The Digital Fix

Zoo Tycoon is challenge free but a fun, fuzzy, warm experience that could just be the change of pace that some gamers would welcome, particularly those with small children. Reasonably deep and utilising the Xbox One pad really well, Zoo Tycoon can be fun if severely limited in challenge. It remains one of the most random launch titles of all time but is well worth a purchase if you are looking for something that isn't a first person twitch fest.

Forza Motorsport 5 is quite simply car porn running at 1080p, 60fps. Visually stunning and without a rival on the next gen stage. If you are looking for car porn along with a cold, distant racing simulator then grab a copy as quickly as humanly possible, you will fall in love with Forza Motorsport 5. However if you are a more casual player of racing games, sadly with the scaled back content, stiff driving, dreadful soundtrack, microtransactions and completely unengaging career mode, you will need to wait for a racer that is actually fun. So sadly whilst it looks absolutely gorgeous the overall experience leaves you feeling a little bit cold, the feeling that you are simply going through the motions consumes you and how could we ever forgot "Press Y now to level faster".

Say what you want about Sony, but their ability to dig through the randomness of third-party content and produce the odd anomaly is almost unrivalled. And really, 'anomaly' is a great way to describe the latest uncovering, HumaNature Studios' Doki-Doki Universe. Ambitiously releasing on PS Vita, PS3 and PS4 at the same time Doki-Doki Universe is a tale about humanity, about self-realisation, about magicing items out of a non-existent hat. It's also about flying poo, but more about that later. Hold on to your (hopefully real) hats, this is about to get crazy. Again.

Super Mario 3D World is a joy from beginning to end, and is the best game for the Wii U so far. The game features the same perfected platforming mechanics and endlessly creative level designs that fans have come to expect from the icon of gaming. It may not be as grandiose and epic in the vein of the Galaxy series and does perhaps feel a little too familiar to 3D Land, but this would have been a much stronger title to kickstart Nintendo's first foray into high definition gaming. It's possible that with the pretty frequent releases of Mario games in the last couple of years may lead some to feel fatigued with the franchise, but nevertheless 3D World is an astounding game, and one of this year's very best titles.

Knack seems to have no ambition beyond wowing you with rendering lots of objects, making it feel like an overlong tech demo. If parents are looking for some cartoon fun to keep the children occupied... well... the PlayStation 4 has a knack for playing blurays, too.

By no means a bad game, Shadow Fall instead feels consumable, there to be experienced and then forgotten. Enjoyment is there in spades, although each moment of awe is fleeting with no lasting impact. Killzone has finally become part of the Sony legacy - not as a franchise of compelling depth, nor in delivering iconic gameplay. Instead its legacy will be one of visual fidelity - a legacy that Shadow Fall attempts to rise above but to which it seems eternally bound.

Insert caption here because I really can't be bothered.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is easily the best handheld Zelda title since the days of the Game Boy Color, as well as being the strongest and most focused entry in the legendary series for easily the last ten years. It's entirely feasible that in the future the game will be mentioned alongside the likes of A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time as part of the series' greatest hits. The game feels fresh whilst still remaining true to the series' roots, filled with nostalgic throwbacks and making you genuinely excited for what direction the series will head in next. Going back to the drawing board, Eiji Aonuma and his team have crafted a truly amazing game that reminds you why you were a Zelda fan in the first place.

XCOM: Enemy Within should be an essential purchase for fans of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, or even those who have not experienced this brilliant remake. With its many additions and changes it provides fans with a revitalised campaign filled with clever nuances and potentially increasing the game's lifetime by several magnitudes. It is not without its blunders, however.

Yes it screams "I used to be a Kinect game," yes it's limited in story as well as combat and yes, you've played many, many games like this previously, better games with more systems and gameplay but...but...crucially, Ryse: Son of Rome looks breathtaking. The perfect launch game, doing nothing new, arguably less so than current gen games but adequately showing off the new hardware - think of it as a tech demo with quick time event executions and you will not be disappointed.

Redshirt isn't going to appeal to everyone, but those who like the balancing act and resource management that go with management sims will find this is a solid game. There will be feelings of repetitiveness during the all too brief periods when you've managed to juggle everything into going well, and you'll find yourself just going through the motions to advance time until your next social or career crisis. Whilst you'll need to be a sci-fi fan to get a lot of the humour, this will actually be less important to your enjoyment of the game than a jaded view of the inanity appearing on your Facebook wall on a daily basis. To fans of turn-based management sims this is an entertaining insight into a future in which social networking rules every aspect of our lives rather than being a place just to quote song lyrics. Although, in Redshirt's vision of the future, people are still spending a lot of their time doing just that as well.

Battlefield 4 puts up a worthy fight for the title of this generation's top first-person shooter. The innovative features are nice touches, but ultimately don't give us the glimpse into the future that we'd all hoped for. Instead, EA and DICE have put all their eggs in one basket with an unbalanced package that shines with its multiplayer, but flounders with its single-player.

If you're upgrading your console soon you may want to hold off as a next-gen version is due to drop shortly, but if you're into hoops and plan on sticking with your current machine into the new year and beyond, this is a must-buy, even if you already have the previous game in the series. Who knows what the next console generation will bring, with 2K marching triumphantly onwards and EA bringing back NBA Live for the first time in five years, but for now, this is just the best version of the best video game basketball experience you're going to find.

Burial at Sea might be a challenger for the best-ever narrative-based DLC yet presented to the gaming community at large.

It's Lego, it's Marvel, it's pretty awesome - a must for any kid who loves The Avengers, X-Men, Spiderman, hell there is too many to name! There are still some issues that have come across from previous Lego games preventing it from being a perfect experience but its audience won't care one little bit. Hulk smash!

Outside of the new social features Pokemon Y and its counterpart do largely stick to the traditional JRPG formula and mechanics that have made the series the global phenomenon it has become. Hardcore Poke fans will still find a lot to like in this instalment and even players who may have lost their way with the series might find the new features and major visual upgrades worth jumping back on the wagon for. It may be iterative and lacking in radical innovations but Pokemon Y is still immensely fun, even if catching them all from a fresh start does feel more than a little daunting.

How do you follow up one of the most successful debut games of all times? Well, by making a sequel of course. But what about after that? How does messing around as a co-developer on a few spin-offs strike you? Hardly taxing though, is it? Regardless at the rising sense of apprehension you may feel, sooner or later you're going to have to strike out and make something new, become innovative again, create rather than repeat. Developers Media Molecule have only just reached this final phase, having spent the last five years playing around with LittleBigPlanet iterations and derivatives. Their first steps with a new intellectual property have been brave ones, leading them onto the Vita and into the paper world of Tearaway.

The best Skylanders game to date and a must for all fans of the franchise, young and maybe old

Call of Duty: Ghosts does not tamper with the formula, fans will receive what they expect yet, with the world moving on to the next generation of consoles, many could perhaps be wanting more and Call of Duty: Ghosts is too formulaic to offer this. It is a victim of its own institution in a world that is quickly moving forwards.

Everything adds up to what could have been.