The soundtrack and visuals are beyond reproach, and the mostly fun skate gameplay sees Bomb Rush Cyberfunk grappling with repetition and really annoying cops.

When the moving light sources break through the darkness, you'll get drawn into a fascinating puzzle world filled with abstract brain teasers. But compared to the likes of Braid it lacks good storytelling.

A tense as well as challenging online shooter that manages to strike a balance between simulation and fast paced action.

Technically clean and for the most part beautiful to look at, this re-imagining of a classic is driven by its story but suffers from the once-pioneering principles of the legendary original.

Focus instead of expanding: Unlike many other studios, developer Techland takes a different approach and presents Dying Light: The Beast, a game that knows what it's good at. There's no time for boredom or slow spells in this compact game...But apparently, there's no time for any special innovations either. A sequel, not a dimensional leap. On the other hand, it's just way too much fun to explore the world like a monkey climbing a tree and mauling zombies. It should get boring, but there are too many buttons being pressed for that.

Small engines, big fun: Once you started it is hard to put the Vita down. Head-to-head online duels are sorely missed, though.

The basic principle as well as the presentation are still cool, but the newfound focus on action, special abilities and the randomized “runs” harms the motivation.

Yes, I think they could have thought of a better name. But then it doesn't really matter, because at its core you'll get a charming homage to a plethora of immortal videogame compositions.

A charming, but monotonous shooter bar any noteworthy elements.

A thrillingly told mystery thriller with strong characters, difficult themes, beautiful graphics and fine sound, which is not exactly challenging in terms of gameplay, but tops the predecessor in almost every respect.

Well executed tactical battles oozing loads of Warhammer atmosphere. It lacks variety though, while the presentation also could be optimized.

Dune Awakening is a magnificent adaptation of the sci-fi original: thanks to the attention to detail and atmosphere, surviving on Arrakis becomes a true delight, only marred by minor bugs and rubberbanding.

Observer starts out as a quirky cyberpunk thriller that tries to play a lot mindgames with you. But it gets predictable after a while.

Samus Aran makes a strong comeback: Metroid Prime 4 is not only a great game on the Nintendo Switch 2 but also looks fantastic. The only things it really didn't need were the open world section and a few mission types that seem stuck in time.

“Word Spud” is more “Word Dud”, but the other games are destined to be played between your Rock Band, Dance Central or Just Dance sessions.

With the reduction to action-adventures’ core elements and the option added to create your own heroes this is the most refined Skylanders so far.

It is so simple, yet so motivating. Weird that it is the only game of its kind.

The predecessor’s upward trend is continued. But nonetheless technically as well as mechanically there is plenty of room for optimization.

It starts slow, but no matter where you look, Xillia gets more interesting the longer you play until it hits you with its full force of different viewpoints, gripping realtime battles and customization options.

It starts slow. Too slow. But once this playable novel gains momentum, it gets interesting.

Classic rhythm game with a high challenge level. If you can get past the idea that you’ll be humming to J-Pop you’ll find an exceptional music game.

A strong soccer game with a great presentation, more kicking women and a really good feel. FUT brings the same problems as always and the career is often no longer up to date.

Fascinating mechanical puzzles with you in the center.

How can you not like Lego Star Wars? Top notch presentation, an impeccable timing for the trademark humor and slight improvements within the proven mechanics make this a blast. Unfortunately the difficulty level is still very low while an online-option is still abundant.

Technically sound, this mix of tower defense, resource management and turn based tactics is as entertaining on Xbox One as it was on PC almost one and a half years ago.

Interesting, but way too easy remake of the NES Classic.

Lots of content, high framerates, a crisp port: Burnout Paradise still packs a punch and delivers tense arcade racing in an open world.

Behind the generic title hides a more than decent dungeon crawler with influences from JRPG and a very distinctive comic art-design. If Airship Syndicate would have ironed out the difficulty spikes it would have been even better.

Interesting mix of classic art and black humour à la Monty Python, wrapped in adventure mechanics.

Anything but colorless: Despite a certain degree of repetition, the Call to Order offers lively, fun single-player content for fans of Splatoon 3.

Appealing Papers, Please clone with a Brexit setting that lacks the dystopian atmosphere of its inspiration.

A tense tactical adventure in an absolutely convincing world that can’t keep the pace it is initially setting.

If you’ve spent time with Final Fantasy 14 a few years back, you will not recognize the reborn Eorzea. Everything seems better connected, better thought through and better executed.

Slightly disappointing adventure sequel which doesn't reach the standards set by part 1, but is saved by the bizarre humour.

Tense souls-like with a polarizing artdesign and technical flaws that stop it in its tracks.

This is a challenging and admirable project. But it isn’t an admirable game. Or good storytelling, since there can be no trace found of development of consistent continuation of thoughts. I applaud Ryan Green's courage to deal with his personal pain in this way, but nonetheless I feel excluded.

A clever puzzler that sort of plays like the swinging counterpart to TIS-100.

Green Planet is a decent expansion adding quite a bit to the endgame, without enhancing the main elements, though.

Emotional, atmospherically dense action role-playing game from the makers of Life is Strange, whose open world unfortunately suffers from a lack of diversity.

It might not be the prettiest game, but once you get the idea of utilizing the weapon changing gestures, the Centinels will keep you in a firm grip with their positively hectic battles and challenging boss encounters.

Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream reveals a little too clearly that it offers a predetermined template into which Miis are simply slotted. It simply needs more variety and a more specific engagement with the characters. Nevertheless, the template itself still allows for the creation of a colorful world—one whose fate you will want to continue following.

Solid golf entertainment for big and small players, for beginners and intermediates alike.

This is a grand simulation of ice hockey. But it while it shows off a few improvements the big significant changes are still missing.

Despite all the visual enhancements you can still see that the original is five years old. With that in mind, this is still a good and at times positively rough action role-playing game that is worth exploring.

This is one of those rare games where you have the feeling of playing something not seen or done before. Short, with a steep learning curve and a sometimes frustratingly high difficulty not everything is perfect, though.

The age of Capcom’s dragon tale is too visible. But overall you will still get a decent fantasy roleplaying experience.

The mobile killzone is not as refined as its stationary brethren. But it plays and looks well enough to make me start another one of its shortened missions.

So this what happens if you put a 2D-Max-Payne, Bulletstorm and The Club in a blender. Unfortunately the visceral action suffers from some visual hiccups.

The ecological system as well as the crafting are cool, but the need for useless repetition gets on your nerves after a while. Nonetheless you can expect a merciless fight for survival with a captivating art design.

With added partygames Taiko no Tatsujin on Switch is significantly better than its PS4-sibling. Nonetheless the poor JoyCon controls stick out.

Shinsekai is a quite atmospheric maritime adventure with not only a dense sound experience but some neat design ideas as well.

Watch out Capcom, SNK and Namco: A new challenger has entered the ring. Although you could reduce it to tits and ass at first glance, you'd make a terrible mistake. Skullgirls offers not only outer but also inner values.

Rogue Trader is a late highlight for those looking for challenging combat and an exciting, if text-heavy, story.

Yes, the fights could be more challenging and mechanically more diverse. But in the end the mixture of tabletop, trading cards and real-time action works surprisingly well.

Expanding on the strengths of its predecessor (in its Dirctor’s Cut, of course) while trying to eradicate its weaknesses, this a thoroughly entertaining ego puzzler with an interesting story.

The controls are top notch, the sickness factor bearable for most of the time and the visuals are among the best you can get on PSVR right now. But the lack of content harms this proof that VR and ego-action indeed is possible.

The renowned but lately overused Telltale formula works with Guardians, but don’t expect it to be as entertaining as the movies. The direction is spot on, the story is okay, but lacks the punch.

Revelations might be a bit older and it certainly can’t get rid of its 3DS origin. But in case you haven’t played it yet on another system, you’ll get a decent and competent port of game that managed to capture the spirit of the classic Resident Evils.

You don’t get the ultimate complete packagae nor a technically perfect conversion. But Duke Nukem 3D still is an entertaining oldschool shooter.

In the beginning State of Decay is a remarkably ugly and trashy zombie bashing. But the more you dive into the fight for survival with its base and resource management, the open dynamic world gets more and more attractive – despite the AI problems.

Headlander is a uniquely funny, sometimes weird and visually very distinctive action-adventure.

This was a pleasent surprise: While I was expecting something like a cheap Super Meat Boy clone, the creative corpse mechanic keeps this hardcore platformer fresh.

Transformed is one of the best fun-racers in recent months and a classy alternative to Mario Kart, whose dominance is crumbling away. Without the frame-rate problems during split-screen races the speeding hedgehog might even have outpaced the racing plumber. Nonetheless with GamePad support and exclusive modes the Wii U version snatches the pole position.

Decent retro beat-em-up with an interesting battle system. But you’ll have to invest some time to understand and use all the subtleties it has to offer.

Classic Lego’ish action adventure in an open world with bucket loads of Zucker/Abrahams style of humour and the coop mode that was dearly missed in the Wii U original. Unfortunately the Switch version suffers from technical shortcomings like frame rate issues.

Story and humor are less entertaining than in the last years, the mechanics are a mix of well known elements on one side and entertaining new ones on the other. And while the trap masters are little more than overpriced doorkeepers, the trapping concept is cool and technically very well presented.

The old fashioned visuals collide with the humongous amount of content and the immense tactical depth.

The typical motivational loop of level exploration, dynamic action, death and character improvement works well. That is until it falls into the hole of redundant content that eventually catches up to almost all roguelikes.

This puzzle concept works best on a big roomscale stage.

Weird, hypnotic and etremely relaxing. In the long run it suffers a bit from repition, but nonetheless this is a fascinating arcade trip.

Entertaining strategy that lacks the humorous punch of its predecessors. A jack-of-all-trades, but master of none.

The second part of Nihon Falcoms rpg saga gains momentum as a revamped civil war drama centered on the elite students of the Thor military academy.

Telltale is still quite a bit away from the quality of the first season, but seems to be on track for a gripping finale.

While superficially Syndicate is not worse than older Assassin’s Creeds and gives you interesting new features, the magic is gone. Visually a step back, incoherent and bug ridden it might be the first sign that Ubisoft has to give the series a break in order to catch the creative spark again.

A faithful remaster of the PSP classic: Game mechanics are a little gray, but atmospherically up to date, it works as a prequel for the original game and remake.

Blitz proves that rhythm games can work without additional hardware, but even though it reminds sometimes of Harmonix' early masterpieces Frequency and Amplitude it lacks substance as a stand-alone-game. But throw the cross-compatibility with the instrument based brethren in the mix and you get more than 20 new songs to play for a fair price.

Although you’ll find just a few fresh touches within the proven formula, they lead to a few interesting new tactics to take your opponents’ worms down. You want Worms? You’ll get Worms.

So this is what happens if you mix Dishwasher with Castle Crashers and add some punk rock.

All in all, it's a decent port of a great game that hasn't lost anything in it's translation to the PC.

On the consoles Stoic presents a very good sequel that builds on and improves the mechanics of its predecessor while the narrative and decisions reach new dramatic heights.

It will take a little to get used to the coordinated chaos that is PlanetSide 2. But the more time you spend on Auraxis the more fun you will have. If only the artdesign and engine performance were optimized.

This is more an add-on than a sequel. It even shares a lot of the strengths and weaknesses of AirLandBattle as well as European Escalation. The addition of naval warfare adds a new, welcome facet, but in the end there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Death Squared is a really good cooperative puzzler. But be warned: You have to communicate, so be prepared, if you play it with your partner...

In theory Overclocked is a successful remake of one of the DS’ grand role-playing games. Unfortunately preventable technical glitches like regular freezes and occasional crashes take a lot away from its’ theoretically well deserved glory.

Even two years after its premiere this game still packs an emotional punch. Subtle and quietly the tragic everyday aftermath of war with moral decisions and bitter consequences makes you think, laugh and cry.

400 Days shows the same strengths as the whole first season: The decision are painful! The merciless fight for survival still is depicted brutally honest. Nonetheless this interlude lacks challenge and freedom of action.

One of the best racing games on the platform and due to more selection and the improved physics even better than the Wii-version.

Los Perdidos certainly has its flaws – and so do some game design decisions that make this Zombie adventure feel more like Dynasty Warriors at times. But nonetheless it delivers undead splattering fun.

Not without its minor flaws, but certainly one of the biggest surprises of the year: If you like to explore freely and don't want everything spoon-fed to you, you shouldn't miss Hell Is Us.

SNK proves that it can take the fight to Mortal Kombat, Soulcalibur and Tekken. The tactical approach to the unforgiving fighting system is a breath of fresh air.

In theory, Ride 4 with its huge selection of tracks and vehicles is a dream for motorcycle enthusiasts, but with massive balance problems, chaotic AI and a dreary career mode the motivation takes a downward turn.

Quite fascinating mix of dungeon action and pinball-ish brawling.

Dead Space 3 is a roller coaster ride. In Space you’ll find interesting missions, a nightmarish atmosphere and a brilliant sound design. But as soon as you land on the ice planet, not only do the temperatures drop, but also the motivation. The further you progress the more irrelevant and run-of-the-mill the game design gets.

While the concept is a prime example for a meaningful implementation of VR into otherwise rather dry gameplay mechanics, the lack of content is very harmful. A great virtual experience hidden in a weak game.

Quotation forthcoming.

While the newest trip into the Octagon shows some noticable improvement at its core in terms of fight mechanics, there are a few surprising steps back as well.

Audio-visually this is a gem. An atmospheric composition of sounds and images that reminds you of Journey. But storytelling, mechanics and exploration are not nearly as elaborate as in the PlayStation classic.

Beautifully crafted prequel to the acclaimed adventures that shifts the focus away from the supernatural to the normal problems of teenagers.