I think it's harder to impress people a second time around because repeated ideas aren't, by their very nature, fresh and exciting any more. But I feel confident now in saying that Slay the Spire 2, um, Slays better. It's prettier, the roster of characters is broader and more exciting, and there's multiplayer.

After being widely considered to have established an entire genre, Slay the Spire 2's devs were never likely to attempt to recreate the wheel with this sequel. Slay the Spire wasn't the first roguelike deckbuilder, but the modern ubiquity of the format owes much to the slow-burn popularity of MegaCrit's debut, so much so that a follow-up could have played things very safe. Instead, Slay the Spire 2 is as successful a sequel as its early access release could have allowed for: instantly familiar, but already bursting with new ideas.

While I wasn't aching for more bots capable of killing me faster than I can react, my understanding among Arc Raiders diehards is that this is exactly what they've been asking for. The current crop of Arc have become somewhat trivial for the folks who've been playing daily since October, so it tracks that a new bot that draws comparison to the dreaded Rocketeer would get their blood pumping again.

Arc Raiders is my favorite extraction shooter to date, surpassing its competition with incredible level design, a deep yet easy-to-navigate crafting system, stunning art direction, and an exciting suite of weaponry and gadgets to discover. Developer Embark Studios’ sophomore release also cultivates a surprisingly helpful community in a subgenre known for obfuscation and treachery. However, player-versus-player firefights still shine thanks to exceptional sound design: shields break like fireworks, characters yelp whenever a projectile hits them, and players can taunt or negotiate with others on the fly via proximity chat. Unpredictable player interactions and some of the most intelligent enemies I’ve seen in a shooter work in tandem to create a thrilling experience that rivals the market’s best multiplayer offerings.

Such encounters are at the heart of what has made Arc Raiders the biggest game of the autumn – a cultural phenomenon defined by its phenomenal culture. In this ruined world where everyone is out to smash and grab whatever they can, you will regularly witness organic displays of deescalation, armistice, and even jolly cooperation. Arc Raiders is not the first game to do this; displays of human decency have been a feature of survivalist shooters since DayZ. But it is the first in a long time to bring our better angels to the fore, and is perhaps the game where such behaviour is most prevalent.

I've found some wires and a volcanic rock. I have no idea how good these things are yet, but I've played enough Escape from Tarkov to know that living long enough to escape with anything is a win. 'Just enjoy yourself', they say, but I can't stop whipping the camera back and forth, trying to spot danger before it sees me. I lose the first vote to head back to Speranza via an extraction point, so I continue skulking behind my squad, muttering about lines of sight and being too loud.

"Don't shoot!" I called out to the raider from a nearby bush. "I'm coming out, but I mean you no harm." Clearly startled by my presence and reacting based on what was more than likely a combination of the Rocketeer hovering menacingly close and a history of earlier betrayals, the dusty raider pointed his weathered Ferro rifle my way. He'd already called for the elevator to bring him back to Speranza safe and sound, so it's no wonder that he'd be anxious. He was in danger of losing everything right at the finish line, just before those saferoom doors opened.

Ten hours into Arc Raiders, I felt betrayal's sharp sting for the first time. The round began with generosity. I met a fellow raider who had dropped me a rare shotgun as well as a damaged heat sink to upgrade my workbench. They asked nothing in return. It was one of many friendly encounters I've had roaming the surface of Arc Raiders' hostile maps, but I also felt my heart rate rise: when you die you lose everything you're carrying, so I knew I had to reach an extraction point quickly and quietly.

Although I can identify areas where Replaced falls a little short, I’m still walking away from the game impressed and satisfied. Its visuals are stunning, its story is risky and full of heart, and what its gameplay lacks in complexity, it makes up for in variety, never feeling complacent even despite occasional pacing issues. Replaced is a terrific experience, especially for the price and hopefully, it’s also just the beginning for Sad Cat Studios.

So, while I will get into more detail about all of that in a moment, if you will humour me for now, I want to talk about something which took me by surprise when I got to go hands-on with Replaced during a visit to publisher Thunderfall last month - the sheer amount of heart there is to be found in this dystopian and cruel world.

As part of our Invincible VS cover story, we got to spend exclusive hands-on time with Dupli-Kate, the latest addition to the roster. Arguably, the most unique fighter in the game, her ability to spawn clones of herself during battle makes her a particularly fearsome opponent.

If the rest of the game is as good as the small taste I’ve played, we’re potentially looking at one of the year’s best. We’ll have a review of the full game nearer to its release, but at this stage everything’s on track to give Forza Horizon 5 a run for its money and take over pole position as the best open-world racing game around.

But the heart wants what it wants, and it turns out that my heart wants a 1989 Nissan Silvia K's. Here is a slick urban delight, its body the colour of evening skies that announce the arrival of a summer storm. It's the car that I chose when the campaign started, and I quickly grew to love its air of 80s-tinged menace.

Pragmata, somehow, manages to take this concept to some sort of illogical conclusion. The core conceit of this game - outside of the weirdly beautiful story about loneliness in space, what it is to be human, and the perils of rampant, irresponsible usage of AI - is that you control a human and a robot, and must engage in action-packed skirmishes whilst shooting, dodging, and solving grid-based puzzles, all at the same time. A 'hacking grid' pops up when you aim at an enemy, and from there you must strafe, hit weak spots, jump or dodge attacks, and work out the most efficient way to disable robot foes in a melee of sparks, shells, and sabotage.

There’s something distinctly 2008 financial crash about Pragmata.Perhaps it could be down to protagonist Hugh, who simultaneously sounds like both Troy Baker and Nolan North, and wears armor reminiscent of Platinum’s Vanquish.Whatever it is, Pragmata feels like a remaster of an early Xbox 360 game that never existed – and that’s great.

Pragmata certainly starts strong, but it doesn't have quite enough to stay completely engaging all the way to the end credits. It's a highly-polished sci-fi game with fun combat and exploration, but its lackluster story and characters keep it from reaching its full potential. Still, it's exciting to have a completely original IP from Capcom, and while Pragmata doesn't live up to the high bar set by some of the studio's other efforts, it's a mostly worthwhile adventure.

Short and sweet, Pragmata is a snazzy late aughts throwback elevated by a terrific sense of feedback and momentum.

Pragmata is the kind of shooter you just don’t get anymore. It packs a lot into a relatively short runtime and makes the most of every single second. The combat is brilliant from start to finish and doubles down on the hacking gimmick to deliver fast, frantic, and tense fights that never get old.

Pragmata is nostalgia wrapped in a shiny new spacesuit with plenty of cool tricks up its pressurized sleeve. It's good to see Capcom returning to its quirky action beat, with an impressive host of weaponry, upgrades, combat hacks, and base-building as the sci-fi adventure moves through beautifully-conceptualized biomes. The visual and stylistic elements definitely give me deja-vu at times, and I could do without its heavy-handed themes battering me over the head, but beneath all that polished titanium sits a profound tale of humanity I'll not soon forget.

That’s what makes original IP Pragmata such an intriguing prospect. Everything we’ve played so far feels distinctly throwback, in a way that most other developers would attract scrutiny. But that’s OK: The idea of a simpler, linear third-person shooter, with a sprinkling of Sad Dad narrative, feels pretty compelling amid today’s abundance of online shooters and RPGs, especially with the Devil May Cry house at the controls.

Overall, this new experience with Pragmata solidified my impression that Capcom’s ambitious new game has firmly found its footing. They significantly amped up the difficulty, added more variety in how you can tackle enemies, and built an exciting new world to explore. It’s great fun, and I can’t wait to play the full game in April.

But Hunt isn’t like that, and nor is Marathon. In both games, you can think of your human rivals as the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation, or Mr X in Resident Evil 2 - a smart enemy that isn’t just looking for you but, more pertinently, listening as well. The presence of other players turns each Marathon map into one enormous alarm system - where even a swiftly resolved firefight with robots runs the risk of drawing the apex predator.

At first glance, Marathon may seem like a fundamentally solid game with a lot of potential, but one that simply feels too intimidating to invest in. But if players are willing to jump over the unnecessary hurdles in Marathon's opening hours, they'll likely discover that Marathon doesn't just live up to its potential, but it exceeds it, with the current version offering a host of replayable maps, an engaging progression system, and a core loop that should keep extraction shooter fans coming back time and time again.

With spellbinding combat and high-concept maps, Marathon is far more than a cool aesthetic draped over the bones of an extraction shooter. If Arc Raiders showed the world what an extraction shooter is, Marathon demonstrates, in unambiguous fashion, what extractions shooters are about. Whatever anomalous conditions coalesced to make Embark's game so oddly affable (at least in solos), they are entirely absent among the abandoned megastructures of Tau Ceti IV.

Marathon is a brilliant distillation of what makes an excellent extraction shooter, and a glimpse at where they could go next.

Like any good extraction shooter, Marathon is a game about the choice and consequences inherent within a run. Yet, it's more than just that. Bungie's excellent audio design and gunplay, paired with increasingly complicated level design borrowing from over a decade of expertise designing Destiny raids coalesce into something special.

It’s a shooter with a graceful visual presentation and the top-notch gunfeel that has come to be expected from a studio with a long-standing legacy in the genre. It’s also a shooter that is as alluring as it is unforgiving, pitting players against each other as they navigate hostile environments in pursuit of tantalizing loot, facing the ever-looming threat that death is always around the corner. The belligerent nature of Marathon reflects not only the past couple of years of Bungie but also the tumultuous landscape of other live service shooters that are also fighting for scraps of attention and a nomadic player base.

On the most basic level, Marathon’s core gameplay is best-in-class. Bungie has always excelled at gunplay, and the same rings true here. Each and every weapon currently in the game comes with a distinct feel and sound profile to accompany their unique characteristics.

I am currently intoxicated not by Marathon, then, so much as I'm intoxicated with its world, its art style. I don't think I'm trying to make progress in the campaign or come away with the biggest, newest weapon. Instead, I'm steadily trying to reverse-engineer the game's mood board.

Marathon captures the highest highs of extraction shooters, trims the finickiness that has kept casual players from engaging with the genre, and ties everything together with striking sci-fi flair. A firecracker wrapped in smoking silk, Bungie has created my favorite multiplayer shooter in years – and while I'll wait for Cryo Archive before putting a score down, I'm already staggered by the promise on Tau Ceti IV's surface.

Marathon feels different, even as it employs many of the same tricks as hero shooters. Each Shell has a distinctive appearance and abilities tailored toward a specific playstyle. Yet it openly acknowledges that the Shells are just vessels for the player to inhabit, which feels more honest about the relationship you'll have with this character in this type of shooter.

The cinematic may just not be a suitable storytelling device in this kind of game. Likewise, big chunks of text aren't something you can easily read while you've another player in your ear. I don't know what the solution is, but my overriding feeling while playing Bungie's multiplayer game is I need to be alone to enjoy it, and that can't be the result they're hoping for.

Another argument for Olden Era is that there aren't many directly comparable games, even though it's been 10 years since the last proper HOMM – Songs of Conquest, I guess? Heroes of Might and Magic is very much its own style. I'd say Unfrozen are off to a good start with this comeback project.

The first season of post-launch content for Battlefield 6 delivered two entire free-to-play experiences atop the expected additions in an effort to grow the player base. Battlefield Studios isn’t slowing down any time soon, having recently unveiled the roadmap for Season 2, complete with more maps, more weapons, more limited-time modes, and a returning vehicle that’ll either elicit excitement or fear, depending on what kind of player you are. Last week, I was invited to go hands-on with the first wave of content for Battlefield 6 – Season 2, and after two hours battling through the new map and fruitlessly trying to avoid a new/old aerial menace, it looks like I’ll be adding even more time to my 170+ hours spent with the online shooter already.

All hail the Battlefools! They fan out efficiently from spawn and are instantly massacred in a hail of rifle fire and grenades. Arguments erupt in the chat. Who's watching the flanks? Were you watching the flanks? I'm not supposed to watch flanks, I'm an engineer - my two defining passions are blowing tanks up and fixing them, a clash of loyalties that routinely gets me run over.

After spending a week with Battlefield 6's multiplayer and campaign, this latest entry proves that Battlefield is back and better than ever. Battlefield 6 multiplayer is a machine that generates water-cooler moments. No matter the map or the mode, every Battlefield 6 match is absolute chaos in the best way. As matches progress, vehicles are obliterated and buildings are reduced to rubble.

At its best, Battlefield 6 is everything you could ask for from a Battlefield game. Intense, close-quarters firefights transition into long-range skirmishes as control points change hands and the action moves from the tight confines of half-destroyed buildings to open stretches of land. As fighter jets and helicopters swoop overhead, a medic pulls out a defibrillator and rushes into a hail of bullets to revive a squadmate who was just blown up trying to destroy a tank with a handful of C4. Elsewhere, a sniper taking residence in a high-rise building is snuffed out by a well-placed RPG, blowing a hole in their nest until the entire building eventually collapses in on itself.

When it's firing on all cylinders, jets screaming overhead, rockets whizzing past your ear, building facades sloughing off their foundations before your eyes, Battlefield 6 is tremendous – undoubtedly the closest EA has got to the series' heyday in a decade. Yet hidden beneath this confident surface is a series still wrestling with its identity. There's a nervous desire to please everyone in Battlefield 6, visible in its oddly heavy catering to small and midsize maps and modes, the weird compromise between fixed classes and free weapon selection, and the peculiar sight of camo-clad soldiers who can knee-slide into battle and perform a 180 spin at the touch of a button. In all of this and more, you can feel Call of Duty breathing down Battlefield's neck.

Fortunately, the veteran task force hit the ground running with Battlefield 6, reintroducing the franchise’s tried-and-true traditions, such as an operator-less role system, a manageable 64-player limit, and an original single-player campaign. Most maps are dazzling sandboxes just waiting to be leveled, firearms feel impactful with detectable recoil patterns, and a bevy of demanding progression challenges keep the grind loop fresh. But like in most hard-fought victories, not every wartime decision yields a winning result. Battlefield 6 pushes the limits of cinematic sensory overload to great effect, even in multiplayer.

Black Ops 7's multiplayer offers some iterative changes and one decent new mode, but these modest improvements cannot hide an experience that feels increasingly lost at sea.

I hope it's clear how much I love Heart of the Machine. It might be peak Arcen, and the game that tells a whole new audience what that means. How complex doesn't have to mean tedious or demanding, and "strategy game" can mean not work or contest, but play.

For a game where much of the entertainment value comes from watching semi-autonomous avatars live out their semi-independent lives, Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a surprisingly addictive experience. While the repetition in the writing really underscores just how much of the game’s substance comes from you personally, the offbeat humour leads to some truly hilarious moments, and the scope for creativity makes the world a canvas limited only by your imagination – and your Miis’ pseudo-free will.

Tomodachi is back, and it’s never been better. While the character creation is so nearly perfect, Living the Dream is a welcome trip down memory lane for fans of the original. It builds upon everything that made the 3DS original so special, creating an upgraded adventure that’s filled with even more odd interactions, silly situations, and laugh-out-loud lines that will have you coming back to view this microcosm of the weird and wonderful for countless hours to come.

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.

GamesRadar+ Verdict Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is a worthy sequel that I can't put down. It's weird, surreal, and a great evolution for Nintendo's iconic social simulator - even if it feels repetitive at times.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream provides you with the constant feeling of seeing something really funny happen, but not being able to tell anyone about it. Not only has Nintendo removed the ability to share Miis via QR codes, but the developer also blocks players from sharing screenshots and videos you take from the game using the native Switch capture functionality. This is a game that is built on its oddball moments, and not having an official way to share those is massively shortsighted.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but its wackiness, creative design, and silly gameplay still make this adventure stand out against the cozy competition.

On paper, Tomodachi Life is something like Animal Crossing mixed with The Sims, perhaps with a bit of Tamagotchi thrown in. But that doesn't really convey just how wonderfully oddball the series is. And after blasting through Living the Dream's demo on Switch last night, I'm ready for more of its weird.

It’s this enjoyment my 7-year-old has had playing the game with me that makes me think Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream could be an even bigger hit than the 3DS game if Nintendo markets it properly.You’ll occasionally be asked questions about various topics, which will then be brought up during conversations.This is the most she’s been excited about any game we’ve had in the house so far – she sits in eager anticipation every time she gives a Mii a new food to see if they like it, she bursts out laughing every time a weird cutscene plays out, and she loves picking clothes for each character.

Final Thoughts If I’m to look at Mouse’s individual parts, all pinned up on my corkboard, I’d see more than a fair share of grizzly crime scenes of padded length, one-note gunplay, and wonky progression. But sometimes you need to step back and take in the full picture for the truth to reveal itself. While you can’t outright ignore the valid criticisms, the outstandingly charming rubber hose style, awesome movement mechanics, and campy noir tale lift enough of the weight to make Mouse a case worth taking on.

Part-chaotic retro shooter, part-stylish cartoon noir, Mouse P.I. for Hire goes beyond its stellar artistry to land an invigorating, imaginative hard-boiled romp.

MOUSE: P.I. For Hire absolutely oozes charm in its narrative and gameplay, even if it gets caught in a mousetrap or two of the FPS genre.

I’m surprised to tell you that Mouse: PI For Hire is the best shooter I’ve played in ages. Not because I’m especially down on rubberhose animation, or rodents, or monochrome Unity engine environments, but because I hugely underestimated how well those disparate elements could be combined. This is a luxurious, maximalist game that commits equally hard to making you feel like a detective solving a case as it does making you feel like a gun-toting hero.

With its black-and-white rubber hose animation, lively jazz soundtrack, and gripping detective noir setting, Mouse: P.I. For Hire serves up a refreshing 1930s-inspired experience in the seedy city of Mouseburg – a name that makes perfect sense given its population of anthropomorphic mice. Here, players control a gumshoe named Jack Pepper (voiced by Troy Baker), as he unravels an increasingly complex missing persons case sporting all the usual suspects from crooked cops and slippery politicians to charming socialites and tenacious reporters. This tale's smart, humorous writing and enigmatic characters play into hardboiled fiction cliches in amusing ways that kept me hooked throughout the dozen or so hours it took to reach its high-stakes finale.

All that, though, you could probably tell for yourself just by watching the trailer. The real surprise, for me at least, is how Mouse P.I. plays. Yes, (in the demo at least) it's a largely linear first-person shooter with light puzzle elements, but it's built around an appealingly elastic sense of momentum.

Arguably, the most anticipated of the bunch over the last few years has been Mouse: P.I. For Hire, the noir first-person shooter that looks like a hyper-violent version of The Mickey Mouse Club. With its April release fast approaching, I was recently invited to go hands-on with the black and white boomer shooter, spending around 30 minutes playing through one of the game’s early levels. With it being such a small slice of the overall experience, there are plenty of questions left unanswered, but my brief time spent causing cartoon carnage did show some promise.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War is dull, uninspired, and devoid of the series' characteristic wit.