Becomes a mirthless, snails-pace co-op brawler set in boring marsh environments. [Christmas 2013, p.107]

It's so similar to Spongebob, Nickelodeon must have a template for offensively awful games. [Christmas 2013, p.107]

Occasionally difficult, never fun. [Christmas 2013, p.107]

It isn't a complete mess, but it's hard to imagine just who it was created for. [Christmas 2013, p.107]

Good stuff, then, but hard to get too excited about. [Christmas 2013, p.106]

There's a touch of imprecision that can make platforming a little on the sluggish side. [Christmas 2013, p.105]

With an excellent soundtrack, and beautiful [if simple] art direction, The Bridge is a sensory treat. [Christmas 2013, p.103]

Blood Knights holds as much annoyance as satisfaction. [Christmas 2013, p.103]

Less a party game than clever learning software, Rocksmith 2014 is a highly personalised, customisable and responsive guitar tutoring tool that improves upon the original in almost every regard.

Peggle 2 is exactly, but not enough of, what we wanted. When you make something this addictive, you gotta supply, man.

Despite this being one of the best 3D fighters of a generation, it's hard to recommend SoulCalibur II HD Online due to a silly price tag and some seriously poor online multiplayer implementation. The SoulCalibur name deserves more than this.

A shambolic demonstration of motion control you shouldn't allow within a hundred miles of your Xbox One.

Few will be utterly blown away by it, given the abiding similarities to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted, but anybody who can't get through the day without buckling a few fenders should consider this an essential purchase.

I'd go as far as to say that Killer Instinct is my favourite launch title for Xbox One. With a little more content, it could seriously have been a killer app for the system. It might be only half a game so far, but what an excellent half that is.

Ryse looks fantastic - a genuinely promising example of what the Xbox One can do. But if you're not interested in co-op arenas, Ryse's five-or-six hour campaign might not offer you great value for money. If you are, you might find your weak, loinclothed gladiator is getting bullied into the gold shop.

Forza 5 is often simulation racing at its best, but Turn 10 hasn't quite rendered all its previous work obsolete. Given the reduced track and car count, and the present wobbliness of Drivatars, the game sometimes feels like it hasn't quite burst out of its shell. As a launch game, though, it's a wonderful achievement.

Other open world games dabble with the undead, but none of them do it on such a scale. Dead Rising 3's technical shortcomings mean that it isn't a game that easily justifies the purchase of an Xbox One, but it absolutely won't cause you to regret it.

The game's still an utterly charming and absorbing linear platformer, with plenty of secrets knotted into its path.

Crimson Dragon entertains most when it's the power fantasy it wants to be - when you're mopping up streams of curious beasts from an early level, with credits and items flying into your backpack as you 100% a level. When you're beset, besieged, and bullied by streams of incoming missiles, you feel cheated rather than challenged, and the beckoning gem shop makes the process feel dirty.

For all its shallowness, I couldn't help but fall for Zoo Tycoon. While its charms may indeed be too quickly exhausted, they're potent while they last, and there's an overpowering wholesomeness that's difficult to resist. There are a lot of great ideas, wonderful moments and potential memories to be made here that make it more than worth a look, but much like my experiences with real-life animal parks, Zoo Tycoon becomes less likely to delight upon each subsequent visit.

Lococycle is as hard to put down as it is hard to love. Even if the comedy scratches your itch, there will be times when the shortage of depth and aversion to polish become impossible to forgive.

Played on a gamepad, Powerstar might not have the grandma-pleasing intuitive appeal of a Kinect-powered title, but it's still a sweet and inclusive family game.

Adults and older kids will probably vibe with the GTA-like open world a bit more, though the basic physics and challenges make it very 'GTA-lite', too. What's urgently needed, though, is a patch for the flight controls that make it a game best enjoyed from the ground, ridiculous as that is for a superhero game.

The idea of Deadfall, as a genuine raid on a legitimate tomb harks back to a fondly remembered era of Lara Croft. Losing Croft's platforming for a heavier puzzle element could have been great. Unfortunately, Deadfall Adventures fails to satisfy on either of the two goals it sets itself. The gunplay is juddering and weak, and the puzzles lack depth and satisfaction. Even a cabal of supernatural Nazis can't save this one.

In terms of what you actually do, though, Burial at Sea is fairly tepid stuff - a fetch quest followed by shoot-outs that introduce Infinite's Tears and Skylines to Bioshock 1's Splicers and turrets, a puzzle that involves finding a new Plasmid, a puzzle that involves doing X of Y, and a boss encounter that's all about attrition.

Returning base commanders might want to ponder whether new classes, maps and foes are worth a second investment, but those who slept through the original extra-terrestrial invasion should pick Enemy Within up immediately.

While it's a noble attempt to change pace and style, Last Light was balanced well - this breaks that balance. [Dec 2013, p.93]

Even at a handful of minutes, the levels seem over-long. [Dec 2013, p.91]