Marvel’s Avengers is a well accomplished game and a must have for Marvel fans. All the characters are fleshed out in their personality and fighting styles and the campaign is a ride any fans of comic book movies will enjoy. I didn’t fully enjoy the combat in this game but I can get past that in order to enjoy the rest of the experience. I am sure they have left plenty of room to expand the game further with extra characters and missions to extended the longevity of the game.

State of Decay 2 is a huge step up from its predecessor. There’s a large and diverse variety of content within, all of which is upheld by well developed systems, fluid gameplay and easy to understand functionality. This isn’t going to be for everyone, however, there’s no denying that despite its niggling issues and bugs, it’s easily one of the best Microsoft exclusives in recent memory. It’s tense, action-packed and thoroughly entertaining.

Skully is a pleasant platforming experience that gives players a delightful slice of platforming and light puzzle-solving that makes for a soothing and worthwhile time. Playing as the skull does tend to feel sloppy at times due to sensitivity of the stick-control and how prone the naked-noggin is to water, but when you’re introduced to Skully’s other forms the game opens up nicely and offers you a scenic tour around an ancient naturalistic landscape that’s hard to peel your eyes away from. Skully is not breaking any ground or pushing any envelopes, but it’s not stationary either. It’s just a pleasing and simple platformer to be enjoyed, and a modest worthwhile curio that certainly deserves a look.

Vesta tends to remain enjoyable throughout the entirety of play, offering up some colorful visuals and decent puzzle design. However, this is hardly a groundbreaking experience, seeing as many aspects of play have already been better achieved elsewhere, time and time again.

I’m a big fan of competitive shooters and this definitely scratches that itch. This is the first time I’ve played search and destroy only matches. I see a lot of potential in Warface: Breakout, but if My.Games want this title to do well they need to get the Season 1 out soon and fix some of the issues that are currently in the game – feeling like you’re walking in the mud while running, foot steps sounds being hit and miss and time to kill at times feeling unfair.

The gameplay lacks finesse and refinement, serving up frustration in place of fluidity. Tennis is a game of endurance, precision and energy, three elements that AO International Tennis fails to deliver. With that in mind, its abundance of content means very little.

Sisters Royale is a fun and amusing bullet hell title that offers up some solid arcade action, but little else. The specific anime styling will either draw you in or put you off (you know what I mean), but the light-hearted tale will likely win over even the most prudish players. Some online leader boards or alternate modes wouldn’t have gone amiss, but even so I still think Sisters Royale is worth a look if you’re into, or curious about, the bullet hell genre.

Paradise Lost manages to keep the intrigue high with its alternate history tale and great environmental story-telling, but is let down by it glacier-esque pace. If you can push through that though, there is an entertaining time to be had here.

Blightbound is a couple of fixes away from being the new hardcore favourite – mechanically demanding, it plays more like a precise competitive multiplayer game than a dungeon-crawler. It is let down by copious crashing and poor pathing from the AI.

Excuse the cliché but Pupperazzi is not the dog’s bollocks – it’s the dog’s dinner. This isn’t to say Pupperazzi doesn’t possess some bright points, as its accessibility and the novelty of photographing dogs doing outlandish things is where the game’s charms shine through. However, once you dig deeper and deeper into what Pupperazzi has to offer, all that remains is a drove of simplistic and weightless objectives with no character or spirit to help salvage it. If you want a cheap and cheery photography game to spend a few hours with Pupperazzi will do in a pinch, but like an ageing show dog, the longer it goes on the more it loses its ability to entertain you.

Strong multiplayer props up an otherwise poor showing from Call of Duty this year. The combat and movement is a good as ever, but a woefully dire co-op campaign drags the experience to one of the lowest points in years, and is only mildly mitigated by the End Game extraction mode that has some good to it, albeit marred by not being the main focus of the release of Black Ops 7.

Simple, solid fun from Double Fine’s multiplayer brawler, with a charming and easy to use creation suite to boot. Matchmaking can take some time, and playing with random players is far less enjoyable than with a group of buddies, but this is still an easy recommendation for those looking to add a new game to the game night rotation.

Party Hard 2 is a brilliant sequel. Pinokl Games have improved things significantly, from the graphics and play style, to the objectives that can be completed as an alternative to killing everyone. The pace is much faster and offering multiple ways to finish a stage makes it far more enjoyable. But hey, you can still go crazy and kill everyone, just don’t forget to DANCE!

Just Die Already with its launch on consoles is a great open-world game within the first couple of hours. Within time its fun factor begins to deteriorate, and there just isn’t much to laugh at anymore. The humor has just gone stale. The difficulty in its controls and lack of features doesn’t help its cause.

There’s a lot to like about Vambrace: Cold Soul. From the gorgeous art work, through the brilliant world building and atmosphere to the deeply involved systems at play, there’s clearly been some love poured into this game. The difficulty – especially early on – and the obscure nature of some elements of the HUD are the main snags in an otherwise brilliant bit of software. If you’ve got the time (and patience), there’s a brilliant experience to be had here.

Some stunning pixel art and music compliment a fun action platforming roguelite title. The aesthetics can occasionally mask enemies, but gaining upgrades and knowledge of what’s to come remains rewarding for its brief runtime.

Scribblenauts Showdown is a lot of fun to begin with, but it doesn’t take long for repetition to sink in due to the lack of content. Despite how innovative and deep the summoning dictionary is, the price tag is too steep to justify a wholehearted recommendation. Nevertheless, this is still a solid family game that’s sure to please gamers of all ages.

Despite its short length, 39 Days to Mars is a game that certainly knows how to boggle the mind through its cleverly structured co-op puzzles. Unfortunately, these intelligently designed moments are frequently broken up by needless, senseless, and boring filler. This ultimately makes for a very hit and miss experience, one that will likely only be appreciated by puzzle enthusiasts.

While it might not be quite the same as the real thing Monster Truck Championship does a pretty good job of replicating the fun. There’s plenty to keep players coming back in the career mode, with loads of challenges to try, and parts and upgrades to unlock. The stunt modes can feel a little too easy to cheese a way to victory but the standard and drag races more than make up for any disappointment here. And plus, who doesn’t love Monster Trucks?

When Yukes and Kenny Omega stated they were looking to bring back the glory days of N64 wrestling titles I was on-board. As a fellow student of those times, there’s a clunky charm to AEW: Fight Forever with its meaty feeling moves and arcade-style action. However, those days were far longer ago than I care to think about, and younger players will have gotten used to a more fluid and fully featured sports entertainment game. If you can work around some of the more pressing quirks there’s fun to be had here, but this feels more like a base to build off of for the hopeful sequel down the line.

I came in with high expectations for this second outing in The Dark Pictures series, but came away ever so slightly underwhelmed. It looks and sounds great, and the atmosphere and tension building is excellent. Sadly the all-important characters just didn’t quite resonate with me thanks to some sudden shifts in tone between sentences, and an overall feeling of disjointedness between scenes. Little Hope may not quite live up to Man of Medan then, but it’s still a passable bit of teen horror to fill up an evening or two.

Saints Row is a new take on the franchise, one that focuses heavily on the RPG aspect of the game. It’s a fun underdog story set in the beautiful Saint Elos about this new version of the Saints. The customization options to make your boss truly your own delivers in such a remarkable fashion. However, it is the number of glitches and bugs that hurt the game’s reputation.

My Hero One’s Justice 2 is well put together and offers a variety of slick game modes. For a fan of the anime it’s sure to be a hit, but if you’re not you may not follow the story or find much to get excited about. The combat is fun, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly when you find yourself spamming the same moves.

Popular games get liberally borrowed from all the time, yet Smash Bros. seems to have avoided this somehow. Brawlout takes on this challenge, but its lack of modes, iffy character balance and poor online offerings, all fail to inspire that same spark that Mario and friends have mastered so well. The basic gameplay is OK, but without the same love, spectacle and reverence to lean on, it all falls flat.

Projection: First Light is a tough one to recommend then. On the one hand it has a lovely visual and audio style that draws us in, and the idea of the core mechanic is great. In practice though it’s too fiddly and unreliable to sustain a several hour+ title, and it likely won’t hold the attention though to its conclusion.

Windbound is a tough and mean spirited survival adventure. The concept is clever in its simplicity and it makes the game more difficult in other ways from the normal methods. The game is quite basic in its design but makes up for it in its challenge. I would have enjoyed the challenge more if the combat was handled a little better, the camera angles weren’t such a nuisance and the sailing wasn’t so slow and awkward. The pace can feel very slow at first but if you commit enough time to it you can speed things up as you progress and learn to balance survival better.

Anthem is one hell of a decent loot-shooter that boasts some ambitious mechanics. Its massively engaging combat and its flow of movement takes center stage, with its several activities, its deep lore, and its diverse and interesting world following closely behind. That said, Anthem isn’t without fault, and BioWare will need to carefully address the game’s issues alongside its community feedback to ensure they maintain player interest.

Three Fields are doing the gaming community a service by keeping the arcade racing genre alive when the big boys seem to have lost interest. Much like their previous entries, there’s a lot to like here – from the fast, responsive action to the sheer thrill of smashing rivals and reveling in that takedown camera. Sadly, its bare-bones approach to modes, its erratic physics, and its barely improved technical aspects, keep it from reaching the heights of its inspiration.