Where Guitar Hero 5 hauled the series up to a quality plateau, adding a load of features that fans of the series can really appreciate, Band Hero is nothing more or less than a reskin. And even though it's a reskin of a superb game, the lack of concern for the credibility of the music and presentation can't help but cheapen it.

Your long-term attachment to the game will also be determined by how much of an experience grind you're prepared to undertake (combined with your attitude towards impermanent purchases), and whether the hack-and-slash combat against somewhat repetitive character models is a meaty enough adventure to keep you satisfied.

Top notch side-scrolling brawler from 1993, and, in many respects almost as much fun now as it was then.

With its nugget-sized level design, intuitive mechanics and impressively lavish production values, Perfect Cell is one of those perfect on-the-road games to savour one tasty chunk at a time.

It's not perfect, and we hope Nintendo takes the concept further, but it's still well worth checking out even for a few hours' worth of hilarity.

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.

Hot Pursuit sees the publishing behemoth finally doing justice to its properties.

SkyDrift is comfortably one of the strongest aerial combat racers we've seen in the world of download-only titles.

There's lovely stuff here, enough to offer that potholing sense of antic richness which is always part of the WarioWare deal. What words to use for a game like this? Capsule toys abound in the menus, as ever, but what this really reminds me of is the days when cereal used to come with a little plastic doodad of some kind in it to tempt you to buy it, and you'd buy it and then thrust your hand down into the packet, past the crispies or flakes or whatever they were, with no idea quite what delight you would find. Brilliant! And in WarioWare's case, panic inducing. But in a good way. [Recommended]

Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team's best original game yet. An immersive romp through a suffocating portrayal of 80s Poland, where your journey is far from what it first seems.

This is still unpretentious fun, but now it's also a surprisingly deep and characterful little sports game, and a welcome stopgap between FIFA 12 and 13.

For lovers of RPGs, [it's] close to essential. It's much more than a reminder of where they came from; it's a welcome - and long overdue - reminder of one of the genre's strongest voices.

The jackhammer gameplay won't necessarily win over new converts, but for everyone else, this silky remake is a must buy.

In combining an open world monster-rush format with PUBG-esque PvP, Crytek has crafted a stealth survival game like few others. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Omno offers a dreamy blend of platforming and puzzling with a feel for player freedom. [Eurogamer Recommended]

But we've all done Lemmings at one time or other, there's nothing new about this, and as much as it might sound like a good idea in your head it's a nostalgic itch you can scratch without spending £30 on another PSP game that makes you wonder why you ever doubted the DS would kick it all around the playground until its shiny little face was thumbsmeared to death.

With numerous unlockables and online leaderboards to fight it out on, this is a fine first attempt from developer Binary Takeover, and well worth losing a few hours to.

It's an absorbing and varied side story that feeds back into the wider Dragon Age universe in subtle ways. What more could you need?

While the setting and inspirations are Filipino through and through, the themes of friendship, love, loss, and acceptance in this visual novel are universal.

Its stunning graphics put most other third person games to shame, the ferocious hand-to-hand combat makes for a more visceral experience than is usual in this rather stale genre, and the heavy dose of Norse mythology provides an interesting and unique setting for the game.

There are easily better fighters on the PS2 though, and so this feels more like an exercise in retro gaming than an essential and accessible purchase.

As a single-player experience, Age of Booty is frustrating and poorly balanced. Take it online, however, and you've got something that's almost worth the 800-Point asking price.

Furious, wasp-in-a-jar electronica does little to diminish the pounding tension, while the restless minimalism of the visuals throws your perception into a blender, morphing seamlessly between 2D and 3D and back again, spinning you upside down before leaving you in a disorientated heap in the face of the next malevolent onslaught.

Kunos brings the full sim experience to console, warts and all, with a few oversights and errors along the way.

Arkham-esque combat and lovely platforming combine in this joyous and colourful game.

Fans of Scott and Cameron's fiction will be delighted to see this iconic universe recreated in miniature, while anyone hankering after a 2D Metroid (let's face it, we're not likely to get one from Nintendo any time soon) will be equally satisfied.

Treyarch delivers an impressive package considering the circumstances, but Black Ops Cold War feels like a step back from last year.

It's an often clumsy and over-ambitious enterprise, one that can wow you with a pirouette and then slip over on a banana skin in the same mission, but the pleasures it does offer are enhanced by the knowledge that it's still the only game offering them.