What little the game does add to the saga is forgotten by everyone at the end. Disney fans will be most disappointed of all: Disney's characters barely put in an appearance, and Disney's worlds are just window-dressing for a killzone.

This could have been a great original title, but instead it's a waste of shelf space with just one redeeming feature: it only takes around five hours to beat.

From a gameplay standpoint, Samurai Warriors 5 is an easy recommendation. However, the political content isn’t as easy to sign off on. While there’s always going to be some celebration of military action in a title like this, the way the script goes out of its way to portray the bloodthirsty as heroes in defiance of true historical facts feels like a step too far. Samurai Warriors 5 isn’t a depiction of Japan’s violent past, it’s a celebration of it.

Transformers might be a good purchase for crazy, obsessive fans of the license (like me), but for anyone who demands rich play experiences and balanced design, this is one of the few times that Optimus Prime has failed to complete his mission.

Despite some slight disappointment from thinking about what else this remaster might have offered, the giant grin on my face while playing was impossible to remove. Being able to play on consoles at 60FPS makes it a monumental upgrade over the older versions, and the core experience has aged surprisingly well. Despite the fact that this is a fairly modest remaster package, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit remains one of the finest arcade racers in recent memory, and anyone with even a slight interest in the genre should jump behind the wheel.

The only mode to feel completely finished is Nightmare in North Point, which pits the player against an army of hopping vampires and a few resurrected faces from the main storyline.

It’s the best version of a legendary fighting experience, and even if it doesn’t check all the expected boxes of a modern fighting game package, it still kicks ass.

It's extremely unfortunate that the Ac!d team couldn't reshape the opening hours into something more welcoming and tolerable.

Always challenging but never impossible, Echoshift goes out of its way to cater to the player in ways that very few titles do, making it an easy game to love

They Stole Max's Brain! accentuates Sam's own special powers. While Max was away, I came to appreciate Sam on a whole new level.

Humor is this game's selling point-not battle systems or graphics or game engines-and gamers who value a smart and entertaining tale well told will certainly be able to look past the game's other problems.

I can't praise the structural work and the interconnecting quests enough.

While Bloom and Rage was an enjoyable romp through someone’s nostalgia, the frustrating pace of both the drama and the central mystery did not endear me to it. As is, I don’t feel as if I can recommend it the game until I see how things resolve in Part 2.

I just can't imagine a filmmaker putting me in a situation where, once the movie stopped, I was forced to go onto a website to find out how it ended. I also can't imagine how anyone at Microids couldn't see just what a fatal misstep this lack of an ending was.

Playing Shadow of Rome has made me more sympathetic to people who argue that killing fake people can lead to killing real ones. I came to accept Shadow of Rome's violence fully.

It's not a perfect game, but it does so many things well that missing out on it would be a crime.

As a fan of the series, I loved Game of Thrones Episode One: Iron from Ice. It's a great start that does the show justice and perfectly captures the brutality and political intrigue of Westeros.

Despite some improvements, the navigation is simply too clunky and unnatural for Revelation to appeal to anyone but fans of the series.

From a presentation standpoint, Showdown is an excellent additional to the Shovel Knight kingdom, but with multiplayer being restricted to couch only, it doesn’t hold up as well as its platforming brethren.

Despite the rough patches, Warhanmmer 40,000 Boltgun remains impressive. It’s fast, action-packed, controls well, and is (mostly) a joy to play. With just a little tweaking and a few adjustments, this could easily be one of the all-time greats.

No More Heroes III is a dizzying, introspective, macabre celebration and roast of nerd culture that has some of the deepest cuts ever put into a game. It doesn’t quite have the same satirical bite as the original, but it’s down for a good time. Fans of the franchise will be absolutely thrilled, and anyone looking for the polar opposite of ‘cookie cutter’ will find it here.

Although I suppose that Super Princess Peach is an example of Nintendo slumming for cash, it also proves that even when Nintendo is slumming, it churns out stuff that isn't really that bad. It may not be memorable or very exciting, but it's not bad.

The pieces to assemble a great game are all there, but it just never quite gels into the game it could have been.

Doraemon: Story Of Seasons is one of the nicest surprises of the year. I wasn’t expecting a non-Stardew Valley farming sim to grab me like it did, and I certainly wasn’t expecting it from a Doraemon game, but here we are. On top of a great evolution in the farming RPG genre, it’s also a fantastic use of a coveted license. Stardew Valley 2 is probably a long way off, but the people that gave Eric Barone most of his ideas have just given us a substitute worthy of both franchises.

With one foot in classical RTS storytelling and the other in squad-based tactical strategy, Iron Harvest offers a take on the genre that doesn’t quite live up to Jakub Różalski’s evocative artwork. While the developers have already laid out a roadmap of updates that could potentially tighten up many issues with unit behavior and balance, the opportunity for a better future may already have passed.

Despite the absurdity of the narrative and the disappointing anticlimax of its ending (not spoiled here!) Black Future ’88 is an impressive title with interesting weapons, spot-on controls, creative unlocks, and entertaining action. I wish the visual accessibility was as robust as the rest, but fans of 2D action will enjoy it as a single-player experience, or with a buddy in local co-op mode.

There are endless variations on the small level/three star structure made popular by Angry Birds, and I've come across many that don't warrant a second look. That's not to say that the structure has nothing left to offer, however. Creative developers can certainly put a new spin on things, and that's just what's happened with Space Holiday.

There’s simply no getting around the fact that Moero Crystal H is ethically questionable and hugely exploitative, but at the same time, it’s a light, frequently sweet dungeon-crawling RPG that’s fairly charming. Players looking for well-drawn art of monster girls in their underwear need look no further, but those who want a classically designed experience with a ton of heart should consider checking it out as well. Assuming, of course, that the groping isn’t a deal-breaker.