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.