A brilliant core mechanic and clever design twists make Bananza a delightfully sticky 3D platform adventure topped off with a sweet central character relationship.

A legendary game gets a legendary sequel. [Eurogamer Essential]

Far Cry 3 is all the best things about open-world gaming. It's a glorious anecdote factory, where you manufacture brilliant new memories every time you wake up in a safehouse and head out into the jungle. It's an astonishing technical achievement, as comfortable revealing incredible landscapes over the brow of a hill as it is when the setting sun winks at you through a canopy, or when the heavens open as you stalk wildlife through the trees and long grass. And it always lets you play, but it also controls the tempo - sometimes a little heavy-handedly, but always with good intentions.

Densely imagined and as complex as you fancy, this roguelike RPG is brilliant.

Dark Souls 2 probably isn't quite the same masterpiece Dark Souls is, but then neither is anything else, and the fact it comes so close is remarkable.

Where I fell out with CoD was the fact that however many cool things I could think of, it was all too easy to peel away the layers of glitz and gloss and come up with frustratingly long list of inconsistencies, flaws and slightly irksome design decisions that remind you that there's plenty of work to be done before the definitive World War II shooter gets made.

The beauty of Mario Kart DS is that it's really, genuinely practical to play with other people, wirelessly or online.

Explore a bright vision of subterranean nature in this astonishingly rich Metroidvania.

Hats off to Bizarre for a marvellous technical achievement, slapped wrists for meddling with the already perfect progression system and balancing and tarnishing what would have otherwise been a peerless single player experience and hearty congrats for an excellent online offering.

An impressive suite of improvements combine with a more clearly defined structure for Animal Crossing's finest outing to date. [Eurogamer Essential]

It's not just niggling repetition and control issues that detract from the overall package. There are many things that could have improved matters - being stuck in the same house feels somewhat stifling and claustrophobic, and for this reviewer was the main reason it shattered the dream possibility of The Sims 2 delivering a virtual personality simulation the way that classic Alter Ego did all those years ago.

Cataclysm doesn't just make WOW better. It does something even more valuable than that; it renews it. It fires your excitement at starting on that long road one more time, and invites you to relish the journey just as much as you'll lose yourself in its ending.

As a single-player experience, even in its slightly compromised state, it's easily one of the most intensely enjoyable console shooters there's ever been.

A game that exemplifies so much of what commentators claim has died in the Japanese game industry. A blast of creative brilliance, both technically accomplished, strategically deep and infused with rare imagination, Bayonetta represents the pinnacle of its chosen niche. [JPN Import]

What console players won't be prepared for, though, is the added graphical fidelity on PS4 and Xbox One, making for a cleaner, brighter battle that feels in line with the PC version running on a nice machine.

In an industry justly accused of leaning towards style over content, ICO is a beacon of light and a bastion of superb game design.

GRAW lets you down just when you start to believe in it, and the net result is that although it's still very good, it's simply not as polished or amazing as it should have been.

The members of 2D Boy should be carried around in chariots while this glory lasts - because at some point, they're going to realise what a murderously high standard they've set for themselves, and run away forever.

One Of The Best GBA games of the year, Nintendo games on the GBA, and RPGs in existence. Simple, fun and rewarding, this is for everyone who ever ogled but never played the original Mario RPG, and everyone else besides.

Pretty and charmingly mean-spirited, this is a game filled with revelations and genuine personality.

The marginal improvement on display here is happily eclipsed by rival extreme sports titles which do take steps to reinvent themselves, and partly because there are four other Tony Hawk games out there and they all do much the same thing.

Inside Story is absolutely a return to form.

It offers simple, one-player gameplay that uses leaderboards to provoke excitement and competition among strangers, and in this sense it has a lot in common with the original Xbox Live Arcade games. The way that it makes its challenging content accessible to a majority of players, however, is what singles it out as one of the best.

Instead, it's approaching the kind of package most developers would have few qualms about boxing up and selling to you full-price as an entirely new game.

A step forward, and after playing FIFA 12, going back to previous entries in the series seems almost unimaginable. It's another step closer to reality, and this time it's a very welcome one.

If you don't have the patience to learn button combinations and toil over the fine points, then perhaps there's no hope for you, but for the rest of us, the reward structure is tuned finer than Dennis Rodman's haircut, it's funkier than a jazz sandwich, and if you don't like basketball, then this is more than likely to convert you.

Although it could be accused of taking a while to get going, Ratchet & Clank 2 leaves an indelible impression as a platformer full of variety and, above all else, options.

Having convincingly overtaken its main rival last year, FIFA 10 nevertheless consolidates its lead with great authority. Last year, I said FIFA feels like football, rewards football, and punishes football for football reasons. The difference between FIFA 09 and FIFA 10 is that the latter knows exactly where the former fell short of that, and makes up the distance in almost every case.

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

At once a little simple and a little over-stuffed, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is still above all a game of immense charm and fluid, free-form style.

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.

There may well be gamers for whom this approach is too substantial, preferring instead the quick-fire charms of the iPhone's throwaway, two-minute-blast games. But where those titles often wither under sustained attention, Rolando 2 blossoms, and in doing so maintains the series' position at the very top of the handheld's library.

Simply one of the DS' best.

Whether you've played it before or you're a newcomer wondering what the fuss is about, it stands out as one of the finest handheld games ever. Resistance is futile. Buy it, play it, love it.

One of the most interesting and delightful things Valve's ever done, but also one of its least fulfilling. If only we had our own portal gun to bridge the gap to the first infusion of new content, perhaps we could forget it.

A decent length for a videogame at roughly ten hours, and it boasts an enormous number of hugely varied tasks to complete and beautiful sights to see. Capped off with an elegant control system and intelligent game design, this is the platformer to bury both mediocre rivals like "Banjo Kazooie" and old classics like "Mario 64."

The absolute pinnacle of Star Wars games. It's bloody hard in places, but it pampers the nostalgic and conveys so effortlessly the beauty of the galaxy and the sheer tyranny of the evil Empire that you will Force your way through it until there's no stone left unturned.

Moody and atmospheric, compelling and addictive, this is first person gaming in grown-up form, and it truly is magnificent.

Stephen's Sausage Roll is a design masterclass. It's also a game about the joys of getting stuck. Don't savour the victories. This is about the precious moments of being absolutely lost, stumped and clueless within a tight, beautiful thing that defies any sense of how it came to be.

Some fiddliness with controls and interface can't hold back Asobo's phenomenal creation from shining in its new context. [Eurogamer Essential]

A beautiful game - and stands as a landmark 3D shoot 'em up; a refined, well designed and intelligent title and marks a real progression in the genre.

Portal remains an absolutely fantastic game, a wonderfully constructed vignette of puzzles and gallows humour that everybody should play.

A happy medium between the mind-blowing excess of its parent game and its somewhat compact Episode One offspring. While initially lacking in gameplay novelty or many truly 'new' elements that fans always hanker for, it more than makes up for this with its consistently engaging narrative tricks, refined set-pieces and a staggering climax.

The definitive way to experience one of the games of the year.

Powerful rather than perfect, then, Persona 4's a status ailment rather than a killing blow - it's not going to bowl you over with one strike, but it will quietly gnaw away at you until you succumb.

A stern yet scintillating 2D adventure that makes a point of not holding your hand. [Recommended]

Artful animation and visuals combine with tightly designed exploration, though beware persistent technical issues.

A tough one to score then, but still unquestionably excellent.

Wholesome, harmonious and completely unwilling to settle, this is one of the most generous games in years.

Jetpack Joyride is further evidence of Halfbrick's unseemly knack for producing games designed to test both the battery life of handheld gaming platforms and the sanity of players. Needless to say, both run out eventually.

A game that has very few humans, but a surplus of humanity.

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.

It's as well-designed as Zelda, as involving as Final Fantasy, and as beautiful as anything you've ever seen; it belongs with the best of the Zelda series at the very apex of its genre.

Super Meat Boy starts out as just another indie game that revels in driving you crazy, but you end up crazy in love.

Between the clever mission design, comedy storyline and imaginative drug-dealing angle, it represents many hours of play, all of which live up to its legacy.

Considered in isolation, Dead Space 2's ambience, brute frights and player toolset are good rather great. But in combination, these three elements prove as irresistible as the pull on Isaac exerted by a malfunctioning airlock. For once, you'll want to let go.

It is, as we tried to tell the blonde at the bar, universally appealing - because it's easy on the eye, taxes the brain just enough, and keeps you entertained no matter who you are. Blooming brilliant.

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

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.

Yet another exceptional puzzle app to add to your growing pile. Absorbing, challenging and unlike anything else out there, buy it and soothe away the stresses of public transport.

The omission of online play aside, Geometry Wars 2 is everything you hoped it would be. It deftly builds on a simple framework without overloading it, and even finds room to make the core experience more varied and accessible to everyone.

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.

You could wish for 3D Land to be a little more challenging in places, then, but you couldn't wish for it to be any denser, any more imaginative, or any more daring. Most importantly, you couldn't wish for it to be any more playful.

Immersive, engaging and with the kind of gameplay depth that so many shooters lack, Metroid Prime 3 might not represent a huge progression as far as the series goes, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best games I've played all year - and certainly one of best yet on the Wii.

Monster Hunter opens up for the most accessible, most detailed and most magnificent entry yet. [Essential]

Poker goes into the blender and emerges in fine form.

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.

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.

Expertly put together and able to cater for both those that want a quick and simple race and those that want a true to life racing experience, Forza 2 is unquestionably one hell of an achievement. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got things to calibrate. So, so many things...

In many ways, Pullblox is Nintendo's answer to Portal. Both are budget puzzlers released to little fanfare that exhibit the finest qualities of their respective developers.

A startlingly inventive and engaging game, which dares to be different - and does it with style.

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.

The follow-up to FTL is just as punishing - and just as elegant. [Recommended]

Heart-stopping swordfights and deft, panoramic stealth waged across another vast, gorgeously rancid From Software landscape. [Eurogamer Essential]

Race sims don't come any better than GTR2.

A genuinely ground-breaking blockbuster in videogame history. There were moments playing GTA IV that I thought back to my initial experiences with games, and realised exactly how far we've come. There's never been anything quite like GTA IV in the world. That there makes me genuinely happy to be a gamer.

Those expecting revelatory improvements in areas like AI may be mildly disappointed by Shogun 2. Those after a sumptious, weekend-whittling strategy epic heaving with flavour and challenge can reach for their uchi-bukuro with confidence. This is a corker.

In some ways, it's the closest we've come to the enormous social novel from the period after that which Empire chronicles: it's a Tolstoy-esque War and Peace of a game. Its problems may be the inevitable problems of trying something with such sheer scope. As such, if you want the breathtaking vision of the game, you have to accept the flaws in the details - for now, at least.

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.

A generous and thrilling exploration of the wonders of VR. [Eurogamer Recommended]

In its quest to be the most meta game ever made, Alan Wake 2 becomes a spectacle about writers and writing that badly needs an editor.

With a whole new 80-event campaign designed to showcase these new modes, along with a smattering of traditional races and fastest-lap challenges, Fury almost doubles the size of an already generous game and therefore thoroughly warrants its asking price. One of the best downloadable games available now has one of the best expansion packs.

It all adds up to what's just about the definitive version of one of the finest role-players of the last five years.

With airtight controls, smooth speedrunning and a big helping of anime-inspired flair, few games can keep up with Neon White's pace. [Eurogamer Recommended]

More an expanded re-release than a remaster, the quality of the original Xenoblade Chronicles shines out in this generous package. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Of the shooters available on the 360 at launch, Call of Duty 2 is easily the most accessible and consistently entertaining single player offering, but if online is your thing you're better off considering what Rare has to offer ["Perfect Dark Zero"].

The real let down is the racing, in that it's simply not as much fun as it used to be, and as such Revenge can no longer be considered the best Burnout game. That's not to say it's "not fun", because we had a blast, but tasked with weighing it up against its predecessors, it's a slight backward step.

So, the most beautiful world in a game? Perhaps. To look at it’s cohesive, well-formed, has some of the best, most inventive enemy designs ever conceived, and the shimmering draw distance constantly beckons you into it’s hazy good-looking promise.

Every minute of that five hours was excellent, and Zero Mission takes its place as one of the finest titles in the GBA's already impressive pantheon of platformers. However, we can't help but wish that it had been longer.

The camera view is frustrating, the controls are frustrating, the AI is frustrating, the resource system is frustrating, the missions are frustrating, and above all the fact that this game isn't half as good as we were all hoping it would be is very, very frustrating.

Technically it's better than either of the previous two, which means it's better than any other golf game we've played...For those of us with Tiger pedigree though, the lack of online play and niggling flaws overshadow an otherwise generous update.

"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.

You can’t help but want more once you've rushed through it all. I wanted to take it all in at my own pace without sacrificing the life of little Olimar.

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 Metroidvania at its best: a swaggering role-playing beat-'em-up that's very easy on the eyes and dense with secrets. [Recommended]

Sea of Stars' well-considered inspirations are shot through with smart, modern sensibilities, creating a more-than-welcome addition to the contemporary throwback RPG club.

Despelote's creators tell a remarkable, pseudo-autobiographical tale about football, Ecuador, and community - but also one about the act of remembering, and the creative act itself.

Joy has rarely come so reasonably priced and, whatever the price, videogames, rarely come so joyful. Indispensable, then.