Ultimately though, while it's not quite perfect, Vicarious has a beautifully crafted remake let down only by its 30fps target. If you've been looking to revisit Crash, it's difficult to go wrong with this package. It's clear that the developers have poured a lot of love into re-creating these games, and if the aim has been to re-introduce this neglected mascot to modern audiences, it's a job well done. Our hope is that this paves the way for an all-new Crash title - one that pairs the beautiful visuals of the N.Sane Trilogy with a fresh batch of gameplay ideas. [Digital Foundry]

An occasionally unwieldy but likeable adventure with a timely and resonant message.

A trashy, overwrought psychodrama with the odd inspired touch that alternates between simple forensic puzzles and gimmicky gunplay.

Housemarque has just made the game of its career. [Essential]

Emily is Away Too is a surprisingly poignant trip down memory lane. [Recommended]

Arms does for fighting games what Mario Kart did for driving games, and the results are absolutely splendid. [Recommended]

Dirt 4 is an authentic and innovative off-road racer, though it lacks the focus and finesse of its exceptional predecessor.

The Omega Collection is a wonderful reminder of those heady times, as well as a reminder of the potency of the formula concocted by a small team in Liverpool. When WipEout clicks - when the track falls away in perfect tandem with the bassline, sending your stomach turning as if a Mitsubishi Turbo has just spun into action as you take your first step onto the dance floor - there's nothing else like it, and given the premature demise of Studio Liverpool it's quite likely there'll never be anything like it again. There may well be other, better futuristic racers out there - but there are none that can boast this much style. [Recommended]

NetherRealm has shown what can be done to make the genre appeal to those who don't fancy getting torn to shreds online. Unfortunately the developers at Bandai Namco's Tekken team seemingly failed to notice.

The fact that I've had a good time with it even on half-melted servers demonstrates the strength of its emergent horror. Like the towering killer himself, Friday the 13th has come out of nowhere, and while it isn't invulnerable, it's more than capable of stealing your heart.

Beautiful, strange and sometimes a bit fiddly, Tokyo 42 offers a dazzling toybox to explore. [Recommended]

Pared-back and wonderfully focused, this is a welcome blast of Burnout magic. [Recommended]

Beautiful but bug-riddled, Impact Winter isn't the game it could be yet.

Rime doesn't rely on a twist ending anyway. Rather, this is the twist ending's older and more appealing sibling: the sense of dawning realisation. This game has it all, really. It has a sense of wonder, of poise and, over time, a true sense of emerging character. And it has something to say. Something that is worth hearing. [Recommended]

Street Fighter 2 on Switch is a disappointing release made worse by the rip-off price. [Avoid]

This ruminative travel game is beautiful, poised, and a little predictable.

This isn't even the 3DS' best Fire Emblem, ultimately, but it's certainly one of the most interesting entries in the series' long history, an eccentric offshoot with an identity all of its own. It forgoes the soap opera of recent games and delivers a different brand of strategy that's remarkably refreshing - and it's a chance to spin back the turnwheel and see what might have been. [Recommended]

It's sure to find a decent following among the Souls hardcore as there's a lot here that's familiar for them to enjoy, but really these players have two fights on their hands - that against the enemies of The Surge, and that against the feeling The Surge isn't all it could have been. And that bloody, incessant song, of course.

PlayStation VR gets some much-needed support from Sony, but unfortunately Farpoint is a hollow novelty.

Despite annoyances with the gear system and the loot boxes, Injustice 2 is a huge amount of fun. There's tonnes of stuff to do, it looks the part and the new fighting mechanics serve a purpose while deftly avoiding adding complexity. Injustice 2 is also a game I thoroughly appreciate for the lovely little touches. [Recommended]

Polybius, for all its ranginess, its generosity, is a game about tight confines. And it is magical. [Recommended]

Despite several shortcomings It is more than a cheap knock-off, though, and thanks to some smart ideas and novel twists there's an enjoyable tribute to be found here. Just be warned that NBA Playgrounds is a few steps away from being much more than an overly fuzzy dose of nostalgia.

An ornate and clever if slightly under-cooked System Shock successor, which makes the most of a truly magnificent space station setting. [Recommended]

A gleefully gory throwback to 90s shooters wrapped in a rogue-like shell, Strafe is let down by uneven pacing and underwhelming guns.

There is unique and unusual pleasure to balancing this world just so, but without a straightforward way to restart chapters, or way to wind the clock back to undo decisions, the troughs of frustration eventually come to overwhelm the peaks of delight.

TumbleSeed is challenging in all the right ways. It never feels mean-spirited, yet it requires patience, perseverance, and experimentation to unlearn everything you know about how to manipulate a video game character. [Recommended]

A glorious ride down a futuristic California that never was. [Recommended]

Like Police Quest meets Papers, Please on a grim day.

Relic has had the audacity to launch it into an unexpected frontflip, and what a glorious, inventive somersault of design Dawn of War 3 is, even if it doesn't completely stick the landing. [Recommended]

A wobbly first-person horror whose moments of splendid unease are spoiled by clunky stealth, casual misogyny and warmed-over scares.

There's a slight disappointment that the tale it tells isn't as smart as the idea that powers it, a blot on an otherwise wonderful game. Scanner Sombre is a remarkable experiment, its only downfall being that once you've shed some light on your surroundings you realise there's not really that much to it at all.

Sega's brilliant puzzler Puyo Puyo makes a long overdue return to the west as part of this outstanding package. [Recommended]

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 is a great sniping game let down by a mediocre open world, poor voice acting, technical hitches and terrible writing.

The FMV thriller is fully exhumed in this splicing of game and cinema, where high production values fail to obscure the creative fissures.

An elegiac, memorable and affecting tale of the misfortunes suffered by the members of a deeply eccentric family. [Recommended]

Media Molecule protégé Tarsier turns in a masterpiece of meat and malice, swiftly consumed but with a lingering aftertaste.

The detail, the care and the craft on show amount to a package that feels luxurious, a feeling only emboldened by this deluxe edition, and the few tweaks made here underline its brilliance. There was some debate when it originally came out about whether Mario Kart 8 was the best in the series - with Deluxe, that's now no longer in doubt. [Essential]

The Dragon's Trap's HD sheen belies the simplistic gameplay of its era, but there's undeniable charm in that simplicity. [Recommended]

A perfectly horrid, wonderfully thought-out mixture of Majora's Mask-style time rewinding and Metroidvania exploration. [Recommended]

Mr. Shifty's action-packed adventure about a teleporting hero offers a similar adrenaline high as Hotline Miami and Superhot. [Recommended]

A wasteland you'll love to wander, but not a game you'll necessarily relish, The Signal from Tölva is a dark, frustrating work.

David Jaffe returns with an obnoxious, sketchy shooter that packs a surprising - if not entirely pleasant - punch.

People Can Fly's cult sci-fi shooter - and booter, and whipper, and blower-upper - returns in an impressively lavish package.

Playtonic's tribute to Banjo is a gentle, irreverent platformer let down by spotty handling and a slight shortage of genius.

Thimbleweed Park is what would happen if you moved Nightvale into Monkey Island, and gave everyone too much rum. [Recommended]

Sumo Digital makes its solo debut with an old school platformer that's inventive, charming and a little too frequently infuriating.

Rain World, for all its stark beauty, feels overly punitive. As such, the audience who will view its impositions as a welcome challenge rather than a grim deterrent will be small.

Persona 5 is unconscionably sublime. Every beat, every subtlety, every movement of the camera - it all translates into a kinetic masterpiece, strung together with the best visuals this side of Atlus. Persona 5 won't change your mind on JRPGs if you lack a taste for the genre, but if you're in any way a fan, well -Why the hell are you still reading this? Go forth and damn well purchase. [Essential]

Where the original Mass Effect games kept you moving through the story, Andromeda relegates its critical path to second place, offering up a spread of loosely associated scenarios that just happens to include a fairly uninspired tussle with a genocidal tyrant. It's a game that is more interested in keeping you busy than keeping you in suspense about what happens next, or making you feel the consequences of your actions.

Wildlands is an environment worth lingering over, but the mechanics and themes it propagates are wearing extremely thin.

I've got a huge soft spot for Super Bomberman R; it's a gentle throwback to simpler times, and a welcome revival for a local multiplayer classic for what's set to be an outstanding local multiplayer machine. An effective slice of nostalgia, then, albeit one that comes at a considerable price.

It's a little insubstantial, and rather too limp as a solo endeavour, but there's real heart to its raucous, collaborative core. If Switch's underlying ethos inspires more games like this, then there'll be no complaints here.

The dark cousin of Pillars of Eternity may not be as polished or comprehensive as Obsidian's standout RPG. But I think, in the end, Tyranny has far more of import to say, and it'll make you listen whether you like it or not. [Recommended]

Where Watch Dogs 2 leads the field is in closing the thematic gap between our world and the open world, and in offering players more ways to hit their targets than those delivered down the barrel of a gun. [Recommended]

Arkane manages to better the already exceptional Dishonored in nearly every way, creating a masterpiece of open-ended design. [Essential]

Motorsport Manager's a couple of tweaks away from greatness, then, but it's far from a disappointment.

It's not without its problems, but Planet Coaster is the finest park construction simulator yet. [Recommended]

Don't be fooled. Rollercoaster Tycoon World is Dismaland without the irony, a machine designed to fleece your pockets and offer the bare minimum in return.[Avoid]

The world of Pokémon is finally, exactly that: a world, with charming, textured characters not just in the named friends and foes you meet, but the random people on your journey, the region you live in, the music, the Pokémon themselves and the very soul of the journey. At long last, Pokémon is not just back. With Sun and Moon, it feels fresh again. [Essential]

The world of Pokémon is finally, exactly that: a world, with charming, textured characters not just in the named friends and foes you meet, but the random people on your journey, the region you live in, the music, the Pokémon themselves and the very soul of the journey. At long last, Pokémon is not just back. With Sun and Moon, it feels fresh again. [Essential]

An odd combination of Dead Space and Dear Esther, ICARUS.1 isn't particularly challenging to play through or exciting to conclude, but it does offer a premise and a pace to enjoy it that never feels that it has to rely on the obvious survival/horror tropes, preferring instead to evoke the spirit of classic science fiction, from a time before all astronauts were armed and the mysteries of the universe could be solved with a blaster.

Undeniably Islands sits to the far left of the sliding scale that runs between digital art installation and Call of Duty. That only adds to its transgressive appeal. It expands the definition of what games can and might be. [Recommended]

In chasing that scale the bigger picture can sometimes get a little obscured, but importantly Final Fantasy 15 retains that love of smaller stories, the ones that often prove to be so much more memorable.

A brainless, buggy open-world game that's forgotten the second you put down the pad.

A wonder of animation and AI smoke-and-mirrors, the beast in The Last Guardian is primarily a masterpiece of observation. [Essential]

Again and again, it's quietly thrilling to leap from the mountainside and the board beneath my feet, up to the overhead view of the entire mountain range, in which my rider is suddenly a dot, lost amongst the rumpled whiteness, and then instantly warp to a distant drop zone. As an extreme sports game, Steep is fine. As a place, it's frequently amazing. [Recommended]

Super Mario Run? This is Mario, for the first time in an age, running on hardware that was not designed by Mario's people. And you know what's frightening? When Mario's people are involved, they make the hardware feel like they designed it anyway. Super Mario Run's not just ingenious and demanding and infuriating and delightful. It's a game born of a deep understanding of its platform.

Clearly not a wholehearted recommendation for shooter aficionados then, but as a lifelong fan of Space Hulk who's been eagerly awaiting a 40k shooter that plays to the strengths of the lore rather than tries to fit the lore into the standard shooter template, I'd probably ignore my own advice and buy the game anyway.

Stephen's Sausage Roll is a design masterclass. It's also a game about the joys of getting stuck. Don't savour the victories. This is about the precious moments of being absolutely lost, stumped and clueless within a tight, beautiful thing that defies any sense of how it came to be.

This is a joyous fairy-tale that, like the best fairy tales, transcends the fashions of the day. [Recommended]

Gravity Rush seemed like an oddity on Vita, but then, the entire Vita was an oddity, wasn't it? On the radio friendly unit shifter that is the PS4, however, Gravity Rush 2 still seems wonderfully unlikely and out of place. What a strange delight. [Recommended]

Though a return to Kamurocho isn't far away, Yakuza 0 is, in many respects, the end of an era - and a heck of a finish it is, too. [Recommended]

Perhaps Resident Evil 7's most intriguing quality is how it plays around with the idea of retracing your steps.

If this Hitman has a design limitation, it's that maps don't evolve as much in response to assassinations as they could - it strains credibility that you can bump off three of four targets in Colorado without plunging the fourth into a panic. That aside, this is among the most expertly-made, engrossing stealth simulations of recent years, and a tale of A-listers meeting their comeuppance to give any Fortune 500 member the shivers. Agent 47 is back with a vengeance, and vengeance has seldom tasted sweeter. [Recommended]

Rebellion has folded in the essence of stealth greats such as Splinter Cell and Metal Gear while keeping the characterful flavour of Sniper Elite itself, and for the first time it's not necessary to make any excuses on its behalf. Sniper Elite 4 is a really good video game. It's as simple as that. [Recommended]

Primarily single-player games are on the decline right now, but Nioh is a strong argument for the merits of this withering form. [Recommended]

Stripped of the context of time (the 1980s) and space (the amusement arcade, where every life has a financial cost attached), that spell has been severely weakened.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a work of considerable finesse and technical bravado, but it falls into the trap of past Guerrilla games in being all too forgettable. For all its skin-deep dynamism it lacks spark; somewhat like the robotic dinosaurs that stalk its arrestingly beautiful open world, this is a mimic that's all dazzle, steel and neon yet can feel like it's operating without a heart of its own.

If For Honor occasionally feels like a game at war with itself, its edge blunted by some less arresting modes and design-by-committee add-ons, the heart of the game beats strongly enough to overcome these blemishes. [Recommended]

Halo Wars 2 does an incredible job of ensuring console players can enjoy the RTS genre and there's certainly a lot of content here, but it's difficult to get really excited about any of it. The campaign doesn't push any boundaries and the game's most exciting multiplayer mode, Blitz, is hampered by the feeling that players who spend more money are given an unfair advantage over their opponents. It's exciting to see another high-profile RTS game released, but this one doesn't do quite enough to move things forward.

It's a sensation I don't feel very often in games, and in that moment all the frustration, the annoying bugs, the torturous dialogue, felt worthwhile. Take on Mars isn't short of problems, but when everything works together, it really does feel like you're there.

Where other RPGs are still content with a dragon or some apocalyptic end of the world boom, here the stakes are personal, as well as both asking and inviting far more interesting questions than how much fire you can fling from your fingertips. It's a far more welcoming game than the original Torment, though a slower burner as far as the main plot goes, and one that never quite has its predecessor's dark confidence. It is, however, as close as we've had in the last 15 or so years, and certainly doesn't invoke the name in vain. [Recommended]

For the most part, though, Night in the Woods is a triumph, comparable to Gone Home in mood and thrust, but with a delicacy and a humour that is all its own. [Recommended]

As fanciful as the game can be, the technology feels unnervingly true to its period - right down to the inherent awkwardness of microfilm readers. [Recommended]

Nier: Automata isn't the most elegant title on the market, but it's the most captivating game I've played in ages. You don't need to look far to find its glaring flaws, but those searching for an endlessly imaginative dreamlike journey will find Nier: Automata too mesmerising to look away from. There's nothing else quite like it - and that includes the original Nier. [Recommended]

The diminutive size of the controllers, combined with their tactile precision, makes the games feel fresh and contemporary. Switching between a specific game and the selection screen is quick and responsive, minimising the load-time lulls that can scupper any game-party.

It's hard to overstate the courage and conviction with which producer Eiji Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and their team have rewritten their own work, and the size of the risk Nintendo has taken with a beloved property. Breath of the Wild isn't just the most radical departure from the Zelda tradition in its 30-year history, it's the first Nintendo game that feels like it was made in a world where Half-Life 2, Halo, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Skyrim happened. It's inspired by those greats and others, but it doesn't ape them any more than it rests on its own laurels. [Essential]

Sunless Sea's method of storytelling isn't unique, but it has never been realised with such impact and elegance.

If it played just a little tighter, Apotheon would be brushing up against greatness. As it stands, it's stunning to look at and a pleasure to play, and what flaws it does have can be easily overlooked by anyone looking for something smart and stylish.

There is a soul to the game, an integrity that tries hard to smooth over many of the game's rough edges.

This is a slight, simple, often delightful game that displays moment-to-moment ingenuity but which now obviously lacks a broader conceit to bring its ideas together.

As a follow up to Dead Island, Dying Light represents an improvement on the technical front, but has lost some of its knockabout charm in the process.

Havoc's a very decent package overall. As part one of the Season Pass, this is a strong chunk of content for the sharpest COD in years. It mixes fan service with proper map design, and gives those still addicted to that ADS snap more reason than ever to keeping plugging away towards that next prestige.

Cassia and co's deep-seated issues and baggage make them an entertaining bunch and while they won't set your world alight, they eventually prove capable of providing many hours of surprisingly amiable companionship.

Playing with others is amazing, but #IDARB doesn't help me out if I don't have quite that many friends available. Instead, it's watchable.

Even when it stumbles, it stands as a fine reminder of why LucasArts at its prime was seen as the industry at its best, and few other adventures have deservedly gathered so much affection. It was an instant classic back in 1998. It's still very much a journey worth taking today, albeit ideally with a walkthrough.

Citizens of Earth succeeds in rediscovering something of the ingenuity of 1990s JRPGs in its playful twists on genre clichés. And as a kooky and inventive contemporary re-imagining of the Super Nintendo-era role-player, this, like its protagonist's campaign, is but a near miss.

As a product of a unique moment in the medium's technological evolution, Resident Evil HD is a fascinating place to revisit. But for many contemporary visitors it will be an unpleasant stay, not because the game's inhabitants are unusually hostile, or because its idiosyncrasies are unfashionable, but because its formative designs have simply been bettered.