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.

Way of Redemption is all there technically and functionally, but it’s empty and short on content. Every moment spent playing, the obviousness of it being an attempt at a forced e-sports success hangs over the experience, which is pretty dull to begin with.

As such, if you're hankering for a truly excellent side-scrolling brawler, your money would be better spent on that instead and not this effort which seemingly places a premium on lewd college humour above anything else.

If you've just come from a literary binge of A Song of Ice and Fire, or just had a marathon of HBO's high production TV show you might be tempted by the lure of Cyanide's A Game of Thrones - Genesis. However if you're that invested in George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy universe you're likely to be left pretty angry, whereas newcomers like me leave feeling just dazed and confused.

Story can’t be the thing that carries a video game and story is all Eisenhorn: XENOS has. A character as powerful as Gregor Eisenhor, with a great voice actor in Mark Strong, and an epic story deserves more than a glorified version of a mobile game. But brainless combat and mechanics, crummy audio, and unacceptable bugs keep this game to no more than a book promotion.

So many times during this review I quit the game just because I couldn't be bothered to solve a puzzle, only to realise I had to keep playing to give it a fair shot. My opinion would start to sway a bit more positive, then I quit again for the lack of care. Which says everything about Magrunner: Dark Pulse really.

It's certainly a question of quantity over quality.

In a year that has seen plenty of top-notch sports games, this is arguably the worst of the lot.

In a year that has seen plenty of top-notch sports games, this is arguably the worst of the lot.

It's certainly a question of quantity over quality.

The Long Journey Home had so much promise but Daedalic forgot to make it playable. They focused on the big picture, on the huge epic universe, without realizing that it’s the small stuff that’s important.