This genre blend revels in its own sense of imagination and excess.

Nomada Studio follows up on the striking Gris with an effort that's poignant and precise, if maybe just a tad melodramatic.

What's most striking, though, is that Pikmin still feels like strategy seen with fresh eyes - strategy, perhaps, by designers who were unconcerned with labelling, and just let their ideas lead them where they wanted to go.

All the verbal artistry of Sunless Sea scattered across a gorgeous steampunk cosmos that's a little easier to navigate and thrive in. [Eurogamer Essential]

No matter how good a Total War game is, the follow-up campaign is always better. Warhammer 2's is no exception. [Recommended]

If you are looking for a festive thinker to play in between consuming copious amounts of booze, this will be ideal, although I wouldn't recommend playing it with a hangover. A thoroughly addictive, engrossing game that ranks among my top five for this year.

There are missteps and a few bumps along the way, but this soft reboot of a long-running series emerges a triumph. [Eurogamer]

Hi-Fi Rush is unashamed to be loud and brash and playful, and it's confident in its execution. On the surface it might seem frivolous but there's a deep battle system here that rewards combo memory and, of course, rhythm. It's upbeat, wide-eyed and unpretentious, but that's all part of its inescapable charm, a game that appeased my inner teen and rewarded musicality in equal measure. I had a blast. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Mixtape, from The Artful Escape studio Beethoven & Dinosaur, is a delight. It's a celebration of teenage life that makes its point, aptly, just as a teenager would.

Spruced up from the PSP and offered for 10 quid, it's probably the best release on Microsoft's clever little service all year.

Apart from somehow managing to be a game that looks every bit as beautiful as the title it so obviously reveres, and despite the perennial handicap of virtual thumbsticks. Infinity Field plays remarkably well.

SCEE Cambridge has done Media Molecule proud and fans of the original game won't be disappointed. PSP owners who missed out first time around should be sure to give it a go, as LittleBigPlanet is undoubtedly one of the standout titles for Sony's handheld.

Somewhere between those map icons is tantalising mystery, and that's what Silent Cartographer was all about, wasn't it? Being on an alien world, not knowing the whys or the hows or the whos. Working things out while finishing the fight. Halo Infinite, underneath it all, is about just that. And, if nothing else, you can always rely on that golden triangle - Master Chief and his gun, grenade and Gravity Hammer - this time on your own terms, the best it's been in a decade.

PixelJunk Shooter is a taut, well-made and original game that's been lavished with good design and slick coding. It won't detain you long - and without giving too much away, the post-credits kill-screen suggests a DLC expansion is highly likely, as does PixelJunk's past history. But for every minute of those few hours, it's an unpredictable, fluidly entertaining blast.

Not all its additions are for the better, but this excavation of Monolith Soft's alien opus remains as fascinating and enthralling as it was a decade ago.

It's only masquerading as its own game - really, coming straight to this without having played its predecessors will be frustrating and bewildering, and the inability to play as Space Marines, Orks et al online a real slap in the face.

A bitch of a game to review. But for the same reasons it's a joy of a game to play. There's just so much to it. It's a town-builder, a compelling dungeon-crawler, a fishing game, a golf game and, in short, a great RPG.

Otherwise, GRID is a great success: the single-player is varied without being confusing; the online multiplayer supports 12 players and damage modelling, reducing the number of first-corner pile-ups; tracks and cars are well chosen and recreated; and Flashback allows you to race with the same determination on lap three as you did on lap one, mitigating risk in a manner of which other racing game developers will soon be envious.

The only problem, in truth, is that it's outrageously difficult to play against experienced campaigners that know the maps inside out and all the tricks. But against your equally (in)experienced mates, it's a fantastic way of experiencing stealth gaming multiplayer.

It's pretty simple, very linear and slightly lazy in places but there can be no denying that it still manages to earn a place among the most beautiful and exciting adventures of recent years for gamers of all ages.

It's not that A Crack in Time is all fur coat and no knickers. The problem is, it's all fur coat and the same knickers it's been wearing for seven years. Time for a change.

This feels more like MotoGP Complete than MotoGP 2. That's not to say that you won't play this for yonks and yonks. The problem is more that you may already have done.

Granted, there will always be those for whom story-led gaming and turn-based battles are a complete turn-off, and for those people, Persona 3 is unlikely to be a Road to Damascus experience. For the rest of us, though, this is one of the finest RPGs on the PS2 - and that, in itself, is a huge accolade.

FromSoftware delivers a superlative action game that builds on its Soulslike pedigree while staying lean and laser-focused.

A compact and ingenious turn-based battler with an evocative world.

Vehicles, weapons, arenas, controls - it's all very intuitive, could probably survive without the added layers of instruction, and significantly still feels natural when the diversifications from standard multiplayer FPS modes and equipment are asked to work together. Warfare is a splendid mode.

It's a tightly designed adventure, in other words, and although I'm not willing to mention Winter of the Melodias and its season-switching intricacies in same breath as Link to the Past, Frontier's game certainly makes a decent My First Metroid, bringing the environment and Toku's powers together in a series of clever set-pieces while the map grows ever busier as his agility increases.

As a statement of intent, Gone Home is laudable; as a technical exercise in game narrative, it's compromised, but it definitely has its strengths and is worthy of study. But you can't escape the sense that Gaynor, Zimonja and Nordhagen started on this project with grand designs for games as a storytelling medium, yet without a story they desperately wanted to tell.