It's the puzzles that truly make The House of Da Vinci 3 engaging, with their variety and challenge.

It doesn’t demand anything of you. Its customers will happily wait weeks, if not months for you; they don’t mind. You can do whatever you want. And that’s Fruitbus’ secret sauce. A warm community spirit without expectations.

If PvP is your bag, then you’ll be right at home with what Marathon brings to the table, but for the rest of us, the bar for entry is set too high.

What a splendid surprise Flewfie’s Adventure is. We expected it to be in and out like a furball, coughed up in the space of minutes and probably just as enjoyable. But instead it’s absolute catnip, and we played through its surprising depths with a big old grin on our faces.

Hell Well might be a little too minimalist for some tower defence fans. But buy into its stripped down approach, and this is one of the cleverest and most addictive tower defence games that we’ve played in recent memory. Hell yes.

While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, Sparklite on Xbox One is a strong contender in the genre and a reminder to push ourselves to be the best we can possibly be.

If you care even slightly about Kain, Raziel and the world that they inhabit, then you owe it to yourself to play Legacy of Kain: Ascendance. It really fills in gaps in the back story that I, for one, hadn’t noticed before.

Mothergunship is a fun experience. Seeing a gun you’ve designed and crafted rip apart the robotic alien hordes is always fun, and the odd niggles aside, it is more than a decent game to play.

If you want a shorter experience, maybe a less challenging one complete with a ton of thrills and spills, then Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is a good option to have.

Mars Horizon on Xbox is an excellent and approachable but deep game that will scratch the space exploration itch for a lot of players. Whilst it’s not an adrenaline rush, it’s got a lot of heart and its excellent UI and design will mean you spend many hours crafting and preparing your missions and then tensely watching them launch.

Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories. It’s a glorious distraction, and while it might not come with supposed necessities like gameplay and difficulty, it managed to keep us glued to our controller for a solid five hours. We implore you to feed your melon addiction and give it a go.

Is FIFA 18 the best in the series? No, but there’s a whole load of things to do once you’ve embraced all the gameplay enhancements to ensure it’s still a decent game.

If precision platforming wasn’t chilling enough, Love Eternal coats it in thick, horrifying atmospherics. There’s nowhere to hide: the closest you will get to safety is the momentary haven of a checkpoint.

For every swing-and-miss, there’s a home run. The songs, the kaleidoscopic world, the Materia-like songstones: they all want to make me pump the air. Sure, there’s the occasional duff note, but People of Note is a crowd-pleaser that should pique the interest of music and RPG lovers alike.

There’s no doubt that this is one of the most immersive, grittiest, most brutal of games, for multiple reasons. However, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl goes and shoots itself in the foot on a few too many occasions. Bugs and glitches are to be expected for an open world game that attempts so much, but only with some polish and refinement will S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 shine as a masterpiece of open-world survival horror.

All in all, Ghost Blade HD is a very enjoyable game. It is unashamedly retro, and captures the vibe of the 90’s shoot-em-up very well. The slow down is annoying but isn’t a deal breaker, because with practice it is possible to compensate for it. The addition of the Global Leaderboards brings in the chance for competition, and if you are willing to invest the time to learn the enemies attack patterns, then the chances for score chasing fun go through the roof. With local co-op play and the score attack mode, the 1990s have never looked so good.

Rabbids: Party of Legends is in the upper echelons of party games. It’s got that lavish Ubisoft presentation going for it, and the gormless rabbids are as entertaining as always.

I have no major complaints about Raven’s Hike. It’s a simple game built on a simple mechanic, but it does it well.

Bunny Factory is a pleasant surprise as it is a real step up in quality compared to the developer’s previous offerings. The puzzles are logical and fun to solve, there are a ton of them to get stuck into, and the variations on the core mechanic bring enough freshness to keep proceedings moving along smoothly.

Whether it be because Berzerk: Recharged feels fresher than the rest, or whether it is because of the random nature it brings, we feel this is in the upper echelons of all the Recharged games that Atari have pushed out.

Multiple playthroughs are an essential part of Murderous Muses. One run-through may take you a few hours, but the next time you come to it, you’ll no doubt discover a totally different experience, with differing elements and clues.

Disciples: Domination is an enjoyable sequel that builds on the original in certain ways, but remains a very similar experience to what came before, complete with the same drawbacks.

For long-time fans of Outriders, the introduction of Worldslayer is good news, with new stuff to go and hunt and new levels to play around with. It is short, but it’s still enjoyable

Shantae and the Seven Sirens on the Xbox One is the best in the series yet. Despite some truly obscure pacing issues and some irritating map design, the base adventure remains extremely enjoyable, with rewarding exploration and a constant sense of progression. While the formula may need more quality of life improvements to really stand out in the genre, Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a step in the right direction and places the series on the right track for success.

At the end of the day, DiRT 4 is left as very good racer that is let down by the odd visual and audio issue. If you’re a gaming petrol head who is prepared to look beyond those though – and can consider turning off the repetition of your Spotter – then you’ll most definitely like what you find.

If you have never played a Crash Bandicoot game then now is the perfect time to get into it. And if you’ve done it before, you’ll find a lovely HD trip down memory lane.

HEROish delivers a MOBA castle-defense type adventure that’s a lot of fun to play on your own. The deck-building and gameplay is super easy to understand, with a great range of cool cards on hand to choose from. It’s just a shame HEROish suffers a tad technically and the multiplayer can’t recreate the enjoyment of the campaigns.

Is it an improvement on the franchise? Well it has NHL Threes, new additions to the career modes and some nice cosmetic touches. Maybe next year there will be a story mode to help really connect with a new audience, but for now I am having a blast like it was 1993 all over again.