You know what would have sucked? Fighting in a medieval battle. Being rounded up by a bunch of douchey lords, taking up the family sword, charging across a muddy field to stab some other poor bastards who didn’t do anything to you and probably copping an axe to the bonce for your troubles. And hell, even if you did survive, the treatment for PTSD in medieval times was either leeches on your ballbag or being burnt at the stake.

Nowhere has this grim mixture of blood and mud been captured better than Chivalry 2, a game that takes one of the ugliest settings imaginable and weaves it into pure gold.

Chivalry 2 puts you in the dung-caked boots of a fighter in various fictitious medieval conflicts. You can play as knights, vanguard, footmen or archers and switch between the classes easily, unlocking new weapons along the way. Matches can feature up to 64 players in modes as vanilla as team deathmatch or as exciting as multi-part sieges where you’re either attacking or defending a series of objectives.

The bulk of the action is melee combat, with weapons feeling weighty and moving in a semi-realistic fashion. This means the fighting, while simple to pick up, actually contains a lot of depth and nuance. You’ll need to get good at blocking, parrying and knowing when to swing your weapon. That latter point is super important, because you can just as easily damage or kill your teammates when in the middle of a crush.

Honestly, it’s bloody exhilarating. Fights are epic, gore-spattered spectacles that somehow manage that perfect video game alchemy where you’ll have a good time even if you’re losing! It’s quite a trick that Torn Banner Studios have pulled off here and one that feels endlessly enjoyable to play.

Online only (apart from a tutorial and very limited offline practice mode) games are always a risk in this day and age, but Chivalry 2 appears to have the chops to go the distance. In its current incarnation, it’s an absurd amount of fun, replete with numerous modes and hours of gaming, and it’s hard to say “nay” to a game that allows you to pick up a foe’s severed head and fang it at his mates.

Chivalry 2 is a unique offering and delivers time and time again on its promise of the most authentic medieval combat simulation, without having to own a time machine.

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The Warhammer 40K universe is one of the most detailed, lore dense and unique settings imaginable. Originally conceived in the 1980s as a tabletop game, it has since branched out into books, comics, audio plays, animations and – most relevant for this yarn – video games.

Its irresistibly weird mix of over-the-top, operatic world building, forever wars, and social commentary seem custom designed for a great video game, yet time and time again, they don’t quite work. This latest title, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a perfect example of the problem, although that’s not to say that it’s without charm.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is set on the planet Necromunda, a dystopian nightmare hellscape that brims with industry, violence and untampered population growth. Into this mix, the player character is thrust, an aloof mercenary who just wants to make some dosh, but before long is exposed to a sprawling gang war and a larger conspiracy.

The plot is pretty standard, and not told in a particularly exciting way, but Hired Gun succeeds in one major fashion: superb, fast-paced, engaging shooting. Slick as a greasy piglet, you’ll wall run to your objective, blow the heads off nearby enemies, grapple-hook to safety and send your cybernetically enhanced mastiff down to polish off the stragglers. This is frenetic, exciting stuff, a bit like 2016’s Doom reboot but with a 40K setting to add extra levels of grime and casual nihilism. When Hired Gun works it works a treat.

The problem? It doesn’t work often enough. Graphical glitches, framerate drops, audio fuckery and even the odd hard crash beset this scrappy title, doing a lot of damage to your good will. And as a result, other ordinarily forgivable flaws like lackluster enemy AI and wonky voice acting become all the more apparent. Which is sad, because honestly, exploring these expansive, fascinating 40K locations, drinking in the atmosphere and just straight up existing in this bull goose loony universe is a treat.

So, here’s our suggestion: don’t buy Necromunda: Hired Gun quite yet. Unless you’re a 40K obsessive, you’re likely to run into problems. Wait a month or two, see if these launch issues are patched out and then revisit the concept. Because underneath the jank, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a grimdark and gory gem that just needs a bit more polishing for it to truly shine.

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I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, there’s just something deeply satisfying about scavenging for scrap in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic society. The Fallout games know this, The Last of Us duology do too. Hell, any number of open world titles like Horizon Zero Dawn could tell you the same. Oh, and let us not forget Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden! Crikey, even your humble word janitor has had a crack at exploring the concept in a literary context.

Biomutant, from small indie development team Experiment 101, have added fresh wrinkles to the formula, some of which work really well, but the game as a whole has serious caveats.

Biomutant is an open world RPG adventure set in a post apocalypse where humanity has long since popped its clogs. The world now teems with adorable rodent-looking things that lob about in cute outfits and batter the shit out of one another using furry martial arts.

Your user-generated character is on a mission to save or destroy the Tree of Life, unite or exterminate multiple mammalian tribes and fight four enormous monsters.

All sounds pretty promising, right? Add to that gorgeous and unique visual design, staggering enemy variety and evocative music and it would seem the entire package is a belter.

This impression won’t last long, however. Alas, Biomutant makes a lot of dud choices. They were made, almost certainly, for budgetary reasons, which is understandable, but it doesn’t make them any easier to deal with.

First up, there’s no voice acting to speak of. All the characters speak in gibberish and a plummy Pom narrator – who sounds like a mixture of bargain basement Stephen Fry by way of a slumming David Attenborough – translates for you. Aside from the fact that the intrusive narrator is a tonal mismatch for what’s happening on screen, this means you’re always kept at arm’s length. You’re being told a story rather than living through it and it’s a real immersion-killer.

Add to this insanely repetitive mission design, endlessly reused assets and floaty combat, and you’ve got an overall package that fails more than it succeeds. Despite this, however, those who enjoy post-apocalyptic RPGs will find stuff to like. The open world is enormous and frequently hauntingly quiet, offering ruins to explore, scrap to scavenge and loot to equip or break down.

Plus, the crafting system is genuinely excellent, once you get your head around it, offering a huge number of weapon and armour options. It’s a pity that this variety doesn’t carry over to missions or story beats.

As it stands right now, Biomutant is a bit of a mess. Aside from the problems listed above, the PS4/PS5 version crashes with bewildering regularity. The script is tepid, the quest design unimaginative and the sense of repetition acute. And yet for all of that, those of you who enjoy scavenging for scrap in ruined worlds may find nuggets of gold in this overly ambitious pile of debris.

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Nier: Automata was one of the best games of 2017. A genre-straddling, fourth wall breaking, bullgoose loony trek through a robotic dreamscape that was at turns funny, sad, thought-provoking and jaw-droppingly odd. Polished gameplay, memorable locations, quality writing and unforgettable characters combined to create something truly unique.

Except, that’s not entirely true. See, Automata’s “uniqueness” was more due to the fact that it was the next evolution of an equally nuts – although in different ways – title from the same director, Yoko Taro, called Nier (or Nier Gestalt in some territories), which dropped in 2010.

The game did not do spectacularly, but it did manage to gather a loyal cult following, which helped Automata’s release no end. So, the good people at Cavia and Square Enix have dusted off Nier, prettied it up, added some new gear and released it as Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… so, uh, we’re just going to call it Nier Replicant.

Nier Replicant is the story of a brother and sister. The sister is Yonah, the brother is the player-named main character. In the beginning, you’ll look for a cure for Yonah’s disease, go on a bunch of fetch quests, fight shadowy ghosts called Shades and get into various shenanigans. Typical video game gear.

Then the game takes a hard left turn, and it never quite stops turning. Automata did similar things, but Replicant’s wild narrative shifts are no less engaging just because they’re expected. This is genuinely surprising, subversive stuff (that we will absolutely not spoil), and for fans of narratives that explore lofty concepts, and take risks, this can be thrilling.

That said, the gameplay is a little less accomplished than Automata. Even upgraded from 2010 standards, there are clunky elements here and for newbies to the series, Automata is definitely the superior option, mechanically speaking.

However, if you were one of the people who stumbled across Automata and were blown away by its wild twists and turns, you might want to give Replicant a spin. It’s a surreal, engaging, surprisingly emotional yarn that packs a wallop, even when some of its technical shortcomings make it feel a little dated.

Not quite the equal of Automata, it’s still something of a Nier masterpiece.

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