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.