The Duke himself is an outdated embarrassment, but his best game was always ahead of its time – and still has much to teach modern shooters.

No fun at all on your own, but together on the same couch this is one of the most entertaining co-op puzzles for many months.

The weapon-crafting is great but given the manipulative microtransactions this free-to-play shooter is not worth your time, let alone your money.

One of the best looking fighting games ever and the most successful attempt yet to make an interactive anime, even if it is a little lacking in content and new ideas.

A welcome return for the pioneering space adventure, but despite a solid start it will need a steady supply of new content and tweaks to reach elite status.

There’s a fair number of new features and missions here but none justify the price, and the experience will pass from your memory almost as soon as it’s over.

Beautiful to look at but the story and gameplay prove far less fascinating than the real world model-making skills of the developer.

The concept may sound absurd but the experience of playing Papers, Please shines a light not on the game’s hapless victims but on the player’s own sense of decency.

The sheer age of the games are beginning to count against them but Ace Attorney still remains exhibit A in how to make story-based games fun and engaging.

An odd mix of Test Drive Unlimited, Assassin’s Creed, and Destiny. And while the combination is tastier than it sounds it also has an awful lot of lumps in it.

Not as compelling as its predecessor, but as a four-player alternative to the Lego games this an enjoyable enough attempt at a Tomb Raider lite.

A hugely disappointing follow-up for To The Moon, whose trite and overly sentimental story feels long at just 60 minutes.

A competent clone of Zelda and a pretty poor adaptation of Adventure Time, this amiable but frustrating tie-in doesn’t really satisfy on either level.

An uninspiring start to the season, that even fans of the show will find stilted and tedious. Although they can still foster high hopes for later episodes.

Another unspeakably bad platformer that beyond its more general faults seems to purposefully misunderstand the appeal of the entire Sonic franchise.

A fantastic crossover that despite a few necessary simplifications manages to do some things better than either of its parent games, especially in terms of accessibility.

Utterly charming on (literally) every level, it may not offer much in terms of fast action but this is just as imaginative and engrossing as any Super Mario game.

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.

A laudable attempt to make a video game that is both entertaining and educational, but despite the interest it builds up for its subject matter the weak gameplay is hard to ignore.

A very promising start to what is mechanically just another Telltale adventure, but where the comedy and characterisation feels very different to their more recent games.

Possibly the worst Sonic the Hedgehog game ever made, which considering some of his previous lows is one of the harshest insults in gaming.

The search for the perfect offline mode continues, but even without it this is the best Smash Bros. so far and one of the best fighting games of all-time.

Offensively terrible in every way, and yet it seems not through some calculating cynicism on the part of the game makers – but just good old fashioned incompetence.

Being a Persona spin-off is almost incidental to what remains one of the best new one-on-one fighters of the outgoing generation.

A relatively promising next gen debut, but it’s still missing lots of older features. And even with a few new ones it’s hard to think of this as anything but a work in progress.

LittleBigPlanet is once again its own worst enemy, as it fails to make the best use of its own fun new characters. Although the creation tools are the most accessible they’ve ever been.

A perfectly good 3D remake of Ruby and Sapphire, the only problem being that Ruby and Sapphire were never that great – and this is still not as good as the recent X and Y.

A perfectly good 3D remake of Ruby and Sapphire, the only problem being that Ruby and Sapphire were never that great – and this is still not as good as the recent X and Y.