It's a third and final chapter, then, with all that implies. It's off-putting to new players, too busy tying up loose ends to dangle any threads of its own, and fails to stand up as its own game in the same manner as its predecessors. But it's also a spectacular, powerfully imagined and dramatically involving final act to one of gaming's richest sci-fi sagas.

It's not perfect, and even skilled players will struggle with some of the more demanding multitasking required for certain scenarios (the level-skip is an acknowledgement of the inconsistent difficulty), but it's clever, cunning and entertaining.

But with Tetsuya Mizuguchi's often bland musical experimentation replaced with some of electronica's finest moments, Electronic Symphony breathes new life into a series that had previously appeared stagnant.

With Delta, Super Stardust has found a pulse. Perhaps all that's missing now is the soul to go with it.

It's a generous package, and even more so given that a purchase of the Vita version nets you a PS3 copy as well, your progress persistent between the two versions. Other launch games may better sell Vita's touch, tilt or AR capabilities, but there is no better advertisement for its connectivity.

Balancing real-time action with tactical micro-management proves beyond Vanpool. With arbitrary limitations placed on an already meagre cash supply, and towers and fortifications proving equally flimsy, what little money is available is best poured into single-use items and permanent ability boosts for Dillon.

Journey's real issue, if it has one, goes much deeper than that. It's a resolutely linear game in which your range of interactions is minimal. For some, that will make it a pretty but hollow novelty; boring, perhaps. But for those who play games to explore strange lands, see beautiful sights and to immerse themselves – for however brief a time – in a new world, Journey is perfect. And what's more, they'll find someone like them to share it with.

Waking Mars is ultimately a game about ecological balance, but it's the balance of a different kind – of art, narrative, and puzzle mechanics - that makes it so very satisfying to play.

When the curtain drops on Binary Domain, you're left with the sense that, while accomplished, this game is largely a rote exercise in genre. It adequately, but not outstandingly, mimics the nuts and bolts of the western cover shooter, while bringing little new of worth to the table.


In looking outside itself for inspiration, SSX has found a worthy infrastructure to establish an online community and culture. But this same approach has found the brand veering away from some of the fun and fireworks of yesteryear, leaving its more seductive silly side out in the cold.

For all its inconsistencies, complexities, inadequacies and oddities, The Last Story offers an entrancing and seamless flow of interesting experiences. And surely that, in the final reckoning, is what counts.

For a game with a premise as simple as kill the aliens before they kill you, Ziggurat's stylishly retro visuals, gleeful arcade precision and deeply interlocking mechanics trigger a chain reaction that kicks off like some interstellar combustion. Not the sound of a world ending. But the sort of bang that would make Richard Dawkins lean back, fold his arms and grin like a chimp.

It's good shooting, of course, pulled off with the studio's signature style, but it's come at the cost of Syndicate's imagination and ambition.

There's a remarkable consistency to the design even as the levels gets steadily bolder until, after hovering vacuums, teleporters, and levers that freeze time, Simogo throws in a climactic boss battle that is as nerve-wracking as it is joyous. It's a compliment to say that Beat Sneak Bandit feels like a Rhythm Tengoku minigame taken to its logical extreme; it's constructed with a precision and a sense of mischief – and, in its final surprise, a generosity of spirit - that echoes the best work of the WarioWare team.

It's a pity that Remedy seems intent on making you eat your soggy story vegetables before tucking into American Nightmare's only real confection.

Packed with detail, both in terms of its environments and mechanics, this is a game that pays back investment in spades. [March 2012, p.122]

NeverDead's heart is in the right place: committed to entertaining you, no matter the cost - even if it means losing your head a few too many times along the way. [March 2012, p.120]

With both real-time and turn-based flavours of haphazard carnage on offer, Glitch Tank is willing to mess with your brain at a variety of speeds. Michael Brough's certainly given iPad owners something to think about, then – even if few will have the patience and foresight to feel truly comfortable on this strange new playing field.

A brave game in many ways, then, but above all, an enjoyable one.

AWESOME Land's harder across the board, actually, but its slightly naff virtual controls work better than expected, and the checkpoint placement isn't unduly sadistic. It's difficult, at times, to tell whether FreakZone's pitched this as parody or homage, but take it as the latter, and you'll have a fairly good couple of hours with it.

This is a freemium game, masquerading as a paid download.

As a proof of concept, Reality Fighters is convincing, but it's sub-par as a high-priced fighting game, trailing the competition and offering novelty in place of substance.

Unadventurous Everybody's Golf may be, but it's wonderfully executed, and its presence at Vita's launch is welcome. With their endlessly smiling characters, cheery J-tunes and bright skies, Everybody's Golf titles are the best Nintendo-esque games a Sony console has ever seen, and this latest iteration is no exception.

Little Deviants' real problem is simple: it's not moreish, and its challenges fail to reveal the kinds of nuance on the second and third tries that will have you refining strategies and aiming to better scores. Without that incentive to return, you're unlikely to.

Yes, Wipeout 2048 conjures a less fanciful racing grid than we've seen previously, and it's also a less immaculate, less finessed racer than the home console iterations of the series we've played down the years. Instead, it's an attempt to try something new on the newest of platforms. While it may not offer something for everyone, when it flies, it soars.

There's also the beauty of Uncharted's exotic locales, which act as a great showcase for Vita's astonishing display. And even if Golden Abyss starred a power-armoured space marine fighting his way across the cardboard-box planet, it would still be a robust thirdperson shooter, the likes of which we've simply never seen on a handheld. The core Uncharted experience is still here, in other words. It's stripped a little bare, but it's just about enough.

Gesture recognition is loose and forgiving, and it makes no attempt to suggest Kinect's genuinely interpreting every movement. Instead, each manoeuvre feels like the empty-handed equivalent of pushing a button – albeit a button that tends to idle a little before it triggers anything.

The first Flipper wasn't a great piece of work, necessarily, but it had its own agenda and was powered by some pleasantly esoteric coding. The sequel, wonky and compromised, can't even claim that honour.

Complex but accessible, inventive yet familiar, a game that has gripped browser windows is every bit as troublingly addictive in the palm of your hand.

Amalur is a very easy world to drop in and out of – if only Skyrim were so willing to share us with our real lives – but it is never a place where we can truly put down roots. And all this is a shame, since Salvatore's encyclopaedic creation is something worth investing in.

It's derivative, gratuitous and needlessly profane, but beneath the gruesome veneer lies a tale of – believe it or not – genuine tenderness.

Monkey Bump lacks the gooey intricacy of the team's best games, perhaps, but it's still an elegant time-waster with fine-tuned controls and an excellent handle on the things that keep score-chasing gamers happy. Slight and chirpy, this may be PomPom at its least idiosyncratic, but the expanding boundary has never looked more at home.

Word games are only as good as their dictionary is reliable, and while Quarrel has one of the best around, it's occasionally hamstrung by Microsoft's Victorian sensibilities.

This is a big game, clocking in at about the 40-hour mark, but the lack of challenge in combat combined with the formulaic missions and frequent cutscenes too often make it feel like a sticky trudge.

Thanks to this astonishing overhaul, it's now quite impossible to ignore. [Feb 2012, p.120]

Puzzlejuice may ultimately be too hectic and exhausting to stay on the front page of your iDevice forever, but it's the perfect game for an unhealthy binge every few days. Enjoy it as much as you can, and try not to burn yourself out for good.

It takes the best and worst of Resident Evils past and present, and spot welds them together unevenly. If the designers had committed wholeheartedly to either polarity of action or horror, Revelations may have been a headshot, but what we're left with is more like a glancing blow. [Feb 2012, p.112]

It's still a Soul Calibur game, but Project Soul has successfully designed it for a wider audience of casual and hardcore players alike, which was a key factor in Capcom's successful reinvention of its revered series. [Feb 2012, p.108]

Successful only as an interactive showcase of Jurevicius' art – and arguably the Flash original was more effective in that regard – it's almost criminal that a world this vivid should be so wearying to explore.

In its present form, Hero Academy is a fairly lightweight confection, but it digs its nails in until you find yourself impatiently anticipating the notification alert, and then starting a fresh battle with a random opponent to shorten the wait.

Like any good zombie fiction, the real enemy in AZMD! isn't the walking dead, but the humans who created them.

An acceptable game rising from the foundations of a great one. Hutch has proved it can do amazing things with Apple's touchscreen but, this time at least, it's provided dubious implementation of almost everything else.

Worst of all for a game hoping to sell itself on scares, Amy is never frightening. Instead, its horrors are derived from the game's shoddy execution, weak puzzles and frustrating play rhythms, a nest of poor game design decisions through which disappointment, not fear, are hatched.

Mage Gauntlet's an action RPG that's perfectly tailored for the pick-up-and-play crowd, in other words. It's a likeable confection that's as witty as it is insubstantial.

It's becoming a 5th Cell tradition: strong ideas compromised by erratic level design and structural weaknesses. One day, the developer will find the right balance to support its undeniable creativity, but sadly, it hasn't found it here.

It may tread more carefully around its psychiatric themes, but its puzzles still toy with minds as easily as they play with space.

In-app purchases require delicate balancing, but with T-Coin bundles costing up to £69.99, and annual T-Club subscriptions available for £20.99 a year, EA could hardly be more obvious in letting you know that, as far as it's concerned, the 69p you paid to download the game was only the beginning.

Ferociously compulsive.

BioWare hasn't cast itself as a guerrilla movement trying to subvert the MMOG with The Old Republic. Instead it's been the Empire, working to produce a slick, gigantic experience that, in the time of free-to-play, feels polished enough to demand monthly fees. How long this empire – vast and imposing, but archaic in structure – will last in the face of newer MMOGs and their rebellious payment models isn't easy to discern. This isn't the first of a new order of MMORPG, but it may well be the last of the old.

As tightly designed and finely balanced as it is, it's hard to shake the feeling that you're endlessly replaying a tutorial.

Bugbear built the FlatOut brand, and bred a following on a balance of silly stunts, destructible environments and rewards. It crafted the game's zanier side with care, with the aim of keeping players invested in its often cheap kicks. Team6 has abandoned that manifesto in favour of haphazard thrills via haphazard design. As a result, FlatOut 3 crashes and burns.

Corpse Party is often too rigid in its ways, requiring players to examine objects several times, occasionally in a very specific order – a problem exacerbated by a structure that locks out later chapters until the correct ending to the previous episode has been found. Some wrong (in every sense) endings are worth seeing once, but repeat plays of scenarios dilute the tension the studio takes such pains to build.

Pinballing between boost blocks on the shorter stages is an undoubted thrill, but when a single, late mistake on the lengthier levels proves decisive, the less patient among us will likely find that an old-fashioned punishment too far.

The highscore table and note-perfect humour (which, just like the pixel-art graphics and whimsical audio, strikes the perfect balance between faux-naivety and self-awareness) proves more than enough to keep you playing in the traffic.

The final third of the game abandons grubby criminality for altogether more lurid, excessive and enjoyably silly climes, testifying to the fact that Saints Row is at its best when it rejects the expectations of the series and the strictures of the GTA format.

Economical and clever, Pullblox is full of leftfield ideas that turn odd congregations of technology into quiet magic. At last, 3DS has a puzzle game with real depth.

It may look chaotic, but this is as controlled as iOS gaming gets. Immaculately calibrated touch controls give you the tools to escape even the most ferocious barrage, while the five stages challenge twitch reflexes, muscle memory and pattern recognition equally. One of the toughest games you'll ever play, then, but also one of the fairest.

It's clear that Disney's ideas are far from drying up.

One of the most artistically accomplished games to have emerged from an independent studio, Trine 2 has enough minor tweaks and new things to see to draw you back into its playground. It's a short, sweet, occasionally imperfect little treat.

The single-player campaign is fast-paced if rather unforgiving on occasion, and the online community is refreshingly vibrant given the game's steep learning curve. Recollection's only real problems exist in the form of a handful of irritating crash bugs and server disconnects, along with an unwelcome over-eagerness to drive you towards in-app purchases as you seek to bolster your sickly starter deck.

When it works, however, Infinity Blade II represents iOS gaming at its finest. For all Chair's improvements, the first game's nagging sense of hollow repetition will still set in eventually; it just takes longer to arrive this time. But until that point arrives, Infinity Blade II remains a defining, and essential, iOS experience.

Chaos reigns in the brackish bayous of this endearingly ramshackle racer from Hydro Thunder Hurricane developer Vector Unit. An erratic police presence might attempt to uphold the law, but between the fluctuating prices of its illegal trading posts and the trail of destruction your air boat leaves in its wake – not to mention a frame-rate choppier than the winding waterways themselves – this is a world without order.

Playing against AI can throw up a challenge, but requires patience. Higher difficulties give the AI more time to think, but DTOL's real problem is its interface. It's simple to the point of crudity, but functionally it can be opaque and cluttered, making a reasonably complex game seem even more so while you're figuring out the rules. Get past that, and there's an acute psychological game to be played in DTOL, but it'll require time – and an extra player – to find it.

The Run doesn't have the structure or production values to carry off its concept. Even if it did, its successes would be smothered by a procession of awful technical flaws. Lacking charm and polish, only the Need For Speed name will sell the game – which will no doubt mean that it fares well enough. But in a year that has seen gaming's biggest franchises one-upping each 
other and demanding players' attention like never before, The Run simply doesn't cut it.

Mildly charming but fiercely superficial, Kinect Sports remains undermined by the lingering inconsequentiality that tends to gather around all but the very best compilation titles.

A hybrid game of mixed success, Legacy reconciles Ace Combat's past and present while failing to offer enough diversity and features to make the results essential.

A brainteaser that's nervy, humbling, and strangely energising. If you can handle the stress, SpellTower is magnificent.

Nintendo has clearly been experimenting with how to better exploit its system's obvious potential, and its solution is a natural, graceful implementation of 3D that complements and even improves its games, rather than feeling tacked on.

SideScroller's final stages are arguably among the best things Q-Games has ever done, but be warned: if you're used to the puzzley pace of Shooter, you won't find its playful nature here.

A fleeting novelty.

The central achievement of Minecraft is a willingness to let the player define the experience; to make them the most interesting element in a world that's already dynamic and fascinating. It's a decision that has made designer Markus Persson a millionaire, and it's ensured that the most important PC game of the past five years is also the most timely.

Where Is My Heart? revels in simplicity, beauty and restraint, yet the experience tempers such qualities by proving challenging, infuriating and exhausting.

The framework is here for a truly great game, then, but it's the need to lengthen - and, for some players, monetise - the campaign that stops ShortRound's debut from living up to its obvious potential.

With its pulsing, ever-changing playing fields and foppish rhythm-action audio elements, one of the main reasons to play Fractal is simply to enjoy its wonderful aesthetics.

Overkill couldn't, for whatever reason, give Payday the development time it needed for its rough edges to be sanded down, but it remains a game with great potential.

While this elegant underwater world may be a little too twee for some players, then, there are still plenty of reasons to dip into Bit Blot's inventive genre piece. Aquaria's as personable on the iPad as it was on the PC and Mac, and now you can cross the oceans on your morning commute.

Ultimately, Gamelion's lacklustre effort serves as a helpful case study for anybody interested in investigating why no-one's ever made a successful platform game about a character with almost no body weight before.

In a world whose sales charts are regularly topped by ever-more-homogenised military shooters and action games, playing Origins feels like stepping into an alternate reality in which the 16bit era evolved by increasing in fidelity, not dimensions.

Unlike the elegant lead, who's grey-haired but unbowed by the end of the adventure, Assassin's Creed has been quietly compromised by age.

Ultimate's new characters, improved online offering and Heroes And Heralds make for a generous package given its budget price-point, and once it clicks, it dazzles.

Halo exhibits a single-minded focus that the modern FPS, with its choreographed set-pieces and thrilling scripted sequences, largely disregards. This is a game about the arc of a perfectly thrown grenade, a game about tense games of cat-and-mouse with foes as powerful as you, a game about constant improvisation with the tools at your disposal. It's a game that always feels tactical, and a game that – even now – has the capacity to surprise.

It's a detour into new territory that will satisfy co-op players as it maintains, rather than distills, the essence of its ancestry. [Dec 2011, p.122]

It homes in, with a clockmaker's precision and a playful gleam in its eye, on what Mario does best.

These moments are why you play Skyrim, because in the instance of breathless excitement, triumph or discovery, you invest completely in its world.

An over-complicated take on a classic recipe.

An emphatic, feature-packed and sometimes stunning final act.

For the majority of Tintin's adventure you'll be happy to kill time hopping and skipping across its gorgeous stages, but unlike the contours of Hergé's timeless stories, there's no hidden treasure to be found beneath its dazzling veneer.

A reminder of both what you adore and abhor in a series that's had its simple joys diluted by flash-in-the-plan iterations and ideas.

Natsume's anaemic offering is a bit of a Halloween zombie, in other words. It's shambling, it's barely animated, and you really ought to avoid it.

Add the odd cruelly-placed save point, and you've got an adventure that occasionally explores the agonies, as well as the ecstasies, of gaming's past. At least it's honest.

As audiovisually accomplished as any game has been, at least on PC, its deference to prescribed spectacle is an assiduous realisation of blockbuster gaming tastes, with an increasing reliance on 'video' rather than 'game'. EA wants Battlefield 3 to be all things to all people, and it's right in thinking that the addition of a singleplayer duck shoot doesn't detract from its other substantial offerings. But in this act of imitation, and limitation, it disregards the choice and tactical empowerment which make the series near-peerless and preciously idiosyncratic in multiplayer.

Festival Of Blood has plenty of ideas, very few of which are its own, but such is the way of the open-world superhero game. Where it succeeds is in casting aside the main game's mechanics in favour of fast, graceful movement around one of the most generous worlds available on the download services.

This is without doubt the most comprehensive entry in Nippon Ichi's once-trailblazing series, packaging its accumulated ideas alongside a clutch of innovations of its own. And yet repetition has dulled the appeal, with the complexities acting as a tall barrier to newcomers while the innovations are simultaneously too meagre to sate any but the most eager devotee.

The inclusion of a food journal, detailing the ingredients you've used and those that haven't yet been found, will be manna for completists in another sparky, generous and amusing offering from Adult Swim.

It's a breezily entertaining flight through seven coloured environments, though it never quite generates the same feeling of mastery as its inspiration: reaching the Violet Zone for the second time isn't as significant an achievement as diving down to the undulating surface of Island 9.

Squids is clever, but it's a cleverness that can slowly give way to devious manipulation: the game has fallen for the easy money of microtransactions, and it's fallen hard.

The present console cycle is expected to last nearly a decade, and there will inevitably be developers advocating the need for more sophisticated tools. But just like Machu Picchu, the Pyramids and every other engineering marvel of antiquity, Uncharted 3 will stand as a reminder to future generations of gamers that enough problem-solving imagination can turn any old trowel into a magic wand.

How apt that this ultimate tale of hero-making should see Nintendo's hardware become the console it was always meant to be.