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.