Set an entire 12 years before the first Gears of War game even kicks off, Gears Tactics has you commanding mankind’s last remaining military forces as they band together to drive back the Locust horde on the planet of Sera, one bloody turn at a time. You’re not just looking to outfight your opponent, you’re working to outthink them as well.

It’s cheesier than a Wisconsin cheddar tour, its coming off of the back of the massively panned Payback game and its going head to head with the current king of arcade racers, Forza Horizon 4. Need for Speed Heat certainly has its work cut out for it and then some. EA and Ghost Games’ semi-regular racing franchise has been in need of a substantial retune for many a year now and with a benchmark so low that it may just be a speed hump thanks to Payback, Heat has nowhere to go but up.

There’re still two weeks to go before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s release on October 25, but that’s never stopped a video game company from releasing a “launch” trailer before. And that’s precisely what Activision and Infinity Ward have done, with an explosive new launch trailer set to a mix of sorts of Metallica’s Enter Sandman.

Maaaaan, I’m excited for Control. Not only is it a new game from the folks who made Max Payne, Remedy, but it’s also a game that ticks off a lot of boxes of things I like. Those things? Weird, completely bonkers sci-fi stuff that doesn’t make sense on the surface of it – like Twin Peaks. Yeah, it’s got that. Great, third person gunplay with interesting abilities and upgrades? Yeah it has that too.

Every realm there ever was, every timeline that ever existed, hanging by a thread in a plot to rewrite reality itself. Who says fighting games can’t have awesome plots? For the last decade, Mortal Kombat has been proving that thought entirely wrong, rising to meet a narrative challenge and then decapitating it with one almight uppercut. Next week, the culmination …

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a marvellous game, that anybody with an interest in sprawling, epic RPGS should play – even if they’re not necessarily Assassin’s Creed fans. The game goes all in on the RPG aspects that have been introduced over the years. It’s starting to feel less and less like an AC game, less bogged down by that series’ lore. I’m entirely okay with that, because it’s resulted in a better game.

It’s just over a week until Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is out. For ages, I had zero interest in the game thanks to my playthrough of Assassin’s Creed Origins still fresh in my memory. I’m now thoroughly over that, because I like the direction that the game is taking the series.

The biggest release this week is undoubtedly Shadow of the tomb Raider, the third game in the rebooted tale of the ass-kicking archaeologist, Lara Croft. Here’s its launch trailer, which shows Lara’s jungle adventures as she attempts to stave off the apocalypse. It’s cinematic, thrilling stuff