It's a good time to be an Assassin's Creed fan. I just wish my console could run it properly.

I’ve had a great time leading the Inquisition. It’s unusual to be able to look back at a game like this and have such fine memories, despite being so underwhelmed by its opening hours. For some, it may well feel like too much of a grind to begin with, and for time-poor players those 15 hours may be far too much of an investment.

If it gets patched out, then PES 2015 will go from being the best football game of this generation to one of the all-time greats. Until then it'll be agonisingly short.

A superb overall package, one that has me interested in Call of Duty again. For a future warfare title with drones and jetpacks, Sledgehammer's success is partly to be found by looking to the series' past, and by combining its own ideas with COD's natural appeal it has reinvigorated the franchise.

Dark Souls is a better game, but they both offer a similar experience. Sluggish and unforgiving, in my opinion, isn't a good combination. If you didn't enjoy Dark Souls I can't see this being for you either.

Sunset Overdrive has some excellent ideas, but its triumphs are sadly suffocated beneath ultra-repetitive mission design and unsatisfying enemy encounters.

The Civilization series is one of the biggest names in strategy for a very good reason, and Beyond Earth adds some wonderful ideas on top of all that, but the underlying systems have remained largely untouched.

Shadow Warrior isn't a classic, but it's a game that exists in an area that we rarely see these days, and is great fun to mess about with.

It does exactly what a Borderlands game should: offer great shooting and fun looting. The introduction of moon-based combat has added some spice to general gameplay, while Aussie voice acting has also injecting some more character into what was already one of the more entertaining series on the market.

The revised focus on the new toys can make your previous investments feel disappointingly redundant.

If you can get past the fact that it isn’t the best looker, you’ll have a good time with Styx. It’s particularly recommended for hardcore sneak-em-up fans looking for a genuine challenge: a stealth-action game in which the emphasis is unapologetically on the stealth, and not the action.

F1 2014 feels like something that needs to exist while Codemasters works on rebuilding the foundations for next-gen.

A system seller. It's a Nintendo-published game that is rarely seen, and a game that will legitimately make non-Wii U owners jealous. It's everything I want from a hardcore Nintendo title, offering genre-leading combat and eye-popping visual spectacle.

It's a game that expertly sustains a feeling of dread, and knows when to ratchet up the feeling of being utterly overwhelmed, first slowly then suddenly in a way that induces sheer panic, much like Resi 4 before it. But detective Sebastian Castellanos is no Leon S. Kennedy.

While it can look nice under the right conditions (usually during well-lit cutscenes or when the sun goes down), Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is the least impressive new-gen remaster I've seen so far. And as somebody who played through the entirety of the game upon its original release, the visual tweaks on offer here did little to convince me that I need to play it, or more importantly pay for it all over again.

There's difficult, and then there's maddening, and sometimes Ethan Carter tips too far towards the former.

It's a game whose appeal lives and dies in its online time trials and sensational visuals, and whose sense of one-upmanship and competition is leaps above the rest of the pack.

A masterwork of atmosphere and environmental design, Alien: Isolation may be standing on the shoulders of giants, but it's also one of the few franchise games to do so that doesn't topple off disastrously.

Its most brilliant innovation, though, is the chance to fail. Each case is a hunt for clues to populate your “deduction space”, a literally cerebral device where information snippets get associated with neurons in Sherlock’s brain, which you can mess around with to make connections. Once enough deductions are made, conclusions become available which allow you to close the case, finger a suspect, and decide their fate.

Shadow of Mordor is a triumph, its final irony being that it's arguably the best and most pure Assassin's Creed game to date.

Both single and multiplayer offerings giving you enough reason to spend hours upon hours simply collecting new uniforms and trophies. The 3DS-exclusive Smash Run offers something different from the rest, too, adding a five minute side-scrolling spree before a four-man brawl.

It lacks variety, both on and offline, and sometimes it strikes a difficult balance between arcade racing and simulation. (It's also far too easy to abuse the rewind function, a problem made worse by the sometimes unclear checkpointing). But there are very few other racing games that can boast such impressive fundamentals, and certainly not very many with a world like this wrapped around them.

It’s not a bad game, and it’s worth playing for the plot and setting alone. But it’s not a great RPG, and that’s a problem, because it’s an RPG. Somehow, it amounts to less than the sum of its parts.

FIFA 15 has gameplay problems, but it can also play some sublime football. However, single-player’s continued stagnation leaves a sour taste in the mouth. If goalkeepers can be addressed, EA will remain the football king.

And yet, despite these glaring, obvious faults, Destiny is utterly capable of draining the hours away, via its excellent combat and its PvP. Flawed, yes. Fun? Certainly. A total failure? Not really.

As a spin-off from the Zelda franchise Hyrule Warriors does the job. It’s fun, pays decent fan service, and uses the Dynasty Warriors template well.

The way they interact with each other, the way they can eat, watch TV and chat about underpants or spaceships at the same time is a marvellous technical achievement that puts the rest of the game, with its missing pools and open worlds, into context. I wish we could have it all in the same package – perhaps The Sims 5 will – but for now, I’m happily and frankly unexpectedly willing to trade those bells and whistles for characters that feel, well, real.

Danganronpa 2 tells a great story that’s worthy of your time. The characters will keep you invested as you wait for the next death. Monokuma continues as a great lead villain, and the new cast may feel familiar, but offer plenty of new tales to discover.