Perhaps the developers were too focused on not breaking all those wonderful toys, or perhaps they were bound to a tight deadline, but the game feels slightly flat as a result.

Viewed abstractly, Dual Destinies is a straightforward sequence of locked narrative corridors.

It's impossible to hold that shallowness against it. This isn't meant to be a game you plug away at for hours on end, trying to beat your high scores or to unlock additional stages. It's supposed to be a daft bit of throwaway entertainment for a gathering of family or friends, a game that anyone can pick up and play and have a good time with.

There's a faint whiff of missed opportunity about Enter The Dominatrix, then, but four or five really good laughs are enough to warrant a cautious thumbs-up. Volition's made a half-decent fist of reheating its own leftovers, and with the injection of fresh ingredients, the next episode - brilliantly titled How The Saints Saved Christmas - promises to be even more of a giggle.

What's here at the moment more than justifies the pocket money impulse purchase price, and the few hours it will take you to bash your way through to the end.

The most heartbreaking thing about all this is that Sonic Team is clearly trying; the developer throws everything it can at the game in the hope that something will stick. Yet the result is a disastrous lack of focus.

Familiar but consistently surprising, this new Parable even fits beautifully into the existing game - a game that took its power not from a single narrative but the interaction of all its possible narratives, super-positioned and entangled.

Most importantly, the game never takes the devotion of these young players for granted, and seeks to reward and challenge them at every turn.

Device 6 is designed to linger in the mind long after the last code has been cracked and the last sentence read.

Fans of the previous games and lovers of Marvel's dynamic universe will find plenty to enjoy without having to spend anything.

As it stands now, it's a fun time-waster for retro game and horror fans. With a little more balance and polish, however, it could be something quite special.

But, story-wise, I'm hooked. The characters are fascinating, the plot heavy with potential, and my faith in Telltale's skill is high. Consider this score a work in progress then, with the expectation that it will rise over the coming months as Mr Wolf's investigation deepens.

Instead of a full-blooded reminder of a genre of games sadly departed, it's more often a reminder of why they died away in the first place.

Heavy Rain worked because it was a police procedural, a genre that's all about narrow horizons and methodical reassurance. The tight confines of Quantic's style suited it well. The same delivery just can't contain Beyond's epic scope, preposterous premise and high-octane action. You're left feeling detached from it, and its component parts have nothing more than a frail spine of story holding them together.

For the young, the game is a soothing promise that, if you work hard, concentrate and look after others, victory and success will be yours. For the young at heart it's a warm reminder of the childlike thrills of discovery, compilation and care.

The finest expression of Satoshi Tajiri's obsessive vision yet. The transition to 3D is smooth and natural and the multitudinous additions to the proven formula will excite even the most jaded Pokémon fanatic.

In isolation it's a great racing game, but in the context of the dreaded yearly churn to which Codemasters finds itself committed, the sensational but ultimately restrictive Classics Mode is the only meaningful addition.

Giant Boulder of Death is a quintessential Adult Swim game. It's strange and silly, but also incredibly well balanced and designed underneath its anarchic surface. Most importantly, the feel of it is just right.

As for the narrative that the cinematic camera serves, Rain's tale is too flimsy and poorly-paced to build into something significant.

What balance there is in Tactical Intervention is precarious at best. Mechanics have been piled on mechanics - ideas the game's creator always envisaged adding to his first game before Counter-Strike was firmly thrust into the hands of its community.

Limited is really the word that sums up Foul Play. It's a difficult game to dislike, thanks to its whimsical tone, but it doesn't do much in gameplay terms to win your affections.

If a few joints can be tightened, a few rough edges filed down, Ironclad Tactics could hum along nicely. For now, however, I wouldn't recommend you climb aboard this one. It's a rickety ride.

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.

There's precious little depth lurking in Hammerwatch, then, but if you've got a few friends handy or are willing to wait around online for the worryingly small community to make itself known, this is genuine old-fashioned skeleton-bashing with a gloriously tidal approach to chucking in the enemies.

As much as I know I will play it all year, though, I would like to feel a greater sense of progression next time. Hopefully EA Sports will find the next-generation consoles inspiring.

Coolson's Artisanal Chocolate Alphabet is a beautifully crafted, fun to play game. It's perfect for anyone who enjoys wordplay, has fastidious organisational tendencies or was disappointed to discover that high-paying jobs in publishing do not magically apparate after three years spent reading one Thomas Hardy novel and watching Loose Women.

Aarklash: Legacy takes the player back to the world of the tabletop RPG known as Confrontation in a second attempt to propose its fantasy universe to PC gamers. The game in itself is a good, party-based RPG, with a nice combat system and many interesting ideas. Unfortunately it’s not a masterpiece and, after a while, the hybrid turn mechanics become a little boring. Dedicated to the fan of the genre who are in search of a fantasy game at a budget price.

The primal joys of a perfect parry followed by a killing blow against a hulking monster mean that Infinity Blade 3 was always going to be good fun where it counts. But between distracting feature creep and the inclusion of in-app purchases just because everyone else is using them, it feels like a game that exists more to serve a publishing agenda than an essential closing chapter in a coherent trilogy.

Like the very best ghost town, it can be surprisingly hard to leave.

In many ways it's the same message as last year, then, despite sea-change in a lot of areas: PES 2014 is a methodical sports game with deep systems that reward practice and experimentation; the sort of game that will appeal to people who read Zonal Marking rather than Sun Sport.

Just like its young hero, The Wind Waker is crisp and energetic, spirited and soulful, just a little bit wayward - and it hasn't aged a day.

GTA5 may not be the Hollywood-beating crime story it wants to be, then, but it's the best video game it's ever been, and I'll take that.

It just about passes muster as a stopgap release to tide fans over until the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3, but those looking to rekindle fond memories may find nostalgia's bubble all too easily pricked.

It's a decent drive that wears its iOS clothing unconvincingly, perhaps a symptom of 2K's inexperience in the area. 2K Drive could have been something special, but it's missing the guiding hand Lucid needed to take it beyond half-heartedly evoking memories of old.

All it had to do was actually simulate farming. That, apparently, is too much to ask from a game called Farming Simulator. In its own weird way, the complete lack of ambition shown by this underdog has disappointed me more than any lacklustre blockbuster ever will.

It has a lot of potential and I'm interested to see how it grows, because it's a game that's all about trying new things: new tricks, new combinations, new possibilities.

By successfully tapping into parental instincts rarely solicited by video games, and offering a parable about nurture and sacrifice, it's a beautiful game within, too.

As usual, Love's eye for a scandalous and knowing wink at gender relations forms an enjoyable, coherent journey through well-rounded characters' lives. If Hate Plus has a downside, it's that you will have to put aside time to read things for three days. But the upside is that you get to read Christine Love's stories for three days, have your cake, and eat it as well.

A Machine for Pigs performs the not inconsequential achievement of maintaining the soul of Amnesia. This is still a game that understands that real horror comes from disempowerment, and from the unseen, unknown and unexplained.

It comes frustratingly close to delivering something special. But despite multiple gameplay avenues bursting with potential, it leaves them largely unexplored, showing more interest in wowing you with surface sizzle.

With each word you correct, you're rebelling against the system, raising a middle finger to oppression. It's a good feeling, and it's prompted by nothing more than black text on a white background. That's the power of the written word, all right.

Stop and peer too long into Outlast's gloom and you'll see the zips on the monster costumes. Take it at at speed and you'll find a haunted house worth visiting.

Ultima's character has been corrupted and trammelled into a grotesque parody of itself in Ultima Forever. This game is a desecration.

A solid and visually impressive shooter, it never manages to feel essential - and clearly exists mostly because all first-party franchises are obliged to put in an appearance on a new console - but even as a relatively minor entry in its own series, it still sets a new benchmark for portable shooters.

An enjoyable, polished, satisfying game. It may only be a few hours long, but it's worth a tenner. It's perfect for those afternoons when all you want to do is close the curtains and collect rainbow gems while listening to some nice music. Just don't expect to remember the experience in 23 years. Or indeed next Tuesday.

For all that the game may have promised, it isn't such a big step forward for the series. It's Total War done a bit bigger, a bit better and a bit different. Its borders hold firm.

Space Hulk could have - and should have - been better than this.

Diablo 3 on console is one of the best co-op games money can buy. It swings smoothly from easygoing to intense, with perfectly paced pockets of downtime, and is capable of swallowing entire evenings in a single, voracious gulp.

At various points, Killer is Dead shoots for the visual surrealism of El Shaddai, the hyperbolic intensity of Asura's Wrath, the oddball melodrama of Deadly Premonition, the extravagant showmanship of Bayonetta. It misses by a wide margin every time. Those games are punk, but Killer is Dead is just posturing. It's just product.

It's worrying when the nicest thing you can say about a game is that the early sections manage to be boring in an interesting way, but it's true for Lost Planet 3. It's a game that manages to make third-person shooting feel like work - and one that makes work feel like something that more games should explore.

SteamWorld Dig is the best kind of surprise, then: a game with substance, challenge and no little charm that seems to have come out of nowhere.

The platform game has been around for so long that it's easy to assume that the genre has run out of surprises. A showcase for the game designer's art and one of the greatest platform games of this - or any - year, Rayman Legends disproves that in glorious style.

While Infinity is adequate in basic gameplay terms, and will certainly amuse Disney-fixated youngsters for a while, it falls short of the games whose ideas it borrows.

Everything in Dragon Commander (aside from these bosoms) is slightly underdeveloped. Still, what Larian has created is a coherent and idiosyncratic game that's remarkably enjoyable if you're a strategy fan who wants something less po-faced than the Total War series.

Time may not have been particularly kind to Flashback, but 20 years on, it hasn't been forgotten. It's unlikely we'll be able to say the same for this remake in 20 days.

Given its fractured development and lumpen structure, the fact that The Bureau is actually pretty good is arguably victory enough. It's certainly the "contemporary" game 2K wanted - but it's never as inventive or memorable as the strategy game that inspired it.

Dropchord demonstrates Double Fine's expanding range and competency as the studio begins to diversify. This may be a palette-cleansing effort for the studio's staff, but in Dropchord's case that sense of creative liberation works in our favour.

This is a love letter to childhood innocence, to that age where truth and justice and awesome costumes seem almost real, as well as the coolest things in the world. In that light, picking at it seems churlish, because The Wonderful 101 doesn't make you feel like a hero; it makes you feel like hundreds.

Citadels is a sorry mess that should be avoided. Perhaps the developers will fix at least the basic functions in a few months but there is nothing here that raises any hope that it will even match its competitors then.

In keeping with its horticultural theme, Plants vs. Zombies 2 has deep roots and many branches, and it bears fruit in a game that feels at once familiar and refreshing.

As a statement of intent, Gone Home is laudable; as a technical exercise in game narrative, it's compromised, but it definitely has its strengths and is worthy of study. But you can't escape the sense that Gaynor, Zimonja and Nordhagen started on this project with grand designs for games as a storytelling medium, yet without a story they desperately wanted to tell.

When the game clicks, which it does often enough across its many modes and missions, it overcomes the inadequacy of its storytelling and reminds you why Splinter Cell was so appealing in the first place.

Saints Row 4 may lack refinement - nothing thwarts a superhero quite so frequently as an overhanging roof or your homies standing in a doorway - but it compensates with sheer exuberance. It's a heartfelt love letter to the superhero genre and to a medium that makes such madness possible.

Larger and more intricate than The Knife of Dunwall, The Brigmore Witches emerges as one of the finest examples of how to not only expand a blockbuster video game, but also of how to enrich and deepen one.

It's still a long way from being the slick, sophisticated crime thriller it wants to be but, with a little forgiveness from the player, this rough diamond manages to shine.

For its target audience - those late 20s, early 30s gamers who remember blowing on the NES cart's connectors when it wouldn't load - the impact of WayForward's high-purity dose of old-fashioned platforming has been diluted by the new wrapping. Even those new backgrounds, as lovely as they are, pull the eye away from the parts of the level that have actually been recreated. For the Pixar generation, meanwhile, there's just a quaint, old-school platformer here, starring a character of whom they've never heard.

There aren't enough two-player tablet action games knocking around; this one is clever and even-handed and, like its courtly leads, unlikely to outstay its welcome.

With its oppressive 16-bit visuals and stomping Eastern Bloc soundtrack - all ominous parps, sinister trills and garbled Tannoy announcements - Papers, Please feels a lot like an interactive anxiety attack. It's hard to call such a nerve-shredding experience "fun", but it is absorbing, brilliantly written and causes you to question your every instinct and reaction - both in the game and in real life.

I think I could play Spelunky forever, and now that it has come home to PC, assuring its permanence, I believe I will.

After plugging away at The Drowning for a few days and pumping money into its ravenous maw, it becomes clear that this is a transaction machine first, a headline-grabbing control scheme second and an actual game a distant third.

The game as a whole is lacking in substance and rough around the edges, but Brothers' fantastic ending makes it a triumph all the same.

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.

Humans Must Answer comes from a place of honest passion and enthusiasm for the shmup, but feels torn between recreating the feeling of hammering coins into a cabinet in 1987 and doing things differently just for the sake of being different. The two never find an equilibrium, leaving the game's best ideas underdeveloped and its mistakes awkwardly exposed.

A decent enough result after 20 years in the wilderness.

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.

It may lack the roundness and heft of Frozen Synapse or X-Com: Enemy Unknown (both heavyweight strategy games that launched on iOS this year) but it also has an appeal that's distinct from these titles: the thrill of arranging a trap and then watching from the sidelines as its various components trigger.

Going hardcore again feels like a narrow interpretation of what made this part of the game good.

Tiny Thief isn't particularly difficult, but its bite-sized challenges are a perfect fit for a quick session on the move and provide just enough mental exercise to blow the cobwebs away on the journey to work.

The bosses, too, are consistently inventive.

It's odd and slightly throwaway, much like Attack of the Friday Monsters itself, yet it also captures the inquisitive naivety of childhood, and of a world where young imaginations blossom to fill the long hours of hot summer afternoons.

Judged purely as a standalone game, it's an unambiguous success.

All of which puts GoatUp 2 right up there with Gridrunner as Llamasoft's best work on iOS. It may have one foot in the past, but even with all that methane this is a daisy-fresh delight, as sprightly and joyous as anything on the App Store. In other words, a taste very much worth acquiring.

That's a testament to how beautifully Sprinkle Islands captures the childlike joy of splashing around, but it does tend to leave the puzzling element feeling progressively soggier as the levels progress.

It has the de rigueur iOS mission structure - complete x number of objectives to increase your crab rank - and power-ups to spend your in-game coins on, but the joy of Crabitron is in just grabbing a claw or two and making a big old mess.

What's most striking, though, is that Pikmin still feels like strategy seen with fresh eyes - strategy, perhaps, by designers who were unconcerned with labelling, and just let their ideas lead them where they wanted to go.

Vanguard's created a decent blaster which offers a couple of moments of genuine bullet-dodging glory: Halo's touch-screen debut is good-looking, colourful, and fun.

This is pared-back game creation at its most sharp-edged: a sewing needle through the tear duct, a razor blade lodged in your brain.

With its moreish pace and compelling presentation there's the basis of a really great tablet RPG here, but Warhammer Quest makes two misguided assumptions that hold it back. It assumes that role-playing works better with all the dice and messy statistics brushed off the table, and it assumes that a multiplayer board game and a single-player video game are the same experience.

The world did not need this Leisure Suit Larry game, and it does not need any more.

Canny enough to keep you hooked, but sufficiently honest to throw in something a little more nourishing too, the genetics are pretty strong with this one.

Dynasty Warriors remains a series that contains greatness, then, but that's not quite enough for higher marks - although, inevitably, it will still be just about enough to bring along Dynasty Warriors 9.

TrackMania 2 Valley's another Nadeo title as brilliant as it is scruffy, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

The additional content of Brave New World ensures that, now more than ever, Civilization 5 feels like a complete package; a game to lose hundreds of hours to as you build an empire to stand the test of time, and one to which you'll sacrifice many a cup of tea along the way.

All of which makes Dota 2 an absurd video game to try to recommend. Being the largest and most immediately open MOBA, with Valve showcasing its talent for rewarding and fostering a community, it demands and offers more than literally any game I can think of. It's almost more comparable to basketball than most commercial games. Something utterly opaque bearing no endgame, but that could happily fill every waking second of your life.

Beneath the hysterical presentation, the frantic battle segments and the skittish storyline, then, Project X Zone is a thin game. The emphasis on fighting game reactions in the battle segments should appeal to genre fans, but these are too simplistic for genuine expression or mastery. Likewise, the tactical elements of positioning and unit movement on the battlefield lack urgency and true significance. The result is a humorous curio, perhaps, but one without the underlying game to adequately serve its stars.

Perhaps Neverwinter has more potential, perhaps it will grow beyond this, but games can only be reviewed on what they are, not what they might become, and for now the many user-forged forays into fantasy are, just like the rest of Neverwinter, mostly about going to a place, bashing heads in and grabbing swag.

This is an enjoyable but rarely essential entry to the Mario & Luigi suite, then. AlphaDream is to be commended for its willingness to build each new game around a different kernel of an idea, but, perhaps inevitably, some of those ideas will be smaller than others.

On paper, this is just the kind of iOS tie-in fans often ask for: it's faithful to the source material, filled with familiar systems and details, and it's even made a decent attempt at matching the graphical style of the main game. It's Deus Ex in cross-section, but although so many of the right pieces are in place, the energy and skill that usually brings the whole thing to life is missing.