Family friendly survival horror with a quietly ambitious, and largely successful, attempt to get the most out of Kinect.

Probably the best-looking WiiWare game ever, but still a mediocre platforming experience overall.

The third round of Dynasty Warriors vs. Samurai Warriors is almost identical to the first two, with more characters, more options, but even less innovation.

A prequel to Road 96, that adds skating mini-games but removes the procedural generation of the original – but it’s still engagingly written, and has a lot to say.

For those that don't remember the original this retro remake will likely prove a little too old school.

One of the very few pre-smartphone games that is still worth playing, even if this new update only does the bare minimum to keep it relevant.

A streamlined port with intelligent controls, this massively multipleyer online strategy overcomes visual disability and tutorial woes to offer horizons of exciting possibility.

A dream come true for fans of the original but there’s nothing here for anyone else, especially given the tiresome new story elements and obnoxious difficulty.

A disappointingly familiar entry in the long-running puzzle series, that comes across as very cheap (in terms of production values, if not price) but not particularly cheerful.

Easily the best Battlefront DLC so far, although it’s still only scratching the surface of what can be done in the Star Wars universe.

As well as building your town, your overarching quest is to awaken a titan and kill a dragon. Getting there takes plenty of resource management and job assigning, but the late game drags horribly in the gap between completing all your buildings and killing the dragon, and while it’s mechanically interesting, it’s also a short game with absolutely no replay value.

An amiable but underwhelming homage to the forgotten majesty of Uridium, that adds some welcome new ideas but removes too many of the old ones.

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.

A surprisingly deep and absorbing cyberpunk stealth-action role-player that transcends its low-tech visuals and basic presentation.

A cosy game of potion manufacture, healing, and friendship set in a delightful isometric world, that’s let down by its grinding repetition and some serious bugs.

It’s hard to tell how games with such a complex economy and shifting balance will evolve, and while this doesn’t land with the same wow factor as Marvel Snap, it’s a promising start, albeit one that comes with a lot of grind. For a game with Warcraft in its name that’s most certainly in line with expectations.

An excellent extension to an already large and polished game, with welcome new gameplay additions and a whole new island to explore.

A terrible port of a game that is very much showing its age, and has no business being repackaged at anything close to full price.

It may be superficial, but the surface it covers is becoming immense.

As an open world co-op shooter there’s a lot to enjoy here, at least until you realise how shallow and repetitive the underlying action is.

The newly vertiginous sandbox levels prove an excellent canvas for sneaking and stealing, in a welcome new entry in what feels increasingly like the spiritual successor to Thief: The Dark Project.

An outdated and uninteresting Soulslike that takes an already flawed original and makes it even less compelling, with unengaging storytelling, bland visuals, and repetitive action.

There are moments of brilliance, but also frustrating inconsistencies and technical limitations that ruin what could have been the ultimate sniper game.

The cleverly-calibrated control system is the main point of interest here, but this is also an entertaining, if somewhat staid, take on VR Super Monkey Ball.

On the surface It may look as cute as an ewok but the money-grabbing machine beneath is twisted and evil – not to mention incredibly boring.

A gorgeous retro homage to early 90s kids TV and video games, but where the total lack of depth and challenge leaves little for even fans to get their teeth into.

Beautiful to look at but the story and gameplay prove far less fascinating than the real world model-making skills of the developer.

A deeply flawed attempt to revive Road Rash, that gets the fighting right but crashes out when it comes to the racing and graphics.

Some great ideas and fantastic graphics, but as fun as it is to see so many genres mixed together Abyss Odyssey doesn’t do any of them any real justice.

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.

A love story told through a first person puzzle game that delights in playing with scale and recursive environments, even if its conundrums eventually feel a little undercooked.

It's a shameless copy of Diablo, but this action role player still has some personality of its own.

An addictive and accessible MOBA which takes advantage of the Pokémon license to great effect but is hampered by an abundance of free-to-play irritations.

A surprisingly hesitant start to EA’s new sports series, in terms of both the amount of content and the disjointed action.

The laziest HD collection yet, with just two titles from an eight game franchise, neither of which have been recreated with anything like the effort and care they deserve.

Plenty of smart ideas and some very attractive presentation, but none of the core gameplay elements work as well as they should and the game ends up sadly forgettable.

The visuals are incredible, but for a game obsessed with storytelling at all costs the dopey plot and underwritten characters in no way make up for the lack of gameplay.

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.

A disappointingly tame vision of a near future dystopia, that represents a perfectly competent use of the Ubisoft formula but falters in its attempts to add anything new to it.

A solidly made and entertaining racing game with loads to unlock, whose minor graphical shortcomings and sim-lite handling do nothing to interfere with long term appeal.

Somebody must still love Spy Vs Spy given the amount of effort that's been put into this remake, but the retro charm wears off extremely quickly.

The mix of highbrow story concept and complex first person combat is certainly reminiscent of Bioshock, but this churlish homage has nowhere near the same nuance in terms of either plot or gameplay.

There's an awful lot of recycled content here, but if you like Zombies mode this is still an essential, if potentially expensive, download.

Outdated action platformer that despite all its talk of madness is far too mundane in both design and visuals to justify its mammoth playing time.

A disappointing start to what should be a potential rich concept, with an overfamiliar storyline and bland presentation.

A mellow and deeply unusual adventure where you play a man’s shadow adrift in a Dutch city, in a game that defies convention and is all the better for it.

An inoffensive 2D platformer with some novel ideas - but fairly vapid and overly expensive.

SNK fail to provide any real justification for continuing the 2D shooter series or for moving to the DS.

The best Tenchu for years, even if it does still leave too many frustrating relics from the past.

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.

An inventive sequel whose small improvements in gameplay can’t make up for tedious firefights and minigames, and a less witty script.

The best Mario Golf game since the N64 original and while it does have some odd ideas they’re almost all optional, resulting in an impressively comprehensive sporting experience.

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

An unsatisfying end to what has been Telltale’s weakest game of recent years, with Game Of Thrones proving a poor fit for their usual formula.

Charming, silly, and occasionally profound but Keita Takahashi’s latest lacks the gameplay hook of Katamari Damacy, even if it is surprisingly well written.

Too familiar, too easy, and too short but if you’re looking for an undemanding time waster on Game Pass you can certainly do worse than The Gunk.

An inspired use of the usual vampire clichés with some fascinating moral decisions to make, that always impact the game world and its combat in unexpected ways.

A multiplayer driven dungeon crawler with flashes of comical entertainment, but which neither excels as a party game or as a captivating solo grind.

It may not be a simulation but this is still an in-depth and hugely enjoyable racing game.

Frustratingly beautiful graphic adventure that's sadly ruined by poor voiceovers and fuzzy logic.

A frustrating mix of survival game and roguelike, that has absolutely no respect for your time and yet still hides an enthralling and rewarding action adventure within its murky depths.

Controls on a touchscreen are hit and miss though, which can leave you wondering whether you’ve solved a puzzle but messed up the controls, or simply haven’t figured something out correctly. It’s also a great deal less satisfying than the games it borrows from, even if it does look and sound consistently spooky.

There's an obvious love here for the genre, and retro gaming in general, but as strategic role-players go this is far from a grandmaster.

For a game obsessed with OTT violence and knob gags this is a surprisingly charming and likeable shooter, if an unavoidably shallow and repetitive one.

A bafflingly pointless remake, that absolutely no one asked for, and which manages to introduce a number of new flaws while completely failing to justify its own existence.

Not a particularly good game in its own right, but an enjoyably outrageous mash-up between three of Japanese gaming’s most prolific publishers.

Almost a great sequel, but the improvements to the sims are overshadowed by the shopping list of peculiarly random missing features.

A worthy successor to the Descent legacy, but lacking the depth of gameplay that would’ve made it a classic of equal standing.

The least scary and least imaginative Resident Evil returns, and although it’s not the worst Resi sequel it certainly is the most boring.

An improvement on the first map pack and not just because of the Predator, but Call Of Duty in general could really do with a change of scenery.

By no means the lazy cash-in you might expect, although neither is it the complete reinvention needed.

As fascinatingly addictive as its premise is perversely mundane, but whatever the setting this is one of the best new puzzle games of the year.

It’s the gameplay which remains slave to the visuals and storytelling here, in this intriguing but shallow post-apocalyptic fable.

A crisply drawn futuristic racquet sport with consistent and nuanced physics that’s let down by a user base too small to support online matchmaking.

A much more ambitious slice of downloadable content than many, but in the end one that fails to take advantage of its own, or the main game's, best features.

The improbable plot ends up being almost the only point of interest in this vapid and hopelessly unoriginal first person shooter.

A cute, absorbing, and often clever survival game that, despite its flaws, is perfect lockdown fodder.

Helicopter sims may be a niche interest but after IL-2 Sturmovik this is the best flight simulation available on current consoles.

As mindlessly entertaining as any lightgun game, and with lots of zombie-themed nostalgia - but none of the pacing or showmanship of the best of the genre.

Not a very good argument for why Nintendo shouldn’t make smartphone games, but an imaginative and enjoyable take on Candy Crush Saga and its ilk.

Macabrely original murder ‘em-up that defies categorisation, and its numerous rough edges, to make being evil more fun than in almost any other game.

Some of the new features could’ve done with pruning, but Ubisoft’s willingness to nurture indie style experiments continues to bear fruit.

A mediocre homage to Contra and a terrible adaption of Terminator 2, which has nothing interesting to say about the concept of adapting movies into 2D video games.

A good recreation of the UEFA Euro competition but the lack of new options means this footy download is not value for money.

The third Guitar Hero game for the DS isn't as lazy as you'd think but the concept is still deeply flawed.

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.

A disappointingly trivial expansion in terms of gameplay, story, and new features; although more Metal Gear Rising and Jetstream Sam was never going to be an entirely bad thing.

The ingredients are there for a transcendent action strategy but the reality is that Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. is disappointingly mundane and only fitfully entertaining.

An ambitious magic-themed shooter which, despite its impressive, flashy combat, buckles under the weight of its influences and slapdash execution.

It's not much of a simulation but Codemasters' first F1 game is a slick and hugely entertaining racer.

The best entry in the series, but very far from being super – as the excitement of discovery is replaced with the drudgery of repetition.

A highly authentic movie adaptation but a sadly predictable, and repetitive, video game, that does far too little to justify the continued trend of turning 80s horror film into asymmetric multiplayer games.

Square Enix’s latest attempt to create a Monster Hunter clone has a lot of Final Fantasy fan service but few other reasons to explore its world.

All the ingredients are there from Human Revolution, but the final dish is disappointingly tasteless – even if its main problems are the opposite of what you’d expect.

More restatement than rebirth, this Gradius greatest hits collection has little new to offer.

Combining Until Dawn’s style of mild horror with online multiplayer works great, but the actual story and characters fail to engage.

The attempts to mirror the cinema of Akira Kurosawa work on a visual level but the story and gameplay are so empty and repetitive this barely works as a homage, let alone an engaging game in its own right.

The camera technology can't keep up with the game's ambition, but at least this Pokemon clone has some.