A true classic. It may not have the admirable depth of "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance" or "Fire Emblem," but it has twice the character - and twice the fun.

This is a nice game that may well turn into a great game: if the players continue to stick around, if the developer doesn't let the micro-transactions take over, and if the design team keeps its eye out for bugs and exploits that emerge as people start to get really serious.

If Deep Dungeons of Doom ultimately feels a tiny bit hollow, this may in part be due to its dazzling presentation.

There's a deceptive depth to Zenless Zone Zero, even with its smaller scale, thanks to this dual focus on pleasing both casual players and those looking for a deeper challenge, mirroring its dedication to both chilled exploration and fast-paced combat. Instead of feeling like a game warring with itself, however, these wildly different vibes weave together to make Zenless Zone Zero what it really is: a successful fusion of ultracool action with slice-of-life goofiness.

A dark RPG-strategy hybrid that's not without its pleasures, but tends towards numb repetition and becomes a slog.

An action RPG with magical powers that feel genuinely dangerous, married to level design that offers scale and prettiness.

Relic has had the audacity to launch it into an unexpected frontflip, and what a glorious, inventive somersault of design Dawn of War 3 is, even if it doesn't completely stick the landing. [Recommended]

Clever tweaks to a brilliant formula make this a tactics game just built for experimentation. [Eurogamer Recommended]

If you've never played a first-person shooter before, you'll probably be in love - this is as archetypal a corridor-shooter as has ever been made, and there's a reason why it works. But for anyone who's been running down corridors with shotguns for most of their adult life, this is so uninspired that you worry for the spark of Monolith's soul. You guys made "No One Lives Forever," remember? You're smart. You're better than this.

Hollow as the game itself might be, the exterior has more than enough charm to tease you onward. If EA can just pull the core concept out of the dark ages, what comes next should be worth everyone's time.

Baby Steps walks a fine line between frustration and accomplishment to provide a walking simulator and climbing experience quite unlike anything else.

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.

Any time Risk of Rain loses its sheen, you can always start again, with a new character.

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 mixed success. In terms of its childlike spectacle, Klonoa is quite brilliant, offering a number of memorable set-pieces and an unforgettable, wistful ambience throughout. But its challenges, while obvious, are often fiddly to overcome, and the sense of deep achievement that comes from completing one of Super Mario's tasks is here replaced by mere relief that it's over.

The length of the game might seem a little short for some of the more dedicated RTS players out there, but then remember that "Homeworld" only had 17 missions!

It's never as tense as its console sibling, and it suffers from a few frustrating flaws, but the core sneak 'em up gameplay - evading enemies and cameras, silencing alarms, collecting data and using your spy tools - is well represented.

But perhaps the over-riding criticism of Brute Force is that it should have been an FPS. It seems like Digital Anvil designed it in the third person for the sake of it, without acknowledging that it completely screws up the opportunity to play it split screen, thanks to inherent third person viewpoint issues.

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

A World of Keflings feels more like an enhanced remake rather than a true sequel, and anyone who played through the original will quickly get déjà vu from the identical journey from basic houses up to an ornate game-winning castle.

Effective, brutal and full of hard-as nails military posture, it's a decent expansion pack to one of the best games of the year.

Just as distinctively great as it always was.

It's a substantial undertaking, too, with breadth as well as depth, and with a control system that demonstrates the Wiimote's capabilities more fully than its direct competitors.

The Nintendo DS masterpiece is squeezed onto a single screen, with the improvements just about outweighing the compromises. [Eurogamer Recommended]

As Dusk Falls represents a bold new future for interactive movie games - a future where games can do away with the supernatural spectacle and thrillery whodunnits to rely on human drama to entertain us instead. And OK, this does occasionally veer into soap opera, but at other times it's gentle and deep and dark, even profound. It shows how well games can handle stories and themes like these when done with care and understanding, and how well it can pull us into the lives of others and invest us in the decisions they have to make. And that's what really stays with me about the game: stories - human stories. They are the troubled, awkward and beautiful stories I can see in the world around me, that I can relate to myself. This is a game that reflects, in many ways, our own lives. Silly as it sometimes can be, As Dusk Falls feels real, and I can't think of a higher compliment to give it. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Despite a number of difficult to spot and ultimately underwhelming "improvements", the Cube and PS2 versions of Dead to Rights remain generally engaging, with an uneven sprinkling of genius.

It's odd and slightly throwaway, much like Attack of the Friday Monsters itself, yet it also captures the inquisitive naivety of childhood, and of a world where young imaginations blossom to fill the long hours of hot summer afternoons.

Peggle 2 is still a wonderful game, but to a super-fan there are too many things that feel miscalibrated. In a way, that's more damaging than the suggestion PopCap isn't sure what else to do with Peggle: it suggests PopCap needs to rediscover itself.

There's plenty of multiplayer fun in this game of benign wrecking balls. [Eurogamer Recommended]

What lies beneath its rather unspectacular veneer is a really well designed game that approaches the conflict from a different angle and provides a solid platform for a hugely entertaining game.

Northern Strike is a polished offering, a lot more than the token handful of stuff draped around the glinting trophy of new unlocks it could have been.

Whether it works or not, you'll have fun playing it; lots of fun; and that, more than anything, is why you should buy it.

It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination: the level design is still a cut above so many of Nintendo's peers. But by the series' consistently high standards, it qualifies as a disappointment.

Fans of smart sci-fi and bold game design should jump aboard now.

Some standard Nintendo limitations get in the way, but this is still an invaluable education in some of the fundamentals of game creation. [Eurogamer Recommended]

This is a deep, engaging, beautiful game, a welcome alternative to DOTA and League of Legends for the console crowd.

In many ways this game is superior to "Morrowind"; although it doesn't have the initial appeal offered by that title's graphical splendour, it has a lot more depth and far less time is spent walking from place to place aimlessly.

It's in the multiplayer that Ring of Fates excels, and we have no problem with recommending it thoroughly to anyone who fancies some co-op action RPG fun with their friends.

3D Dot Game Heroes does have its moments and fun features, like a cute little avatar editor (guess what I made), and the ability to take screenshots and save them to your PS3's photo gallery. But every one of the problems it suffers from elsewhere is something that Legend of Zelda, through its longevity and the massive expertise of its designers, has either long since overcome or never had to worry about anyway.

It may not have a licence behind it, it doesn't feature online play, and it could do with a few zanier tables and quirks to match the presentation, but until somebody comes along with a game of pool that plays this well - and is this accessible - it's by far and away our clacker of choice.

There's no denying that this year's edition plays a good game of golf, and the changes to the game's core systems are well-judged - but they're arguably not enough to make it worth buying again for anyone but the most ardent fan of the sport. While the likes of FIFA have made clear progress in recent iterations, it's hard to see what benefit there is to having a Tiger game every year.

Volgarr the Viking is, beneath it all, a very lovely game. Just don't be surprised if it takes you a while to realise it.

American Arcadia isn't as memorable as Call of the Sea, and it has its frustrations, but overall this is a well presented adventure-platform game with an almost irresistible personality.

What's left is the nucleus of a Metroidvania game, mechanically functional and regularly interesting, but a shadow of its inspiration nonetheless.

An intimite, mindful story of journalling what matters hits a few small bumps in the road.

Square Enix's line of retro JRPGs continues with an all-new world and tale for Bravely Default, though some of the old problems persist.

That true panoramic freedom is still missing in action, the campaign's rather undernourished as it rushes you into the final act and the fiction feels increasingly forgettable. There are charms here, though, if you boot up the tactical display and stick to the shadows. There's the silent kill in glorious surroundings; there's the swish of an arrow, the creak of a bow.

Another strong, if understated slab of zombie-smashing from the people who wouldn't be told that a four-player FPS that lasts four hours was commercial suicide. In 24 hours I've already gone through it nearly a dozen times in various modes on Xbox 360, and I don't regret parting with five quid for the privilege (in fact, it was mis-priced at 800 MSP when I bought it, and I don't regret that either).

Rugby 06 finally offers the full range of Premiership, Celtic and Southern Hemisphere club teams, not to mention exhibition sides such as the Barbarians and New Zealand Maoris. That's, like, three times as many sides as "Rugby 2005."

Once described as "a Tetris for the 21st Century", there's a beautiful design simplicity that belies some of the most fiendish block-sliding puzzle design you've ever encountered.

It's a systematically refined game, with superlative combat and intriguing progression that plays the long game. It's beautiful. It's a slow burner, perhaps dangerously so for the skittish console audience, although the prevailing winds in gaming - where social, persistent metagaming is king - are on its side.

The huge time investment required to make anything that resembles progress means that this is hardly the best place for newcomers to start but by stark contrast, there's no better Yu-Gi-Oh! title on the market in terms of card lists, AI and sheer longevity.

It's plodding and lacking in imagination, and it's mostly the great cut-scenes that will get you through. It's certainly not 'rip out your optics' bad - but Transformers: War For Cybertron hasn't got the touch either.

But the true wonder of the game is in its clockwork structure, the way dynamic story and environments that shift with time thread with the permanence of its collectibles and secrets. There is an intricacy of design here as impressive as any of the miniature towns on view at Legoland.

Trouble is, it once again errs far too much towards the arcade style of play, and is not only unrealistic, but makes the game feel too easy.

A short, sweet translation of Gone Home's cosy environmental storytelling into the realm of speculative fiction. [Recommended]

It doesn't have any depth to speak of, but it's unique (for the moment) and has a genuine sense of humour, a quality few games can boast. It's an apt launch title, lacking in polish but rich in character and laughs.

Despite the wealth of options and the addition of infinite continues – which will no doubt lead some to complain that it can be completed in 20 minutes – Guwange makes few concessions to a modern audience, and as such, Cave has almost certainly restricted its game to a niche crowd. But that's an observation, not a criticism.

A glorious spell of island hopping, with some surprisingly nasty moments. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Skald is a propulsive throwback RPG that exudes grisly character, though its commitment to tradition holds it back in a genre rife with competition.

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.

With its knowing sense of the absurd and finely honed frantic playability, Alien Zombie Death provides the PSP Minis scene a welcome shot in the arm.

While it probably won't get the adrenaline pumping for long, AiRace is certainly high-octane fun while it lasts. (Am I fired yet?)

So, an improvement on the (initially) buggy port that the first GRAW on PC was, but even with the pleasingly significant interface and visual tweaks over the console version, this is still very much a an adequate but not spectacular sequel to an adequate but not spectacular tactical shooter. It's GRAW, but a bit better, and that's it.

This is a full-blooded add-on, and the kind of meaty expansion that Forza 4 sadly never enjoyed. It's not, however, quite the measure of the main dish, and it's something of a shame that the off-road sections couldn't be better integrated into Horizon's existing world rather than being bluntly torn away from it.

This is a new FC, with some genuine differences on- and off-pitch. It's also the exact same FC it's always been.

Treyarch delivers an impressive package considering the circumstances, but Black Ops Cold War feels like a step back from last year.

Folklore powers a heartfelt game of exploration and empathy. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Often overwhelming and always nerve-wracking, Mode 7's classic tactical game receives a fascinating strategic reworking. [Recommended]

Pick a direction and wander off to get the most out of this mesmerising game of exploration. [Eurogamer Recommended]

When I started playing I was fascinated by the landscape beneath. I wanted to hear more about the abandoned, crumbling temples and foundries, the different forms of government and social relations you're told about when you visit each city. I craved an extended mission or two to dig into the origins of the Prophecy. I wondered about the possibility of an antagonist. But towards the end, I felt only indifference, which is a more rarefied, civilised kind of cruelty than the urge to pillage. It feels like this game drifts in the shadow of another game in which the Airborne Kingdom is exactly what it looks like: a ponderous, uncaring monster that eats the world in order to set itself free.

A tough but lovely recreation of two of the greatest orthodox shoot-'em-ups ever made.

It's a genuinely peaceful and relaxing experience, with a wonderfully becalmed atmosphere, subdued beauty, and an earnest, innocent attitude - all of them rare properties in games.

Many won't appreciate the simplicity, or the fact that there doesn't appear to be enough of a substantial challenge to grab your attention for very long. Not for everyone, then, but well worth further investigation if puzzling's your thing.

All told, you're getting an absurd amount of content for your 800 Points, but such is the incessant repetition at the core, you may question whether you really need it. If the answer is yes, then this is unquestionably an instant purchase, but over the long haul its infectious opening gambit doesn't quite sustain.

A deceptively goofy asymmetrical tactics game that feels as grand as any monster movie. [Eurogamer Recommended]

You might not think that we need another first person shooter in our collections, but when such a simple game can be fun, exhilarating, affecting, tense and stressful all at once, you begin to wonder why you ever needed more.

Lacks the polish of Mikami's Capcom work, showing a rough edge that its creators no doubt hope communicates their punk attitude to game development, but really just comes across as a bit shoddy. But at a time when few publishers of EA's stature are willing to take genuine risks, its uniqueness is welcome and interesting. And as a celebration of the puerile, it leaves Duke Nukem Forever standing, staring longingly at its tit bridge.

With songs catering for multiple generations and all manner of tastes, and a disc packed with excellent tracks and none of the filler which has polluted previous Singstar releases, Legends is perfect family Christmas fare.

What Tales of Kenzera lacks in creative game design it makes up for in vital, passionate storytelling.

Plain Sight sits simmering on the hob like a pot of genius soup that's lacking something, and I don't think even the developers could figure out what.

If you've got the stomach for repetition, this is well worth a look, but otherwise approach with caution.

Shift: Extended also has one of those insidious background tunes that probably provide a soundtrack to your dreams for the next 17 years. Just don't play it on the train without headphones - you don't want innocent bystanders suffering the same fate.

It's the weakest of the series by a long way, and an ill-judged attempt to drag a narrative driven adventure game into the realms of sub hackandslash by removing much of the actual thinking and forcing the player to engage in less than challenging puzzles while foisting repetitive and unengaging combat upon them.

This ruminative travel game is beautiful, poised, and a little predictable.

A joyous and rugged display of rally racing, with exquisite handling, lightly flecked by technical issues.

Few games from the early '90s stand up this well today and although there are obviously better fighters out there, an enhanced classic for less than the price of a cinema ticket is a bargain in anyone's book.

Band Hero does not add anything to what we already saw in Guitar Hero 5, so in the end buying it just depends on your opinion about its track list.

It's still splendid - it's just infuriating that so much of what makes it such a delight has been lost in translation.

It does lots, and it does things reasonably well. It's just, well, it's doing the wrong things reasonably well.

The systems run as deep as ever in Paradox's latest effort, though the personality isn't quite there.

This is a largely enjoyable journey for series fans - a dilution of what has gone before, but one that suits the handheld and serves its audience well. As a result, Suikoden Tierkreis offers a blueprint for how developers of modest JRPG series can continue their lineage into the future.

Intricate and ingenious, Hob is a true spiritual successor to A Link to the Past. [Recommended]

For all that the game may have promised, it isn't such a big step forward for the series. It's Total War done a bit bigger, a bit better and a bit different. Its borders hold firm.

It feels familiar, but it's unlike anything else - and even on DS, where good RPGs are plentiful, this is in the top tier. It should have been called Awesome Robot-Riding Dog Adventures, of course. But you can't have everything.

As with "Out From Boneville," The Great Cow Race is an entertaining enough diversion, but one that doesn't provide much in the way of lasting thrills.

It's a competent, workable game that draws inspiration from the right places, but which is rarely anything more than a cover version of the greats.

Get to the end of the short campaign and you realise it isn't short at all, with time attacks and plus levels and expert levels unrolling before you It's a lovely package, and another pleasant stop on the Switch's protracted farewell. The more I played, the more I found myself collecting fragments of memories of the GBA original which I thought I had lost. Familiarity, then, and forgotten pleasures: isn't that what a Vegas residency should be all about?