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.