I'm somebody who has never really jumped on the bandwagon and waved the flag in rapturous praise of From. They're undoubtedly one of the most adored developers in the biz today, but while I've certainly enjoyed the likes of Demon's Souls OG, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, I've never really held them in the same esteemed regard that your average gaming enthusiast does.

That's all changed with Sekiro. I get it now. I get why people love From and go stir crazy whenever a new game by them is announced. Sekiro is a certified masterpiece. It's From's best game. Their magnum opus. It has maybe the best combat I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing in a video game. The boss battles are an exhilarating thrill. It's a punishing game, but rarely unfair, and the mechanics are so tight that you always aspire to improve and be better whenever you take a beating. Deflecting feels fantastic. Pulling off a Mikiri counter is pure dopamine. Going on the offensive and smacking an enemy around so much that you wear them down and remove all their health with a single deathblow is rewarding as fuck. It just feels so fabulous to play.

I also appreciate that Sekiro has a more conventional storytelling approach than the usual From fare. If there's one thing I can't stand about the likes of Bloodborne and Elden Ring, it's the cryptic nonsense that passes as a 'plot'. No, I'm not going to watch Youtube videos to study up on the lore. I'm not going to read item descriptions in order to get a clearer idea of what's going on in your game. Sekiro does away with that for the most part. It's hardly Grim Fandango-levels of narrative intrigue, but it's a heck of a lot more engaging than what has come before and since. You play as someone not scrambled together in a character creator screen. He has a personality. He actually talks and interacts with other characters. He's an honourable gentleman and it feels good when he perseveres and takes down a big baddie! More of this please From!

It's a looker too. Graphical fidelity has never been From's forte, but Sekiro has plenty of occasions where one is tempted to take a breather and soak in all the pretty scenery. After Elden Ring, I was surprised by how much better this is visually, despite coming out a few years prior.

So why did it take me so long to play this winning showcase of the medium? Because for some reason it never got a discount in the UK. It's actually quite rare these days, and extremely hard to obtain a brand new copy. I had to buy the game used on eBay, and it wasn't cheap. But bought it I have, and played it to completion I did, and now it's going straight into my top 50 favourites list. RIP in peace whichever game gets kicked out of its slot as a result. And the next time a From game is announced to a roaring crowd, I'll be right there with them, whooping and hollering.

Unless their next game is a sequel to The Adventures of Cookie & Cream.

This Kickstarter success story deserves every bit of the support and goodwill it garnered during the crowdfunding stage of its development. The pixel art, combined with a vivid colour scheme and a wealth of exotic locations brimming with detail, is impossible not to gawp at. The frantic nature of its slash-and-dash combat offers plenty of tense encounters that rely on quick reflexes, ability management and a little bit of luck (the boss battles in particular are breathless). And the music. My god the music. As a big fan of Vangelis, let me just say that Disasterpeace's atmospheric, scene-setting electronic score is highly reminiscent of the Greek virtuoso's seminal Blade Runner soundtrack, in the best way possible. It's a score so stupefyingly effective at times that it threatens to overshadow the rest of the game, and when the game looks and plays as good as this, that's quite an achievement.

Furi is bastard hard, but in the best way possible, and though I did get my ass handed to me on a frequent basis, there's an immense satisfaction in learning from your previous encounter and getting that little bit better with each attempt, until you're adept enough to bask in the glory of another fallen enemy. The game has little else to offer other than some lengthy, epic-scale boss battles, but the fast-paced and unrelenting mixture of melee-combat and bullet-hell provides such a thrill that it matters little.

Purely from a gameplay standpoint, Mankind Divided makes the necessary strides from Human Revolution in terms of building upon its established stealth mechanics and presenting more options to the player in how to tackle objectives. I like that, and this is a great game to play. It terms of its story however, it's disarmingly small in scale. I miss the grandeur of Human Revolution's narrative. That game felt like it took you on an odyssey through a dark, dystopian world. Mankind Divided by comparison feels like an ambitious DLC expansion.