While its cutesy aesthetic won't work for all, Portal Knights is a game that capitalises brilliantly on both its RPG and sandbox elements, elevating the merits of both. With seasonal events planned to keep players' attentions and an endless canvas to explore once you've completed the Story mode, this is a worthy challenger to Minecraft's throne.

MatterFall is crammed with interesting mechanics and there’s something really lovable about its Metroid-meets-Contra-meets-Bullet-Hell style. It’s just a shame that the levels aren’t memorable enough or the enemies distinctive enough to make it another retro-arcade great. Throw in boss battles that go on way too long, and it’s a solid shooter that will please enthusiasts, but not quite up there with Resogun or Nex Machina.

The Ezio Collection nets you two classic Assassin’s Creeds and one that’s still one of the best ones – but the remastering doesn’t really do them justice. Would it have hurt to bring AC2 and Brotherhood up to the more lavish visual standard of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, or bring the combat and controls in line? Luckily, the strong storylines of the Ezio trilogy and the Florentine’s charisma still shine through, but while The Ezio Collection is a great catch-up set for Assassin’s Creed newcomers, it doesn’t really do enough to reward old fans coming back for another spin.

If PixelJunk Monsters is one of the all-time-great tower defence games – if not the greatest – then Monsters 2 is the tower defence evolved. It’s a seriously beautiful-looking game, and Q-Games has found ingenious ways to make the translation to 3D work for, and not against, the gameplay. And it achieves all this without losing the heart and soul of the original.

Dragon Ball Z Xenoverse 2 is the ultimate fan experience. The game magically manages to retain the epic, and faithfully recreates the fast-paced combat using a surprisingly intricate fighting and character development systems. If you’re a Dragon Ball fan, Xenoverse 2 will definitely entertain...However, I'm concerned that newbies to the series – or less hardcore fans that only remember Dragon Ball in passing – will struggle to get their bearings. The combat system is great, but the game offers little up-front tutelage. Add to this a difficulty level that spikes fairly quickly, and the game could end up frustrating as much as it entertains

FIFA 21 is an often great football game packed with content and modes. The few gameplay tweaks that are here make for a better overall experience and keeping Volta around adds some variety. Sadly, the redesign of career mode focuses on the wrong features and feels like a wannabe Football Manager without any of the depth.

This second helping of Styx won’t set any benchmarks or redefine the genre, but it’s a good, solid stealth game played with humour and a smidgeon of style. It feels a bit old-school and slightly hardcore in the age of MGS5: The Phantom Pain, but there’s something enjoyably tight and focused about its gameplay and a real sense of fun in Styx’s sneaking, sabotage and slaughter. It won’t kick Styx into the big leagues, but Shards of Darkness makes you glad to see him back.

An enjoyable cyberpunk adventure with an excellent setting and cast of characters that are worth caring about. It doesn’t quite stretch its storytelling muscles as far as it could, confined by the traditional visual novel formula in ways that feel detrimental to the overall narrative. Despite this, the world is compelling, original and thought-provoking at times. If you're a fan of Danganronpa or Persona, Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness could be next on your wishlist.

The first episode delivers enough sharp story hooks, entertaining action sequences and amusing lines that I found myself quickly sucked in, my reservations swiftly squashed; by the time it was over, I was looking forward to the next episode and finding out where Telltale is taking the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Love Destiny? Rise of Iron gives you more to love, with a strong, if short, campaign, new quest lines, challenges and gear to collect, a great new Strike, two entertaining remixes and a brand new Raid. The Plaguelands is a large and intriguing new region to explore, and the new crucible maps and modes mean there’s something for more competitive Guardians to chew on...If you’re being picky, you’ll note that there’s nothing that fresh or innovative on offer, and that Bungie has its work cut out if it wants to stop Destiny going stale. For now, though, Rise of Iron hits all the right notes for the Destiny hardcore and is another great addition to the game.

Warriors Orochi 4 is not a particularly bad game, but it does feel like it’s trying its best to innovate on a tired formula, but those new additions might not be enough. Compounded with finicky menus and performance issues, it leaves the game leaving a little bit more to be desired than what it offers currently. And no, that doesn’t mean they should add more characters.

Lost Paradise provides an absorbing trek around a captivating post-apocalyptic universe. Appropriately enough, Sega doesn’t pull any punches in adapting Buronson and Hara’s gratuitous and violent world – definitely don’t play this around kids, though.

Survival games were in need of a shakeup and Smoke and Sacrifice appears to be the game to do it. More than just a title of crafting and cooking, you’ll find yourself rooting for Sachi while still appreciating the satisfaction that can come from a battle for survival. This is a game that’s brimming with heart and emotion.

A good on-rails virtual reality shooter. At times the scares can feel cheap, and the fact that it uses the same scare over and over again means you’ll either get bored or annoyed by it.

Call of Duty: Vanguard does have its moments, even if they are quite few and far between. The campaign goes back and forth between innovative and entertaining, to repetitive and bland, while the Multiplayer and Zombie modes don’t bring anything new to the table other than how impressive they look.

A robust combat system, plentiful characters and a meaningful progression system combine to create a worthwhile fighter that I’d recommend checking out. It certainly isn’t the finest the genre has to offer, but it does more than enough to stand out.

It’s a shame that it doesn’t have the visual fidelity or single-player content of some of its competitors, because it knocks the shine off what is otherwise a really fun, deep and varied fighting game. At its core, Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite is a game that offers a fresh spin on the series’ tag-based combat and, provided the online works upon release, is another top-tier fighting game.

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.

Mordheim is unapologetically hardcore, and if you’re not the type to play the X-COM games in Iron Man mode then you might want to give it a miss. It’s complex, detailed, finicky and somewhat unforgiving, and while the strategy can be tense and interesting, the actual combat feels slow and a prone to random elements.

Play Bound for its incredible graphics, strong audio and an atmospheric experience, but be prepared to be underwhelmed on the gameplay front.

Ubisoft Annecy has crafted a gorgeous-looking winter sports game with a strong foundation of exploration, enjoyable gameplay and a feast of events to unlock. What it hasn’t done is create a pathway through that game that will keep you playing through to the end. Despite the variety of events and sports the action and scenery grows repetitive, while some minor issues keep on cropping up. The result is a game that’s close to brilliance, but not quite close enough.

As a short, enjoyable romp that can be shared with friends either locally or online, Little Hope is worth the price of admission. The title's move to more accessible gameplay ensures that it can be enjoyed by a wider audience without issue, and the visual prowess of its characters is second to none. In both scares and narrative however, Little Hope doesn't come close to matching the same heights reached by Until Dawn, meaning that true horror lovers should probably look elsewhere.

Bizarre and interesting; perhaps the quintessential Adult Swim-published game in that respect, but ultimately this one is merely just a decent game that may be guilty of thinking being strange is the same as being funny. Pool Panic shows promise but is more surface than feeling. It’s great it exists, however, if only to prove that, yes, sometimes games are just plain weird, and it’s okay to embrace that.

Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 is a well-balanced, smart compilation of games that is aimed solely at those that are hoping for a warm trip down memory lane.

If you’re a more casual fan of the series then this is only the fourth-best Assassin’s Creed on current-gen hardware, and there are other, stronger open-world games around if you just want more of this kind of thing. It’s great to see Rogue return looking so good, but it seems destined to remain a side-story, not a classic chapter in the saga.

The addition of PSVR is gimmicky, but fun, with VR shining in cabin-based games like this one, was re-jigged to be. The rest of the game despite showing its age heavily in places manages to feel a fresh experience, as surprisingly nothing has really come out in all this time that comes close to how slickly agile aerial mech combat feels here.

Doom VFR has a few control issues and won’t take you long to get through once, but if you’re a Doom fan with a compatible VR headset, it’s one of the best experiences around. iD has bought Doom to VR without compromising the action or the hellspawn-slaying, nerve-wracking pace that makes Doom Doom, and a tiny bit of nausea here and there is a small price to pay. Do yourself a favour: Bring it on.

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.