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.