Starfield: a thousand planets and not one journey

Bethesda, 2023. A game with space in it but no travel: an anatomy of the central structural error — now on PlayStation too.

Dragon's Dogma 2: two years on, the game has finally become itself

Capcom, 2024. The best travel system in the genre — and the worst launch a good idea could have been given.

Alan Wake 2: a horror game that, for some reason, sings

Remedy, 2023. Thirteen years between instalments, two storylines the player interleaves, and a musical number in the middle of chapter four.

Hi-Fi Rush: the whole world in four-four

Tango Gameworks, 2023. A rhythm game that does not demand a sense of rhythm — and the best argument that synchronisation is worth more than fidelity.

Pentiment: a game where the typeface says more than the line

Obsidian, 2022. Twenty-five years in a Bavarian town, three deaths, and not one confirmed answer.

Disco Elysium: a role-playing game whose skills argue with you

ZA/UM, 2019. Twenty-four skills, zero combat, and the only system I know in which a failed check is content rather than punishment.

Return of the Obra Dinn: a detective story that takes answers three at a time

Lucas Pope, 2018. Sixty people, one ship, and a verification rule that holds the entire structure up.

Into the Breach: tactics in which you cannot miss

Subset Games, 2018. An eight-by-eight grid, a handful of turns, and full information about what the enemy will do. Everything after that is on you.

Vampire Survivors: the three-dollar game with a BAFTA

poncle, 2022. No attack button, thirty minutes per run, and the British Academy's top award — for construction, not production.

Death Stranding: forty hours about carrying a box

Kojima Productions, 2019. A game that took the connective tissue between actions and declared it the content — and was about half right.