Feels like a complete package from the start; the three gameplay areas - solo, co-op and multiplayer - all feeling like parts of a cohesive whole, driven by a clear and honed declaration of intent.

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.

A serviceable shooter, but it lacks the spectacle of Call of Duty, the tactical options of Deus Ex or Crysis, and the urgency of FEAR. In their place it has, well, not much.

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.

Sonic Generations still doesn't do much to dissuade us that the hedgehog's best days are distant memories, but at least it is a worthy tribute to them, capturing the subtler elements of the original Hedgehog's enduring appeal although still falling foul of some of his weaknesses.

Disney Universe is far from a bad game. Its general competency is evidence of a capable team that has cherry-picked designs (both systemic and aesthetic) from other titles and paired them with a clutch of inspiring licenses. But the disparate parts only click together in a rather mundane way, failing to capitalise fully on the licenses or match up to the quality of its video game inspirations.

But Rugby Challenge is the nucleus of a truly great rugby sim. It's certainly the best rugby game currently available and one can only imagine the heights it could scale if a publisher with enough cash were to throw its weight behind it.

More of a smash and grab than a smooth raid, then, but you can't deny that it's come away with the goods.

There's nuance and depth here that goes beyond most people's preconceptions of what motion gaming is about, and yet the game never loses sight of the fact that anybody should be able to get up, have a try and have fun doing so. The sad part is that more studios aren't using the technology to this standard.

A visually stunning, dreadfully fussy and cruelly unsatisfying hardcore game - one that does very little indeed to reward the near-infinite levels of patience required to get anywhere close to the value of your time or money.

But there were times within Disgaea 4, more than ever before, when the grind seemed more prominent than the obsession. Disgaea always does unexpected things with numbers, and 4 feels like its most polished and feature-packed entry yet - and it also feels like the point of diminishing returns.

Festival of Blood's slight but fun, in other words - a decent shaggy dog story for you to plough through on Halloween evening before the doorbell starts ringing and your friends drop round dressed as the seven ages of David Bowie, or whatever your theme is this year.

Alongside the recent port of Guardian Heroes, this is the perfect example of how to revisit your back catalogue. With 18 years' worth of dust carefully brushed aside, Daytona USA has been lovingly restored and thoughtfully explored - providing a fitting tribute to one of arcade racing's enduring icons.

Battlefield didn't need to be more like Call of Duty to succeed, it just had to double down on what it was already good at.

It is a majestic tribute to cinema, a movie game in the literal sense, and your enjoyment will be in precise step with your appreciation of that objective - and whether or not you believe it to be Drake's great deception, or Drake's great delight.

In short, it's unquestionably the best dance game available on Kinect, and a successful, evolutionary step forward that will certainly please those who loved the original.

At the most fundamental level there's nothing tragically wrong with the game, it just displays a lack of imagination that chafes against the legacy of a series that has never been short of ideas. For a game with that sort of pedigree, average simply isn't good enough.

If you live in actual London, however, your cartridge doesn't come with London Life. Japan, North America, and Australia get this rather huge bonus; the U.K. and the rest of Europe don't. It's the kind of tedious, infuriating localisation strategy that Nintendo still holds over from the 8-bit era, when it was possible to keep people on distant shores from knowing they were getting the short end of the stick.

It's not perfect, perhaps, and the whole thing feels pretty slight, but The Secret of the Unicorn's clever and deeply charming - a Tintin game for everybody, and not just the super-fans.

Okabu's first impression is dazzling because it gets the audio and visual design absolutely right, but it has neither the depth nor imagination to sustain this. And when the simple act of playing isn't fun, you're just going through the motions.

It's an absorbing and varied side story that feeds back into the wider Dragon Age universe in subtle ways. What more could you need?

Disposable entertainment designed to be enjoyed unashamedly and uncritically. It's a game to pull out at parties, not obsess over: trashy, garish, stupid and - if all that appeals to your inner 13-year-old girl - terrific fun.

The opportunity to revisit Human Revolution is a welcome one, but this is a competent expansion rather than an unmissable one.

It's a role-playing game in the most literal sense of the phrase, a game in which you're encouraged to give in to the fantasy, and to see what life is like when it's composed of rooftop brawls and zip-line getaways. Animations, traversal mechanics, takedowns: they're all building towards the same thing. In Arkham City, you become Batman.

Rewarding and frustrating in equal measure, but rarely boring, it's a memorable dose of mass slaughter.

WRC 2 is a very slightly improved game, but a year on, gaming has left it behind.

For all its effortless charm, the game ultimately offers a window into an immersive world, fires up the imagination and then tells its young players to simply mimic the actions of others. That's enough to amuse kids, but it won't inspire them for long.

The absence of any tutorial mode makes it an uphill battle for newcomers, while committed rugby fans will probably be put off by its lack of depth. New Zealand games don't even begin with the Haka, and where's the fun in that?

Guardian Heroes is one of the most comprehensive and generous ports on Xbox Live Arcade, a game that has been lovingly updated to suit the contemporary hardware.

Under the hood, Namco's designers have upgraded the series' engine and mechanics in effective and interesting ways, making this the strongest Ace Combat in a decade.

Its rough edges may have been sanded down, but in the process some of its unique personality has been lost. At a time where games like Dark Souls aren't afraid to put players through the wringer, it's disappointing that a title from Capcom of all publishers should feel, much like its doughy protagonist, a little soft around the middle.

With Binding, McMillen and Himsl created the rules of the world and then set it in motion. Yet this game is nearly as much fun as Super Meat Boy, and more profound. It proves that there's more than one way to make a masterpiece.

It's just a waste of time. Too clumsy to satisfy any action gaming urge, and too wrapped up in its own turgid mythology to realise it's getting things so badly wrong, releasing it right before the onslaught of massive winter releases is a decision more audacious than any design choices in the game itself.

The series' steely heart has softened, revealing a game that's as exhaustive as it is exhilarating and that's now been infused with a little extra passion. Forza has always been a series to admire, but now it's a little easier to fall in love with it too.

If you're from the crowd that remembers it the first time around, you'll get the chance to revisit an artful and wonderfully atmospheric gaming oddity filled with sudden deaths and clever set-pieces. If you're new to it, you're probably in for an hour or so of intrigued confusion, followed by a quick trip to a FAQ.

Come not for the enticing Game of Thrones name, certainly not for the ugly graphics, clunky interface (as appears to be Cyanide's habit of late) and soulless writing, but instead, perhaps, for what genuinely is an ambitious new take on real-time strategising. With verve and wit and gloss, Genesis could have been the start of something fascinatingly, enthrallingly cruel: as it is, it's a song of needless branding and sad compromise.

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.

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.

If entertainment is fun without failure and progress without pain, you'll have to find it somewhere else. But you'll be missing out on one of the best games of the year.

Fans of Scott and Cameron's fiction will be delighted to see this iconic universe recreated in miniature, while anyone hankering after a 2D Metroid (let's face it, we're not likely to get one from Nintendo any time soon) will be equally satisfied.

If you're looking for a more entertaining game of attacking football - and you can laugh about it when one of the game's many remaining rough edges fires a moment of absurdity into a finely poised multiplayer game against a fierce rival - then PES 2012 is well worth investigating.

Unlike movies, it's rare that games are so bad they're good. The rubbish ones are usually so unplayable that they're not worth plodding through. X-Men: Destiny is the exception that gets just enough right to be fun, while being sloppy enough elsewhere to be good for a laugh. It's the best kind of disaster.

A relic of a bygone era that Capcom has done nothing to reinvent for modern audiences with this reissue. Yet beneath its off-putting anachronisms there is a worthwhile, menacing game - for those with the eyes to catch it.

Buy MotoHeroz, by all means - it's cheerful and fun while it lasts, with some levels that compare with the developer's very finest work. But in the context of what else is out there, and more importantly by RedLynx's own very high standards, this is, at best, above average.

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.

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.

The curious structure of Burnout Crash makes the overall experience one of giddy highs punctuated by fist-clenching lows, and as such it's very difficult to recommend with any confidence.

Fans angry that they need to fork out more money to see the "real" ending of the game can rest easy. The events of Lonesome Road build to a suitably apocalyptic climax, but it has none of the depth, pace or meaning of the face-off between House, Caesar and the NCR that rounded out the original storyline. Completists will want to see it through, just to say they did, but it's a shame to see such an epic atomic age narrative go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

In an age where self-consciously clever design can become an end in itself, there's something reassuring about a game that opts to be so deliciously old-fashioned, yet offers a deceptive amount of depth via well balanced upgrades and a robust scoring system.

A game that captures that rarest commodity in gaming: joy. It's an experience where comedy, camaraderie and personal improvement are tied together in one glorious whole. It's also a game that hasn't even got off the ground yet, as its community get to grips with the track creation tools and the potential for re-designing the environments.

Resident Evil 4 is a brilliant game, but that's exactly why Resident Evil 4 HD is such a disappointment. This is no definitive version or director's cut (wouldn't that be something), but a criminally half-baked attempt to winkle a little extra cash from the still-beating heart of a classic. Resi 4 deserves better than this; Resi 4's legions of devoted fans deserve better than this; and Capcom should be much better than this.

SkyDrift is comfortably one of the strongest aerial combat racers we've seen in the world of download-only titles.

SkyDrift is comfortably one of the strongest aerial combat racers we've seen in the world of download-only titles.

If BloodRayne: Betrayal gives Uwe Boll an excuse to make another movie, its appearance might not be such a good thing, But if you can get over such matters, this is a satisfying and brutal return to the old school.

If BloodRayne: Betrayal gives Uwe Boll an excuse to make another movie, its appearance might not be such a good thing, But if you can get over such matters, this is a satisfying and brutal return to the old school.

As a game, though, it's so cripplingly inane it makes me want to eat my own teeth and replace them with sweetcorn prongs.

It's never as smooth and intuitive as it needs to be. But don't let that put you off at least trying out one of the most creative motion-based games yet.

It may not have the visual class of its younger cousin Ikaruga, but there is no other 32-bit era game that shines like this today; a true classic that is available to the world at last. And the scoffers? Well, the joke is finally on them.

It's short, shallow and repetitive, and where humour might elevate the experience, the pointless and clunky motion controls drag it down again.

Strip away the new lick of paint and it's tough to tell F1 2011 apart from its predecessor, and though it's certainly tighter, smarter and more technically accomplished, some of the old faults remain. A marginally better outing than last year, then, and that's enough to ensure that, as F1 games go, this is still quite comfortably the best.

In its multiplayer, all you could have reasonably asked for; in its visuals, new heights reached, while cracks of old age are papered over; in its story, a fitting conclusion; and in its campaign, though short of the consistent brilliance of its predecessor, a mostly rousing and memorable spectacle.

It's impossible to recommend to anyone beyond its existing fan base.

Despite (or possibly thanks to) its barren, shamelessly derivative mechanics, you can't help buy into its casual nonsense.

In the initial stages, it's fairly simple stuff, with straightforward circular layouts and a modicum of train-style junction point switching involved. As long as you're diligent enough to switch to the appropriate branch at the right time, it's usually an easy task to qualify for at least two of the available three performance stars.

Look past its lo-fi style and you'll realise its production values are hardly stingy, with unlockable time trials and other Easter-egg modes, and generally slick presentation. More to the point, it's excellent for its entire length. How many big-budget developments can say that?

It's stratospherically mad. At the point where I emerged out of a narrow corridor into what turned out to be a vast stadium and a gyrating dance master exploded from the sea in an outfit that would make Lady Gaga proud, I almost collapsed with joy. If that sounds like you, this could the best thing you buy this year.

Thoughtful, mysterious and haunting, Trauma is best approached as a curio. Its execution is arguably stronger than its ideas, and the narrative trajectory of the game has no surprises in it, outside of the surreal tone. But as an artwork exploring the mind of a trauma victim, its singular voice and approach stick in the mind.

Just like the mad scientist whose baffling plot drives the action, Rise of Nightmares is a failed experiment.

It's a lovely restoration job, then, and the kind of thing Ubisoft could learn a thing or two from. Beyond the joys of seeing the games sharper and less shaky, and in 3D if you've got the right telly, is the simple pleasure of having them on the same disc and the same loading menu, where you can flick back and forth between them and ponder the way that they fit together.

With its shaggy construction and wild ambition, E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy is as difficult to dislike as it is to recommend.

A fiercely likeable time-waster. But with console download services delivering increasingly brilliant games these days, DeathSpank has yet to make the transition from an entertaining diversion to something that's truly essential.

Overall, when you strip away our automatic affection for the universe, you're left with a simple story full of thin characters and predictable twists, where the combat quickly descends into a repetitive war of attrition, and a small suite of online modes that can't compete with the bigger boys in the genre.

First-person shooter design has reached an evolutionary ceiling and desperately needs some mutant DNA to push it onwards and upwards. Resistance 3 could have provided that genetic jolt; but Insomniac has chosen to look back to how we used to play rather than grapple with how we could play in the future. As understandable as it is, that cautious approach results in a game that is extremely enjoyable, but never as imaginative as you want it to be.

As comebacks go, Bounder's World never really gets out of first gear, and is a bit of a false start for Urbanscan's Gremlin reboot project. Maybe it's keeping the powder dry for Monty Mole.

With 60 levels offering hours of patient probing, it's another impossibly good-value offering.

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.

Nit-picking aside, Senseless Acts Of Justice is another harrowingly accurate exploration of the eccentric, perverted, vomiting British psyche. This is less of a game, more of a documentary.

Much like gnawing on human flesh, Dead Island's clumsy horror-action role-player is the definition of an acquired taste.

If you're looking for a slick, tactile contraption puzzler, then you're far better off looking to the mobile scene for the many superior (and cheaper) offerings. By comparison, Crazy Machines Elements is a step into a murky past best forgotten.

On the real-life TV programme, it's the usual kind of knockabout fun where not getting knocked into the water provides the goofy incentive. On the 360, though, most of the time is spent mangling yourself into forms that the Kinect sensor has rather too much trouble interpreting.

With bags of charm and wry humour, Rock Of Ages gets off to the best possible start. You'll want to love it, but in the end, these are half-baked ideas that ought to have been put to better use. Ah well.

If you have an itch for straight-up no-frills blasting action, then Serious Sam: Double D will certainly give it a good scratch, but despite the challenge modes and the golden guns that bulk out the package, it's doubtful you'll be coming back. There are some good lines, and a few neat ideas, but ultimately it's mindless shooting and aspires to be no more. In that, it is a success.

You begin to think that behind Bodycount there is perhaps the story of an heroic development team tasked with doing far too much with far too little, who have performed a minor miracle in simply shipping something that works. Well, works some of the time. It's an explanation. But the killer fact about Bodycount is that it's nowhere near good enough to compete in the FPS arena, and serves nobody - player, developer or publisher.

Quarrel is a victory for good ideas and also for clever implementation. I suspect that the game's still waiting for multiplayer in order to really show us what it can do but, until that arrives, this is a smart addition to iOS in its own right.

It's another carefully crafted package in the manner of Ocarina 3D, then, yet the ancient quality that Star Fox 64 3D exudes only makes you wish that Nintendo was releasing a few more, you know, entirely new games. Luigi, Mario and Kid Icarus are still a few months off, for the time being. Until then, I'll be hanging out with Slippy, Peppy, and Falco - that jerk.

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.

Second-hand content with a spoon of sugar, no more. It's a second-rate package.

It's almost too playable and satisfying for its own good, or in other words, not quite annoying enough to lure you back endlessly. Perhaps there really is only enough room for one game as annoying as Angry Birds.

In gameplay terms it's a well-worn path, but you're not in it for innovation, you're here for the quirky dialogue, the surreal scenarios and the alluring art style.

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

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.

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.

Even on the most basic level it fails to drag itself out of the mire, with haphazard handling and regrettable collision detection conspiring to ensure that any enjoyment you eke out of it will be entirely coincidental.

It takes a while for Space Pirates And Zombies to really play its hand, but that's the trouble with something so wilfully creative - it takes time to peel away the layers. But if you make the effort, it's worth the effort.

The way the game manages to weave simple RPG mechanics on top of the narrative works surprisingly well, even if, ultimately, it all feels like a curious throwback to the days when even the most basic graphics were something of a luxury.

If Alien Hallway bothered to adopt the 'lanes' system of PvZ, it might have worked, but instead this headlong battle quickly descends into a repetitive brawl of little consequence.

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.

It's hard not to like Tropico 4, because it's based on a solid foundation that is naturally engaging. It was and remains an enjoyable if slight take on a dry genre. Its tragedy is that it hasn't bothered to build anything worthwhile on top of that foundation, preferring instead to coast on jaunty music that makes you feel like you're playing in Nando's and broad satire that fails to sustain the game beyond the first few days of play.