If you can ignore the story, It Takes Two has some of the best co-op gameplay in years. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Inclusive and often thought-provoking, this is a daring portrait of a game-world with all the failure cut out, and it's hard not to love a game that loves you so much in return. Fable II will charm you, thrill you, and leave you very, very happy.

A masterful combination of the many things that have striven to define the series in the past, each presented at its best and accentuated by considered design.

Whereas once we treated Left 4 Dead as a stopgap between Half-Lifes, this is no longer a weird little side project with modest expectations, and Valve is confident enough to play around with it, safe in the knowledge that you can trust your players. Left 4 Dead proved it. And whereas that game had a personality, this one is overflowing with it.

It'll still have the piss ripped out of it for being a spreadsheet number crunching exercise, a game that reduces passion into numbers, but take no notice. It's an abstract extrapolation of emotions. A beautiful game of the beautiful game. Chaotically absorbing.

Genres combine with beautiful precision in a game that offers simple pleasures and terrifying depths. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Another deeply professional, personality-filled and progressive take on the shooter from Valve. In a cultural landscape that has as many zombie touchstones as ours, it takes something special to make them shamble appealingly, and Left 4 Dead, both literally and metaphorically, makes them run.

Whereas once we treated Left 4 Dead as a stopgap between Half-Lifes, this is no longer a weird little side project with modest expectations, and Valve is confident enough to play around with it, safe in the knowledge that you can trust your players. Left 4 Dead proved it. And whereas that game had a personality, this one is overflowing with it.

It's just so devastatingly addictive - and the fun doesn't even truly start until you've got some competitive friends on the in-game leaderboards.

Action fans will find the combat too simple, while RPG fans will find the inability to customise their character to any major degree frustrating.

Monolith Soft closes out its loosely connected trilogy of epic RPGs with its most adaptable, malleable and high-spirited adventure yet. [Eurogamer Essential]

An unqualified triumph. It's stuffed with content but rarely for the sake of it, and knowing Criterion it will be handsomely supported for months to come, even though it's already the best pure arcade racing game since Burnout Paradise.

No matter how much is going on at any given time, the frame rate is a rock solid 60, and for a game as fast as this that's a godsend.

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.

But you also suspect BioWare's on the right track, and until it pulls it off - and the initial noises about the sequel seem promising - Mass Effect offers us a singular universe of excitement and drama to lose ourselves in.

It's the heady energy at the heart of every Super Mario 3D World level, pushed out across an entire map for what's a hugely entertaining, and very different brand of Mario action. There might be more polished Mario adventures around, and more coherent ones. But when it gets to the core of what makes these games so special - the inventiveness, the imagination and the eccentricity of it all - then this new pairing might well be peerless. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Taking a healthy dose of inspiration from Ridge Racer Type 4, Inertial Drift is a unique arcade racer with an exquisite core mechanic.

Although Hot Pursuit 2 is an excellent racer, well worth buying and stuffed with many hours of gameplay, "Burnout 2" is all that and more, without having to obey strict license agreements regarding damage.

Perhaps Tony Prince does nothing to drag the series forward - somewhat fittingly for a man with his head stuck in the eighties - but the episode Rockstar has named in his honour is a colourful and pleasingly unpredictable adventure that gets better throughout and ends on a high.

Pokopia succeeds in capturing the spirit of Pokémon's past without sacrificing its uniqueness, as one of the best spin-offs the franchise has ever seen.

Developer Coal Supper's relentlessly inventive absurdist comedy might, by necessity, keep a tight rein on players, but this is an impeccably constructed masterclass in gag-telling.

If you can accept that it won't last you as long as you might like, then your quest is clear: leave no stone unturned in your search for this game, and then leave none of its stones unturned either.

Marginally better than the original. The single player game is undoubtedly more enjoyable, whilst the multiplayer is still flawed but nevertheless worth a few games.

Tetris gets the Tetsuya Mizuguchi makeover, to dazzling effect. [Eurogamer Essential]

The simple joy of exploration is at the very heart of the appeal of video games. In Fez, it's absolutely unfettered.

While a fine piece of craft and a sumptuous reworking of the setting, EA Motive's Dead Space remake sheds a little of the 2008 game's enchantment.

If this game had been released on the NES 20 years ago, it would be recalled by a generation of players as a high point of the 8-bit era. The fact that console gamers are only getting their first crack at Cave Story in 2010 doesn't make the experience any less memorable.

The array of character builds and focus on warring guilds makes it a dream for those who enjoy online rucks. The more off-line adventurer has a huge world and extensive plot to fight their way through.