Favouring smaller, more scripted levels than its forebear, you’ll once again need to bump off targets while preventing your handiwork from being noticed by security. That means engineering ‘accidents’ by shooting pieces of scenery or gunning down targets where their bodies will fall conveniently out of sight. While still entertaining, PvP contests often seem as though you’re playing a bot rather than a human and the whole package feels a shade less compelling than the original, which is currently available for 49p.

Charmingly old-school puzzle-solving with some interesting gimmicks and cute characters/corporate mascots.

Possibly the world's least anticipated sequel, but a surprisingly enjoyable brain dead romp all the same.

The dream of flight becomes reality with PlayStation VR. But the fantasy is a shallow and repetitive one, that you wake up from all too quickly.

It's clearly just junk food gaming but there's still an art to these arcade brawlers and X-Men remains one of the most social examples of the breed.

An amusing enough side story but the novelty of pitting serious criminals against Resident Evil monsters don't last nearly as long as the running time.

360 owners might be less familiar with the original but this is still the most pointless remake ever.

An absolutely terrible version of an enduringly excellent game that has no business being on the Wii.

The customisation and creation tools are impressively powerful, but the disappointingly dull racer that's been built around them doesn't provide much inspiration.

The action and illustrations are all expectedly grimdark, and the interactions come thick and fast, but it suffers from bugs, sometimes failing to recognise completed objectives, spoiling what might have been a neat adjunct to its TV counterpart.

For a game five years in the making this is a disappointingly trivial and repetitive actioner.

It would have been a great unlockable extra, but as downloadable content the price of being a robot dog for an hour just doesn’t add up.

it does eventually start to feel a bit samey, however elegantly drawn it is.

The sequel to Ferrari Challenge may be a good simulation, but it's not really much of a game.

A sleek skating hybrid with plenty of compelling ideas and some stylish presentation, but the longer it goes on the more frustrating it becomes.

A purposefully under-designed platformer that takes several cues from Pikmin but forges ahead with its own distinctive take on a platforming comfort game.

The original version had the potential to be a classic multiplayer horror game, but this updated edition still feels as hokey and unrefined as the movies it’s based on.

A minor effort from Suda51 and Digital Reality, but with some clever presentation and a peculiar atmosphere that enhances some fairly ordinary action.

FromSoftware struggle to force the square peg of Elden Ring into the round hole of a co-op roguelite, and while they just about manage to make it work the whole game feels like only a half-successful experiment.

Rather than the future of survival horror this is merely a retread of its defining moments, and even then it rarely manages to equal what has gone before – let alone exceed it.

The move into 3D has produced some staggeringly pretty visuals, but when it comes to the controls and running time this usually enjoyable action puzzler suffers badly as a result.

Less than the sum of its many and varied parts, Mercenary Kings never gets the mix of modern and retro influences right – apart from with the amazing visuals.

The component games are better than the first time round but less well suited to the mini-game format, resulting in two unsatisfying halves of what could have been the perfect retro compilation.

The touch controls are nowhere near up to the job, and even with a controller it’s a massive grind, especially when runs are so highly dependent on luck, but this is easily the most cost effective way of enjoying a little hero slaying.

An inspired effort to try and make Doom work in VR, but the limited control options on PlayStation VR leave the action feeling clumsy and frustrating.

A needlessly stringent remake of the original two arcade classics that is just as frustratingly difficult as ever, although it does have a neat co-op mode.

An interesting but flawed attempt to tackle the selling and using of cannabis, that never has the courage to take itself entirely seriously.

Certainly a career high for Kirby, but he still wilts next to serious platforming competition.

There are some great ideas at work here, but the game can't quite bind them into a successful whole.

Definitely one of the lesser entries in the Dragon Quest franchise, but still a loving remake for those that can stomach the overfamiliarity.

Extremely rough around the edges but even in its current state this is an engrossing and tension-filled strategy role-playing game that offers a very different perspective of WWII.

A beautiful but shallow experience that beguiles with its presentation and bores with its listless combat and long-winded puzzles.

The weakest of the recent SteamWorld games but still an enjoyable, if rather unfair, mix of role-playing game and card-battler.

There’s some mild improvement on last year’s game but the Madden franchise still feels lost, with too little depth and too many bugs.

A better game than the earlier spin-off but Travis Touchdown’s time is clearly over, even if he is still able to provide some entertainingly odd boss battles.

An enjoyable, likeable mash-up of dungeon crawler and dating sim undercut by simplistic combat and a short running time.

There’s not much to it, but what’s there is made so perfectly that it can prove hard to put down.

A genuinely funny Paper Mario style role-player, with entertaining puzzles and a welcome mockery of LinkedIn culture, let down by rhythm action battle mechanics that don’t quite work.

A better game than the original, but it still suffers from many of the same problems – with desperately uninteresting storytelling and combat.

A mechanically solid and fun Super Smash Bros. clone which doesn’t have the style, personality or affection for its characters to reach the heights of its inspiration.

Because your party doesn’t auto-heal, anyone with that skill swiftly becomes indispensable, although you can mix and match team members depending on the enemies you face. The real problem is that without new ideas, this no-frills dungeon crawler is possibly a little too generic for its own good.

A spirited attempt at innovation and some competent driving mechanics are not enough to escape the shadow of either Mario Kart or the previous Sonic & Sega racers.

It’s fun to play and early progression is swift and reasonably satisfying. The problem is that it’s nowhere near as good as Clash Royale, with less identifiable units, a clunkier interface, and a slower pace of play.

A welcome return for a beloved Amiga classic but while this compilation proves the games still have charm it lacks accessibility and features, especially given the high price.

It might not be the Elite sequel of your dreams but this space trader is in a field of its own on 360.

A loving tribute to the later Mega Man games and a 2D platformer with plenty of new ideas of its own, but a lack of consistency spoils the overall package.

A cute woodland survival game that looks like an illustrated children’s book but has a few too many rough edges to make full use of its charming setting.

A labour of love that few are likely to appreciate – but if for some reason you did want a hand-drawn remake of Toki then this is your lucky year.

Considering it's been almost seven years since the last game Dead Or Alive 5 has shamefully few new ideas, and makes you wonder whether the series didn't belong in the big league after all.

It's the imagination of the developers that seems at fault here, not the player, with little real opportunity to create anything - just rearrange it.

Not a very interesting 2D shooter, but fans are likely to create something far more exciting from it.

Baby and bathwater are thrown screaming from the tub as Square Enix strip Final Fantasy down to the marrow.

A magnificent tribute to retro graphics and music, but the game underneath remains a hollow tie-in.

A direct-to-video style sequel to Far Cry 5 that’s still perfectly playable but fails to make use of its own premise in any interesting way.

Mario turns property tycoon in a relatively successful alternative to Monopoly, but a very disappointing crossover.

Progress is sedate, and at launch it does have some balancing issues. It’s biggest problem though, is that if your opponent’s losing and quits, during what can be quite protracted matches, you get a smaller reward than if you’d simply lost, which feels unfair. Still, with Ninja Kiwi’s customary polish and attention to detail there’s a great deal of promise if it can retain a decent player-base.

The makers of Until Dawn unleash a new interactive sci-fi horror, whose polish and narrative twists are undermined by under-informed choices and an awful lot of walking about in dimly lit corridors.

A great remaster of a forgotten almost-classic, but most of its flaws were already obvious 18 years ago and this does little to improve any of them.

What sounds like a silly gimmick works extremely well at immersing you into the life of another, although the technical problems can be severe.

A semi-successful pirate take on the Like A Dragon formula, held back by its lack of focus, drawn out length, and surprisingly weak story.

Indefensibly shallow and repetitive, but still great fun for Simpsons fans and nostalgic arcade goers in general.

With its 8-bit-style graphics and roguelike trappings, Space Grunts 2 is every bit an OrangePixel game; only this time, rather than being about action, it’s a turn-based deck builder with an emphasis on speed and simplicity.

In the past, similarly priced premium titles have only been supported for a few years before becoming unplayable forever, adding to any nagging doubts you may already be experiencing given its litany of problems. There’s still a solid game in there, but you’d be better off playing it on literally any other format.

More competent than incredible, this middle-of-the-road tie-in replicates the films well enough but doesn’t mesh with the Lego formula as well as some other properties.

The best non-sports game so far for the PlayStation Move, but there still seems to be plenty of magic left untapped on what is an unnecessarily brief experience.

Visually interesting and competently made for the most part, but the novelty of a 2D Assassin’s Creed is already beginning to wear off.

It shuns the more raucous fun of Boom Blox, but this is still one of the better Move games so far and a good tech demo.

Even a high-quality remaster such as this can’t hide the fact that Assassin’s Creed III is too much a product of its time and has little to offer modern gaming.

The best Dynasty Warriors style game ever made, which means it’s slightly north of mediocre, with simplistic combat, weak storytelling, and a whole lot of repetition.

A noir boomer shooter rich in style and atmosphere but limited by its unremarkable gunplay and flat writing, which fails to capitalise on its fun premise.

The fundamentals haven't changed from the Dreamcast days but the new online mode and other refinements make this the best Phantasy Star for some time.

Not a great trio of remasters (although also far from the worst) but Assassin’s Creed II’s best qualities still make it one of the highlights of the franchise.

The mechanics could well help to rejuvenate the adventure genre, but the story and puzzles of The Cave are nowhere near as entertaining as they should be.

One of the weakest Lego games of recent times, and not just because the formula is getting old but because The Hobbit isn’t a particularly good fit for it.

Luigi’s Mansion 2 was always a much better game and while there’s some novelty (and possibly nostalgia) value to playing the original it doesn’t warrant a new full price release.

It’s altogether too authentic to the rules of the film but despite its slow-motion gameplay and contrived scenarios it’s hard to imagine a better Quiet Place video game than this.

Still one of the best lightgun games never to see the inside of an arcade, but it's still no classic and the new additions are of questionable worth.

The iPad’s screen size makes the interface a bit awkward, but it works well on iPhone, even if it doesn’t come close to recapturing the joyous silliness of the 1990s original.

It’s great value for money, as a sort of mini-Far Cry 3, but those that have played the original are likely to find it a rather weak sauce substitute and those that haven’t may just wonder what all the fuss was about.

There's certainly plenty of rock but this climbing sim doesn't prove quite as exciting as it sounds.

A fun riff on the Lego formula, and although it doesn't add anything other than an extra two players it's a fun diversion for Disney fans.

Although instantly gripping, its heavy reliance on chance and your limited agency – you only ever decide which order to play the five cards you’re randomly dealt – make it feel a little too much like gambling rather than a game of skill. With no deck building and encounters decided on die rolls, Knights Of The Card Table struggles to sustain its appeal.

It still looks the part of a more action-based Zelda, but this sequel has some serious deja vu issues.

The racing and visuals are good, but the scarcity of modes and options means this is another year where the official F1 tie-in barely makes the starting grid.

An atmospheric and often perplexing exploration game that suffers from bugs, uneven level design, and an unwavering dedication to leaving you to your own devices.

Still one of PlatinumGames’ most imaginative and exuberant action games but the refusal to improve the controls or accessibility doom the remaster to further obscurity.

The 2D visuals are absolutely stunning, but the simplistic action and pretentious storytelling undermine what could have been a true neo-retro classic.

A fun and imaginative homage to Dungeon Keeper that's gone from impossibly to merely incredibly hard.

Square Enix's addiction to microtransactions ruins another WiiWare release, in this 17-year-late sequel.

For better and worse this is Harvest Moon in all but name, with a few useful new ideas but still the same old crop of problems.

A disappointing second episode that’s 90 per cent filler and, apart from a good turn by a ghostly Handsome Jack, severely lacking in humour.

A so-so episode, which relies too much on cliché and Clementine’s increasingly rapid transformation into a child superhero. But there’s still some effective drama despite it all.

Relaxing, aesthetically pleasing, and giving you just enough room to feel creative with your flower arrangements, this suffers from the usual idle game problems – no threat, zero difficulty, mostly a waiting game – but makes up for it with charm and good looks.

An impenetrable start for non-fans, but there’s enough potential here to hope that subsequent episodes make this a dream everyone can share in.

Entirely inessential and lacking in any genuinely new ideas, but if all you want is more Dragon Age: Inquisition this download is unlikely to disappoint.

Dead Space 4 in all but name, except with no puzzles and surprisingly little suspense. The Callisto Protocol has plenty of gritty action but that’s not quite enough to sustain interest for its entire duration.

It doesn’t really do a lot more than what Elite achieved over 30 years ago, but this is a fun and accessible, if rather repetitive, space trading game.

The original was obnoxious and insensitive but this new shooter lacks even that much personality.