Red Dead Redemption
Rockstar Games
★★★★★

ROCKSTAR GAMES'S previous release Grand Theft Auto 5 was a masterpiece that moved video-game storytelling, setting, writing and gameplay a step further.

The protagonists were brilliantly written. Motivations were understandable, the dialogue superb and tearing around as three of the most degenerate criminals in a fictionalised version of Los Angeles was incredible.

It was hard to see how Rockstar would ever surpass that. But with their latest, Red Dead Redemption II (RDR2), they’ve only gone and done it again.

In this Wild West action adventure game, you play as Arthur Morgan, a member of the Dutch van der Linde gang on the run from the law in 1899, a time when the West’s wild days are giving way to “civilisation.” After a robbery in the southern town of Blackwater goes bad, the gang flee northwards to the snowy Grizzly Mountains to wait for the heat to die down.

We know from the game’s 2010 predecessor — set after the events of RDR2 — that the gang eventually splits up and ends up killing each other. How this happens is delivered once again with intriguing dialogue from a cast of rogues whose wonderful 19th century lexicon I could listen to all day.

RDRII is a game to be savoured, with many of the game’s missions beginning with long horseback journeys across a beautiful landscape of rocky mountains, dusty deserts, dirty swamps, imposing forests and grassy plains. I’ve never seen mist in a game like this. Sunsets are incredible and the sky looks fantastic, especially when full of distant thunderous clouds.

This hyper-dynamic world exists without you — animals hunt and scurry away from each other and townsfolk go about their lives — but people you meet in it will occasionally rob or take advantage of you.

In the days since its October 26 release, I’ve put in around 20 hours but barely progressed through the story. The game’s realism, characters and setting takes immersion to the next level and all I want to do with my life now is play this game.

Assassin’s Cred: Odyssey
Ubisoft
★★★★

I’ve also been captaining a trireme in ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian war, fighting the Athenians and the Spartans and anyone who gets in the way of female mercenary Kasandra’s quest to unravel the mystery surrounding her family in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

Scrambling up the Parthenon, sneaking into Spartan military camps, engaging in naval combat with pirates in the Aegean and simply taking in ancient Greece more than makes up for the game’s wonky storytelling, childish script, tragic voice-acting and jarring plot holes.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the Assassin’s Creed games but this one is excellent. Odyssey is much more of an RPG experience than last year’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, meaning the game is deeper and longer than all of its predecessors. Had Ubisoft ironed out the series’ chronic story problems, then this could easily have been one of the best games of the year.

We Happy Few
Compulsion Games
★★

A first-person, story-driven, rogue-like survival and action-adventure game set in a dystopian version of 1960s Britain, We Happy Few touches on so many things I love.

In this alternative past, the Battle of Britain has been lost and the country occupied by the nazis. The people of Wellington Wells, the game’s setting, have struck a dreadful deal with them in order for them to leave. Whatever that agreement was, it's turned out to be so traumatic that the government mandates everyone to take the drug Joy, an addictive hallucinogenic which also causes memory loss and constant euphoria.

Unfortunately, playing We Happy Few became a real chore. The crafting and survival elements are tedious and hoofing it across a landscape in which everywhere and everyone looks the same is boring.

Most annoying of all is that the game is very buggy, with characters and vital mission objects occasionally disappearing and the game crashes often. I spent a hour creeping through a mansion trying to figure out why everyone in there was tripping on mushrooms only for the game to crash. I haven’t played it since.