Looking firmly along the line of simple-as-possible, it's clear that the developers, in focusing so much on the presentation of the HAVEN, rather than gameplay faults, have allowed it to stray too far into the bad half.

If you've been desperate for an RPG and would willingly drown yourself in a sea of Final Fantasies then it might be a little on the simplistic side.

A shift away from single-player leaves Call of Duty with its most lopsided and homogenous entry in decades, though what it does offer is consistently good fun when accepted on its own terms.

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.

Don't buy this expecting an epic RPG, and consider keeping someone under the age of 12 at hand to help you justify the twee nature of the game as a whole. But there's something here which is notably absent in any number of lushly produced and scintillatingly scripted games: a real sense of fun and discovery.

Just as Dark Angel is guilty of repetitive character models and backgrounds, the game design is guilty of repetitive action, which is unbelievably stagnant.

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

Supermassive's dour whodunnit is a poor vehicle for PlayLink's experiment in multiplayer narrative - a woeful mismatch of genre and form.

What you end up with is thirty battles masquerading as a fairly rigid sports league, in which you can try each fight as many times as you like, using whatever weaponry you want.

It may lack the roundness and heft of Frozen Synapse or X-Com: Enemy Unknown (both heavyweight strategy games that launched on iOS this year) but it also has an appeal that's distinct from these titles: the thrill of arranging a trap and then watching from the sidelines as its various components trigger.

Let's just slap a score and a verdict on the bottom here and we can all forget the game ever happened.

Despite making an excellent first impression, Park Beyond ends in a downward spiral that's exciting in a coaster, but lethal in an economy.

There's no doubting that this is the very best way to play either game outside of an arcade - mainly by virtue of the fantastic controls, and that you don't have to fork out for expensive extra hardware to play them.

But with up to seven players supported in multiplayer, the options for incendiary silliness are obvious. If you've got it already then it's a no-brainer, but otherwise it's inessential fun from one of the best indie developers out there.

This is a game about singing and dancing along to some of the greatest pop records ever made. Perfect for parties, it's also ideal for entertaining small children, unlike oh see why'd you have to go and spoil it all right at the end.

As it is, Imaginary Range feels like a waste of everyone's time.

For more than five years, the PSP version has provided the closest approximation of the stripped-down FM experience that many of us naturally gravitate towards, and this year's edition continues to stick doggedly to those sensibilities.

Slitterhead can be a slow-burn to begin with, but once its combat clicks, this is an action horror game like few others.

For all the control innovations that come tantalisingly close to solving the riddle of joypad RTS play, Universe at War is constantly blighted by unforgivable slowdown that, at its worst, all but breaks the game.

With genuinely appalling voicework setting the tone for development incompetence, it's compounded by a few dreadful levels, camera issues and the feeling that the whole project was ported onto the 360 as an afterthought.

As it stands, however, Verdict Day is more than just a marked improvement over Armored Core 5. It offers more parts, more maps and new missions while expanding the already tight mechanics with an AI crafting system and an overhauled online mode that encapsulate what Armored Core does best: options, creativity, strategy and teamwork. It's unashamedly hardcore - and all the better for it.

There are times when State of Decay 2 is so buggy that it stops being a stodgy post-apocalyptic looting game and transforms into metatextual horror theatre. [Avoid]

But it also makes you wonder why the game uses motion sensing at all, since all you're really doing during the swing itself is setting the power of your shot. If you can live with that then it's a decent bowling game with plenty to unlock, as well as trick shots and other fun frills.

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.

It's a small improvement over the last Settlers, and therefore a game that many devotees will be rooting for, but there's no getting away from the fact that judged against its peers, or even its own ancestors, this is an average offering in terms of depth, challenge and longevity, and blighted by fussy technical snags to boot.

Detective Pikachu Returns is a straightforward mystery adventure whose strengths lie in its Pokémon setting and breakout star.

We're sorry to heap such bile on a game that we actually like at times, but it's a bit like hearing a bad cover version of a song that you've grown to like that some people still maintain is rubbish. Our advice? Buy the PC version of Mafia.

I certainly enjoyed the quest, brief as it is, and for all its flaws I was happy to be lured back into Fable's world after a few months out. But I was still left underwhelmed once I'd sucked all the new content dry though. Worth experiencing for the Fable faithful? I'd say yes. But is it worth 800 Points? Probably not.