Visually stunning but wholly underwhelming, Tokyo 42 fails to capitalise on its inventive premise.
If you've got some friends to play with, give Wildlands a bash, but better open-world games are out there.
Infinite Warfare takes the series to its logical conclusion, delivering one of the best single-player campaigns in ages. But the trademark multiplayer modes need a serious overhaul.
Despite the weak career mode, the depth of Planet Coaster's tools and the strength of its community make it a thoroughly engrossing experience. Old-school PC gamers can rest easy: this is the theme park game you've been waiting for.
Mafia 3 is a classic case of style over substance, where its slick setting and story can't make up for tired open-world gameplay. What a disappointment.
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.
Your enjoyment of Dead Rising 4 will entirely depend on how long you can tolerate its multiple novelties. The novelty of killing thousands of zombies (again); of screwing around with crafting silly weapons and wearing dumb outfits (again); of returning to Willamette (again), this time with its Christmas theme; and of playing as Frank West (again).
While titles like Witcher 3 and Metal Gear Solid V have innovated on the open-world adventure, Syndicate is stuck in the past, in more ways than one
Excellent script, great voice acting and convincing animations bring the game to life – but they can't redeem the terminal repetitiveness of the gameplay
Despite its less impressive iterations over the years, the Need for Speed name has delivered some truly excellent games - from Underground's street racing to Shift's wannabe-simulation, all the way to Hot Pursuit's absurd action. But rather than build upon this rich diverse history of fun, Ghost Games has sucked the fun out of a game that should epitomise the outlandishness of going really bloody fast. When you could be playing Driveclub, or Forza Horizon 2, or Project Cars, or even the beautiful and superiorly quick Forza Motorsport 6, offering a racer without speed? That's suicide.
It's never that V-Rally 4 is actively bad, but the 16-year wait since V-Rally 3 is no way near worth it. No part of the overall experience surpasses the benchmarks set by more polished, mechanically complex, spectacular or enjoyable racing games from both the arcade and sim camps. Even compared to the universally disappointing Dirt 4, V-Rally 4 feels like it's missing more than a few tricks.
At its core, Catalyst's expansion to an open world is a misfire. While side objectives like time trials, dead drops and an entire asynchronous multiplayer functionality make for a longer playtime, it comes at the expense of refinement. Catalyst's direction feels like the opposite of what people have been quite explicitly asking for since the original game came out. As a result, while its breathtaking leaps and adrenaline filled ascents are great in their own rights, Mirror's Edge feels like it has spent the last eight years standing still rather than moving forward.
LA Cops has some cool ideas, but the frustratingly shoddy execution works completely at odds with the experience the game is trying to create.
In short, For Honor is bloated in a way it doesn't need to be, but in a way that's completely unsurprising for Ubisoft. A ton of cosmetic upgrades and progression rankings can't save it from being an ultimately narrow experience. It may not wholly satisfy anyone craving an enormous single-player campaign or competitive multiplayer, but if you want a surprisingly competent fighting game that's capable of offering some great, tense and skill-based encounters, For Honor has enough to offer. Ubisoft may have marketed the game as a big, broad battler, but in truth it's just about you and your opponent and that's where it is at its best.
That's the nature of golf, then, but with the magic of Mario lining the seams, it feels like this game doesn't know quite where it wants to land.
Much of what Star Wars Battlefront 2 offers is a response to the negatives of the 2015 reboot.
Latest expansion doesn't move the game on, but has lots to like for returning fans
Eidos Montreal's near-future thriller presents a visually impressive dystopian playground, but a wonky narrative and some shoddy touches tarnish its potential
A likeable lead character and some beautiful visuals do their best to make up for an empty and frustrating world
The best on the track but the weakest everywhere else, F1 2015 is an inconsistent lapper.