Overwatch is ready to join the likes of Quake and Team Fortress 2 in the pantheon of greats.
Homefront: The Revolution has a distinctive personality and its share of good ideas, but overall the execution is a mess. Cool weapon customisation options are no substitute for thrilling combat, while the exploration stuff is spoilt by poor movement and controls. A storyline that already struggles for credibility isn't helped by charmless characters and cringe-worthy dialogue, and visual glitches and poor AI only make the game feel less than finished. The result? A game with big ambitions that fails to hit the mark.
Homefront: The Revolution has plenty of ambition and a handful of good ideas, but it's spoilt by the clumsy execution. Much as we love the mix of gameplay styles and those classy customisable guns, we can't get over the lifeless gunplay, clumsy movement and woeful AI.
Buy it for the brilliant single-player, then stick around for the multiplayer and community content. You won't regret that you did.
Most of its problems are fixable, but Gearbox really needs to fix them and serve up some more content if it wants to turn Battleborn into an ongoing hit concern.
Thrilling, moving, exhilarating and ambitious, A Thief's End is a storming climax to the Nathan Drake saga. If it's the last of its breed, it's one of the best.
It might not have the arcade purity of Resogun, but Housemarque has crafted a genre mash-up smash. This is a smart, addictive twin-stick shooter with no shortage of adrenaline, yet it also works as a compelling action RPG with potential for a lot of co-op mileage. Alienation has short-term appeal and eye-candy spectacle, but also replay value and long-term depth. It's furiously entertaining AND has the legs to keep you coming back.
You'll fall for Alienation's great twitch gameplay, but it's with its RPG-like elements that the hooks really sink in. Alienation has created something that's part twin-stick blaster, part sci-fi dungeon crawler, with all the looting, levelling and upgrading that implies. Limited locations and the repetitive shoot 'em up gameplay might make it a less enticing prospect a few weeks in, but right now it's impossible to resist.
This isn't a good-looking, sophisticated or hugely innovative game. The graphics are basic and the controls can be tricky. Switching cameras is a nightmare when you can't remember the positions, making the business of stemming the tide of bots a little more stressful than it should be. Yet Starfox Guard turns out to be weirdly addictive. As a bundled extra it's well worth a go. As a £10 extra, it's still just about worth a punt.
Sometimes great, sometimes rough but mostly patchy, Star Fox Zero is depressingly mediocre. Fox and the gang deserve much better next time around.
Forget any sneering Pokémon comparisons. Yo-Kai Watch looks sure to be a monster hit with the 3DS's school age audience, but it might also make a fair few friends among older gamers. It's not the deepest or richest game that Level 5 has ever come up with, with character development linear and limited, but it's smart, innovative and funny. You won't grow to love it any less.
More than just a remake, this feels like a lap of honour for Ratchet and Clank, with all the frantic action, bizarre weaponry and cheeky innuendo a fan could wish for. Being picky, you might say that it sticks a little close to the old templates, but at least it does so on a bigger stage with a spectacular sense of scale. Only time, sales and the movie's box office will tell if we'll see more of this dynamic duo, but I hope so. This is a pretty good way to make a new start.
Quantum Break's no travesty of Order: 1886 proportions, but its gameplay, while fun, can't reach the level of its stellar graphics. Enjoy it for its engaging time-control gunplay, its spectacular stutters and its sci-fi storyline, but this isn't the landmark entertainment experience that Microsoft once promised.
Battleborn has flaws but it also has potential. With time and the right attitude, it could be brilliant, but it's going to take a little work first.
This is a strong second episode with plenty to offer The Walking Dead fans, but it does nothing to battle any criticisms you might have of Telltale’s handling of interaction, nor any concerns you have about the length of each instalment. Play it for Michonne, the strong atmosphere and the drama, but don’t expect a game that challenges you on any other level.
This isn’t a bad port of the Wii U original, and if you like Dynasty Warriors and love Zelda then the addition of new characters and content might be hard to resist. Yet Hyrule Warriors struggles to represent the best of Warriors or the best of Zelda, making for an awkward hybrid that’s not actually all that much fun.
Not content with putting Tekken in a Pokémon skin, Pokkén Tournament does its best to bridge the two worlds in one innovative fighter. In terms of the core combat it's succeeded, and Poké-enthusiasts will love to watch their favourites battle it out in a whole new way. However, Pokkén Tournament doesn't go quite far enough to capture the exploration, collection and training aspects of the classic series. It's going to please an awful lot of Poké-fans, but it's not quite gonna catch 'em all.
Like Destiny, The Division ruthlessly exploits the pleasures of the RPG, MMO and shooter to create one hideously addictive feedback loop. Combine that with the excitement of demanding co-op play and it can be an unstoppably thrilling game.
Despite a few technical issues, this is the definitive version of Heavy Rain. The problem is that Heavy Rain now feels less like gaming's glorious, cinematic future, and more like a semi-interactive cul-de-sac; a string of scenes, some stronger than others, propelled along by quick time events. It's just about worth playing for its best bits, but other, less visually accomplished dramas do a better job of immersing you in their tale.
Twilight Princess HD is an impress remaster of one of the most divisive Zeldas. As with The Wind Waker HD, genuine new stuff is relatively minor, but Nintendo has been smart enough to fix some of the original's flaws. It's still an odd, slightly inconsistent Zelda where not everything works perfectly, but it's also huge, beautifully-designed, fascinating and immersive. By Zelda standards it falls short of being a masterpiece. By any other standards, it's still an amazing game.