Bastion may have you tugging at its threads to decipher your role and meaning, even as you return for a second go-round - but you're unlikely to question the choice you made to buy it.

It's brilliant because it presents a slick and fast-paced management puzzle within firm boundaries and rules that manages to teach the player all of its lessons before he or she gets bored and moves on.

At its best SBD's blend of twitch-platforming and stealth puzzles produces little rat-runs with a nigh-on perfect balance of action and tension. Such quality isn't quite sustained across the whole, but this is still within touching distance of greatness, and certainly much classier than Tactical Espionage Arsehole suggests.

All That Remains does a great job of reintroducing the series, and switches things up in a way that could have tripped up harder than Lee over a tree branch yet feels like the only way the story could have been continued.

The core strength of the experience ensures Virtua Tennis 4 is best in class where it matters, on the court. Likewise, a well-structured World Tour mode, while slightly anachronistic in its straight Japanese presentation, provides a sense of journey and progression that is wholly engaging. But the motion controls, core selling points for many buyers, are woefully implemented and provide little interest or value.

MaXplosion might lack some of the depth of its rival, but given that it's less than a tenth of the price, it's entitled to. Buy both with the money you're not spending on beer tonight. Make everyone happy.

Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team's best original game yet. An immersive romp through a suffocating portrayal of 80s Poland, where your journey is far from what it first seems.

An exceptionally fun game to play - the fight model is spot-on (entertainment wise), and the missions and storyline are both sufficiently interesting to keep the player involved in the action.

Perhaps the only downside about Lego Star Wars II is that the melee combat remains weak throughout, some of the latter puzzles can be wilfully obscure, and that Traveller's Tales neglected to allow co-op to be played online. Apart from that, it's one of the most instantly enjoyable games around.

Not a life-changing experience (if you discount the coming years of physiotherapy on my arms) but it is an astoundingly competent first-person shooter. While the multiplayer mode is a flimsy experience unless you have friends you can rely on, the single-player mode offers a worthy adventure even for players who don't ever expect to take the game online.

The game's concessions to traditional game design make No More Heroes 2 a more palatable, satisfying experience. But in doing so, you feel Suda 51 and his team have moved away from Grasshopper's boisterous 'Punk's Not Dead' slogan.

It's an awkward reinvention that manages to be at once faithful and a little wide of the mark. But such is the strength of Combat Evolved, this is still an Anniversary that's worth celebrating.

As tired as the series can often seem, these games have a strong emotive core laced with pieces of refined mechanical slices that, while often repetitive, still accomplish far more than newer series with weaker creative underpinnings.

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

There's a deceptive depth to Zenless Zone Zero, even with its smaller scale, thanks to this dual focus on pleasing both casual players and those looking for a deeper challenge, mirroring its dedication to both chilled exploration and fast-paced combat. Instead of feeling like a game warring with itself, however, these wildly different vibes weave together to make Zenless Zone Zero what it really is: a successful fusion of ultracool action with slice-of-life goofiness.

If Abyss Odyssey stumbles, it at least does so while attempting a genuinely thrilling, high-wire juggling act of game design rather than simply milking obvious and proven gameplay features. For all its missteps, it remains utterly unique, absolutely gorgeous and delightfully eccentric.

As much as you might not be thrilled about the prospect of a 2D scrolling tank shooter, Heavy Weapon is far better than it initially appears to be. As an example of how to bring the past up to date, it's one of the best examples on Live to date.

Under the hood, Namco's designers have upgraded the series' engine and mechanics in effective and interesting ways, making this the strongest Ace Combat in a decade.

It's the closest many of us will likely get to genuinely exploring unknown territory.

The most innovative football title we've come across in many years.

When the offline experience is so rich, moaning about the fact that Simbin have capped multiplayer at sixteen is slightly uncharitable.

In terms of substance and style, the man himself delivers. But with just one or two surprises along the way, this could have been spectacular.

At its best, Red River surpasses Ubisoft's original Ghost Recons for squad-based tactical play. But it's the presentation of the story – not the broad-canvas story, but the story of four marines and their staff sergeant – that marks it out as something new.

As a Sony-published release, Ronin isn’t quite Team Ninja’s Elden Ring, even if it does evolve its Nioh-like formula, with the help of existing open world formulae. Still, while it’s been great to witness the renaissance of Japanese games these past few years, there’s something special about seeing a Japanese developer stepping up to reclaim the AAA open world samurai game for itself - especially one that cares more about being a video game than a Kurosawa film.

While Half-Minute Hero will be best appreciated by gamers familiar with its surface inspirations, it can nevertheless be savoured by anyone.

Volgarr the Viking is, beneath it all, a very lovely game. Just don't be surprised if it takes you a while to realise it.

The ideal alternative to Wii Sports. It's a highly enjoyable, well-designed game with simple appeal and real depth. It's the game the Wii's been waiting for - well, one of them, at least.

As culmination of three years in which we've gone from a scattered lineage of average UFC games to a genuine contender for the best sports fighter available today, Undisputed 3 is, on all counts, a round three technical knockout.