Dark Souls 2 probably isn't quite the same masterpiece Dark Souls is, but then neither is anything else, and the fact it comes so close is remarkable.

If you'd like to know how easy it can be to ruin an excellent work, you can cry yourself to sleep thinking of all the squandered potential in Dawn of the New World. But if you can bring yourself to ignore it, this is still a fine reissue of a great game.

As part of the Guild portmanteau it's a curio that earns its place, an eccentric exercise whose existence you can't help but be grateful for. Torn away from its more substantial partners, though, it never does enough to stand out on its own.

The translators and proofreaders have done an excellent job conveying both meaning and emotion through text. The music is cute, and the art is simple and beautiful. This game is so worth its eShop price.

Threes! is at once nicotine and soul food, magnificent and deadly, a machine for playing. It is flawed and broken and perfect and you must start playing it today.

What is really starting to take its toll on The Walking Dead is the way it burns off goodwill with too many false choices - or worse, moments when players are meant to share guilt in situations we had no real say in.

It's more professionally made and superior to the original campaign in every way, and likely to clock in at around 12-15 hours depending on difficulty settings: enough to tell its story, but not enough to outstay its welcome.

A finicky combat system, a lack of challenge and few reasons to remain in South Park once the story is done - these minor disappointments hold The Stick of Truth back from greatness, but they don't detract from the sheer audacious hilarity it delivers. In gameplay terms it may be soon forgotten, but there's unlikely to be a funnier - or filthier - game any time soon.

A little more faith in the player's ability to cope with deeper strategy and Heroes of Dragon Age would be a genuinely good game. Conversely, it would only take a few more turns of the micro-transaction screw for it to be intolerable. Strange as it sounds, this somewhat awkward middle ground actually represents huge progress for EA's freemium ambitions.

I liked playing Banished. It was complex, but never fiddly, difficult, but rarely cruel, though it would benefit from a little more transparency. But as soon as I had a handle on it, as soon as I'd started to see through some of the fog of its complexity, I wanted to grasp for something bigger, something greater. Banished is satisfying, but never spectacular. That's not quite enough for me.

It never hits the heights of Battlefield in its pomp, Call of Duty at its slickest or Titanfall in its explosive beta, but at its best Garden Warfare stirs the same emotions; the panic, the triumph, the tension and the elation.

The first Lords of Shadow was a sweet surprise. The follow-up is a hostage to a story it tells badly, and a prisoner within a dull urban maze that refuses to become a characterful exploratory playground. To live on but to be diminished - that's the fate of the vampire in Castlevania's lore. Sadly, it's a bit of an epitaph for this well-meaning but bloated game as a whole.

It's a game that adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Undeniably, Thief suffers greatly by comparison to Dishonored - its more coherent, more thoughtfully and successfully designed cousin, in whose shadow Garrett and his game now cringe.

It's not being corny and schlocky on purpose, which means that for all its faults Rambo honestly taps into the spirit of 1980s action cinema more deeply than you might expect - not in spite of its rough edges, but because of them.

At its best, Tengami is something you want to freeze-frame and hang on the wall. For a video game, that shouldn't be taken as a compliment.

Though a few tweaks short of masterful, it's a pleasure to find Ys in such good standing - proof of Falcom's ability to transpose 25 years of blueprint into an up-to-date, three-dimensional trapping.

EDF 2025 is a shorthand for every game. Just shooting GIANT INSECTS, whilst someone shouts SHOOT THE GIANT INSECTS from your TV.

It's a competent, workable game that draws inspiration from the right places, but which is rarely anything more than a cover version of the greats.

The likelihood, then, is that people who played DKC Returns will find Tropical Freeze a little uninspiring. It's a superior game - it looks nicer, it's easier to control on the GamePad than it was on the Wiimote, and there's slightly more to do - but like a lot of Nintendo's recent sequels, that doesn't feel like quite enough.

World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition is limited in features right now, but is rich in potential. It's not a well-oiled machine yet, but it's still fun to take for a spin. Given that it costs absolutely nothing to climb aboard, it's hard not to recommend.

A beautifully crafted addendum to The Last of Us, a game that already stood tall above many of its peers. While it could have benefited from yet more exploration, its impeccable level design utilises its environments to take Ellie and Riley - wonderfully portrayed by Ashley Johnson and Yaani King - on a trip that is not easily forgotten, underpinned by sparing use of Gustavo Santaolalla's beautiful score.

The polished frankness is one thing, but a neat system that allows you to gradually best your score level by level breaks down the action into sizzling, digestible chunks makes the perfect concession to portable play and less time-rich players.

That's not to say it's not without its own unique pleasures, but while I'm curious to see what happens next, it so far lacks the edge-of-the-seat impatience that The Walking Dead conjured up at the end of each episode.

From its dazzling battle system to its overarching temporal puzzle, this is the best of the set - even if it's dragged down by an exhaustingly impenetrable plot that its creators will no doubt be pleased to be done with.

This game made me laugh - not gently or under duress of slow realisation, but in staccato outbursts which alarmed and unsettled passers-by.

What we have here is the shell of Bullfrog's pioneering strategy game, hollowed out and filled up with what is essentially a beat-for-beat clone of Clash of Clans. Every function, every mechanism, every online feature has been tried and tested already by Supercell's money machine and EA is following behind, drooling like a Pavlovian dog. That's what stings the most: not that Dungeon Keeper has gone free-to-play, but that it's done so in such soulless fashion.

Ironically, what makes Surge Deluxe so instantly sensational is perhaps also what holds it back from being one of the greats. That riot of colour and sound, that constant positive reinforcement, can make it feel a little too eager to please. And yet each play session offers a very tangible surge, a rush of dopamine that will take some time to wear off.

It's a shame Octodad leans so heavily on traditional gameplay tropes like boss fights and stealth sections in its second half, especially when the opening sections suggest something quirkier and more inventive - but taken as a whole, it's still a minor triumph.

As there's no real burden of expectation on its shoulders, it's hard to imagine anyone getting angry with Fable Anniversary, and yet it's equally hard to shake a feeling of disappointment. It's the original, rather than this update, that's the problem. Fable's fundamentals already had a major overhaul in 2, and while a return to those ideas in rawer form provides an insight into the evolution of game mechanics, it also serves as a stark reminder of its age.

The fact is that wandering through the plot of Long Live the Queen, blithely making mistakes on the assumption you'll do better the second or third time, is wonderful. Trying to actually do better is a byzantine process involving either heavy use of a guide or incredible persistence.

This is DLC that sticks to what has worked in the past while taking tentative steps towards a different formula in which Call of Duty is many games under one banner. Action movie, slasher horror, sci-fi conspiracy - they're all in here, and often competing with each other.

Samurai Gunn is a game about little else, really: you spawn, you fight, you fall, and then you spawn again - and fall again...This is hectic and hilarious and exhausting, in other words, and it's also very clever with its focus.

It's unadorned, then, but the game's so wonderfully unselfconscious in its aims that it creates the perfect atmosphere in which to enjoy its simple charms.

Might & Magic 10: Legacy feels like a pleasant throwback to dungeon crawls of decades past, but its limited scope and combat-heavy focus might put off those pining for the freedom afforded by the more recent Elder Scrolls games, or the wordy character interaction of a Dragon Age.

The new levels feel rich and generous, and will absolutely reinvigorate the game for anyone who played it to death at indie gaming events.

Elegant, understated and yet with the capacity for wild showboating, OlliOlli is a twitch classic, a startling console debut from a young British indie that manages to bring together the purity and focus of seminal arcade games with the latest asynchronous multiplayer designs.

Despite its unevenness and occasional cruelty, Teslagrad is a bold and captivating proposition. The unusual and elegant aesthetic is persistently attractive, and the lightness of touch with the storytelling brings the world-building to the fore.

It's easy to see Dr Luigi as a symptom of the current malaise affecting its home console business. It features a strange gimmick no one's really that interested in, it highlights an increasing reliance on past glories, and most will find it somewhat overpriced.

As with many reconstituted products, NES Remix is immediately delicious, but inspires an obsession that it can't sustain for long.

Pleasant but undemanding, gorgeous but lacking in depth - fans will be forgiven for expecting something a little more chewy, a little more experimental, from a developer who made his name by turning adventure games upside down. Here's hoping Act 2 builds some gameplay muscle to go with the supermodel looks.

The Banner Saga offers a refreshing take on the tactical RPG with a story every bit as engaging as its combat.

Even at its best, Caesar in Gaul wears thin long before the end of the campaign.

It's a game that makes you feel smart and, unlike Limbo, never surprises you with unforeseeable traps: there is always an opportunity to stand back, assess and, finally, execute.

For a story about breaking the chains of your fellow men, this add-on's gameplay mechanics remain resolutely locked up to the Assassin's Creed framework. Its strong, self-contained narrative is Freedom Cry's greatest asset, but the tale struggles under the weight of its over-familiar gameplay.

It's worth taking the time to raise a glass to this unlikely hero, and what might well be his best game to date. To Infinity, and beyond!

A little more spit and polish on the mechanics, and the confidence to build a game around original ideas rather than sitting in the shadows of giants, and it could create a classic of its own. For now, this is a fine calling card.

It's arguably a perfect simulation of real-life social media, but it unfortunately doesn't make for an edifying game experience.

The Novelist suffers because we are essentially examining a family that doesn't care for us or know about us and we don't really feel an emotional attachment to them.

Fans of smart sci-fi and bold game design should jump aboard now.

All That Remains does a great job of reintroducing the series, and switches things up in a way that could have tripped up harder than Lee over a tree branch yet feels like the only way the story could have been continued.

I'm no fan of the gross sense of entitlement displayed by some gamers, but when the core game is still blighted by outrageous glitches and glaring bugs it's hard to see how State of Decay justifies charging almost 50% of its original asking price over again for a game mode that arguably should have been implemented at launch.

From the cartoon sketchiness of the art to the breezy gallicisms that litter the text, there's a wonderful sense that, for all its elegance, the core of Poof vs. the Cursed Kitty came together in a mad rush. And although it's a pretty simple affair at heart, it will drink in your free time with surprising ease.

Rocksmith 2014 is a towering achievement on console, sitting somewhere between instructional software and rhythm action game...Joins that small club of video games that imbue their player with a truly transferable physical skill.

As lovely to watch as it is to play.

Any time Risk of Rain loses its sheen, you can always start again, with a new character.

What was once fresh and exciting becomes expected, and the recipe can be so delicate that trying to repeat it with different ingredients can easily result in an indigestible disaster. Fireproof has taken a conservative approach that avoids those pitfalls, but it hasn't abandoned ambition in the process.

With a touch more refinement in its platforming and less zeal in its agent-based aggression, Stick it to the Man could have staked a claim as one of the most essential games of the year.

It's hard, it's obtuse. It's big, it's beautiful. It's cruel, it's arbitrary. It's an adventure.

Peggle 2 is still a wonderful game, but to a super-fan there are too many things that feel miscalibrated. In a way, that's more damaging than the suggestion PopCap isn't sure what else to do with Peggle: it suggests PopCap needs to rediscover itself.

As a foundation, it's certainly more stable than its predecessor - and as a way to explore the thrill of four wheels it is, despite its many faults, exceptional, brilliant and pretty much peerless.

Second Assault marks another successful map pack for DICE, although one not nearly as sharp as Battlefield 3's marvellous End Game sign-off. Two excellent maps, one decent effort in Metro, and the perfunctory but underwhelming Operation Firestorm are enough to freshen up the rotation, while the new weapons might sate those who've already (somehow) exhausted the 'vanilla' game's already sizeable arsenal.

Pirates is a game of lots of little pieces that combine to form a patchy but largely coherent slice of pirate life. Could it stand to be a little more in-depth, a little less piecemeal in the way it hands out tasks? Certainly. But if you just want a solidly entertaining pirate game that you can dip in and out of, safe in the knowledge that there are hours of gameplay ahead with no paywalls, this is definitely worth downloading.

World of Warplanes is not bad, but it's not nearly as exciting as World of Tanks. It's a sometimes enjoyable, occasionally tiresome arcade shooter that's forgiving to fly and a challenge to master. Compared to its smart, successful older brother, it's not nearly as sophisticated and, most importantly, it's not nearly as much fun.

The core conceit adds new capacity for strategy; it's a genuine and interesting invention. And despite the now completely lifeless use of mystical crystals as a plot device, as the game progresses, scriptwriter Nataka Hayashi begins to subvert the clichés in unexpected ways. What's easy to dismiss as by-the-numbers plotting will delight and surprise you in time.

It's hard to shake the feeling that China Rising is Battlefield 4 by numbers - maps for the sake of maps. That's enough for most. That is, if they can get the bloody game to work.

It's hard, though, to shake the feeling that the only reason this game is free to play is that nobody would pay money for something so scrappy and generic.

Ubisoft should be ashamed of itself for trying to peddle more of this nonsense. And Microsoft needs its giant cyborg head examined for thinking this is a great way to show off the capabilities of its new hardware. It's like Tampax launching an ad campaign fronted by Danny Dyer.

Despite its exaggerated cartoon characters and picturesque sunsets, Powerstar Golf feels surprisingly staid and lacking personality.

There's huge satisfaction to be had from building your zoo, observing the animals and watching all the graphs go up. It's just a shame that over time, as the novelties wear off, the lack of depth makes it hard to keep coming back.

Dribbling in this year's current-gen instalment always felt a little jittery - as though you were constantly teetering on the edge of control - but dribbling on next-gen is much better. You can now move the ball around in tight spaces with greater confidence, even completing neat little one-twos in close quarters where you might previously have lost possession.

But a few missteps and one notable absence can't derail what is otherwise a timeless fighting game in high definition.

Contrast is a game of light and dark: a puzzle platformer with two well-realised female leads that occasionally buckles under the weight of its own mechanics. It's beautiful in parts, but also a little broken; I admire it for the first and can almost forgive it the second.

The dojo is amazing. All fighting games from now on need to step up.

It's a thin and troubled tribute to the original Panzer Dragoons, slim on the ambition, vision and art that made its predecessors what they were - and some way short of the invention and execution in the games they inspired.

There's no brains, no muscle, no fibre beneath Ryse's extravagantly engineered good looks - this game rings loud but hollow.

With Forza Motorsport 5, Turn 10's created a driving experience both accessible and beautiful - but it's been stripped back to make Xbox One's launch, and augmented with a host of ugly extras that only serve Microsoft's bid to make a few dollars more.

It's not a long game, but for every section of simple platforming there's a moment of pure creative delight that leaves most other games looking stuffy and sterile, locked away behind their joypads and glass, away from your prodding, inquisitive fingers. Tearaway's tactile world may be no more real, but while you're under its spell it certainly doesn't feel that way.

Compact by the standards of the Galaxy adventures but still loaded with bountiful secrets, beneath the warm familiarity of 3D World lies one of the strangest Mario games in years - or at least one of the most random in its influences and its moment-to-moment indulgences. And that's a very, very good thing.

Type:Rider couldn't be a more unlikely game, really. It's a collision of visual and gameplay styles topped off with an incredibly narrow educational focus, and yet through ingenious design and polished gameplay it emerges as one of the best mobile titles of the year. You don't have to be a graphic design student to enjoy this one.

The implementation is rushed and slipshod, however, ignoring fundamental problems and expending limited energy on the wrong things. What you're getting for your money feels a little like somebody else's office in-joke: you can sense the well-intentioned laughter, but you can't really join in.

Dead Rising 3 is the weakest in the series, then...Just beware, once you get over the pleasure of the first few combo weapons, Dead Rising 3 is just a solid zombie brawler set in an open world, not the strange game of tender heart that used to be so funny and surprising.

What they've conjured up in their debut effort is a remarkable achievement. Before downsizing, Criterion created some of the last generation's very best arcade racers in Hot Pursuit and Burnout Paradise. Ghost Games has carried on that torch and crafted a racer that any of its competitors would do well to match in the new generation.

For all its borrowings and influences, all its sleights and feints, Eldritch's dark alchemy ultimately lies with the way it uses a blocky, cheerily primitive art style, silly sound effects and a surprisingly forgiving level of challenge to summon the kind of creeping dread that H.P. himself would be delighted with.

Cities of Tomorrow makes SimCity a better game but, unfortunately, it still doesn't make SimCity a particularly good game. While its presentation is excellent and the act of laying out a city is alarmingly addictive, nurturing and developing that city is less compelling.

What's most frustrating is that with more enemies, more graceful control and a more compelling structure, there's no reason why a retro-styled Adventure Time roguelike couldn't have been an absolute treat and a game worthy of the show.

It's often been said that A Link to the Past is a game set inside a puzzle. That means A Link Between Worlds is buried at least two layers deep, as it's a game set within A Link to the Past. But that's both the pleasure and the pain of Zelda, isn't it?

Resogun really is that rare kind of arcade game that feels like an entirely different beast when played on the toughest setting. It's also the closest the PS4 launch line-up gets to offering a genuine next-gen thrill.

I'm all in favour of games that transport us back to the good old days of vibrant originality, but Knack simply doesn't.

There's a lack of confidence here that contrasts starkly with Guerrilla's dazzling, sure-footed command of the new hardware. It's a game that any new PlayStation 4 owner will be proud to show off - but it won't be one they remember by the time PS5 rolls around.

Part One of Burial at Sea is predicated on so many constants and variables that it will undoubtedly prove divisive. It feels all too brief, even as half of a two-part whole, but it delivers a rich storyline that builds to a suitably stunning climax.

Much like the genetic modifications that it champions, XCOM: Enemy Within is an experience that gets under your skin.

Like its predecessors, Lego Marvel has surface flaws - but it's so generous with its content, so clearly head-over-heels in love with the characters and world it's inherited from the comic page and cinema screen, and so reliably, reassuringly designed from the ground up to both enchant and inspire young minds, that it's impossible to allow the slight technical scruffiness to sour the experience.

The novelty of typing the phrases 'male crime sim' and 'flowers to womans', although hilarious in the first few stages, starts to fade a little without that ancient Sega charm. You realise that you're just retreading the slightly toothless plot of a game that you didn't ever feel nostalgic about. The bromancing leads start to get tiresome. And then you need a gin and tonic.

Rayman Fiesta Run just misses out on the majesty of its parent games, sometimes tipping from pleasant frustration into genuine annoyance thanks to its endless runner DNA, but it's still one of the best translations of a console hit into a mobile format around.

Puzzle solving is a gentlemanly pursuit, one that will perhaps never be better personified than in Professor Layton and his inquiring entourage.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is still a wonderful game, but as with the other three boss battles, I can't help feeling that this Director's Cut would have been even better if the directors had, you know, cut it.

Infinity Ward had a chance here to throw down the gauntlet for the next hardware generation, to set the new standard, to show that this hugely popular, much derided behemoth can dance to a different tune. It's chosen to play a Greatest Hits package instead.

This is a game about the beauty of science, and most puzzle games can learn from its findings.