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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a big, bold, and ridiculously beautiful entry to the series that finally delivers on the much-requested era of the Viking and the messy, political melting pot of England’s Dark Ages. It walks a fine line between historical tourism, top-shelf conspiracy theory, and veiled mysticism against the backdrop of a grounded and focused story. Fresh takes on several of the series’ established loot and quest systems help to keep the things fluid and nuanced, though progression could use refinement. There’s also a bigger than usual horde of bugs and blemishes to contend with from start to finish. But while it may not be the most stylish or polished, its rugged and brutal look at the muddy business of Scandanavian expansion is as memorable and dense as an Assassin’s Creed has ever been, and it makes great use of the new consoles.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is a deep-dive into a truly stunning realization of ancient Egypt, with a rich series of cultures, genuine characters, and more mission variety than any other game in the series. The combat is challenging and thoughtful, and while the loot system doesn’t match up to games like Borderlands, there are enough different weapon types and enough enemy variety to keep you swapping between weapons, catered to the situation. The RPG elements encourage challenges of their own, and even despite a handful of bugs, I desperately wanted to keep playing.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a resounding achievement in world building, environment, and engaging gameplay with occasional problems throughout. Its incredible recreation of ancient Greece is something I’ll want to go back to long after I’ve finished its main story, and its excellent systems mesh together in a way that’s hard to beat. While there are definite rough edges, Odyssey sets a new bar for Assassin’s Creed games and holds its own in the eternal debate over the best open-world roleplaying games ever.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered has finally swung on to PC, almost two years after its release on PlayStation 5 and just shy of four years since its original release. However, this isn’t quite the same game you might have played on either platform. This version contains some exclusive enhancements that make it the best way to play the titular webhead’s finest videogame outing to date.

I’ve been playing Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on my gaming PC for the past few weeks, making this the third time I’ve accompanied Spidey and Co on this particular quest to take down superhuman crime lord Mister Negative. Despite my familiarity with the game, it didn’t take long for me to become completely absorbed in the story and web-slinging once again, and it feels just as fun to play as it did when I first picked it up.
For those already familiar with Marvel’s Spider-Man, the game itself remains unchanged – it’s still one of the best superhero games you can play today. So if you’ve not played it before then rest assured you’re in for quite the treat.

You spend the majority of your time in the game swinging from building to building, high above the bustling streets of Manhattan, and it’s easily one of the most enjoyable parts of Marvel’s Spider-Man. Traversal can often feel like a chore in other open-world games, hence the prevalence of fast travel within the genre, but I’ve never found myself wanting to use it here, as zipping through the air is simply delightful. On more than one occasion, I find myself making a beeline for the tallest building I can find, leaping off its roof, and hurtling to the ground with great speed only to break my fall at the last second by firing out a web – few games capture high-speed motion anywhere near as effectively as Spider-Man.

What’s more surprising is that the rest of the mechanics in Marvel’s Spider-Man are almost – if not just as – fun. While the combat and stealth sections feel reminiscent of the Batman: Arkham games, they certainly aren’t carbon copies, which is largely thanks to Spidey having actual superpowers in addition to his unique set of gadgets. There’s a tremendous amount of depth here, and it always feels like there’s something new to master, even after taking on a gang of goons without taking damage and maintaining a 100+ combo.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to develop and perfect your combat skills between main story missions and the seemingly endless array of side activities that Marvel’s Spider-Man has to offer. While the former can be completed in around ten hours or so, if you’re anything like me then you’ll spend triple that finding collectibles, stopping petty crimes, sightseeing, or completing challenges across Manhattan. That’s not including the three chapters of The City That Never Sleeps DLC, which comes included as part of the Remastered package, netting you another 20-odd hours of quips and thwips.

While the majority of these side missions are satisfying to complete, they can become a touch repetitive after a bit due to the sheer amount of them – and it certainly doesn’t help that you’ll hear repeated voice lines a lot if you hope to finish them all. To be clear, the quality of writing means they’re merely immersion-breaking rather than annoying, but it all adds up.

Every character in Marvel’s Spider-Man feels well realised when it comes to dialogue or performance. Otto Octavious in particular receives arguably his best adaptation to date, and that’s no mean feat with Alfred Molina’s imposing performance in Spider-Man 2. It’s clear that Insomniac greatly respects and understands the source material that it’s drawing from, resulting in an absorbing story that had me excited during its explosive set pieces and quietly empathetic during its more mature moments.
This same degree of adoration is clearly present in the game’s visual presentation too, whether you turn on the exclusive PC enhancements or not. Diving into the settings menu, you’ll find a pretty robust set of graphics options. Your usual suspects are here including an unlocked frame rate, in addition to features such as AMD FSR, Nvidia DLSS, Nvidia DLAA, ultrawide gaming monitor support, and of course ray tracing.
The amount of modularity available here is fantastic, with a plethora of tweakable settings and tools like dynamic resolution scaling making it easy to find a great balance of quality and performance for your system. Just make sure you check out the Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered system requirements to keep performance expectations in check.
Marvel’s Spider-Man doesn’t push the boat, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do with such a high level of quality that it’s hard not admire its execution. Even after four years of potential challengers behind it, it remains one of the best superhero games that’s now even better thanks to the power of the PC.

In nearly every way, Hogwarts Legacy is the Harry Potter RPG I’ve always wanted to play. Its open-world adventure captures all the excitement and wonder of the Wizarding World with its memorable new characters, challenging and nuanced combat, and a wonderfully executed Hogwarts student fantasy that kept me glued to my controller for dozens of hours. It’s certainly weighed down by technical issues, a lackluster main story, and some poor enemy variety, but even those couldn’t come close to breaking its enchanting spell over me.

Despite its numerous tweaks Sniper Elite 5 ultimately feels like more of an incremental upgrade than a major revolution, keeping it a half-pace ahead of Sniper Elite 4 rather than taking a big goose-step forward for the series. With a more maneuverable main star, modifiable weapons, enhanced co-op, and Axis Invasion allowing the hunter to become the hunted, Sniper Elite 5 is still a satisfying and spectacularly gross way to shoot Nazis in their nether regions -- but it feels like the series needs to start aiming its sights a little higher and find ways to avoid repeating the same handful of objectives so often.

Farming Simulator 22 is a beefy farming game that brings realism at the expense of inexperienced player enjoyment. It’s a machine built on the agricultural industry that forgoes any story in favour of hard work. It’s a simulator game that understands the assignment but isn’t at all intuitive in how it allows players to begin new farms. With proper tutorials and allowances, this game would appeal to players beyond its dedicated niche. Once players are able to tackle the learning curve, they’ll discover enjoyment can be found through persistence.

More than anything, Cities: Skylines is about the simple joy of building. It’s a really impressive and often beautiful simulation, where an amazing number of virtual people go about their business across a huge swath of land. Getting in and creating something is easy, though mastering it will require extensive research on community wikis to understand why growth is stunted even when you address your citizens’ apparent concerns. Don’t expect exciting scenarios or random events, but do expect to be impressed by the scale and many moving parts of this city-builder.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the most fun I’ve had in CoD multiplayer in a good long while. It’s taken what was already a mechanically solid multiplayer game and improved on it with a weapon customization system that's almost limitless in its possibilities, and its new focus on bigger maps with tons of players has paid off bigtime. The giant Groundwar and Invasion maps have struck a fantastic balance between hectic and manageable, giving them a feeling of controlled chaos, and the cooperative Spec Ops missions are a treat to play through. That’s on top of the usual load of modes, and they all let the excellent, weighty gunplay shine. That said, performance issues on PC and even some across consoles put a damper on the fun, and at launch there are a lot more issues than I would have expected – including temporarily turning off that awesome weapon customization. But aside from those hiccups it’s been great, and the constant stream of unlocks are a really effective carrot on a stick that keep me interested moving forward.

Rich, rewarding, and highly replayable, Hitman 3 is a superb instalment of IO’s idiosyncratic but much-loved stealth series. The fundamentals haven’t changed since 2016 but its collection of outstanding maps makes for a refined, reliable, and robust curtain-closer to the current Hitman trilogy. Six maps may sound slim but each one is huge and designed to be played several times over – and even then it’s very unlikely you’ll have uncovered all of its creative and surprising assassination opportunities. There really isn’t a weak one in the bunch. This barcoded butcher has made a lot of appearances over the past 20 years, but Hitman 3 is definitely one of his best.