To escape the Cold War and the destruction of all life on Earth, the enterprising passengers of the spaceship Fedora set out for the stars to begin hunting for a new planet. Over 200 years later, the Fedora, which had ended up sinking into an alien o

2008’s Turok reboot (PS3) allowed you to stealth-kill dinosaurs. ReBoot was a 1998 PS1 game based on a Canadian TV show. Twisted Metal: Black (2001) had a stronger emphasis on story. 2013’s PS3 Tomb Raider reboot included PvP. With top-tier Hollywood

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 PUB CAPCOM / DEV CAPCOM / PLAYERS 1 Fancy strategy with a twist? How about a game featuring the one-two step of parading demons meeting crowd control in the form of twirling, dancing blade strikes? Many of the genre staples are

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 2024 / PUB BANDAI NAMCO DEV GAME STUDIO INC / PLAYERS MULTI Usually we here at PLAY love rain. When the sky is weeping outside, we have the perfect excuse to stay inside and play Baldur’s Gate 3 all day. But Synduality’s toxic shower

Based on fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, developer Larian has apparently bottled the essence of only our most electric tabletop sessions to serve up an incredible RPG return. Offering a wealth of options for crafting your own adventurer – and ‘yes,

Despite having been doing some version of this job for 16 years now, 2024 was my very first time at Game Developers Conference (GDC) at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. I’ve done PAXs and I’ve done E3s, Summer Game Fests and Gen Cons and more. But nev

At first glance, you would be forgiven for thinking that Unicorn Overlord is just another JRPG, most likely very middle-of-the-road, with attractive art but shallow characters and a very basic story. As soon as you start to play it, however, it becom

Greetings, traveller. Have you heard the tale of the adventurer who spent a whole day levitating from balcony to balcony in the capital of Vernworth, looting chest after chest? Or of the one who fought off a legion of lizard-like saurians by flinging

FORMAT PS4 / PUB DOTEMU / DEV DOTEMU, LIZARD CUBE, GUARD CRUSH GAMES / RELEASED 2020 Given how the Streets Of Rage series started back in 1991, it’s quite the shock to see Axel, Blaze, and co thrown behind bars. Where once they used to call upon thei

MANAGING ART EDITOR PaRappa The Rapper features enough different animals clad in bespoke attire to make the marketing people at (insert major pet retailer here) rub their hands with glee. Dogs, cats, amphibians, and insects are catered for, with cost

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 8 MAY / PUB 11 BIT STUDIOS / DEV ODD METER / PLAYERS 1 Seeing a studio take risks always gives us a buzz, and Odd Meter’s mind-bending game Indika makes one hell of a first impression. It tells the tale of a nun who leaves her monoto

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 21 JUN / PUB BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT DEV FROMSOFTWARE / PLAYERS MULTI Let’s hope you’ve not grown rusty since you last battled your way to the Erdtree and reclaimed the Elden Ring. Shadow Of The Erdtree will put you to the te

Another PS Plus addition, another PSP entry in a series that no longer exists. In this case, we’re looking at the final game, which was quite the send off. But while it was impressive at the time – especially for PSP – it’s showing its age now. Two t

FORMAT PS5 / ETA 20 SEP / PUB PRIME MATTER DEV NIGHTDIVE STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1 Nightdive Studios’ swanky, ground-up remake of 1994’s genre-launching classic System Shock is finally heading to PlayStation – which should make you very excited if you have

Set the whole world laughing The rocky launch period for this live service shooter is over, and season one begins. The Joker has been added as a free character, and he’s well-designed and fun to play in combat. The problem? Everything else, from a he

Mention X-Men Origins: Wolverine to a cinephile and they’ll probably burst into tears. It’s a movie so terrible that it made the swine flu epidemic only the second-worst global disaster of 2009, and it honestly wasn’t even close. But mention X-Men Or

We’ve all seen top-down RPGs before, so you might wonder what’s new about Arranger. Well, to begin with, its developers are calling the game a ‘Role-Puzzling Adventure’, after the unique fusion of genres that defines it. While the RPG genre has alway

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 2024 / PUB SQUARE ENIX / DEV OUKA STUDIOS / PLAYERS 1 Once one of Square Enix’s core RPGs, this series has been all but on ice for 17 years. Mobile releases, spinoffs, and remakes are all that have been released since PS2’s Dawn

Great stories often centre on normal people given no choice but to step up and become heroes. They’re a frequent choice for narrative games like (just think of Telltale’s The Walking Dead or Life Is Strange) as we all think we know how we would react

What’s better than one superhero? Two superheroes! And even better than that? Getting to watch ’em beat the snot out of Nazis. So it goes with the Captain America and Black Panther game from Skydance New Media (helmed by Amy ‘Uncharted’ Hennig), now

Helldivers 2 has you squashing bugs with over-the-top weaponry with friends, all in the name of Super Earth. Clever multiplayer antics and Starship-Troopers-like humour keep you sticking around, but if you want a palate cleanser, here are some others

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA 28 MAY / PUB WARNER BROS GAMES / DEV PLAYER FIRST GAMES / PLAYERS ONLINE MULTIPLAYER Too often live service games explode onto the stage only to evaporate from the scene for good maybe a year later – but this platform fighter is

FC 24 might be the biggest football game going, but you’d never want a single match to last 90 minutes. The average NFL playbook takes pro players months to learn: Madden would lose three-quarters of its audience if such tactical options weren’t stre

When business simulators arrive on console, fans of the genre take a collective deep breath as the control schemes can be trickier than most to master. And when you begin playing Planet Zoo you might have to take just one more meditative moment, beca

Telekinesis and guns make a wonderful combo in VR. With one mapped to your left hand and the other to your right, you feel like a conductor of chaos as you blast your way through a rogue colonel’s mind to uncover secrets. Eye-tracking is wonderfully

FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA JULY 2024 / PUB GAMELOFT DEV GAMELOFT / PLAYERS 1-8 Quietly purring the engine, Gameloft has been making rather good arcade racers since 2004. Not heard of it during the past 20 years? That’s fair enough – often relegated to por