PowerUp!'s Reviews
Returnal makes an important, evolutionary (house)marque on the arcade shooter landscape.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is a showcase of the game design mastery which has made Nintendo the best in the business.
Little Nightmares 2 is a superb puzzle-platformer that'll worm its way into your brain and stay there.
Persona 5 Strikers is my favourite Musou crossover and the first one to truly feel like the guest franchise first and Warriors second.
Olija is a great action platformer and one that throws back to the best of those which have come before.
Not for the faint of heart, nor those susceptible to trauma, The Medium is an intensely disturbing masterclass in storytelling, dripping with atmosphere and loaded with enough dread to make you question the very nature of your existence when you're finished with it.
It's enormously addictive and is endlessly replayable. For one of the first major releases in 2021, Hitman is an absolute home run
Frankly, Cyberpunk 2077 is the best video game I've ever played
Immortals Fenyx Rising is the most successful Zelda-like since Darksiders. It uses Breath of the Wild as a base and delivers a colourful, vibrant world to discover.
Rebirth‘s romanticised version of the genre is perhaps best forgotten
Mortal Shell‘s origins may be steeped in an echo but the final product has more than enough soul.
Sackboy delivers some damn good jumpy-jumpy material.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla is the best Assassin's Creed ever. Fully embracing its new genre and giving players so much choice and freedom has paid off handsomely. There's not really much more to say. You simply have to experience it for yourself.
It might not be the brand-new, system selling experience we're used to getting at the launch of a new console, but Spider-man Miles Morales is an incredibly good game and a must-play.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon, when all of its pieces are taken together, is not only a fantastic new direction for the series, it's also one of its best titles.
Overall, Dirt 5 is a great racing game, packed full of things to do and with so much variety you're unlikely to get bored quickly or even in the long run
And that’s the real issue here: the previous game was a story and a damned good one. Watch Dogs Legion is a playground and a damned good one. All it took was a shift in priorities to make the open-world feel less like a world, and more like… well, a game.
I love football. And I still love FIFA. But it’s the former carrying the latter here. FIFA 22 will be a crucial game for this franchise.
When it's all said and done, Mafia: Definitive Edition earns its name. It's the definitive Mafia videogame
It may be a throwback to another era of gameplay and mechanics. It may not have the bells and whistles and feature creep of other modern shooters and it may be simple but it’s damned good.