You’re Rock Gunar, sole survivor of your unit and last bulwark against the extraterrestrial onslaught in this Aliens sentry-gun simulator. Illuminated by the flickering muzzle flash of your gun and the explosions generated by grenades, Molotov cocktails, and one highly combustible species of alien, your job is to aim high or low to take out herds of xenomorphs advancing along the floor, walls, and ceiling. It’s all a little bit mindless, but the upgrade path has a satisfying grind to it, and the chiptunes and faux 16-bit pixel art style are a winning combination.

There are some innovative ideas here but poor balancing, restrictive matchmaking and too little content overwhelm the positives.

An impressively silly mishmash of game styles and historical references that still manages to entertain despite its lack of depth and variety.

FromSoftware’s first VR game is full of interesting ideas but very little entertainment, with frustrating storytelling and tiresome puzzles.

As shameless a clone of Geometry Wars as you could ever hope to see. But fairly good fun all the same.

Its B-movie charm is beginning to sag and this revamp of the Xbox 360 hit fails to make the most of its enhancements – or charge an appropriate price for them.

Even committed fans are likely to be disappointed by this lazy and largely unnecessary rehash.

Some of the best 2D artwork ever seen in a video game, married to a spitefully difficult game whose main gameplay gimmick only manages to make it more frustrating to play.

Extreme video game nostalgia enters the world of VR but the novelty can’t excuse the sub-par gameplay and repetitive humour.

It perfectly fulfils its brief of being a new Banjo-Kazooie game in all but name, but Yooka-Laylee’s reliance on nostalgia may struggle to find new fans.

A surprisingly high quality tie-in, which for once acts as a good introduction to gaming for youngsters.

It looks amazing but baffling design decisions suck every ounce of fun out of this disappointing sequel.

As unique a vision as video gaming has ever seen and one able to use even its many incompetencies to entertain and surprise.

The original 3DS game is sacrificed on the altar of microtransactions and grubby monetisation, almost erasing any sense of fun in the process.

There are spikes to avoid, water-filled areas that make your eyeball buoyant, enemies with shields and others that intermittently catch fire, falling rocks, sticky web-firing spiders, mid-level bosses, actual bosses, and lots more to spice up this highly unusual ocular adventure.

Impressively well produced and extremely playable, but there are few changes from last year and the microtransactions are still obnoxious.

It’s certainly not the worst Gauntlet revamp there’s ever been, but there’s too little substance or variety to satisfy either new fans or old.

An improvement on the first game, but this still lacks the variety and thrills to be considered a true top gun.

Probably the best portable football game there’s ever been, but it’s not really FIFA 18 and the limited online options drastically limit its appeal.

The most enjoyably one-note VR game for a long time, that turns its simplicity into a virtue and whose cathartic ultra-violence is strangely therapeutic in these difficult times.

At first a HD remake of Wii Sports seems a faintly ludicrous idea but the game is still a great introduction to gaming, and to the potential of motion controls.

It's inconsistent and never quite fulfils its potential but this is far more inspired than it first appears and one of the best Wii games of the year.

It doesn't get everything right, and its low budget is obvious at times, but this is still one of the most unique and ambitious racers of the generation.

Shallow and repetitive it might be, but this new mobile game can prove surprisingly tense and recreates the atmosphere of the first film very well.

A deeply disappointing co-op shooter that squanders its excellent graphics on a bland and repetitive attempt to make a sci-fi Diablo.

A surprisingly competent 2D fighter, but one whose presentation and muted combat will restrict it only to hardcore fans.

Dumbing down Mario Party sounds impossible, but this strips out every ounce of fun or thought from the concept to create the most vapid Nintendo game ever.

Whether you know it best as Puzz Loop or Zuma this is an imaginative variation of the puzzle formula, even if it's a self-consciously weird one.

A disappointing sequel that only compounds the failures of the original, while also featuring Double Fine’s least amusing script so far.

As fearlessly unconventional as the rest of Suda51’s work, but even existing fans will have trouble deciphering the hidden depths beneath the surface level of surrealism.

A competently made but disappointingly inferior follow-up to the excellent AI: The Somnium Files games, featuring mediocre puzzles and an uncharacteristically simple mystery for a game with Kotaro Uchikoshi’s name in the credits.

It's a perfectly competent strategy role-player, but one lacking any real personality or imagination.

There are some fun ideas here, and Arkedo are clearly a very talented team, but this action platformer is neither as amusing nor as fun as it likes to think.

The Age of Discovery has enough excitement and intrigue to fill a hundred video games, just not this timid and repetitive strategy game.

Mixing Pac-Man with Metroid seems like an enjoyably strange idea at first, until you realise just how bland and unimaginative the end result is.

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.

A terrible disappointment given the Wii original, with some very sloppy use of Kinect and more bugs than Fallout: New Vegas.

An enjoyably distinctive survival game, in terms of gameplay, visuals, and an unusually affecting story.

Serious Sam is looking seriously tired, with a new sequel that makes only the most perfunctory attempt to doing anything new for the franchise or shooters in general.

The return to Rapture is a self-indulgent and unnecessary one, that combines Irrational’s previous two games into an unsatisfying new whole.

A good HD remake but the game itself doesn’t really warrant the attention, with too many unfulfilled promises that even its sequels failed to make good on.

It’s unclear how much Nintendo is going to market Labo as an educational toy but it certainly has great value as such. It not only stimulates artistic urges but making full use of each of the Toy-Con garages feels like the most entertaining science lesson ever. The potential seems limitless and while Labo may not be a video game – and in that sense will provide little relief to Switch owners looking for something new to play – it could well be the next big thing. For big kids as well as little ones.

Shallow, repetitive and easy, but this Ninja Gaiden clone is also mad as a hatter - and that helps a lot.

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

Never has so promising a game been ruined by such a perversely high difficultly level, which is a crying shame given the gorgeous 2D art.

The characterisation and presentation continue to impress, but they've yet to be emancipated from the repetitive and shallow gameplay.

The cinematic atmosphere is highly impressive throughout, but that's about the only thing that is in this weirdly inconsistent 2D survival horror.

A terminally flawed experience but there are enough good ideas to hint at an action spin-off that could have been every bit as good as the real XCOM games.

An excellent remaster of an unappreciated classic from the PC’s golden age, whose unique mix of genres seems more novel than ever.

Need For Speed is back to being a bland, middle-of-the-road racer - one so uninteresting it's hard to get too upset at th e shamefully short running time.

Carefully engineered sniper action that’s let down by frequent departures into close combat, exposing weak gunplay and a lack of polish.

One of the scariest video games ever made, or at least it is for the first few hours – before it succumbs to wearying repetition and frustratingly unfair set pieces.

A horrible waste of a strong narrative, whose politically-charged storytelling is squandered on a dull and horrendously repetitive GTA clone.

Being closer to a traditional video game does more harm than good, in a game that is all too proficient at making anarchic mayhem seem boring.

Half-broken and needlessly obscure, but if you have the patience this challenging survival game can be extremely satisfying – and it’ll be even better when it’s finished.

Game starved rally fans will welcome it all the same but this low tech racing sim has a bit too much room for improvement.

A shot for shot remake of the original - and therefore one of the most pointless makeovers of the year.

As blatant a clone as has ever been seen, but although it does nothing better than Dark Souls it does do some things almost as well – and is certainly more accessible.

A staggeringly detailed flight simulator with a wealth of new craft and aviation challenges, that now works like an actual video game – but the technical shortcomings are still noticeable and frequent.

Probably the best ever use of the Jurassic Park licence in a video game, marred by repetition and exploitable systems.

The jokes and plot twists are more bizarre than ever, but even they don’t always hit their mark – and without them this is an even less interesting gameplay experience than its parent game.

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 highly original indie action puzzler, with some wonderfully minimal visuals and a uniquely beguiling atmosphere.

Solid realisations of some superb, underexposed games from the heyday of the 2D shooter genre, that illustrate the immediate legacy of R-Type and the coming of the Metal Slug games.

A very peculiar online shooter that manages to be both quietly original and shamelessly derivative all at the same time. It does have dinosaurs in it though and that counts for a lot.

Another disappointing slice of downloadable content, with little of what made the main game great.

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

Borderlands 2D sounds like a good idea on paper, and this certainly looks the part, but it's an experience as vacuous and unrefined as its protagonists.

A remake that is loyal to a fault when it comes to honouring the original, with gameplay and design mechanics that were barely acceptable 21 years ago, let alone now.

Another wasted survival horror sequel, that ruins its chance to make proper use of the GamePad and turns fear of the unknown into fear of the same old thing.

The visual look of the game is novel and fun, but underneath it is a shallow and only intermittently enjoyable dungeon crawler.

A disappointing follow-up to Limbo and Inside that lacks the same complexity of plot and puzzles, and yet struggles surprisingly poorly with the move to 3D.

Its heroine may be the only thing that's not rough around the edges, but this is another fascinating mess by Suda51 and a great arcade style actioner.

Possibly the scariest 12-rated game ever made, although the attractive visuals are better designed than the poorly balanced difficulty.

Another retro platformer that doesn’t deserve such lavish new presentation, where everything has been improved apart from the gameplay.

A fun reminder of how first person shooters used to be, but the opportunity to marry the best of the old and the new has been studiously avoided.

Despite the return of Zipper this repeats all the same mistakes of the last game and seems even more old-fashioned and generic as a result.

The semi-real-time battles are fun but a lack of depth soon dulls your enthusiasm for this limp Fire Emblem wannabe, as the rest of the game is taken up by tedious, choice-free conversations and lengthy cut scenes.

The closest thing so far to a 3D Angry Birds game, but although the Kinect controls are fine it's the gameplay and visuals that need adjusting.

Simultaneously better and worse than you’d expect, with some fun co-op and detective elements but weak combat and muddled storytelling.

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.

A predictably flawed Switch port which works fine in terms of gameplay but loses a lot of the spectacle and stress-free enjoyment to frustrating frame rate issues.

One of the most original survival horrors of modern times, held back by a leaden pace and controls.

A textbook Gameloft release, with an impressive facsimile of Counter-Strike et al. at a fraction of the price - and with a fraction of the inspiration.

A stodgy middle episode for what is still a promisingly unique slice of downloadable content, but its true worth won’t be clear until the final episode.

Felix moves beautifully, and the game’s narrated by the eternally sonorous Patrick Stewart, but it suffers from a patchy difficulty level, supplying five-ish hours of mildly frustrating and often repetitive puzzling.

An occasionally interesting attempt to update the Double Dragon formula, which understands the appeal of the original but fails to offer any longevity or variety.

A small improvement on the last game but until the issues with the artificial intelligence and other bugs are fixed Sniper Elite will always be off target.

Turok may have been state-of-the-art in 1997 but today both its graphics and its gameplay feel virtually prehistoric.

Definitely one of the lesser Lego titles, and yet still a fun co-op game with plenty of charm – and more new ideas than many of is stablemates.

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 jumbled mess that’s trying to be at least three different types of game at once, drowning out the enjoyable combat with a tsunami of repetition and meaningless loot.

A stylish blend of rhythm action and dungeon crawler that misses a beat when it comes to satisfying gunplay.

An underwhelming finale to what has been a consistently disappointing season of Batman adventures, with weak storytelling and bland visuals.

The hack, slash, and loot world of Diablo is brilliantly re-engineered for a small screen but the fun, initial progression is offset by a grinding endgame and/or eye-wateringly costly microtransactions.

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

The next gen space combat simulator now plays almost as good as it looks, even if there are still many more improvements needed.

A disappointment given the quality of the first volume, and although the new Mercenaries-eque mode is fun the two story missions are not.