Worst of all, the game seems to be rendered at a far lower resolution than I was setting it to, looking like a 720p game blown up to 1440p. It's a bizarre mix of occasionally good looks contrasted with some supremely bad ones, and it tops off an already lacklustre game.

Mafia 3's first few hours are some of the best you'll play this year—but the next few dozen are among the most disappointing.

If either Dragon Quest or base-building games appeal to you, try it with an open mind and a willingness to buck convention.

If you own an Xbox One, you'll have a fine enough time thanks to smooth, 60-frames-per-second multiplayer combat. But the game's best performance—with higher settings and resolutions, still easily locked at 60fps—can only be yours if you have a moderately powerful Windows 10 PC.

Gears 4, more than the other Xbox Play Anywhere games that have launched thus far, seems poised to scale across various Windows 10 rigs. This gives players real choice between higher frame rates and higher visual settings. A smooth 60fps refresh at Xbox One quality levels (or better) can easily be achieved with the right toggles on our test rigs. That may not prove out over every processor+GPU+RAM+HD combination in the wild, but so far, the game appears to be both highly optimized and infinitely customizable.

FIFA 17 is a typically slick offering from EA, but if you want the best football game PES 17 is the way to go.

Project Scorpio doesn't yet exist, but comparable hardware does, and FH3's phenomenal 30-frame-a-second performance is a pretty good money-where-the-mouth-is declaration of what level of performance we should expect from the company's next living room box.

PES 2017 asks you how you want to interpret the beautiful game. There's no higher praise for a sports game.

The more hardcore sim fans might find things a little too arcade-ish for their liking. Although there are circuit races on street tracks, they'll never compare to lapping Spa or the Nordschleife, and the off-road driving isn't the same test of skill that you'll get from DiRT Rally. But for fans of previous Horizon games or the Project Gotham series, this sequel will probably tick all your boxes.

Legion succeeds at making you feel important, even if Azeroth itself sometimes feels bland by comparison. Buy it.

A love letter to die-hard DQ fans. See if you like Dragon Quest VIII when it comes to the 3DS—if you do, circle back around for this one.

Too much content is missing. The plot is thin; the upgrades aren't meaningful; and the developers clearly ran out of steam (or, who knows, maybe budget) and put out what they'd gotten done in a certain amount of time.

Whatever platform you play this on, ReCore is not a particularly stunning game. This desert isn't glittering with cool particle effects, and while you might expect laser-blasting robots to be smothered in cool lighting or metal-shimmering effects, you won't see those here. Everything from level geometry to texture quality to facial animation looks more like a high-end Xbox 360 game than a proper Xbox One title; the only exception, really, is that draw distances on New Eden stretch pretty far.

The PC-conversion team at Nixxes has done it again, and while we know better than to announce a game's PC version as a clear winner out of the gate, our experience with the PC build has us leaning towards calling it the definitive version.

DX:MD packs in more Deus Ex, mostly polished, with tons of plot that we don't want to spoil, a bazillion side quests and optional plot to sink your teeth into, a likable story, missions so good that I have described them to friends as "boss levels," and a free side game with a tolerable microtransaction system. I'm still shocked. August is usually the triple-A dumping ground of the game-industry calendar, but August hasn't seen a game this good in years.

If you're an F1 fan then it's probably a no-brainer. It has the latest tracks, includes all the latest rules, and the current line up of teams and drivers. If you're not an F1 fan but still like racing games it's still probably worth your time, thanks to an engaging career mode and enough granularity in the settings to make you work for that win.

Abzû is a beautiful audio-visual treat that's light on challenge but big on wonder.

Don't just wait for a sale; wait for a major overhaul.

Its voxel-based, procedurally generated engine is an incredible template for more systems, content, and performance tweaks. Until then, the game's title is true: this isn't yet a sky any man (or woman) should bother claiming.

Cleverly designed, and brimming with charm—the cast of characters includes an anthropomorphic cardboard box and a paraplegic racoon—Overcooked is a game that I've been coming back to again and again over the past few weeks, and one that joins the likes of Towerfall Ascension and Rayman Legends on my small but steadily growing list of great couch co-op games. Just make sure your relationship is strong enough to withstand the inevitable fallout.

I Am Setsuna skims the surface of games long past without always understanding what made them memorable. Try it if you just want a game that looks the part or to see its admittedly cool combat.

Generations is a last, wonderful gasp of life for this aging Monster Hunter engine. If you’ve been on the fence, now is the perfect time to hop aboard.

Necropolis at launch has just enough going for it for those who want a Dark Souls-styled experience that can be easily dropped into and out of. Instead of having to memorize incredibly tough passages like in the Souls games, players can boot Necropolis, tear through some randomly difficult sequences with satisfying weapons, and log off, having gotten a solid action fix. But the game would benefit from serious tuning and more variety in its random level generation. While some of the generated levels feel expansive, huge, and impressive, many of them feel a little sleepy and same-samey. (Also, Harebrained needs to turn on public matchmaking for co-op post-haste.)

For most, it's better to let nostalgia remain nostalgia and leave this mess of a football game alone.

You absolutely want this if you liked the previous games, but newcomers should at least play Virtue's Last Reward first.

Just be warned: Inside will not win you over purely as a puzzle-platformer. The game is divided evenly into four types of play: no-challenge traversal; obvious puzzles; annoying head-scratchers; and truly clever challenges. Like Limbo, Inside limits your control to running, jumping, and an open-ended "interact" button. Sometimes, that button lets you push boxes or climb ropes. Other times, its functionality opens up the game's best and weirdest moments.

Try it if you want to see Atlus' latest experiments in dungeon crawling and combat, but not if you're solely in it for Fire Emblem.

There is definitely fun to be had simply running through Mirror’s Edge Catalyst’s beautiful cityscape like some sort of all-knowing speedster god. It’s all the stuff that surrounds that simple, joyful running that ranges anywhere from annoying to downright frustrating. In the end, combining a game about running as fast as possible with one about exploring a vast open world ends up being a pretty awkward pairing.