Bond origin story isn’t just the best 007 game ever made. It's one of the finest action games of the generation.
Directive 8020 is a compelling, frequently terrifying, and occasionally flawed piece of interactive horror that confirms Supermassive Games as the undisputed masters of their particular craft. The story is excellent, the atmosphere is exceptional, and the sound design is frankly some of the best work the genre has ever produced. The repetitive stealth mechanics and the stiff character animations can be characterised as weaknesses, and they hold the game back from going even higher on my scale, but they do not come close to undoing what the game gets so right.
Mixtape is a remarkable piece of work. It is the kind of game that reminds you why storytelling in this medium can be so extraordinary when the right people are given the freedom to follow their instincts all the way to the end. Beethoven and Dinosaur have created something deeply felt, visually inventive, and musically brilliant, and Annapurna Interactive have once again demonstrated why they are the publisher I trust above all others to deliver games that mean something.
Adorable Adventures is exactly what it says on the cover, a warm, charming, and surprisingly varied game that asks nothing more of you than to follow your nose and enjoy the ride.
Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss has a story worth being part of and a mystery worth following, but everything surrounding it struggles to keep pace with its own ambitions.
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection is a well-assembled package of games that time has treated unevenly. The combat system still holds on, even for today's standards; the first game's story holds a quiet emotional weight, and the quality-of-life additions make the trilogy more approachable than it has ever been. For fans who remember these games fondly, the collection is an easy recommendation at its price point.
Grind Survivors is a roguelike capable of hooking you with its addictive loop and clever systems to the point where you'll simply want more. Why? Well, because it is genuinely fun.
Pearl Abyss's long-awaited RPG, Crimson Desert, had sort of a rough landing but eventually delivers one of the most absorbing open worlds in recent memory.
1348 Ex Voto is a short medieval adventure whose powerful story is perfectly capable of overshadowing every gameplay flaw it obviously possesses.