Cliffhanger endings are fine when the next episode of a TV show is days away, but less so when the wait is likely to last a couple of months. Yet Telltale has already achieved something remarkable, proving – to both Clem and to you – that there’s life after Lee.

What began as a celebration ends with nostalgia’s bubble being cruelly pricked.

It’s no accident that your role can often feel more captive than intrepid explorer; Fireproof skilfully demonstrates that escapism through escapology can be a potent conceit indeed.

Multiplayer’s not much better, and is a rare area in which Shadow Fall suffers technically, the action slowing to a crawl when things get busy thanks to an unlocked framerate.

For the time being, Exordium represents a kind of success, even if it’s tempered by the evident struggle to achieve an objective that may, in the end, prove to be a fool’s errand.

It’s sweet stuff, but repetition quickly sets in.

It’s a masterclass of design purity: every one of these elements exists for a reason, and its potential is exploited to the fullest. But Samurai Gunn’s genius lies in its dizzying speed. It condenses organic, balletic setpieces worthy of an action flick finale into mere seconds, the ground filling up with the bloodied pixel remains of the fallen.

Board game fans might be able to overlook these sins to find the deep game within, but developers Full Control has done too little to evangelise the cult of Space Hulk.

The Novelist, then, is a game of endless compromise, and in that sense it is a quite remarkable simulation of family life.

Peggle’s secret is the way it makes you feel about these successes – and it’s here that this most feels like a true sequel. Clear out a level and the resulting Ultra Extreme Fever is a bigger festival of light and colour than ever, and Xbox One’s Game DVR popup serves as an extra pat on the back. The accompanying crescendo is no longer limited to Ode To Joy either – each Master has their own piece of classical music.

Naturally, it isn’t as attractive as its console cousin, though zoom down to eye level during its majestic sunsets and the shanties belted out by your crew make for a reasonable facsimile of the console game.

Polyphony has produced a handling and physics model that is unmatched by any other racer, but failed to provide AI competition capable of showcasing it to its fullest.

As a reminder of the old days of the series, The Serpent’s Curse just about serves its purpose; it sounds the same, works the same and, mostly, looks the same. But as a contender on the modern point-and-click landscape it offers little to drag players away from the new age of superior soirees.

Playing Blek is pure intuition, not a puzzler so much as an act of freeform creation. That’s quite a feat within a genre which can feel so stiff and prescribed.

This is a game that skilfully blends the safe with the courageous in an alchemical fusion of old and new, somehow brave and default all at once.

For all Zoo Tycoon’s charms, it’s ultimately too shallow; there’s only so much cooing at identikit baby animals you can do before the inevitable fatigue sets in.

Fighter Within’s storyline is a misery of clichés, reaching for kung-fu movie kitsch but delivering nothing of the sort. But even the ugly presentation and forgettable cast of characters could have been forgiven if the developer had managed to make good on its ambitions for a nuanced fighting game controlled with arms and legs rather than fingers and thumbs.

The game also fails as a high-profile PS4 launch title in terms of what it’s putting onscreen. The particle effects serve their purpose, but everything from the vapid story sequences to the hackneyed goblin foes feels blandly feeble. A chapter setting entitled The Barren Wastes? Yes, you think, no need to ram it home.

It’s a game of light and shade, sure, but there’s a little too much of the former seeping through the cracks.

It’s gorgeous; Resogun draws on its host hardware’s graphical capabilities to make you feel like the most powerful entity in the room.

Rivals’ systems show potential, but it is considerably less than the game it might have been.

Like the first Gears, Ryse is a simple game loaded with small-scale encounters and rudimentary set-pieces with the intention of hustling you towards something beautiful. Both have their own ‘horror’ stage, both have sieges, both have stationary guns of sorts, and Ryse, like Gears, has room to grow if given the chance.

There’s no way to sell unused cars back to the AI or to other players, no bespoke onscreen speedometers, no test driving a car before purchase, no kid-friendly Kinect steering or Kinect support in Forzavista, no opportunity to load a circuit-specific tuning setup before a career race, no exiting from a race series without loading up the next track, no unicorn cars, no ‘reasonably priced car’, no auction house, no storefront, and no surprise, really.

At six to seven hours, Tearaway isn’t the longest game in Vita’s library, but it packs in more joyfully realised ideas than many games manage in three or four times the runtime. It’s a beautiful, brilliant game, but it’s more than that: it’s the first great Vita game.

This is Mario like you’ve never seen him before, and unlike so many of his next-gen rivals, he nips along at an effortless 60fps. If the true measure of new hardware’s worth is how stark the difference is between it and what came before, then this is the most next-gen game that 2013 has yet produced.

It’s tempting to believe that Microsoft and Twisted Pixel set out to create some kind of meta-joke here, but the line between a successful and unsuccessful parody can be a fine one. All Lococycle achieves is falling on its face, while no one laughs.

It’s during its harder moments that Crimson Dragon pushes you away. A combination of heavy handling and poor communication make you feel hoodwinked rather than outmatched, and the ability to buy continues with Gems you’ve purchased with real money sullies the challenge. It’s a good job that the Zen gardens of those easier levels are always there to return to.

There’s a fantastic combo system at Killer Instinct’s core, but right now it feels like half a game – one full of promise, certainly, but not an especially next-gen one either. The cascade of particles may not be enough to retain player interest until the rest of the game arrives.