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.