Just Dance 2 is impossible to play with a furious frown of concentration on your face, and just as impossible to play without a wide grin. It doesn't reduce music and dancing to precision beatmatching or button-pressing: it's about surrendering to the free-spirited, glorious silliness of it.

There is a real MMO in there - a secret world within The Secret World - but it's estranged from the player, clouded by obfuscating systems and smothered in charismatic but stolidly single-player adventuring. Tornquist is a writer, the man behind adventure games The Longest Journey and Dreamfall, and it seems like he's more interested in telling stories than building adventure playgrounds, never mind emergent worlds.

Sonic Chronicles is undeniably a nice-looking game, and its slick presentation makes for an enticing experience to begin with. The longer you play, however, the more the cracks start to show, and what seemed like a potential minor classic is soon reduced to just "pretty good".

There's a good day or so's simple, colourful fun in there for those who can stomach Bomberman's sugar-coated world.

Coupled with archaic AI and the isolating absence of PlayStation Network support, this makes for a game that feels unfocused and regressive, despite its considerable technical and mechanical accomplishments.

Familiarity stalks you at every turn in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, a competent, cool and pretty soulslike with a nice twist on death but few true surprises.

Much like its endless enemies, Darktide's many small issues add up to a real nuisance - but stupendous atmosphere and vicious action just about prevails.

You'll need a hot bath and some strange dreams to get over this one, but then the same is true of Peggle.

Nintendo's second-ever Peach game finally realises the character is destined for smart level design and center stage.

The main coup of the PC version over the PS2, however, is that it that the on-track visuals have been given a massive overhaul.

The sense of scale is also slightly lacking, with cars and tanks actually looking like teeny tiny cars and tanks instead of making your mech look huge.

A reasonably clinical package with a decent though not spectacular footy game somewhere under the glitz and licensing efforts, but you'd still be better off scouting around on the transfer lists for a better value signing. Not everyone's as much of donkey as Heskey.

Like its own hero's dabbling with time travel, Life is Strange: Double Exposure highlights the troubles of trying to revisit old memories, while raising unanswered questions about the future.

It almost feels awkward to play something this understated, but once you get over that you realise that all you need to have fun is a few squares of track snapped together creatively - and that you don't need in-game radio stations, real-time reflections or modern cityscapes to make your case.

a horribly clichéd plot and a fairly tedious single player mode, but it does have a nice online mode and asks you to rub your robot's crotch to make sure it's working properly.

A handful of improvements and overhauled physics make this audaciously exciting bike sim easy to recommend.

An essential purchase for anyone interested in war simulation or tired of the contrived drama that fills mainstream military shooters.

It's a brilliantly pitched game that, while will inevitably turn many players off either by its reliance on random battles or by the generally low technical standard, is far more accessible than it sounds in synopsis.

With goofy stupidity and smart one-liners pepping up the otherwise simple gameplay, it's the kind of game you'll happily trudge through just to see what nonsense Twisted Pixel can throw at you next. Frankly, it's worth it for the stat screen song alone.

The saddest thing about Sakura Samurai is that the foundation is there for a much better game.

That there are a couple more modes for fighting other humans underlines that this is a pack that exists primarily for those who play online - and without even giving a decent experimentation zone to play with the new possibilities of the ships without embarrassing yourself in front of a peer by crashing into a pier. Or something.

While Still Wakes the Deep is a beautiful work of atmosphere and tension, all that can be shattered by its strictly linear trappings.

Hypnotic art, otherworldly audio and captivating writing meet in an undersea exploration game that wants you to take your time. [Eurogamer Recommended]

PES 2008's entertaining match improvements, exhilarating action and solid additions mean it just about scrapes another 8, though at no point does it come even close to flirting with higher scores. It's fast, fluid, fun and physical, an improved, revamped version of PES 6 if you like.

Ion Assault is an extremely polished and well-executed twist on a very pure gaming genre.

Torturing yourself with frankly ridiculous load times isn't acceptable, nor is the choppy frame rate or the sound stutters. [U.S. version]

Mafia II gets the last word by destroying the myth that the mafia is interesting at all. It contends that the mob world is a hell of boredom populated by aggressively stupid automatons. These drones wake up each morning, carry out a series of repetitious tasks, and return home.

A harmonious meeting of two traditions, Fire Emblem Warriors explores a different, yet no less beguiling, type of battlefield strategy. [Recommended]