VideoGamer

From control to innovation, Madden 23 delivered one of its best full game experiences to date. However, a push for creativity has led to stark inconsistencies from year to year, leaving many unsatisfied with modes like Face of the Franchise.

Indeed, there remains about Saints Row the air of a slightly desperate brainstorming session.

This is where Stray succeeds. It offers us delectable opportunities to act out the behaviour that so bewilders us, in very celebration of that bewilderment.

Far more damning is the fact that The Quarry, though happily thronged with beasts, is barren of scares.

Not that this is something that has to be endured. The underworld may be outglowed by the freaky fogs above, but so what?

There just isn’t enough juice in the combat, the cover shooting, or the endless hoovering of collectibles.

What saves Norco is that the visions on offer belong as much to the imagined as the troublingly real.

You can sense, in Weird West, a developer both returning to his obsessions and toiling on a fresh frontier.

And yet, despite its obvious muses, Tunic manages to rise above mere flattery, by paying deeper homage to the medium itself.

Most potent of all, there is a strain of urban fear running through its design—not of monsters but of the city itself as an isolating entity, rendering you unreachable.

Polyphony has delivered an airtight flight from the everyday, rich in escape yet rooted in anything but fantasy.

If only Dalcò, rather than honouring his heroine by smothering her search for truth in confounding gloom, had abided by her love of illumination.

There are no other dynamics quite like it in games; they acquaint us with an array of miseries and charge us money for the privilege.

With Horizon Forbidden West, Guerilla is armed with the grunt of the PlayStation 5, and we get not just a catalogue of alluring tones but a richer palette of ideas.

The coup of Sifu is that this process mirrors that of the hero; I was continually tempted to ditch my progress and start afresh, furnished with new knowledge at the expense of a little more life.

Whether OlliOlli World charms you or chafes at your patience will depend on your appetite for such whimsy.

Indeed, if, like me, you have a weakness for the zombie-hued, and for the sway and flail of first-person platforming, then Dying Light 2 is easy to recommend.

More than any other studio, Ubisoft is willing to mutate its existing IPs until they scarcely resemble what they once were.

Where Solar Ash goes from an intriguing ambient platformer to one of the year’s most fascinating releases is in its fixation on living as an act of being stuck.

But it is, right now, where 343 has succeeded with Halo Infinite—where it has taken us full circle and where it is looking ahead. I will leave you with the words of Cortana: “This isn’t an end. It’s a chance to make amends. To rectify mistakes. And it starts here.”