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 most disappointing aspect of Rugby World Cup, however, is just how threadbare it is in terms of modes.

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.

It professes to be a reaction to overblown, scripted rollercoaster FPSes, but never manages to bring a whole lot to the table for itself. Bodycount even makes a fuss over destructible cover, which was done better by Battlefield Bad Company. Bodycount is not a poor game, just a confused and unremarkable one, even if those instant restarts really are wonderful.

There’s a decent game beneath some unfortunate flaws and irritating business practice, and I would genuinely like to see Vanguard have another crack at a top-down Halo without such questionable deterrents.

It's initially quite fun, but truth be told, steering with an invisible wheel gets a bit old after a couple of hours and the game has few pleasures to offer besides.

Its controls are a little ropy and its depth severely lacking, but these aren't concerns that will trouble the audience it's aimed at. Not only that, but it's tremendous entertainment value. Just ask my other half. She hasn't laughed this much in ages.

The visual novel is a very niche genre in the west, and even forgiving the game its numerous grammatical sins, Lux-Pain will be a tough sell to most. But it deserves praise for engaging some unusually weighty themes, and weaving them skilfully into its own twisted tapestry of psychological chills and sci-fi-flavoured thrills.

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.

The voice acting is generally solid, and Laurence Fishburne is excellent. And there's optional Facebook connectivity if you're into that kind of thing, with the game posting a single-entry summary of the in-game achievements you've earned every time you finish a session.

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.

Fighters Uncaged is an appalling, joyless makeweight trying to grab some of the Kinect pie before a fighting game that actually works comes along. Avoid it at all costs.

Fruit Frenzy is, for want of a better word, uninspired. It lacks both the originality and the imagination needed to make it stand out from the crowd nor makes use of the iPhone's touch-screen capabilities in any meaningful way.

Developers Plain Vanilla have taken every tried-and-tested gamification device and every social media lure and stuffed them into a fun quiz app, complete with a delightfully clear and cheery design.

The plot’s exceptionally strong too, albeit with one rather jarring bit of progression that didn’t feel hugely believable to me, mainly due to the game’s brevity. It’s enough to stop it being up there at the pinnacle of game storytelling, but only by a hair’s breath. Otherwise, the dialogue is believable, sensitive, thoughtful, the plot surprisingly gripping, and the potential deviations and outcomes are all equally satisfying. It’s £2.79 on Steam, 2-3 hours long, and I absolutely highly recommend this little gem.

It’s an absolutely fascinating, atmospheric take on the horror genre that plays on the mechanical strengths of its various genres to create an utterly unforgettable experience.