Pushing Buttons: Autumn's gaming gems

Games follow a seasonal rhythm, and perhaps because I have spent my career writing about them (take that, school careers advisor!), Absolutely nothing happens in winter, ever. Spring is often when the most interesting games appear – the slightly offbeat big releases or ambitious indie games that want to make a splash after the Christmas rush. In summer, E3 and Gamescom and all of the other showcases look ahead to the future. Autumn is truly the season of games, when the Fifas and Call of Dutys and Assassin's Creeds come out, and everything else either competes with them for attention, or scrambles to get away. The world's biggest games convention, Gamescom, marks the shift between summer and autumn.