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When the Wii U was released, it brought with it a handful of ports and "enhanced" editions, partly because they were awesome games and partly because Nintendo wanted to prove that the Wii U was just as capable of playing "grown up" games as any of the other consoles. That they didn't need to worry about proving themselves in that way, and that many of the quickly-rushed ports actually seemed to prove the opposite probably didn't come into it.

The Saints Row series started out as a free-roaming criminal rampage game that was very close to Grand Theft Auto, but by the time Saints Row The Third showed up the developers had pretty much abandoned the idea of edgy crime drama and made a game where gamers could drive around on the Light Cycle from Tron, shooting people with a Shark Gun while their pal Burt Reynolds helped them beat up zombies.

Transformers: Prime is a successful animated series that, this year, will be seeing its first TV movie. Built around a small group of kids and their relationship with the Autobots, Transformers: Prime - The Game is the first video game based around this specific area of the IP.

These days, it seems like everyone is trying to breathe new life into the zombie genre. Most developers are looking for the angle that nobody has done before, trying to make zombies terrifying all over again and forcing people to sneak around in the darkness lest they find their tender brains being chewed. What happened to all the fun we used to have with zombies, where we were the ones with all the power and they were just rotten targets, ripe for the shooting? Splatter brings it all back.

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee was a PlayStation staple. Along with Rayman, I'm not sure there was a single person I knew that didn't have that iconic green sewn-up mouth grinning within their PS1 collection. When the Oddworld series jumped to the Xbox, abandoning not only much of the userbase but also, in a small way at first, Abe himself. Stranger's Wrath ended up under-performing and would have been lost to time if not for Just Add Water and their release of Stranger's Wrath HD.

I've only tried one other Vanillaware game, and that's Muramasa Rebirth. While I did understand the appeal, it was still an experience that left me feeling cold, and my expectations for their next release plummeted. Regardless, I still felt like I should give their next effort a chance. I'm glad I did, too, because Dragon's Crown is one of the finest games I've played all year.

In 2004, Sony Computer Entertainment acquired a somewhat unknown Amsterdam based studio called Guerrilla Games. At the time, the studio had really only produced one game: a multiplatform third-person shooter set in the Vietnam War called Shellshock: Nam '67. Though Shellshock went mostly unheard of, one title of theirs began to stir some excitement amongst gamers, generating considerable hype: Killzone.

Since Ratchet and Clank propelled Insomniac into the role of "Masters of Weaponry," they've done everything they could to hold onto the title. Fuse is the video game form of their attempts. From the very beginning, mad weaponry is not only a feature of the game but the game itself, embodying not just your actions and means of attack, but the plot and design as well. Unfortunately, this isn't enough.

Dynasty Warriors 8 isn't a huge improvement over Dynasty Warriors 7, but with its remained focus on a cinematic form of story telling, and with a far more technically sound gameplay, Dynasty Warriors 8 manages to be the best, most accessible game in the franchise so far.

007 Legends was released on Wii U at the end of last year, and if it had been the only first person shooter available on the system, it might have been enough to kill the genre entirely. It's not that it's actively bad - not when compared with the likes of Ride to Hell: Retribution - but it might be the very definition of generic shooter. The Bond licence has had some stinkers attached to it, but this one is something else.