Genesis Alpha One has some really cool ideas going for it, unfortunately they’re outweighed by repetitive busywork that you easily get bogged down in. Sure, it’s an interesting strategy game at times, but the grind is just too damn much!

Defiance may have you wasting away the hours, but this is not going to be the game to draw in new fans to the genre.

A little short on polish it might be, but there's no doubting Atlas Fallen's credentials as a decent slice of good (but not great) open-world fantasy action.

A series, and a game, that seems to have lost a remarkable amount of lustre and just doesn't feel as interesting to play through as some of it's peers. The story is drab and drawn out, plus the tasks that litter the game are overly simplistic even for a kids title. LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is still better than any number of kids titles and movie tie ins, but otherwise this is a major disappointment for fans of LEGO games and Potter alike, and just doesn't have that spark of magic that you would expect.

A sci-fi horror that gets better with perseverance, The Persistence is worth delving into, despite more than a few frustrations. Give it time, though, and you'll ultimately discover a rewarding roguelike experience.

While Fallout 76 is effectively a buggy mess, marred by frame-rate issues, quest bugs and general calamity when it comes to the engine, there’s still a decent amount of fun to be had here. Whatever you do, though, don’t come in expecting Fallout 5 otherwise you will be supremely disappointed. Fallout 76 is effectively about base-construction, survival and world-building, not the story and your part in it, which isn’t a bad thing. The execution is though.

It's slightly upsetting how close Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed is to being a properly good remake. Were it not for the parade of annoying bugs and the occasional crummy mission, this would be easy to recommend. In its current, messy state, however, Black Forest's latest effort falls.

NBA 2K20 is so similar to last year's game that it's hard to wholeheartedly recommend it like we normally would. If you haven't bought an NBA 2K game in a while, then by all means, don't hesitate to dive right in. But if you're still happily playing NBA 2K19, there's really no reason to make the switch. Major, sweeping changes are clearly in order, and we hope to see big things happening for NBA 2K21.

A grim, dystopian future shock, The Ascent is an action-packed ARPG brimming with guns and ultra-violence. It's enormous fun, especially in co-op, but bothersome bugs and repetitive quests unfortunately put a dampener on things.

The Crew 2 feels like a missed opportunity for Ubisoft after what was a decent start for the franchise in 2014. It’s a racing game with some interesting ideas, but the new main additions frankly aren’t entertaining enough and there’s too much of a focus on quantity over quality.

A case of diminishing returns, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes 2 is certainly ambitious in terms of scale and playable character numbers, while the story is entertaining. Yet it fails to deliver anything really new or interesting, making this a case of been there, done that. The first LEGO Marvel game is better.

Battlefield 2042 is DICE’s most average Battlefield yet, one that despite boasting two new modes to discover in Hazard Zone and Battlefield Portal, clearly forgot about the core of the experience. With some weird design decisions, plenty of bugs, and more crashes than a destruction derby; the future of Battlefield, this is not. It’s still fun, but we hoped for so much more.

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is the Big Mac of games. You know what you’re getting, it’s a bit cheap, you enjoy eating it, you don’t have to chew and an hour later you’ve forgotten all about it. Utterly unchallenging and lacking in fresh ideas, Gat Out of Hell is still capable of making you smile.

Sloclap has delivered nice, crunchy mechanics like it did with Absolver and Sifu, making Rematch an immediate, accessible, and above all enjoyable arcade-style football game. It’s Rocket League without the rocket cars. But whether you'll be playing it this time next year, I'm not entirely convinced.

Mind Over Mutant has the building blocks of a great platformer, but with a dearth of content and an inexcusable amount of back-tracking, it's impossible to recommend this game for anything more than a rental.

World War Z has its flaws especially with its throwaway PvPvZ mode and repetitive campaign, but it’s genuinely a pretty fun zombie shooter akin to Left 4 Dead. It’s a fun title to just pick up and play with a few pals when you’re bored or have run out of games to play. It’s even enjoyable solo with AI companions. World War Z is worth a go, then, at least until Back 4 Blood makes its debut.

Boasting a strong female heroine in Aveline, Assassin's Creed: Liberation is worth the asking price, but only just. The fragmented story was excusable on PS Vita, but on Xbox 360 and PS3, Assassin's Creed: Liberation's myriad cracks and flaws are glaring. Aveline may be a thinly-drawn character, but she's one that's deserving of so much more than this.

Cramming many of Assassin’s Creed’s calling cards into ACC: China’s diminutive 2.5D frame, while amping up the importance of stealth, is impressive. But too much of the game is flat and uninspired. There’s the barest bones of a great game here. Let’s hope one of the sequels expands on that promise.

A movie tie-in that thinks outside of the box, John Wick Hex is an unexpected and unique strategy game with more than a few neat ideas up its impeccably tailored sleeve. Yet, a steep difficulty curve, some fiddly controls, and a frustrating sense of repetition cramp its style. However, cool heads and sharp wits will prevail.

A decent enough start for Ubisoft if they're looking to crack the dance-minded Kinect owners market, but unlike on the Wii, the Xbox 360 already has a trend setting rival to their musical offerings and they're going to have to do a hell of a lot better to one-up the brilliance of music maestros Harmonix. You could say, Michael Jackson: The Experience is to Dance Central what Bubbles was to Michael Jackson. Ironic, right?

Biomutant is a scrappy and charming open world RPG, but despite its many systems and gameplay mechanics, there isn't enough depth and direction to make this game truly great.

Warhammer 40K: Inquisitor – Martyr is a pretty solid ARPG from NeocoreGames with some neat ideas – like procedurally generated dungeons – but it’s far too frustrating and repetitive for a mere mortal like myself. If grind is your name though, you should probably change it, but at least you’ll like Martyr.

Harold Halibut's handmade world has bags of charm, but its sedentary pace and largely uneventful narrative might not be to everyone's tastes. Great stories stay with you, but, sadly, I'm not sure Harold's will.

Dead to Rights: Retribution can provide some good B-movie fun at first, but it soon gets overly repetitive and the niggling flaws soon begin to grate more and more as the game goes on.

The driving mechanics are solid enough but that is about as good as it gets as the rest of the game feels surprisingly out of date.

As far as street or arcade-style basketball games go, this is a far cry from what you'd expect. Taking too many strides towards "legitimate" basketball loses all of the charm, and frankly the fun-factor, that we've come to expect from this genre.

A retro-style beat 'em up without the retro charm, Raging Justice attempts to bring a dormant genre back to life with mixed results. Unfortunately, it just isn't as much fun as you'd hope it would be. So near, and yet so far, you'll be yearning for Streets of Rage in no time at all.

This game brings back a lot of memories but fails to provide many out and out laughs. The game is also remarkably short and easy even on the toughest settings, so will not really provide any long term appeal. Rent it for a nice homage to some classics but never imagine it will be join them in the upper echelons of gaming goodness.

A perfect game for kids, especially with four players, but the simplistic gameplay and rather small levels may soon begin to grate on everyone else. Plus for every unique idea there are a bunch of others that seems to be repeated over and over again. Disney Universe is a fun diversion but nothing more than that.

For every step forward the latest LEGO game takes, it takes another step back. Disappointing, to say the least.

Still a fun movie game but one that is little more than an add on pack to what has come before. Surely it would make more sense to release new questions as DLC rather than releasing an unnecessary, and overpriced, new product that has very little in the way of extras. The online mode is a nice addition but is simply not enough to warrant a purchase.

It is fun for a while, but despite the epic landscapes and chance to control (even fleetingly) the heroes of the Middle-Earth, once that first half an hour is over you’ll be looking elsewhere for your fun.

This game is a mash-up of a few successful ideas but as a finished product it never quite adds up to the sum of its parts. You may well find it fun to blast through in co-op, but don't expect it to leave you with any lasting memories.

The Force Unleashed II never really gets to the same heights as its predecessor and it almost feels like a sequel was rushed out just for the sake of it, as the story and combat never really feels that fleshed out. There is still some fun to be had, but it's almost inevitable that you'll become bored of the game by the time you finish it, which says something considering it only lasts a few hours.

The story never really takes off and the characters are a bit one-dimensional, plus the lack of anything other than the main quest to occupy your attention is a let down.

Captain America: Super Solider could have been far more entertaining than it turned out to be. The supposed sandbox style setup is actually far emptier and shallower than it should be, and the whole game consists of repeating the self-same combat and timed jumping sections over and over again. You will blitz through Captain America: Super Soldier in five hours and still feel like your time would have been better spent elsewhere. Another movie tie-in 'gem'.

That smile eventually turned into a neutral look as I plodded through the predictable levels. In the end, I just wanted the act to be over so I could play something else.

GI Joe is a fun shoot ‘em up for a short while, but then you will realize that you can get pretty much the same kind of action from any number of arcade titles. The action soon gets repetitive and you will have no urge to play the game again, at least having a buddy along for the ride makes things a bit more bearable.

To be honest, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is a disjointed mess. The promising early screens have, once again, been nothing but a false dawn and the shockingly brief story is barely worth a rental let alone a full purchase. The game may look nice at times, and have a thoroughly enjoyable multiplayer offering, but that in no way makes up for a mere three hour campaign, zero plot and two characters completely lacking in charisma.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is arrogant and patronising ... which would not be a problem if the game was amazing; but with flawed controls, repetitive action and an extremely short experience overall, this was never going to live up to its own delusions of grandeur.

As a new franchise, Capcom’s Dark Void does a lot of things right and has quite a few nice ideas, and for that we can praise it. However, its shortcomings bring those nice ideas crashing back down to earth. With no replay value and boasting an awkward and sub-standard ground combat mechanic, it’s hard to see how the short 8 hour campaign is going to justify its price tag. There are a few nice set-pieces and the jetpack gameplay is a whole host of fun, but unfortunately that’s not really enough these days. For every moment of brilliance, there is a moment of mind-numbing gun-combat or a repetitive “haven’t I just done this?” moment.

Destroy All Humans! is never better than when you're carrying out the remit of the game's title. When you're doing stealth missions, it's not nearly as fun. As far as its remake credentials are concerned, meanwhile, this is a perfectly solid, serviceable piece of entertainment, if somewhat unremarkable. That said, if you lapped up Destroy All Humans! fifteen years ago, you'll no doubt be more than happy to do it all over again.

All in all, the Knothole Island pack is an enjoyable romp, however, it is short ... short as hell, and just when you really start to get in to it, the quest line wraps up and you are left wanting more.

Another dose of Supermassive’s choose-your-own horror, lacking in scares.

The game isn't downright awful, but there is little to distinguish it from any other action game we've seen, save the Transformers brand attached to it. Yet another movie tie-in with endless possibilities, that does not take advantage of anything it's given.

Redfall is perhaps one of Bethesda and Arkane Austin's most ordinary titles. A perfectly competent first-person shooter that does little to raise itself above the competition. The perfect Game Pass game that's not worth the money, but is worth a casual weekend of play.

Taking on some heavy subject matter, Black The Fall has moments that will live in the memory once it's all over. And while Sand Sailor's game might be on the brief side and occasionally frustrating, it's also perfectly fine. But that's about the long and short of it.

High On Life is easily Squanch Games’ most ambitious project, but aside from the environments and the world-building which match that ambition, the first-person shooter itself is incredibly generic, and not funny enough to make up for it.

Splatterhouse effortlessly fulfils its remit as a shlocky, enjoyable but utterly disposable third-person brawler, which is unashamedly bloody, gratuitous, violent, sweary and brutal. While we love all of these things, they're not really delivered in an especially smart or knowing way.

From a design perspective, Cloudpunk is fabulous. Stunning soundtrack, a lovely little voxel-art world, but the game itself (and the bugs! So many bugs!) don’t really inspire like the world itself. In truth, it gets incredibly repetitive and rather boring the longer the games goes on, and the narrative isn’t strong enough to get its hooks into you.

LocoCycle is unhinged madness, and impossible not to like.

A better presented package overall, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter is a small step forward for the series, but still in serious need of polish and a greater level of cohesion between its disparate parts. Fewer mini-games and more sleuthing would have been preferable and played to the game's strengths. As it is, The Devil's Daughter is a solid Sherlock yarn, but one that falls well short of greatness.

A flight game that never quite takes off, mainly due to the fact everything feels like it has been done on a tight budget and, more importantly, that everything feels a little bit laboured. The campaign never really gets going, the multiplayer is so-so and only the co-op offers any real fun, mainly because that's what co-op is all about. Damage Inc.: Pacific Squadron WWII is a generic flight game designed to sell a peripheral, so you'll get just as much enjoyment out of the game as that.

Enjoyable in a mad, pantomime sort of way, Resident Evil Village feels like a pretty significant step back from Resident Evil VII, and a toe back into the absurd. It's a game you're unlikely to forget in a hurry, for entirely the wrong reasons.

While not bad enough to be nuked from orbit, Aliens: Fireteam Elite regrettably falls short of what I'd hoped for from the franchise, especially seven years on from Alien: Isolation, which remains the high watermark. A lack of atmosphere, tension, and interesting stuff to do beyond shooting things, makes for a somewhat disappointingly flat experience.

Showing signs of early promise, Battleborn very quickly becomes a chore, its repetitive story and paltry selection of multiplayer content putting the nail in its coffin after about 10-15 hours or so. That's assuming you even have the perseverance to stick around for that long. Battleborn is a disappointment.

Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey is an experimental indie game that through all its issues and idiosyncrasies, can be fun for anyone seeking a survival game with a difference.

Golf With Your Friends is good for a laugh, and the more people you can get involved, the more fun you'll have. The concept is fantastic, but the execution is a little lackluster, resulting in a title that just about makes the par.

It's not bad, but it's not great either.

Last year, we noted that WWE 2K17 was a marginally better game than 2K16 was. We could say the same thing about WWE 2K18. It is marginally better. But given that it recycles the same old gameplay mechanics and doesn't add enough to the tried and tested template, it's hard to really recommend WWE 2K18. Been there, done that. Next year, Yuke's needs to give WWE 2K a firm dropkick directly to its lycra-clad arse.

The Outlast Trials is almost entirely devoid of fun as a solo experience. Add friends or other random players, however, and there's ample enjoyment to be had fighting through the unrelenting horror together. As long as you have the stomach for all that blood, guts, mutilation, death, and unsettling imagery, of course.

Don’t get me wrong, See The Future is an enjoyable couple of hours, but for $7, you’re probably better off getting a goldfish … it might have more life in it.

Game of Thrones is definitely worth a look if you have the patience to make it past the dull opening hours. If you're a fan of the books or the show, you'll enjoy the references to the wider lore, but you might enjoy the stilted combat, poor visuals and abhorrent voice acting a lot less. Hardened Game of Thrones fans need only apply.

Like the hardware it's running on, the F1 series is showing its age and seems to be running out of ideas. Fingers crossed that 2015's next-gen edition is the upgrade it needs to be.

I did enjoy my time rolling with Circle during his journey to complete himself. The story was great, the graphics matched the simple premise of the game, and rolling through the game's beautiful scenes while listening to its relaxing music was a great experience. But with its high peaks, there are also low valleys that I just cannot get past. Tough to follow dialog bubbles really disconnected me from the story at times, and frustrating sequences like the magnetic fields and cloud hopping really hurt the entire experience overall.

A Metal Gear game in name only, Survive is a decent – though often frustrating - survival game with a few unique tricks up its sleeve. While the Metal Gear name brings with it a certain weight of expectation, as long as you don't go in expecting Metal Gear Solid 6, you'll be fine.

Despite being held back by pesky bugs, The Occupation is nonetheless an enjoyable and immersive game that handles weighty subject matter with aplomb.

Spectra is good clean fun, providing just the right amount of challenge without ever feeling unfair.

What looks like a bright and breezy game turns out to be an incredibly stiff challenge that can occasionally be hugely rewarding. More often than not, however, The Escapists is about as pleasurable as a swift kick in the bollocks.

Burst Limit was a poor start for DBZ’s future with the 360, but it could have been worse. The art stays true to the series as do the cutscenes.

Racing across the USA for a cash prize is a great concept, and perhaps there's a Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay collaboration in there somewhere. Or possibly there's a sequel that can inject some variety and fun into proceedings, rather than a succession of thankless, exhausting rubber-band races against faceless opponents and stereotypical rivals. Need for Speed: The Run does generate some memorable highlights, but they're simply too few and far between.

A disappointing entry in the Lost Planet series that occasionally shows flashes of potential, but ultimately ends up being marred by numerous problems, Lost Planet 3 manages to eke out a mildly compelling story and a solid multiplayer mode. More akin to the first game, Lost Planet 3 will nonetheless leave you cold.

A fairly mediocre follow-up to the original not so much in terms of content, but the sports you're left to play and how they play. Online play is a great addition, as is more voice control, and the darts and the golf are great fun while they last, but the skiing is way too simple, American Football is dire, tennis is a substandard version of table tennis from the original and baseball is barely passable. So yeah, not exactly blowing us away.

If Blades of Fire manages to strike a chord, it won't be for its narrative, nor its world, but its violence.

Last seen swinging into a time portal towards the bargain bin, we'd recommend you save your cash until it gets there. Spider-Man: Edge of Time is not especially terrible but is far more mundane than a hero of Spider-Man's ilk deserves.

In attempting to start over and give PES its most substantial revamp in a long time, Konami has given the franchise a much-need shot in the arm. There's a lot more to like here than previous, but PES 2011 still feels like an also-ran that's still in dire need of some additional refinement and some of that old fluid magic that once made PES sheer footballing alchemy.

The Dragon Ball series has been trying to peddle long range, multi-tiered combat for quite some time now and it never seems to pull it off. The controls and combos in Raging Blast 2 can be fiddly at the best of times and fights can become decidedly one-sided which is annoying, even when it's in your favour.

Flawed it may be, but Simulacra is an interesting thriller in which you get to play detective. The found phone concept is a smart hook, while the storytelling delivers a yarn that will keep you engaged from beginning to end.

Bland and uninspired, the achievement list will make for easy gamerscore points, but it won't be very inspiring in the process.

After the brilliant Lair of the Shadow Broker episode though, it's a shame that BioWare ends Mass Effect 2's run on such a substandard piece of DLC... a piece of DLC that strips everything that we loved from the main game and left us with nothing more than a run-and-gun shooter.

While we would have liked to see the Gex Trilogy scale up the resolution and bring the gameplay more up to date, it's nice to be able to play Gex, Gex: Enter the Gecko, and Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko on modern platforms, with some neat refinements for good measure.

State of Decay 2 is a perfectly fine game. Nothing more, nothing less. Sure, it may be buggy and it might be a step back from the original, but it is nevertheless still a fun game, albeit one that doesn’t really motivate you to keep playing. To keep grinding. I imagine it’s what a real zombie apocalypse would be like, we just wanted more from a game about it.

After a rocky start, No Straight Roads settles into a rhythm, but its action is off-key, in spite of its edible looks and funky soundtrack. Regrettably, No Straight Roads is an action game that doesn't quite hit the high notes, with execution that falls some way short.

LA Cops is a neat game of cops and criminals that's just too short-lived and lacking. The 70s style is a nice touch and the partner dynamic adds a strategic bent (even if we did mostly just use the second cop as an extra life) to what is otherwise a fairly sterile twin-stick shooter.

Despite its decent presentation and simplistic gameplay mechanics, Avatar is as shallow as the kid’s end of a Hobbit’s swimming pool. Whilst there is nothing overly wrong with the gameplay mechanics per se, after you’ve spent 8 hours going back and forth planting explosives or collecting objects for your mission objective, you’ll be ready to use Avatar as a coaster.

A handsome remake that loses some of the original’s power.

While we'd hoped for better things from Aspyr's remastered Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection, this is nonetheless an adequate way to revisit a couple of shooter greats from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I mean the mid 2000s. No doubt further patches (there's already been a significant one) will improve things somewhat.

Afterparty is a disappointing follow-up to Oxenfree, one held up from being an absolute car crash thanks to two wonderfully written protagonists and some crackling dialogue between the two. With lame mini-games, bugs galore, and a story that promises so much and delivers so little, Afterparty will be an Afterthought in no-time at all.

Little more than a cash in on the first Lips and one that I would only recommend for people who do not own the original, but even then you are hard done to as you would be missing out on better songs and more achievements. Madness.

Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut isn't a bad game, it's just not a particularly great one. If you're screaming out for a space combat game in the Colony Wars mould, however, this will certainly fit the bill. Just don't expect to be playing Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut for a particularly long time after you've beaten the missions the first time around.

Buried beneath Lake's innumerable mundane tasks are some really cool characters and stories. It’s just a shame you have to dig deep to really reach them.

A disappointing end to a promising tale, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a turgid and inconsistent sequel that fails to live up to its forebear.

Bithell Games assumes your passion for Tron, but what is here stands on its own, though it doesn't truly succeed on its own.

A solid, precision-based time trial racer, Phantom Spark won't satisfy those WipEout and F-Zero cravings, but it will keep you occupied for a fair few hours, if you manage to dial in to its 'just-one-more-go' wavelength.

Ubisoft Toronto has done a fine job in bringing a broken, near-future London to grim life in Watch Dogs: Legion, and playing as anyone you like has a certain appeal, but ultimately, it doesn't quite work as well as one might have hoped.

A solid but sadly unpolished Lovecraft-inspired detective story, The Sinking City has all of the key ingredients to be something compelling, but it's rough around the edges. Dodgy combat drowns an otherwise robust horror-tinged bout of sleuthing, drenched in intrigue.

SnowRunner is a slow game, requiring a lot of patience to get through. If you're willing to give it the time investment it asks, then you will find a satisfying experience here, with each contract you take, and each road you traverse, unfolding into one big puzzle to tackle. A hoard of customisation options also allows you to tinker with your trucks to your heart's content. If that sounds up your street, then SnowRunner might be for you, but don't expect to get anything done fast.

I wish I could report that Zockrates Laboratories served up a playground of emergent sparks, but with such a promising trick I couldn’t help but hunger for more.