Even the most stalwart, traditionalist series fan should be able to appreciate A Link Between Worlds for what it is: the most interesting new Zelda game since Wind Waker.

For just over $30, you get a good four to five hours of gameplay if you take your time, more if you want to collect 100% of each area’s hidden elements. Most of that time is spent with a smile on your face and the realisation that the Vita is severely underutilised.

A more deeply integrated city, a rethinking of the controls and broader options for solving puzzles would inject some extra life into the LEGO franchise.

A technical marvel and a truly next-gen experience. Drivatar technology needs to be implemented into every game as soon as possible, and people looking for a fantastic looking driving game need look no further. Still, thanks to a pointless need to streamline the experience Turn 10 has robbed the game of some of its heart. It seems that for all their focus on recreating how a person drives, they lost sight of why.

NBA 2K14 is a truly next-gen experience -- it looks and plays amazingly, it offers a better connection to the real world of basketball than ever before and the way they've added in relationship management elements to both the MyCareer and MyGM modes makes the game feel significantly better.

One hell of a wild ride. The vehicular combat is refreshing, it looks a treat, and handles like a dream. Whether you’re a looking to leave your mark as a maverick speed demon with a legion of fans or skirting the thin blue line desperate to shut entitled street trash down, each campaign is a blast to work your way through, even if the plot surrounding them isn’t.

This sort of baffling design is not a new thing but as game narratives improve these dated examples can’t help but feel just that – dated.

It would be remiss not to mention The Streak mode, where players attempt to thwart the longest running undefeated series in the history of professional wrestling. Much like the rest of WWE 2K14, the fanfare is better than the actual gameplay.

Call of Duty: Ghosts is a mess of a game. That’s not to say that it’s nonfunctional or bad to play, rather, it loses sight of its core principles and eschews an amazing opportunity with the advent of our transition to next-gen, as well as being the first true IW CoD sans Zampella and West, through poorly constructed (and utilised) tech, half-assed delivery of modes and a single-player campaign that sets the series back more than a few years.

By itself, as just a game for someone that has no interest in learning guitar, it’s probably no more or less engaging than past rhythm games, but for those who dream of shredding, I can’t think of a better starting point.

The verbose characters and clue interactions provide several hours of likeable humour per case. This is the perfect game for sitting in your favourite chair with a hot drink and a soft chuckle just hovering, perhaps even spilling into a quiet giggle.

The greatest compliment I can afford Black Flag, though, is that I wanted more at the end of my time with it. With such an expansive map to explore and so many alluring distractions on offer, this is the kind of game a player could easily lose scores of hours exploring.

Battlefield 4 is visually amazing, with plenty of pretty that is often simultaneously aesthetic and practical, while the DICE sound wizards continue to forge a second-to-none soundscape that complements the eye candy. If you’re a Battlefield fan, this purchase is a given, but even the smaller, faster-paced modes give Call of Duty a run for its money on its FPS formula.

Skylanders will be an influential series in years to come and successfully combines real world collectables with a fantastic platformer to deliver a rich and engaging experience.

For all its faults, Arkham Origins lives up to the prestige associated with its name. It’s easy to be negative about it, simply because everything it does well the previous games also pulled off splendidly, but the fact is that if the other Arkham games didn’t exist this would be the best Batman game ever by a mile.

Creativity is all well and good, but it needs a more receptive canvas than what Scribblenauts Unmasked offers.

The Wolf Among Us is off to a great start – if it can replicate The Walking Dead’s emotional nuance and stakes going forward, it could turn into something special.

David Cage may have succeeded at making his most cinematic game yet, but if I’d paid $8 to see Beyond on the cinema’s cheap day I would have walked out well before the credits rolled.

I think EA needs to go back to the drawing board on its interpretation of unpredictability's role in sports games, because while it might make the game look more realistic to watch, it makes it feel frustrating to play.

Diablo III adds just enough to the console experience to separate it from its older PC sibling without stripping away the core action RPG base.

The standout factor for Grand Theft Auto V is that each character not only offers a unique perspective on the GTA world in which you’re taking part, but on gaming as a whole. Franklin is new to the ‘game’ -- he looks sharp and listens and learns. Michael is as I’ve painted him to be: a reluctant master in an ever-changing dojo clinging to a wall of arbitrary yet important-to-him trophies, while Trevor is the wild side in every gamer (thanks Joab) -- the sort of yes-man we inevitably become because pain and reward exist on a blurred precipice in modern narrative-driven gaming.

For now, I think it means you're better off sticking with Arma II. Underwater missions, accomplished vehicle physics, an impressive array of player stances and fantastic visuals can't make up for a too-big map full of nothing and a handful of missions most computers and servers can't fully handle. I'll tell you what though, Arma III is going to be a great game in 2015.

This is truly a developer putting all their skills and knowledge to use, funneling it into one singular creation, whilst also focusing on presenting it to players not at all familiar with the series.

It combines the simple elegance, bountiful content and colourful enjoyment of so many indie works with the production values and design genius of the generation’s best Triple-A titles into a game that feels fresh and contemporary, but also mindful of what has come, and worked, before.

Even with the screen tearing and sporadic glitches, unimpressive graphics, generic and forgettable antagonist and over-powered abilities, I have to admit, I couldn’t get enough of Saints Row IV, once it hit stride.

Considering the game’s fraught development history and arguably ill-conceived premise, The Bureau is practically a best-case scenario. It may not be a game that anyone asked for, but perhaps that has, in a way, strengthened the final game, forcing it to reel itself in a bit and focus on being entertaining rather than revamping an old IP. It succeeds admirably as an enjoyable sci-fi shooter, and that’s good enough for us.

Even though Rise of the Triad is a buggy experience that’s slowly getting fixed with each subsequent patch, it still stands as one of the best examples of a classic title being given a facelift for the modern age.

It’s a rarity when a title delivers engrossing, compelling, varied and highly replayable gameplay in both its single and multiplayer elements. Splinter Cell: Blacklist is such a manner of beast and other than a few graphical inconsistencies it remains one of the most solid all-around combat experiences I’ve snuck around behind and embedded my knife into.