There Is No Light's combat follows a very simple action-RPG formula that revolves around dodging, chaining basic attacks to generate rage and then unleashing a powerful charged attack. Simple does not mean bad, however, as There Is No Light's combat is both brutally fast-paced and full of little tricks for you to master.

Enemies in There Is No Light have three different types of attacks, each designated with a colorful marker above their head. Red attacks are generally weak and can be interrupted by your basic strikes. Yellow attacks are powerful and can only be interrupted by charged attacks, while White attacks cannot be stopped at all and thus need to be dodged.

This makes it so fighting enemies, even the most basic ones, requires a fair bit of precision since you can't just mash buttons and hope for the best - you will eat multiple Yellow attacks in a row and fall over dead within seconds. Instead you need to get into a bit of a rhythm that changes with each enemy type. You'll usually need to dive in, do some basic attacks to build up your rage, dodge what you can't counter, and then retaliate by first stunning the enemy with a charged attack before going for the throat.

It's a simple idea in theory, but when you're fighting multiple mobile monsters that each have numerous attacks, trying to keep track of everything gets a bit tricky. Yet when you do manage to do everything correctly and dance through a battle without taking even a single scratch, it genuinely feels amazing!

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. Released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh in 2001,[10] it is the second game in the Age of Empires series. The Age of Kings is set in the Middle Ages and contains 13 playable civilizations. Players aim to gather resources, which they use to build towns, create armies, and defeat their enemies. There are 5 historically based campaigns, which conscript the player to specialized and story-backed conditions, and 3 additional single-player game modes; multiplayer is also supported.

More often than not, Ancestors Legacy showed me a good time watching my berserkers, Teutonic knights, and Slavic tribesmen hack their way through forests, marshes, and the occasional open field. The weakness in the core infantry combat, which tilts a bit too much away from quick, tactical thinking and into correctly guessing how the enemy line will be arranged, was the main issue that kept me from really coming to love it. Historical inaccuracies aside, though, it scratched my itch for a traditional RTS in a way that will probably keep me coming back.

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 blows off a heck of a lot of heads, but never managed to blow my mind. Its long range sniper shots feel genuinely satisfying to pull off, but the enemy AI is so dimwitted it almost seems cruel to kill them. With an upgrade system that’s largely skippable and mostly uninspired mission challenges, Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 is a competent sniper sim that lacks the edge required to be a real sharpshooter.

Spellforce 3: Reforced is a good-looking game on PS5 though. The character models are detailed, and the world maintains a compelling and believable atmosphere. The majority of the voice-acting is on point, which makes the narrative work all the better. If anything, the biggest barrier to entry will likely be learning the controls. RTS games on a controller often feel fiddly, and this is no exception. Once you’re passed that though, it’s a well-made adventure that’s unlike anything else you can play on console.

Disciples: Liberation struggles against itself. It contains a rich world and high-stakes story that are coupled with fun and varied tactical combat, but this RPG feels destined for cult status, especially among those who didn't know they wanted this particular blend of genres. Despite its epic length, it’s a game that feels like the start of something bigger, and I had enough fun that I'd at least try a sequel. Disciples: Liberation has a lot of interesting ideas going on that could be refined into something great – if its rampant bugs can be smoothed out and its extraneous systems balanced.

The quest for the ultimate fantasy strategy game will continue for a while longer, as Age of Wonders III only partially fits the bill. Still, it's a fairly successful return for a game series and style that seemed undeservedly buried. I have no doubt that the strength of the tactical combat will help find a strong niche, but for me, that just makes the relative weakness of the strategic side of gameplay all the more disappointing.

It's difficult to ever feel completely satisfied with a play session of Skyrim. There's always one more pressing quest, one more unexplored tract of land, one more skill to increase, one more butterfly to catch. It's a mesmerizing game that draws you into an finely crafted fictional space packed with content that consistently surprises. The changes made since Oblivion are many, and result in a more focused and sensible style of play, where the effects of every decision are easily seen. Featuring the same kind of thrilling freedom of choice The Elder Scrolls series is known for along with beautiful visuals and a stirring soundtrack, playing Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced.

Play it on the Hard difficulty and you're playing as developer CI intended, the regenerating health and generous sniper assists on Normal turned off to give you a proper sniping experience. However, it can be brutally punishing in a lot of cases, and those that want the feeling of being a black-ops badass without constant retries might enjoy the lower difficult. Similarly, for those that want more of a challenge, there's an even higher difficulty, which strips out the skill-system and many of the assists. That each difficulty has its own features has the bizarre and not wholly unwelcome effect of making each setting having its own slightly different texture in play.

Assassin’s Creed Unity is a game of impossible peaks and disappointing valleys. Its highs of movement, customization options, and just the city of Paris itself pierce the sky like the spire of Notre Dame. On a purely technical level, Unity is a marvel to walk through and admire. But at the same time, a lot of my journey through the French Revolution felt as cold and heartless as the darkest depths of the catacombs. I was never given a real reason to care about new Assassin Arno, or the events that transpired. Instead, I had to find my own fun throughout my 30 hours in Unity, which was generally easy to do in its large sandbox assassination scenarios. However, it’s a bit disappointing to see how few of the long-standing problems with the series have been solved by the upgrade to the new generation of gaming hardware.

It's like a nightmare. You're trapped in LA and the sun never shines and you’re living out of your car and everyone keeps talking to you about driving techniques. When they’re not talking to you in person, they’re calling you all the time. It’s hell. This is the setting for the first exclusively new-gen Need for Speed, which launched on consoles in November last year. After relatively unimpressed reactions, its developer Ghost Games has used the interim to give its PC port a tune up.

There's now manual transmissions, additional steering wheel support, an unlocked framerate, 4K resolution, and new cars and customizables courtesy of both the Icons and Legends packs.There’s a strangely heavy story component to this new Need For Speed. You play what is essentially a voiceless camera who hovers around a bunch of nocturnal street racing enthusiasts as they ignore the fact you never speak, driving from diners to bars drinking—as everyone is keen to point out—coffee. Your buddies are all depicted by good-looking people in live-action cutscenes, who talk in a vaguely convincing street racing lingo. Your hero, this floating camera, is somehow able to operate an automobile, and because your crew acknowledges you'll never know human emotions like love and joy, they instead race you for ‘street rep’. The more you win, the higher your rep, the more cars you can buy.