It’s perfectly enjoyable, but for every smart innovation it seems to have lost a portion of both complexity and character. There’s potential here, but we’ll have to wait for a couple of meaty expansions to see Beyond Earth’s promise fully realised.

Most will come for the original game, which offers a decent amount of challenge and length and a great deal of variety in its levels. Just go into it knowing that the original game was released back in 2003 – and in spite of the HD upgrade, it feels like it.

Get friends together or good all-round players and Evolve can be a blast, but anything less than that and you’ll be bored in far too short a time. In short: not quite the evolution in multiplayer gaming we hoped for.

If Pride of Nations is guilty of anything, it's simply guilty of being unimaginative. But what it lacks in imagination it makes up in historical fidelity and sheer depth.

This is an excellent combination of concept and design, but needed more, more, more. The core game itself utilises a fine engine with which to play with, but the actual core of the experience feels somewhat lacking in substance. A real shame that detracts from an outstanding piece of game design.

It certainly feels like the best Tropico game - but anyone who’s played a previous Tropico game might get bored at doing it all again (although the excellent missions help) and anyone who hasn’t might struggle to progress. In the end though, it’s still a worthy follow-up.

God of War: Ascension is a decent addition to the franchise. Combat remains sharp and puzzles are more intricate than ever. Unfortunately, a lack of interesting source material never shakes off the feeling that the stakes are lower here. This is easily the weakest God of War title to date, but when you consider the immense quality of the previous five games, it's perhaps to be expected.

At the end of the day, Aliens: Fireteam Elite doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a game that clearly knows what it wants to be. It’s not the most sophisticated co-op shooter out there and won’t exactly blow your mind with its uniqueness, but if you want to spend an evening shooting up Xenomorphs alongside friends, it has you covered.

Railway Empire is a satisfying enough experience for any strategy fan with even the remotest interest in trains -- or train fans with a passing interest in strategy. It offers campaign and scenarios with tasks and objectives alongside a sandbox mode that allows one to build the network of their dreams, catering to most players. While the lack of a single level going from 1830 to 1930 might displease some, the end product is a capable and accessible title in a very scant genre, and Railway Empire comes off as a passionate -- if not exactly flawless -- title.

Lost Sphear takes a little too long to really get going. Dungeons are tiny, its characters paper-thin, and the story far too predictable in its overuse of already overused plot elements. It’s a JRPG that struggles to add anything of value, perhaps to the point of reminding us why the natural evolution of the genre happened in the first place. Despite this, it’s rapid pacing is perhaps its biggest achievement. Even the smallest session can lead to a feeling of progress. Things start to feel a bit too repetitive in longer sessions, but playing in smaller bursts helps stop its generic tropes from grinding you down. At $50, though, it’s far too much to ask for something that purposefully refuses to reinvent the wheel. Even if it promises 40 hours over the last game’s 20.

NHL 2K10 talks a good game with it’s brilliant TV-style presentation and is almost every bit as comprehensive as its competitor, but when it comes down to the clutch, 2K can’t quite seem to ‘squeeze it’ where it really counts.

For a first faction pack, Tyranids is a very interesting addition to anyone interested in the interstellar creatures. It displays the same overall missed opportunities and underdeveloped aspects as the base game – and it is still is somewhat of a boring long-term experience compared to the likes of Civilization – but for fans of Gladius and Tyranids, it should definitely warrant a shot.

A game with a tight focus and some good ideas, Storm: Frontline Nation sadly falls slightly short of victory. The elements that make it unique don't go far enough, and the lack of decent management and diplomatic areas means it lacks some critical depth.

A top-down, turn-based tactical battler with a solid core and not much content to go around it, Special Tactics has the beginnings of something great that it can’t quite parlay into excellence.

All the same, there’s enough here to bring you back to Galactic Civilizations III and give you enough to enjoy a good few more hours with space battles and planet cultivation, and if that sounds like it’s worthwhile then the price might not put you off. Everyone else may want to wait for a sale.

The focus on unique weaponry and customization at the moment provides Loadout with a degree of compulsive appeal. But without Annihilation mode, it's debatable whether there is any long-term depth on offer here.

Without the Steam Workshop Natural Disasters is a nice little DLC that adds more depth to an already fun and interesting game. Giving long time players a little more spice. With the Steam Workshop and the scenario creator players will have an almost unlimited number of cities to play and scenarios to beat as players create new and interesting challenges for each other. It brings with it complexity and a difficulty level. The ability to fail at your job and the end of a game that has previously had no end. If at first you find that Natural Disasters isn’t for you, give it some time and try out the player made content. It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I feel fine.

Yet the novelty of airships and battles with giant sky-whales are simply not enough to save it from its flaws, painful as they are. Perhaps post-release support will allow Windforge to transform into the game I hoped it would be, but for now it sits as a flawed gem.

Rezrog is a give and take of fairly enjoyable character building and somewhat tedious and repetitive dungeon crawling.

Overall, WTF is a capable fast-paced game clearly aimed at fans of East/Gundam-style robot fights than more Western/weighty robot realistic representations. The game has a serious problem with feedback that never really goes away, but it should provide enough meaningless fun for anyone who’s really interested in the subject matter.

When you finally begin to put the aerial maneuvers together and to great effect, as you’re dodging incoming falcons, stopping in mid-air to shake that tailing dragon, or barrel-rolling to produce near-miss fire.

If you're looking for a fun arcade-style racer that you don't have to plop a disc into your machine to play, Hydro Thunder Hurricane is definitely a more than worthy candidate.

The world and characters are forgettable and uninspired without any of that deeper lore and storytelling Dark Souls is known and loved for. But despite those criticisms Lords of the Fallen is still worth a look if you’re after challenging combat and a grisly dark medieval world to explore.

An enjoyable game. But frankly even if it wasn’t for the bugs, the simplicity, the lack of a campaign, and the other minor short-fallings, I’d still be disappointed because when someone like Sid Meier copies a classic genre, I at least expect him to add something new and innovative to the game-play.

A fairly run of the mill expansion pack that offers few new incentives in terms of missions or units, and it’s not something for every WWII RTS gamer to snatch up.

All in all this is a good set of games for burning away spare hours with high seas hijinks. Now if only it came with a Captain Jack action figure!

Destination: Treasure Island a good game. In fact if you like Adventures, I’d say that given the slating they have been given over the years, it is very good.

The Golden Horde is a pleasant shake up to the usual tried and true method of a RTS game, mixing light RPG to give the player the chance to better customise and tune their own war machine is an engaging feature. Unfortunately this also plays against as some won’t find it to their tastes.