At moments a beautiful depiction of the struggles of mental health, but a greater progression should have been felt throughout.

The Crimewave Edition does too little to Payday 2 to make it a really worthwhile update.

Despite its classic metaphoric coming of age storyline, despite its lovingly drawn backgrounds that seem to have sprung to life from the pages of children’s stories and despite the innocuous language and childish humour, the incongruous nature of the frustrating puzzles will thwart children unfamiliar with the ancient lore of point and click adventures.

Exposition-heavy, yet light on actual plot development, In Sheep’s Clothing is perhaps the weakest episode of The Wolf Among Us to date.

Hardboiled and undercooked, the story and tone of Milanoir are dead on target, but the shooting doesn't quite hold up against the tough difficulty.

Hard Reset was a great game when it was first released in 2011. The Redux edition has a graphics overhaul and a story pacing rebalance it still retains the gameplay of the original. While that was great five years ago when old-school shooters were in decline, Hard Reset now feels somewhat dated.

Whether or not The Elder Scrolls Online is for you depends on what you are looking for. It is not a conversion of the single player series that many might have hoped for.

The loading times and frequency that the game needs to load is immediately and consistently depressing too and for these reasons it all becomes hard to recommend. The thing is though does that really matter? Probably not because you know, it’s for kids.

It’s certainly not a joke game, and the writing quality does elevate it for those who have an appreciation of the material that is being targeted, but the whole combat mechanic becomes so tiresome so quickly that you can’t help but wish the game could have been shorter, the story more focused, instead of the more positive elements of the game losing some of their sheen from hiding behind the rest of it.

In conclusion, The Infectiousness Madness of Doctor Dekker is an admirable attempt at a niche horror title, marred only by the U.I. of the particular version I played. I’m already invested in their next game, I’ll just make sure I pick that up on the Switch.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate is a game that tries to take the best of both new and old Castlevania but ultimately comes up short all round.

Team 17 took a simple idea, blowing up enemy worms named after your mates with an arsenal of ridiculous weaponry, and turned it into one of the most iconic and fun memories in gaming. But that was 1995 and here we are in 2014 realising that not much has changed in nearly two decades.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is sadly a bit of a let down. Gorgeous to look at, fiddly to control and a tad dull to experience, this is yet another AC iteration that falls flat. A bold idea, poorly executed.

The Padre has so much potential but sadly it fails to deliver on most of the aspects I was really looking forward to. With uninteresting gameplay and clunky controls it's fairly difficult for me to recommend this game as a survival horror. If you go into this expecting a witty adventure, you may enjoy it more.

In the end, Magicka 2 almost feels like two different games. If you choose to play through the game on your own, you will regularly become frustrated at the game’s control scheme, its random difficulty spikes and overwhelming and unfair nature. On the other hand, if you team up with friends, you’ll get a far more enjoyable experience that doesn’t fix all the game’s problems, but does make them easier to deal with.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine could have had deep mythology building for 1930s Americana, but instead it offers only enough to get you intrigued before forcing you back into the grind-laden, story-gathering crawl the rest of the game is.

An odd beast, one which seems unsure whether it’s trying to be a genuine throwback, or ironically retro; the graphics and gameplay indicate the former, but its difficulty level and tone suggest the latter.

Chaos Theory has two big things going for it, the character of Max and its final cutscene. If it wasn’t for these two factors, our time of enjoying Life Is Strange may have been up. Its gameplay has become rather tedious and the lack of elaboration in Max’s time travelling usage is a severe let-down.

Ambitious in both scale and scope but sadly is just too much for the console hardware it will be mostly played on.

Guardian of Gotham is an improvement on the banal Episode 3 then, but is not without its share of technical and narrative faults. The caped one has an uphill battle ahead of him before the year is out.

Some missing features, specifically the ability to speed up time, holds Cities: Skylines back but it's still a competent city builder.

The best thing to say about The Evil Within is that it is a good survival game with some decent mechanics, the worst thing I can say is that it is a poor horror game that doesn’t live up to its design or the talent of the director.

A finale as uneven as the series itself; a few highlights and more meaningful outcomes to earlier choices are offset by Telltale’s usual problems of pacing and gameplay mechanics.

A beautifully crafted game on the surface but is ultimately crippled by its core gameplay mechanics and short length.

A wry hacking adventure, marred by a few unfortunate design choices.

The Novelist still remains an interesting experiment that you will find yourself getting caught up in. Playing as an outsider to the family gives you a significant amount of objectivity but also prevents you from ever really connecting.

All in all, despite the by-the-numbers approach that Compile Heart has to its stories, and it's penchant for lacklustre world design, it's the little details that honestly make Fairy Fencer F : Advent Dark Force an enjoyable experience. Even with shallow, predictable characters, they do have genuine-feeling interactions behind all the clichés. These walking anime stereotypes end up being quite endearing, if you can get over the initial first impressions that each one gives. Unfortunately all of these aren't enough to redeem the game quite sufficiently to make it a hit; the repetitive nature of the dungeons can get incredibly tedious very quickly, turning what could have been a fun time into a dull slog.

At a couple of quid less we’d suggest that most people think about giving it a punt (or, indeed, a jab?) but for now this will probably remain in the quite small ‘passionate about boxing, owns a Vita’ niche.