Even with lacklustre combat, Paper Mario Color Splash’s gorgeous art style, lush music, and great writing make it a pretty easy recommendation, at least for fans of family-friendly single-player adventures.

It’s also easily the prettiest Skylanders game yet – an early stage in a twilight world with glowing lights and waterfalls has an almost Trine-like beauty – but as with past entries the graphical upgrades are evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Much as I hate to admit it, strong storytelling – which is so rare in big games – is often only half the battle. It’s a shame to see it tarnished by mediocre action.

When it comes down to it, though, I play Gears games for their spectacular campaigns, and Gears of War 4’s single-player mode just doesn’t live up to the standard set by its predecessors. It’s too conservative to wow us the way we expect, and it lacks many of the larger-than-life personalities that made the original trilogy so fun and memorable.

That rare remastered anthology that’s worth your attention.

Throw in positive tweaks made to Career Mode (the ever-cumbersome transfer network runs itself a bit better than before; there are more objectives that dictate your strategy both in and out of competition), and this is a FIFA game that seems to realize there is competition out there and it has to do a lot more than update the rosters to succeed.

Forza Horizon 2 has been my go-to racer for the last couple years. And now its position in my game library been handily usurped by its stellar successor.

Nebulous will help you kill a lazy Sunday afternoon, but not much more.

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.

It feels a bit like a Metroid Prime game – no surprise, since Armature employs some of the same people – but with better controls and a (slightly) more intelligible story. It’s not exactly bursting with new ideas, but it does a good job breathing fresh life into old ones...At least when it’s not making you want to pull your hair out with its technical issues.

Deus Ex GO is still loads of fun. I had a hard time keeping myself from just sitting down and burning through the whole story in a single afternoon.

But the real problem is that – as with most free-to-play games – the developers don’t really want you to stop playing. If you did, you’d stop making microtransactions. So there’s not really an end. And progression – as already noted – is painfully slow.

Nuka-World doesn’t constitute the best time I’ve had playing Fallout. The action and mild role-playing don’t grow the core experience in any meaningful ways. But it did remind me why this epic post-apocalyptic adventure has kept my attention for nearly two decades, and it has everything to do with the series’ setting, culture, and mythology, all of which echo our own in ways familiar and sometimes uncomfortable.

All is not perfect — there are still some visual glitches and long load times to contend with — but for a title routinely derided for not improving enough between titles, Madden has really raised its game this time around.

Overall, Deus Ex is perhaps less ambitious in its storytelling than its hot button ads might suggest, but is still an exemplary example of open-ended problem solving gameplay.

Befriending (and perhaps even falling in love) with artificial humans is not an entirely novel premise for a story, but Benjamin Rivers approaches the idea thoughtfully and with tact, avoiding obvious pitfalls. What he has to say on the subject is worth a few dollars and few hours of any sci-fi aficionado’s time.

It’s not perfect, but No Man’s Sky is as much – and probably a lot more – than we had any right expect from such an ambitious game made by such a tiny team.

Chambara is a fantastic idea in need of elaboration.

In the end, though, I had a great time with Prison Architect, and spent more than one night playing into the wee hours in an effort to build and maintain the perfect prison. What I soon learned, of course, is that there’s no such thing. And adding profit to the equation only makes it worse.

With great game mechanics, unique artwork and tough to master gameplay, Severed is well worthy of your time.

At this point even a game like FRU is highly unlikely to make anyone rush out and by a Kinect camera. But any existing owners still interested in the possibilities of Microsoft’s sensor bar would do very well to give this refreshingly inventive little indie a shot.

Pac-Man 256 checks off all the key features of the original – short sessions, super accessible play, addictive mechanics – while adding just the right amount of modern conventions, including long-term goals, pretty presentation, and co-operative play.

From its unrelentingly dark story to its challenging difficulty to its imperfect controls, in no way is The Banner Saga 2 the sort of game one sits down to play casually. It is an intense and demanding experience right from the start, and it never lets up.

If killing the undead in a Russian oven heated by fire’s breath sounds appealing, you might give this DLC some consideration. Otherwise, feel free to take a pass.

Crush Your Enemies engaged me enough to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon. The missions are so short that it was easy to just keep clicking one more without paying any attention to the clock on my desk.

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.

There’s a great game in Street Fighter V, but only if you’re willing to learn the hard way. Capcom will need more than the few thousand competitors following the Capcom Pro Tour to make this game, and the series as a whole, sustainable for the future.

It’s unlikely Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE will attract much more than a niche audience outside its native Japan. Not only is it exclusive to Wii U – sadly, a poor selling system that now feels like it has one foot out the door – but it also seems as though little was done to prep it for Western audiences beyond translating dialogue.