What lets Uno down is the online infrastructure. There aren’t many players, for a start, and it hurts the appeal of playing online when it ends up being against one human player and two AI. You may as well just play the single player, especially considering how frequently drop outs happen. Conveniently this happens most frequently when the other human player is close to losing. There doesn’t seem to be a punishment in place for that. At least AI players have honour.

Transformers: Battlegrounds did the right thing in eschewing the Hollywood "mature" efforts and the games that tried to piggyback along with those to give us a true Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic. It was also right to go with a turn-based tactics game, rather than yet another action effort. What this game does is add to the Transformers property and demonstrate that it can be more versatile than the folks in suits have been pushing for over quite some time now. It's certainly not the "XCOM clone" for people that come to XCOM for the nuanced tactical strategy, but it's a nice, light little game and, for someone like me who grew up loving Transformers, only to watch the series be driven into the ground in recent years, it's nice to have something nostalgic to some very fond memories that I had as a kid.

It’s unfortunate that Lone Ruin came about two years after the jokes about every indie doing a pixel roguelike became exhausting. It’s well-made and undeniably entertaining, but there’s so much competition in this space and the developers didn’t seem overly concerned with doing something that would actually differentiate their game. So yes. This is a mechanically very solid production that I can recommend to people that like difficult action roguelikes. Unfortunately, I’ll also likely forget about it by the time the next one of these comes along, and that’s probably sometime next week.

A truly entertaining little strategy game. Offering just enough complexity to test a player's strategic thinking, it's backed by steady, effective aesthetic direction and a mass of scenarios that almost - almost! - make up for the lack of multiplayer to make for one of the finest indie games so far in 2015.

Knack 2 also outstays its welcome, and the developers didn't seem to know when or how to finish it.

Variety in stories and settings could have gone a long way to making Siege Survival Gloria Victis a more compelling game. As it stands, while those who enjoy a mix of strategy and deliberately melancholy narrative threads may find it engaging for a while, it’s all a bit too uneven to really recommend.

Despite those small issues, I can see this game developing a strong core audience that will play it for quite some time to come. It's simply too groovy, colourful, and cheerful to resist.

I was concerned that D3 Publisher and the development teams behind EDF were losing sight of the purity of vision behind what they were doing. Iron Rain painted a bleak vision of the future of the series. Thankfully, the developers themselves seem to have realised what a misstep Iron Rain was, and the team at Yukes has pivoted a full 180 degrees with World Brothers. This game is just such great fun.

Mad Max's greatest strength is in many ways the title's most significant weakness as well. It is immediately familiar, reminding of the Batman titles and Shadow of Mordor - games that I am very much a fan of. Unfortunately on the whole, Mad Max is not as good as those titles either, coming up short in its narrative, controls and combat to create a less engaging overall experience than those titles.

The ease of which you can get into Hey! Pikmin is both a blessing and a curse - it doesn’t do a lot to distinguish itself as a title, which is fine, but that also doesn’t make it particularly memorable.

There's nothing wrong with Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games 2020. It's presented with verve and for such a large range of mini-games, the fact that there's no true dud in there is impressive in its own right. At the same time, it lacks the competitive edge of the "proper" Olympics title this year, and is a little too feature light for its own good as either a single player or local multiplayer experience. That makes it throwaway. Good fun, sure. Well made, absolutely. But throwaway nonetheless.

Farming Simulator 17 is a game that I would almost argue should be put into schools, because I see real value in using it to highlight what the life of a farmer involves, and that would in turn be valuable in raising awareness around the kinds of challenges that food supply faces in the years ahead. It’s still a game, don’t get me wrong, and a simple, but effective one at that. It’s also the most accessible it has ever been thanks to tutorials that actually work. But beyond that, Farming Simulator 17 is the best kind of game; it’s a game that offers more than just entertainment.

In most other regards Arslan is a fairly standard Warriors experience, but between the strong, epic, narrative, gorgeous setting, and the varied bunch of really enjoyable characters there is more than enough here to justify its place among Koei Tecmo’s growing stable of licensed work.

The real appeal of the game is in its presentation. The music is light and bouncy, the visuals are bright and colourful, and there's plenty of humour in the way units animate. I can't describe in enough detail just how happy it makes me to finally have a full-featured shooter game that is bright and pleasant; though I have no particular problem with serious and grim shooters, it's nice to have an option for when I'm in the mood for something happier.

Big Ant is, effortlessly, the world’s premier independent developer of niche sports, and Lacrosse falls squarely in its beat. It’s ace and I love it. Now.

Candlelight isn't a long game but it kept me entranced throughout the entire playthrough. It's a fantastic example of a simple idea executed very well, with extra effort spent in ensuring the player will have a good time. This isn't a game which you will get excited about - but in some ways it's even better than that. This is a game that you can get comfortable with, that will help you relax, and will make you look at platformers in a new way.

There’s a clever mix of addictiveness with basic gameplay to keep players going without getting them too irritated about the more difficult levels. Ultimately the experience of playing this mirror's Shiba Kari himself - the game will never be as notable as the heroes that exist in its world, but humble as it is, there is a real sense of satisfaction in clearing that field of long grass.

With every new iteration Football Manager seems like your decisions and strategy are more accurately reflected in the on-field performance and results of your team, and that consistency and reliability is ultimately what's important in making this series such a strong outlet for storytelling.

While the games themselves are functional and worth a chuckle, the best experience relies on the player being familiar with the source material.

The Church in the Darkness has much more value as an idea and as a story creation tool than it has as a game.

Curious Expedition 2 might not be too much of a step up from its predecessor, but then it also didn’t need to be. The original was already an excellent foundation in the way that it provided players with a challenging roguelike focused on exploring exotic lands and discovering incredible wonders. Now, with Curious Expedition 2, not only is that gameplay fine-tuned and refined, but the art matches the wonderous beauty that your characters are meant to be witnessing.

With any 4X strategy title, there’s a learning curve, and Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening is no different in that regard. There’s so much depth to the strategies, stats, and nation management that it will take some hours to learn your way around. However, an efficient interface and an excellent approach to the historical storytelling make this the most accessible Nobunaga’s Ambition we’ve seen in the series’ 40-year history. What’s more, it’s a genuinely excellent alternative to a textbook for anyone that wants to learn something about a period of warfare every bit as fascinating as the Napoleonic Wars, the Three Kingdoms era of China, the civil war in America, the Roman campaigns or the Mongol conquests.

Assuming concentration is a problem worth solving (an assumption lacking the solidest of foundations), I will argue there are better, significantly more efficient, ways to address it than through another game from a device that's otherwise a regular dopamine provider by its own rights.

Hopefully the story can use its established foundation and these moments of emotional investment to drive the story forward as House Forrester attempts to survive the challenges circling in around them.

Kitaria Fables is a warm, genuine delight. It’s not trying to tell you something deep about the world. Nor is it looking to spark debates over hard modes or subversion. It’s not aiming to challenge, belittle, insult or offend. The game’s just there to give people of all ages a chance to go on fun little quests together, as adorable little animals, with a garden of veggie delights to look forward to coming back to. It might just be the sweetest and most innocent Rune Factory or Harvest Moon I’ve come across, and that’s really saying something, since this entire "genre", such as it is, is entirely built up around wholesomeness.

On the surface, Akane is a super difficult game that requires absolute dexterity with a controller. It has some fantastic ideas which sadly are all cancelled out by mechanics and design choices that fight against the good stuff. It looks gorgeous, and can be enjoyed in really short spurts, but unfortunately there’s just not enough substance in this game to consider recommending it above the vast array of games available on the eShop right now.

The perfect addition to the series. Earth Defense Force 5 made improvements but it still felt like it was slavishly committed to the way earlier EDF titles operated. Iron Rain is different. It finally taking itself more seriously, which may or may not resonate with every player, but the end-to-end revamp in the way the game works on every level is exactly what the series needed to keep pushing forward.

It's clear that the same effort that went into historical research in other Assassin's Creed games did not happen here. Rather, it's quite obvious that the team did an afternoon's research on Wikipedia and called it a day.