An easy recommendation for newcomers. [Dec 2012, p.108]

The cold heart beneath the cuddly surface fits the dark tone of the game, which beneath all the whimsy tells a melancholy story. Even so, players drawn in by Pid's dreamy visuals might end up feeling betrayed.

While Cargo Commander might be an occasionally limited platform game, it's nonetheless an entertaining ode to the simple pleasures of an honest day's work.

Control can be an issue at times – the one button combat system relying on the distinction between taps and holds makes it easy to muddle attacks – but challenge seekers will find plenty to get stuck into, impaled on and cut to shreds in this macabre, frenetic onslaught.

Fundamentally, it's hard to bear a grudge against a game with such generosity of spirit and pleasant delivery. But having tangled with mythical sea beasts and alternate Londons, isn't it time for Layton to solve the greatest mystery of all: where does he go next.

It's a puzzle game and a strategy game as much as an action game, then, and like Rockstar's Manhunt, it will sicken you even as it provides its murky thrills.

Liberation's narrative is rather picaresque, while the less said about its asynchronous multiplayer mode, the better. Yet it avoids the console game's occasional longueurs to offer something altogether more compact and focused. It may not be a true Assassin's Creed experience on a handheld, then, but this sensibly streamlined game is a fine companion piece.

At the core remains the solid, steady hand of Halo, but those hoping Halo 4 would roll back Reach's intricacies and deliver an alternative to the current wave of console shooters will be disappointed.

Punch Quest isn't just good for a free-to-play game. It's good, full stop, infused with humour, depth and the most charming violence imaginable. Unless you're a skeleton knight, in which case the violence is offensive, troubling and needlessly graphic.

This sense of restrictiveness filters through to ACIII's mission design. There are surprisingly few assassinations here, and relatively little freedom to plan an approach to them. It's mostly eavesdropping, tailing, chase sequences and battle scenes.

Once again, Criterion still manages to stand out and offer something fresh, setting a new standard in open-world driving games with - that word again - a seamless feast of quality. [Dec 2012, p.98]

Previous Forza entries showed glimmers of personality, hinting at a broader approach to accessibility, but were too shy and reserved to truly let loose. Horizon boldly goes there. It's a magpie game, assembled from pieces of other series, but it delivers a driving game precision engineered to offer all levels of player the best possible experience.

Though generous with its ideas, Flexile can't quite make them stretch across 60 levels, and while the controls are as good as virtual buttons can be, some challenges are too fiddly to be fun, with a curious fussiness when it comes to triggering your blob's powers. Even so, this is a bright and attractive puzzler that is, thankfully, far smarter than its title would suggest.

If The Unfinished Swan didn't do such a marvellous job of tantalising players with its patiently evolving visual signature, it would be easier to sense the messy whiteboard of ideas churning beneath the surface. It's not that the game feels unfinished, just ungainly.

This is a game built with Kinect's limits in mind, and one that never risks defying them. The result is a modest, mechanically simple on-rails shooter, but it's one that offers a voyage with epic sweep for those looking to re-immerse themselves in Fable's world.

If you've come this far on Lee's journey, Around Every Corner's ending will make the final chapter a near essential purchase: not just to see how this supposedly reactive, in part player-authored story ends, but to see if Telltale really can pull it off.

Hell Yeah! may wear its warm immaturity on its sleeve, but its jokes are strong, its protagonist and antagonists likeable and its rhythms satisfying.

It's a surprisingly effective template for an action game, offering all the explosions and feedback of a shooter, while leaving you with a warm feeling of smugness when things go according to plan.

For all Team Ninja's talk of keeping it more real, DOA5 is mostly business as usual. There are tweaks to the formula and aesthetic, but nothing too sacrilegious or enticing. It's disappointing, then, that this has little to offer over its forebear.

For experienced players, though, this is as fluid as Tekken has been for years, the tagging doing much to revitalise a combo system that, with its over-reliance on juggles and wall combos, was in danger of growing stale. But it's taken a 12-year-old mechanic to do that, and other games in this increasingly crowded genre boast a deeper level of mechanical complexity as well as a more generous welcome to newcomers.

Fair, competitive and, above all, relevant. [Nov 2012, p.100]

Wickedly irreverent and cartoonishly outrageous. [Nov 2012, p.96]

Charting a course through Earth's imminent destruction is as unashamedly difficult as it was in 1994's X-COM. It's possible, through bad planning and bad management, to doom the planet early on, making the game feel unfair. Get it right, however – survive the stresses of management, and the strains of aliens – and you'll feel like world's greatest hero.

It's a rare delight to play a game with such consistency of vision, its art design, level architecture, rulesets, storylines and writing all working in lockstep.

It's a smart idea in an enjoyably brisk score-attack game that sadly feels a little undernourished thanks to the brevity of its campaign and its repetitive play rhythms.

Jokes are in short supply, as is the serene abstraction often associated with modern puzzle games. The platforming segments and spaced-out checkpoints might annoy the more cerebrally focused, but all told they're a fairly minor part of the game.

Sadly, the early learning curve is far too shallow, while creative freedom is often illusory, with a single solution to many stages. Rovio does eventually loosen the reins, but the combination of rickety vehicles and unforgiving level design only heightens the frustration.

It makes no spectacular breaks from the past, but it does reclaim the mood – if not the tone – of Diablo II. It's living proof that the values of 2001 still have worth over a decade later.