Despite its lunges for the mainstream, in other words, The Act has forgotten one of the most important things about escapist cinema and cartoons: they generally don't require this much effort.

Its prudence, that veil of simplicity masking a system of astonishing possibility and depth, makes it one of the purest fighting games on the market today.

Suda is an undisciplined designer. As with his comedy, he throws every idea at his game design, hoping something will stick. He's an artistic, if idiosyncratic, thinker, so invariably some ideas do succeed, but the assault of jokes, ideas and vignettes ends up as unwieldy as it is characterful. The result is a game in which there's as much to celebrate as to berate, as much to admire as there is to admonish.

There's an overall level of polish to Inversion that shows a developer improving its skillset. Though the game never fully stretches its ambitious premise beyond the confines of the cover shooter genre, it's a game with the noblest of intentions: to provide wall-to-wall, or, rather, floor-to-ceiling, entertainment.

It's not bad at all, but it's not different. It might add to Skyrim, but it doesn't enrich it in doing so.

Above all else, it's an infectiously cheery game that marches to a very different tempo. In that respect, Beat The Beat might just be the perfect swansong for Wii.

Rowdy and knockabout? Perhaps. Fun? Not quite.

Fantastic Four and Captain America-themed tables complete a package of rare value on the eShop; this may not be the finest version of Marvel Pinball you can buy, but Nintendo's store can only benefit from more third-party offerings of similar quality.

Spelunky digs its way so deeply into your brain and often pops up when you're busy playing something else. You'll flashback when another game's arsenal reminds you of just how powerful Yu's simple toolset is, or when another level designer tries and fails to encourage a different approach and reward convoluted strategies.

It's the misjudged reuse of ideas like this that makes the game feel like a classic '80s rock song being played by the band's contemporary line-up.

With global events offering in-game rewards for communities who team up to service a single destination, it has a shifting short-term goal to keep you checking in, but you may struggle to justify your continued involvement in the long game.

It draws you in after your first few taps of the screen, and it's smart enough to keep things brief, topping off a short campaign with an endless mode and a limited selection of unlockables.

It would also be an overstatement to call it profound: in any other medium such themes would hardly be revelatory, and although The Line is a thoughtful and well-intentioned game, the level of its writing is carefully engineered to be accessible to those expecting a brainless bullet exchange. Even so, it is brazen in its critique, and a rarity besides. It may not be subtle, but it engages with problems that the bellicose ilk of Modern Warfare and Medal Of Honor have yet to acknowledge.

That it largely fails to deliver does not quite snuff out its allure – not, at least, for devotees of the fiction. For those yet to be tempted by Martin's work, however, the blunderous combat, mangled dialoguing and profoundly unlovely looks will make it seem, as a Westerosi idiom goes, a mummer's farce.

Sadly, too often your powers feel anything but godly.

With its unusual blend of Kinect and controller – of simple missions and complex control – Heavy Armor is a modern rarity: a game designed to be hard work. Whether that translates directly into it being a game for the 'hardcore' is debatable, but From Software has made the best of a bad situation and, aptly, delivered a game that asks you to do exactly the same.

If you're the right age to appreciate the irony of an over-powered Care Bear attack, Saturday Morning RPG is going to take you right back to your distant past.

Despite its reheated fantasy trappings and formulaic design principles, it also remains surprisingly easy to get hooked on the steady dopamine hit of each fresh loot acquisition and the rhythm of the game's combat pulse.

It's a sparse recipe that makes for a sometimes infuriating, but always compelling, puzzler which is spiced up by the inexorable progress of your dot.

This is a game that lives well within your comfort zone no matter how many bullets are flying, and how many enemies are kiting along behind you. It's a game about games, in other words – and a very good one, at that.

The game is divided into four tournaments, each containing four unique courses. It's when you get to the second stage of the first tournament that the game's major failing makes itself apparent: there's only one composition to race to. Presumably, the developers thought this would be enough, as differences in course layout and sound effects provide a little variety, but in practice it's just too repetitive.

The convincing sense of speed is dulled by a lack of weight to the handling, while collisions betray some erratic physics: you can easily be shunted into a respawn by other racers, yet left relatively unscathed by a head-on smash into trees.

Gravity Rush might not always live up to the promise of its tutorial, but it's exactly the kind of original game that a fresh-faced system such as Vita needs, taking subtle, thoughtful advantage of its control inputs while showcasing its power.

The shift from WiiWare to 3DS, meanwhile, may not see Art Of Balance really benefiting very much from either the handheld's touchscreen or the developer's range of depth tricks, but it does add a generous suite of new levels - and it does raise the chances of a larger audience finally discovering this playful, wonderfully-calibrated puzzler.

It's a game confident enough in its core ideas to simply offer greater volume and variety of enemies in its later stages, and it has the balance and poise to ensure that's more than sufficient.

Despite its hectic invention, then, Velocity retains a rare kind of focus. Vita owners finally have something tart to see them through the drought, and the Minis just got a new standard bearer.

Gauge, then, is throwaway, minimalist, score-chasing brilliance, a game that's pulled together from the smallest selection of pieces, but that also feels bold and new and intensely imaginative.

And though a clutch of score-based challenges are both too few and too brisk, they contribute to an iOS game of rare generosity and substance.