A Monster Hunter clone that does some things differently but doesn’t manage to improve on element of it is far more entertaining inspiration.

A game that should probably have been cancelled rather than delayed, with its complete absence of personality or new ideas.

A mildly spooky walking simulator whose plot, acting, and puzzles fails to benefit from its Hollywood connections and is even more disappointing without VR.

A charming, atmospheric indie game with some enjoyably imaginative puzzles and evocative visuals, whose only real flaw is a lack of longevity.

Splitting half the content between a mode many players won’t be interested in is an odd decision, but short as it is the new area still has that classic Dark Souls appeal.

An extremely successful attempt to reproduce Dota style action strategy on consoles, with a game that's considerably more accessible than its inspirations.

A competent remaster of a story mode that, while it still has the ability to impress, feels old-fashioned, shallow, and grossly overpriced.

50 Cent's second game is an enjoyable slice of dumb fun that has plenty to teach more serious shooters.

A co-op action roguelite with simplistic, special move-based combat and some heroes that don’t quite pull their weight, which while fine in multiplayer is not satisfying enough to take on solo.

Space combat simulators will hopefully become a mainstay of VR in the future, but although this lays the groundwork the experience itself is limited and repetitive.

Instead of high-tech thrills and survival horror chills, this disappointingly mundane thriller struggles to impress with a muddled narrative and unengaging gameplay,

An enjoyable homage to old school Metal Gear Solid, but a lack of challenge and an overbearing story means it isn’t quite a stealth classic in its own right.

The combination still makes little sense but if Lego Freddy Mercury doesn't make you smile nothing will.

A colourful and creative first person adventure, whose From-style asynchronous multiplayer, branching plot, and faltering stealth sequences are hamstrung by a very low budget.

An unappealing mix of role-playing clichés and purposefully limited gameplay options that has little to do with Final Fantasy, past or future.

Impressively original, if still fairly abstruse, platform puzzler that challenges you to think as differently as it does.

One of the best survival horrors of recent years, that functions almost as well as the Wii U version. creating a mature-rated adventure that is as ruthlessly difficult as it is engrossing.

The DS's second serving of Bust-A-Move has little new to offer but the same old coloured bubble matching.

Another largely pointless download that fails to capitalise on any of Mass Effect 2's achievements.

An excellent portable flight sim that will please both series fans and newcomers - until they realise how short and underdeveloped it is.

A low budget but competent remaster of a game that’s showing its age – and yet still makes a good argument for a future franchise revival.

An ambitious and visually arresting double-A adventure, that blends Assassin’s Creed’s stealth with Halo’s epic scenery, but which is compromised by a litany of minor technical issues.

A stunning visual style can’t hide the fact that Sable is not only uninterested in guiding its players but it doesn’t really care about entertaining them either.

The low-key narration and sparsely surreal graphics play well in this uncluttered game of brinkmanship, dexterity, and puzzle solving. Its challenge certainly isn’t for the faint hearted though.

The best Dungeon Siege ever is a more of a compliment than you might think in this accessible and fun action role-player.

Despite what you might imagine when you hear that Nintendo’s VR goggles are made out of cardboard this latest Nintendo Labo kit is able to replicate all those sensations and more, in what sounds like it should be a laughing stock but is actually a thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly engrossing mix of VR, handicraft, and edutainment.

Micro Machines remains to be beaten, but this top-down racer is still fun if you have enough friends.

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

The first post-season pass DLC is a substantial slab of new plot, gear, and abilities but never anything more than that. If you loved the base game, this is a lot more of exactly the same.

It goes completely against the spirit of the movie but at least the game is able to celebrate the creativity of its developers, if not its players.

A colourful and good-humoured 3D retread of 1990s point ‘n’ click adventures that despite the odd innovation suffers from the same frustrations and limitations as its ancient forebears.

Cute and silly but also impressively insightful when it comes to ordinary people’s wants and desires – even if those ordinary people are portrayed as talking sushi rolls.

Geographically speaking this is set in the real world but apart from the co-op options this still suffers the same delusions and deficiencies of previous Ace Combats.

Another impressive PlayStation VR tech demo, but as a game, and the long-awaited return of a beloved franchise, the experience fails to satisfy.

The only Monster Hunter clone to try and break the mould, but it still suffers from all the old problems of repetition and poor controls.

What could have been an all-time classic action role-player is let down by a surprisingly poor script and unengaging characters.

The new developer perfectly recreates the art direction and atmosphere of the originals, but there’s a lack of innovation and variety in this otherwise enjoyable quasi-horror sequel.

An extremely slow start to Minecraft’s first story adventure, but it’s a game made with a clear love for the original and is bound to please most younger fans.

A great technical showcase for the 3DS but also one of the least substantial launch games ever seen for a new console.

Few PSP games look as good, but this is still a hugely disappointing return for Parasite Eve and the ruination of a once intriguing heroine.

A stunning technical achievement and a mesmerisingly addictive one, even after you realise how simplistic and repetitive it really is.

The game is steady like Tim Henman but lacks the imagination and true greatness of Roger Federer.

A charmingly narrated VR puzzle game, with some interesting mechanics, but it’s let down by mechanical difficulties and occasionally insufficient signposting.

If you love Persona, this supplies a new set of interesting characters and successfully translates the flair of Persona 5 into a portable format, although it also features cross-save functionality with the PC version.

A flawed but interesting attempt at a mash-up of everything from God Of War to Dark Souls, but where crafting weapons is often more fulfilling than using them.

A clever and idiosyncratic time loop detective thriller with top notch voice acting, which suffers from circular gameplay that quickly descends into monotony.

How anyone came up with the idea, let alone made it work, is baffling but this charming little mystery game is the most entertaining Pokémon spin-off in a long time.

Suitably outrageous and undeniably fun, but even fans of the source material will be disappointed at a fighting game that values spectacle over substance.

There's disappointingly little to get your teeth into in this only briefly entertaining consumable.

Somehow this manages to be the best superhero team-up game of the year, even though its management style is fairly simplistic.

A wonderfully imaginative and beautifully presented interactive anime, but one that cannot maintain a regular enough supply of surprises to justify even its short running time.

If only it had been considerably cheaper, or considerably bigger in scope, this could’ve been a fun ride, but as it is ScreamRide is not really worth the price of entry.

It's not really Ridge Racer, but whether you consider it a reboot or a spin-off this is the best arcade racer since Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit.

A surprisingly worthwhile slice of downloadable content, that is better paced and has a more interesting storyline than the main game.

Although the central conceit of continual binary choices sits well on mobile, it eventually proves a shade too simplistic, making your ongoing adventures feel repetitive and as though you’re too much at the mercy of RNG-esus.

As unique a vision as video gaming has ever seen and one able to use its many incompetencies – including the new ones – to entertain and surprise.

Some of the best dialogue of the year and an interestingly original portrayal of Hell overcome a slightly undercooked take on classic graphic adventures.

Hugely disappointing retro reboot that fails to offer any of the freedom or fun its premise suggests.

Rushed, repetitive and a huge waste of potential. More expansion pack than sequel - and not even a good one.

After decades of miserable failure, Sonic Team has finally made a good 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game, and it’s one of the best open world platformers ever seen.

Very poor value if you already own last year's version, but even if you don't the console version is still badly compromised compared to the PC.

There are some great ideas here, with clever use of the dual screens, but the game in which they find themselves is far less entertaining than it should be.

An obvious labour of love that finally provides a full release for one of the best looking 2D arcade games ever made, although it’d be wrong to paint it as a lost classic in terms of gameplay.

Real-time strategy for the FarmVille generation, and yet it still owes too much to the past - and offers far less than it pretends for free.

A shadow of one of the former masters of survival horror, that is better equipped to bore than scare.

The best-looking Lego game ever and the most fun Aloy and the rest of the Horizon Zero Dawn cast has ever been, in this cheerful but shallow spin-off.

Fun but slight real-time strategy expansion that's rather short on strategy and value for money.

A fun addition to the sandbox genre, that adds a more structured campaign and achievable goals – at the cost of only a little in the way of accessibility.

A story about loneliness and grief, set in a retro-futuristic 1970s and told from the perspective of a deepsea diver, which is less interested in action than creating the right atmosphere.

A good idea only moderately well implemented, with the novelty of playing cops and robbers lasting only a relatively short time.

Another promising game is ruined by the lure of procedural-generation, which is a particular shame given Sundered’s gorgeous animation and interesting gameplay ideas.

The story set-up is good and there are some interesting new gameplay features, but almost all of them are squandered by sloppy design and technical issues.

It may be a good quality racer but this is also one of the most offensively cynical video games we’ve ever played, and despite being ‘free’ also one of the most expensive.

As unique a vision as video gaming has ever seen and one able to use its many incompetencies – including an unfortunate number of new ones – to entertain and surprise.

A well-crafted and occasionally imaginative dungeon crawler that is let down only by its questionable presentation and sky high difficulty.

It's a gift for fans of the show, but in terms of repetition and combat this is just a little too similar to the 16-bit games it seeks to pay homage to.

Team Ninja has done everything to please fans short of making a brand new game, but despite its successes this too often feels like an awkward compromise.

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.

Sony's own take Project Natal proves a convincing proof of concept but even as a virtual pet it's limited.

It may look like Zombies but it certainly doesn't play like it, in a portable conversion that copies all the features but delivers none of the fun.

A muddled and underwhelming Dark Souls clone that has a few unique ideas but fails to back them up with compelling combat or exploration.

An inoffensive way to waste a few hours with friends or family, particularly younger ones, but a waste of both Insomniac and Ratchet & Clank's talents.

Technically it's nowhere near as good as Dance Central, but for most people this is going to be a lot more fun - despite the fact that it still barely works properly.

The one note action might be pitch perfect, but the lack of variety or any real tactical depth soon drowns it out.

A disappointing port of one of the Wii's best games, although still a clever and entertaining mix of Pikmin and The Settlers.

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.

Five fun, but paper thin, premises connected by perhaps the world's only no-button control system.

A surprisingly successful reinvention of the Worms formula that turns the more slow-paced originals into an engagingly silly multiplayer free-for-all.

A slight improvement on the disappointing Bangkok level, but the lack of traditional Hitman thrills don’t make this a mission to remember.

If you’ve already played The Heist you’ll easily be able to imagine how Turf Wars plays out. In fact, if you’ve played any story DLC from the last few years it follows a very familiar path of artificially extending the running time of the parent game with the bare minimum of new features and enemies. But more of the same is exactly what some people want from Marvel’s Spider-Man and it’ll still be interesting to see how things end with the final DLC next month.

A fascinating premise that is used not only to create a set of mind-bending puzzles but to ruminate on the nature of reality. It’s just a shame about the controls and the short running time.

An engaging mix of The Legend Of Zelda and Fez, which rearranges a number of familiar ideas into a clever action puzzler, even if its visuals are a bit too old school for its own good.

Shallow mechanics hide a game that is much more simplistic than it first appears, but this is still a passingly entertaining take on a 3D Metroidvania.

An inspired adaptation of the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, that’s also one of the most unique and fun roguelikes of recent years.

As long as you don’t turn on 3D mode this is almost as good as the original Wii U game, the only problem being the Wii U version wasn’t very good at all.

As charming and accessible as any Lego game but Jurassic Park doesn’t suit the Lego formula terribly well and the ability to play as dinosaurs is underused.

Spring cleaning has never been so entertaining in this well presented and cunningly addictive physics-based platformer.

In many ways an improvement on The Teal Mask but the tedious currency grinding and ongoing technical problems mean Scarlet and Violet’s DLC is far from essential.