The pixel art simply can’t do justice to the Kratos we’ve formed in our mind’s eye. There’s also something deeply grating about listening to teenage American accents attempting to capture the complexities of a Spartan wrestling with his conscience. Perhaps if you could overlook Sons of Sparta’s lineage, you might see it as a perfectly adequate Metroidvania. But Mega Cat Studios knowingly took on the burden of that name only to fall short of the stellar God of War pedigree.

Outside of Screamer’s punishing story mode lies a more persuasive set of challenges, time trials and multiplayer races. Yet as a whole it rarely generates the irresistible momentum that drives you to come back.

Xenoblade Chronicles X remains stuck in the game design of 10 years ago, padded with hackneyed dialogue, pinballing the player from silly quest to tired kill quotients. Sure, it occasionally surprises you with a stunning panorama or confronts you with a colossal enemy. Even then, though, it’s not long before you’re engaged in a repetitive combat loop where your attacks trigger automatically and your optimum strategy relies on approaching enemies from the rear.

People of Note offers a visually arresting tableau, scored by a collection of agreeable tunes in genres from rap to rock. The developers’ love of puns delivers a regular supply of chuckles and a smattering of optional puzzles based on everything from moving blocks to mathematics adds novelty to the gameplay. But aside from Cadence’s slight obnoxiousness, People of Note is less of a hit because the music at the heart of the story is only loosely connected to the gameplay and the songs themselves are short on memorable hooks.

Taken in isolation, DKC Returns HD stands as a generously endowed 2D side-scrolling platformer in the grand tradition of the series. Colourful and punchy, it taxes the reflexes and the brain via 80 levels densely packed with hazards, secrets and optional challenges.

It still offers a comprehensive package of enjoyable football with plenty of tweaks here and there in Ultimate Team, Career and Manager modes. But for me the changes amount to just that – tweaks that don’t substantially alter the package.

You will want to keep playing just for the sheer pleasure of the sharp dialogue – by turns sarcastic and poignant but at its heart drolly funny. Less successful is the musical aspect that notionally underpins the whole expedition – the tunes at your gigs are pleasant enough but the mini-games that accompany them quickly become tedious. Reigns: Beyond shows the formula might be running out of legs. But priced at under a fiver it offers plenty of laughs even though it’s more of a game that plays you than you play.

Unlike Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2 is sparing with scenes of pure horror, save for the infrequent encounters with unkillable nemesis Pyramid Head. He comes at you every so often with a giant blade, his metal mask shielding him from your bullets until he decides to go away again for no apparent reason. Less is more – in terms of visual style and tension-building – can be effective but the long periods of nothing dramatic happening in drab locations border on monotony. And that’s the last thing you want in a scare-em-up.

Electrician Simulator turns on the part of the lizard brain devoted to making pleasurable connections but some of its design decisions have been badly wired and it feels a little too unplugged from reality.

Hirogami follows in the footprints of other successful papercraft videogames such as Tearaway and Paper Mario. While it nails the pleasing handmade aesthetic of those titles, the shapeshifting gameplay never quite pins down the precision required. It’s not a write-off, more of a write-down of a crafty idea.

Sorry We’re Closed will find kinship in fans of the Persona series for its flamboyant character storylines. It’s less successful in trying to emulate survival horror stalwarts such as Silent Hill or Resident Evil. But Michelle’s amusing antics in combining these two strands make A La Mode a studio to watch.

Luminous doesn’t lend itself to long sessions of scuba adventures – it just doesn’t have the depth for that. But as an antidote to the pressurised atmosphere of modern life, it acts like a cleansing bath.

Clearly, there’s a reasonably compelling hack’n’slash buried under the rubble of Lost Soul Aside’s B-movie ambitions. But you will repeatedly conclude that you don’t have the energy to sift its gold nuggets from the unattractive grit in between.

Aspyr offers a selection of concept art, lost levels, soundtracks and videos – all of which will be doubtlessly manna to fans of the original. But compared to more rounded remasters from the likes of Digital Eclipse, Legend of Kain might better have been left preserved in aspic than pulled screaming a quarter century into the future.