Despite the questionable long term appeal, Gitaroo Man Lives! is one of those games that you'll cherish while it lasts, but only truly get the most out of if you're lucky enough to be able to engage in multiplayer. [JPN Import]

The game is a gradual reconnaissance into your capabilities as a leader. The smaller battles hone your self-awareness and prepare you for those glorious life-or-death crucibles – there's at least one per stage – where the screen bursts into a Technicolor fog of war, with glowing power-ups layered on top of energy bars on top of exploding missiles.

Ultimately you're watching a performance as much as giving one, and for a game this sly and playful, I can live with that. This is a rush, a conceit, a virtuoso doodle. It's a gas. It's a lark. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Where Brotherhood enhanced the thrill of being Ezio Auditore, Revelations distracts from it. Ezio may look old, but it's the series itself that really shows its age.

If nothing else, Age of Empires DS provides a title that will appeal to those Discovery Channel Dads who picked up the stylus for Brain Training, and proves that Nintendo's flip-top toy can supply grown-up depth as well as giddy frivolity.

As always, all you're paying for here are some minor updates, a couple of simplistic new modes, and that new season / franchise data. Unless you're an absolute addict, there's no need for this game. If you are an absolute addict, there are better games out there.

It's a little insubstantial, and rather too limp as a solo endeavour, but there's real heart to its raucous, collaborative core. If Switch's underlying ethos inspires more games like this, then there'll be no complaints here.

The Banner Saga offers a refreshing take on the tactical RPG with a story every bit as engaging as its combat.

The increased writing quality, cunning puzzles and Telltale's self-referential ability to know when the game is slipping into self-parody makes Moai Better Blues a marked improvement on the last one.

With a convincing story and some innovation in the fight system FFTA2 could have been so much more, but it still stands as the best example of the genre currently available for the handheld.

Tarsier returns to horror with a rich, meaningful evolution of its familiar Little Nightmares formula. And while it could perhaps be a little more radical, Reanimal remains utterly compelling; bleak, nasty, and full of menace.

Crucially, however, the game itself remains almost completely unchanged, the creative inertia all the more noticeable given the radical overhaul the series enjoyed over the course of its 2008 and 2009 incarnations.

It hangs together well enough, and more exists as an excuse to create the set-pieces which provide Dungeon Siege with its most memorable moments.

The sheen that Alpha 3 gains by being thrown onto a handheld is just a fresh coat and it didn't take long for us to remember why we put down the hadokens after its original 1998 release.

Abe Lincoln Must Die is by no means a 'bad' episode, but it feels like the series is stuck in something of a rut already. I just hope it's not too late for the talented people at the studio to get it firmly back on track for the last two episodes and end this bold episodic experiment in style.

Kri's got a lovely story though, and otherwise it is very compelling, thanks to thoughtful level design and so on, but we just don't want San Diego throwing different styles of combat into the periphery if they're going to screw up the main one.

The end results may be somewhat shallow for most serious gamers' liking, but it's a quirky, fun, amusing, and heart-warming addition to the PS2.

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.

An entertaining but slightly unbalanced remake whose biggest draw is a regular distraction from one of the series' best stories.

Condemned 2 deserves hearty praise for improving on everything it did first time around. The melee combat is brutally intense, the investigations play a bigger part, the visuals are top-notch, and the whole thing's wrapped up with engaging narrative.

Blood Dragon wears its idiocy like a shield. With its mechanisms borrowed from a bona fide blockbuster and its cornball retro swagger rendering any artistic criticism surplus to requirements, all that's left is to have fun, and that's in plentiful supply. Blood Dragon condenses all the best bits of Far Cry 3, sprinkles them with cheesy nonsense and blazes its way through to a finale that will leave you grinning like a loon.

Football Manager is still the best sim of its kind, but FM23's serious lack of major improvements shows an annual release schedule taking its toll.

If you haven't played the other Lego SW titles, and you fancy a bit of straightforward, enjoyable platform action, this is an essential purchase. It's also great for younger gamers, especially if you like to play co-operatively. And the sharp, shiny, varied visuals make it one of the best-looking games on the Wii.

Guns and gangsters make for a silly delight in this PSVR caper. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Shadow's campaign provides some of the best 3D levels of the series, but it's coupled with a dated and unnecessary remaster. If only Sega went all-in on the future.

It has managed to genuinely take the series forward in technology terms, offering up much more engaging firefights than ever before, which are far less forgiving and require a hell of a lot more thought and skill than simply charging in like you're immortal.

The whole package is smoother and shinier than Nuno Bettencourt's hair. It's not a bargain, and it's not the best game you'll play this year, but it's probably the best game you'll ever play with the word "Extreme" in the title.

Hob's Barrow is a game that refuses to leave your brain until the whole thing is untangled. [Eurogamer Recommended]