So, what do you get for your money? Beyond standard fighting or five, 10 and (ultimately) 20 fighter survival modes, not very much at all...Clearly there are enough Tekken fans out there to justify the conversion but it all simply boils down to pixels slapping pixels and that gets very boring, very quickly.

Hang in there through the repetition, though, and it turns out that there’s more to this than internet dog jokes and fetch quests. The combination of wandering and postmodernism put me in a contemplative mood anyway, presumably by design, and the wistful conversations with Krista, in which the couple gently nurture a long-distance relationship, have tenderness and pathos that kept me coming back. As a joke game, this has the expected issues, but ultimately it’s a flight I’m glad I didn’t miss.

This remains an odd mix of sporting events that adds little to the franchise or the party game genre that Nintendo created and still dominates.

Like Friday the 13th (and to some extent the similarly asymmetrical Evolve) there is a great concept here, but the balance and finesse are lacking – especially when you’re not playing with friends. Hopefully there will be patches and updates, bringing the console version more in line with its PC originator, which has been improved greatly since launch. Dead by Daylight needs and deserves a more nuanced, crafted and considered structure. It needs to be more Wes Craven and less Rob Zombie.

The intrigues that play out between its often bizarre but always interesting characters and factions, and underwater sequences that see Reed in a 1920s diving suit, are highly absorbing. Its narrative puts the boot into religious cults, and Lovecraft would surely not have approved of its ruminations on racism. It also tackles Depression-era deprivation, which is pretty apposite in today’s world. The Sinking City is original, commendably thought-provoking and deliciously gothic, but aspects of it feel either half-finished or ill thought-out. Had it pruned just a little of its ambition, it could have had more than cult appeal.

We loved SimCity for the first few hours, but the compulsion soon gave way to frustration...The simulation promises more than it delivers, and you feel perpetually boxed-in by the meagre city sizes. The social features are interesting, but we'd rather have the ability to save our game, play offline, and not have to worry about server downtime. The regional multiplayer really should be an optional aside to a standard single-player mode.

The soundtrack is one of the best of the year, and it’s incredibly stylish. But the sheer gory, numerical compulsion at its core gets more terrifying the more you consider how much sway this manic impulse toward numb, exploitative accumulation holds in our own world. Dystopias like this used to feel creepily prescient. Now, they just feel terrifyingly honest.

It’s a game you can complete, and when you do, you’ll want to start playing again immediately, perhaps bumping up the difficulty level or increasing the map size. That’s exactly the same kind of replayability spark that Civilization had all those years ago.

This has clearly been a work of catharsis for its designer, blending the two to say something personal and important. By opening up about the lived experience of depression and focusing on the causes rather than the solutions, Cornelia Geppert and the team at Jo-Mei have created something that truly resonates.

Peaky Blinders: Mastermind is stuck between abstraction and fan fiction, ambition and restraint. At its best, it’s streamlined; at worst, stifling and predetermined. Give me an Alfie Solomons rum-empire management game, and you’d have my attention.

What a shame that Luminous Productions didn’t capitalise on its best assets. Frey’s taken some heat for being overly chatty in Forspoken, but without Ella Balinska’s fantastic performance, the game would be totally forgettable.

While the last game impressed with the variety of enemies, TFUII takes a "less is more" approach, reducing the variety but upping the intelligence. The result is a frequently challenging (if disappointingly linear) journey to some truly epic boss battles.

Habitat destruction is something we’re surely all aware of – we’ve all seen the heartbreaking footage of animals left stranded in tiny patches of forest, surrounded by roads and industry. Beyond the Trees reinforces its ecological message through its visuals and through play, and though this might not be many players’ introduction to this pressing real-world issue, it is a new way to look at it, and a new way to engender sympathy. Developer Broken Rules has done its research here, both on the creatures themselves and the places they call home. No matter how many people feel moved to donate to conservation charities after playing, this game will have made a difference through its advocacy.

The death screen is a rare moment when Sleep Awake summons something between dream logic and the strange hazy moments between sleep states that can feel like dreaming. The rest of the time, this narcoleptic nightmare merely wears its psychedelic aesthetics – floating Numan included – without interrogating them interactively. It’s too straightforward, too legible, and not actually illogical enough where it matters. You may want to sleep on this one.

The finest Sonic game in years, a riot of ideas that at times approaches the quality of Nintendo EAD's work. It may not provide much insight into where games are heading, but as a Sonic-themed celebration of the past few years, it's a surprising delight.

After the excellent surrealist horror of Alan Wake 2, which revelled in its own strangeness while also delivering a clear, compelling story, Alone in the Dark is too staid, too clumsy, and too haphazard to invoke anything other than a shrug. The mystery surrounding Jeremy’s madness isn’t worth putting up with the ponderous unravelling, while the combat and puzzling are mere shadows of Resident Evil 2’s superior design. The curse, it seems, lives on.

An absorbing thriller with a splash of They Live and The Goonies, this spooky multiplayer game has you investigating paranormal goings-on in suburbia.

It’s unfortunate that Empire of Sin has arrived in town with holes in its waistcoat, but I don’t believe its problems are beyond fixing, and it’s got moxie that ultimately shines through the flaws.

It lacks the depth of Toy Story 3 but Tangled on the Wii certainly won't disappoint the young audience it is aimed at. Parents will enjoy helping out, and for what it is, Tangled is definitely worth a look.

This is a 10-minute laugh, if that – the kind of thing that's here today, gone tomorrow, but for a brief moment in history is the talk of Shoreditch and Twitter. It's the gaming equivalent of a novelty single and even the developers, to give credit where it's due, recommend you don't buy it. Listen to them.

It's a little cramped – occasionally you'll swipe past the option you wanted and need to make a series of jerking thumb moves to get back on track – but offers a breezy kind of customisation both for those with inspiration and plans they want to execute and those without, who just want to browse and tinker.

It tells its story well, with smart writing and some superb characterisation that elevate its simple revenge plot. Ultimately, however, it never capitalises on its open world potential, instead succumbing to an almost constant lull of tediously unimaginative repetition that makes for a boring and dated open-world shooter.

There is an OK vamp story hiding in here; careful, dicey conversations with dangerous fellow vampires are by far the most interesting thing that Bloodlines 2 has going for it. And I enjoyed some parts of Seattle, particularly the dive bars packed with people gyrating to (of course) goth music. The Chinese Room has managed to make something playable and vaguely interesting out of a game development disaster. But after the first few hours, I kept going more out of morbid curiosity than enjoyment.

It's always been more fun playing with friends than spending time alone with the rabbids – diluting their shouty impact makes them a little more palatable – that seems to be underlined with this collection.

And it's all over in about five or six hours. Worse, for all its authenticity in terms of voicework, the cut scenes and animation are all too often hilariously awful.

For the most part, the acting is pretty dismal, as if the cast were exhausted by the number of takes they had to make for each branch path of action. Nevertheless, the always welcome Kate Dickie pops up as the tech company’s CEO and gets to sport a particularly amusing pair of tartan pants – the kind of clothes you dig out of the closet when you have been in isolation for too long.

It’s disappointing that, for licensing reasons, the Augusta National course is missing so you don’t get a chance to play at the Masters. Indeed, there are far fewer courses than the 2013 version of the game (with 12 real-life options against the 20 in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2014), and the roster of players has been culled too, with no LPGA stars at all.

There are quite a few sections where the game looks like the player is handling a 3D character on a 2D background, and in some situations, the 3D can be a hindrance.

In short doses and with a good team, War in the North is not without its compulsive charms.

Overall, this game has a nice central premise let down by execution. For die hard fans – either of skateboarding or Orwellian nightmares – only.

The Crew offers these moments of emergent gameplay for those willing to go find them but, tragically, doesn’t have them naturally stitched into its design upholstery. As such, the potential is too often unpicked by the game’s frustrating shortcomings.

Certainly Disney's best video game in a long time – especially for the youngsters, who will enjoy the simple, trial-and-error gameplay and diverse styles, looks and challenges.

Riptide isn't especially good, but I can't help but feel that it might well be the most accurate depiction of what trying to survive a zombie apocalypse would be like in reality.

This version of Vertigo portrays women in a way that is seriously difficult to stomach in a post-#MeToo era. Here, women prey on an unsuspecting man using, for instance, sex and hypnosis to lure him in and do him harm. Male trauma is of course absolutely real, but this game doesn’t have the tools to examine it with the required care, and ends up essentially saying #MenToo – and doing a significant disservice to the body of cinematic work that inspires it.

In a motion control game it is simple; control is paramount. When Kinect 2.0 behaves, Rare’s creation can be plenty of fun, especially in a social setting. But its lack of consistency breeds a sense of distrust in players, and with that the fun fades. It seems that flawless hands-free motion control applicable to a variety of living room environments continues to remain just out of our reach.

Despite some efforts in meta-progression, it’s difficult to look past Drag x Drive’s most significant hurdle – that it’s uncomfortable to play for extended periods. The mouse controls are ingenious in theory, and when applied in small bouts, it feels like a novel prototype. But, in the context of such overtly active gameplay, the concept starts to fall apart. What remains is a surprisingly inaccessible sports game that lacks modal variety and a long-term hook. If you were hoping for a spiritual successor to the Nintendo Switch’s Rock ’Em Sock ’Em brawler Arms, you will be disappointed.

Its mechanics are thin, its micro-transactions are annoying and the plot in the campaign makes the story in Call Of Duty: Ghosts look like high art. But if you fancy thumping barbarians and you don't mind the lack of depth, Ryse is arguably the most beautiful hack 'n slash you can play on the Xbox One.

Angry Birds Go! is great fun now, with plenty of potential for evolution in 2014 and beyond. A few tweaks to the in-app purchases aside, it'll be raising eyebrows for positive, not negative reasons.

There’s the spark of something genuinely special here, beyond a FarmVillian Nightmare, and well beyond the flood of base-building Clash of Clans clones and uninspired Candy Crush-apeing puzzlers cluttering up the app stores.

Really, it’s the kind of game that’s best enjoyed when you don’t think about it very hard. It’ll make 12-15 hours disappear in an ever-escalating sequence of rooftop-spanning leaps of faith, easily conquered shootouts and cartoonish face-offs against supervillains and giant robots. It’s as moreish as popcorn, and exactly as substantial.

In some ways, the game’s simple ambitions would not have been a problem if the recipe had been respectfully crafted. But to a modern audience spolied for choice when it comes to excellent family games, it is something of a travesty.

Ultimately, Warner Brothers live-service ambitions rob players of a remarkable comic-book caper. The result is a game that’s as confused as its titular characters. Just as these reluctant heroes find themselves battling against their villainous natures, Rocksteady’s storytelling ambition struggles to break free of its live-service trappings. Since its reveal as a looter shooter, the internet has declared Suicide Squad an abomination – the antithesis of the classics that Rocksteady once made. The reality is somewhere in between, a game that straddles both the brilliant and the banal. As Rocksteady is surely learning from Suicide Squad’s hostile fan reception, you either die a licensed game hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

If its publisher Ubisoft continues to support it, Skull and Bones will attract a committed player base of sea-combat enthusiasts who enjoy tinkering with their ships’ builds and facing off against each other, or teaming up to take on the intimidating fleets, cargo heists and sea monsters that lurk tens of hours in. If you are after a game that feels like a pirate adventure, though, you’re still better off with Black Flag.

There are moments when The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria hints at what it could have been, such as when you’re mining a rich vein of ore in some dark tunnel, and your dwarf becomes inspired to sing. They’ll clear their throat and give voice to a story of trolls and orcs and the beating that will rain down on them if they cross your path. The game briefly feels alive, the story making the cold mines warm. But then the song stops, and you’re still mining, and all you have to look forward to is a long walk back to the forge.

Throw in some surprisingly nuanced storytelling, some boss battles that can only reasonably be described as mega, and what Namco have produced here is something of a masterpiece of the beat-'em-up genre. Splatterhouse is a vulgar, noisy, shallow, juvenile, gruesome gem of a game that never forgets to be fun, even when going out of its way to be as appalling as possible.

It will deliver a fun weekend of fart-infused chaos for anyone who misses the days when snowfall meant freedom.

Even where it is strongest, Anthem rarely stretches beyond the derivative. The combat, while well-designed, is little more than Gears of War with jetpacks, and narratively it veers between inconsequential and downright irritating. This anthem is, sadly, a tedious and conservative dirge that we’ve all heard before

Those previously unaware of Time Crisis will find the whole affair bafflingly cheesy, but devotees of the franchise will love Razing Storm as a package, although most will surely agree that it should have been billed as Deadstorm Pirates, with a free copy of Time Crisis: Razing Storm thrown in.

It is, at least, pretty original, and getting to grips with your submarines' controls is both fun and satisfying. We would, though, have preferred to see it priced more realistically to reflect its brevity. It's true that it simply wouldn't work on any console other than the 3DS, but it's by no means an essential purchase.

The problem is, very little of what you’re asked to do turns out to be any fun. Fetch-quests that offer next to no payoff are compounded by annoying travel: you have to make an unappealing choice between the vein-popping frustration of trying to drive across the craggy, impassable, boulder-strewn landscape, or giving up and shlepping there on foot. And this landscape isn’t Skyrim, or The Capital Wasteland, with discoveries to be made around every corner. It’s a Starfield planet map like any other, with only the odd cave or cookie-cutter facility to explore, and it rarely rewards inquisitiveness with anything other than wasted time and the urge to swear.

It manages a pretty impressive balancing act: non-gamers obsessed with Tron will love its ambience and authenticity, and may even discover they like games more than they thought. Yet it contains enough clever ideas, and is well-enough structured, to keep hardcore gamers interested, particularly given that it takes place in that seductive Tron universe.

Ultimately, it feels almost disrespectful that Tolkien's rich and evocative mythology should be reduced to collecting "Gandalf Tokens" and bowdlerising one of the 20th century's greatest mythologies. The pity is that that Aragorn's Quest works well enough to prove that LOTR does indeed have the makings of an epic RPG. Unfortunately, this isn't it.

There are certainly rough edges aplenty to be picked at, but also a deep love of the source material; everything from the voice-acting to the detail on gun barrels is steeped in that grim 40K atmosphere. The look and feel of this Space Hulk delights the boy in me, who long ago abandoned Games Workshop but never quite lost faith in the Imperium of Man.

As it stands, 1-2 Switch is a really fun couple of hours that may well end up being the star attraction at one or two friends or family get-togethers. However, it will then find itself at the dusty end of your games collection. Nintendo says it wants to offer value to Switch purchasers, yet we can’t help but feel it’s not just the cow getting milked in this scenario.

Not all cosy games need to evoke hard emotions. However, it does feel like a disservice to the emotionally complex source material not to explore the richness of the world at large – especially when dry humour, tragedy and finely drawn social structures are what make Tolkien’s writing so powerful. Without any challenging quandaries to pull at your heartstrings, the promising atmosphere in Tales of the Shire is overwhelmed by endless fetch quests. Diehard Tolkienites and Stardew Valley lifers may be better off looking elsewhere for their cosy thrills.

Everything Frobisher does well, Deviants does too – just a bit worse.

If only the game gave you more encouragement to improve.

Reviewing a Call of Duty game today is a bit like reviewing a military theme park: it’s impossible to give a holistic appraisal. You might find the rollercoasters thrilling, the ferris wheel tiresome, and the hotdogs tasty, but consider its murky ties to the US military-industrial complex deeply problematic. Certainly, however, the game has expanded in such diverse and deliberate directions that most players will find at least one diversion to suit their tastes and play styles, and for this the developers are to be commended. Wrangling an annual series into a persistent online framework is obviously an unwieldy challenge for artists, designers and programmers alike, as they seek to marry the past and future of video game delivery. Within those difficult, arguably misguided constraints, MWIII is, campaign aside, a minor triumph of engineering and design.

Hunters is not quite as much fun as playing Overwatch … or watching Star Wars. It could have done with some truly original features, or more movie content tied in with the gameplay. Instead, it is a decent team shooter that you can play on Switch or mobile, and swap your progress between the two, so you never have to go more than a few moments without levelling up a wookiee. Yes, it tries to bamboozle you with many quests, challenges and blinking icons on the menu screen so that you inevitably fold and buy a £10 season pass, but you can definitely defeat the game’s Jedi mind tricks and have a blast without paying. The force is strong in this one, but not THAT strong.

There’s nothing wrong with a game making you work hard before it yields rewards, but Ghost Recon Breakpoint takes that principle so far that, in its early stages at least, playing it is a chore. The latest iteration of Ubisoft’s future-soldier open-world shooter has plenty of good points, but those are marred by basic elements that so broken that the game feels like a backward step from Ghost Recon: Wildlands (2017).

Redfall is a poor execution of ideas ill-at-ease with Arkane’s historic design ethos, a sad misuse of Arkane’s a unique developer’s particular talents.

Ultimately, high production values and variety raises Kinect Star Wars above mediocrity, but it only delivers tantalising glimpses of the kind of game both the controller and the franchise badly needed.

This is a game from another time, best enjoyed with your brain switched off, some friends to laugh with, and perhaps a bottle of extremely cheap spirits.

As it stands there's just too little on offer here to justify the cost for a full-priced, boxed retail release.

Try as I might, I just can't hate it.

With better controls and collision detection this would have a pretty decent Wii game – especially considering how little is expected of this sort of licensed offering. As it is, I'd expect only fans of the film or puzzle-game devotees to consider this a worthwhile purchase – and even then, perhaps only after a couple of months when it can be found in the bargain bin.

With its open-world environment and emphasis on crafting, this is an interesting sequel, marred by glitches and frame rate issues.

Knack isn't a bad game: there is satisfaction to be derived from it, some of the gameplay is genuinely good fun (at its best moments, it does begin to acquire an air reminiscent of a more ponderous Crash Bandicoot), and it's one of the longer games to emerge in recent years, so will at least keep youngsters occupied for decent periods of time. But neither is it a particularly good game, which is hugely disappointing given that it's supposed to be one of the flagship reasons for buying a PlayStation 4.

These versions of Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Vice City (2002) and San Andreas (2004) are in no way definitive. Seeing them like this is more than a disappointment. It is infuriating.

Altogether, Yoostar is as baffling as Gwyneth Paltrow in a rom-com: smart and charming, sure, but basically uninteresting, and nobody's first choice for a fun night in.

War games can do dumb, and I'm OK with that. But dressing dumb up in the cloak of authenticity seems a dangerous line to cross. When you pretend to be saying something about ongoing real-world wars, but present a conflict of extremes with all the substance of air, the thought that anyone might take Warfighter seriously becomes a very queasy one.

This new iteration of the escape-to-the-country fantasy replaces all that was charming about earlier versions with an average adventure game.

Technical wobbliness doesn’t always denote a bad game. The sheer charm of the writing, delightful golfing and the warmth of the world compensate for the rough edges. It’s a generously big game, too – imperfect, but special nonetheless.

The storytelling suffers from a lack of conviction.

Inversion is a tiny bit frustrating. It's a nicely crafted game with some good ideas, which nevertheless seems unwilling to claim an identity of its own. If you liked Gears of War, you'll enjoy playing it, but you might find its sheer familiarity a bit annoying. And if you like third-person shooters that don't require superhuman skills, you'll enjoy it, too. But if you're looking for something futuristic, cutting-edge and distinctive, keep on looking.

Previous Fallout games always had something to say about the post-apocalypse and the human factors that led to it; here, it’s reduced to shooting mutants and picking up rubbish. Even if, in the future, it mutates into something more stable, it will still feel eerily soulless.

Safe to say, it isn't the future of first-person shooters. But it is great fun.

Raccoon City isn't the sort of game that will win awards – it's too rough around the edges in certain respects – and it's important to bear in mind that it's best experienced multiplayer rather than solo. But it's great fun and adds a fresh spin to a key time and place in the Resident Evil universe. It will bring a smile, in particular, to those who remember Resident Evils 2 and 3 with fondness.

A decent game that has been horrifically let down by one sub-standard element.

Despite these misgivings, the gameplay actually isn't all that bad.

There’s a fine line between playfully obtuse instructions and infuriatingly vague game design. Being unable to complete a task because it’s challenging is one thing, but not knowing exactly what the task is (and being blocked from doing it by bugs) is another. Table Manners has a brilliant premise and provides incisively funny commentary on modern romance but, just like when a Tinder date doesn’t match their profile and then proceeds to behave inexplicably, sometimes you just want to make your excuses and leave.

When I imagined a video game adaptation of Squid Game, I did not imagine running around an arena in a golden pig outfit trying to hit a player called skibidi69 with a baseball bat. Perhaps I set my expectations too high, but the only shock value here is in the lack of imagination.

Its mix of planetary scavenging, alien-hunting and funky artwork ought to be a smash, but sluggish mechanics and onerous mission demands diminish the fun.

A mark for nostalgia then – it's the Duke, after all – and one for the game. If this was 15 years in the making, it makes you wonder what they did for the other 14 years and 10 months.

A perfectly decent game (although in no way spectacular), with a three-player drop-in co-op mode and the characters' different secret agendas adding some replay value. But all the way through, the abandonment of the Western theme nags at you.

With a little more time in the oven, Food Truck Simulator could have been something really tasty. Unfortunately, in its current form, it will surely leave players feeling a little sick instead.

While the different games offer some variety, there's simply not enough to differentiate between them.

Here's the thing; if we take it as read that this review is simply a lengthy opinion proffered by a thundering nerd, all the score rating rests on is whether or not the person writing consistently enjoyed the game they were covering – and on that scale, Aliens Colonial Marines is a success. It actually feels like a product out of time; one of those scrappy FPS games mid-tier publishers could boot out between Triple-A titles back in the day, when Metacritic didn't exist and a studio wasn't shut down if the game they made failed to sell a bajillion copies.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is a dull game with a great concept, made borderline unplayable by its hyper-aggressive monetisation.

At its worst, it’s the gaming equivalent of a drunkard shouting abuse from a park bench. At its best … well, the drunkard has leapt up and now he’s wielding a plastic knife. Rage against political correctness if you like, but don’t support this tired game as part of your ideology – there are so many better uses of your spare time.

Unfortunately, any sustained period of time spent actually playing The Eternity Clock will leave you with a similarly desperate feeling. Doctor Who games have always set very specific problems.

Unfortunately, while it's energetic fun in parts, there's a series of near-vertical blips where the learning curve should be.

MindsEye is an oddity. For all its failings, I rarely disliked playing it, and yet it’s also difficult to sincerely recommend. Its ideas, its moment-to-moment action and narrative are so thinly conceived that it barely exists. And yet: I’m kind of happy that it does.

A derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien’s fiction.

But when you play it, you get the feeling that everyone involved with the franchise will be secretly relieved when the whole juggernaut finally grinds to a permanent halt.

A moderate try, but minimal fun.

Given that each four-song session probably burns less than 100 calories, this isn't going to see anyone shimmying their way into svelteness, but it's OK if you're after some cheery cardio. And that's the best you can say for Get Up and Dance: it's OK. Not broken, not bad, and not doing anything you can't find better elsewhere.

For actual fun and a bit of instruction – all the things you'd get at a real life Zumba class – you want Dance Central. But for adding one more piece to the Zumba branding behemoth, it has to be this, whether it's any good or not.