This game is one of the greatest things that video games have ever achieved.

So Arcade Edition is exactly what it appears to be: a tempered update that lacks the immediate wow factor of its predecessor, but offers an extra layer of refinement on an already winning formula.

Smashing into crowds of rancid flesh-eating zombies ought to be a terrifying life-or-death battle, not like shooting fish in a barrel.

With its clumsy dialogue threatening to ruin everything at every turn, Lexis Numerique's high-gloss offering is a challenge to play - but perhaps not always for the reasons the developers intended.

It might look cuter than a kitten, but Rotating Octopus can be just as savage when it wants to be. And we still love it, fools that we are.

A game that requires a degree of patience and tolerance before it truly clicks. If you have the required resolve, there's plenty to admire.

It leaves you with a peculiar sense of power: it feels as though you have the influence of a redemptive god, restoring a fallen world back to its Eden state after a corrupting virus.

Worst of all is that exploring Wonderland is, in practice, about as full of wonder as watching paint dry. Paint the colour of blood and dreams, but paint nonetheless.

In the end, you feel every year of Duke Nukem Forever's ridiculous, fractured development seeping out of each unsatisfying frame.

The puzzles aren't bad either, and flitting between nicely-rendered static environments is pleasantly old school, and works well on the iPad.

Simultaneously brain-frying and fiendishly satisfying, Ancient Frog is another puzzle revelation. And with 100 beautifully presented levels to unpick, it's a keeper.

One of those middle of the road games which adheres to a familiar template closely enough to provide adequate entertainment in the short term but is unlikely to inspire any devotion. It falls over itself to make you feel like an unstoppable badass, but then rarely gives you the opportunity to show off.

White Knight Chronicles II flounders. It's a hybrid that fails to find its own identity in terms of its structure, and its convoluted battle system is poorly explained and, once mastered, reveals itself to be broad but ultimately shallow. Those improvements from the first game are overwhelmed by a more general sense of ennui; what were once interesting innovations lack the polish and endurance to inspire over the course of a sequel.

With 60 wry and crafty levels awaiting, his quizzical eyebrow would have been working overtime. Instead, we're happy to settle for the grunting anonymity of Hamilton and invent a few one-liners of our own to fill in the blanks.

If you posses superhuman racing skills, FAST - Racing League is the game for you. The rest of us can mull over what might have been.

The further you go, the more hazards await, and the more colourful your language gets. One day they'll be forced to put blood pressure warnings on these things.

During its best moments, it feels like something we might have been given by the Assassin's Creed team if they'd grown up immersed in the works of Steve Ditko rather than Umberto Eco: a hard-edged pulp adventure where your tools are perfectly matched to your missions. If the original game gave Cole a purpose, this one provides a little personality to go with it.

But those who can overlook Hunted's design shortfalls and occasionally tepid fantasy backdrop will extract a good few hours of fun slashing and exploring before something better comes along.

If you've somehow lost your inner child, you might find it skulking impishly in the confines of Casey's Contraptions. Even the price is from your youth.

With production values that smell of money and brow-furrowing challenges, Frisbee Forever is an essential download.

As effortlessly charming as the beautiful art style is, Bumpy Road veers perilously closely to being style over substance.

Radiant Historia might lack the breadth and polish of Dragon Quest IX or the contemporary chutzpah of The World Ends With You, but in its own way, it's every bit as memorable and fully deserves its place alongside them at the top table of DS role-players.

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

More to the point, why would you consider spending £4.50 on the gaming equivalent of pairing socks? I'm not sure even the developer, Intense, has the answer to that one.

Ideas like collaborative mission editing offer tantalising possibilities for the creatively minded, but they can't mask the flaws of a game lacking a central hook.

Frozen Synapse takes the old, the stuffy and the traditionally glacial and it makes it brand new, instant and brutal. It's such an achievement.

Perhaps the main selling point is the presence of four-player co-op - especially given its online and local credentials. A bit of Gauntlet-style adventuring isn't something to sniff at, and far more enjoyable than button-mashing solo forays, where death results in having to replay entire missions from scratch. Nein, danke.

The best reason to buy Hydrophobia Prophecy - not for entertainment, but as a kind of digital tourism. You're paying for a look at everything the developers achieved over Hydrophobia's exceptionally long development, and to see what this game might have been.

The best game currently on the 3DS and the best portable fighting game ever made. It's no less than the pocket fighter of choice.

Back when all games cost upwards of £30, it wasn't easy to keep up with games like Death Rally. Nowadays, you've got literally no excuse to hold off buying the best top-down racing available on mobile platforms. Better late than never.

For your massive 59 pence outlay, you get 27 tricky-as-you-like courses, rendered with the requisite loving care, and the chance to obsess over your times with your equally OCD friends. Honestly, what's not to love?

Codemasters has succeeded in curating another superlative festival of driving. It's a package more inclusive than any of its predecessors, shot through with the quiet innovations that have defined the studio's more recent efforts. With its off-road events celebrating the series' past and Gymkhana presenting a potentially bright new future, it's another great racing game from an outfit that's proving itself to be a master of its craft.

There's simply no competitor that can touch it in terms of poise, characterisation and storytelling, or the way in which it treats you not as a player - someone to be pandered to and pleased - but as an adult, free to make your own mistakes and suffer a plot in which not everyone gets what they deserve.

If you don't have fond memories of the arcade cabinet or Saturn game, it's still a truly feisty little racer that looks great and handles well. Tearing up dirt tracks with indestructible rally cars is enormous fun, and this XBLA title delivers those thrills in their purest, most undiluted form. It's just a shame that there's so very little of it.

As a side story to the main event, Honest Hearts is forgettable and predictable. Where it justifies its asking price is in the takeaway benefits it supplies to the long-term wasteland wanderer. More levels, more perks, new weapons and new enemies - this is what really benefits the game, and Honest Hearts delivers more than enough to make it a worthwhile diversion for players of all levels.

It's a game about games, and stuffed with the kind of scenarios and salacious tidbits that presuppose a largely male, largely 20-something audience ready to get lost in them...So let's put it this way. If you masturbate with any degree of regularity, you'll probably really enjoy No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise. And you can quote me on that.

It helps that The First Templar's endearingly off-kilter presentation keeps expectations low, and even at its best it's still only pretty good at what it does. But being surprised by a game that succeeds on modest terms is often more satisfying than grudgingly accepting a hyped blockbuster that fails to deliver, so while the final "not bad" score might be the same, the actual experience couldn't be more different.

L.A. Noire is slow but quietly engrossing; its mechanics are suspect, but you can't fault the ambition, attention to detail and commitment that went into its making. It risks stumbling over its own earnestness at times, but it's saved by its star – and I don't mean Staton, who does his best with a dry character. That star is Los Angeles.

The studio's happy knack for punting out charming little retro platformers continues with this moving tale about a monster and his desire to digest big-headed baby boys.

Like the equally awesome Dark Nebula, Gears pitches the challenge perfectly, and gives you that one-more-go feeling without also instilling the need to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. When developers make games this good, it's only right and proper to reward them with cold, hard cash.

As it is, Imaginary Range feels like a waste of everyone's time.

The results feel neutered and unfinished.

The lack of multiplayer is a bit of an oversight, but if you can live with that, Castle Conqueror represents another persuasive reason to consider thumbing through Nintendo's virtual racks.

A mildly engaging way to spend an otherwise empty hour of your life.

A promising start, but one that will sink or swim on the quality of its puzzles. If State Of Play can balance things up there, this quiet optimism could break out into something altogether noisier.

By bringing nothing particularly new to either genre that it borrows from, Gatling Gears fails to justify its inflated price of 1200 Microsoft Points, and is far from an essential purchase.

The worst accusation I can hurl at With Fire & Sword is also the kindest compliment I can pay it. Despite the new setting, infernal weaponry and bespoke story quests, most of the time the game plays just like Warband or the original Mount & Blade.

For those of us living in the now, it's joyless tat and should be smashed with hammers. Big ones.

If Pirates seems less ambitious than the last two Lego titles, lacking the cohesiveness of Potter's Hogwarts hub or the epic scale of Clone Wars', um, wars, then it makes up for it with an overall confidence borne from TT Games' experience with the licence.

But the clean menus and HUD have a slickness and simplicity of interaction that elevate the squad-shooter genre to a new level of style and polish. Likewise, in moment-to-moment play, this is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2. For those who can leap that first hurdle, Brink should run and run.

Who cares if it's no longer free? Slap your money down and feel the warm glow of supporting Raptisoft's sterling efforts.

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

It might be cheap and considerately tooled for both the iPad or iPhone, but it's no Piyo Blocks. But hey, it has birds, and we all know that's all that matters.

Despite having wings, your Unpleasant Horse's flying abilities are poor to say the least, so getting around requires leaping from cloud to cloud while stealing passing birds.

It's approximately 47 times more appealing than it looks.

For me, though, Your Doodles Are Bugged strayed perilously close to feeling like work.

A mere 12-level campaign rather curtails your wistful pleasure, but the presence of four 'Arcade' modes doesn't hurt, especially co-op.

Offers a smorgasbord of treats to delight and infuriate in almost equal measure. The mean, almost contemptuous difficulty curve is something that shouldn't be celebrated, but almost everything else is golden.

Another good map pack.

Mythos is almost competent as an action game. But if you come here expecting an MMO, and you like your MMOs to have a sense of purpose – whether it comes from innovative design, a world worth falling in love with or a certain awe-inspiring breadth – then this game is a bit of a wasteland.

As brilliantly creepy and original as Papa Sangre undoubtedly was, it left you wondering where Somethin' Else could go next. The answer? Into space.

Fundamentally, it's about having FUN – because FUN is important.

While never terrible, Darkspore feels like it's had its heart surgically removed. All the components for a giddily stupid, aesthetically imaginative action RPG are here. Somehow, however, they combine into a shambling golem that knows its basic purpose, but not a whole lot else.

If you loved Words With Friends, then it's almost certain that you'll waste just as much time here. Just don't blame me for corrupting your innocent mind.

Yes, just to add an even greater degree of random nonsense, you can shake the device to jog the coin a little, and therefore give you a chance to influence its direction. Once you start employing this tactic, of course, you can't bloody well stop, and so spend most of the game spasming like a drunk with an involuntary tic.

In spite of its steep learning curve, dearth of content, and lack of depth (both figuratively and literally), Steel Diver grew on me. It may have less to do with being a submarine commander than Trauma Center does with being a doctor, but it's a novel premise nonetheless, and the tactile fidgeting with the sub's controls is strangely rewarding.

Amidst the unremitting chaos, there's something fractured to admire in Trouble Witches Neo, especially if you can drag a friend into some co-operative mayhem. At least download the trial, but maybe get into the spirit first by putting on some Elton John shades, wearing a pink wig and wolfing down a big bag of Haribo.

Still, this is Cave we're talking about - the masters of Stress Gaming. What did you expect?

Unfortunately, it also features some of the things that remind us why adventure games fell out of the mainstream, with tedious fetch quests, aggravating scenarios and a spirit-crushing trash-sorting mini-game conspiring to gradually strip the joy out of it all.

For the most part, you're left plodding and prodding around a series of mildly engaging scenarios, wishing that a spark of wry creative genius could just kick it up a notch.

The core strength of the experience ensures Virtua Tennis 4 is best in class where it matters, on the court. Likewise, a well-structured World Tour mode, while slightly anachronistic in its straight Japanese presentation, provides a sense of journey and progression that is wholly engaging. But the motion controls, core selling points for many buyers, are woefully implemented and provide little interest or value.

The core strength of the experience ensures Virtua Tennis 4 is best in class where it matters, on the court. Likewise, a well-structured World Tour mode, while slightly anachronistic in its straight Japanese presentation, provides a sense of journey and progression that is wholly engaging. But the motion controls, core selling points for many buyers, are woefully implemented and provide little interest or value.

The game is a gradual reconnaissance into your capabilities as a leader. The smaller battles hone your self-awareness and prepare you for those glorious life-or-death crucibles – there's at least one per stage – where the screen bursts into a Technicolor fog of war, with glowing power-ups layered on top of energy bars on top of exploding missiles.

Don't play Outland because you expect it to be charming and filled with personality, then: play it because of the swooping, speeding cleverness of its design. Play it because of the craft.

It's about getting behind the rhetoric and gaining a meaningful understanding of the many dreadful things we're doing to our home.

If Mercenaries Vs was a basic online extra on a full-fledged mobile Resident Evil, you might forgive it, but as a standalone release it has no redeeming qualities. Come on Capcom, you can do better than this.

But even with the 2600 stuff taken out of the equation, nine quid for the whole lot is reasonable value, and if you're only interested in certain titles, you can buy each one in 59p packs.

Once again it comes down to this: superb pop songs and amazing choreography, wrapped up in a package which could be more polished and comprehensive but which does the job. Good times.

This is a game about singing and dancing along to some of the greatest pop records ever made. Perfect for parties, it's also ideal for entertaining small children, unlike oh see why'd you have to go and spoil it all right at the end.

Some games are so excruciatingly terrible that you feel compelled to review them, if only as a benevolent act of public service to ward off the curious and daft.

It doesn't help that you're saddled with an inelegant control set-up that demands constant use of all four shoulder buttons at once.

But if you're the kind of hardy soul who positively revels in merciless treatment, then a couple of quid is a small price to pay for such joyful puzzle punishment.

If you can adapt to the control eccentricities, there's plenty to recommend, but you might find it too much like hard work at times.

If you can adapt to the control eccentricities, there's plenty to recommend, but you might find it too much like hard work at times.

At its best, Red River surpasses Ubisoft's original Ghost Recons for squad-based tactical play. But it's the presentation of the story – not the broad-canvas story, but the story of four marines and their staff sergeant – that marks it out as something new.

The series has always ridden in the wake of its own spectacle, but after years of unfocused deviation, we finally have an evolution that demonstrates clear progress. It's the best 3D game in the series by a long way, and that's because it embraces the 2D heritage which always made Mortal Kombat its own kind of game.

Were it not for the outdated visuals and functional presentation, Prejudice would easily be worth a full-price purchase. It is, quite simply, the best multiplayer shooter since Battlefield: Bad Company 2. As a budget digital download, it's ridiculously good value.

Portal is perfect. Portal 2 is not. It's something better than that. It's human: hot-blooded, silly, poignant, irreverent, base, ingenious and loving. It's never less than a pure video game, but it's often more, and it will no doubt stand as one of the best entertainments in any medium at the end of this year. It's a masterpiece.

I would say that EA has landed a knockout blow to the competition, but that would probably result in actual violence against my person, so I won't. Anyway, it's good. You should get it.

If you're prepared to expend the requisite effort, there's a decent game of golf to be had here, but there's substantial room for improvement.

If Duæl Invaders is designed as a confidence booster, then Strania is here to remind us that, deep down, we're all pathetic narcissists that need taking down a peg or two.

After thirty-odd rounds of Duæl Invading, it becomes increasingly apparent that a Game Over screen isn't going to appear any time soon. With extra lives spewing out at a rate of knots, it seems like the difficulty level wasn't quite as finely tuned as it could have been.

It's a simple enough formula, but for those of you looking for an uncomplicated reminder of a forgotten era, Captain Sub is a fine waste of time and money.

Just as it did with Modern Combat: Domination, Gameloft has provided another high-quality, no-frills alternative that might just surprise you.

With a depth and longevity that humbles most full-price releases – including five single-player campaigns and online multiplayer – Clash Of Heroes HD demands your immediate and undivided attention.

With a depth and longevity that humbles most full-price releases – including five single-player campaigns and online multiplayer – Clash Of Heroes HD demands your immediate and undivided attention.

Many will leave disappointed, yet the more reasonable should still welcome this faithful yet flawed interpretation of their sport. Come the inevitable sequel, though, the developer will need to really turn the corner.

Until Koei can refine the long game, Dynasty Warriors will continue to slip from relevance, in much the same way as Xiahou Dun's good eye, or Sun Quan's colourful beard, have done before it.