Not just an Olympics tie-in but a proper sports game, with the majority of events finding a good balance between realism and enjoyment.

A combat-heavy action RPG with fun fights and spectacular landscapes, that’s brought down by glitches, fiddly navigation, and an over-reliance on fetch quests.

A very run of the mill Metroidvania that does little of interest with the God Of War setting and stumbles in terms of the dull combat and unengaging plot.

The sequel to Puzzle Quest is cheap and far from cheerful, but it's still a mostly effective mix of genres.

A real misstep for Level-5, with tedious battles and an equally uninteresting plot and characters.

It’s very pretty but this patchwork of other game’s ideas never has enough of its own to keep you interested during the repetitive and overfamiliar open world action.

A welcome sequel to the original Tales From The Borderlands, that negotiates the franchise’s loud mouth humour to deliver a surprisingly nuanced and intelligent slice of interactive storytelling.

A remake of a rehash of a disappointing sequel… that only hints at what Earth Defense Force could be if the series would only show some forward momentum.

It has admirable intentions, but this misguided role-player proves a quiet life is rarely an entertaining one when it comes to video games.

An unbearably bland arena-based shooter that only manages to make the Quake-style action seem more old-fashioned and irrelevant than ever.

It makes the stealth more interesting and there’s a successful tonal shift from the main game, but free or not this expansion fails to improve on any of Unity’s major problems.

A promising rhythm action game is reduced to a curiosity for dubstep fans only - and all thanks to an unnecessarily high difficultly level.

The glory days of Mario Golf and Tennis seem very far away, in this lazy and patronisingly simplistic sports compendium.

Regardless of what it may or may not do to your brain age, this is a disappointingly low effort remaster with serious technical issues and a lack of interesting content.

One Piece fans will enjoy the novelty but only Dynasty Warriors groupies will be able to bear the typically mindless gameplay.

A tiresome and unforgiving survival game that purposefully makes things as difficult and repetitive as possible, while offering very little in the way of entertainment.

The imaginative puzzles occasionally come close to replicating the genius of Portal but the bad jokes and repetitive gameplay make this a poor substitute for the real thing.

It’s a genuinely revolting vision of the future, of a games industry that treats its players as enemies to be bullied and manipulated – not customers to be entertained and attended to. If SimCity really was a city we’d realise we weren’t welcome and move out immediately.

A bigger, more ambitious stealth sequel which revamps the original’s mechanics and personality but most of the changes are to the game’s detriment.

A complex, vampire-centric role-playing game where conversations replace violence, but whose boring puzzles and undercooked script suggest its budget didn’t stretch nearly as far as its ambitions.

The official World Rally Championship game is looking tired on just its second outing, with very few improvements to the first game and far too many flaws.

Fast-paced and accessible are not words commonly used to describe turn-based strategy games, but Sid Meier’s latest is a fun, breezy strategic time killer.

A near future third person sci-fi adventure whose believable characters, expressive animation, and glorious icy backdrops are undermined by a linear story with too little variety in its interactions.

Simplistic to a fault but still one of the most addictive, and fairly original, puzzlers of the year.

Vin Diesel proves not to have the magic touch after all, with this technically inept Driver wannabe.

Tackling such a difficult subject matter is laudable, but as a video game documentary this only really succeeds in terms of its good intentions.

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

The most peculiar HD remaster so far, that offers no obvious reason for its existence or why the original was though worthy of resurrection.