This collection shines with the underlying impressive emulation of Mega Drive hardware, the variety of visual options you get to switch between realistic and pixel-heavy versions of each game, and the quality of life stuff like rewinding and picking up where you left off. And thanks to over 50 titles in the collection there are gems to find that you may not have played before - including Phantasy Star and Alien Soldier.

And if it's racing with a story that you're after, The Crew and Need for Speed franchisers have you well covered with their mix of outlandish, goofy storytelling and arcade style racing. Perhaps if Legends cut the story entirely, pared down the overly long career mode, and simply focused on being a multidisciplinary arcade racing game, it might find that niche it once occupied on the shelf, back when it was simply known as TOCA.

You won’t be disappointed in any way shape or form with this as a complete product. Production values throughout the short journey are spectacular and you get a sense when it’s all done that this is either the beginning of something longrunning and with expansive potential, or a complete one-off experience for the ages. Again, you’ll be the judge of that when the credits roll, but such is the virtue of what SkyLabs has created and completed here.

In the end Cloudpunk is as long as its narrative, with little more than collectibles to find through exploration. Mostly there to present videogame elements like vehicle upgrades or trinkets to place around your small apartment. The story though is memorable, and often as dense and layered as the jutting buildings that make-up Nivalis. An aesthetic joy throughout, and a cyberpunk tale well worth delivering to your desktop.

In the end, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot is still worth celebrating. For one it’s different from the usual "fight fight fight" setup of past DBZ games, with a focus on telling classic stories from the series. The ability to explore the world is especially wonderful for fans, and King Kai’s fantastic jokes make you yearn for a new Netflix stand-up special. Still, as a fan, I was left wishing there was more depth and activities to make the world feel more alive. Overall, it's a decent role-playing experience faithful to Dragon Ball Z that’s action-packed and entertaining. A game tailor made for DBZ fans. Nothing too groundbreaking, except for the attacks breaking the ground.

So, even though the first Mission Pack for Nova Covert Ops can be boiled down to two great missions and one average introduction, the future is bright for StarCraft II story-based content.

In the end there’s a reason They Are Billions has received a groundswell of support and appreciation over the past year, and that comes down to it excelling as a defensive RTS experience you’ll come back to time and again. That mission to build up a little town and hold a position on the back of incoming waves of attackers, where unpredictability plays a role and you’re somewhat in charge of the pacing. Because when the horde arrives – they’ll be running.

If you're looking for some light-hearted swing and miss fun with your mates then this is certainly worth a look, particularly if you've got a couple of PlayStation Move controllers lying beside your couch, but if you're looking for the definitive tennis experience Grand Slam Tennis 2 is lacking compared to other more established offerings.

Apart from the overly long boss battles with no mid-point checkpoints, the fact that by the end of your time with Hard Reset you'll be an expert in disposing of endless waves of robots without having to replay as many sections as earlier on, speaks in favour of this approach. In other words you won't be reloading quick saves when battles don't go your way, so man up and stop being such a pussy.

In the end The Eternal Castle is a fascinating experience and one that you won’t soon forget. If like us, taking one look at a screenshot makes you immediately wanted to play it – be sure to check it out.

At its core Yooka-Laylee features solid 3D platforming, all wrapped-up in a charming and funny package that oozes with the quality that drew a lot of players to Rare’s output during the N64 era. And although this may sound like strange criticism, we would have preferred it if the game featured fewer ideas, smaller worlds, and a more focused design. Yooka-Laylee’s better moments far outweigh its troublesome ones, and for the most part you’ll feel like you’re playing a Rare platformer from the year 1999. And when that’s what Yooka-Laylee promised to be, you can’t fault it for delivering on that promise. Warts and all.

Rage 2 is a good time if you can look past its issues. On one side of the neon-pink fence, the game’s story is frustratingly generic amidst a world of potential. On the other side, the action, gunplay, and variety of things to do is great. Chaining special abilities together to take down mutants inhabiting the wasteland is immensely satisfying, especially when it involves hurling them into spinning blades on ‘Live TV’. In the end Rage 2 is fun for what it is, and certainly hits the right high-octane note when the action gets going. It’s just a shame it can’t carry that momentum through to the other cogs in the machine.

My Time in Portia has its moments though and getting through the early milestones hint at the larger picture and more player freedom. As it stands it’s is a ‘life sim’ that could do with a little more of the former.

Describing the game as chaotic in action is definitely apt, and for sheer speed this is one of the fastest ‘Mario Sports’ games to date. In a way, that goes against what you kind of expect to see from Nintendo, but in execution Mario Strikers goes all in on the fast and dirty game of Mushroom Kingdom soccer.

West of Dead isn’t without its standoff moments of frustration, but a squint of the eye and a sweat-bead zero-flinch will see you standing tall post-Purgatory call out. Honestly, I just want to see more of it at this stage, maybe in less repetitive form, but as a continually-fleshed out new IP and one that keeps its creative skull-fire burning.

Given an empty block and the freedom to do what you please, Project Highrise doesn’t quite reach the heights of SimTower.

Star Wars Battlefront might not be terribly considerate of solo players and its by-design accessibility might deter DICE’s hardcore Battlefield fans, but there’s no denying the multiplayer is a hell of a lot of fun, and as far as creating the feeling of being part of a Star Wars movie, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Contributing significantly to the disappointment are the sound effects - with the guns and explosives sounding particularly underwhelming.

The first few hours of Agents of Mayhem are genuinely exciting and entertaining. And funny too. It’s the open-world of high-tech Seoul and the repetitive missions that fail to live up to the colourful Agents and the Saturday morning cartoon vibe. Which is unfortunate. The juvenile sense of humour won’t appeal to everyone, but the same could be said for just about every Volition-developed title of the past decade. And in that sense, the studio’s latest effort is worth considering if you’re a Saints Row fan. For everyone else, imagine a ludicrous ‘80s cartoon built around the profane and juvenile marines featured in James Cameron’s classic film Aliens. Where they’re globe-trotting government agents, and prone to enter fits of gravity defying carnage.

It's a hard game to get really enthusiastic about, and all too easy to walk away from when you hit a frustrating section.

Anarchy Reigns ultimately feels like a game that probably didn't quite feel right midway through development, which didn't have the same effort and attention lavished upon it as the developer's previous games. Still, when your very worst game ends up being this decent, you're clearly doing something right.

Mad Max is obviously a license close to my heart, and The Road Warrior is my favourite tale in the franchise, so it could be considered unfair to have judged the game how I have, but there are definitely some glaring issues here that make the product schizophrenic in its license representation. When applying played-out tropes, however, it actually works through the game’s size and goals, and is easy to enjoy -- just as long as you forget the past and embrace the present.

The single player campaign is an exercise in banging your head against brick walls until they break. Depending on the quality of your friends list, the long-term value of Rock of Ages probably lies in the chaotically level playing field of human-versus-human multi-player.

Seems to be an expansion in name only. If anything, it makes the already overplayed sections of the core game feel smaller. And for a grand sci-fi universe, that’s a bad thing.

At the end of the day, Serious Sam: BFE isn't as much of a welcome throwback to old-school gaming staples as the original title was a decade ago. But, thankfully, that doesn't mean that it's a failure or a complete waste of time.

Even if some of it feels a little extraneous, like trying to keep investors and executives happy with god knows how many future toys and bits of entertainment, Anno 2205 is still absorbing.

For all its faults and this remaster’s bare-minimum approach to presentation – Shenmue is still worth playing. And hey, any game that can be described as Virtua Fighter meets The Sims, set in Japan during the 1980s, always will.

Spintires: Mudrunner has a tiny 1.1GB install because there's really not much too it. There are no peasants wandering the woods or working at the lumber yards. No other vehicles hauling lumber or otherwise in motion. The fauna has become extinct and only birds remain. It feels like you are the sole survivor in a post apocalyptic USSR where the cold war turned nuclear hot. Which begs the question: why you are hauling lumber? And for whom?

As much fun as it is to see Nintendo Switch Sports bring back some of that Wii magic, that party room vibe, it’s hard not to look at this as anything but a missed opportunity. Having all progression and customisation locked to online play feels like a missed opportunity, and although we couldn’t test the online stuff during the review period it’s hard to see how the Wii Sports formula would substantially improve on the same-room formula.

In a sense Mafia II is more like an interactive version of Goodfellas than an open-world mob experience that could only exist as a videogame. Vito’s rise is full of twists and turns that are always interesting even when they dip into stereotype and a facsimile of the classic cinematic mob epic. The expansions do flesh out the open-world setting of Empire Bay in interesting and meaningful ways, but in the end Mafia II: Definitive Edition remains an experience where the engaging story towers above all – sitting alongside the skyline of the impressive but only skin-deep Empire Bay.

It’s not the kind of game that will be remembered down the track, but in the here and now it’s filling a certain gap in the One’s line-up more than adequately.

Without any remastering or touching up done on the visuals, not including the best looking and best sounding versions of these games is baffling.

Monster Truck Championship is fun and challenging, but frustration, a one-note near linear course masquerading as variety, and not nearly enough in terms of options and engagement leave this a bogged experience.

Expanded mission choice, more cohesive movement options, a wide variety of customisation options all set in an immersive world combine to promote the exploration every player possibility. And not to say it’s without its faults, as noted with some minor, yet impactful, movement snags and a dated combat system.

It's great that MotoGP 10/11 adopts a more realistic simulation approach to the game, but I found the handling of the bike frustrating in certain situations.

Gravity-defying loops and curves sit alongside integration with real-world sections and plenty of room for breaking race lines, if you’re the overzealous type. And the deeper you go into the game as it’s meant to be played, with fully upgraded cars, the more a hidden level of depth emerges and a truly challenging racing game materialises. It’s just a shame it’s largely hidden from the outset.

It's rare that a title sneaks right up on you and offers intense visceral gunplay, an intriguing consequence system and poses philosophical questions that leave you pondering the possibilities once you put down the controller. Binary Domain manages to juggle these aspects rather well, not outstandingly or brilliantly, but compellingly enough that I found it hard to walk away and was determined to see it through to the end in as few sittings as possible.

With most of the action taking place in castles, forests, caves, factories, mountains, swamps and numerous other locations, there are very few dungeons to be found at all within the game. Which overall speaks volumes for potential expectations one may have with the game, and in failing to meet them could be an unfair catalyst in dismissing what is a fun, polished, and streamlined action RPG experience that deserves your attention.

There’s a franchise-in-waiting here, it just needs more than a few tweaks and hell of a lot less forced character.

It offers a different kind of multiplayer and a robust smattering of solo missions to keep any international man of mystery occupied for hours on end.

In the end, with more varied activities that went beyond the usual by-the-numbers story missions, say, a more emergent city full of events to match the unpredictability of who you control - then Watch Dogs: Legion could have been an experience on par with its impressive technology. As it stands it’s a fight and a cause worth joining, but like its cast your reasons might only extend to the escape from the monotony of a normal everyday existence.

There are puzzles, but never in a way to stop you on your journey forward. Like the music, there’s a pull or need to keep going. It’s what one might dismiss as art first, game second. Shape of the World is, well, neither. Instead it is a transportive journey that feels like a great ambient electronica album come to life. Brief and wonderful, and something to savour.

Ambiguity is not for everyone, nor is the simple pleasure of walking through a gorgeous sci-fi vista. Replace a few words here and there and that statement that could apply to just about any genre, or style of game. Planet Alpha may not quite have the mechanics to match the sheer variety and wonder of its beauty, but close-enough means that it’s one of the most surprising and wonderful slices of sci-fi we’ve seen this year.

Toads might not be for everyone, but if you can stomach even half of popular culture and gaming as it stands, like, being a space knight fighting against alien races, a ‘Spartan’ fighting against alien races, an agent of an old house with a gun that transforms while suspended humans are ‘Hissed’, a paper plumber still saving a tripped-out world with red, green and purple mushies, a covert operative infiltrating an ex-Soviet base entirely on kayak, or a growing shark that subsists on a steady diet of humies… a couple of wise-cracking toads is the least of your woes. Just, you know, go with the flow… dude.

Ultimately it's the setting, art direction, and non-verbal cinematic storytelling where Somerville excels. But even here there are long lulls and a few sections that begin to feel bland. Like when you’re in a cave system trying to avoid attention in a way that feels like a homage to Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee. And outside of the emotional notes touched upon when it comes to trying to reach your family in an oppressive situation, the ending and final act are too obtuse and abstract to make any sort of lasting impact. Somerville is a visually impressive, relatively short cinematic adventure held back by its ambition.

There’s a different kind of emergent gameplay that surrounds Steep, and it’s the game’s strongest component, and it falls back into that freedom gameplay pillar I mentioned earlier. You couldn’t possibly have this playspace with linear, game-directed objectives. And while Challenges offer you pathways to complete them, and obviously have finish lines, the freedom you have to just do all of the things, as you please, is the game’s number one strength.

On the whole, more time in development might have ironed out some bugs, and the Day One patch which I’ve had a play with today addresses *some* issues, but a few more persist. They’re not game-breaking, but stand as reason enough the game might have needed another month or so in sharpening up. All that said, there’s a fun game here for people who are into 100%-ing anything they touch, and for those looking for something a little bit different. Be sure to watch the video examples riddled throughout this review to get an idea of what you’re in for, but I’ll be spending the rest of my game-time after plonking roughly 18 hours into it, uncovering everything else it has to offer.

If the idea of getting to play a wide range of distinct heroes each with their own abilities in a setting that captures the fun and humour of the Borderlands franchise then yeah, sure, [you'll enjoy it]. If you’re looking for a new co-op game, then yeah it’s good for that too. But it’s not Borderlands. It’s not even a MOBA, a genre that a lot of people know very little about. It’s Battleborn. And even with a number of problems, it’s still a lot of fun to play.

Shadow Warrior 3 left me wanting more on the account of the relatively short campaign being the entirety of the experience. But there’s something to be said about that. A repetitive shooter that structurally doesn’t change over the course of several hours yet doesn’t grow old or feel tired. A gem of a first-person shooter, an interactive rollercoaster, and one hell of a good time. So much so it’ll have you lining up to go again.

As a fan of all-things zombie, I went in with high expectations and found that the game ticked a lot of the right boxes. Throw seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op into the mix so all of this can be enjoyed with friends or randoms and the appeal is a whole lot stronger, particularly considering the clever variations between quests.

Days Gone is contextually broken, its gunplay is deplorable, its ‘open-world’ premise is a joke and its narrative consistently overrides that open-world ‘design’ goal. It’s pretty, in parts, but it’s broken across the board because it’s disparate in what it wants to be, and that’s because it fails to be Days Gone. Instead it just mimics, brokenly, games already gone.

I wanted to like this marriage of Warhammer and action-RPG. Really like it. And initially I did, but the honeymoon was over pretty damn quickly. The hotel room was nasty and bug infested. The food invaried and bland. And the wife who looked so radiant on the day, lost most of her appeal when her skills and abilities were found to be lacklustre and severely limited.

The closest thing to Beyond Blue currently out in the wild is the brilliant Subnautica, but where they differ is that one is an absolutely open, alien sci-fi fantasy and the other one is Subnautica.

Under the surface, not enough has changed to the formula that separates The Elder Scrolls Online from existing free or established properties, and I would find it genuinely hard to recommend to anyone seeking an experience outside of a cosy, well presented, box.

It is an absolutely stunning game with a great story and an excellent presentation (as well as beautiful audio), but it didn’t quite reach the top of the mountain it set out to climb.

Despite some art direction issues and the lack of a tutorial system, dedicated players will have some fun here.

For a title devoid of action, outside of a couple of stealth sequences and a ‘run towards the screen from the giant monster bit’, The Medium might commune with the spirit world... but it fails to communicate all that well with the player.

In the end Space Hulk: Tactics also has the appeal of its premise and works better as an experience played with others whilst also designing missions and various layouts. Much like the origins of Space Hulk it feels true to the tabletop roots of the series - but also lacking in its limited scope.

Sniper Elite 3 is an idiot savant of a game, excelling in one specific area while being almost obtuse in many others.

When viewed through a cinematic lens, White Shadows becomes an easy experience to recommend. The wonderful art direction, cinematography, animation (for the most part) and other elements do come together to create a cohesive and visually surprising journey. There’s variety here, quite a bit of it considering the very short runtime. So even though it doesn’t quite emerge, fully formed, from the shadows of Limbo, Abe’s Odyssey, or Another World, White Shadows certainly makes its mark. However fleeting that might be.

There's definitely an audience for a game like this, a story-driven interactive experience that opts for bombastic action and spectacle as opposed to taking place in the real-world as a police or crime procedural, and for that reason, and that particular audience, Asura's Wrath comes highly recommended.

Although Armageddon excels in the destruction stakes, combining it with some adrenaline-pumping action and cool special abilities, it leaves you feeling empty with its less-than-enthralling story – well less-than-interesting really – and level after level of tedious objectives.

The fact that there are several difficulty levels and the ability to fine-tune Sonic’s speed, jump height, and even damage recovery as part of the in-game options is not a great sign and is indicative of the mish-mash feel. In the end, the lack of focus and consistency makes Sonic Frontiers feel unfinished - even if playing in the solid 60 frames-per-second performance mode is great for capturing and conveying a sense of speed and scale. But even here there’s so much pop-in that you lose out on a true sense of awe when it comes to the environments and structures born from the mysterious Cyber Space. Another average, but ambitious, outing for the blue hedgehog.

In keeping with the chocolate bar metaphor, even apart from these issues, and the hefty price tag associated with the premium content, once you bite past the tasty yet somewhat odd MMO shell there's still a delicious RTS core to savour. Mmm, Age of Empires.

Crossing Souls is a little scrappy, rough around the edges. But at its core it tells a great story. An adventure filled with twists and turns and well-earned moments of introspection and emotion. The fact that it nails this part of its inspiration, that being the Spielberg-like vision of the 1980s, make it a success. Adventure, action, and friendship drive the experience, which make its short comings far less visible than its bedrooms filled with posters for films like Ghostbusters. In the end we love that Crossing Souls isn’t merely a compendium of references to things like Back to the Future and Poltergeist. There’s definite substance below the shiny neon ‘80s surface.

As a classic RTS experience, there’s a lot to like about Starship Troopers: Terran Command - especially in terms of translating the look and feel of the action scenes found in the iconic movie into little slices of strategy. Outside of a few pathing glitches and a couple of animation bugs, the biggest problem here is that the default difficulty feels a little too easy in addition to there being not much on offer once you complete the campaign. Without a fleshed out skirmish mode or even something like a co-op mode to take on the Arachnid together, it’s something of a one and done experience. Still, it’s good to do your part because... service guarantees citizenship.

The biggest praise that All 4 One garners is the constant diversity of the level design and, even more impressively, the gameplay. The beautiful environments are a visual treat that tend to distract from the task at hand, while the little additions to gameplay throughout the campaign -- mini-games, water skiing, jet packing, rail grinding, and the list goes on-stop All 4 One from avoiding the pitfall of losing appeal after a few hours.

Combat that leans a little too heavily in the direction of counters isn’t the only issue here, but it’s the most prominent and one that bleeds into all the other shortcomings.

If you're absolutely desperate for a Move game you could do worse, but Sorcery is really nothing more than a relatively irritating, disappointing curio.

And that is Brink in a nutshell: the potential to traverse the digital battlefield in an entirely new way that affords the player more combat options. Couple this with the well-balanced classes (including the higher-level abilities) and the distinct lack of camping equipment (there's really only one sniper rifle in the game), and this is a different breed of first-person shooter: faster, sexier and made for online play.

Minecraft Dungeons has a few bright spots, in its release form it’s highly polished with solid visuals and effects. Outside of the static nature of the environments they’re diverse and cover the range of locations you’d expect to find in this style of experience – from snow-capped mountains to volcanic caves and fortress-like structures. Minecraft Dungeons’ fantasy look is on point. And with the game being moderately priced and a part of Xbox Game Pass – this alone lessens the ‘fun for a few hours’ blow that is Mojang’s take on Diablo. An entry level take on a well-worn genre that after a few hours will have you heading for the exit.

With its lineup of indistinguishable cars, bland Career mode, and the more enjoyable but limited Quick Game, WRC 7 presents few reasons to justify its price tag. It's fun for a quick bash sure, but for similar expenditure you could be playing Forza 7, Project Cars 2, or the literally billions of other racing games on the market.

Perhaps if SEGA chose to remaster and re-release the first two GameCube titles, which defined and perfected the core Super Monkey Ball formula - before it’s slow dive into obscurity thanks to Banana Blitz and other titles - we’d be hailing this as a minor masterpiece. Instead what we’ve got here is a HD misfire of a motion-control misfire from over a decade ago.

A whirlwind of fun for sure, but too many opportunities are missed. At least the cathartic nature of zombie slaughtering does help you push through to unveil the end boss, which in a definite way is its own reward, along with the post credit ending, which you should stick around for.

The problem with Thief is that the studio spent so much time trying to make a game for all kinds of people that it forgot to execute any single part of the experience perfectly.

Silent Hill HD Collection features two very fine, albeit extremely unpleasant and not super accessible, games. It's nowhere near as polished as Konami's other recent compilation, the brilliant MGS HD collection.

David Cage may have succeeded at making his most cinematic game yet, but if I’d paid $8 to see Beyond on the cinema’s cheap day I would have walked out well before the credits rolled.

With everything above said, there’s an obvious draw here in it just being a Mario game, which alone will pull people to it. And there’s some fun to be had, and Nintendo gets a lot right with it, we just need the gimmicks and party favours turned down. Invincibility Star isn’t a number, so dialling the game up to that just isn’t something we can tune into on the reg. Especially given golf on its own merits is a game of strategy and patience, that can still be fast and fun without needing addressive rolling rocks impeding your path all the time.

What we get when all’s said and performed in step with The Gunk’s level design, is a fleeting experience really only good for the Achievements (your first G is a whopping 50, and this rarely lets up), or for a chilled and relaxed romp through an alien world whose FernGulley storyline is face-slappingly on-the-nose. I mean, it’s actually quite fun, despite Rani’s overly contextual Mepsipax design, which is entirely at odds with everything I’ve gunked at you here, but it did suck me in.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer is more re-release than remaster. A game that admittedly was rushed to market in 1999 to ensure it hit shelves in time for the film’s release. So, the almost-there career mode feels a little undercooked in 2020 and the lack of polish to the AI stands out. But, it’s simple premise – recreating the excitement and thrill of Star Wars Pod Racing is a winning one. For pure high-speed thrills in a galaxy far, far, away, they still don’t get much better than this. And, getting to hear Watto hum the Cantina Theme is probably worth the price of admission alone.

From the outset, and playing on Xbox Series X, The Callisto Protocol is a genuinely jaw-dropping visual assault. It might have the most detailed interiors of any game I’ve ever played, and the variety in art that accompanies these is staggering. From the initial prison sequences through to deep underground spaces where you’ll be navigating an old, abandoned colony to the surface of Callisto itself, the game serves up a terrifying feast for the eyes.

The themes of nature, balance, and the connectiveness between all living things is strong and can be felt throughout. In the end Fe certainly looks the part but doesn’t quite have enough memorable moments or feeling of discovery to match its ambitious design.

Like every The Sims game before it, The Sims 4's success will hinge on the DLC that accompanies it -- what you have here is simply a solid foundation. The Sims team needs to do some heavy duty work on the automation side of things, but otherwise they've created a good place to build from.

Without a majority of the characters, the time between the major story beats would be particularly dull without anyone to talk to or side quests to complete. To take the evil path and embrace the vampire side of Jonathan, is to kill what life there is in Vampyr. Although it is important that there are consequences to your actions, some of which do have an immediate impact to the world, there isn’t enough to balance it out and make being evil fun or interesting.

EA Sports UFC is form over function. It's all show, no go, a pretty fighter without the know-how to back it up in the octagon. The Ignite engine successfully delivers a game which makes casual observers double-take as they attempt to work out if they're watching the real thing or not, but anyone with the controller in their hand will know something is wrong.

Genesis Alpha One, once it grabs you, is a hard one to put down. Dripping in atmosphere, exploring and building your own space-ship and then visiting strange new planets has all the wonder you could hope for. The added tension of wondering if your crew has been infected by some sort of alien parasite – and then watching as your ship slowly becomes a scene from sci-fi horror film, is exhilarating.

In the end Wolfenstein: Youngblood isn’t so much a misstep as it is a side-step, inessential but rewarding once you look past the confusion and simply take up arms and do that thing that this series does so well - kill and take-out entire squads of Nazi super soldiers in style. Now with an invitation that reads, plus one.

A tennis game that seems unusually keen to hide its potential away behind superfluous control options and silly concessions. It's your best bet if you want a tennis game on the 3DS right now (better than Sports Island anyway), but not a patch on what you can find elsewhere.

No doubt it would have been interesting to see some alternate take or variations in this remaster, perhaps in a secondary ‘modern mode’ with streamlined controls, updated AI, and less tech-tree clutter. But as a reasonably priced remaster that doesn’t mess with the original apart from implementing some minor improvements and all the bug fixes and content that came with later expansions it’s hard to fault Age of Empires: Definitive Edition. A fun, engaging trip down RTS memory-lane.

As a Rainbow Six Siege spin-off it’s fun to see all of the gadgets and mechanics of that game make their way over into the co-op space. The gun-feel is also on point. The ease at which you can throw out a recon drone or line up a head-shot through a wall is endlessly satisfying. And with all of its tactical stealthiness, Extraction plays unlike anything else we’ve seen in the co-op space. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to give the experience a true identity it can call its own.

Shadows: Awakening feels different enough, thanks to integrating the idea of character and class swapping into the core design of both the mechanics and story. But even so the by-product of this is more micro-management and loot scrubbing duties placed on the player, that isn’t helped by an overall pace that feels too slow.

One look at the score and you might feel that the The Dark Pictures Anthology has a long road ahead to prove itself, but as is the case with the anthology format - it’s one spectacular or memorable story away from becoming a cult or out-right classic. The format, setting, technology, craft, and interactivity on display in Man of Medan bodes well for the future. What we’ve got here, although replayable, doesn’t quite invoke the sense or feeling or general incentive for you to go back to re-watch or re-play. A so-so debut for a promising series.

Unfortunately, the genuinely entertaining humour, strong cooperative play and a surprisingly great soundtrack of familiar tracks do more to make me wonder about what could have been than push Red River into 'must-buy' territory.

A great foundation that is mechanically sound and will delight in the early hours. Stick around too long, however, and Chaosbane reveals a dearth of classes, enemies and environments. Also a weak endgame.

Are wonderful visuals, brilliant sailing mechanics, and fun activities like playing music and throwing up on your crewmates after drinking too much grog enough? For a few hours sure, but probably not in the long term. What’s here is extremely polished and wonderful to look at. And if the simple joys of sailing through Sea of Thieves gorgeous world clicks with you as it did me, then however long you spend visiting outposts and islands and strange wrecks – will be time well spent.

In the end the fact that most of the different disciplines are fun to play, outweigh the shortcomings. Which makes The Crew 2 a fun, scrappy, but not all that essential arcade racer. If it could somehow reign in the insanity and shortcomings, while providing a real reason to drive around and explore the impressive open-world U.S.A. - especially in co-op – then it could become something special.

Combing two previously uncombined genres results in a challenging, strategic and addictive experience, which makes up for any storytelling shortcomings.

When I Am Alive broke immersion with any number of the aforementioned flaws, which it did far too regularly, it was easy to chastise it. But when it was taking risks and throwing me into tense situations or decision moments, I couldn't drag myself away.