This is a game about Going Fast and Jumping, and, at last, its designers have realised that that's exactly what we want to do with Sonic. The Going Fast is brilliant, the Jumping is fantastic, and we have big smiles on our faces. Sonic is back.

With spectacular landscapes and soothing music, Europa is a deeply zen experience - yet is also capable of delivering some hard-hitting messages.

Graphically Syphon Filter is impressive and the musical score is utterly fantastic, though unfortunately the voice-over work features more racially stereotypical accents than your average mobile phone ring-tone advert.

This is not a pompous blockbuster, nor a long-term proposition. This is about men hitting each other with swords, and the hitting part works great. Chivalry is a simple pleasure, and a funny game indeed.

It's charm which cements Dawn of War in the affections. In fact, it charms so casually that the contrary parts of the gaming world will just lazily dismiss it as a bimbo. It really isn't. Charm lures us in, but there's enough happening upstairs to keep it firmly in our affections.

It's expertly paced, with bite-sized levels that walk a tightrope between pull-your-hair-out maddening and knowingly easy – and while it can be overwhelming and cause you to doubt yourself, it's always worth it for that moment of relief where it all slots into place.

The action starts off nice and gently before smashing you around the room with a two-by-four. No one said that puzzle genius couldn't be tempered by abusive madness, and you take the rough with the smooth in this game. Bloody Chillingo.

It doesn't play out quite like anything else, veering between brutal and whimsical all the time, and at its best it hits that shooter sweet spot: when your brain is absorbed, fingers moving in advance, the music's pumping, and your eyes observe genius skills emerging from some subterranean consciousness. So please don't quote this out of context, but I'm a big fan of DRM.

It's exactly what meets the eye - which is to say a good-hearted festival of a game about talking robots shooting and smashing each other, shouting itself raw-throated in joy at the toys it gets to play with, but no more than that.

FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage isn't perfect, and doesn't quite live up to its promise; but it's sitting on the doorstep of absolute, legendary greatness. Everyone with a spark in their soul for high speed, ultra-destructive fun should play this game, and cross their fingers that just that tiny bit of extra care can be lavished on the next game in the series.

A great tennis sim. It's certainly less fun than "Virtua Tennis" (especially the career mode) and it's damn frustrating at times, but it's still the best representation of strawberries and cream we've ever seen.

Pokopia succeeds in capturing the spirit of Pokémon's past without sacrificing its uniqueness, as one of the best spin-offs the franchise has ever seen.

Continuing improvements to the 3D match engine also help drag it kicking and screaming into the present, although it's still a long way short of FIFA Manager in that regard. But, frankly, sod that. The dogged purist in me prefers to see the match unfold via elaborate text commentary, rather than see the painful truth of my tactical inadequacies laid bare.

The thing that really marks The Darkness out, we'll repeat, is its "minute-to-minute gameplay". You can't argue with that. It's a game which offers thrills arguably as intense as anything the genre has to offer. It is, for the most part, an extraordinarily entertaining game with precious little fat around the edges,and often technically stunning.

While on the surface of it Darksiders feels like a game with a lot of good ideas but only a few of its own, where even a brief flying section on an angelic mount owes rather a lot to Panzer Dragoon, overall the silly old story and wonderful art style give terrific heft to the universe, and the clockwork of the puzzles and game systems are precision-engineered in a manner that you come to trust implicitly.

iOS has got the version of Clash of Heroes that it deserves, rather than the one that it's capable of.

It feels familiar, but it's unlike anything else - and even on DS, where good RPGs are plentiful, this is in the top tier. It should have been called Awesome Robot-Riding Dog Adventures, of course. But you can't have everything.

A thoroughly enjoyable game that matches its predecessor in every way. It's true that the plot never becomes as epic as Golden Sun hinted it might, and it's also true that the game will be a little too 'freeform' for some RPG fans, but it is basically the middle of a story - and thus plays as such.

It's hard, it's obtuse. It's big, it's beautiful. It's cruel, it's arbitrary. It's an adventure.

Simultaneously brain-frying and fiendishly satisfying, Ancient Frog is another puzzle revelation. And with 100 beautifully presented levels to unpick, it's a keeper.

By putting accessibility and instant enjoyment at the forefront, 2K Czech has cast all the old frustrations aside at a stroke, and the fact the developer has eased passage into the game without sacrificing any of its depth is also remarkable. It feels as though a balance has been struck, which should suit players of all skill levels.

A must-have purchase for any action gaming fan, and is a testament to what can still be done with the genre with the proper amount of thought.

A subtly tweaked and well fleshed out return to the dirty streets of Dunwall, and its handful of shortcomings and taste for blood over stealth are never really enough to stop it from being essential.

It's not big or boisterous, the characters don't squeak at you in comedy accents and you don't get to unlock Bowser or anything (at least I should hope not), and that's what high-end golf is often like: quietly dignified, a sport of concentration. The occasional lucky chip-in is satisfying, but the real pleasure comes from getting it right because you thought about it.

EA should take a page out of FIFA's book here: focus on the game. Every iteration - pre-alpha onwards - sit down and play a full game, 15-minute quarters. If it feels 'right', then you're on the right path.

War of the Roses is modest and pared-down, then - but it offers a challenging, chaotic and sometimes comic take on multiplayer. It's an innovative game and I'd like to see it succeed, I'd like to see it grow and, quite honestly, I'd like to see it turn into an eSport.

You'll laugh, you'll die, you'll blow the teeth out of a wandering Borok the size of a small camper van. Compared to the heights of Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, with its masterful blend of Kayfabe jokes and sustained bar-fight intensity, Hammerlock can't quite match up. But it provides several great new reasons to return to Pandora, and that's enough to seal the deal.

By putting accessibility and instant enjoyment at the forefront, 2K Czech has cast all the old frustrations aside at a stroke, and the fact the developer has eased passage into the game without sacrificing any of its depth is also remarkable. It feels as though a balance has been struck, which should suit players of all skill levels.