Persona 4 Golden is full of surprises. Perhaps the biggest is that a console JRPG is so well suited to portable play, and that a four-year-old PS2 game is, by some distance, Vita’s best game to date.

This is a brave and truly original work, and if this is what happens when Simogo explores its dark side, it should do so more often.

While Rising’s combat is hugely satisfying to experiment with, and a sight to behold when played well, it’s undermined by technical issues and a singleplayer campaign that peters out just as you think it’s getting going. There’s replay value here, and for Platinum’s most devoted fans it won’t matter if the game is five or 50 hours long, but others will, rightly, feel a little short-changed.

Food Run may be unapologetically old-fashioned – right down to its use of impossibly jaunty stock music – but game design this smart never goes out of style.

This is a game for those who grew up in Hyrule but spent more time in Lordran in recent years. Some finicky platforming also frustrates, but then Link didn’t get an auto-jump until Ocarina Of Time.

While the beauty and evocative nature of Kairo’s world has survived the transition from its original PC form to iOS unscathed, the controls have not. Movement is flighty and unwieldy, and in desperate need of a sidestep.

The sense of immersion is about as unparalleled as you can get without an Oculus Rift strapped to your head. But the campaign feels overlong and stretch marks begin to appear towards the end of the roughly 20-hour adventure. This game could have benefited from some strategic dismemberment of its own, performed by a shrewd editor who knows how to sever redundant limbs.

Antichamber is many things – a remarkable technical achievement, a smart subversion of its genre, a game that plays you as much as you play it – but you're more likely to respect it than enjoy it.

With a defined beginning, four distinct seasonal environments and an affecting, surprising conclusion, there's no question that Proteus is a game. But if there's one concern, it's whether this is an island that's worth revisiting once you've seen all it has to offer. In a way, its lack of progression – the absence of skill trees, difficulty levels and save points – works in its favour; you won't dive back in to mop up the last few achievements, or to climb leaderboards, but simply because you want to play Proteus.

Its foundations aren't sturdy enough to hold any longterm weight. [Feb 2013, p.110]

This series offered some of the most memorable hours we spent holding a gamepad during 2012. [Feb 2013, p.102]

At its best, Orgarhythm's disparate ingredients coalesce into scenes of thrilling tribal warfare, a winningly eclectic soundtrack stirring your men to march into battle. Too often, however, you end up feeling like your fragmented cabal: disorientated, frustrated and battered into submission by an unforgiving enemy, with little reason to keep on fighting.

As a platformer it's not Ravenous' best, and as a puzzle game Infestor doesn't quite provide enough material for its parasitic premise to build on.

Like its titular star, the game tends to transform, flipping from triumphant to frustrating, and back again.

Tokyo Crash Mobs might not be the best version of Puzz Loop around, but in allowing us to briefly abandon our traditional British reserve, it becomes one of the most satisfying variants we've played.

The lack of instruction here is telling: Lucky Frame wants people to discover the joy of making music for themselves, and this stylish and entertaining curio represents a fine place to do so.

Approached as the latest work from one of the industry's favoured fathers, The Cave could seem like a tourist trap, packed with old ideas to lure in passers-by. Taken for what it is – a simple, characterful adventure game from an independent developer – it offers just enough to be worth the price of admission.

Temple Run 2 is a beautiful looking, natural extension of the series that never breaks stride for a second. The game's only liability is that, as beautiful as its environments may be, their unceasing repetition can eventually grow wearisome. Like a child hearing about the concept of living in heaven for eternity and asking, won't I get bored?

Level-5 and Studio Ghibli's contributions are harmonious. As a game, Ni No Kuni builds upon classic JRPG foundations, eschewing the evolutions of Xenoblade Chronicles and Final Fantasy XII. But the assured flair with which Level-5 has implemented each of the game's classic components combines with Ghibli's masterful storytelling to deliver a JRPG that's quite unlike any other.

A cynical, if predictable approach to monetisation also sours the experience.

For the moment, though, SOE's MMOG is a remarkable achievement. Games like it often have to sacrifice visual fidelity for performance, but PlanetSide 2 looks stunning, even on medium settings.

The only sour note is the way the game keeps even the most skilled players at a severe leaderboard disadvantage until they've unlocked – or purchased – the final playable character.

This is the best entry in its genre since Bayonetta, and might just be the best game Ninja Theory has made to date.

It's undeniably a one-trick pony, then, but it's a good trick, performed with flair and polish. Those inclined to correct grammatical howlers in friends' Facebook missives will find this a far less confrontational way of sating their inner pedant.

Captivating, strategic and, despite the monstrous aliens, oddly welcoming. [Jan 2013, p.102]

Handsomely uncluttered, if more than a little austere, this is a modish, elegant puzzler.

It's a smart concept, skilfully realised in the main, and yet it's compromised by a truly boneheaded piece of design: the default perspective offers such a limited view of the field of play that you're forced to squeeze the zoom button throughout to make it playable, with no option to toggle it.

It's a game that tries to be everything, in other words, yet through the sheer all-encompassing nature of its irreverence finds an identity of its own.