VGC

Not everyone will warm to the jarringly realistic designs of its animal protagonists, but there’s no denying that this is a remake with visual soul. [Hands-On Impressions]

007 First Light might just be the best James Bond game ever. The way IOI has translated the Bond fantasy into a 14-hour globetrotting epic is masterful. It's a game full of spectacle, humour, action, and romance. Everything James Bond should be. New Bond owners Amazon must ensure this franchise continues.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book powers along with the kind of breathless imagination typically associated with mainline Super Mario adventures, with new ideas and gameplay mechanics stretching across the margins of its pages. A brilliant, unique siderscroller.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is a love letter to not just Batman, but the history of Batman media. While it's a very easy game, that doesn't take the shine off of an experience that left me smiling constantly. Rocksteady's legacy is given the recognition it deserves, and proves there's still a huge demand for the Arkhamverse to rise again.

Forza Horizon 5 was already an exceptional racing game, but Forza Horizon 6 takes everything up a notch to deliver an even more engaging, entertaining and all-encompassing experience. There's an absolute wealth of racing, exploring and collecting to do here, and that's before the inevitable live-service updates start adding even more content. Few games are as essential as this.

Mixtape is a tribute to "the best years of your life." It combines authentic nostalgia for being young, with witty commentary on how life doesn't actually end just because you didn't have a Hollywood-style last night in town. The game's use of music is pitch perfect, and heavily contributes to Mixtape being one of the best coming-of-age games of the modern era.

Vampire Crawlers’ deck-building gameplay is incredibly smart, and the runs never feel like they stretch for too long. It takes every smart decision made in Vampire Survivors and translates it beautifully to a new style of gameplay. Even if you’re not usually a fan of roguelites or deck-builders, you need to try Vampire Crawlers.

Saros is a bold, confident realization of 30 years of Housemarque. It builds on the mystery and exceptional gameplay of Returnal with an excellent lead performance, and changes to the formula mean even more players will come to realize that Housemarque is PlayStation's secret weapon.

For now, Masters of Albion in early access represents a solid start from the wayward creator of some of the greatest games to have been born on these sceptered isles. It’s premature to be rolling out crack-addled 90 per cent scores in this day and age, but when the AI-pocalypse comes and gaming magazines make a comeback - as surely they will - I can see Masters of Albion being deserving of more than a few accolades. [Early Access Score = 60]

Like its predecessors, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is an entertaining collection of ridiculously random set-pieces, tied together in an easy-to-play life sim. It does start getting repetitive after a few weeks, but the exceptionally localised dialogue and the scope for heavy customisation makes it a game the entire family can enjoy regardless.