It's becoming a 5th Cell tradition: strong ideas compromised by erratic level design and structural weaknesses. One day, the developer will find the right balance to support its undeniable creativity, but sadly, it hasn't found it here.

It may tread more carefully around its psychiatric themes, but its puzzles still toy with minds as easily as they play with space.

In-app purchases require delicate balancing, but with T-Coin bundles costing up to £69.99, and annual T-Club subscriptions available for £20.99 a year, EA could hardly be more obvious in letting you know that, as far as it's concerned, the 69p you paid to download the game was only the beginning.

Ferociously compulsive.

BioWare hasn't cast itself as a guerrilla movement trying to subvert the MMOG with The Old Republic. Instead it's been the Empire, working to produce a slick, gigantic experience that, in the time of free-to-play, feels polished enough to demand monthly fees. How long this empire – vast and imposing, but archaic in structure – will last in the face of newer MMOGs and their rebellious payment models isn't easy to discern. This isn't the first of a new order of MMORPG, but it may well be the last of the old.

As tightly designed and finely balanced as it is, it's hard to shake the feeling that you're endlessly replaying a tutorial.

Bugbear built the FlatOut brand, and bred a following on a balance of silly stunts, destructible environments and rewards. It crafted the game's zanier side with care, with the aim of keeping players invested in its often cheap kicks. Team6 has abandoned that manifesto in favour of haphazard thrills via haphazard design. As a result, FlatOut 3 crashes and burns.

Corpse Party is often too rigid in its ways, requiring players to examine objects several times, occasionally in a very specific order – a problem exacerbated by a structure that locks out later chapters until the correct ending to the previous episode has been found. Some wrong (in every sense) endings are worth seeing once, but repeat plays of scenarios dilute the tension the studio takes such pains to build.

Pinballing between boost blocks on the shorter stages is an undoubted thrill, but when a single, late mistake on the lengthier levels proves decisive, the less patient among us will likely find that an old-fashioned punishment too far.

The highscore table and note-perfect humour (which, just like the pixel-art graphics and whimsical audio, strikes the perfect balance between faux-naivety and self-awareness) proves more than enough to keep you playing in the traffic.

The final third of the game abandons grubby criminality for altogether more lurid, excessive and enjoyably silly climes, testifying to the fact that Saints Row is at its best when it rejects the expectations of the series and the strictures of the GTA format.

Economical and clever, Pullblox is full of leftfield ideas that turn odd congregations of technology into quiet magic. At last, 3DS has a puzzle game with real depth.

It may look chaotic, but this is as controlled as iOS gaming gets. Immaculately calibrated touch controls give you the tools to escape even the most ferocious barrage, while the five stages challenge twitch reflexes, muscle memory and pattern recognition equally. One of the toughest games you'll ever play, then, but also one of the fairest.

It's clear that Disney's ideas are far from drying up.

One of the most artistically accomplished games to have emerged from an independent studio, Trine 2 has enough minor tweaks and new things to see to draw you back into its playground. It's a short, sweet, occasionally imperfect little treat.

The single-player campaign is fast-paced if rather unforgiving on occasion, and the online community is refreshingly vibrant given the game's steep learning curve. Recollection's only real problems exist in the form of a handful of irritating crash bugs and server disconnects, along with an unwelcome over-eagerness to drive you towards in-app purchases as you seek to bolster your sickly starter deck.

When it works, however, Infinity Blade II represents iOS gaming at its finest. For all Chair's improvements, the first game's nagging sense of hollow repetition will still set in eventually; it just takes longer to arrive this time. But until that point arrives, Infinity Blade II remains a defining, and essential, iOS experience.

Chaos reigns in the brackish bayous of this endearingly ramshackle racer from Hydro Thunder Hurricane developer Vector Unit. An erratic police presence might attempt to uphold the law, but between the fluctuating prices of its illegal trading posts and the trail of destruction your air boat leaves in its wake – not to mention a frame-rate choppier than the winding waterways themselves – this is a world without order.

Playing against AI can throw up a challenge, but requires patience. Higher difficulties give the AI more time to think, but DTOL's real problem is its interface. It's simple to the point of crudity, but functionally it can be opaque and cluttered, making a reasonably complex game seem even more so while you're figuring out the rules. Get past that, and there's an acute psychological game to be played in DTOL, but it'll require time – and an extra player – to find it.

The Run doesn't have the structure or production values to carry off its concept. Even if it did, its successes would be smothered by a procession of awful technical flaws. Lacking charm and polish, only the Need For Speed name will sell the game – which will no doubt mean that it fares well enough. But in a year that has seen gaming's biggest franchises one-upping each 
other and demanding players' attention like never before, The Run simply doesn't cut it.

Mildly charming but fiercely superficial, Kinect Sports remains undermined by the lingering inconsequentiality that tends to gather around all but the very best compilation titles.

A hybrid game of mixed success, Legacy reconciles Ace Combat's past and present while failing to offer enough diversity and features to make the results essential.

A brainteaser that's nervy, humbling, and strangely energising. If you can handle the stress, SpellTower is magnificent.

Nintendo has clearly been experimenting with how to better exploit its system's obvious potential, and its solution is a natural, graceful implementation of 3D that complements and even improves its games, rather than feeling tacked on.

SideScroller's final stages are arguably among the best things Q-Games has ever done, but be warned: if you're used to the puzzley pace of Shooter, you won't find its playful nature here.

A fleeting novelty.

The central achievement of Minecraft is a willingness to let the player define the experience; to make them the most interesting element in a world that's already dynamic and fascinating. It's a decision that has made designer Markus Persson a millionaire, and it's ensured that the most important PC game of the past five years is also the most timely.

Where Is My Heart? revels in simplicity, beauty and restraint, yet the experience tempers such qualities by proving challenging, infuriating and exhausting.