Conscript's more grounded setting had lots of potential to help it carve its place within the confines of the genre even if it sticks quite adamantly to established conventions. It has moments when it successfully paints how grim the life of a World War 1 soldier could have been, but it ultimately fails to strike that fine balance which crucially keeps you on edge and horrified but curious and willing to push on and discover how opening that next door might alter the protagonist's fate.

Unless Blizzard has some real story shake-ups and a phenomenally tuned raid on the horizon, I’m honestly expecting the sharpest player decrease to set in within the next few months. The expansion itself has some interesting ideas, but sticking to a World Quest grindfest is quickly becoming the norm, and the Island Expeditions aren’t exactly exciting.

When it comes down to it, cheaper, more sustainable fun can be had from donning a pair of tights and rugby tackling an elderly family member while they attempt to serve the Christmas turkey.

Dead to Rights simply coats the environment in red and its characters in force-fed grime and loathability. What's left is an experience that provides some basic action sustenance, but lacks any real purpose or direction.

King's Bounty: Dark Side is absolutely not a bad game, in fact it's fun and very addictive. The trouble is that they've already released it at least three times under different subtitles and with the absolute bare minimum of tweaks.

We were looking forward to The Little Acre as soon as we saw the lovely art and Charles Cecil’s involvement, but sadly it’s pretty bad. I don’t mind short games but at two hours (including puzzle solving) the game doesn’t leave much room for storytelling, character and world building, compelling puzzles, or much of anything really.

Villagers is a promising game that doesn’t deliver on any of its potential. Its mechanics don’t provide much strategic depth and its lack of content means that there’s no reason to come back. I can say, in some faint praise, that it’s not broken, but it’s so completely dull and unremarkable that I can’t think of any reason to recommend it.

It's easy to see what the aim of Body and Brain was, but on a platform like Kinect it has to offer flawless recognition when you're submitting your answers, otherwise it completely defeats the point.

With a concept that’s insensitive at best, Cannibal Cuisine has a rough first impression to overcome. The mechanics that are under it are fine, but the controls can feel too slippery for their own good. Add that with an average combat system and you’ve got a game that never shines beyond its sensationalistic pitch. If your mates crave some co-op chaos, there are far worse games to play. However, there are also far better games out there.

That's Legions of Ashworld's greatest problem, really, a lack of character. Beyond the likable visuals it's a very dry, repetitive experience that never engages you or makes you care about defending your kingdom.

Blood and Gold is a mess of ideas that feels half-finished.

The Fight, then - possibly one of the better fighting games we will see for the Playstation Move, yet still utterly dull and repetitive. Consider giving it a rent, but nothing more.

Given the price tag, I have to seriously question what this game offers. It seems like the greater part of the work went into designing the rules, which can be downloaded for free. The adjustments are certainly intriguing, but there's absolutely no good reason to recommend Chess 2 as a videogame.

Although there were portions of the mechanics and cardplay that I enjoyed, I can’t get past the shortcomings of the story and lack of strategy needed in the late game. Even if those story beats did not turn me off from this game, I would still recommend anybody looking to get into this style of card game to get Slay the Spire instead.

Simply grab them each separately (preferably when they each appear in the inevitable sale), and your life will be a whole lot more fulfilled.

There is fun to be had here. It's just that, in my opinion, the amusement provided is severely limited by the lack of challenge, the lack of diversity and the low grade graphics and sound.

Necromunda: Hired Gun checks all the boxes that should make a single-player first-person shooter tick, but its flawed execution and an ugly Warhammer 40K paint job give you few reasons to stick with it until the end. It’s functional and has a grappling hook that’s alright to use. But its tedious, unsatisfying combat, janky animations, and AI that’s prone to mess up all test your patience without offering any tangible reward. It misses out on making you feel like a bounty hunter – badass or otherwise – and all you’re left with, in case you do play through its campaign, is a sense that you could have spent that time playing something better.

Beyond an amusing style and excellent presentation the game is as deep as a particularly dry puddle, and while I have nothing against games that offer simple thrills Shoot Many Robots doesn't make levels interesting enough to make them feel anything but repetitious – and the occasional Survival levels only exacerbate the problem, not offer a reprieve.

Cities XXL represents a serviceable starting point for beginners certainly, but is simply far too riddled with bugs, performance issues and recycled content to recommend to anyone else who has sampled the series previously.

Jade Dragon adds precious little to Crusader Kings 2, which would have benefitted much more from a playable and visible Chinese region. This expansion feels far too feature-bare for its price tag, and even at a smaller price point none of it feels really impactful. Even when you have access to the China menu, you’ll likely find yourself progressing via other means.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this game is that you, the main character, do little to actually determine the murderer. Instead you are really Poirot’s minion. The ending and solution inevitably comes from him, with a little input from you.

A lore-breaking spinoff that removes most of what makes the new XCOM special and replaces it with short bouts of repetitive tactical combat and bad writing.

The developer’s heart is in the right place, but Solarix just isn’t very good.

Rather like last year's Amy, Lexis Numerique have created in Red Johnson's Chronicles: One Against All a game that appears to hold much promise, only to be let down by a ham-fisted implementation of the game mechanics. While it's nowhere near as bad as that game, One Against All's annoying puzzles and clumsy interface too often suck the joy out of progressing through its pulp plot, making it impossible to recommend to even the most committed of adventure game fans.

Kinect Joyride is not a game you should invest in, yet with a few tweaks here and there, it could have been something great.

Deponia's saved from being worse than Yesterday by at least having a simple understandable storyline and by not taking itself too seriously, but that's not saying much.

A depressingly bog-standard port then of a game without its own identity, Front Wars elicits the instantly gratifying play of its inspiration, but fails to capture the imagination of Nintendo’s beloved strategy opus as thoroughly as it wants to.

Ultimately, Pro Cycling Manager 2014 feels like a missed opportunity from Cyanide.

It's not awful and, in a House of the Dead-while-standing-up kind of a way, it's acceptable, but only really worth buying if you have nothing else for the Kinect that you spunked money on and you've seen it going dirt cheap somewhere.

Veterans of the genre will probably find little new here to entice them, although if you really don’t care, then by all means try this out.

Though there’s fun to be had in the pleasing progression of such free-to-play titles, there are so many better and more rewarding battle strategy games out there. Leave this to the mobile space and find something that the PC was made for, not for emulating a lightweight mobile port.

Without online multiplayer, all the stages and possessing visuals that are inferior to the console versions, Dead or Alive 5 Last Round manages that rare and horrible thing of making PC players feel like second-class citizens to their console brethren and in doing so, succeeds in heavily tarnishing what is actually a pretty incredible fighting game in the process.

Wreckateer is an interesting experiment and certainly one of the more accurate Kinect titles with clear and responsive controls (despite a large space requirement) but it forms an uneven experience.

How utterly average-sounding can you get, huh? With a little sprucing up, perhaps some voice-acting and some real, game-changing decisions to make, Faery: Legends of Avalon could have been a hidden gem. Instead, it's the kind of RPG that developers try their best not to create.

Far Cry 5: Dead Living Zombies maintains the level of general Far Cry 5 fun within a zombie movie setting, but does nothing really exciting with the concept. We have no problems with the DLC not having a sandbox world (although doing an Undead Nightmare with the main map would’ve been awesome), but the 7 linear levels on offer here are unimaginative, short, have no checkpoints, and could’ve been so much more. The idea of playing through terrible horror movies, which can change at any time Call of Juarez: Gunslinger-style, is fantastic, but Ubisoft wastes it. Hopefully Arcade map makers will do something with the concept, because this DLC is dead on arrival.

What's there is decent enough for the genre and certainly as technically accomplished as any Kinect title aimed at kids would ever need to be, but without any strong hooks to keep people coming back it could well end up as just another fad - much like the majority of other content for the all-seeing camera.

What is unforgivable is that All Zombies Must Die! commits the ultimate video game sin by becoming boring. Much like the classic example of Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, (that's right, I went there) quantity must not come at the expense of quality or even a basic level of enjoyment. It's a real shame because with more variety and less padding AZMD could've been so much more.

There is no single-player, only a handful of maps, and a relentless focus on deathmatch. There are no modern bells and whistles, no character customization, and no real thought past the concept of dinosaurs vs humans.

There are lots of good ideas here, variations in objectives, AI companions, skill building, and numerous aircrafts to fly, but it all feels so bland, mundane even.

It's not a terrible game, but it is a deeply average one.

Even without the frequent sever issues, Shadowrun Chronicles : Boston Lockdown would be hard to recommended to anyone but the most rabid fans of the setting.

Blue Reflection feels like a Gust game. That is, it looks and sounds beautiful at times, but ultimately falls flat elsewhere. While certainly easy on the eyes, it cuts every corner it can in what feels like a purposeful attempt to emit mediocrity. There’s some good in here, but the rest feels hastily put together.

The Groundhog Day vibe in the end left me a wee bit disappointed.

As enjoyable as Monster Truck Destruction undoubtedly is at times, it’s not been fully-baked in the transition to the PC and the price point won’t reflect its nature without some heavy patching. If you can find it cheap in a Steam sale this Christmas then it’s certainly worthy of a chunk of change to take a look, but for the moment, pick up your phone and give it a try before even thinking about hitting that purchase button.

There's just so much missing that would have made this a must buy game. Customisation is nowhere to be seen, and the multiplayer modes may as well be non-existent. Loading times slow things down, often hitting the 30 second mark, a time frame that is often longer than your actual run on the water.

There was one mission that brought out the intensity that I expected, but it was over too soon and right back to the problems that preceded it.

I was under whelmed by this game. It seemed a game with all of the right elements, but they never really came together in a way that ‘smelled as sweet’ as a game by any other name.

The problem is that as much as it wasn’t a bad game it wasn’t a great game either, falling somewhere in the realm of mediocre. Then again...so is most reality TV.

If you have the sheer will power to push on through the vast mire of early drudgeries, there are jewels to be found buried deep within Ancient Wars: Sparta, but whether you’ll still be motivated enough to really enjoy them is another matter.

While Utopia City does have some unique qualities in the form of rewarding artefacts and its energy based gameplay mechanic, other areas only make it adequate for budget line expectations and out of reach for anything beyond that.

As cheap as it is, the game is just too unstable to recommend. There are some colossal load times (even with 2GB of RAM), persistent crash-to-desktop issues, and many, many occasions when you'll need to reload your last save game due to bugs.

If you liked Samurai Warriors, then you'll like number 2.

Just too lifeless to bother with.

Right now the small player population is seriously harming what makes Ravaged stand out, but even when you do end up in a big battle on a fresh map, its best attributes are lost underneath layers of niggling issues that just prevent it from being an enjoyable experience.

Just too lifeless to bother with.

Overpass is for a certain type of sadist, and it’s been awhile since a game made me want to stop playing it as quickly as possible. It might have its polish and intent, but the mechanics they serve are frustrating. Perhaps everything I mention makes the game all the more interesting, a game that isn’t for noobs like me and something that would sit comfortably between Surgeon Simulator or Getting Over It. But this makes for a niche game that will bug anyone else. I get the appeal, but it’s simply not fun.

NaissanceE could’ve been a neat game but Limasse Five should’ve just stuck with making a cool artistic world and left the actual gameplay at home. I may have then complained that there wasn’t enough game in it, but at least I would have actually enjoyed it.

What little positive elements it has going for it are marred by its problems.

Kung-Fu Live isn't worth the 10 quid it costs on the PlayStation Store, especially when most PlayStation move titles charge just under double this price for a superior experience. Don't waste your PlayStation Eye on Kung-Fu Live.

Fire is a sweet, innocent adventure with a very kid-friendly style, and it hurts me to kick it in the teeth. But I will. Behind those innocent looks lies a very basic adventure, with no story, no dialogue, no characters, no personality, and no satisfaction.

Ultimately though I found myself sat in front of my computer, scratching my unkempt beard and trying to answer the question: who is the game for?

There are some half-decent ideas here - particularly the evolution of the hospital - and some fairly decent jump scares, however Daylight is too often too keen to rely on tropes that have been far better served elsewhere.

The Technomancer is not grossly bad, but it feels cheap and is deeply mediocre. It’s a cheap game, and worse: it’s no longer a cheap price. As I said in the first paragraph, I can’t think of a reason anyone would want to buy it over any other game in existence.

When a licenced game fails to excite fans of the franchise on which its content is based, it had better have something in reserve for the swathes of other consumers to latch onto. Unfortunately for The Punisher, it ends up unrecommended in both regards.

Scaling itself back for a more "pure" co-op experience just doesn't work for this franchise that benefited so greatly from borderline parody. For that reason alone, The Devil's Cartel is an awkward one to recommend.

Even if you spend the time to unlock your skills and build that warrior-archer-tank-damager behemoth you had in mind, what's the point if the activities you're engaging in are so threadbare and unappealing for the most part?

There are no difficulty levels, no online support, no party modes, no DLC, and no reason to switch it back on. To say that I wasn't entertained would be a lie, as there's enough charm in a few of the games to pass a couple of hours on a dreary Sunday afternoon - but that's nowhere near enough to justify a full-price or even a budget purchase.

While Peaky Blinders: Mastermind has some style and a novel approach to puzzling, it's not enough to properly engage. It definitely clicks at times, and there are moments where solving a problem makes you feel like a meticulous planner. However, there aren’t the eureka moments you’d expect from better puzzles nor mechanics worth mastering in replays. It’s hard to recommend and it’s only for a niche of Peaky Blinders fans who want an average puzzler with a lot of dull micromanaging (if they even exist).

As it stands, there's hardly ever a reason to go beyond the obviously marked out route to the objective, as there'll not ever really be anything that interesting to find if you do.

Bombshell isn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, but it’s among the most dull and uninteresting. From its cheesy, late-90s alien blasting plot to its absolutely repetitive action, it’s tough to pull out any redeeming qualities. Even assuming its bevy of technical issues get ironed out, this one still isn’t worth your time.

If you were to summarise it in a puzzle, Puzzle Agent 2 would be a paint-by-numbers picture: formulaic, messy, and unable to hold the attention of all but the most easily perplexed.

It's a wasted concept and it's let down by lazy execution.

As a curiosity project for fans of the genre, I can only say that I’m glad Lords of Football exists; but as a full-price release it’s not something that can be readily recommended.

King’s Bounty II is a game where it takes forever to do anything. I averaged maybe 2-3 short battles for every hour of gameplay – perhaps 20 minutes of fun for 40 of drudgery. All this is doubly frustrating because somewhere under all this crap is a pretty solid strategy game. I just wish that King’s Bounty II would stop jerking me around and just let me play it!

007 Legends is rushed, short, frustrating, and wastes several interesting scenarios. It's at best slightly above average (several bits in Moonraker), but largely painfully average or excruciatingly below average.

It is a simple role-playing game for slower systems. You would get far more enjoyment from playing something such as "SpellForce: Order of Dawn" for the same cost.

The equation got heavy on the negative side with a dull collection of ammunition, mediocre mission objectives, obsolete and redundant computer infiltration techniques as well as game pacing that is confusingly inconsistent.

If you are unfazed by the inevitable, constant death, the steep learning curve, the idiot AI, the poorly-designed (but neat looking) maps, the certain index finger cramps, or the underdeveloped character creation system, you will find Dawnspire to be a unique (and economic) gaming experience.

Dynasty Warriors 9 suffers from a lot of issues, most stemming from the terribly implemented open-world. Assets are reused, it’s buggy, repetitive, bloated, empty and bland. These shortcomings are made all the more painful by the obvious potential this game had, and how fun the base combat can be once players waded through all the other nonsense.

I tested the Xbox 360 version of Omerta, which controlled fine. The 360 versions of Tropico both had decent performance, and the same is true here. As well as working smoothly on a technical level, the actual control scheme is well-thought out. It’s clear that Omerta began life with both platforms in mind instead of console being tacked on as an after-thought.

If you’re into in-depth management of a park then Adventure Park may be for you, but for everyone else the design problems, unattractive menus, misplaced priorities, and numerous other flaws adds up to a tedious experience. Worst of all though, Adventure Park is bland, lifeless and lacking in both character and imagination.

Blades of Time never matches up to the well-executed time mechanic it so readily deploys.

Journey of a Roach attempts some nice ideas and is pretty cute, but altogether isn’t a particular good or enjoyable adventure.

Granted, Pixel Boy’s premise is hardly conducive to a rich backstory and mythology, but there’s really no personality here to lure you back in.

Sonic 4 is an utter mess of a game, cobbled together in a manner that puts the entire franchise to shame. It feels sluggish, broken and lazy, but at least it only lasts a couple of hours!

Sonic 4 is an utter mess of a game, cobbled together in a manner that puts the entire franchise to shame. It feels sluggish, broken and lazy, but at least it only lasts a couple of hours!

Bannermen’s appreciation of genre greats can be easily seen through the cracks in its shoddy construction. However, in between a single faction with a small, uninspired roster, bland story and writing, and very few options in terms of tactics and strategy, it’s tough to recommend. As rooted as it is in the genre’s past, it’s nowhere close to mastering what made RTS titles of yore great, ultimately being just a flimsy, soulless imitator.

Bland, boring, and turgid to the last - look to Tropico 4 for a fine example of micromanagement, or instead XCOM Enemy Unknown for turn-based kicks: Omerta: City of Gangsters deserves to be thrown in a trunk and taken "someplace up state."

Those who've played the first game will either not want to touch another AZMD or be supremely disappointed at the sheer amount of regurgitated content here. Newcomers will likely get frustrated with the emphasis on grinding and repetitive game play.

An interesting concept is let down by some pretty glaring gameplay flaws.

The Callisto Protocol is one of the year’s biggest letdowns. It is joyless, contrived and feels unfinished, as if the studio rushed it out prior to Dead Space Remake’s launch on January 27, 2023. Like Black Iron itself, I can’t help but feel the project was abandoned at some point. It feels so wrong for a game that looks and sounds this great to be so devoid of spark and quality control. It’s fitting that after traversing every tight nook and cranny, the only feeling left once the credits have rolled is that of having life squeezed from you.

On a good day, it's even approaching mediocre or average. Then you fall into the swamp because the killing animation took you over the edge of your small raft and you die instantly.

Overall an immense disappointment.

With more time and more polish Stained could be a perfectly decent little platformer. As it is, though, it's hard to recommend even at a stripped-down price.

It's unfinished, it doesn't communicate vital information to the player very well, and – let's be honest here – it's all more than a little repetitive. Every level just feels like you're doing the same things over and over again. There's fun to be had certainly in the building and exploration departments, but it could've been handled with a lot more care. This isn't a game, it's a tomb.

It's dreadful.

Yes, things look prettier. But scratch the surface to plumb the depths as the saying goes, and Sins of the Fathers Anniversary Edition’s flaws become that bit more glaring. The polished aesthetics may well be enough to sway those avid nostalgia hunters, but I can’t be sure that new players will be at all interested.

I hate to use the term "cash-in" but there really isn't any other description for Sanctum of Slime.