Vintage Nintendo. Maybe a bit too vintage - Spirit Tracks is, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a straight rehash, a derivative sequel of the kind the company used not to make, and based on a decades-old template. You could easily mark it down for that. But that would belie the fact that it's also a tighter and more rounded game, crafted with more care, than not just Phantom Hourglass but most modern games for grown-up consoles.

Adding GRID's flashback feature allows the game to hit that sweet spot of accessibility without blunting its appeal, and allied to a plethora of consistently entertaining race disciplines and locations, it's an absorbing and technically accomplished experience from start to finish.

Time does the best job of muffling hyperbole but today, years after we first encountered Disgaea, we still feel like shouting from the rooftops.

They combine everything that was best about the older Pokemon games - namely, the more likeable monster designs and inventive spirit - with the much-improved looks and streamlined battle system of the fourth-generation ones.

An even faster and bloodier but slightly wayward follow-up to a thunderous shooter reboot.

Reaper of Souls is a huge improvement for Diablo 3; it does what was needed and a whole lot more besides. It's overkill - right down to the removal of any cap on the endgame Paragon system, which now invites you to play forever, taking your characters' stats to infinity and beyond.

Little King's Story is not the best game you'll ever play. It's repetitive, it's lacking in depth and it can feel slow and frustrating at times. Plus it's got some dodgy politics and a rubbish save system. But it's the best game I've played all year, and that includes Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. It's charming, engrossing and just plain fun.

Just as it did with Two Point Hospital, Two Point Studios has combined neatly overlapping managmenet systems with an irrepressably oddball charm. [Eurogamer Recommended]

So utterly complete that comparing it to consumer racing titles like "F1 2000" from EA is pointless. This is on another level entirely; another plane if you will.

There is a magnificent amount of stuff to do.

A delightful, playful, occasionally exhilarating platformer. But while this is a game whose visuals point to a bright, alternative future, its systems too often rely on the dusty past. Half of a classic, then.

Of course there's a lot that's the same. Of course there is. But with a great many small and well-placed innovations, a vivacious, inventive new cast and the biggest cosmetic makeover the series has ever seen, Pokémon Black and White makes it all feel new again. It reminds you what there was to love about Pokémon in the first place – and perhaps we all needed reminding.

This apparent desire to cut to the chase means that you'll blast through the 12 chapters in about four hours; short enough for the repetition not to set in, but long enough to satisfy. As a taste of what's to come, this is not to be missed.

Beautiful, rhythmic, inventive and funny, Titan Souls developer Acid Nerve has delivered one of the best Zelda-likes in some time. [Eurogamer Essential]

The New Colossus is a game that straddles moods and periods, caricature and biting insight, cartoon villainy and insidious real-world malevolence. It is a well-wrought FPS caught on the rocks of some marvelous, horrendous discussions about race, gender, discrimination and complicity. It is frequently crude and half-baked, mixing fart jokes with oafish interpretations of trauma. But it is also both strikingly ambitious and a lot more intelligent than it often seems. What it needs now, I think, is a new lead and possibly even, whisper it, a change of genre. There is more to be said about a character like BJ Blazkowicz, but there is also more to be said about this universe - and our own - than is possible with BJ at the helm. [Recommended]

A thrilling leap forward for a magical skating series. [Eurogamer Essential]

Maybe it's just the pent-up shock talking, but this short, fearsomely sharp episode in my life has left me with many images and sensations that I wouldn't part with, even if I'd probably rather have taken the last campaign on again instead, given the choice between the two.

A game that commands your attention, ruthlessly hauling your eyes into the flatscreen while tickling your brain with impeccable track design and spine-snapping speeds.

Certainly, I have no hesitation in recommending Original Sin to RPG fans old and new, provided that you're up for a challenge from very early on and don't expect to romp through, Diablo-style.

No other RTS provokes the feeling that you're inventing rather than enduring to defeat your foe to this extent. It's complicated and exhausting with it, and while that's exactly what an established COH player will want, I fear it ever so slightly undermines the achievements the original game made in making historical wargames appeal to a mass audience again.

If you want a game that lets you take a club to glorious heights or just go on a one-man sabotage mission to ruin Manchester United, then this is by far the most refined, in-depth and yet most approachable version Sports Interactive has come up with to date.

What's unavoidable is the fact that almost all of the problems that weigh Psychonauts down are borne out of the legacy that the platform genre itself has, and Double Fine - like so many other developers - has largely been unable to avoid falling into the same pitfalls of inconsistent level design and unwise difficulty spikes. Dammit.

Gears of War remains a triumph. It is an almost relentless march of unpretentious, cartoon violence that serves as a satisfyingly brainless alternative to the complexity of its contemporaries. Whether played alone or with a friend, it's essential gaming.

Here the rewards are rich, satisfying and threaded in the design. The compulsion to play through the game has not been found in manipulative shortcuts, but in graft and execution and a plethora of ideas. It is expensive game-making, for sure, but it is game-making at its absolute best.

Velocity looks like a blast from the past and plays like anything but; it's some sort of triumph of substance over style. That sounds like a good thing, and it is, but a little more of the latter wouldn't have hurt.

Spelunky's astonishing creativity and the spectacular depth that opens up as you make progress make it easy to forget that it's also an extremely competent platformer, with tight, poppy controls that work far better on an Xbox 360 pad than they ever did with a computer keyboard.

Improving tenfold on its predecessor in almost every area, it not only belongs on the shopping list of existing Resistance fans, but those who were underwhelmed with the original will also want to check it out, and then fight for it on the internet.

These games have always come with oddities, but the central mode is so staggeringly joyous and compelling that it draws my eye and my attention and leaves me powerless to do anything else. Unlike Tetris, Lumines didn't need a borrowing from Lumines to become even better. All it needs - and this may just be me, and I know we have the Steam Deck - is a release on Switch 2, where that glorious panoramic screen that you hold in your hands is waiting to take this absolute dazzler back home to its portable origins.