It’s the best the game has ever looked or played, and is available at a more than reasonable price.

Even as newcomers to the Anno series, we’re finding Anno 1800 Console Edition a joy to get to grips with, and we can’t wait to see our town flourish into a thriving metropolis. We need to spend more time with it before delivering our final verdict, but all signs point to this being an excellent city building strategy game, and one that’s been exceptionally ported to consoles. With easy to learn controls, fantastic visuals and a gripping campaign, we’re having a lot of fun with it so far. [Provisional Score = 80]

So far, Black Myth: Wukong is a game that I'm really wanting to like, but sometimes it feels like it's fighting against me. I'm loving its visuals, which make exploring each environment feel somewhat magical, and I'm mostly enjoying its combat until I come up against an enemy or situation that feels somewhat unfair. Elsewhere there are other issues. And so, while I'm keen to continue playing and see the Destined One's journey to an end, I'm prepared for bumps in the road along the way. [Review in Progress]

I’m very much enjoying what I’m playing so far, with just one or two minor issues encountered along the way. It looks great, has plenty to do, and offers a surprising amount of freedom while also putting a smile on my face from time to time thanks to its humour. What more could I ask for, really? As a sequel, it may not be all that ambitious, but it takes the first game, expands upon its formula, and is much more polished from the outset. For most, that’s probably all they need to hear to know that they’ll love The Outer Worlds 2. [Review in Progress]

There isn’t really anything to be said negatively about Defiant Honor, other than, like Dragon of the North, I just want more. But Nioh is more than enough, I’m just greedy. I will be eagerly awaiting the final DLC, and the pain it will bring me. Don’t let this game slip away. Experience its ever growing brilliance.

Its 3D scanned recreation of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone looks absolutely gorgeous, too, being picturesque yet also haunting. [Review in Progress]

Between its bugs and its busywork, Outcast – A New Beginning does feel a tad dated. But it’s charmed us with its characters, combat and a world that, thanks in part to your jetpack, is a joy to roam. [Review in Progress]

If you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise, you might get a few nostalgic kicks out of Friday the 13th: The Game. But if you’re simply looking for a horror-themed multiplayer, this doesn’t hold a candle to Dead by Daylight, which itself is coming to Switch next month. Do yourself a favour, and pick that up instead.

As a gamer of over 30 years, I truly understand the impulse to bring back old-school mechanics and had they been executed well, Daydreamer: Awakened Edition would be an easy game to recommend. However, this isn’t the case and I find it to be one of the worst games I’ve played this year.

Don't let its disarming visuals fool you – Formula Legends is a pretty serious racing game at its core. The problem is, the racing on offer isn't all that fun. Add in a lack of game modes, and you're better off picking up any of the recent official Formula One games – they're more accessible and have features such as multiplayer, after all.

For all of Aqua Moto Racing Utopia’s light sense of fun and nostalgic reminiscence of past games like Wave Race 64 and Jet Moto, the act of taking to the waves is unfortunately tarnished by some frustratingly aggressive AI and a general lack of polish.

There are elements of Bard’s Gold which are worth hanging on to for future projects – the interest in secrets (such an important aspect of gameplay, and in need of revival too), the willingness to challenge players. The rest can be put to one side in the “trial and error” pile.

We’ve still got some time to spend with Mato Anomalies, but we’ve enjoyed what we’ve played of it so far. It’s not the most polished RPG, which may disappoint some, but its streamlined nature is a breath of fresh air, and it has a neat premise and some cool ideas. Fans of the likes of Persona are most likely to resonate with it, but it’s perhaps worth a look for any RPG fan looking for something new to sink their teeth into. [Provisional Score = 70]

If Overpass‘ events were a bit shorter, if you felt like you had more of a connection with your vehicle, if you didn’t get stuck so often, then it would actually be a decent game. As it stands, however, it’s rarely fun. Playing Overpass just made me angry, and I don’t like being angry. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall, repeatedly. It’s frustrating beyond belief. Why would you want to pay to introduce that feeling into your life?

I did not enjoy my time with Bookbound Brigade, but I do say that with a heavy heart. I really wanted to like the game. It has a lot of character and some nice work has gone into its visual design. But its problems are insurmountable and ultimately you’re left with a game that’s too frustrating and filled with too many issues to ever be fun to play. At least Bookbound Brigade tries some different ideas on for size. They don’t fit, but at least the developer tries. Isn’t that what counts? “It’s not the winning, but the taking part.” Sadly, nobody’s a winner playing Bookbound Brigade, and there’s nothing to celebrate by taking part, either.

Unlike its protagonist, Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son shows little interest in forging its own identity. If you’re craving a return to Punxsutawney, rewatching the movie is a far more rewarding choice.

Sonic Forces may not be the worst Sonic game ever made, but it’s close, and I don’t think the speedy blue hedgehog has many more chances to impress before gamers like myself lose all hope of him returning to his former glory.

I just don’t see the point in Senran Kagura Peach Ball. If you want to play pinball, download Pinball FX3 for free and you’re all sorted. Maybe buy a table or two that take your fancy to expand your options. If you want to see some anime tiddies, open up your browser and do a google search. I mean, Senran Kagura Peach Ball isn’t awful, but I don’t see any reason why you need to spend £35.99/$39.99 on it.

Small Radios Big Televisions is the embodiment of style over substance, providing a beautiful world that warrants exploration, yet does not provide the tools or the desire to do so.

Giraffe and Annika takes around six hours to complete and, after seeing it through to its end, I wish there were more positive things to say about it. The world and its characters are cute, but you’ll be sick of Annika’s whining and the painfully repetitive fetch quests in no time. It has some merit as a starter RPG to introduce young children to the genre, but even then, there are much better adventures out there to spend your time with.

Into the Stars is a subpar and incomplete product but if you’re the kind of player who has the will to put in a steady investment of time and effort to probe its every nuance and deeper subtlety you might just get that pearl.

I’m sad to admit it, but Dead by Daylight on Nintendo Switch is a huge let-down. I love the game, and while I was excited to get to play it on a handheld format, its lagginess, framerate issues and massive graphical downgrade mean that I just can’t recommend it on Switch. If you’re still tempted to give it a try, perhaps wait a month or two and see if any patches come out to fix some of the current painful and glaring issues. Until then, the price simply isn’t worth what you get. Stick to playing it on another format; trust me, you’ll have a much better experience.

There are some good ideas in RETSNOM, but unfortunately they fall by the wayside as the tiresome visuals and dreary soundtrack wear you down to the point where you just wish it would end.

The idea of developing your own ninja is a great one, but here it relies on you engaging in action that feels borderline broken at times, sucking all the fun out of the process.

While Attack of the Earthlings is aiming to be more casual than its counterparts, its gameplay really is too simple to be interesting for more than a few minutes. This, mixed with the criminally awkward and slow animations, makes the game little more than a chore, broken up a few some decent jokes.

Ultimately, Tennis World Tour 2‘s new timing-based shot system ruins what could have been a decent or even good tennis game. It makes gameplay so unpredictable, and not in a good way. If you plan on buying Tennis World Tour 2 just to play exhibition matches as your favourite professional players, you might get some fun out of it thanks to their boosted stats making things more lenient. But career mode will be unbearable for most, requiring either an obscene amount of skill or an inhuman amount of patience. AO Tennis 2 remains the best tennis game available right now, so just stick to that.

Random but ridiculously repetitive, this deadly dull dungeon hack gives little reason to recommend it.

Unless you’re really desperate for some anime girls and mechs, you can find much better dungeon crawling experiences elsewhere.

Bounce Rescue! ends up feeling rather uninspired and a little boring.

There’s simply no reason why a game should perform this badly. Try as you might, it’s hard to thoroughly enjoy something that’s such a technical mess. If you’re a glutton for punishment and want to spend more time with the most bizarre protagonist in video games, go right ahead. But don’t say that you haven’t been warned. It isn’t a blessing, it’s a disappointment.

Should you play Neptunia Virtual Stars? Unless you’re a fan of the quirky Goddesses, I’d give this one a wide berth. Sure, shooting a range of weird and wonderful enemies is fun for a while, but if third person shooting or hacking-and-slashing is what you’re after, there are way better games to do that in. Ultimately, its annoyances far outweigh its pros, and there’s not much here worth sticking around for.

I really don’t get what the developers were trying to achieve with Valkyria Revolution. It pretty much takes everything that was good about the prior games and just throws it out of the window, replacing it with tedium and banality.

Ultimately, G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout is a team-based third-person shooter with poor aiming, atrocious enemy A.I., and no online multiplayer options. That should tell you all you need to know, basically. It’s not the worst game you can buy right now, so if you’re a huge G.I. Joe fan and pick it up on a whim you might have some fun with it. Anyone with more self-control, however, should either wait for it to be deeply discounted, or simply forget it exists.

With its shoddy gameplay, Star Wars Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles would have been better left in the past. But credit where credit's due, Aspyr has made numerous welcome additions and improvements here, which may at least make fans of the original happy.

Creeping Terror isn’t a game devoid of any good moments, but it’s one where they are so sparsely placed that it feels like you ended where you started, with the same questions. The 3DS just doesn’t have the chops for a true horror experience, and Creeping Terror isn’t immune to that.

It’s a short experience end to end which sprouted from a solid idea, but whose ambition far exceeded the capabilities of the developers. Maybe consider it if it’s extremely heavily on sale, but for it’s current price point you’d be much better served buying a good book.

It's not a very polished game, and mechanically it's underwhelming. It's a shame, because there's plenty of content in the package, and throwing vehicles around bumpy dirt tracks should be a lot of fun. But it just isn't for the most part.

Solving the obscure puzzles of Scholar's Mate can be troublesome enough, and so when you also add in a pursuer and limited stealth mechanics, you're left with an experience that is generally unrewarding and frustrating.

If you really like twin-stick shooters, and you were a fan of the 1997 original and desperately want to see how they’ve changed the ending, then maybe, just maybe, there is something here for you. Otherwise, get your rage out of the system another way.

Ultimately, Fallen Legion Revenants is one of the worst games I’ve played in some time.

Breached is a game that tries to make its story cryptic enough to keep the player interested in replaying it, but its gameplay is too shallow and dull to make replaying seem worthwhile.

It has some good ideas and interesting features, but it doesn’t feel polished enough to impress. Basically, it feels like it needed more time in development.

As slick as Solar Shifter is when it comes to its style it just can’t be recommended when it comes to the gameplay. It’s a shame as the Xbox One could really do with some solid shoot ’em ups to help fill up the online store.

There are good ideas in Super Dungeon Bros, such as the inclusion of challenges, the Call of Duty-esque upgrades, and the team-work centred dungeon-crawling. Where it falls down is at the basics: good, satisfying combat and challenging gameplay.

It’s a tough game to sit through – and not just in a “it deals with challenging subject matter” sort of way. It’s hard to shake the feeling that you’re having someone’s gross beliefs about their twisted ideology shoved down your throat. Its initial premise had me hooked at first, but the bait-and-switch of subject matter does not make for a pleasant experience.

I’m finding it hard to recommend Anima: Gate of Memories to anyone outside of diehard fans of the IP and I don’t know a single person that falls into that category, so I can’t really recommend it to anyone.

Even though it’s arrived nine years later than planned (it was cancelled and later resurrected due to the 2011 Japanese earthquake) this is a step back for the Disaster Report/Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series. There are a few highlights, but Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories has so many rough edges, broken mechanics and frustrating, counter-intuitive elements that it’s anything but memorable.

I’d have liked to have had more fun with Table Manners, but its purposefully-awkward controls ended up being just too awkward to bear. It’s a balancing act, and sadly I feel like developer Echo Chamber Games has missed the mark. It should be silly and entertaining – and it is, for a few minutes – but it quickly devolves into frustration. Maybe involving some friends might make it a bit more enjoyable. But by yourself, Table Manners just isn’t much fun.

Forever Forest feels like an early access game; it looks and sounds a treat but there’s disappointingly little joy to be had here. You’ll initially enjoy treading the game’s green spaces, and swapping your character’s mask out for a more impressive, and lethal, piece of headgear will raise a smile. But with no meaningful goal to power through the tedium towards – and since the game theoretically goes on forever – you’ll quickly lose interest. Lovely as it is to look at, Forever Forest leaves a lot to be desired.

Overall, Party Hard is not a game you need to play. There are some fun moments, sure, but predominantly it is boring, which is a cardinal sin when it comes to serial killers.

Textures looks incredibly stretched and muddy even on the highest setting and animations are clunky and stiff.

A game of extreme peaks of troughs. At times it’s dreadfully boring; other times it’s wildly exciting. It doesn’t want to make your life easy, but then throws so much resources your way that being downed is trivial. It looks great, but it has a lot of bugs that will only make you able to view the game as ugly. Like Marmite, Generation Zero will dramatically split opinion. But it’s not just a matter of taste – Generation Zero‘s glitches and ill-implemented mechanics are just as much to blame.

Divide‘s curious narrative and enigmatic characters can only do so much; for every genuine moment of intrigue there are a hundred other moments to be spent aimlessly wandering the endless, grey corridors, desperate for the whole thing to just end.

Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot really should not have been a standalone release; at the very least it should have been bundled in with the superior Wolfenstein: Youngblood. There are glimpses of potential here, but it’s lacking nearly everything that makes Wolfenstein fun. Gunning down Nazis in a virtual reality mech might sound like a lot of fun on paper, but the reality completely misses the mark.

Krinkle Krusher is a simplistic and generic tower defence game that is made worse by its use of its imprecise physical controls.

After two decades in development hell, Captain Blood has finally seen light of day — but it probably shouldn't have. Its controls and gameplay are rooted in the past, but its problems stretch far beyond feeling a little old-fashioned.

PC just isn’t the right platform for a title like Guards.

There are no redeeming features to be found in Fallout 76, and I’m not even sure if it can be saved. Technical issues just make what’s a boring and soulless experience at its core into something that’s simply more of an abomination.

Zorro The Chronicles is hard to recommend. There are few, if any, redeeming features here, and anything that’s partially enjoyable – like the simple combat with its humorous finishing animations – is ruined by a dreadful camera. There are far better family-friendly adventure games out there and so, even if you or your kids have a love for Zorro, you should spend your money elsewhere.

Action News Heroes is a mediocre shooter that is brought down even further by its annoying music, frustrating rating system, and lack of replayability.

It’s clear that Saint Kotar has tried to draw inspiration from the likes of Broken Sword. From the way its exploration works to its dark themes and eerie environments, it really wants to be a point and click game worthy of cult status. That’s highly unlikely to ever happen, though. While interesting at times, its story is too poorly told to ever be truly enjoyable. And the ugly visuals, awful voice acting and budget interface mean most players are not likely to stick around.

Cyber Clutch: Hot Import Nights has all the ingredients to make it an enjoyable cyberpunk-inspired car combat arcade racer, but ultimately it's a let-down. The handling is awkward, there's no real sense of weight or impact, and on PS5 Pro performance is terrible. Things could be turned around with an update or two, but until that happens this is best avoided.

It’s repetitive, unfairly difficult and nauseatingly ugly to the point that it’s hard to tolerate, never mind enjoy, making it one of the most unsatisfying experiences I’ve had in recent memory.

Blood Alloy Reborn is akin to placing a Literature student in a University Calculus exam, hoping that their brief five-minute class with a nutty professor will net them a good grade.

Made up of four sports — soccer, basketball, tennis and golf — Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports should be an entertaining outing for up to four local players. Unfortunately, it's not: none of the games are enjoyable to play in the slightest, and not even the familiar cast of Looney Tunes characters is enough to save it.

A dull, cynical, money-grabbing mess, Frank Rising deserves to be buried six feet under.

Ultimate Fishing Simulator has its share of flaws, but it’s the constant grind that really sinks this game.

With a running time of around ten hours, it speaks volumes that Arc of Alchemist still manages to outstay its welcome. Chances are you’ll be bored of it within two. Even its bosses aren’t noteworthy. If you do somehow manage to find yourself fond of the game, there’s New Game + so you can start again and maybe try a different party, but god knows why you’d want to. Arc of Alchemist isn’t the worst action RPG I’ve ever played, but it’s crushingly dire, and not worthy of your time or money.

Quite frankly, there’s nothing about Saban’s Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Mega Battle’s creation that feels worthwhile.

As fans of LEGO, LEGO Brawls should have been the brawling game of our dreams. But unfortunately, it’s nothing but a massive disappointment. Collecting minifigs is fun, and creating your characters even more so. The actual gameplay, however, is monotonous, repetitive, and ultimately devoid of any real depth. LEGO Brawls is impossible to recommend, then. Even to the most ardent LEGO fan.

Transformers: Galactic Trials is one of those games that has some good ideas but fails to execute them successfully. While the racing action is basic but fun, its on-foot sections are terrible, and there are other issues, too. And so, while it looks fairly nice, has plenty of unlockables and its roguelike elements add some variety between runs, it's ultimately impossible to recommend.

While it may superficially retread a similarly desensitised violence found in the original film, little else could be compared from one to the other. In fact, Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days is better an example of Lionsgate’s misuse of the original property, shelling it out every so often for some quick cash here-and-there.

The most frustrating thing about playing an indie release like Spheroids is the feeling that the developers were not even attempting to create something fresh or novel.

Needless to say, when there are so many good Metroidvanias available on all formats right now, there really is no reason to invest in or play AeternoBlade II. With its crude visuals, laughable voice acting and dull and clumsy combat, it really doesn’t have much going for it at all. It’s one those rare sequels that is actually worse than its predecessor, so unless you’re a glutton for punishment, give it a wide berth.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash is very much a missed opportunity to capitalise on a popular franchise. It’s a brawler that fails to get the most important thing right – making its combat dynamic and interesting – and also makes a litany of other errors along the way. And so, while some die-hard fans may eke some enjoyment out of it, we can’t really recommend it at all.

In its current state, Dead or Alive: Xtreme 3 is a nice game to relax and unwind with, but beyond that it’s a very disappointing and lazy entry into the Xtreme series.

It may be cute and colourful, but that's practically all that Tamagotchi Plaza has going for it. Essentially a collection of minigames, the activities on offer here are mostly dull and repetitive, and as there are no tutorials they are fairly inaccessible to younger players. One or two of the games are somewhat entertaining, but certainly not enough make this a title worth recommending.

It won’t cause as many laughs as it did in Early Access, but also won’t give you as many thrills as the originals. Roller Coaster Tycoon World is a fumbled hodgepodge of ideas that are emotionally detached from what makes a Tycoon game great.

So, should you buy Evil Inside? Probably not unless you’re really desperate to be reminded of P.T., or truly love jump scares. Though even then, the fact that it’s only an hour long should make you think twice. On the balance of things it’s not a terrible horror game, but it brings nothing new to the table at all. It tries to mimic P.T. but is inferior to it in pretty much every way. Even worse, you have to pay for the pleasure.

It’s been a while since I’ve played anything quite as bad as Touhou Kabuto V: Burst Battle. A title with no redeeming features whatsoever, please, for the love of god, spend your money elsewhere if you’re even considering picking this up.

Monumental isn’t a bad game. It’s just a badly made game. I think that somewhere in here was a really genuine idea at heart, and looking at its page on the Steam store, that is so obvious. The world design is actually pretty nice but the game itself is plagued by buggy mediocrity and dull audio design. I wouldn’t recommend Monumental, but I think something amazing could have come from it. Clear away the bugs, dust off the boredom and you might have had something worth playing here.

The whole time you feel you are playing through a disjointed connection of apparitions that tie a loose story together, all a bit too far removed to create any meaningful attachment.

The obviously Hitman ‘inspired’ gameplay does start to get to you after a while, in an annoying fly-on-your-shoulder kind of way.

If you’re dying to have a shooting gallery type game for PSVR, there are better options. There are more fleshed-out titles, for equal or less cash, than Ace Banana.

I’m not really sure who Drive Girls is for. It’s too short and generic to satisfy most fans of the genre. It fails on nearly every level, never able to outlive its initial gimmick. The game leaves its one joke of “ladies, but also cars” stranded amid a desert of awkward anime tropes and reiterated levels forcing you to relive the same Drive Girls gameplay loop forever. It’s not that Drive Girls is simply repetitive, it’s just somehow boring. And that’s not something I thought I’d say about a game where women transform into cars, fight bug-robots and lose their clothes.

On the whole, Umbrella Corps is very much a missed opportunity. Light on content, unbalanced, and rough around the edges, it has some good ideas but they are drowned by its issues, making for an experience that is rarely fulfilling.

Ultimately, Dying: Reborn is a halfway competent puzzler, but a failure as a horror game.

Under no circumstances should you consider buying Super Street: The Game. Priced at £49.99/$59.99, it’s daylight robbery.

With several upgrades applied to your car, Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing can become bearable to play – but that’s just it; bearable. And for it to reach that “bearable” point, you’ve got to put in far more time than your wits can probably handle, so it’s just not worth it.

Left Alive is simply not worth your time or money. It has a fairly interesting story to unravel, but only the most patient and persistent of players will be able to enjoy it, even if they pop the difficulty down to its lowest level.

Bounty Battle is a disappointment through and through. On paper, its concept is fantastic; many players will be tricked into picking up the game so they can see their favourite indie characters in action. But in reality, it’s a mess that will only serve to disappoint. From poor performance, lacklustre level design and lack of weight to the characters, there really are too many issues to mention. It might be nice to see some of those beloved characters again, but that’s all that Bounty Battle has going for it.

Monster Jam: Crush It! is crushingly disappointing, taking the recipe for what should have been a simple yet enjoyable game and then failing to add even the most basic of ingredients.

Twisted Fusion, to me, isn’t so much bad as it is simply unfinished and broken.

It’s hard to overlook the terribly outdated and buggy graphics, and the fact that the clunky presentation feels hardly optimised for consoles. Whilst gameplay can be enjoyable at times, it soon grows repetitive and tiresome, and the flawed day/night cycle means you’ll spend a great deal of time with nothing to do other than twiddle your thumbs.

Fast & Furious Crossroads is a serious disappointment. There’s a gleam of the franchise’s over-the-top action now and again, and some of the cutscenes hint at the cheesy humour the movies are known for. But those moments are few and far between. Underwhelming visuals and uninspiring mission design stop Fast & Furious Crossroads from being a good game – but it’s the terrible, terrible handling that relegate it into ‘bad’ territory.

Road Rage is like one of those terrible low-budget straight-to-video movies that occupies the shelves of your local supermarket: you know it’s rubbish but you can’t quite help but be bemused by it.

Unless Dawn of Fear gets heavily patched after launch, steer well clear of it unless you’re a glutton for punishment or have the patience of a saint.

Weeping Doll is a brief preview of what horror is capable of, if given time. However, it does not stand on its own as anything noteworthy.