"Warcraft III" is very innovative and has production values higher than just about any game ever released on the PC, while Age of Mythology is simply a worthy successor to an excellent series.

The most exhilarating and refined Monster Hunter yet, even if its attempts to balance the old and new don't always quite coalesce in its ongoing quest to please all audiences.

The Emperor's Treasure doesn't just have rhythm: it also has soul.

The Club is brilliantly immediate, logical and rewarding in ways that the "PGR" games always were and are, and it does for the third-person shooter what no one else has even bothered trying to do: moving it closer to the 2D shoot-'em-ups of old in a manner that appeals anew.

But however much positive energy we lavish on FIFA all the areas that EA beats Konami on - bar online - are simply gloss. In a straight tussle between the games, we just don't enjoy playing FIFA as much as we do "PES3," and, for most of you, that's what matters.

But these are small things to get annoyed about in a game that's filled with so many other small things that have been included just to make you laugh, or to surprise you, or to make you think back to a comic book story you haven't thought about in 30 years.

But beneath the scream and riot there's a mathematical reality that simply makes for really good videogame levels.

An exceptionally accessible package that fools you into thinking you're doing well - until you observe your pitiful online ranking.

It's the first game I've played in ages that realises first-person shooters can bundle in as much philosophy and as many moral dilemmas as they like, but fundamentally they're still about shooting monsters in the face, and so what it lacks in originality it makes up for in variety, pacing and exuberance.

Sure, there are flaws and the lack of any soloing capability, the occasional difficulty in finding groups, as well as the apparent slowness of levelling get irritating, but they're nothing in the face of what it does properly.

This heartwarming gestalt is a lovely and joy-bringing piece of our history, and anybody who ever popped a shiny round coin in any one of these machines' welcoming slots owes themselves a copy, today.

With Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Sayonara Wild Hearts developer Simogo weaves together interlocking puzzles, infinite timelines, and supernatural mischief with only minimal clumsiness.

It's also rather obvious that the developers realised towards the end of the game that it was going to be far too short, resorting to the old trick of forcing you to backtrack across large portions of the game world (no less than three times!) to make it seem longer.

Although it's ostensibly simple, Naked War is a game with enormous and entertaining hidden depth...It's fun and addictive, and you'll willingly give it more than eight-odd hours.

A fairly competent shooter with quite a bit of life in it - just not quite the leap forward we had hoped for.

The inability to upload high-scores is a minor disappointment, but otherwise Bit.Trip Void is an unqualified success, and for 600 Points from the Wii Shop it's well worth investigating.

If you hanker for a new world – one that feels familiar yet fresh, with an atmosphere of discovery and experimentation – then Rift stands proudly, ready to greet you with open arms.

It starts with a bump, but played the right way, V Rising offers riches few other crafting survival games can match.

An excellent strategy game which is sadly somewhat marred by its overly difficult campaigns and unimpressive enemy AI.

It would be too generous to suggest this is the best recreation of the sport imaginable, as the rough edges and clunky navigation pull the game back from contemporary sheen. But it's close. And in sports videogames, that's the only metaphorical distance that matters.

Top notch side-scrolling brawler from 1993, and, in many respects almost as much fun now as it was then.

A great card battling game, and only a few niggly details hold it back from being even better: the lousy locked decks, the half-baked multiplayer tournaments, the quick and dirty iPad port. Nevertheless, it offers something fresh and creates battles that feel like two massed armies clashing across their ranks.

Despite - or possibly because of - its simple premise, Critical Mass is a game that's hard to put down once you get into a groove, and its a game we're likely to see a lot more of on handheld platforms once word gets around.

A delightful, playful, occasionally exhilarating platformer. But while this is a game whose visuals point to a bright, alternative future, its systems too often rely on the dusty past. Half of a classic, then.

Mastering the game's in-body platforming is an urgent thrill, beaten down less violently here under the auspices of our old friends keyboard and mouse, and stands out from the homogenised interfaces of modern first-person and platform games.

Chasing scores is always an exercise in masochism, and in giving you potentially infinite second chances, Time Surfer risked taking away the sense of achievement. Instead, it adds a whole other dimension.

Driver: San Francisco isn't quite the jolt that the arcade driving genre needs to stir it from its own particular coma, then, but it's an endearing and eccentric experience in itself. In Reflection's best work since the Driver series began, it's managed to tame the ridiculous and conjure something quite sublime.

It's a beautiful piece of design and one that puts PomPom right up there with Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman at the very forefront of the genre... whatever genre this actually is, of course.

Put it like this: This is probably one of the most enjoyable piece of early-Beta code that I've ever played. You want to damn Atari for releasing it like this. However, you also want to hail them for spending money on something of Boiling Point's ambition rather than the safe option.

The important thing is that it's all rather good fun, right down to the level design, colour palette and even the sound effects.

It plays it a little safe in places and lacks a truly killer single-player mode, but by broadening the versatility of the tag system while dramatically improving the online functionality, Namco has crafted a new teamwork seminar that builds upon the original in almost all the areas that matter.

It's perfectly pitched between the frustration of failure and the high-speed, adrenaline-fuelled euphoria of success, and it's a welcome return to a more old-school Burnout formula.

But perhaps the over-riding criticism of Brute Force is that it should have been an FPS. It seems like Digital Anvil designed it in the third person for the sake of it, without acknowledging that it completely screws up the opportunity to play it split screen, thanks to inherent third person viewpoint issues.

The opportunity to record your own live music over the top of your sequenced compositions, to export Midi files with your loops and to save out songs as .wavs are features that go beyond where console-based music packages have ventured before.

This remake is a labour of love, and it catches the single most important thing about Cave Story. Objectively, it's a 2D game heavily inspired by Metroid. In its details, and in your hands and head, it's another world entirely.

Arkham-esque combat and lovely platforming combine in this joyous and colourful game.

If you take FM2008 at face value, you're left standing eyeball to eyeball with the finest football management game ever made. But just like Aliens: Special Edition was fleetingly more engaging than the cinema release, this year's FM feels like a game that further polishes an already highly buffed formula but fails to take it to a genuinely higher level.

A game a few degrees short of greatness, an intense and hectic romp that needs that final level of polish to compete with the very best.

The genius of Blek's design is that it channels that weird sense of freedom you get from helping a doodle unfold - the freedom that comes of kicking yourself loose from life's formal structures, even if your only rebellion is seeing where a curving black line will take you.

Mutant Blobs Attack is exactly the sort of game Vita needs lots of if is to survive and thrive as a platform. It's got the pick-up-and-play moreishness of the best of iOS with a level of complexity only possible on bespoke gaming hardware.

The heroic thing about it all is that Laughing Jackal manages to reinvent Qix in a way that has evidently been completely beyond Taito for the past 30 years.

To say it's a good stopgap for Super Street Fighter IV would be an injustice, as it's a fighter that stands out on its own merit. Those who look beyond the tinted visors will discover not just an excellent Wii game but an all kinds of awesome 2D fighter.

It's fundamentally a great game and the best option for console-owning quiz fans.

Of course the idea with Deluxe is that even if that's beyond you so much has been brought together that there's enough to entertain regardless.

Take it on its merits, enjoy it for what it offers and make allowances for its humble origins and this second salvo in the God of War Collection is a worthwhile, if never quite spectacular, update to the Kratos canon.

As it stands, however, Verdict Day is more than just a marked improvement over Armored Core 5. It offers more parts, more maps and new missions while expanding the already tight mechanics with an AI crafting system and an overhauled online mode that encapsulate what Armored Core does best: options, creativity, strategy and teamwork. It's unashamedly hardcore - and all the better for it.

An excellent 'story so far' game that delivers pretty much the whole Tekken experience thus far for an astonishingly inconsequential seven quid. More than that though, it's a hard-hitting fly-kick to the face of the software industry - a standard bearer that redefines the value and content level of downloadable games.

Handling, progress and rewards are as mature as you would anticipate from a developer that now has six similar arcade racers under its belt.

In essence, you have to play it less and less, and it will feel better every time. It's all about going out of your way not to go out of your way.

Anyone expecting the same level of teen drama offered by the Persona series may find the characters a little flat, but if you embrace the depths of the fusion system, there's nothing quite like building a squad of demons that can unleash hell in perfect harmony.

With 90 brow-furrowing levels to pile through - and a built-in level editor for creative sorts - iBlast Moki 2 offers the kind of value that will have Satoru Iwata crying into his sales figures. The iPhone's not exactly short of great physics puzzle games, but it'd be remiss of anyone not to pick this one up.

Judged on game design and content, then, it's slightly anachronistic, but as a toy box full of things you can only do in games, Rage is warm-hearted and refreshing. It's not going to change the world, but it does serve as a timely reminder of that other thing id Software games always did besides smashing through some new technological barrier.

One of the most refreshing, fun and downright brilliant games I've played this year.

Supporting up to four players at once, the game lends itself brilliantly to playing with your mates (locally or online), but is equally good fun against the computer in the hugely challenging campaign mode.

FIFA 08 is, on the whole, a triumph. Had the Be A Pro features been more fleshed out and the lower difficulty settings somewhat more forgiving, then it would undoubtedly have scored a 9 rather than an 8. However, thanks to the promise of the former feature, multiplayer games that are little short of superb (due to the lack of AI defenders thwarting your every attack), the usual exhaustive array of official league and cup competitions and some stunning visuals and animations that milk next gen power for all it's worth, it very much feels that the FIFA franchise is genuinely teetering on the cusp of greatness.

The jackhammer gameplay won't necessarily win over new converts, but for everyone else, this silky remake is a must buy.

If you're an old school arcade veteran looking to prove yourself again, then this is perhaps the purest gameplay experience you'll find for a long time. Even if you're a rookie looking for something 'new', you can't go wrong, but you might well find the barriers to entry a little harsh to say the least.

The Walking Dead is a serious, solid, but clay-footed work; in truth, it wouldn't stand out from the crowd if video game storytelling wasn't so impoverished to begin with.

The addition of a robust and varied co-op option helps to mitigate the disappointment of the by-the-numbers traditional multiplayer modes. However, looking back to Kristan's review review of Call of Duty 3 you'll find the exact same complaints being raised two years ago. Corridor gameplay. Outdated features. Flaky AI. They're all still here, albeit masked by even more whiz-bang effects than ever before.

Air Traffic Chaos is, basically, terribly, perfect.

The lighting system more than makes up for this lack of colour though, with pyrotechnic multi-coloured dynamic lighting, and full day and night cycles.

This is a high-quality game by anyone's standards, but that doesn't change the fact that I spent a good deal of my time playing it feeling blasphemously bored.

Machinarium is a treat for the senses that demands more of your brain, a paradoxically gentle yet punishing riff on a genre that, until now, had been revived but sadly defanged for modern players.

Batman Arkham Shadow can feel rough around the edges at times, but it's still a more than worthy entry to the Arkham series, and an essential Quest 3 experience.

Resogun really is that rare kind of arcade game that feels like an entirely different beast when played on the toughest setting. It's also the closest the PS4 launch line-up gets to offering a genuine next-gen thrill.

Regardless, that Cave continues to flourish in a shifting industry and to evolve a sub-genre they helped define, is testament to the studio's strategic nous - in-game and out. DoDonPachi Resurrection shows just how much poorer we would be without them.

Get the timing and direction right and you'll clock up a higher score, screw it up and you'll suffer the indignity of being a ham-fisted rhythmless clod.

As RTS games go Winter Assault and its parent game are more concerned with being spectacular than they are about being sophisticated, but we appreciate how that works.

So while it never becomes particularly difficult, it remains constantly interesting, bursting with personality and a desire to be incredibly silly.

MotoGP 10/11 marks the series' evolution into a simulation with depth. It's a game with a steep learning curve and there are no shortcuts to mastery – much like motorbikes themselves – but with patience and perseverance the rewards for dedication are great.

These games have always come with oddities, but the central mode is so staggeringly joyous and compelling that it draws my eye and my attention and leaves me powerless to do anything else. Unlike Tetris, Lumines didn't need a borrowing from Lumines to become even better. All it needs - and this may just be me, and I know we have the Steam Deck - is a release on Switch 2, where that glorious panoramic screen that you hold in your hands is waiting to take this absolute dazzler back home to its portable origins.

Cars, boats, guns, stealth, traps, super-strength, scent-vision - it's crowded, but its density is actually our delight, because while it may not play as strategically or controllably as something like "Halo," or as evocatively and inventively as something like "Half-Life 2," it's still atmospheric, involving, and empowering.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is a cerebral but hugely characterful stealth tactics game filled with creativity and depth. And fun pirate stuff.

It's infuriating that the adventure feels so rough around the edges, then, but a range of annoyances are not quite enough to detract from the madcap brilliance at the core of the whole thing.

FIFA 09 rams the point home with the emphasis on physical midfield battles and possession football, where teams hold their shape and press, and jostle with great effect, and it's up to you to exploit them by dragging defenders out of position, switching the play and paying attention to personnel.

It's bursting with happiness. And so am I when I play it.

Marginally better than the original. The single player game is undoubtedly more enjoyable, whilst the multiplayer is still flawed but nevertheless worth a few games.

I love it - the challenge, the atmosphere, the blood.

Tarsier returns to horror with a rich, meaningful evolution of its familiar Little Nightmares formula. And while it could perhaps be a little more radical, Reanimal remains utterly compelling; bleak, nasty, and full of menace.

Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all, that it so confidently and prettily takes the fight to Blizzard is an enormous compliment about how well put-together this is.

On consoles, at heart, it's the same rewarding, anecdote-rich and very personal experience as it ever was. If you've got the option, then the PC version is still the one to go for, but in every significant way, this is just as good.

Meanwhile, it serves as a sharp reminder that, regardless of how pointless the skills are that some videogames imprint upon our minds and hands, some of life's biggest thrills are to be found in their mastery.

Trials Fusion is still a supremely enjoyable game, but it takes very few risks in its desire to stand the test of time, preferring to adopt the neutrality of a platform holder and stick to things that worked well in Evolution - a game with which you sometimes feel it should swap monikers.

Some of you might also grumble about how little innovation there is in this sequel. In most senses, yes, this is a straightforward re-run of the last one. In its favour, though, it boasts vastly superior visuals, instant restarts, an achievement system, and, of course, an online components like a leaderboard, uploadable replays and multiplayer modes.

The only problem, in truth, is that it's outrageously difficult to play against experienced campaigners that know the maps inside out and all the tricks. But against your equally (in)experienced mates, it's a fantastic way of experiencing stealth gaming multiplayer.

It's worth taking the time to raise a glass to this unlikely hero, and what might well be his best game to date. To Infinity, and beyond!

If it played just a little tighter, Apotheon would be brushing up against greatness. As it stands, it's stunning to look at and a pleasure to play, and what flaws it does have can be easily overlooked by anyone looking for something smart and stylish.

Is it a game? I can't say I know the answer, but I do know that unless you're an IGF judge or a prissy dogmatist who sets out to pedantically define the boundaries of an extremely fluid medium, then you shouldn't really care. All that matters is that Dear Esther is worth your time - and that its two-hour long chill will remain in your bones for a long while after.

Single-player fans need not apply - but for online players, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a title which stacks up surprisingly well with Valve's "Team Fortress 2." It can't quite match the polish, presentation and beautifully conceived design of Valve's latest, but Quake Wars sets out to provide a totally different experience, and does so very well - with a set of well-designed, expansive levels and great vehicles being the stand-out factors.

What a treat, finally, to be able to say nice things about Battlefield 4. Onwards, upwards, and never look back at the destruction you left behind.

You can smash through Terminator 2D: No Fate's story mode in less that the runtime of the movie, but that doesn't stop this side-scrolling action platformer from being a perfectly presented tribute to 90s nostalgia.

It's a saccharine-sweet little big adventure, which engrossed us right through to the end, and if you're in the market for a spot of light relief in your adventuring, you could do worse than give Ham-Ham Heartbreak a little TLC.

Make no mistake that it is going to give you absolute hell, yet beyond the initial frustration at your apparent gaming impotence, attempting to penetrate its steely exterior becomes a bizarre pleasure that offers a triumphant sense of achievement.

Adding GRID's flashback feature allows the game to hit that sweet spot of accessibility without blunting its appeal, and allied to a plethora of consistently entertaining race disciplines and locations, it's an absorbing and technically accomplished experience from start to finish.

For all the hours it eats up, outside of its multiplayer it gives disappointingly little back, and it will continue to give very little back until Firaxis bites the bullet and admits that there are aspects of Civilization which deserve not just to be improved, but fixed.

Set over seven beautiful retro-style levels, half the fun of The Incident is in seeing what craziness can be thrown your way next while humming along to the giddy chiptune.

Stardrone carries on taunting you with its breathless pinball-breakout king of swing madness. It's a complex, abusive relationship, and one you should enter into with your eyes wide open.

Nobody Wants to Die doesn't bring much invention to the table - but while it lacks originality, it has atmosphere, heart and relevance in spades.