SNIPER ELITE 4

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XO sniperelite4.com/en Yes, it’s the enduring series all about shooting Nazis in sensitive areas and then watching the carnage in X-ray slow motion. This instalment doesn’t expand the template much, but it applies polish in all the right areas.

NIER: AUTOMATA

$99.95 | PC, PS4 niergame.com A surefire cult hit in the making, Nier: Automata is an action RPG, but it’s an action RPG which feels like Twin Peaks set in a Hideo Kojima game. It’s also surprisingly tender, for a game about slicing robots up to death.

LAWBREAKERS

$54.95 | PC, PS4 lawbreakers.nexon.net LawBreakers, at the time of writing, is a bit of a disaster: its playerbase continues to dwindle, and no amount of updates have managed to save it yet. But it’s an impeccably designed competitive FPS that we hope Cliffy B can salvage.

THE EVIL WITHIN 2

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XO theevilwithin2.bethesda.net Departing from the original game’s old school Resident Evil template, The Evil Within 2 experiments with survival horror in terms of style, but it’s fairly conservative in terms of its scares. An awesome action game and a decent horror game.

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XO shadowofwar.com/ Who needs friends when you have enemies like this? Go toe-to-toe with an Uruk or orc and make sure you knock him to the ground, or he’ll be back stronger and harder, with a vendetta. It’s a glorious system, enormously improved over Shadow of Mordor, and we’re shocked no-one else has copied it.

SONIC MANIA

$26.95 | PC, PS4, XO, Switch | www.sega.com An essential Sonic game, but how? Simple: it’s been made by Sonic’s biggest fan, a chap called Christian Whitehead. He’s repackaged and remixed Sonic 2 and 3 (the best 2D Sonics) to make something new that’s guaranteed to stoke your nostalgia gland.