Not everyone is going to enjoy this. Some people will never warm to Ubisoft's anarchic little fiends, many will find the constant enthusiasm draining. This isn't a purchase for hardcore enthusiasts or steely battlefield veterans with a thousand-yard stare and a pico-second response time. The rest of you, should you be able to engage your inner child, could well find a big old slice of the fun pie cooling on your windowsill.

It's not the easiest game for newcomers to approach (the tutorial's dreadful), but even stealth virgins will see the light after an hour or so in the dark, and probably ought to add another mark to the score. Make ours a double.

Innovative, unique and utterly charming in its self-contained universe, it comes highly recommended to open-minded 360 owners.

Ultimately, Madden is a sensational game in the literal sense, delivering unparalleled replayability for those with open minds.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.

It's about getting behind the rhetoric and gaining a meaningful understanding of the many dreadful things we're doing to our home.

Back when all games cost upwards of £30, it wasn't easy to keep up with games like Death Rally. Nowadays, you've got literally no excuse to hold off buying the best top-down racing available on mobile platforms. Better late than never.

In motion, it's a painfully beautiful game: in the saturated richness of its colours and the raw exuberance of its backdrops; in the soaring melody of Magical Sound Shower and the husky elocution of the girl who voices the menus; in the hard, brilliant, arcade brashness of it all; above all, in the unique balance and beauty of its handling.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.

The gameplay is solid enough. Although the level design of the five short campaigns doesn't really inspire, the sticky quirk keeps things interesting and makes replays worthwhile. The higher difficulty levels are insanely punishing, offering plenty of challenge for completists.

It's long, it's tough, it's huge fun, and it's cheap. But it will never be perfect.

And there's the trade-off: the tight, narrative flow of Chaos Rising may be gone, but in its place, there's enormous diversity, and more toys than you could possibly hope for in a £20, standalone expansion.

Better than Midway’s "RedCard," and more violent than the average ice hockey game, Sega Soccer Slam is pure arcade fun, albeit not very long-lived.

It's exactly as the name describes - the ultimate incarnation of the game so far.

An enchanting, emotionally charged visual novel with a new take on deck-building and tarot divination.

But a few missteps and one notable absence can't derail what is otherwise a timeless fighting game in high definition.

Ms. Pac-Man is still a joy to play. Simplicity itself, elegant, addictive, manic and somehow timeless.

For all its borrowings and influences, all its sleights and feints, Eldritch's dark alchemy ultimately lies with the way it uses a blocky, cheerily primitive art style, silly sound effects and a surprisingly forgiving level of challenge to summon the kind of creeping dread that H.P. himself would be delighted with.

Most importantly of all, it's re-introduced a thoughtfulness to play that's been absent for too long. As the game settles down after the disruptive influx of new gadgets and gizmos, you sense there are plenty more remarkable inventions hiding in plain sight, but they're waiting for a curious mind to start tinkering with them.

But if you can deal with that, the useless camera doesn't sound like a showstopper and motion sickness isn't a problem, then strap on your simian capsules and spout some unintelligible Japlish, because the monkeys are back and your Cube needs this game.

It's a Ubisoft open-worlder to its core, but this spin on the world of Avatar has some really special moments.

Right now, though, the game as it stands is a rough diamond - very good, bordering on great thanks to a regular stream of comprehensive patches from Funcom.

Gemini Rue gets things right from the off by virtue of set piece intrigue, inclement weather, sharp writing and half-decent voice acting. And unlike most modern day point and clickers, it doesn't hold your hand at every opportunity.

Rockstar's skill in creating a believable, functioning world with a distinct, coherent and consistent atmosphere is peerless. The broad-brush vision is masterful.

A fantastically involving and solid fighting game, enhanced by being set in one of the most imaginative and beautiful universes in the medium.

Offers quite a different approach to any other RTS games we've seen recently, and neatly occupies a middle ground between the incredibly hardcore "Total War" franchise and the more lightweight gameplay of something like "Age of Mythology."

Every time you think you've had enough, a spark of inspiration drives you on to the next one, and the next thing you know, you've missed your stop and you don't even mind.

Sure, the slightly inexact nature of the controls make it somewhat hard to be as effective as you might be, but The Hero is still well worth checking out.