There isn't anything particularly bad about Battlefield Hardline, it's solid enough, but one cannot help but lean towards those initial detractors who were very vocal in the run up to launch. Despite a clearly big effort and no doubt a ton of money, we are still without a decent Battlefield campaign and what we are left with is a Battlefield off shoot with no long term life in it.So there we have it, a Battlefield game with weak single player and solid if underwhelming multiplayer - absolutely no one saw this coming.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China is sadly a bit of a let down. Gorgeous to look at, fiddly to control and a tad dull to experience, this is yet another AC iteration that falls flat. A bold idea, poorly executed.
A fun and educational city builder which unfortunately drags thing out a little too long.
The baby brother of the world's most successfull football management sim has plenty of depth along with the trademark gameplay, but it is unfortunately hampered throughout by a clunky user experience.
State of Decay 2 feels very much like a remake of the original (or how it should have been released initially) rather than a new game, complete with bugs galore and tedious long term gameplay.
A beautiful JRPG throwback with deep combat, held back by punishing difficulty spikes and far too many technical issues on PS4.
Overcooked Special Edition on the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic slice of old school local player co-operative fun.
Offering many hours of solid city building gameplay, with the potential to play from your couch and bringing to the table an actual campaign rather than just countless sandboxes, Aven Colony is an excellent little title, which we can particularly recommend for console players.
A solid return to its roots, Call of Duty WWII reminds us what made us all fall in love Call of Duty in the first place. It ticks all the boxes which is both a blessing and a curse. Good fun and worth your time but offers nothing exceptional.
Destiny 2 is a better game than the original but more akin to a reboot than a full sequel.
Embrace the grind!
For Honor brings us a surprisingly deep and downright fun co-op / multiplayer fighter held back from greatness by an incoherent, mundane single-player campaign and the use of peer to peer networking for online matches.
If you are new to this sort of thing, it's a good introduction but be prepared for a tough experience.
A solid entry but it's getting a bit tiresome now.
Battlefront is a fantastic game for a certain type of person. Its dip in, dip out accessibility, matched with the obvious lashings of love and detail from a development team that clearly respect the franchise and its fans - it is absolutely perfect for fans of the original trilogy who these days have limited game time.
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".
Sunset Overdrive is solid if underwhelming romp in parts which admirably sets out to poke fun at itself, along with the genre, and inject some joy into proceedings. At times it does, too often it doesn't and it ultimately comes off as a mix of Jak and Daxter along with Tony Hawk minus a lot of the tight gameplay that made those successful. It's really not a system seller, making the Sunset console an oddity but it is a solid open world franchise template which will hopefully improve if we see a sequel in time. Decent but not quite as much fun as it should be.
Plants Vs Zombies is bright, colourful, lovely to look at and fun to play - it's the third person shooter no-one knew they wanted and may go a little way to filling the small gap before the big triple A games start to drop.
Unlike some of the better previous titles like LEGO Batman 2 and LEGO Marvel, LEGO Batman 3 feels more claustrophobic, smaller in scale and lacks that open feel that the aforementioned titles gave us. There is a lot of content for your money, albeit nothing new and the little ones won't be disappointed but it just isn't as good as previous efforts. A handful of poor design decisions, the odd ropey celebrity cameo and a smattering of technical issues along with a small dose of LEGO game fatigue all add up to a slightly underwhelming experience. Good, but don't expect evolution.
Co-op is always a hoot and Zombie Army Trilogy proves that your game doesn't have to be a massive triple AAA, technically breathtaking piece of pseudo art to be a success. Sure it is rough around the edges, although less than it used to be on the PC and of course the gameplay along with the environments will get a little tiring after a while, but Rebellion seem to get this and have priced accordingly. For at most, £24.99 (UK RRP), you are getting Nazi zombies, slow mo sniping, bone-breaking impact close ups, robust four-player co-op, some Horde modes and to top it all off you get to shoot Hitler in the nads. No masterpiece then, but perfect Friday night entertainment.