Even if the Secret of the Nameless Kingdom can bite at your nerves, it's fun and funny enough to keep you searching for the next boss key.

Frequent and infrequent players alike should avoid it, for no amount of narrative sincerity makes up for this exercise in mechanical frustration.

Once you get the hang of the complex controls and slight camera issues, you're in for a breathless, exhilarating time staring down giant robots, outmaneuvering your rivals, and rescuing your betters.

There's a pervasive plainness to Escape Dead Island that hasn’t been common since the PlayStation 2 days.

Despite my profound apathy regarding making sense of Cliff's hallucinations and dreams, there was at least some satisfaction in silently assassinating the undead.

Space Hulk: Ascension rises to the challenge by preserving the spirit and most of the mechanics of the original board game, while still expanding on the design to embrace its new home on the PC.

An engaging and often hilarious joyride.

A wealth of hidden secrets in every level keeps the game high on replayability, while the deluge of extra content promises many hours of adventuring.

It's a seemingly simple and cute journey, but with the underlying potential for strategy in combat, and a massive number of adorable Pokemon to catch, you can't help getting hooked by Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

It's a seemingly simple and cute journey, but with the underlying potential for strategy in combat, and a massive number of adorable Pokemon to catch, you can't help getting hooked by Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

Is this a game you want to play? No. Is it a game anyone with a beating heart should play? Yes. A million times yes. It's a longform exercise in empathy, a sobering piece of work that fills in the blanks left when all we see of war are the headshots.

The push for creativity is limited in the way you play the campaign, but it’s an overwhelming presence within creation mode, offering boundless ways to leave your own mark on Craftworld.

A small, simple, but incredibly affecting story that showcases the power of the ability to encourage empathy through the most basic expressions of humanity and imagination.

It's when you circumvent Far Cry 4's major thematic flaws, inconsistent missions, and incessant nagging that you find the game you came looking for, breathing easy and enjoying the mountains that rise in the distance and the valleys that stretch beneath you.

Like the terrain if depicts, Far Cry 4 travels both high and low, representing the good, the bad, and ugly of video games all at once. It's awesome and messy and dumb and fun and annoying and gross and beautiful. Take any given adjective in your vocabulary, and chances are, it will in some way describe Far Cry 4.

Aside from a few mild frame rate issues that sometimes take the edge off its more dramatic moments, this is the definitive version of GTA V, and the bar by which all other open-world games, or indeed any game that aims for a cinematic feel, should be judged. It is beautiful, and thought-provoking, and thrilling throughout.

Outside of a few additions like an air rifle and grenade launcher (which is used exactly one for mission), there's next to nothing in Rogue that moves the franchise forward.

Randal's Monday is blind hero worship that ignores decades of design theory and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste thanks to its thoroughly unlikable, homogenous cast.

And it's a testament to the quality of Halo games throughout the years that Halo: The Master Chief Collection is an attractive package, despite the massive problems with online multiplayer.

Somewhere along the line Sega lost sight of what makes the series work. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric has a laundry list of problems, and not just problems inherent to the modern Sonic franchise, but failings of basic design.

It's very good, maybe even great in places, but the story's smaller focus has come at the expense of its exquisitely rendered backdrop. The grandness and spectacle that so often graces the finest Assassin's Creeds is sadly sorely lacking here.

Inquisition's characters and world, on the other hand, recall the grand gestures of the original Dragon Age, even though the game as a whole is so structurally different to its predecessors. It offers the thrill of discovery and the passion of camaraderie.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a wonderful game and a lengthy pilgrimage to a magical world with vital thematic ties to one we already know.

Most importantly, though, is knowing that PES 2015 is not inferior to FIFA 15. That in itself represents a huge step forward for a series that, for a time, looked as though it had no chance whatsoever of getting back to digital football's elite table.

It's the kind of failure many developers work their fingers to the bone to achieve.

Depth is the closest I've come to experiencing the kind of fear a game about killer sharks should generate since my younger days of playing Jaws on the NES. Future updates that clean up bugs and add new content could help it breach the surface and approach greatness. Until then, however, Depth floats listlessly in the ocean current.

Effective offense is a struggle to achieve, and defense is far too automated to keep you interested. Even with individual players looking better up close, NBA Live 15 fails to present an attractive package when all ten bodies are running plays on the court.

Even during its brightest moments, NBA Live 15 isn't a very fun basketball game.