Ah... sub-"Jak & Daxter."

Despite the criticisms, Team 17 has still managed to pull off an impressive evolution of a much-loved series. The core game has remained barely unchanged, but the 3D engine introduces a lot of unexpected elements to get used to, both good and bad.

Played on a busy PvP server, while Exiles often comes across like the Ark/Rust clone it so clearly is, it has the setting and combat mechanisms to set it apart. Play it as a single-player experience and it will evoke memories of Minecraft, while as a co-op game, with its respawning mobs, thinly spread content and raid-like endgame, you might just catch the glimmer of an old school MMORPG, reminding you, just a little, of when the genre was a metaverse of uncharted promise. [Recommended]

At once accessible and complex, kid-friendly and adult-pleasing, and full of personality, MySims is an excellent and original idea that's well-suited to the console, even if it won't be an essential purchase for everybody.

Niggles aside, Band of Bugs is another solid addition to the increasingly well-stocked Live Arcade line-up, and although it's not the most astounding or original title, it's got the sort of charming pick-up-and-play feel that you want from a cheap, casual game. Definitely one to check out for fans of Advance Wars.

The missions are beautifully detailed, but characterless. The acting is just a few inflections the wrong side of ham. The units simply don't pack the punch you want from modern combat, and that lack of zing is pretty much found throughout the game.

Gang Beasts is far from perfect, then; it's all a little too messy for its own good, and it's still a super slight package despite its extended stay in Early Access. That spark is still there, though, and this remains a uniquely boisterous party game that's well worth having on tap. It's earned its place - just - with those other modern multiplayer classics, even if it doesn't quite have their class.

Penta Tentacles is like a cuddly drug; a game you won't feel guilty about playing relentlessly on a sunny day in June.

There's just not enough depth and nuance here to sustain prolonged play.

At this point, criticising a Lego game for being much like the other Lego games feels somewhat pointless. It's tempting, especially after so many, but it's a series that's long been more comfortable changing the wallpaper than rebuilding the entire house, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

Lost Sphear is a more ambitious JRPG than its predecessor, yet it risks abandoning its purpose to return to the genre's simpler days.

Without a clear system to give players feedback on whether their inputs are constructive or destructive, Metrico's emphasis on perpetually shifting rule sets and experimentation just wouldn't work. Instead, all of the game's ideas respond to each other much like its own delightful infographics, creating a short and beautiful puzzler that feels like a wholly self-contained piece.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuk work perfectly fine on their own - especially considering the Wii Zapper is both less accurate and less comfortable.

For those who are investing scores of hours into the game every week, the Stimulus Package will live up to its name, revitalising the game once again by providing new scope to learn, master and dominate.

Only two of the four maps feel truly essential, the new game mode is more a frantic doodle than a fleshed-out idea, while the new weapon and vehicles are of negligible use beyond the shattered confines of Aftermath's dusty arenas.

Atmosphere rules in this narrative game about a cabbie on the trail of a killer. [Eurogamer Recommended]

There's much to love in this colourful free-to-play Switch exclusive, but it's obscured by some clumsy design.

I won't pretend that Joint Strike is the most thrilling shoot-'em-up to be revived and relaunched as a digital download, but it's a damn solid effort and if all classic arcade titles received this sort of careful updating before being shunted into our cyber-pipes the world would be a better place.

This isn't a game that sets out to change the world or to redefine the genre, but rather to rehash an existing genre in a solid and playable way. An objective which it achieves with room to spare.

It’s a curious gaming experience, and strangely enjoyable, even if, like us, you haven’t got even the faintest interest in fishing.

If only there were a few more moves to learn, and a bit more imagination than room after room of contrived fight sequences against hordes of identikit enemies.

If you already have the Sims 2 on PS2, it depends on how much you want to buy the same game again, but with dogs and cats.

Gamers under about the age of 25 will frankly be utterly amazed at how basic things were back then, while those old enough to have owned (and who knows, maybe loved) a 2600, or hung around the arcades will have a few hours of curiosity sated before moving well and truly on.

You can't accuse Vergil's Downfall of being more of the same, and Ninja Theory should be commended for offering up a punchy side dish with action that boasts its own distinct flavour.

It's the best portable Harvest Moon in quite some time, and the multiplayer is a promising development, but we're still waiting for another Friends of Mineral Town.

The presentation is flawed and even though SBK 07 looks rough in parts, we can't recall actually enjoying a bike game on PlayStation 2 this much since, well, since PlayStation 2 began.

A beautiful but rather hollow and one-note trip to a familiar world of wonder and misrule.

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.

Taken at face value, these 'remakes' aren't as disastrous as they sound, but not including the original versions alongside them guarantees a testy dismissiveness among the very people who would champion this collection the most.

Unfortunately there's not a great deal to it; just a succession of questions, and no other modes to explore - and if you were expecting Game Center integration or real-time multiplayer competitions, you're out of luck.

A horror game with a twist? We've not seen one of those before! But The Cabin Factory's big trick is just enough to set it apart.

With its joyfully evil brand of warm humour enlivening every encounter, it's a game that makes you feel good about being bad. And with slick controls and a satisfying blend of action and strategy, it's a game that's never less than enjoyable to play. But while it provides superior controls and less frustration than Overlord II, it regrettably falls down by failing to offer enough of a concerted challenge.

Kinect Rush certainly lives up to its title, but only for the first hour or so. After that, the rush wears off and the grind sets in. That wide-open field turns out to be not so wide and not so open after all.

Taito's comeback continues with this revival of its most famous series, and while it's slim the old magic remains.

There's just not enough to the game, and by the time you're frantically scribbling increasingly complicated symbols in order to chip away the health of some super-blocking AI opponent, the initially appealing simplicity of the concept proves a hindrance rather than a help.

Where Orcs & Elves leaves me is wanting a decent, full-length dungeon-crawling RPG for the DS. What it gives me is the first five or six hours of one that was already beginning to feel a bit repetitive. Nothing's inherently bad about it (apart from the attempt at touch-screen movement controls), but it's rarely unapparent that this belongs on your portable telephone.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows is one of those games that seem content to just drone along, coasting on the ever-decreasing appeal of one gameplay element and gobbling up your free time with repetitive tasks and mindless exploration of a mostly empty space. It's not awful, but nor is it sufficiently different to any of the other Spider-Man games.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

The sheer unabashed evil that Eko Software has managed to cram into a seemingly cute puzzler is something to behold.

DICE goes big in a Call of Duty-baiting package that's as maddening, uneven and spectacular as the Star Wars films themselves.

With its varied mission objectives, well designed co-operative gameplay and highly impressive graphics, it's a joy to play - most of the time.

But the clean menus and HUD have a slickness and simplicity of interaction that elevate the squad-shooter genre to a new level of style and polish. Likewise, in moment-to-moment play, this is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2. For those who can leap that first hurdle, Brink should run and run.

For now, Vanguard is a game which has plenty to offer a brave adventurer with a stunning PC. Aside from any design or content problems we've identified with the game, potential buyers need to be aware that they're entering a world which, as a prominent WOW character would have it, is not prepared.

Dull adventure game mechanics are enlivened by a brilliant sense of dread, as the Dark Souls director turns his hand to VR. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Tiny incremental tweaks to the function are all very well if your base material is simply amazing or the form changes significantly but, all told, this is an old, whiffy average GBA kids RPG, dull and tired through inbreeding.

As an interesting and well-thought -through study of the struggles of an everyday life, Kudos is well conceived and a welcome alternative take on life-simulation.

Entertaining though Lost Kingdoms can be when it's raising two fingers to RPG convention, it's still blighted by conventional RPG problems.

The biggest issue here, sadly, is the price. When this launched on Xbox 360, its faults could be excused not only by its big heart but also by its small price-tag: at £25, the original was a budget game in both outlook and its impact on your wallet. So why, well over five years later, is the Vita version being sold full-price at £34.99?

Completely harmless and sure to get a giggle from younger gamers.

If the team can perhaps fix a few niggling issues via an update A.R.E.S. will be well worth a look, but until then this is a case of try before you buy.

Battles are fun and fairly compulsive but this is a game we've played many times over, usually presented better, executed more beautifully and intertwined with a far superior story.

Its uniquely British humour and gentle progression system (the ability to restart levels with saved high-score is a hugely welcome feature) provide light relief to what is, essentially, one of the most unorthodox and alien gaming experiences you'll ever have.

The broader fault is simply that by the time you've spent an hour in Potter's company, you'll have sussed out the rest of the game, leaving you with even less to look forward to than usual - because of course you know what's going to happen to everyone anyway. If you don't, you're better off reading the book.

Almost equally fun and frustrating whether played in co-op or in single-player mode, it's a game you'll both love and hate in the same breath.

It's the Amy Winehouse of videogames: rambling and incoherent, a bit of a mess and not much to look at, but with a unique and distinctive voice that's very hard to ignore.

It's clear that the team is trying to provide an accessible, fast-paced scrap-'em-up that can be enjoyed by all the family, not just autistic puppeteers. In that sense, the game's a modest success, offering a shallow but sometimes riotous playpen for up to four players to scrap away in visually interesting ways. But the slightness of the package means that this polished after-pub game will provide some short-term laughs but only minimal long-term nourishment.

At its best, it's all very bite-sized and relaxing, like a bucket of M&S flapjack bites, a glass of red and some ill-gotten American-strength meds.

But the trouble is, as soon as you remove the novelty death sequences it's actually the dictionary definition of the average third-person shooter.

What's really missing here? A bit of inventiveness, we think.

Despite the missteps, Arrowhead's Gauntlet is a dungeon-crawler that understands the action's at its most thrilling when four players are piled in together, helping each other through the fight - and giving each other a hard time when they think that nobody's looking.

As far as block or blob-based puzzlers go, Puyo Pop Fever is perfectly adequate, but the PSP happens to have a few better alternatives: "Lumines" offers a more classy experience, while "Koloomn" is a more original title, and one that will take every brain cell to master.

For all its sheen, H.A.W.X. remains a curious sideshow in Tom Clancy's murky world rather than a star player.

The best thing you can say about the game is that it's technically impressive, and the openworld structure is a good idea - but that's it. The game's central purpose seems to be to make dismemberment as easy to pull off as possible, but as soon as that novelty has worn off you're left with a hollow, repetitive experience which quickly loses its initial appeal.

For now though, unless you're desperately aching to play a new turn-based 40k wargame - which is entirely understandable given how long it's been since the last one - we'd advise waiting on the outcome of one or two necessary patches before joining the fray.

It's just that what it does still isn't that exciting or memorable, and without the lure of permanently capturing your Poképals, it falls to the rather dull storyline to try and keep players engaged.

Slightly Mad's expansive world of motorsport arguably works better as a hard-edged arcade racer than it ever did as a sim. [Eurogamer Recommended]

We're huge fans of the genre, and really buy into the thought of regular episodic content, but we'd demand it at a significantly reduced price and with an approach that actually panders to the long-term fans of this style of game - as opposed to young kids with no patience.

There's nothing sadder than a great idea wasted, but it's no longer enough to simply come up with a concept and let it do the heavy lifting for the entire length of a game.

It's a long journey through this huge game and TDU2 offers an unrefined, bumpy ride. Thankfully, if it all gets too much, you can set the grind aside for a long journey of your own – just following your front wheels across the islands, revelling in one of the great videogame open worlds...Unsteady but passionate and ambitious, TDU2 is fantastic escapism. It's just a shame it sometimes needs to escape from itself.

There's no doubting Juiced is a quality game, but it veers off the racing line with a flawed progression system that starts off promisingly but penalises players too harshly and makes it a frustrating experience to claw your way back.

If you can accept the pleated pixels for what they are, can appreciate the accomplished fluidity of the on-screen animations and - more importantly - are prepared to invest time into learning a technically demanding yet ultimately rewarding combat system, then Arcana Heart 3 is one of the most flexible, diverse fighting games that money can buy. It's far from perfect - and the variety it offers will be too spicy for some - but it effortlessly positions itself next to the current cream of the crop as a colourful, curious alternative.

In a perfect word, the meta-games would be as good as the mini-games themselves. But with four people, Lambrini and deely-boppers (just me?), Wii Party's still a reliable, if fairly thin, source of entertainment all the same.

It's hard to ignore the fact that the 3DS has smarter and more inventive puzzlers - a handful of them are also on the eShop, in fact - but if you want a good old idea dressed up in garish new duds, Tokyo Crash Mobs should just about do the trick.

It might go some way to negating the slightly impersonal feeling of Master Quiz, too. The format is always fun and yet, as polished as the presentation is, this PSP version is a little bit Every Second Counts to the PS3's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Another polished, oily, neon-drenched street-racing game with bags of 'tude, some neat ideas, and a decent riff on the classic Ridge Racer drift handling. But with so many genuinely inspired driving games out there at the moment, the fact that Juiced 2 ended up merely solid is not enough when it needed a spark of inspiration to draw attention away from everything else out there.

It's just not the Grand Theft Auto experience most people will be gunning for, and certainly not for this price, not a chance in hell.

Shallow and repetitive, Costume Quest 2's winsome appearance and occasional wit never quite obscure the busywork at its core.

It never feels more than throwaway fun. And while it never claimed to be anything to the contrary, its blatant copying of the Brain Training formula and the lack of innovation that results don't do it any favours.

As a concept, it works. The physics is decent enough, but the game itself never finds the tone or hook that elevates its gameplay model into something truly compelling.

Honestly, the question isn't whether you should play Bejeweled or not. It's more of a question of how much you covet the glory of fast-paced simultaneous competition.

Food Run is a pleasure to play, its only frustrations coming right near the end when the increasingly complex levels and lack of checkpoints mean some annoying restarts.

The game succeeds with this approach simply because it has so few contemporary rivals but it's a modest sort of success, one that proves the strategy RPG in its traditional form has run out of steam - but suggests that nevertheless, there's enjoyment to be had in revisiting old flames.

It has straightforward puzzles, cute rabbits, an unsual-for-its-kind multi-character dynamic, and lovely brassy music. I know I'd have loved this when I was a kid. For a while. Probably.

If you enjoy impish cartoon worlds that mask their pristine internal consistency under a measured low brow, and you can put up with falling in a pit occasionally and having to go back to a checkpoint, then Hell Yeah: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is probably exactly the game about Hell that you've always wanted.

In The Azoth of Destiny, these smaller cogs have been removed in favour of a more cumbersome larger gimmick and, as a result, grinding the sequel through its revolutions is tiresome and often unrewarding work.

Treasure World has a nice idea at its core and is fun as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

Thanks to the game's fundamental competitive structure, in two-player mode it shines and the charming art style, which ably mimics Japanese fighting game aesthetics, lends the package character sorely missing from its DS Sudoku rivals.

Neither particularly clever nor particularly beautiful. Instead it's relentlessly videogamey - distilling most of the clichés that onlookers might hold about both comics and videogames.

Instead, try teaching them to spell 'soulless merchandising opportunity' because this isn't a worthy companion piece at all.

The greater focus on third-person sections is also a pleasant diversion (especially when you're outside of the ship) but, realistically, the real problems are the drudgery of constant waypoint-following and the inability to play the campaign mode with a pal.

Both While Waiting and The Swimmer seem deeply interested in life - what it's made of, how it unfolds, and how easy it is to miss important details. Both are larks, in a way, but difficult, complex, ponderous larks. You know, if such a thing is possible.

Supermassive Games' collaboration with Dead By Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive results in occasionally awkward fan service.

In the face of such opposition, Nightshade, a pretty damn poor game when stacked against PS2 contemporaries like "Devil May Cry" or "Castlevania," simply doesn't have a candle to hold.

In terms of his strength and abilities, The Invincible Iron Man is one of the wimpiest game heroes we've encountered and deserves to be locked away in this rather limp platformer-with-guns.

Level-5's latest multimedia outing makes a belated western outing in an RPG that's eccentric, exuberant and more than a little clumsy.

But if you're looking for a Kinect fitness game which provides more motivation than Your Shape and is technically sounder than EA Sports Active, and if you can put up with the relentless cheeriness, Ultimate Loser is a decent choice.

Overall not a bad attempt to move the Mario Kart formula into the skies by any means, but one that's initially far too easy, then bizarrely too tough, and chock full of fairly irritating and unavoidable shoot-'em up-boss encounters that simply take you away from what you'd rather be doing.

At best, this might have been a cute piece of original downloadable content on a system that sorely needs some. As a full price piece of software, it's genuinely worth less than forty quid's worth of dog-eared primary school maths books.