Once you're onto the medium levels and beyond, you'll be cajoled into smack-talking the level designers and laughing like a drain when it all slots into place, as if you're exacting some strange form of revenge by solving their unseemly riddle. It's that kind of game.

Go and bust some heads and sever some spiky limbs in the name of slightly disturbing entertainment.

Not only is it quite cheap and full of play options, it offers something more than any previous Tetris game in its ten-player mode.

Beneath the glorious tech, and once the writing relaxes a little, Sunset Overdrive's wonderfully lurid and heartfelt - a bit like playing an old 4AD album sleeve. If you get that reference, you'll probably get this, too.

If you like collecting things, going fast, beating times, posting scores... If you like videogames, basically, you ought to like this.

Had the crash problems not made it into the retail code, we might have scored it higher, but Rockstar's programmers are in detention this week sorting it out, so hopefully within a few days of your reading this we won't feel like beating them up behind the bike-sheds as we do now. The fact we're so happy to be playing Bully again in spite of this ought to speak for itself.

Majestic in scope, impressive in detail, Assassin's Creed Shadows honours the beauty of feudal Japan, even if its strongest moments are saved for the personal stories of two protagonists.

You also have the delightful option of capturing squealing princesses and holding them to ransom (also present in a dedicated princess ransoming mode), while also roasting any daring thieves that try to make off with your gold. Cheek.

Fun though DKC is, it is - as many have said in the past - rather on the short side. Stumbling through the game with a fairly good idea of where everything was, it took us about four hours to get to the final boss and dispatch him, picking up some 70 per cent of the game's secrets along the way.

With numerous unlockables and online leaderboards to fight it out on, this is a fine first attempt from developer Binary Takeover, and well worth losing a few hours to.

It is, simply, a game where you want to see what happens next, because whatever does happen next will be delicate, beautiful and pleasurable, and never so hurried as to overburden the spectacle and sense of immersion.

Split/Second requires exactly the right combination of skill, memory and reflexes from you while maintaining a permanent high of tactile feedback, sensory assault and knife-edge excitement. If that's Black Rock's elevator pitch for a modern arcade racer: sold.

Remnant 2 is an ambitious sequel stuffed with delightful - and deadly - surprises.

Heroes could be a whole lot prettier. There's a hell of a lot of washed-out colour and bad camera wobbles in there.

Even for those people who hated the previous generations of the strategic break and enter, I suspect you'll come away loving this.

All round, it's a compendium of disappointment, and something to which only super-hardcore Ridge Racer fans need subject themselves.

A taut, time-hopping horror game that playfully subverts expectations at every step, and is all the more refreshing for it.

Almost every area of the game can be customised in line with your tastes to the extent that, if you ask nicely, Tiger will probably even dress up as Sailor Moon and call you Susan.

As it is, it's a game that veers between excellence and anguish a little bit too often.

But for those who can shrug off the contradictions and the limitations, ignore the tearing cityscape and lingering qualms about value for money, this will shove you so deeply into the experience of being in someone else's body, and taking it on a terrifying, breakneck joyride, that nothing else will matter.

Star Ocean isn't a game that everyone will instantly like, thanks to the real-time battle system which is likely to divide opinions significantly, but it's a game which has moments of absolute genius, wrapped up in a solid, competent but not particularly remarkable whole.

Moonring adds modern convenience to a classic Ultima-style RPG to create an approachable and appealing adventure with a huge amount of depth and discovery.

Best to think of this release as planting a seed, rather than an end in itself, with potential to grow into something quite wonderful with some canny updates from Relentless and a dash of imagination from the players. For now, it's nothing more, or less, than the most polished and entertaining quiz experience on this generation of consoles.

The bosses, too, are consistently inventive.

Santa Ragione delivers a subversive, sometimes shocking, often funny first-person narrative horror that, while perhaps a little insubstantial, remains an engagingly unconventional exploration of some timely themes.

A cheap, polished online-enabled offering that fans and newcomers should embrace heartily to their bosoms. It's exactly the sort of quality offering that Microsoft should be extracting from developers of Live Arcade titles and one that should bring a smile to the faces of any right thinking gamers.

While the absence of multiplayer means it won't last you as long as previous instalments, new control options have allowed the developers to line the seams of Drake's adventure with flashy tassels and detailing that make for a varied and entertaining outing - perhaps even more so than its big brothers.

The truth is that Hudson's perennial classic is still best played in its original form without the associated fluff, so if you've held out for the last 27 years, perhaps it's time you succumbed to being continually blown into little chunks by your friends.