10. Onrush
Doomed multiplayer racer Onrush might well be the most tragically under-appreciated video game of 2018, a sand-blaster of a car-combat game in which racing is only the third or fourth priority behind driving fast, smashing up your rivals and looking damn good while doing it.
SEE ALSO: Read our review of Onrush here
With an incredibly moreish gameplay loop, spritely visuals and a pure focus on escapist fun over soulless simulation play, Onrush should’ve been a summer sleeper hit, yet despite positive reviews it was failed by non-existent marketing and sank like a stone at retail.
Thankfully the game’s a hoot whether you’re playing online or against bots, and considering that it’s available on both Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, you don’t really have much excuse to miss it.
9. Detroit: Become Human
David Cage’s new interactive drama boasted most of his usual excesses – namely a laughably heavy-handed, portentous treatment of delicate, socially relevant themes – but it was also an intoxicatingly stylised, impeccably acted and richly absorbing sci-fi tableau.
SEE ALSO: Hands on with Detroit: Become Human
Refining Cage’s cinematic, choice-based gameplay with the welcome addition of a flowchart defining your decisions – while indicating those left to be made – Detroit: Become Human is a compulsively replayable romp. Thanks to its outstanding style and the conviction with which its cast delivers the material, the melodramatic faults are forgiven with surprising ease.
It lifts liberally from better sci-fi literature and cinema for sure, but as an ambitious realisation of gaming’s potential for high-budget genre fare on par with other media, it’s an incredibly impressive effort.
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