There is, in other words, a lot more to this seemingly casual console RTS than meets the eye. Legions of Halo fans are likely to drive its initial popularity. They won’t have any trouble figuring out the basics and giving the Banished a good pounding. And a few months from now many of them may still be playing Blitz. But I won’t be surprised if Halo Wars 2 also develops a strong and faithful following of serious RTS fans who regularly wage epic multiplayer matches well into the wee hours.

The menus are still clunky and slow, players seem to run out of energy around the 60-minute mark of every game, and fancy animations are a poor substitute for basic functionality.

The second season and occasional special episodes haven’t managed to recapture the emotional peaks of the series’ devastatingly emotional first season, and I’ve yet to see anything to suggest that this season will be any more successful. But it’s still well written, expertly acted, and filled with tense moments dealing with both the zombies and the true monsters of Kirkman’s world, humans.

This is another app that will hound you to spend real money in order to buy things like better punching bags and balls to play with, but you can have a lot of fun with the basics and not spend a penny. So it’s worth a download, even if you never get serious about levelling up your blundering ninja.

Thanks to beautifully balanced combat, gorgeous and cleverly designed levels, and an almost ridiculous amount of depth and replayability – traits all noticeably absent in Alien Creeps TD – the high price tag is absolutely worth it.

The man behind interactive storytelling triumphs Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls has brought us what is perhaps his most fully formed and satisfying story yet, a work that examines the concept of machine intelligence with nearly as much insight and sympathy as Isaac Asimov's finest novels about robots and just as much style as Alex Garland's Ex Machina.

At its core, the game delivers. The gameplay — always the most important factor — is as good as it has ever been and the level of depth, customization and replayability makes this one a winner.

Co-op play isn’t as much fun as we might have hoped, and it’d be nice if the designers could find a way around Yoshi’s outmoded aiming mechanic, but the abundance of delightfully creative levels ought to sate casual Wii U gamers and the considerable challenge of tracking down every last collectible on each stage should appeal to Nintendo’s hardcore platformer fans.

This is exactly the sort of game we, as a society, need right now: authentic, inclusive, edifying, engaging, and, in the end, hopeful. Tell Me Why is one of the best and most memorable games of the year, and it helps lay a foundation for the growth of minority presence in games with wider audiences.

It’s not as moving as the first season finale, and it doesn’t tie things together in a satisfying narrative knot the way the preceding season did. But it’s still compelling, thanks largely to its unflinching and sometimes disturbing depiction of no-win situations. Telltale Games refuses to let Clem or the player off easy.

It’s not attractive or even very welcoming, but get past this deceptively off-putting veneer and you might just find a game of turn-based tactics worth getting lost in for a few days or a few weeks.

Ultimately, the real question of For Honor is if it will maintain a good community. The skill at the combat isn’t twitch based, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy and I could see people start to get scared away as the player base becomes more experienced and hardcore.

If you happen to have fond memories of mid-aught nights spent exploring green fields and fighting whimsical fantasy creatures – and you don’t mind learning to cope with a crappy camera and frustrating navigation – then by all means, spend away. There’s still a good, lengthy, old-school RPG buried under all the problems introduced by this iOS edition.

What does matter is that in Unravel Coldwood has succeeded in creating a beautiful, poignant, and compelling game interested in going beyond mere entertainment. It wants to make us think about the what and why of everything that happens.

The second season and occasional special episodes haven’t managed to recapture the emotional peaks of the series’ devastatingly emotional first season, and I’ve yet to see anything to suggest that this season will be any more successful. But it’s still well written, expertly acted, and filled with tense moments dealing with both the zombies and the true monsters of Kirkman’s world, humans.

It might lack the spit and polish seen in some other shooters, but Battlefield V delivers a visceral thrill unique to the series. Its adrenaline-filled, large-scale battles give rise to memorable moments simply not seen in other games, and these moments are augmented by the faithful Second World War setting. Those looking for an alternative to the twitch-driven combat of other popular shooters will find it here.

A little game like Mario and Donkey: Minis on the Move would make a perfect test title for the broader mobile market. I’d be shocked if it didn’t rocket to the top of app sales charts.

An inventive game with plenty of potential and some truly original concepts that somehow failed materialize into something that can be fairly described as entertaining.

As a guy whose passion for golf games lies mostly in powering through single-player tours and developing a character’s skills and playing style, Mario Golf: World Tour left me a little unsatisfied.

Impressive as some aspects of the level design and interface might be, Guerrilla hasn’t quite delivered the whole package. This isn’t going to be a massive system seller with wide, mainstream appeal. Still, one can’t discount that Killzone: Mercenary may well be the most playable handheld first-person shooter yet made. That’s no small accomplishment.

While I’ve had plenty of fun with Fallout 4 and, to a slightly lesser extent, its DLC, I’m feeling pretty ready at this point to wait a few years for the fifth numbered entry in the series – a game that, hopefully, will receive a little more of a buffing than its predecessor.

With Call of Duty: Ghosts, Infinity Ward has done some of its best work yet, delivering thrill-a-minute escapades in the campaign, deep and surprisingly nuanced competitive multiplayer, and highly varied solo and co-operative play in Squads and Extinction modes.

Disney Infinity 3.0 could end up being a lot of fun for Star Wars fans willing and able to shell out for all the content and figures that will eventually be released over the next several months, but budget-conscious players – especially those who aren’t all that interested in diving into the Toy Box – would be wise to wait until the starter pack can be grabbed at a discount.

The great allure of The Walking Dead – beyond the game’s brilliant moral questions and compelling exploration of human nature – is that we simply don’t know how things will turn out.

This two-hour episode introduces players to a quintet of new characters, individual survivors who through random chance spend at least a little time in or around a lonely countryside gas station and diner during the first 400 days of the outbreak.

Despite its imaginative exterior, the game adheres to a surprisingly rigid design. After a while I felt as though I was just going through the motions, dispatching hundreds of zombies simply to get to the next waypoint on my map...But it takes a good while for the disillusionment to set in.

The focus on intense action comes at the expense of legitimate alarm, anxiety, and dread. That’s just not a trade-off I’m overly interested in.

Still, I was left with the feeling this episode simply fills the space between the first and third, moving our heroes from one important location to another without much of consequence happening along the way.