GigaBowser
The bear of bad news
Starfield - 6
Cocoon - 9In spite of these shortcomings, Starfield exerts a curious gravitational pull: there is a pleasant mindlessness to it that means it can easily become a black hole for your free time. But if it's not a bad game, it's an achingly unambitious one, failing in what should be one of the foundational aspects of any space exploration game (see Post Script). True, we've come a long way in six decades. But zoom in on the recent history of games – and that of its maker – and you're forced to concede that we've not covered much distance after all. For Bethesda, this isn't so much a giant leap as barely a small step.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - 8As the closing act arrives, it's hard not to wonder if Carlsen has another 11th-hour pivot in store. After a fashion, he does – but rather than a cathartic twist, it's more a cunning reconfiguration. Here, Cocoon breaks its own carefully established rules in a way that doesn't so much smack you in the face as lead to a realisation of its giddying implications, before you're afforded the opportunity to harness some of that potential. Not all, however: there are possibilities left unexplored, albeit for reasons that seem ever more apparent the longer you consider them. It leaves you instead with a reward of a different kind, courtesy of a playful tribute to an unlikely cinematic inspiration – one last delightful surprise beyond its final door.
Lies of P - 7Yet caught in the thick of Phantom Liberty's spygame intrigue, it's easy to see all that as the rest of the game's problem. Few focused action-adventure games spin a yarn as well as CD Projekt does here, likely keeping you uncertain about your choices to the end. That the adventure is hosted within the richly detailed Night City can be treated as a mere fascinating detail, if that's how you want to play it.
The Crew: Motorfest - 6For all its wondrous mimicry, Lies Of P can't quite match the master's ambition. A remarkable feat of craftsmanship and engineering it may be, but never quite a real boy. Yet in a post-Elden Ring world, it serves up a back-to-basics From game of a kind the company itself may never make again, triggering many of the same emotional responses as Dark Souls and Bloodborne did. Rather than being a forgery, it recognises that everything we love about those games is still worth reconstructing. In its desire to deliver exactly that and no more, Lies Of P is nothing if not honest.
Mortal Kombat 1 - 7In spite of all this, we find ourselves warming to Motorfest, its enthusiasm and generosity wearing down our defences. The scenery is sensational at any time of day or night, though plenty of events are set at dawn or dusk for good reason. And between the blistering pace of its Lamborghini- and Porsche-themed events and the boisterous quad-bike races, Ivory Tower's bet on versatility trumping derivativeness pays off. If The Crew's ultimate fate is to be a kind of racing game variety pack, the role seems to suit it.
Chants of Sennaar - 9As a series well into its fourth decade, then, Mortal Kombat appears in surprisingly good shape. If its Fatalities have never felt so gruesomely satisfying, though, the greatest pleasures are still limited to those willing to play through the pain. But between the extra sparks of mechanical invention and visual humour, Mortal Kombat 1 offers perhaps NetherRealm's most persuasive argument yet to take the plunge.
Gunbrella - 7All of this pays off handsomely in an endgame that subtly transforms certain areas, letting you move more freely through the floors as your linguistic expertise turns you into the tower's unofficial translator. It brings to mind Wittgenstein's assertion that "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world", your mastery of these languages a testament to how boundaries can be expanded through immersion in other cultures. As its climactic moments form ties between the secular and the religious, allowing peoples of science and faith to find common ground, its underlying message sounds out loud and clear. Its thesis – that a multiplicity of cultures leaves a society profoundly enriched – has never seemed more urgent and vital.
Sea of Stars - 7Combat perhaps doesn't develop quite enough, however, something exemplified by a protracted bore of a factory sequence that limits evasive manoeuvres. And though the bosses are wonderfully unpleasant in their design, they're rather less engaging to fight: a couple are straightforwardly cheesed. Yet the story picks up the slack, and though its goofier elements lead to one or two severe tonal lurches, it delivers a string of genuinely startling moments. By the final reckoning, we're invested in how it all shakes out; perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that the titular weapon is 7 not, in fact, Gunbrella's most powerful asset.
Mediterranea Inferno - 8That exquisitely fashioned world – rendered in a style that evokes the 16bit era while pushing the level of detail beyond what would have been possible then – is a joy to explore, offering a mixture of puzzles and wayfinding that consistently engages without resorting to roadblocks. Beyond its more involving traversal mechanics, Sea Of Stars honours its heritage through a variety of vividly imagined JRPG staples, while taking the occasional modern liberty. Certainly, few JRPG towns we visited back in the day bustled with chatty NPCs quite like this – though it's a pity that attention to detail doesn't quite carry over into its more formulaic, at times rigid approach to characterisation and combat. A fine effort, then, but a new Chrono Trigger it is not – and directly inviting such a comparison only highlights the areas in which it falls short.
Eternights - 5But that fruit has a bitter aftertaste. This is at times a biliously angry game, its central trio furious at their lost youth and the societal failures that have left them cynical about their future. But as summer ends, its melancholic undertow surfaces; Redaelli's script captures how a lost friendship can be as wounding as the death of a loved one. In reckoning so candidly with the conflicting emotions we've experienced over the past few years, Mediterranea Inferno achieves a purgative potency few of its peers can match.
Finity - 8Eternights suffers most from a lack of character: for all it borrows from Persona, Studio Sai has evidently not taken lessons from Atlus's artists for its drab menus and loading screens. Your companions, including highly strung track runner Min and eccentric science researcher Sia, are pleasant enough, with their penchant for exaggerated anime expressions, but your interactions with them are undercut by dialogue options that come across as more creepy than flirtatious. Their paper-thin character arcs, meanwhile, discourage you from spending time with them for anything more than their utility: you'll see them merely as ways of boosting your offensive or defensive stats rather than as individuals. And the nondescript metropolis you inhabit – which, outside of its indistinct dungeons, limits you to a train carriage that serves as a base and a few scavenging locations revisited ad nauseam – is so lifeless you wonder whether it's worth saving. As datingcentred RPGs go, we know a spot, and it's not here.
It's not, in other words, a relaxing, casual play: the polarising early response suggests it has broken the will of those accustomed to the more colourful task of crushing candy. Meet Finity on its own terms, however, and there is much to admire. Masterful use of haptics and audio ensures that when your finger, so often an unstoppable force, meets an immovable object, you hear and feel it. To play is to experience the pleasure of successfully picking a lock, or cracking a safe, or perhaps even repairing a watch: there is a constant sense of tension and release, as you find ways to free those gummed-up gears, to oil that rusted sliding-bolt mechanism, to feel the click of that tumbler dropping into place. When you do, there is no need for celebratory pyrotechnics: the satisfaction felt in 8 thumbs and brain is congratulations enough.
