Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a graphically superb puzzler, tackling historical events that are not perhaps known to everyone and doing it in a lighthearted, yet respectful manner. Gameplay wise it's not going to challenge but the story, the characters and the emotional response that the combined product will evoke in players is easily enough to justify the asking price.
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!
The best Skylanders game to date and a must for all fans of the franchise, young and maybe old
FIFA 14 pushes the franchise forward in baby steps without providing any major surprises or new 'wow� features, yet is still streets ahead of the competition and a must for any footie fan. A solid but slight evolution of the franchise, here�s hoping that the next iteration brings us closer to perfection, word is the Xbox One/PS4 version is a ground up rebuild!
Batman: Arkham Knight is a very good game, held back from greatness by some odd design decisions.
A rough gem that is not only a great game in its own right but also acts as the perfect hype generator for Fallout 4.
...a solid addition to an already well established franchise.
Halo Wars 2 offers fans of the franchise a whole new swathe of lore and is a damn fine real time strategy to boot - all playable from the comfort of your sofa.
Watch Dogs 2 is a superior game to its predecessor and a thoroughly entertaining romp in a season light on open world offerings.
A great step for the franchise which finally lets you create your very own Skylander!
Darksiders: Warmastered Edition takes an already fantastic game, improving both the visuals and performance in the process all for a modest fee which many publishers should pay attention to.
With improved performance and the addition of co-op gameplay functionality, Lego City Undercover is elevated to the status of one of the better, more fun modern day Lego titles.
A hell of a lot of game for your money and for the most part a ton of fun, sadly it outstays its welcome leading to total fatigue as you enter the overly long unnecessary home stretch.
Victor Vran is an excellent port of a solid Diablo clone combining solid 60fps (ish) dungeon crawling with some heavily action-oriented demon-slaying gameplay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.