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.