The sense of satisfaction Cities: Skylines delivers, from gradually layering a city until it becomes a behemoth of urban design, finds a good home on Nintendo’s portable. The speed of activating the Switch works well for brief forays into neighbourhood management and policy adjustments. It’s only a pity that performance issues betray the difficulty of squeezing a complex PC game into a handheld console, and that the game itself can sometimes feel a tad humourless.

Batman’s second episode in season two — known as The Pact — takes The Dark Knight and continues to refine him in a very unique way. If the whole series can pay off this story, it’ll be very good indeed.

Gravel is fun enough as an arcade off-road racer, but it feels like it was designed to compete with the hits of five or six years ago, not the racers of today. While there’s something likeable about its no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble action, it lacks the poise, power and polish of a mud-flinging, tyre-spinning champ.

The Lego Ninjago Movie Videogame is a fun platformer that expands on the established formula with an enjoyable combat system. Unfortunately, performance issues and lacklustre level design hold it back from greatness.

Marvel’s Avengers has proven to be a pleasant surprise, even if its live service identity arguably hinders the true potential of its world, story and characters. Engaging combat and rewarding progression have established a solid foundation for Crystal Dynamics to build upon with new heroes and scenarios in the months and years to come.

Shining Resonance Refrain plays it safe to an extreme. Little about it pushes the genre forward and nearly every part of the game is a bit too familiar, or done far better elsewhere. This is one for when you’re desperate for a new JRPG fix and that’s it.

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.

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.

Rage 2 is one of the year’s most disappointing titles. However, the shooting is some of the best this generation when you’ve finally dedicated enough time to unlock different abilities and poured a couple of upgrades into one of the best shotguns in gaming. Unfortunately, the middle chapter is full to the brim with busywork that taints the entire experience. At one stage, I was spending 10 minutes driving for a five minute firefight before getting back in a car for another 10 minute drive and a stilted vehicular combat section. Shooter fans deserve better.

A flawed experience, yet boasts such as a commendable level of creativity amidst its restrictions that I was unusually smitten with it. The combat is repetitive, the visuals are sub-par and, sadly, there isn’t a lot of depth to many of its mechanics. However, the razor-sharp writing and sheer dedication to its universe allow Suda51 and Grasshopper Manufacture to craft one of Nintendo Switch’s most unique titles yet. I’m not sure I could wholeheartedly recommend it to the average player, but hardcore fans should certainly sign up.

Dissidia Final Fantasy NT is a Final Fantasy fan’s dream, with oodles of playable characters presented across a truly beautiful variety of stages. Its fast, frantic battle system makes it easy to pick up and play, but also difficult to master once you delve into the inner workings of each hero. Unfortunately, it’s held back by a distinct lack of modes and progression options beyond a ludicrous number of cosmetic goodies.

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

What Miitopia lacks in actual game it makes up for in how weird and wonderful it is. If you’re easily charmed by Nintendo, this will eat you up and spit you out.

This is a great exercise experience for Nintendo Switch that makes excellent use of its motion controls, although the game doesn't introduce quite enough changes to stand out from its predecessor.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a great game spoiled by a terrible business model. DICE and EA are going to be under a huge amount of pressure not just to tweak, but completely overhaul the metagame or face an even bigger fan backlash than they have already. Underneath the terrible progression system, cheap payouts and more-than-gentle hand in the back towards paying for loot crates is the same excellent core, now across so much more content with the promise of more free maps and heroes to come.

WWE 2K18 is a great wrestling game with a crazy amount of depth that feels a bit too similar to 2K17 to really hit new highs. If you love the franchise, however, this will rock your world.

There’s no question about it: if you want to play The Sims 4, the PC is still the best way to play it – and given that its PC system requirements are fairly low that’s what we’d recommend. Get used to the console controls and it’s still a fascinating town-building game/life sim/virtual soap, but one with a few too many bugs for comfort. If EA cleans those up we’ll raise the score another notch, but right now The Sims 4 console versions could still use a little work.

There are some great ideas in here, some funny characters and plenty of scope for Lego lunacy and mayhem, but the quest stuff doesn’t drive you forwards as it does in Dragon Quest: Builders, while the real, in-depth construction is hard going.

The AI can be annoying, and not everyone will get the game’s approach, but if you engage with the game’s strong social angle, there’s a great racer in here to enjoy.

It’s a shame that it feels unfinished and that mechanics like being unable to decide where your character initially drops at the beginning of matches does detract from the experience here, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had for fans of the genre.

Familiar territory but with better graphics, plus a few nice-to-have but non-essential extras...My biggest concern are the controls, since the Switch clearly isn't built for fighting games. The Switch Pro controller is an effective fix, but it's expensive. If you don't already have one and invest in one just for this game, you're looking at £95 – which is quite steep for a game that's nearly 30 years old. This is no reflection on the game itself, however. I had a blast.

As a game for chilling out on the sofa with a handful of friends or the family, Hidden Agenda is pretty cool. Yet there’s a lot about the mechanics, the story, the situations and the characters that seems wilfully, crazily dumb. For £20 for a few hours of fun it’s well worth a try, but this feels like an interesting concept that needs some work before it all comes good.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind is an excellent expansion on the existing RPG, building upon the original ending in some fascinatingly unexpected ways. However, it's one that only hardcore fans will truly benefit from, otherwise you'll be lost in an endless deluge of complicated character motivations and frankly silly plot developments.

An improvement on the original, and with far more variety on offer, but State of Decay 2 suffers from repetitive combat and poor player communication throughout. Fans of survival sims will likely appreciate the greater attention to detail and increased demands when it comes to sustaining your communities, but for more casual players the constant need to find dozens of items or resources just to keep everything ticking over will just annoy, the longer you go on.

Code of Princess EX is a bit of a mixed bag for. It looks great, never missing a beat no matter how action-packed things get, and it’s certainly very accessible. And it’s fun – for a time. It simply isn’t a game that will stay with you for any length of time. It’s more a palate cleanser between meatier fare, or for those times you want to relive your youth with some Streets of Rage-style bashing.

For the first few hours Bleeding Edge is an absolute blast to play and well worth a look if you have Xbox Game Pass. But there's not enough depth to make it last long-term, at the moment.

The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch is a passable iteration of Obsidian Entertainment's excellent RPG, but arguably makes too many sacrifices to allow for a comfortable transition to the portable platform.

As DONTNOD’s first self-published game, the effort that’s gone into Twin Mirror’s world building should be commended. Between the added gameplay elements introduced by The Double and Sam’s Mind Palace, not to mention the colourful cast of characters living in Basswood, Twin Mirror had my attention from the get-go, but its short length prevents it from delivering an emotional journey comparable with anything the studio has done before.