Not only are there better looking, more advanced games on the shelves now, there are also simply better games out there; this genre hasn't stood still since Jade Empire came out.

All minor gripes aside though, SWOS remains a triumph of playability over tedium and proves the franchise is still a strong contender for the greatest football game of all time.

If you're prepared to expend the requisite effort, there's a decent game of golf to be had here, but there's substantial room for improvement.

A moody, well-wrought action role-player with striking, desolate landscapes and a couple of great dungeons. [Eurogamer Recommended]

The further you go, the more hazards await, and the more colourful your language gets. One day they'll be forced to put blood pressure warnings on these things.

As lovely to watch as it is to play.

With the inclusion of a Software Development Kit in the package, the door is also wide open for user modifications and new missions for the game, which should extend SWAT3's life for the foreseeable future. I couldn't recommend your acquisition of this game any more.

If you fancy some utterly ridiculous, relentless twitch gaming action, full of drama, evil henchmen and a posse of minions to pump full of lead, then Time Crisis 3 stands as an essential purchase.

Asheron's Call is also very addictive - I sat down and told myself that I was only going to play for an hour, but after I finished playing I noticed that I had been playing for over four hours, which pretty much explains that I'm hooked.

Borderlands 4 brings a more sensible script and a true open world to its pseudo-cel-shaded gun-show. But these moderate improvements are undermined by frustrating exploration and combat that takes too long to properly shine.

It's a good idea, well measured and put together. Its problems are spiking difficulty and mechanical obstinacy.

The big issue, for us, is that Mario Golf hasn't really grown much since its time on the N64 - and when you consider the sorts of things that other golf games are doing at the moment, that's much less forgivable than it is in the case of some of Nintendo's genre-leading franchises.

Ghostrunner never loses sight of being about speed and agility, making it a constant joy to play. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Shadow Dragon will live long in a lot of DS slots - and probably even long enough to show the US gamers who's boss for a while in 2048 or whenever it comes out over there. Sorry guys.

Slapstick gaming at its silliest, Untitled Goose Game delivers brilliantly on its premise. [Eurogamer Recommended]

A serene, quietly uplifting afternoon's entertainment for urban explorers and platform fans alike.

Even with the new home cities, gameplay feels tired and characterless. Bombarding players with shiny baubles and inconsequential gifts can’t hide that.

Far: Changing Tides' story is a little longer and its puzzles more refined than its predecessor, while its world is as beautiful as ever. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Stuck awkwardly between action game and top-down strategy, Cold War is an affectionate and exhilarating blast in the short term - but much like the cheap action figures it pay loving homage to, it can't survive more than a few days of intense play.

It's a fitting end to a game that starts off brightly, wriggling elusively as you try and grasp what's going on, delighting in the mechanics and beautiful visuals, before sinking into a pattern that, while fairly gratifying, never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive.

A dreamily pretty and astonishingly compulsive puzzler that's a good deal more polished than many full-price retail releases.

Mostly, this is a relaxing Sunday-afternoon game, and good at either accompanying the digestion of a roast dinner or the slow exorcism of a hangover.

18 years on from Super Mario 64, Nintendo's designers are still going further in their exploration of the third dimension than almost anyone else.

While Distant Worlds may be a paragon of its style, I can only recommend it to a select few: those with beefy computers and plenty of time to really dig into the meat of this stunningly elegant and impressively wide-ranging bit of software.

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 like being cuddled by fun.

Maybe it's just because we're remembering that the best games aren't the best because they've got the biggest polygon counts, or the most multiple paths through levels, or the largest number of murderable prostitutes - they're the best because they're the most fun to play, and that's what counts.

This is an enjoyable but rarely essential entry to the Mario & Luigi suite, then. AlphaDream is to be commended for its willingness to build each new game around a different kernel of an idea, but, perhaps inevitably, some of those ideas will be smaller than others.