It plays it a little safe in places and lacks a truly killer single-player mode, but by broadening the versatility of the tag system while dramatically improving the online functionality, Namco has crafted a new teamwork seminar that builds upon the original in almost all the areas that matter.

It's perfectly pitched between the frustration of failure and the high-speed, adrenaline-fuelled euphoria of success, and it's a welcome return to a more old-school Burnout formula.

But perhaps the over-riding criticism of Brute Force is that it should have been an FPS. It seems like Digital Anvil designed it in the third person for the sake of it, without acknowledging that it completely screws up the opportunity to play it split screen, thanks to inherent third person viewpoint issues.

The opportunity to record your own live music over the top of your sequenced compositions, to export Midi files with your loops and to save out songs as .wavs are features that go beyond where console-based music packages have ventured before.

This remake is a labour of love, and it catches the single most important thing about Cave Story. Objectively, it's a 2D game heavily inspired by Metroid. In its details, and in your hands and head, it's another world entirely.

Arkham-esque combat and lovely platforming combine in this joyous and colourful game.

If you take FM2008 at face value, you're left standing eyeball to eyeball with the finest football management game ever made. But just like Aliens: Special Edition was fleetingly more engaging than the cinema release, this year's FM feels like a game that further polishes an already highly buffed formula but fails to take it to a genuinely higher level.

A game a few degrees short of greatness, an intense and hectic romp that needs that final level of polish to compete with the very best.

The genius of Blek's design is that it channels that weird sense of freedom you get from helping a doodle unfold - the freedom that comes of kicking yourself loose from life's formal structures, even if your only rebellion is seeing where a curving black line will take you.

Mutant Blobs Attack is exactly the sort of game Vita needs lots of if is to survive and thrive as a platform. It's got the pick-up-and-play moreishness of the best of iOS with a level of complexity only possible on bespoke gaming hardware.

The heroic thing about it all is that Laughing Jackal manages to reinvent Qix in a way that has evidently been completely beyond Taito for the past 30 years.

To say it's a good stopgap for Super Street Fighter IV would be an injustice, as it's a fighter that stands out on its own merit. Those who look beyond the tinted visors will discover not just an excellent Wii game but an all kinds of awesome 2D fighter.

It's fundamentally a great game and the best option for console-owning quiz fans.

Of course the idea with Deluxe is that even if that's beyond you so much has been brought together that there's enough to entertain regardless.

Take it on its merits, enjoy it for what it offers and make allowances for its humble origins and this second salvo in the God of War Collection is a worthwhile, if never quite spectacular, update to the Kratos canon.

As it stands, however, Verdict Day is more than just a marked improvement over Armored Core 5. It offers more parts, more maps and new missions while expanding the already tight mechanics with an AI crafting system and an overhauled online mode that encapsulate what Armored Core does best: options, creativity, strategy and teamwork. It's unashamedly hardcore - and all the better for it.

An excellent 'story so far' game that delivers pretty much the whole Tekken experience thus far for an astonishingly inconsequential seven quid. More than that though, it's a hard-hitting fly-kick to the face of the software industry - a standard bearer that redefines the value and content level of downloadable games.

Handling, progress and rewards are as mature as you would anticipate from a developer that now has six similar arcade racers under its belt.

In essence, you have to play it less and less, and it will feel better every time. It's all about going out of your way not to go out of your way.

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.

With 90 brow-furrowing levels to pile through - and a built-in level editor for creative sorts - iBlast Moki 2 offers the kind of value that will have Satoru Iwata crying into his sales figures. The iPhone's not exactly short of great physics puzzle games, but it'd be remiss of anyone not to pick this one up.

Judged on game design and content, then, it's slightly anachronistic, but as a toy box full of things you can only do in games, Rage is warm-hearted and refreshing. It's not going to change the world, but it does serve as a timely reminder of that other thing id Software games always did besides smashing through some new technological barrier.

One of the most refreshing, fun and downright brilliant games I've played this year.

Supporting up to four players at once, the game lends itself brilliantly to playing with your mates (locally or online), but is equally good fun against the computer in the hugely challenging campaign mode.

FIFA 08 is, on the whole, a triumph. Had the Be A Pro features been more fleshed out and the lower difficulty settings somewhat more forgiving, then it would undoubtedly have scored a 9 rather than an 8. However, thanks to the promise of the former feature, multiplayer games that are little short of superb (due to the lack of AI defenders thwarting your every attack), the usual exhaustive array of official league and cup competitions and some stunning visuals and animations that milk next gen power for all it's worth, it very much feels that the FIFA franchise is genuinely teetering on the cusp of greatness.

The jackhammer gameplay won't necessarily win over new converts, but for everyone else, this silky remake is a must buy.

If you're an old school arcade veteran looking to prove yourself again, then this is perhaps the purest gameplay experience you'll find for a long time. Even if you're a rookie looking for something 'new', you can't go wrong, but you might well find the barriers to entry a little harsh to say the least.

The Walking Dead is a serious, solid, but clay-footed work; in truth, it wouldn't stand out from the crowd if video game storytelling wasn't so impoverished to begin with.