NEAR MISSES

Foamstars PS5 Splashing down on PS Plus just before deadline, Square’s gaudy multiplayer foam-’em-up doesn’t exactly give off the best of first impressions. We suspect some curious players may well have tapped out by the end of the tutorial, between its infuriating staccato structure and the nails-down-blackboard voiceover of host Bublo Espuma. An even more irritating MC welcomes you to the gaudy surrounds of Bath Vegas, while an attempt to limber up for the messy online matches via a few solo missions reveals the singleplayer component to be somewhat of an afterthought. Still, some surreal flourishes, a hint of self-aware humour and a few conceptually intriguing touches means we won’t write it off entirely just yet.

Chronique Des Silencieux PC In a quieter month we’d doubtless have found more time for this detective game, which certainly gets off to a more engaging start than the above. Set in the south of France in the 1970s, it sees a 15-year-old apprentice detective step off the train hoping to meet his uncle, only to wind up in a high-end brothel (whose employees are studying Pushkin) where the madam informs the boy that his unruly relative has been arrested for assault. It’s not quite as dark or dramatic as it sounds – the tone is relatively breezy – but it’s dense and challenging from the off. Your initial goal is to find discrepancies between evidence and interviewee testimony (recorded on a chunky portable tape deck), before making deductions. It’s a pleasantly tactile process, as you drag two pins to link contradictions with red string, and nouns and a connecting verb become keys in a lock to confirm a hypothesis. And with multiple characters and conversations to keep tabs on, locating those inconsistencies isn’t especially easy. Plenty, in other words, for seasoned sleuths to get their teeth into.