you get less than two hours of gameplay consisting of a few repetitive fights, and all you get to show for it is a new hat. Hardly worth getting out of bed for, let alone rising from the grave.

A curious game: an improbably boisterous departure for a series that has slipped into conservative compromise in recent years.

Halo 4 is authentic, and assures 343's role is more than a mere tribute act. Their delicate yet sprawling work may be more continuation than true expansion - and perhaps the true test comes in the next step - but for now, Halo returns with a bang, not a whimper.

It's a classic game and an essential part of any collection, especially in this flawless, gorgeous reissue.

Eight years in purgatory hasn't really been long enough to justify the move into down into the rosy red-tinted fires of Hell & Damnation. Sorry, Lucifer.

Its sense of character may be not be as forceful as Criterion's other games - but the sense of competition that informs it, the joy of discovery and the plain pleasure of driving haven't been dimmed in the slightest. This isn't quite paradise, but it comes very close.

The biggest and richest Assassin's Creed game to date - maybe not the best, but a place where, for want of a better expression, everything is permitted.

It's a tightly wound adventure well worth setting aside time for, backed up by a multiplayer angle that will have greater staying power.

Football Manager offers the most detailed and in-depth management experience ever made, as it does every year.

There's been a backlash brewing for some time against the bombastic direction military shooters have taken, but it would be wrong to assume that Medal of Honor: Warfighter is simply the game unlucky enough to bear its brunt. The truth is far simpler and more depressing: it's just not that good.

It only works as a whole, and it doesn't hit you like a flavour; it builds up in your system like an intravenous solution. If you took away the masks, or the blinking colours, or knocking over guys with doors, or the stuff about answerphone messages, or the DeLorean, or the wobble on the screen, or the super-fast movement, or walking back through what you've just done, you probably wouldn't understand why it stopped working, but it would definitely stop working.

It's probably quite fitting that anyone who wants to recreate Monkey Ball's past in this way will be left a little disappointed. Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz sees Marvelous AQL and Sega attempting much the same trick and earning much the same result. This does enough to stop the rot, but it can never quite turn back the clock.

Scrappy design and presentation mean that it's hard to give Zombie Driver a more enthusiastic thumbs up - but as a particularly goofy example of the sort of guilty gaming pleasure that rarely gets a look-in amongst the autumn blockbusters, it's impossible to dislike.

Despite the shift in dimensions, this is a pretty standard Layton adventure. Luckily, since Layton adventures tend to be one of the more dependable highlights of the gaming calendar, that remains a ringing endorsement.

From this point it's clear that in terms of being a shooter, 007 Legends is dismal - but in terms of being an actual James Bond game, it's a genuine insult.

It's a game that can startle you, for sure, but one that more often bores, the gunplay a low thrumming drone rather than a high-pitched screech of rage.

This is a vast, generous offering: a true expansion from a developer that obviously cares deeply about its creation, rather than a corporate cash-grab mandated by the boardroom. More please.

And away from the core experience, WRC 3 is lacking, if not a little regressive. The involved if slightly flabby career experience of previous games, which had you recruiting a team as you worked up through the ranks, has been replaced with a character-driven affair that apes Codemasters' more recent efforts while getting it horribly, horribly wrong.

The Unfinished Swan is gentle and beguiling, but also thematically patchy and insecure in its own merits, choosing to constantly introduce less interesting new gameplay systems rather than fully explore any single motif.

It's an adventure built of other adventures, then, and its originality comes from the manner in which everything comes together. If you love old games - and old movies and all that other old jazz - there's a good chance you're going to love this, too. It has an ancient heart, shot full of bullets and criss-crossed with tyre treads.

Forza Horizon is built on the best parts of the Motorsport games but delivers a strikingly different experience to them, and in many ways a better one. It has its own personality. It exchanges infinite laps and bottomless grind for an actual structure and a sense of adventure, while mastering its roads requires less practiced skill than it does courage and intuition.

It's unique, unlikely and uneven, but also the kind of unsafe game that is rarely created in mainstream circles these days. For that reason, despite the simplicity, the linearity, the dearth of meaningful systems, it is also curiously fascinating.

Angry Birds Trilogy certainly benefits from the more extravagant presentation options that a TV allows, and in bringing Rovio's juggernaut to consoles it has a basic "does what it says on the box" appeal - but there's clearly a lot more that could have been done beyond bluntly porting the levels across.

If you're someone like me who returns to Trials at intervals, then Origin of Pain is a great opportunity to catch up on months of fantastic user-generated content, explore the possibilities of an interesting new bike, and savour another few dozen challenging and imaginative courses from the team that really put trials riding on the gaming map.

A game filled with wonderful new ideas in the margins, but dependable, predictable gameplay in the middle. A game that honours the past but never seeks to stray too far from it. A game that elicits absolute unguarded delight and devotion from its young fans, even as they dream of what might be possible in the future.

Black and White 2 offers a compelling record of all that's great from 16 years of catching, collecting, collating and coaxing pocket monsters into ever more exciting forms, bit by wonderful bit.

Play Liberation Maiden because you're after an acceptable arcade shooter, in other words; approach it expecting another wonky blast of Suda51 charm and, President Mech aside, you're going to be a little disappointed.

Re-imagining? Remake? Whatever it is, XCOM brings back and revitalises a classic...This game is a winner.

This is a muscular and confident game, one with the utmost faith in its own fiction and a dedication to gameplay satisfaction at a microscopic level, paid off in dozens of situations that feel completely random and organic, even when they've clearly been planted there for you to find. Tighter control and a more generous approach to replay value would elevate Dishonored to true classic status, but it stands as one of the year's best all the same.

Get reacquainted and it's easy to convince yourself that perhaps NiGHTS is Sonic Team's real masterpiece.

For all its stumbles - and there are an awkward handful - Mists of Pandaria nevertheless represents a WOW participating in the massively multiplayer genre rather than revelling in the cult of its own personality.

War of the Roses is modest and pared-down, then - but it offers a challenging, chaotic and sometimes comic take on multiplayer. It's an innovative game and I'd like to see it succeed, I'd like to see it grow and, quite honestly, I'd like to see it turn into an eSport.

All the effort in the world won't make up for a lack of vision. This game is blind to imagination and focus.

If you enjoy impish cartoon worlds that mask their pristine internal consistency under a measured low brow, and you can put up with falling in a pit occasionally and having to go back to a checkpoint, then Hell Yeah: Wrath of the Dead Rabbit is probably exactly the game about Hell that you've always wanted.

Whether you'll want to buy Dead or Alive 5 on day one depends on a number of things. If you're looking for a wealth of new and inventive content in addition to some truly ground-breaking mechanics, then this really isn't the next big thing. But if you have any love for the genre and want to lose yourself in a highly methodical 3D fighting game that tests your adaptive reasoning at about three or four potentially game-changing decisions per second - well, then Dead or Alive 5 is very easy to like.

Tokyo Jungle is a celebration of classic games, with their ridiculous plots, repetitive tasks, excessive violence and all. It pulls off the impressive and nigh-on impossible trick of being an original homage. Also it lets you set a giraffe on a bear.

If the first Torchlight capitalised on the continued absence of Diablo 3, the second feels like a genuine alternative to it. It's a colourful, heartfelt and well-judged spin on one of the most reliably engrossing genres knocking around. Pick a class, choose a pet and set a course for Plunder Cove.

If they can keep updating FTL with new scenarios, new spaceships and new stories with the same intelligence and restraint, we could well be seeing the birth of a future classic.

In defiance of the expectation that this out-sourced handheld update would be a second rate knock-off, the game builds on the past, rather than merely riffing on it.

FIFA 13 is also the most broadly appealing game EA Canada has ever produced in other ways. It's absolutely rammed with different ways into it, and it takes unprecedented advantage of its intimacy with the people who run the big leagues and own all the broadcast rights.

Wake up, everyone! With PES 2013, Konami has finally pulled off the excellent game it's been threatening to release for the last couple of years. On the scale of dramatic football comebacks it's not quite up there with That Night in Barcelona (© Clive Tyldesley) or The Miracle of Istanbul, but it surely comes close.

It's not the levelling, it's the taking part that counts. That's what makes Guild Wars 2 great. Almost every aspect of its design serves the individual player and whole community equally, and there's a breezy willingness to put the content ahead of the grind throughout. It's a little lightweight, perhaps; its fantasy world is more picturesque than truly enveloping, and its social and gameplay hooks offer instant gratification over ties that bind. But it's still the most coherent, seamless, social and fun MMO in a long time - and the only one that can call itself truly modern.

Borderlands 2 is still a hillbilly moonshiner sort of game, then, but it's the hillbilly at his canny, tinkering, big-dreaming best. It's the hillbilly at the peak of his powers. It's the hillbilly made majestic.

It's another small step forward for the series, but that's not quite enough to dispel the suspicion that Codemasters' F1 team doesn't have the resources to create iterations compelling or different enough to justify the annual churn. F1 2012 is a good game, but it's some way off from being the classic it could be.

As a small-scale project and a £3 game, Gateways is a tiny, tidy success. But as an experiment in aperture science, it might need a little more time in the test chamber.

A game clearly put together with care and passion, built around a core of delightful feedback and quite simply fun at a very deep and instinctive level. It still feels great. There's just a sense that there remains a bolder and more ambitious, game lurking just under the surface and only occasionally showing itself.

Jet Set Radio's still capable of making people say, "What the hell is that?"

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 delivers the essential basics pretty much perfectly, and it's hard to complain much about that.

Closure may stop short of delivering the sort of swashbuckling adventure one might hope for from a journey through this shadowy netherworld, but it remains thoroughly enjoyable puzzle game that twists your brain in all sorts of maddening directions while keeping the answers just out of reach.

A game that never rests on its laurels and offers ample replay value, Mark of the Ninja is a much-needed shot in the arm for Live Arcade's lacklustre summer offering.

For Battlefield fans, this is an essential expansion.

Despite the rugged, rough-hewn aesthetic of Skyrim, Hearthfire ultimately offers all the character and personality of an Ikea cupboard.

Out There Somewhere isn't a normal game, though: it's a platformer with a devious twist and a truly shocking difficulty curve. It's a platformer with a very late level, for example, that contains absolutely no platforms at all - just empty space and a doorway right near the ceiling. With this weird, atmospheric brainteasing oddity, the Brazilian micro-team Studio MiniBoss has put itself firmly on the indie game map. This is challenging stuff, but it's wonderfully creative with it, and I'm not sure I can recommend it enough.

Tales of Graces f never fully abandons the slight clunkiness of its first few hours, but players who bow out early because of its linear design and apparently limited scope will be missing out on what may well be one of the last great traditional Japanese role-playing games. It may have taken three years for it to reach European shores, but it's well worth the wait.

A genuinely interesting fighting game that was released at a time when accessibility played second fiddle to mechanical depth and combos that demanded a high level of execution. The HD subtitle doesn't add up to a lot in this case, but that shouldn't detract from a 2D fighter that's as much lost treasure as it is bizarre curio.

It doesn't have the best execution and it probably costs too much, but there ought to be room in everyone's life for at least one slapstick physics puzzler, and if you're in the right mood then perhaps Rigonauts can be your Bridge Builder.

Yes, there are a lot of improvements here, and yes, the game is heaps of fun to play, but the core experience doesn't feel incredibly different from last year's iteration. In comparison to the gameplay changes that are made between each update of FIFA, Madden feels like its wheels are stuck in the mud.

Leviathan is a rich adventure for those who are willing to reopen the door on Commander Shepard's story, and a worthwhile chapter of lore within the Mass Effect canon. But for those who have already moved on it is perhaps reassuring that, at the end of it all, those goalposts lie largely unmoved.

There's plenty to like here, and Blitz is an undeniably enjoyable arcade game in short bursts. But it feels like an awkward offshoot for the Rock Band name, a little desperate in its push to get people downloading more songs, and an altogether lightweight experience that is unlikely to reverse the decline of the music genre.

There are some few entertainment experiences that rise above mere amusement, and the world of Lordran is one of them: an endless feast to be chewed over and digested, each morsel swallowed with lip-smacking relish before returning eagerly for the next.

It's exactly what meets the eye - which is to say a good-hearted festival of a game about talking robots shooting and smashing each other, shouting itself raw-throated in joy at the toys it gets to play with, but no more than that.

A memorable gem from a master miniaturist who can teach the big boys a thing or two about how to tell a story in this medium. If we're ever going to get away from measuring our gaming by the yard, this would be a great place to start.

It's rare that you come across a game that dares to blend two such disparate genres, let alone one that does so expertly.

The core of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a reminder that quality can be permanent rather than fleeting, and the new additions give us new reasons to take interest and - hopefully - another way in for people who are ready for something different.

Its designers have crafted a decent team shooter that, though small and imperfect, offers an alluring, dramatic kernel amid its see-sawing action beats. But the way it's been carved up and served doesn't inspire much appetite.

Dust does many things well, but it doesn't do anything brilliantly. The combat's decent, the structure invites the revisiting of old areas, and the narrative stays interesting. Taken together, these things are enough to keep you plugging away till the end.

Sounds Shapes is not a brilliant game, but it is a bold, often beautiful experiment that stands and sounds apart. And in one of the driest, dreariest periods for console gaming in memory, that's music to my ears.

It's the ugly subject matter that's challenging, and the way in which the game invites you to walk through the contours of distress. And yet there is something redemptive at its heart.

There's a sense throughout of a development team in love with their work: a team that's gleefully committed to over-delivering. Why else would Vigil opt for two dungeons where one would have been enough for most developers, or throw in boss after boss after gigantic boss when others might have tied things up with a simple cut-scene and the odd quick-time event?

Sleeping Dogs certainly doesn't deserve to take all the blame for this situation, and Rockstar has some serious game-raising of its own to do with GTA5. But when a game is so clearly intent on being a follower of trends rather than setting them, it's hard to feel much passion for Sleeping Dogs' vanilla retread of established ideas. When compared to his open-world peers, Wei Shen's stoic promise to do "what I always do" ultimately feels more like an apology for low ambition than a rallying cry.

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.

It's a solid, enjoyable shooter, but one that ultimately fails to leverage its strange control decisions into a truly unique experience. It should be different yet, for all its bold ideas about movement, it ends up feeling strangely generic over the long haul.

This isn't a great game, it's not even a good game, but it is the closest thing we've got to a cops-and-robbers MMO - which is, I suspect, one of the all-time great video game concepts. One day, somebody's going to do it right, and they're going to become very rich indeed.

The saddest thing about Sakura Samurai is that the foundation is there for a much better game.

Archaic and lethargic, The Expendables 2 seems far more likely to break a hip than a sweat.

So Deadlight can lay claim to being as smart and atmospheric as previous 2D XBLA hits such as Limbo or Shadow Complex. There's one problem, though: Deadlight is an incredibly slight experience. A single play-through comes in at under two hours, and that running time's been bloated by an uncomfortable number of trial-and-error moments.

It's in the myriad ways you can decimate your attackers that the game's appeal lies, and the improvements made here have only made that pleasure more intense. While Orcs Must Die 2 still has balancing issues, they're more than outweighed by the sheer pleasure of the minute-by-minute gameplay, where calculated carnage is its own reward.

Conquest isn't just that rare Pokémon off-shoot that isn't a limping abomination - it's a reminder that the best consoles don't slip into the night very quietly. They stick around, defiantly showing up the machines that have replaced them.

Dyad merely holds a mirror up to your own failings. If you take the time to master the machine, to level up your own eyes and hands and co-ordination, then this is a game to amplify those tiny victories; to put your name in lights.

There's a rich, deep, accessible and fun score-attack game lurking not far beneath Wreckateer's rubble, but it never fully reveals itself.

Some of it is down to the execution, which is mostly competent but lacks the spark and energy of Neversoft's original work.

The change in tone and tempo may well come as a jolt to long time fans, just as the lumpen opening sections may deter newcomers, but it's rare to see a decade-old franchise reinvent itself with this much vigour.

A flawed game, then - but one that Enzo would, perhaps, have approved of.

There is a real MMO in there - a secret world within The Secret World - but it's estranged from the player, clouded by obfuscating systems and smothered in charismatic but stolidly single-player adventuring. Tornquist is a writer, the man behind adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, and it seems like he's more interested in telling stories than building adventure playgrounds, never mind emergent worlds.

Project Zero 2's gameplay is pretty basic throughout and showing its age in areas - although the graphical makeover, bar some dodgy textures, is very good. But with the lights off, it's as spine-tinglingly scary as any game I've played, with some truly haunting moments and gasp-inducing set-pieces delivered as it reaches its disquieting climax.

It's all horribly addictive. You're compelled to keep clicking that "end turn" button one more time, inching closer to an interlocking web of different goals, watching your domain grow and spread, star systems turning from neutral grey to your chosen faction colour as you go.

It's a huge game, in other words, and it's tough enough to ensure that you'll move through it fairly carefully. Throw in a scrappy kind of handicraft charm, ignore a selection of little annoyances, and Rainbow Moon becomes a bit of a blast.

It's playful, subversive, irreverent and, at times, impudent, revealing a darker, more left-field side to Nintendo that increasingly stays hidden. Let it out, we say. Let it out.

A simple music game. But, for someone who grew up with these myths wallpapering their imagination, it is a complex vehicle for emotion. Final Fantasy may be a loose, somewhat obnoxious umbrella term for a collection of games of mixed message and quality, but Theatrhythm succeeds in touching upon some true magic within its bounds.

If Beenox had been allowed the time to build on that foundation - to add more life and colour to Spidey's world, to construct more compelling reasons to explore and develop your abilities - then it could have earned the adjective of its title. The Passable Spider-Man just doesn't have the same ring.

Spelunky's astonishing creativity and the spectacular depth that opens up as you make progress make it easy to forget that it's also an extremely competent platformer, with tight, poppy controls that work far better on an Xbox 360 pad than they ever did with a computer keyboard.

Overall, London 2012 is a lot better than I expected on a presentational level and in its best-realised events. But the lazy repetition of dull mechanics throughout the poorer activities (gymnastics, diving) means there's as many bores as scores.

Apart from the (sadly) expected Bethesda hiccups - erratic quest markers, odd spawn glitches - there's nothing really wrong with Dawnguard. At the same time, there's nothing here that demands 1600 Microsoft Points' worth of attention. If all you want is a solid side quest and some good loot, this will scratch that itch. If you were hoping for something more epic and ambitious, keep waiting.

It's certainly not about to reach out to anyone who doesn't like wargames, nor appeal to anyone who wants the broader scope of the Civilization series, but it does a perfectly good job as a tombola of fantasy combat nonsense, full of new and wonderful and silly surprises.

A budget game, and Swift and her team can't be expected to match the perfect cohesion of Portal. The disappointment is that, in trying to do just that, they've undersold their own good ideas as well as inviting unflattering comparisons with a classic. Despite its frequent frustrations, it's a solid, intelligent puzzle adventure and represents good value for money, but it could have been much more by trying to be a bit less.

There are such a lot of shooters these days, and so many tend to blur into each other if you're not careful. This one won't, however - and that's quite an achievement.

Would Heavy Armor be a better game if it ditched Kinect and focused purely on the tried-and-tested buttons? In all honesty, no - because without the novelty of raising your arm to pull down a periscope or punch your fleeing co-pilot in the face, this would be a comparatively dull experience.