Combining childish humor with bloody demon murder, Shadows of the Damned pays off on the promise of the creative team of developers involved. It may momentarily waver, but SotD has some of the finest grindhouse fun of the summer.

The usual bells and whistles are all here as well, with the caveat that this is a PS2, so the tech is dated.

By adding yet another layer of realism with the presence of animals - dogs barking in the distant night, cats napping on the couch, rodents running in their squeaky wheel - your Sims' world becomes richer and, thus, your gaming experience more enjoyable.

There's more than enough in the game's Adventure mode to recommend Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 to the dedicated and the curious. While this falls firmly on the side of evolution, Skill Battles are a strong new addition to the game's lineup of modes, while the rat-a-tat joke delivery of the story adds a flavour that you just don't get in other puzzle games. This inexplicable cocktail remains potent for any puzzle lover.

Not only has the game been retooled with the Live audience in mind, but it's still a challenging, rewarding way to pound out your frustrations after a brutal day in the real world.

The bottom line is Band Hero is going to be an awesome game to those who happen to fall neatly within its target demographic. However, the developers missed the opportunity to make Band Hero stand out as a unique offshoot of the main franchise with special features and additional content.

We'd rather play this than the past two or three Tony games on PS2 and Xbox - Downhill Jam makes Tony Hawk seem fresh and exciting again.

Encore is a solid sequel and an enjoyable experience, but in 2008, Karaoke Revolution is starting to feel a bit outdated compared to the emerging competition.

If you played and loved it in 2008, then it's worth picking up for the power trip of playing as Lady. Alternatively, if you've beaten Ninja Theory’s faster, prettier DmC reboot and still have an irresistible urge to combo something, then, flawed though it is, Devil May Cry 4 will deliver.

It's a game that requires patience and immense commitment. If you know what you're getting into, or are at least patient enough to figure out everything on offer, Rome II is a worthy continuation of the franchise and an overdue update to one of the greatest strategy games of all time. It's every bit as vast and absorbing as you've come to expect.

Solatorobo is a carefree, fun experience, a portal directly to our childhood. There's something endearing about the characters and their growth that still holds a special place in our heart.

Gameplay aside, Bone: The Great Cow Race boasts pretty, well-animated visuals, excellent voice-acting and a great musical score, especially for an indie title. It's still a little short and none too replayable, but it's a fun little quest while it lasts.

There is no denying this Dead or Alive looks better than ever, but its improved fighting system is another step in the right direction. The game's story mode leaves much to be desired, however, but fortunately the game's other modes will keep you coming back for more once you finish. Ultimately, Dead or Alive 5's new fighting mechanics and flashy stage effects turn battles into an entertaining, over-the-top experience anyone can get into--with enough practice, of course.

Knights in the Nightmare isn't a bad game; the combat system is addictive as hell, and though the various elements of the game that might seem like an odd mix, together they make a lot of sense. It just tries to do too much, so instead of a historic must-play that changes the genre forever, we get a quirky, worthwhile oddity.

As the only baseball option on the 360, we’re relieved that MLB 2K10 is a genuine winner. There is still work to be done, but it deserves a spot on a major league roster.

While we’ve got a small list of complaints – you get no instant replays, pitches are tough to pick up in Home Run pinball, and the commentary gets repetitive really quickly – they don’t really impact the overall awesomeness that is The BIGS 2. In fact, it’s our favorite baseball game of the season, even if it’s really just an action game dressed up in pinstripes.

Just be warned: this game's for the fans, not necessarily someone looking for a quick bus-ride excursion. Gradius has never been easy, and these five selections are no different.

SoulCalibur 2 HD Online is everything the original was and more. Stunning full-screen, 1080p visuals and the inclusion of the full-fat single-player mission mode make this an essential download at $19.99/£15.99

Gunslinger offers an entertaining romp through a stylized Western world. The famous name dropping doesn't add much spice to Silas' revenge story and their gameplay implementation is even less memorable. But where Gunslinger falters with the legends of the West, it succeeds in creating a score-based shooter with an interesting, constantly morphing environment and charming narration.

Yeah, it’s pretty short, but those are some good five hours that’ll remind you of why you fell in love with Ratchet and Clank in the first place. Its $30 / £20 price tag makes it a great incentive to pick it up, and it delivers what you’d expect from the series.

Planet Coaster 2 is an ambitious sequel that expands sideways upon the foundation laid by its predecessor. The graphics are stunning, the water slide additions are fun, and the creative potential is immense, but it comes at a cost. The complexity of infrastructure systems interrupts the creative flow, making the impressively customizable experience feel unnecessarily convoluted at times.

EA and FIFA part company with a game packing fresh content both on and off the park – but FIFA 23 is ultimately hamstrung by a pair of longstanding frustrations.

Its handful of setbacks slightly outweigh its improvements, but Galactrix still offers an addictive, puzzle-meets-RPG experience that won’t disappoint most fans of the original PQ, as well as anyone looking for an accessible game that still packs plenty of substance.

Getting to punch, kick and burn things as a Pokemon is a delight, but it doesn’t feel fair when playing with others.

It's pretty easy to enjoy what’s here - smooth and intuitive gameplay with innovative controls and plenty of depth. Once you train your brain to use the sticks and love the "ping", you'll be joyfully rounding the bases.

Chessmaster Live doesn’t look like much. But it delivers exactly what it promises, and there’s not really much to complain about because of it.

All this enthusiasm leads us to the sad reality of the game's release. This would have been a glorious XBLA title at $10-$15, but Deathsmiles comes as a boxed copy and asks the uncanny price of $50. Sure, the game has replay value, but after a few playthroughs, only the ultra dedicated score chasers will have reason to keep going.

The Surge 2 offers the hard-earned pleasures of Souls-style combat, with less of genre’s signature sting.

Slime Rancher 2 may play largely the same as its predecessor but, between the beautiful new world and some key quality-of-life improvements, the future looks promising for Monomi Park's sequel. [Early Access Review]

A fizzy addition to the party game canon, Party Animals brings ample amounts of chaos and chuckles, with an uneven mix of modes highlighting the physic fighting shortcomings. Still, it's never not fun to hurl a friend off a speeding train and see them shrink into the distance.

Victorian London is the star of the show here, and although some old gameplay problems linger, it hasn’t been this much fun to wield the hidden blade in years.

While its character roster is smaller than previous games, and its multiplayer seems disappointingly basic next to its single-player campaign, Twisted Metal is nevertheless a compellingly badass game filled with fun things to discover and unlock. This isn't a perfect Twisted Metal, but as comebacks go, it's pretty strong.

While it's not Pokemon-killer, Yo-kai Watch delivers a delightfully simple and engaging experience that'll keep you coming back time and again.

If you’ve never played a Mario & Luigi game, this is the perfect on-boarding point. It’s got a hilarious script, near-flawless battling, and bucketfuls of charm.

Every individual component works so well that you might even wish the game would have focused more on a specific area or genre. This doesn’t hurt the game, but like its aerial controls, it leaves you wanting more. Still, Dragon Commander manages to combine all of its different gameplay elements and delivers one cohesive experience that's highly worth playing.

The biggest disappointment, though, is the sloppy online play.

The graphics might be a little dated, but they still look good. The manual shot aiming works like a dream – the puck always goes where you want, and the targets that appear in the net make it especially intuitive for newcomers.

The Old Blood is very much an expansion of its fun, entertaining predecessor, but doesn't quite pack the same emotional clout. Still, a great FPS worthy of your attention.

If the thought of playing as a goofy rip-off of Ninja Gaiden star Ryu Hyabusa named Frank, who always refers to himself in the third person, doesn't have you running for the hills, then by all means pick up Shadow Hearts: From The New World. You definitely won't find yourself bored.

It's not perfect, but it's shooter purity in an electric-glowing bottle that may not go down easy, but it sure tastes delicious with every gulp.

The charm and clever logic puzzles are still here, and the cases deliver the same charge-back-from-the-edge-of-defeat rush that made the first game so cool.

Super Star's been widely held as the best Kirby game ever, so with everything it had plus seven more games, Ultra becomes the new top pick. This is indeed Kirby at his best, so even those who've yet to sample the Mega Man meets Mario gameplay should give it a try.

Kudos to Zipper for being trailblazers in terms of how many people you can cram into a game but beyond this USP, MAG is a fairly generic affair. It all works well but it isn't mind-blowing. And with a full-price tag, minus an offline campaign, it's hard to see where the value for money lies here.

The novelty of a 13-character cast is a solid hook for Wild Bastards, but a myriad of streamlined and sidelined elements compromise its potential to the point of becoming a trip to outer space that you won't remember for long after hitting credits.

If traipsing through multi-tiered dungeons for hours, leveling up a multitude of job classes and equipment, and keeping track of health, hunger and magic levels sets your heart aflutter, it doesn't get much better than Chocobo's Dungeon.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is a large, ambitious adventure with great visuals, varied gameplay, and split-screen co-op to boot that's a great sequel to an underrated sci-fi platformer. However, the crude humour and corporate satire can be grating and the whole game feels like a collection of shallow busywork – though the design of the final few hours is exemplary.

Bruising, buggy and beautiful, UFC 2 is a technically triumphant fighter, but its combat can easily flounder and frustrate.

ATV Offroad Fury Pro has made a quantum leap over Blazin' Trails. Learning from their mistakes, developer Climax has retooled everything from the controls to the graphics, making Offroad Fury Pro so good that it's a wonder what happened the first time around.

With a fun battle system, great graphics and character design, no loading times, and plenty of charm and wit to boot, Brave Story is an easy recommendation for any RPG fan. This is one of the best RPGs (if not the best) for the PSP yet.

It gets by just fine with its tried-and-true, user-friendly golfing action, strong multiplayer, and a mostly smart smattering of Vita-specific gimmicks and upgrades.

The Saboteur is a charming mess. Yes, the unpolished gameplay can be frustrating and, yes, the storytelling can be silly. But as soon as we drove through the gorgeously stylized Paris – then jumped out of our nitro-fueled racecar to snap a unsuspecting Nazi’s neck – we didn’t care anymore. For us, the good overwhelmed the bad.

Star Wars Outlaws is an exceedingly fun Star Wars game that's hindered by poor stealth systems and lacklustre mission design. Massive Entertainment establishes an incredible sense of place through its open worlds, accurately capturing the look and feel of the original trilogy of movies, but the experience falters the closer you stick to the critical path. If you've ever dreamed of becoming a scoundrel in a galaxy far, far away then you'll find a lot to like in Outlaws, and a lot more crawling through cramped ventilation systems than expected.

One can complain that Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's Treasure isn't all that new, but it often takes the portable puzzle-adventure genre to new heights via an abundance of addictive minigames.

It's no "Halo 2," but excellent level design and the infusion of the augmentations into multiplayer via a class-based player structure adds a welcome bit of variety to the mix.

Mixing eclectic elements from throughout the genre’s history, but making them all entirely its own, LawBreakers is an immediate, energised shot of FPS purity, with intelligence, depth, and exhilarating strategy to spare.

It may not last long and it may have issues with its save feature, but the time spent adventuring in this futuristic vision of Seattle will be well worth any frustrations you may encounter.

Wi-Fi battles are there, but you're more likely to hang around this furry crew for its intense, tactical battlefields.

Primal takes the great structure of the Far Cry series, but little of its character. No clear goal and a limited arsenal end up making this feel a little prehistoric itself.

The Evil Within 2 doesn't quite manage to step out of the first game's shadow - but while it may not have the same bold, unified style, you won't have to worry about frustrating mechanics or enraging difficulty spikes. If you've got a soft spot for the original game in your survival horror-loving heart, you'll surely enjoy this sequel (and get a kick out of the many callbacks to the previous plotline).

Prejudice won't completely reshape the way you think about online shooters or alter the multiplayer landscape forever, but it doesn't intend to. What it does do is deliver a feature-heavy, high energy experience that'll satisfy shooter fans craving a new addiction. All for a measly 1200 points.

Ends up being more inviting than ever to new players, with a clearer plot and goals. The game knows what it does well and highlights it instead of trying too many hit or miss concepts. Despite the sometimes limited scope of its world and objectives, it's a great downloadable that hopefully will introduce a whole new audience to one writer's unique world.

A miniature time loop thriller that will burrow into your frontal lobe and stay there long after you've solved the mystery.

Filled with enough fan service to make it an undeniable treat for Spider-maniacs, Shattered Dimensions is a fine game that's a little too uneven and repetitive to be more that the sum of its parts.

Super Mario Run is an excellent and smart step into mobile gaming for Nintendo, but difficulty spikes might frustrate casual players.

Its combat is fun, its world is worth exploring, and the game itself does a fine job of showing you just (and only just) what it needs to at any given moment. The problem is, it brings very little that's new to the table. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, but it definitely doesn't match a game that clearly had ambitions to be something greater.

It's the deceptive simplicity of Undertow that makes it compelling - that and the easy-to-learn rules and controls.

Garden Warfare is a fun, polished shooter, and what it lacks in gameplay depth it more than makes up for with fun cosmetic gear you'll actually want to unlock.

Microgame madness marred by overcomplications, WarioWare: Get It Together dissolves the fun with frustration.

The overall feeling we got from Uprising is one of a game not quite up to the standard of the very best Contra games.

Crimson Shroud is clearly Matsuno's labor of love, but it's a shame so many of its features failed in execution and proved more annoying in practice.

Online multiplayer is there if you tire of the campaign, but win or lose, you can only play so much Greed Corp before you feel there's just nothing more to get out of it.

But while the suicidal rodents look sharp and the gameplay is still some of the best puzzle gaming around, there’s no escaping the fact that Lemmings simply doesn’t bring much that’s new to the table.

Though a slowness to change and evolve hinders Tony Hawk Project 8's greatness, the developers sank a gargantuan lump of time into making the skating feel genuine, and it's enough to revitalize what is broadly the same game with a few newborn adoptions.

We didn't expect a lot from NHL Slapshot, which may explain our delight at what we found. With the right audience, it's a superb hockey game with its own unique charm and "this is all about having fun" vibe. There ain't nothing wrong with that.

What it all boils down to is this: if you're hurting for a Metroid-style adventure on a handheld, this might be your cup of tea. If not, then you'll probably be just fine skipping over this good-looking, though clunky 2D adventure.

PGA 2K23 is a fine golf game that builds on its predecessor in every way, with fabulous gameplay, shot craft, and depth.

It's more of an interesting but unfocused experiment than a tight, compelling Mega Man game.

Got charm for miles, and that’s a lesson many, many games could stand to learn.

Jurassic World Evolution 2 is chaotic, delightful proof that managing dinosaurs is no walk in the Jurassic park.

Hyrule Warriors has brilliant Zelda fan-service, but is ruined by unimaginative combat and brain-dead enemies.

An open world racer that gets better the more you play it, revealing a wealth of high-quality racing in a beautiful, technically spectacular Hawaii. While it lacks originality, it is better than Forza Horizon 5 in several ways.

Despite its bland and overly simplistic exterior, ShootMania Storm is like a blank canvas for FPS fans' creativity.

They say the devil’s in the detail, but Color Splash proves quite the opposite. In the minutiae it excels, while many of its broader systems hit a little wide of the mark. Despite its flaws, it’s very difficult to dislike, perhaps because every niggling issue is quickly followed by a moment of grin-inducing silliness or awe-inspiring beauty. This might not be the return to classic Paper Mario that its devotees have been awaiting, nor is it a bold reinvention that vindicates Nintendo’s need to innovate. It is, however, one of the most heartwarming games you’ll play this year.

In many ways, Arkham Origins is a lot like the Gotham that it's set in; weirdly empty, but so much fun that you're going to be able to overlook most of the flaws.

A short and satisfying space adventure which really is laugh out loud funny.

Somewhere amongst all of the clunky design decisions is the charming style that made the LEGO series so popular. The game just oozes charisma, and as long as you're not banging your head against the wall trying to figure out what to do next, it's solid, lightweight fun (especially when played co-operatively).

And wouldn't it be cool if you could edit, save and upload your videos to the internet, complete with visual effects and filters? Yeah - that's almost positively going to be in the PS3 version. Until then, this will get you by, especially if you're throwing a party.

A stunning example of interactive storytelling, Firewatch's greatest success is making you feel like it's really happening to you. And the less you know about it going in, the more you'll enjoy it.

The game's meant to be a no-frills, no-pressure entry point into the Wii and its bizarre new way of playing videogames, and it's impressive that it manages to be a lot of fun at the same time.

There’s good stuff here (especially for what, two bucks a game?), but sometimes not even modern hardware can recreate the past very well.

It sacrifices a lot of its character to focus on creating a solid core experience, but it's good dumb fun that will easily keep you entertained all the way up to its anti-climactic end.

We were amazed at how much time the game swallowed, meaning time was flying, meaning, well, we all know what that means.

Beyond Light delivers one of the best raids in Destiny history and some of the best story moments in Destiny 2, and that's more than enough to make up for a few disappointing gaps.

Suikoden is mainly all about the obsessive-compulsive scrabbling for all 108 "Stars of Destiny" - which means yes, there are literally 108 characters to meet and recruit to your cause.

RoboBlitz may be a tad on the short side, but at around 15 bucks, the price of admission is perfect for the amount of fun you'll have with this game.

Fantastic showcase for Move.

Ultimately, this game is a true celebration of all things Ghostbusters, and all the fans shouldn't wait to get this if the Wii is all they have.

Quite formidable among other PSP offerings. Unless you hated First Departure, this one is definitely worth a try.