An adorable platforming adventure that steadily finds it own voice. [Recommended]

This is a rare game that feels like it was made because its creators simply had to execute on the idea, even if that meant they had to teach themselves how to do it. With that kind of foundation, it's more than worth the effort of teaching yourself how to play it properly.

The Takeover is a wild and slightly insane take on fighting, with truly original characters hurling abuse and fists at each other like a scrap at a special school.

But if you're in the mood for one of the more cerebral, calming puzzle experiences around, you could do a whole lot worse than fire Hexic up when you're between games - if only to trounce the high scores of your buddies.

Phogs! is playful and wholesome and stuffed with adorable creatures in a world where everything's larger than life and just a teeny bit odd. There's barely a story, but it doesn't matter as you slip around this peculiar place with its peculiar people and a peculiar, if perfectly happy, two-headed doggy that adores being petted by friendly townsfolk. Bright, bold, and wonderfully accessible, Phogs! is phantastic stuff. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Majestic in scope, impressive in detail, Assassin's Creed Shadows honours the beauty of feudal Japan, even if its strongest moments are saved for the personal stories of two protagonists.

Between the strangely absent humour and the ill-advised diversions into generic shoot-em-up territory, Rochard squanders enough of its potential to hold it back from something truly greatness. The tragedy is that this greatness can still be glimpsed, resulting in a game that invites passionate defence but never quite earns it.

A shorter, sharper campaign would condense the high points more potently, and some better characterisation would make the plot twists hit harder. But if you're looking for a game that really sinks its teeth into what makes this iconic movie monster endure, look no further.

The game is extremely generous with its hidden hint coins, with hundreds of the things hidden in every background. You'd have to be a full-on Kardashian to use them all.

It's certainly true that apart from the graphical polish, this is essentially the same in terms of core gameplay, albeit structured slightly differently. But with new courses, new cars and the freedom to create your own content, it's hard to imagine too many DS-owning race fans being put off by such a piffling complaint though.

Ultimate is a finely tuned evolution that should be held in a similar regard to Super Street Fighter IV. It takes the flexible combat system from the previous game, irons out many of the niggling issues and expands the possibilities even further, because no matter how you look at it, that's the type of fighting game Marvel is.

Limited, but compelling. For a full-price add-on, you'd judge it more harshly, but for £8.50 (Plus an extra couple of quid if you want the "Download Insurance", which frankly sounds a little sinister), for some strategic challenges while we all wait for "Medieval 2" it's entirely acceptable.

In a way, by selling this series on history alone, Capcom is killing its chance of having a future.

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.

A lean and tightly-restrained mashup of more than just Rock Band and Doom, Metal: Hellsinger captures the earnest spirit of an underloved genre. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Don't overlook this joyous explosion of colour and charm - I very nearly did, and I'm kicking myself for it. [Eurogamer Recommended]

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.

Much like the cakes that the princesses so greedily scoff down, the game is delicious at first, an overwhelming confection of bright colours and varied flavours, but the sugar rush wears off much too quickly, leaving you bloated and exhausted.

A thrillingly authentic take on the first-person shooter's 90s heyday, delivered with nerdish enthusiasm. [Eurogamer Recommended]

A raucous, absurd spin-off that manages to still feel like a first-rate Yakuza game despite the leftfield setting and delightfully unhinged plot.

The choice is yours: wait for all six episodes to appear on one value-packed 15 (or so) hour game, or enjoy the cheap and cheerful drip-feed that we're getting now. Either way, Situation Comedy is another solid episode that bodes well for the next four - but let's have less of the recycled locations and more new characters next time, eh chaps?

For all its mechanical cleverness and forward-thinking design, Final Fantasy 13-2 is also convoluted, complicated and unfriendly to newcomers. In Square-Enix's desperation to discover what its flagship series looks like in the modern world, what should be an interesting curio has been inflated to blockbuster proportions.

If there's a better kids' game this year, I'll eat my Sorting Hat.

If this came free with the PS2 Network Adapter - as it does in the US - we might be more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

There's little argument overall that Tiger Woods 07 is the best possible starting point for golf-game beginners...but anybody who was getting a bit bored of the same formula last year will be even less impressed with this outing.

It's one thing staying true to the beloved gameplay that we all still cherish, but that heady whiff of nostalgia only gets you so far - especially when the limiting episodic structure itself makes the actual puzzle solving such a horribly basic part of the game.

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.

With only one attempt allowed, this score-chasing affair becomes another insidious time sink.

A colourful and breezily enjoyable adventure that's impossible to dislike.

When I finished Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims, thanks to liberal use of the restart button, not a man had been left behind. It's a question of self-respect. Not many games can make you feel like that.

A venerable template comes alive in this beautifully compact adventure. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Fast, slick but with a few too many flaws, Pacer is nevertheless a fine futuristic racer.

Ubisoft builds upon the framework of Steep with this enjoyably eccentric open world extreme sports adventure. [Eurogamer Recommended]

If it hadn't have been for that thoroughly unjust Rewind right at the end of my playthrough, The Quarry - with its stunning visuals, wonderful voice work, fabulous score, and intriguing plot line - would have been one of my favourite games of the year thus far, and one of the best horror romps for some time. As it stands, though, it's hard to feel anything but disappointment for a game that took all my time and effort and just discarded them without warning. It's one thing to kill off a character; it's another to kill off a player's enthusiasm.

The football is as sublime as ever, but PES's lack of progress elsewhere pulls it back.

But for those who can shrug off the contradictions and the limitations, ignore the tearing cityscape and lingering qualms about value for money, this will shove you so deeply into the experience of being in someone else's body, and taking it on a terrifying, breakneck joyride, that nothing else will matter.

It's better than Ice Station Santa, yet not quite as good as Moai Better Blues. It remains small in both size and scope, while those who have stuck with the series since Season 1 will find that much of the actual gameplay is basic meat-and-potatoes fetch-questing. And yet...it's indecently cheap and, for all its minor flaws, the ongoing saga of Sam & Max is still the funniest game around.

It's expertly paced, with bite-sized levels that walk a tightrope between pull-your-hair-out maddening and knowingly easy – and while it can be overwhelming and cause you to doubt yourself, it's always worth it for that moment of relief where it all slots into place.

While fun can be had here, it's from the mini-games and the experience rather than solid table designs - and that's a cardinal sin in pinball.

Few games of late have required such a concerted dedication to pure blasting, and few have ever provided such a visual feast, either.

Thanks to Criterion's otherworldly technical ability to pull off graphical effects that wouldn't look out of place on next gen machines and some truly inspired set-pieces, BLACK is the most progressive and exciting shooter to emerge on the console platforms for years.

Overall, it's a very entertaining low-tech drive and demolish racer, but with one caveat for veterans of the series - they'll have seen much of the game already in FlatOut 2.

Shades of Picross and Phoenix Wright blend together in this unlikely but utterly lovable genre mash-up. [Eurogamer Recommended]

FIFA 23, like so many FIFAs before it, sums up the best and worst of football culture - a joyous game in the vice-like grip of profiteers.

A consistently entertaining series steps up a gear to provide a true great of the genre. [Eurogamer Essential]

It's deceptively tricky, hiding a razor-sharp puzzle game beneath its cutesy exterior, but it's the sort of intuitive and methodical difficulty that won't scare your mum.

It's complicated, often unhelpful, and engrossing. It's the shy boy your mum told you to make friends with. It's a troubled and stubborn creature, with a funny run.

Playful challenges and a warm sense of place and character converge in this cheerful modern classic. [Eurogamer Essential]

With its strict linearity preventing you from trying out songs in the order of your choosing, it's a little too easy to get snagged on one in particular. Without even basic hints on offer, you can end up faffing around to no effect for ages.

Elegant, understated and yet with the capacity for wild showboating, OlliOlli is a twitch classic, a startling console debut from a young British indie that manages to bring together the purity and focus of seminal arcade games with the latest asynchronous multiplayer designs.

With a lengthy central quest and plenty of side missions, there's enough Golden Sun here to illuminate many a long winter evening.

Ingenious and characterful, this immersive sim is an absolute delight - particularly when things go wrong.

The trouble is that Shadowgrounds was a game bursting with unrealised potential, and this sequel still leaves too much of that potential untouched.

A game whose good intentions simply don't translate into wide-eyed entertainment. With uninspiring and basic deathmatch multiplayer options failing to rescue the package, it looks like it's going to be another long hot summer for FPS devotees.

Unquestionably a triumph, marking a great improvement over the last game... It relies on gameplay rather than on cutscenes and ephemera, and the variety and suspense of individual battles combined with the simple but effective campaign system mean that it will stay on a good many hard disks for a long time to come.

"Burnout 3" may have surpassed our expectations in a number of areas, but it's worth remembering that OutRun2 falls short in terms of longevity, not play mechanics. When it comes to speed and immediacy it's easily comparable, the handling is something else entirely, and in technical terms there's only one truly beautiful journey between the two games, and it's taken in a Ferrari.

Rare are the games that have you muttering "Well, I didn't know that could happen!" after more than 30 hours, and the fact I could have written another 2000 words describing weird and wonderful moments you're best discovering for yourself is all the recommendation you should need.

Another good map pack.

This is arcade racing at its most simple and its most focused.

It's built on an impressive world but it doesn't do enough with it, and as a result it's curious, but hardly compelling.

Inertial Drift has its quirks - that drift mechanic won't be to everyone's tastes, and I can imagine a fair few bouncing off this hard after they've spent one lap too many bouncing off walls, while the lack of clipping in competitive races can also seem a little odd. Personally, though, I get why you're allowed to drift through other racers like they're ghosts. Inertial Drift is about you and the road, pure and simple. It's about placing this novel twin stick drifting in your hands and letting you explore its nuances, and exploit the potential in each car and each apex until you edge further up the leaderboard. It's just about the most stylish, thrilling racer I've played in an absolute age. [Eurogamer Recommended]

No amount of lavish technical polish and drama-filled cut scenes can disguise how it feels to play, and the fact that at its core, the combat doesn't quite cut it. Put simply, it feels like it's trying too hard to be different for the sake of it, and throws all manner of good, well-established ideas out to its detriment. Instead of being a spectacular refinement of what's gone before, Heavenly Sword is a reinvention that doesn't quite pay-off.

It's never quite as great as it could be. Nor is it as successful as Mass Effect 2 at pitching itself across genres. Nevertheless, Dragon Age II presents an absorbing, sprawling story encased in blood-stained action RPG armour.

Namco is to be applauded for updating the series with no small amount of consideration and flair, an effort that has resulted in the strongest entry to the aging series yet, and one which makes up for its lack of polish with an abundance of detail, character and, dare I say it, soul.

Pixel People is an addictive proposition, one that many players will happily play - but few will be especially happy while doing so. Its pay-offs are irregular and require no skill, simply perseverance in clicking through the splicing options.

The Resident Evil 3 remake, like the original upon which it is based, is inferior to its predecessor.

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.

Offering new items, skills and other general stuff for level 20 Guild Wars players certainly justifies the lessened price tag, but I'm not sure that the overall quality of the adventures here can really be said to make this one of the more interesting outings into the Guild Wars universe. They're just not interesting enough.

Unlike Canabalt, a definite structure awaits, with 30 levels to bound through - each with checkpoints - allowing you the chance to become mired in gleeful trial and error. He might have vengeance in his heart, this Gravity Guy, but his aim is true.

A new studio in charge sees Dirt retain some of its old swagger in a fun, frequently beautiful but occasionally hollow arcade racer.

Go and bust some heads and sever some spiky limbs in the name of slightly disturbing entertainment.

Aggelos treads a path many others have followed in recent years, but it does it all with a charm of its own.

While racing is at its core, Kirby Air Riders channels the chaotic energy of Smash Bros. to deliver a deceptively deep one-button gameplay experience - and tops it with absolutely oodles of things to do, see, and unlock.

Drinkbox's latest is an ARPG that has real fun with the classes. [Eurogamer Recommended]

A cluttered control screen can be a pain, but sync up a controller and Apex Legends Mobile is the real deal. [Eurogamer Recommended]

As a technical showcase for what's possible with PSVR2 Call of the Mountain excels, even if its world and mechanics sometimes fall short. [Recommended]

There’s more fluency to the [Hitz] gameplay, and the “on fire” element is handier than EA’s aptly named “gamebreaker”.

The pack does inject some honestly good, fun and creative features into what is still one of our favourite multiplayer games to date. It alters it to the point that it feels like a slightly different game, and it's a commendable effort by DICE to refresh and revive the BF1942 experience.

In general, Carcassone is a quicker game to grasp but lacks Catan's depth and tactical nuances with the outcome of a game often feeling more like luck than skill. If you've only got a Silver Live account Carcassonne is a marginally better purchase thanks to its offline multiplayer and its short game length and puzzle-like aspects gives it a strangely addictive quality, yet the honest fact is that despite being a better adaptation, Carcassonne just isn't based on a board game quite as good as the one Catan is.

It's a life you'd want to live, and it's a truly refreshing escape from the pressures of reality into an imaginary utopia poised on the edge of an ocean.

An immersive space sim that's dazzling in VR, Squadrons provides an exhilarating multiplayer experience, even if the story feels pedestrian. [Eurogamer Recommended]

However, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge has inherited a few too many of its predecessor's weaknesses as well: a lumpy single player campaign, some arbitrary physics made more noticeable by the less sophisticated engine, and a tendency for the less inspired tracks to merge into one grimy muddle.

Glowfish's unnerving mazes offer the unexpected menace befitting of a desperate rescue mission against an unfeeling urchin.

A masterly racer that gets to the very essence of motorsport's magic. [Eurogamer Recommended]

I Am Dead, with its ghosts, its world of objects, large and small, curiosities charged in some ways by the people who owned them, speaks to this very clearly, for me at least. It speaks of the ways that conversations with the dead go on. The way rituals and responsibilities take on new and perhaps confusing dimensions. More than anything it is a reminder of that bright contradiction - that death has absolutely everything to do with life. [Eurogamer Recommended]

A punishing, exhasperating slog, or an off-beat love story between driver and car, human and the Zone? Pacific Drive is both and then some.

Oh, and here's a bonus: this is one of these games that runs well. I don't associate Warriors with that, even on higher-end consoles. But this is great. I don't know if it began life as a Switch 1 game and was then shifted to the successor machine or what, but whatever the reasoning I'm thrilled to note that this looks nice enough but also maintains a solid and high frame rate, even when hundreds of troops are bouncing around on screen. [Impressions]

On balance, though, Jon Hare and co. have done a fine job in capturing the spittle-flecked fury of the Amiga original so successfully.

Not quite the new "Geometry Wars" then (or the new anything-older), but a solid effort, and definitely one of the best original Xbox Live Arcade titles since Bizarre's opener.

If it had a decent checkpoint system, Babylonian Twins would be excellent, so let's hope future builds respond to the feedback.

Despite initial appearances to the contrary, you spend most of your time swiping The Last Rocket through various hazard-strewn rooms, negotiating air currents and conveyor belts and dodging flame jets and inconsiderate spikes.

On the one hand, it's perfect for handheld play to make those boring commutes fly by, but on the other you'll probably be unable to stop playing and get run over on the way to work. Your choice, really.

Zero may have proved that it's hard to create a fitting sequel to a classic, but to see the original Perfect Dark slotting into place so well on XBLA is enough to suggest that, just sometimes, restoration might be a better solution than reinvention.

A game that gives you the rare chance to kick back and do diddly squat. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Speed and gleeful violence merge in one of the most delirious feats of game design ever. [Essential]

Even with the pall of over-familiarity lingering over it, Gears of War: Judgment is a timely reminder that ruthless focus on gameplay, generosity towards players and good old-fashioned design craft can still pay dividends at a time when big-budget action games are at risk of fragmenting into splinters of mindless busywork. Sometimes, being a bloody good shooter is all that's required.

As a short but sweet puzzle-adventure game, Lego Voyagers handles itself with an air of grace but no snootiness - a game so lovely it's hard not to feel sad when it's all over. Look deeper though, or simply from the privilege of age, and it'll leave a more lasting impression on those of us who know what proper friendship feels like. Sometimes a little "hello" is all you need.

It's an effortlessly light and addictive indulgence - just don't expect it to nourish you.