So if Arkham Asylum was defined by its limits, Arkham City is a careful, considered exercise in stripping those limits away. Its open city lets players be a different kind of Batman to the stealthy predator of Asylum – this is the Batman of dropped smoke pellets and theatrical getaways, the Batman with an ear to the ground for the strong picking on the weak, and the Batman who floats above the city with a gothic majesty.

It's brash and beautiful, and in looking outside its own boundaries has found fresh ways to keep you coming back to the danger zone.

On balance, the fourth Forza gets things right. The franchise has earned its place at the forefront of console racing sims and has done more for advancing the social/online element than any of its rivals.

This is a smart template for future fun, but the details need work. When it comes to getting this kind of game onto iOS then, Madfinger has, in more ways than one, done all the boring bits.

Funny and miserable, disgusting and endearing, the end result is a game that's smart enough to have things both ways, offering an often brutal critique of certain religious sacraments, while wallowing comfortably inside the rituals of one of gaming's oldest genres.

Generous, polished and charmingly eccentric, Magnetic Billiards proves the benefits of deliberation - though if this is indicative of the quality the Pickfords can bring to iOS, here's hoping their next isn't quite so long in the making.

A great marriage of presentation and design, spun with ravishing verve.

Goat Up isn't the most challenging game Llamasoft has ever made, but it's certainly one of its most imaginative and lovely: meanness would seem out of place. No other developer could, or would, turn the twitch platformer into a farmyard idyll.

Rage is a stunningly rendered FPS, but one that seems caught between a desire to innovate and the desire to be true to the template its creators defined.

Dark Souls beckons the masochistic with its chilly indifference. If you steel your nerves and persevere, the loot you'll uncover is an adventure so exquisitely morose and far-ranging that it will tug at your mind insistently during the hours you spend apart.

As an interim project, it's good to see Criterion still interested in its most beloved IP, but it's just a shame there's so little of interest in the game itself.

Renegade Ops sees Avalanche successfully putting a thoroughly modern spin - and more than a few spin-outs - on well-worn mechanics. If you're reading, EA, we know just the team for that Strike reboot.

So despite the winner podiums and big sponsorship contracts and – yes – even the hours you'll spend in this askew universe, Grand Prix Story feels more like deja vu than entertainment. The formula is rapidly palling.

It has flashes of brilliance, but then you get stuck on some cover and get killed because of it, and that moment is shattered.

In music, bad tribute acts play pubs and weddings: in games, they sit at the top of the charts.

When the cards become familiar enough to make zooming a thing of the past, Ascension flowers thanks to its speedy and unfussy online integration. A simple game to learn, it's one that builds into rich and complex battles, big and small. It probably won't impress the airhead in your life, unfortunately – but that's what iPint's for.

The best pleasure in Tiny Invaders isn't really the white-knuckle action. It's those moments spent mentally sketching its levels out before launching into them and executing perfectly - or getting smooshed. Infesting humans slowly and inexorably with an army of cheerful germs – Tiny Invaders isn't perfect, but it definitely brings a smile to your face.

Fans of TrackMania Nations and its Stadium course, in particular, will have a hard time adjusting to the heavy, drifty handling that is, for the moment, the only way to race in TrackMania 2.

You can see things worth admiring here. The promise of sandbox combat emerging from the interplay between environment and gun-modes never comes good, instead devolving into a repetitive, gruelling bedlam - but that promise alone is more than many shooters offer. To make anything of it, however, Hard Reset would need to go right back to the drawing board.

MotoHeroz is a cuddly toy you hug to your face, only to realise a second too late it's in fact a surly porcupine.

The degree of refinement and technical polish across every facet of Gears 3 is enough to make most other games look tatty.

The Gunstringer's biggest problem, however, is that it's a score-based shooter with little incentive to return. With only one weapon type available at any given time, there's none of the tactical interplay between attacks that makes aiming for high scores in Child Of Eden so tempting.

It's done enough to shake a shambling wraith out of its coffin and render it an elegant, challenging treat.

The Baconing is undoubtedly a solid, entertaining addition to the series, but over-saturation has made this once brash and energetic adventure feel slightly predictable.

The Baconing is undoubtedly a solid, entertaining addition to the series, but over-saturation has made this once brash and energetic adventure feel slightly predictable.

The bottom line is that Rise Of Nightmares isn't as engaging or exciting as AM1's established brand. It's also too adult in its content to appeal to the younger users who might enjoy its gimmicky use of Kinect.

Beneath the drab visuals, then, Taito's unlikely classic remains a game of skill and wit, as well as proof that no-frills fun can still be found in the strangest of places.

Despite the air of brutality Space Marine tries to cultivate, it's ultimately defined by convenience; by linear levels where you follow the green lights of unlocked doors from one corridor to the next, while the gentle trickle of upgrades and new weapons does just enough to keep you playing. The result is sometimes casually enjoyable, but never vivid, or memorable, or truly involving.

Brutal and rather short, VVVVVV's also devious and darkly funny. It's a pedantic classic, and a game for watch-makers as much as speed-runners.

As with Ocarina, at first there is a rush of nostalgia. As it fades, it's replaced by the realisation that, in many ways, the original was the playable prototype and this is the true final product, a fantastic fit both for the hardware's portability and feature set.

Like a kaleidoscope, El Shaddai offers a constant variety – sometimes confusing and out of focus, but often sparkling brilliantly. So long as you're not looking for any deeper meaning, you'll find plenty of novelty and beauty here, if not quite an eternity.

Despite the odd misstep, Infinity Field is a great dual-stick shooter that moves into essential territory with its controls.

DrawRace 2 isn't just everything a sequel should be – it's more. DrawRace was a solid foundation, but what RedLynx has created here goes far beyond what is usual – or even exceptional – in the industry. It's an essential purchase, a game shot through with brilliance, and one that will live with its players for a very long time indeed.

It's unusual to find a game of this sort deal with losing, which is obviously the majority experience, with such care – the packaging of Barry's mad dash turns it into an endlessly rewarding marathon, rather than a series of disconnected sprints.

It lacks the connective tissue to join its bite-size skirmishes into a seamless epic, but as a lightweight pick-up-and-play romp, Resistance 3 is hard to resist.

The world doesn't have the charm to warrant forgiveness, and progress-halting bugs prevent it anyway. With regular AI freezes and vanishing items, a mistimed autosave can prove fatal. Ultimately it all invites the refashioning of another line from Romero. When there's no more room in development hell, the dead losses will walk the Earth.

Bodycount's lack of consistent game design, flitting between arcadey action and a sub-par story-driven campaign, ultimately causes the game to misfire. The lesser parts of Bodycount's gameplay ultimately shout the loudest, drowning out its charms and distracting from the flourishes of inspired ideas.

Quarrel DX is the funniest and most stylish word game around, with layers of strategy that go down so deep it sometimes feels you're just scratching the surface. Even without multiplayer this is an essential purchase. With multiplayer, it could take over the world – or, at the very least, be the thinking person's Angry Birds.

If Rock of Ages eventually runs out of variety, it never runs out of charm. The game has a magnificent sense of momentum throughout, tugging you downhill towards the enemy's gates and upwards through the strata of Western culture. It is an oddball offering in every sense.

One of the best games on iOS, a testing blend of strategy and crisis management with a sharp tux and a winning smile.

It sends traditional multiplayer mores into a dizzying spin and, bolstered by a cheery script and amicable tone, creates ever-evolving thrills across the course of the singleplayer campaign.

Occasionally, the glow of sheer ambition nudges polish-related problems away from the light, allowing a few glorious moments to gaze upon what EYE could've been. But un-met ambition isn't enough.

iBlast Moki 2, with its slightly bland charm, unremarkable origins and questionable English, isn't going to be the next Angry Birds. But while playing, you occasionally think it should be.

The only black mark is for the controls: the on-screen buttons feel reasonably responsive most of the time, but you'll experience a definite stickiness when things heat up.

Is it better than Flick Kick Football? It lacks the purity of Pik Pok's original, and isn't nearly so charming. But where Flick Kick lapses into formula after you reach a high enough score, Flick Soccer gets even more challenging – and in full flow, it can provide a magical experience.

The gravitational force is strong with this one.

From its sluggish, restrictive start, Human Revolution opens into a world of scintillating possibility in which your actions' significance reaches far into the future. And with something like that difficult future approaching fast, Human Revolution achieves a rare accolade: it's not just a great game, but a timely one.

It's a potent return to form for Takahashi, then, a glowing comeback for the Japanese RPG, and an injection of creativity for some tired hardware. Xenoblade Chronicles manages to impress, enrich and, best of all, inspire wonder.

It's never worse than pleasant, and the evergreen villages, the jaunty swagger of its cows and donkeys and the peaceful expansion of your city are exactly the kind of recharging experiences Taylor talked about providing four years ago. It's only a shame that the repetition, and a lack of anything to look forward to, mean that you eventually realise your grass still needs to be cut.

But the lack of crispness in the controls undermines everything else here, and too often does the same to the player.

The laser-like focus on the personal side of management is to the exclusion of all else – the lack of a match engine is one thing, but there's no detail whatsoever to the football your team is playing.

The game's underlying sense of humour and its obvious affection for giant robots save it from feeling ordinary. [Sept 2011, p.110]

Zombie Gunship obviously has its influences, but it works them into something surprising: a slow-mo high-score shooter, a grainy panorama of survival horrors, and a greater sense of an undead horde than the rest of the App Store's zombie shooters put together.

It arrives fully formed, with a challenge and aesthetic that's beautifully intertwined and finely crafted. Joyous.

A beautiful disappointment – a great look in search of a great game to go with it. The genre template may be rock solid, but the end result is an adventure that's been strung across a fault line.

Prose With Bros is irresistible: the interface is clean and simple, voting is snappy, and the algorithm producing each game's jumble of words delivers perfectly innocent but eminently corruptible English every time.

A smart idea, executed in a very controlled fashion, but could do with letting its hair down occasionally.

It's a tribute to Me Monstar that, despite lasting a good few hours, you want more.

Unusual, startlingly innovative and engaging. Its nuanced storytelling offers something few games have been able to meaningfully achieve – true conundrum, with little indication from the game telling you what you're supposed to do to be 'good'. Frustrating, beautiful and bizarre, Catherine stays with you.

Solatorobo's short attention span is occasionally 
its undoing – good ideas and mechanics are dropped 
as readily as bad – and the button-mashing combat 
can occasionally fatigue, but this is an adventure both 
epic and bite-sized, with the kind of charm that 
makes its weaknesses easy to forget, and hard 
not to forgive.

QuBit is only held back by itself: as a linear drive-into-things score attack game, it's a great one. But it never quite unfolds in the way that the very greatest do – a Space Giraffe or Geometry Wars – to reveal layer after layer of variation.

It's totally faithful, and if you're of a certain age worth it without question for the nostalgia hit and sheer fizz of the nutty robots and explosions.

Great concept; questionable delivery.

From Dust's not magnificent because of its breezy intricacy and rugged grasp of geology. It's magnificent because it's designed with a playful deity in mind. It's built for a god who knows that to succeed is human, 
but to err – and to be creatively led astray time after time – is truly divine.

If the Old West is anything, it's a giant myth, and one that the Call Of Juarez games have always embodied. What The Cartel replaces this with – a mishmash of 
The Shield and conspiracy theories – is a much less substantial vision, played out within a world with no real resonance to it.

Old hands will still find much of the personality and singular vision of the franchise intact, but it's the newcomers, ironically, who might find Insect Armageddon a jarring mix of old-fashioned thrills and modern gameplay trends.

Ms Splosion Man might have done little to fix the 
first game's flaws, but it confidently follows up on its raucous appeal.

This is a game built from great art and clever mechanics, but it's an adventure born of both deeds and words.

Tiny Tower's ongoing tick-tock of cash and happy bitizens is a fantastic toy.

Pac-Man's rotund physique and the millimetre-perfect tilt controls make him a delight to bounce up and down and around the edges of the screen, while a forgiving drop distance encourages a cavalier attitude.

No one thing ruins Cavorite, but its pile of minor faults eventually overshadow its charisma. The levels can be ingenious, and Dr Cavor's quirky animations and great gimmick feel fresh, but the experience soon devolves into attrition rather than a challenge.

What Level-5 has created is a Frankenstein's monster. It's half singleplayer and half multiplayer, and both of them are half good: a compromise that leaves much of this game feeling soulless. To give WKC2 its due, it certainly improves on the original. But in trying to fix a poor template rather than start anew, it was probably doomed from the beginning.

Once again, Volition delivers exceptional tech, but fails to shape it into a truly engaging and sustaining experience.

As an experiment in making a genuine retro game, and as a tribute to a forgotten title of yore, Forget-Me-Not is brilliant. But as a 2011 release, even with rose-tinted spectacles firmly applied, it's much harder to recommend.

While it's far from being one the most mechanically refined or polished apps available, Titus is nevertheless distinct amongst the clone-saturated masses, with plenty of charm to fill out its bare bones.

You have expectations when you see Capcom's logo as a game loads up, particularly with its flagship titles. Shoddy workmanship isn't one.

The plot may be filled with sub-Lynchian fumbles, but it weaves an intriguing story, while the charismatic muddle of awards that accompanies each solution goes some way to wiping away the grey memory of what you're actually being congratulated for.

DaWindci's a sedate, slow burning thrill.

A lender and borrower with a few ideas of its own, Kami Retro's not quite perfect, but is worth a hundred more generic clones.

Sonic And Sega All-Stars Racing is the most fun karting game on iOS, and an update taking care of those online hiccups can only make it more essential.

Shuggy's a clever game rather than a truly smart one – a smart game wouldn't do half as much to undermine itself along the way – but it's still worth sticking with to its bitter and infuriating end.

Reveals that the series can be both a chaotic toy box and a lattice of fantastical set-pieces that unfold meaningfully. [July 2011, p.126]

It can't entirely compensate for the lack of depth, but wading together into a throng of the undead, guns blazing and fists flying, leaving a trail of dissolving bodies in your wake, is without question a grisly pleasure.

We hate its impotence, its utter lack of a scare beyond an aversion to getting shot. And with its market-led features and Skinner-box mechanics, we hate that a series that began as a lesson in horror – of the B-movie kind, admittedly – now feels so afraid of the competition.

It's simple, simple enough that a Bishi Bashi Special minigame had the basic idea years ago, but Match Panic does brilliant things with it. Every time you think you've got a handle on its workings, something changes up and confuses you for just long enough that the wrong thumb falls. It's a one-trick pony, but you should really see what she does with it.

The finely tuned platforming lays solid foundations for a leaderboard racer, and the custom leaderboards are well implemented, but this just doesn't feel like something you'll be playing in a month, never mind three years. You can't fault its ambition, and it may yet transform itself into an essential title, but presently, 1000 Heroz falls short of its lifespan.

What Dynamic Hunting captures is the back-and-forth rhythm of Monster Hunter fights, the swings between danger and all-out attack, the wounds and the frenzies.

It's a game built from pluck and resourcefulness, in other words: thoughtful when it can afford to be and stoically reliable – for the most part – when it can't.

Accentuat[es] Suda's often over-indulgent scriptwriting and accelerat[es] Mikami's brand of horror into a hyper-gothic, shock-free world of bright lights. With a little more restraint and focus on the core experience, Shadows Of The Damned could have been the action thrill ride Garcia Hotspur thinks it is. Instead the game – like Hotspur himself – is all talk.

It gets far more laughs than it should, and special mention to its credits song: perhaps the finest ending on the App Store. Original, funny, and intense: for a game based on Snake, not bad at all.

Its nonsensical charm – cartoon aliens, sweeties that make planets, and a robot T-Rex – as well as a winning extra mode (which basically makes planets into timebombs) after completion rounds off an original and deep hybrid.

Has enough in that expertly-pitched control system to keep you replaying the same courses over and over, relaxing into a groove before smashing through the score barrier on one perfect run. It's an iPhone game you'll come back to for the controls alone – and that's not something you can't say every day.

The game's visual and combative energy spark the urge to see where it goes next. If only there was something to do when you get there.

A convincing example of how 
motion control can breathe new life into a niche genre. 
More than that, it's a masterclass in audio design and the emotive power of CG imagery.

We at least have a chance to marvel at the hectic cost of ambition, and to be mystified, once more, at the strange, stupid, painful things that some of us will do for love.

Like a horse swishing its tail with futile persistence, Hunted never manages to rid itself of bugs.

The game's second half descends into a fiasco...One thing's for certain: if there's a great action game in Infamous 2, no one's actually built it yet.

Forget the artful placeholder nature of the title, then: the rotating octopus character moves through a meticulous game built with a rare sense of poise.