Matt Lorrigan
Backed by an amazing art style, a great soundtrack and a selection of heartwarming characters to take you through the story, Ori and the Will of the Wisps is pure platforming perfection.
Hades is an excellent action game that allows players to find progression even in death. Roguelikes are normally known for their high level of difficulty, but in Hades, the greatest challenge you’ll face is trying to put it down.
We may have been waiting a decade and a half for a sequel, but Double Fine’s efforts haven’t been in vain - Psychonauts 2 is an energetic, imaginative, and excellent 3D platformer, with brains and heart to spare.
Elden Ring offers up a gorgeous open world that is enticing and exciting to explore, along with excellent combat variety, amazing bosses to fight, and intricate dungeons to tackle. It might feel a little familiar, but this could well be FromSoftware’s best game to date.
The Dead Space remake successfully revives a beloved survival horror franchise with gloriously gory aplomb. Nothing that made the original so good has been compromised, even with all the new additions. Bring on Dead Space 2!
Immortals Fenyx Rising is a strange beast, then. Much of it feels very familiar, and you won’t find many things here that haven’t been done before. Yet, it manages to pull together so many different aspects with such proficiency and love for the source material that it’s impossible not to simply enjoy soaking it all up, in an adventure worthy of the Greek heroes of old.
Stray is a wonderfully crafted game. It not only manages to successfully immerse you in the role of an adorable cat, where exploration is key, but it also tells an engaging science-fiction story along the way.
Creaks is a wonderfully atmospheric game that is ingenious in its execution, with a unique art style and excellent sound design. The sheer number of mind-teasing puzzles can be a little relentless at times, but the way that the game's systems evolve and interact with each other over time is incredibly impressive. If you have any love for brain teasers, you should probably consider picking it up.
FIFA 22 offers a slower, more deliberate game of football on the pitch, and that's a good thing. But with minimal investment in new modes or updates to existing ones, this is a good upgrade, rather than an essential one.
A Short Hike is a wonderfully chill little game that can easily be finished in the space of an afternoon, combining clever traversal mechanics with a lo-fi visual style and a very relatable protagonist. If you’ve got a couple of hours to kill over a weekend, or after a stressful day of work, A Short Hike is an easy recommendation.
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a great collection for fans of 2D platformers, whether you’ve played these games before or not. Klonoa 2 is the standout title here, but both games are well worth playing, and should hopefully create a new generation of Klonoa fans. They certainly did with me, anyway - where’s Klonoa 3, Bandai Namco?
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty sets itself apart from Nioh, Team Ninja’s other soulslike series, with plenty of inventive mechanics that thrust you into the midst of a war. But by spreading the action out over various disparate battlefields in second century China, with plenty of chatty characters to meet along the way, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty loses a little bit of its magic in the process.
FIFA 23 is the best FIFA game that you can play right now. But unless you’re an Ultimate Team diehard, FIFA 23 might not do enough to convince you to upgrade from the mechanically similar FIFA 22.
Disintegration blends together FPS and RTS elements to create a satisfying gameplay experience, with weapons that feel great to use and battles that will have you constantly on your toes. Campaign missions can be hit-or-miss and the game's storytelling is a little slight, but an enjoyable multiplayer mode will keep you playing once the credits have rolled.
The Gunk is a difficult game to label, but an easy one to enjoy. Whether you’re sucking up a load of the titular gunk to help bring an alien world back to life, or listening to an engaging back and forth between the game’s main characters, there’s plenty to like here, even if it doesn’t quite live up to its early potential.
The Devil in Me is the most assured entry yet in The Dark Pictures Anthology, even if it doesn't produce quite enough scares during its seven hour runtime.
Carrion is an excellent power fantasy that casts you as the monstrous villain in your own horror film. The wonderfully gloopy animation and conception of Carrion's meaty monster makes it enjoyable to play, especially when tearing through the unfortunate humans that stand in your way. But dull exploration, a lack of memorable environments and disparate gameplay ideas that never really come together, mean that Carrion never truly reaches its full potential.
Biomutant is a scrappy and charming open world RPG, but despite its many systems and gameplay mechanics, there isn't enough depth and direction to make this game truly great.
The Falconeer offers up an incredibly well-crafted world with a deep mythology that's begging to be explored further. Gliding over the open sea on the back of a falcon is pure fantasy, but while the game’s dogfights can occasionally be thrilling, they can soon grow rather repetitive. Samey missions and a lack of options in combat ultimately mean that The Falconeer doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Sonic Frontiers is a fascinating move into open world for the Sonic franchise. It's frequently flawed, and doesn't always match the heights of Sonic's best games. But the fact that it occasionally does reach those highs, while offering a totally new experience, is pretty impressive, and leaves Sonic Team with a strong foundation to improve upon.