Two Point Hospital makes no bones about returning to the foundations of Theme Hospital - and it makes plenty of improvements along the way. [Recommended]

This is the rare game that excuses itself for taking whole hours out of your life, and it gives you more than a little in return. A lasting smile, a song soaring in your heart and blocks falling from the heavens everytime you shut your eyes. 14 years on, Lumines is as potent a puzzler as it's ever been, and in this it's as close to perfection as it's ever been. [Essential]

A timely overhaul that should take a great game to new heights - though it's not quite on peak form this year. [Recommended]

Call of Duty nails battle royale with a blistering, jank-free experience. [Eurogamer Recommended]

In the first flushes of infatuation it's an easy game to love, and one that will easily provide hours of ferocious enjoyment. In a few months' time the spell may well have worn off, but for this price that's really not something to worry about right now.

Limited by a rote and rigid world, Sucker Punch's samurai homage pairs okay action with enjoyably committed, if awkwardly fawning melodrama.

Reinvigorate your childhood fantasies of living in a cartoon and pick up MDK2 - there ain't much better in the genre.

What the game lacks, though, is the self-referential humour that made GDS so adorable.

Taken in isolation, it's easily the best handheld Tennis game.

Where it scores above other games is simply the emotions it inspires.

Its weave of systems hauls you back in to replay stages time after time; the sense of progress and acquisition is a powerful, irresistible loop. Most significantly, it reveals a Nintendo we haven't seen for some time, eager to innovate in ways that will excite its hardcore fans, focusing on competition, struggle and mastery. Reaching for the sky.

Just mucking around in these little sandboxes is a blast - and in that sense, it's the best sort of game, where play is its own reward. More snack than feast, it would be nice if there was slightly more of it to enjoy, but Gunpoint comes highly recommended all the same.

It's up there with the best platformers ever made.

Aside from experimental unlocks and silly novelties, the LocoRoco experience is one of undiluted fun. If the tilting, blob moving puzzle-platforming doesn't warm your heart, then the catalogue of alarmingly addictive psychotic J-Pop tunes will have you dancing around the living room.

While promising a glimpse of the future, Astro's Playroom is a gloriously old-fashioned thing at heart, a characterful, character-driven platformer that has been built to showcase a particular piece of hardware. So often that's where magic in video games happens, and that's most certainly the case here. On its own, this is a beautifully crafted, exquisitely paced and absolutely gorgeous 3D platformer. Combined with the hardware it's bundled on, it's something very special indeed - and one of the best launch titles I can remember in an age.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is a game about falling off things, goring yourself on things, squashing yourself under things and occasionally being eaten by things. So it was in 2010, and so it is now. There are worse ways to spend a weekend.

Colourful, characterful and disarmingly charming, Guacamelee 2 is a hit. [Recommended]

There's a whole lot of good here that easily balances out the bad if you're already a fan of Persona 5, and I'm pretty sure that if P-Studio made approximately 5 more sequels we would eventually arrive at the perfect version of Persona 5. There's just always so much of everything, from plot strands to enemies to fight and food to eat, that I had a great time while simultaneously feeling pretty exhausted by it all. Though that's just videogames for you.

It's by no means anything remotely original, borrowing almost all of its ideas from a three year old PC game, but in terms of console fragfoolery, it's up there with the best of them for visual splendour and all out intense action.

I'm going to cheat, and simply provide a score for the multiplayer element of the game...and bearing in mind that this game probably won't run shockingly well without major tweaking, because it's one of the most demanding games in terms of system specs that we've ever seen.

Simple, beautifully illustrated and packed with addictive lunacy, you should give this a spin immediately.

Paid or free, as map packs go, Back to Karkand is hard to fault. The maps themselves are excellent, tried and trusted classics that (Wake Island's diminished scope aside) have been thoughtfully reconstructed for modern FPS play.

Type:Rider couldn't be a more unlikely game, really. It's a collision of visual and gameplay styles topped off with an incredibly narrow educational focus, and yet through ingenious design and polished gameplay it emerges as one of the best mobile titles of the year. You don't have to be a graphic design student to enjoy this one.

Purely on the basis that it's a wonderful concept executed with no small amount of wit and style, N+ comes highly recommended - at least to those with a taste for such punishing gameplay.

Each and every part of Point Lookout is both challenging and interesting, and you come away with the impression that Bethesda's quality control has tightened up over the course of the year. As a whole, Point Lookout hangs together better than any previous Fallout 3 DLC pack, and as such comes highly recommended.

In a fight between games as metaphor and games as entertainment, we need to feel like the winners. There are times in No More Heroes when we don't, but there are enough occasions when we do, and by the time you're the best assassin in town you'll either be glad that the destination was always worth it or arguing that it deserves another mark. Either way, you do at least win.

Anyone expecting the same level of teen drama offered by the Persona series may find the characters a little flat, but if you embrace the depths of the fusion system, there's nothing quite like building a squad of demons that can unleash hell in perfect harmony.

The key problem is that just about all the good things about it are lifted straight from the original Homeworld, and there's really not a lot in the "enhancements" to this sequel which distinguish themselves above the first game.