After only 10 minutes, you realise something about Days Gone that will come to mind throughout the next 20 hours or so: it is as if Far Cry was set in a B-movie version of The Last of Us universe. If you're okay with that, you're going to have a heck of a ride. The latest title from Sony's SIE Bend Studio (responsible for the Syphon Filter series) is set in the beautiful, rural Pacific Northwest, after the spread of a virus that turns victims into the kind of absolutely-not-zombies we saw in Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later. Survivors either hole up together in paranoid communities or drift from one compound to the next, killing the infected for bounties. Lead protagonist Deacon St John is a rootless biker who takes on tasks for these fragile clans, blasting monsters and thieves while grieving his lost wife, Sarah, a botanist who arrived in the area to study plant life before the pandemic and ended up falling for our sullen hero.

PlayStation 4, Xbox One; Capcom Pitting you against everything from fire-breathing dinosaurs to fluffy bird-wyverns, this is destined to be one of 2018's best games Tue 30 Jan 2018 04.31 EST Last modified on Tue 30 Jan 2018 04.32 EST It's rare that a video game forges a connection with nature, but Monster Hunter World does so by returning players to a time when humans were a part of the food chain, casting you simultaneously as a hunter-gatherer and zoologist. Like a virtual Attenborough, the hunter heads out into stupendously gorgeous places, rich with natural life and untouched by human influence, to track and observe extraordinary creatures, gathering local plants, bugs and mushrooms to study their healing or offensive properties. Then, distinctly unlike Attenborough, they must battle to the death. Monster Hunter's foes range from fire-breathing dinosaurs to building-size elder dragons to fluffy bird-wyverns that look like a cross between a hamster and a bat. They are realised so convincingly, with such personality, that it's easy to believe that they could be real creatures despite their fantastical appearance. Each of them exists within a natural hierarchy, feeding on smaller monsters and fleeing when larger ones appear in the middle of a fight.