Shenmue 3 would have been well received in 2003, but we’re 18 years on from the last entry and Shenmue hasn’t budged an inch. If you weld your nostalgia goggles to your face, you’ll be able to slog through the story, but it really is a chore. Poor game design and a complete lack of innovation are the killers, but even the continuation of the story is a meagre offering thanks to ludicrous levels of padding.

Unless you're a hardcore lover of the original MediEvil, I can find little reason to recommend this remake when there are numerous superior platformers available on PS4. Heck, even Knack manages to produce a more compelling experience than this, surpassing the brittle bones of Sir Daniel Fortesque in almost every department. As someone who was equally enthralled and terrified by the original duo of games, this is an unfortunate disappointment.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint may have solid shooting and co-op play foundations, but it can't make up for the aggressive microstransactions, infuriating technical issues and mission structures so repetitive they soon become tedious to complete. After attempting to cherry pick popular features from other games, Breakpoint ends up feeling like a chaotic yet bland mess that really isn't worthy of your time.

A ruined, post-apocalyptic anime future could have made for a fantastic game, but it falters at every genre it attempts to ape. Code Vein is clearly attempting to spin a lot of plates. But unless you’re into playing a great character creator with a bad Dark Souls clone attached to it, we’d say steer clear.

FIFA 20 remains a gorgeous and fun-to-play football game that’s as addictive as ever. The addition of Volta adds some much-needed variety and the quick matches filled with skills and elaborate game celebrations are fun. I’m not sold on all the gameplay tweaks, however, and the additions to Career mode feel slightly dull. Still, if you’ve picked up FIFA every year then you’re most likely going to like what’s on offer here, even if the package feels very familiar.

Without the bugs, The Bard’s Tale IV is okay at best. With them, it’s perhaps best to preserve your nostalgia and play the HD remaster of The Bard’s Tale I to III instead.

The game has a gooey smooth outer coating that contains a rough, unpleasant centre. Unfortunately, Black Clover Quartet Knights is much like Asta himself; completely lacking in magic.

Ultimately, Immortal: Unchained serves to highlight one thing above all else. Every frustrating aspect of the Dark Souls experience is tolerated and even praised by its fans because the underlying combat system is so fantastically well-realised...Strip that away and all you’re left with is a mediocre exercise in frustration. Immortal: Unchained has thrown guns into the mix, but no consideration has been given to how their addition might affect the classic Souls formula. Dark Souls but with bad combat is a tough sell.

This game shares a lot of DNA with the Dragonball Xenoverse titles but manages to falter at almost every aspect, with flaws in the mission structure, the combat, the way you attain loot and in the way that you develop your character.

It’s no disaster, but State of Mind delivers only disappointingly forgettable returns on some significant pre-release promise.

Ultimately, this is a 12-year-old game, and no amount of spit and polish can overcome the dated mechanics and repetitive combat that lies at its core.

Octopath Traveler is a delightful JRPG that takes plentiful inspiration from the classics that inspired it while carving a new path with fun, inventive ideas I’ve never seen before. Its satisfying and methodical combat system is complimented by a world that’s brimming with life. Whether its through its sprawling cities of richly written characters, there’s plenty here for hardcore and casual fans of the genre to appreciate.

A shame, then, as Agony is a bold and deliberately non-conventional release from a studio that clearly has a vision. However, no matter the content, when the game is both boring and broken, it immediately overshadows any positives.

More slot machine than it is video game. If you have oodles of cash you want to throw away then give it a look; otherwise, steer well clear.

Punching, stomping and walking my way through a Star Fox-esque metropolis and destroying everything in my path for the high score, I couldn’t help being massively underwhelmed by the game itself. It’s an incredibly simple smash-’em-up where you simply have to destroy every building to earn a multiplier and bigger score. Lifting your arms in the air will make your bot fly, crouching turns it into a tank, and lifting your legs up and down makes it walk, while punching, naturally, punches. It felt like a mini-game from the ill-fated Star Fox Zero, and once the level was over, I had no desire to play it again. I hope the full game offers more for buyers than what there is here. You do get Garage mode again in this kit, though.

If the rest of the games in the Variety Pack, and the more expensive Robot Pack, can deliver the depth offered by the RC car and especially the Piano, Nintendo has created something that every child will love. And also something that every child will learn something from.

Payday 2 continues to maintain a very dedicated audience, but even fans of the game are unlikely to enjoy what’s being put forward for Nintendo Switch. Stripped-back visuals, poor performance and a lack of adaptation to the console results in a shoddy port at best...It’s ironic that a game about heists is trying to jump on a bandwagon and rob you of your hard-earned cash.

We’re not going to dish out any final scores until the full release next year, but Bluehole and Microsoft have some serious work to do if they want to bring the Xbox One PUBG up to scratch. I hope they do it, because at its best this is still one of the most thrilling and tactical multiplayer games around – and it deserves to be as big on console as it is on PC.

Dead Rising 4: Frank’s Big Package is an exceptional port of the original package, with additional content that fans will have a blast with. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the worst entry in the series by quite a wide margin.

Dreamfall Chapters stays true to the adventure genre it embraced in 1999, but sticking to the same approach in 2017 means it feels a little past its prime.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3 offers some of the most satisfying sniping you can imagine, but everything outside of that just feels too drab and lacklustre to truly make it standout.

Four games in and Dead Rising as a series has all but exhausted its core concepts, but these tricks might still entertain you if you just want to cut some rotting meat in half. For me, Dead Rising 4’s surface schlock quickly became tedious shoddiness, and the result is a disappointingly dull open-world game that simply can’t hold a candle to this year’s best.