The flawed original is already showing its age, but this poor quality Switch port is Payday 2 at its very worst.

Mama's sideline in gardening proves to be just as shallow and repetitive as her cookery courses.

The shape of its isometric puzzles may be reminiscent of Monument Valley, but it lacks that game’s inventiveness and refinement, its intrinsic clumsiness imposing upon the difficulty.

A spirited attempt to adapt Lovecraft’s mythos, but while it overcomes the low budget when it comes to atmosphere the overly simplistic gameplay drags it down.

There are secret passages to be found in the bland, procedurally-generated levels, but all the enemies do is vaguely wander towards you, adding to a pervasive sense of playing a prototype rather than a fully-fledged game. For most players one run will be more than enough.

Innerspace meets Smash T.V., except retaining only the worst elements of both in this slow-paced and tedious dual-stick shooter.

Gears Of War meets Diablo turns out not to be a classic pairing after all, or at least not when it comes to this low rent hotchpotch of other people's ideas.

A silly premise with some very clever ideas, but unfortunately none of them are implemented well enough to help this one-on-one fighter make history.

Definitely not the worst multiformat port a Nintendo console has had to endure, but the low frame rate and lack of new features makes it almost entirely pointless.

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.

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

One of the Wii's best-looking games, but this role-playing hybrid is all atmosphere and no substance.

Zelda may have inspired one of the best Dynasty Warriors games to date but the end result is still well below average by any other standard.

Dynasty Warriors finally gets the overhaul it’s long been waiting for… and while it addresses a few old problems it creates just as many new ones.

To add to its problems the game is also surprisingly ugly, often looking much more like an original Xbox game.

Maybe the next gen versions will be better, but on the 360 and PS3 this is a deeply cynical release that’s inferior to last year’s entry in almost every way.

One of Platinum’s worst games so far, with dull and repetitive action that doesn’t do the heroes in a half-shell any justice at all.

As an homage to Mega Man this is almost a complete failure, especially given the only successful elements are those that have the least to do with the original games.

The world needs a top notch open world samurai adventure, but sadly it's not to be found here in this strange mix of the perverse, the peculiar, and the downright boring.

The real question here is why Rebellion has bothered to remaster the game at all. If it’s a first step towards releasing more 2000 AD adaptations then we’re all for it, but viewed on its own merits this is the same mediocre shooter it was more than a decade ago. For fans of the character it is at least a faithful adaptation, but viewed as anything else but fan service its thrill-power is far from zarjaz.

A game of exploration and combat that’s hamstrung by PlayStation VR’s unreliable motion-tracking and a movement system seemingly designed by someone who hates you.

It’s depressing that the one modern game that shows the most effort is also the least satisfying to play, but if Sonic is ever to work in three-dimensions Lost World gives no clue as to how it might work.

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.

Staggeringly beautiful at times, with some wonderfully imaginative art design, but this sci-fi oddity is a lot more entertaining to watch than it is to play.

A worse game than the already flawed original, whose poorly crafted action is as ineffective as its clichéd attempts at horror.

As bland and unmemorable as 3D platforming gets, and clearly not a Pac-Man game at all – just a cynical piece of tie-in merchandise.

A litany of missed opportunities results in one of the most aggravating action role-players of recent years, with irritating characters, dull combat, and a frustrating movement system.

A perfunctory kart racing spin-off that has a few unique charms but falls well short of its far superior competition.

Unravel the mysterious history of a dead planet in a brief, overly simplistic first person walking simulator.

You don't need to be a Front Mission fan to get upset about the wasted potential in this lifeless, one-dimensional shooter.

Beneath the technical wonder this is just a dull, aimless Gears Of War clone – where the attempts at storytelling are just as boring and lifeless as the action.

More depressing is its constant desire to shake you down for cash, with microtransactional extras popping up for practically everything you need to progress. It’s an exhausting begging simulator, with a wafer-thin veneer of Harry Potter that in no way recaptures the initial allure of Pokémon GO.

Yet another slice of downloadable content that's well below the quality of its parent game.

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

A brave mix of RPG, action game and spy thriller, brought down by too many design and technical faults.

The three worst Tomb Raider games, remastered for a modern audience but unable to overcome their archaic systems, dull action, and uninspired design.

Micro Machines meets Geometry Wars, but so phenomenally less interesting than that sounds it's almost painful.

There's a decent a story to be salvaged here, and one that could happily be adapted for the show, but as a video game this fails miserably.

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.

Telltale Games continue to be a formidable supervillain, and manage to turn Batman into the one thing he should never be: boring.

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.

Manga and anime fans will no doubt get some pleasure out of the game’s endless array of cameos, but viewed on its merits as a fighting game this is a clear defeat.

A hugely disappointing sequel, where the high difficulty, restrictive controls, and randomly-generated levels all contribute to a thoroughly miserable platforming experience.

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.

A joyless and confused mix of BioShock, Fallout, and Rust that wastes its intriguing setting on repetitive action and tedious survival mechanics.

A nice idea in theory but the super shallow gameplay and micro-budget presentation make this portable strategy game only marginally better than its home console namesake.

Fire Emblem has the potential to make a great partner, but this badly made and painfully simplistic crossover is as disappointingly dumb as all the other Dynasty Warriors games.

The visuals are amazing but the game's moral quandaries are impossible to care about without any context, let alone any decent gameplay or controls.

A step in the right direction, but still nowhere close to being the ideal Transformers game.

The most baffling Nintendo release of recent years, with a quasi-remake of one of the GameCube’s worst games, that seems specifically designed to irritate and confuse would-be players.

Getting killed because of unwieldy controls is nobody’s idea of a good time, and Apex Construct rubs salt into those wounds by removing un-banked experience points every time you die. Although not all bad, its sense of adventure and investigation is marred by eternally clumsy motion and combat.

The action is a bit basic, but it’s the way it’s framed that destroys the atmosphere. The messy, cluttered interface proving to be a constant assault on the senses. It’s not helped by the banality of the characters and stories, with the patchy translation making that problem even worse – the turgid dialogue adding to a sense of not trying very hard. Although not a dead loss it would be hard to recommend this even to die-hard role-playing fans.

The problem, beyond its intense ordinariness, is that many questions are America-centric, so unless you spell ‘mesmerise’ with a Z, know who the 25th president was, and can name various baseball and basketball players, frustration awaits.

The apes look pleasantly simian, and it’s nice observing conversations from behind the small visible portion of your hairy forearms, but these are small beacons of light in an otherwise unremittingly bleak landscape.

Not your typical real-time strategy game, but despite a few interesting ideas this shallow husk of a game feels almost barbarically simple.

A single-player and couch co-op sequel to one of the world’s oldest racing franchises, whose rudimentary looks and driving model can’t compete with 21st century alternatives.

Whether you're a fan or not this is easily the weakest of the series, with an unwanted revisit of overfamilar locations and gameplay faults.

Although its reputation is as one of the better Star Wars games from the prequel era, this shallow, unengaging squad-based shooter has little to offer modern gamers.

Hell itself comes to video games, in the form of disturbingly explicit imagery and unbearably dull gameplay.

A tedious trawl through the worst aspects of roguelikes, turn-based strategy, and bad interface design. Only somehow less fun than that sounds.

After several patches and months of waiting this may, possibly, become a halfway decent wresting game, but at launch this is the gaming equivalent of Doink the Clown.

By-the-book cartoon tie-in, which ticks every box on the list of obvious mistakes. Some of them twice.

A loving homage to PS one era JRPGs, but its small innovations are suffocated beneath a dead weight of clichés and conventions that in most cases were better off left to the past.

Bad film tie-ins are nothing new, but this seems more of a waste than usual given the subject matter.

If this half broken, frustrating platformer counts as one of WiiWare's biggest releases then the service is in an even worse state than we feared.

It's no picnic being a psychopathic teddy bear in this shallow and repetitive 12-rated murder sim.

You'll pray for an early release from this cheap and nasty, and strangely belated, TV tie-in.

Another failed Doctor Who tie-in, but one that's especially disappointing because of how much it gets right in terms of the dialogue and visuals.

It seems very unfair to suddenly thrust such a dated game back into the limelight, but it ready would’ve been better if Putty Squad had stayed in retirement.

More interesting than most official Dynasty Warriors spin-offs, but still deeply repetitive and suffering from both a lack of originality and budget.

One of the most ineffective reboots of recent history, with a game that seems purposefully designed to undermine the unique qualities of the Scribblenauts series.

2001 is hardly the most obvious movie to use as inspiration for a video game and perhaps predictably the end result suffers from slow-pacing and a lack of meaningful interaction.

It looks like Cannon Fodder, and to a degree it plays like Cannon Fodder, but this bizarre sequel lacks the heart, soul, and mind of the 16-bit classic.

A bad idea, poorly realised. Not only does this sully the already tarnished name of Silent Hill but it's a tediously poor dungeon crawler in its own right.

Somewhere between a non-interactive VR experience and a half-baked licensed game, the latest Stranger Things VR experience has neither a coherent storyline nor proper action.

It looks like Ice Age 4, it sounds like Ice Age 4, and it plays like the frozen carcass of a 5,000 year old mammoth.

Not so much a poor man’s Gears Of War as a tramp’s, which is perhaps why one of the few distinguishing features is playing it with a loyal canine by your side.

A bizarre attempt to celebrate the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 in the most boringest way possible, with a limp collection of unentertaining minigames made even duller by suffocatingly clinical presentation.

Not the revival Carmageddon veterans will have been hoping for, and far too glitchy and unrefined to draw in more casual fans of vehicular violence.

Gorgeous graphics but gormless gameplay leaves you wishing you were playing any of the dozens of other games this indie dud attempts to parody.

The Lord Of The Rings is yet again denied a decent tie-in, with this desperately uninteresting and half broken action role-player.

The first new Star Trek game in years doesn't boldy go anywhere in this cheap and tacky tie-in.

There's a decent range of game modes, but none are as engaging as the other ten year old snowboard games it's trying to copy.

Ghost Recon re-imagined as the most boring Time Crisis clone imaginable, with a mix of genre and franchise that should never have happened.

There's a real lack of magic in what is essentially Harry Potter And The Half-Hearted Mini-Game Collection.

The move to the Wii hasn't brought with it any significant changes, just more wasted potential.

You'll be laughing at, not with, this parody - which perpetuates every cliche it sets out to mock.

Offensively awful as both a tribute to Bond and as a first person shooter, with every ounce of personality and imagination stripped from an already malformed skeleton.

Surviving zombies is fairly easy but the real enemy here is tedium and a shopping list of design mistakes that makes this one of the worst zombie games of the year.

A depressingly awful sequel whose main faults are probably due to a lack of budget and development time, but that doesn’t excuse it being considerably less entertaining than the 31-year-old original.

A lovely looking origami-themed 3D platformer that’s let down by dull combat and pedestrian puzzle design, and then positively ruined by its use of fixed camera angles.

A tragic failure that attempts to revive the wonder of NiGHTS and Sonic The Hedgehog, but falls victim to publisher melding and terrible controls.

There are countdown timers, bosses are oft-repeated re-skins with identical action, and Crash’s runs soon become repetitious, with progress gated behind either a tedious grind or microtransactions. Despite its colourful palette On the Run! is almost aggressively bland.

Its sights are set on being a brave new kind of shooter, but this misses every target but its own feet.

The intentions are good, but cute graphics and some clever ideas can’t stop this ‘feel-good FPS’ from being anything but a downer.

Occasional flashes of mediocrity are as good as this lacklustre shooter gets, in a tedious jamboree of technical ineptitude and bland co-op action.

Sickeningly offensive use of not just microtransactions but every underhand trick in the marketing handbook, which is a shame as the underlying game isn’t bad.

Combat and storytelling are boring beyond belief, but what's worst about Inversion is that you can sense the far more interesting game it could've been just beneath the surface.