Paul Renshaw

With the recent coming of Nier:Automata to Xbox Game Pass, the time would seem to be ripe to have a glance back through history to the first game. As luck would have it, 2020 just so happens to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Nier’s release. So, come with me to a world where monsters and robots cross paths, where modern ruins are everywhere, while primitive villages flourish in their shadow, and a father is desperate to find his daughter.

With many, many sharks to unlock, a variety of different cosmetic items to unlock and buy, and four large worlds to explore, there’s a lot to go at here. It has an appealing graphical style, with each shark having a distinct look and personality, and the enemies being a varied bunch. If I'm being brutally honest, Hungry Shark World on Xbox One isn't the deepest game you'll ever play, but there is a great deal of fun to be had and eating anything that moves never gets old.

Here for your reading pleasure, and to get the writing itch out of my brain for today, may I present: the Battlefield games in order of greatness.

I am a firm believer in the old adage that "you learn something new every day" and the thing I have learned today is the word "caprine". As equine is to horses, and ursine is to bear, so caprine is to goats. However, I didn't start writing this article to come across all Sesame Street, I wrote it to look back to one of the silliest games I've ever played - Goat Simulator.

Come with me to the seven seas as I cobble together a list of my favourite gaming marine creatures for National Dolphin Day - and yes, it includes the good old dolphin. Obviously.

Midnight Club 3 was very much on the arcade end of the scale, featuring stupidly fast action through the streets of three American cities.

Element Space on Xbox One is a game that apes two of the giants of sci-fi gaming - X-COM and Mass Effect - and instead of using this as inspiration and building on them, instead tries to ride two horses and ultimately ends up falling down the gap in the middle.

If you like the Surge 2, The Kraken on Xbox One is a short but fun expansion at a reasonable price.

The original version of Dark Souls 2 was released on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in March 2014, to a pretty good reception. However, the edition of the game that I'm looking back to here is the first of the series to make its debut on Microsoft’s shiny new Xbox One (as well as PS4, obviously) - Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin. A suitably doom-laden title for an oppressively difficult game, to be sure, including all of the previously available DLC as well as upgraded visuals, new online features if that was your bag and some slight tweaks to the storyline.

If you have any interest in how the Gears universe works, then you owe it to yourself to read Gears of War: Bloodlines from Titan Books.

With the world on lockdown, with increasingly stringent restrictions in place on our daily lives, video games may seem to be a strange answer to the world's problems, but there's no doubt that they will play a role. But at the risk of sounding like an old man, there's only so long in a day that I spend staring at a screen, at the risk of developing square eyes, as my mother used to say. Now, I am, and have always been as long as I can remember, a very keen reader. If only there was a way to combine my love of reading with my love of video games, and somehow shoehorn my love of writing into an article. What's that? There are novels based on popular gaming franchises? Hold my coat, I'm going in!

In my book - a book with lots of pictures and big, easy to understand words - there are two types of gamers on this planet. There are those who know, deep down in their hearts, that the Battlefield series of games are better than the juggernaut that is Call of Duty, and those that are wrong. However, that isn't to say that all Battlefield games are masterpieces, and the game I'm casting my mind back to now is one of those difficult titles that tried to move away from the established Battlefield formula, attempting something new. Now, change can be a good thing, and without innovation there is no evolution, but was EA's gamble on Battlefield Hardline a good one?

If you have a regular group of friends who can be gathered together, thrown on a couch and want to play games as a few drinks are taken in, then Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly on Xbox One is a great entry into the genre. If, however, you don't have that regular group who are always around, drinking your beer and eating your biscuits, then it’s most definitely a somewhat harder sell.

Visual pop-in and map confusion aside, this game is a great deal of fun, and with so many characters to choose from finding your ideal team has never been so challenging. If you have enjoyed the previous games in the series, then this is a no brainer, but if you haven't then Warriors Orochi 4 Ultimate could well be the stepping stone you need.

In my mind, the only thing better than sniping Nazi heads off is sniping zombie heads off. So a game like Zombie Army Trilogy that lets you combine the two? Amazing!