CD Projekt Red's long-awaited follow-up to The Witcher 3 is brilliant, fascinating and engrossing but bears the scars of a tough development. [Review in Progress]

One of the things that has surprised me during my first hours in The Division 2’s ravaged Washington DC, is just how thoroughly competent it all is...If that immediately sounds like damning Ubisoft’s militaristic looter-shooter with faint praise, that isn’t the intention. Launching an persistent online game in the vein of Destiny et al and having it hold together is bloody hard. Just ask Anthem...Several hours later, I’m still enjoying a compelling, mechanically satisfying --if aesthetically uninspiring-- shooter. And that’s with very few technical hiccups, aside from the odd floating corpse and texture pop-in.

Company of Heroes 2 cruises when it should be sprinting, and when you couple that with the fumbling of the tone and setting it becomes a very difficult game to recommend.

Hitman Absolution is a fascinating case of an error of judgment costing a game its heart. For Absolution, that mistake was placing a focus on a story that didn't need to be told and nobody wanted to hear.

Most importantly it feels great. The colourful, muscular artwork lends extra weight to already ferocious scuffles, moves landing with crunchy force, accentuated by its brilliant habit of a split-second freeze for fierce hits. Everything is quick and forceful, with fights quickly taking on their own rhythm depending on both the characters and the players using them.

AIt hits all of the usual story beats and it will scratch an itch for JRPG obsessives, but there’s an absolute lack of substance. There’s no discernable creativity, flair, or ingenuity in any part of it. It doesn’t want to either reinvent the wheel or even add a lick of polish to it. It is a game which exists and functions as it was meant to; a JRPG as by-the-numbers as they come, I just wish the developers had been brave enough to take a few more risks.

Syndicate is a massive shame. Ubisoft’s yearly development cycle is really beginning to leave its mark on the series. Assassin’s Creed has been good. It is a series that can be great, but unfortunately Syndicate is a misstep. For a series concerned with making its players historical tourists, it is ironic that it is so stuck in the past.

As a Tomb Raider game, as a coherent game in general, and as a narrative experience, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a startling fall from grace. A severe disappointment in a series that was previously going strong, and a sign that this version of Lara Croft might need to retire.

I would like to be able to say that in the weeks and months to come, the multiplayer modes will be fuller, the niggles less prevalent. The core of Battlefield V, that raucous and spectacular shooter, suggests that the future is bright. But while those questions hang in the air, this is a game too slim and scrappy to recommend fully. In due course, that could change. But by the time Battlefield V is where it should be, will it be too late?

Tales of Zestiria is a profound disappointment, and does not deserve the time investment that huge games of this length require.

Beyond the poor dialogue, patchwork visuals and ridiculous interface of the console version, there is an interesting adventure game buried here.

There is every chance that in a week’s time the toy-cons we built may be languishing in a cupboard, with the thrill of creating something already over. Regardless; what a charming, rewarding and singular way to spend our time it has been.

Considering Double Fine nailed the whole 'characters with differing abilities' concept so well in the brilliant Stacking, it's bizarre how poorly it's been pulled off here. Disappointing as a puzzle game, inconsequential as a platformer and far too reliant on players having the patience to traipse around, The Cave ends up feeling extremely hollow.

Even the co-op, local-only, fails to save the game from tedium. It’s a shame; aesthetically and mechanically there could’ve been something here, but there just weren’t enough ideas put in play to make Mother Russia Bleeds into anything special. Coupled with the often frustrating collision detection and the woefully poor friendly AI, Mother Russia Bleeds ends up as little more than a tedious, forgettable drudge.

Admiration and respect is due for how N-Fusion has compressed Deus Ex into its iOS form. But as a general rule, straight replicas of traditional console and PC games on touch devices is folly. Despite the developer’s best efforts, the devices have neither the grunt nor control palette to stand up to the task, resulting in a fiddly and pared-back experience.

As a huge series fan, I had high hopes for Maiden of Black Water. I certainly didn’t expect to find my attention drifting because the game became boring. For all its flaws in the past, the Project Zero series has never been simply dull. And yet that’s exactly what Maiden of Black Water is.

I had more fun making my way up to bed in the dark after playing Thief than I did at any point during its benighted trudge across The City.

With something like Ring Fit Adventure, the variety of exercises and madcap storyline drew me back in time and time again, and in comparison Fitness Boxing 2 just feels flat. Even the budget RRP of £39.99 feels far too much to pay. Given that we’re all mostly housebound at the moment, it feels like there might have been an opportunity to do something more interesting with the concept.

Despite its less impressive iterations over the years, the Need for Speed name has delivered some truly excellent games - from Underground’s street racing to Shift’s wannabe-simulation, all the way to Hot Pursuit’s absurd action. But rather than build upon this rich diverse history of fun, Ghost Games has sucked the fun out of a game that should epitomise the outlandishness of going really bloody fast. When you could be playing Driveclub, or Forza Horizon 2, or Project Cars, or even the beautiful and superiorly quick Forza Motorsport 6, offering a racer without speed? That’s suicide.

As nice as it all looks and sounds, however, one can't help coming back to how lightweight this game is.

Nothing /quite/ works as it should, and when Simcity is built on those systems from the ground up, that’s an incredible shame. There’s so much to like, but there’s so much that will frustrate, and it’s hard to recommend you brave the many ailments.

It's a harrowing tale of ambition which far exceeds its boundaries, of broken promises and broken game mechanics.

At its heart, Mafia 3 is a simple story of revenge, but its actors sell it to you with gusto, and the linear prologue does a great job of getting players invested. Unfortunately, as soon as you’re out in the open-world and you’re free to roam, it becomes a repetitive slog, not least because when you’re doing the same thing on repeat, it only serves to highlight the limitations of the rest of the game.

How disappointing to see such potential wasted. What a shame to see a developer so clearly uninterested in their own project. Such is the lack of invention and variety on offer, The Force Unleashed II can't help feel like a cursory cash-grab, more akin to DLC than a fully fledged retail product.

Everything added is a disappointment, and everything retained only succeeds as much as it did before. It’s not often that a sequel completely fails to build on the successes of the game that came before it, but Riptide achieves that defeat with a cynical lack of ambition.

It loses a lot of the adult tone of the original, but it's far too frustrating and convoluted for kids (or all but the most patient of adults). It looks great, and there are some nice ideas, and a few great puzzles, but it's all let down by sloppy execution. Even the songs are miserably bland, which for a Disney title is especially disappointing.

Right now, despite those fabulous jetpacks, Anthem stumbles more than it soars.

Much worse than a pipe in the face, though, is the fact that Shattered Dimensions' excellent structure also appears to have been a victim of cost-cutting.

While it has some nice ideas, Dood's Big Adventure is far too basic and scrappy to be worth your time.

There is a mission relatively early on in Redfall’s tale that draws you into the mansion of one of the town’s main antagonists. It is a creepy, looming pile creaking with atmosphere and, once inside, plays smartly with Arkane’s knack for twisted level design; shifting time and space and spinning a hair-raising tale through gameplay and artistic direction. It is brilliant and, for a moment, recalls some of Arkane’s best work. But then it’s gone, fading in the wind as you return to wrestle the so-so shooting, lacklustre looting and barrage of bugs...Rather aptly, the mission is called The House of Echoes.

Short, disappointing, and certainly not worth spending £40 on.

It’s uglier than Gollum and twice as annoying as that whiny Frodo chap. Even brutalising fat hobbitses as Sauron himself can do little to alleviate the feeling that Conquest is a cheap, lazy and regressive game that is the very worst kind of franchise cash-in.

The issue is these positives are dwarfed remarkably by the huge and underlying pitfalls of this title. Even if the countless glitches get fixed, and updates whip the technical side of the game into shape, there are intrinsic issues in the mechanics of Fallout 76. This hurts for me to say as a fan of the Fallout series, but 76 is a slog to play, a chore to deal with and certainly not worth your time.

The failure of Aliens: Colonial Marines runs deeper than a clumsy stab at sliding into the Alien canon, though. It’s not just a poor Aliens experience, it’s a poor game. There’s a stiffness to the movement and a lack of feedback to the vanilla weapon line-up that’s unexpected from Gearbox Software.

The Cartel is a calamity; an unfinished, unpleasant piece of dreck that even developer Techland got bored of before hoisting it out of the door. The Cartel's list of misdemeanours is lengthy and depressing, but the worst is how either Techland or Ubisoft can have the nerve to put this on the shelves and ask people to pay money --real money-- to play it.

There's a temptation to end this review with a play on Jigsaw's famous 'I want to play a game' line, but to call Flesh & Blood a game would be doing a disservice to games, and 'I want to play a train wreck' doesn't have the same ring to it.

There's a temptation to end this review with a play on Jigsaw's famous 'I want to play a game' line, but to call Flesh & Blood a game would be doing a disservice to games, and 'I want to play a train wreck' doesn't have the same ring to it.

Sadly we'll have to do with this for now, a bland, unimaginative shooting gallery that lacks the thing that matters most: magic.

Fun for about an hour. It's not good, the virtually identical sections are hardly exciting, and there's a lot less variety in the mayhem than you might be led to believe, but it is an enjoyable, compulsive score-chaser. But it's deceptive. It lures you in with promises of something it never delivers.

Several occasions while playing Star Trek, I was ready to call it a write-off, whether it’s the bugs, the terrible signposting or the fact it’s just plain dull. But then the game surprises with a section that’s not half-bad...And it is so infuriating. Not because Star Trek is ever hard, but because it could have been good. And it’s not.

No matter how big a Prison Break fan you are, no matter how forgiving you can be, The Conspiracy is an abject failure on all counts.

Perhaps the biggest misstep Ju-on makes is that it ignores one of the most crucial elements in creating a horror title; the audience needs to have sympathy for the protagonist.

So what we have is a game that should be kitsch, daft fun but instead is dull, broken and mildly sexist.