A valiant effort but ultimately unrewarding, especially given the competition.

Aside from the graphics that give a quality-of-life boon on modern rigs, there's little else about this remaster that excites or even excels.

This version of Warcraft III has welcome graphical updates to a great game, but it's not reforged enough to justify its price.

Jagged Alliance: Rage! Is the closest thing we have to the greatness of Jagged Alliance 2. It's a very trimmed game, delivering the experience rather than a carbon copy of the series. You still have to care for your mercs' health and gear, as well as carrying capacity, but at a much less grognardy level. I dunno if 1.13 mod fanatics will be pleased, but for the others, it's a good introduction to what Jagged Alliance used to represent.

Praetorians HD Remaster brings the game into the 2020s; but is ill-equipped to compete with the almost two decades of progress since.

Sadly, not nearly mechanically sound enough. This is no way to run a railroad.

Necromunda: Underhive Wars works and that's just about all that it does. The frustrating lack of color and speed does not do it any favors.

And if you’re a fan of APM based RTS and other acronyms, then Bannermen might provide some enjoyment. Bizarrely, if it was early access, I would recommend it as the developers have been releasing patches every other day. But for £25, I don’t see enough here to recommend in its current state.

In the end, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a game with good production values, let down by a tactical layer that doesn’t seem to have been fully thought-through. There are impressively few flaws here, but the ones it does have are so key to the nature of the game that they end up dragging down the whole experience. Like Pablo Escobar’s intrinsic arrogance which led to his downfall, so does Narcos’ rather basic assumptions ruin what could have been a very exciting tie-in game.

A game that invigorates with the pure, fierce joy of play that only very best board games can deliver.

For those wanting a light-hearted experience filled with great content and progression, this cheap little title will offer you exactly that.

If you care about the British Isles, this Immersion Pack gives them a lot more flavour than the free changes alone can offer. Like most DLCs of this tier, this is far from essential.

Warring States is a capable and surprisingly enjoyable tactical game. While the units are varied, and the combat has some depth to it, it is still feels like a very simple game -- while playing on the PC, I kept wondering what it would be like on the mobile, and if it wouldn’t be more at home in that platform. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a casual and straightforward game about Ancient China that will challenge you, look no further.

Great maps, great units, great strategies, not so great online.

The Broken Alliance expansion is an important one. It is to Deadlock as Brood War was to Starcraft; interesting unit additions and thoughtful writing elevate a dry but highly competent base game. Essential for Deadlock fans, and compelling for the curious. So say we all.

Inferno shouldn’t be mistaken for a simple expansion pack, it adds core gameplay loops that improve upon Endless Legend enough to where I consider it a required purchase.

All in all, the Tactical Legacy Pack is a surprisingly good addition to the base game, providing smaller portions of XCOM that manage to be enticing and engaging even without the strategy layer. It is not a replacement to the main campaign in anyway whatsoever, but the deeply tactical battles and powerful squads should provide plenty of fun for any players looking for just a little bit more XCOM.

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is a pretty special game. Not only is it a great experience for fans of the show, but for tactics fiends looking to get their starship combat on, Black Lab Games have been honing and expanding the title since launch in August of last year. They've just released a new expansion, and it’s a belter.

Terraforming Mars is a great strategy challenge with huge replay value. But, while pretty and convenient, this adaptation currently has too many rough edges to recommend.

In a situation where you have all of it, HF is going to truly shine, pulling together parts from four or five different DLC and using them together. If you don't have at least one of Sword of Islam or Rajas of India (and preferably both), you are going to run into a significant amount of frustration, especially in randomized worlds.

Space Race as an expansion is worth checking out at some point, but I wouldn’t be in any hurry. It ultimately does little to solve many of the deep-rooted problems the game still has at the mid-to-late stages. It does make the early-game a little easier, or at the very least more varied (depends on your settings), and there’s definitely some interesting stuff there. Surviving Mars still has a fair ways to go though, and it’s going to take more than small injections of personality to carry it over that hump.

If you enjoy playing in the Iberian Peninsula and you can overlook a few historical irregularities, then it would be very hard to pass up on Golden Century. If you're obsessed by pirates and can't fight off the desire to pretend to be Jack Sparrow, then this is going to be your best bet within EU4. If you're literally anyone else: While it's only $10 USD, it's not really vital to your experience and doesn't actually bring that much to the table. You might just want to wait until the next actual expansion and pick this one up on sale.

Warhammer 40K Gladius’ Tyranids DLC is the best piece of game content concerning my least favorite race I’ve seen in a while. They play well and feel authentic, which I imagine was no easy feat, and they slot into the overall narrative and structure of the game more seamlessly than I was expecting. They could have been a bit more creative, perhaps, with the use of instinctual behaviors, but it’s a great effort, none the less.

Overall, Retribution is a capable expansion for fans of the franchise, bringing in new gameplay options and two specialist races to round off an already well-developed roster. The expansion will not change the mind of anyone who already likes or dislikes the series, but it’s worth a shot if you like the game. GalCiv III might not have taken off the way Stardock intended, but the company’s decision to stick with it turned the game into a tailored experience virtually unmatched by any other sci-fi 4X on the market.

After Anabasis cleverly effected the Second Cylon War via the original's setting, Sin & Sacrifice might seem somewhat conservative. However, Black Lab Games continue their tradition of tight, tactical mission design, and as a farewell to this chapter of the First Cylon War, it's a solid one.

This is C & C with a deep tech tree, modern graphics, and custom armies. It fails only because it was too ambitious.

Somehow, Creative Assembly managed to completely understand and encapsulate what each race is, and add interesting and fitting game mechanics that reward you for playing as they should. The Prophet and The Warlock is a surprising addition to anyone interested in the Skaven or Lizardmen, and it should definitely be given a shot.

An excellent Cold War strategy game that cuts to the heart of the political and ideological struggle while still offering a fun strategic experience.