Tetris Effect gets the multiplayer of its dreams with four delightful modes. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Stop and peer too long into Outlast's gloom and you'll see the zips on the monster costumes. Take it at at speed and you'll find a haunted house worth visiting.

From Dust is a crescendo - of ideas, but mostly of the glorious and fearful drama of nature - that will leave you feeling both humbled and thrilled...But it still feels like a beginning, and not just because it tells the tale of one. It's a big idea in a small package, and it's begging to be expanded, as Ubisoft has hinted it might be. Pray that it is.

Verdict for Churchills? If you already own HoI2 then think long and hard before coughing-up for Doomsday's jumble of minor enhancements and questionable alterations.

Punchy and immaculately produced, NBA Street Homecourt is a great jumping-on point for a simple, entertaining and really well-designed series.

But there were times within Disgaea 4, more than ever before, when the grind seemed more prominent than the obsession. Disgaea always does unexpected things with numbers, and 4 feels like its most polished and feature-packed entry yet - and it also feels like the point of diminishing returns.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is enjoyable enough at times, but weighed down by a deluge of unnecessary systems and bullet-sponge combat.

Mutant Mudds doesn't quite have the brash, devil-may-care attitude of Super Meat Boy or the charming personality of VVVVVV, but its refined obstacle courses are a distillation of what made us fall in love with 2D platformers in the first place.

Still, nitpicky design and technical limitations aside, the 12 hours or so that you'll be playing the single-player game are almost always enjoyable, challenging, and entertaining.

Thankfully, while some of its design decisions are more than a little frustrating, it remains a brilliantly entertaining first-person shooter and probably deserves more credit for helping to shape the genre than it has been given. It's a shame the online modes aren't more compelling, but having spent two blissfully nostalgic days battling through the single player campaign, I'm happy to consider it 800 points well spent.

It's competent, it's fun, it's certainly good - but unless the PS2 to PSP transfer stuff tugs your whistle, it's not easy to justify the upgrade.

While the story and characters are unfortunately very weak, Baten Kaitos is easy to recommend to anyone looking for an RPG that focuses strongly on gameplay rather than storytelling.

Warm-hearted, funny, and never less than sincere, Wanderstop is a pleasant place to while away the time, though less successful as a vehicle for mindfulness in itself.

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

Ultimately, it's this unique style that makes The Darkness 2 worth your time. After years of chest-beating military domination, the FPS genre is starting to show signs of life in more eccentric ways. Everything old is new again, so by concentrating on character, story and giddy comic-book excess, The Darkness 2 is a more compelling offering in 2012 than it would have been in 2008.

It's not too hard, it has a certain charm, it lets you take things on in your own way (as a commander or a commando), and it isn't afraid of pushing the old-fashioned arcade challenge of getting through a level without hitting F6 every ten seconds.

The heart of AI War is in its asymmetrical nature, but that uniqueness permeates the entire game, from the way each fight works to your overarching strategy.

It simply feels more natural to select attacks, items and suchlike on the smaller GBA screen, and actually do the combat and exploration on the main TV screen - while there's even an added element of gameplay from the fact that each player gets a different map on their GBA.

Pokémon Sword and Shield add some brilliant new creatures, but like their gargantuan Dynamax forms, the games feel like a hollow projection.

Infinity Ward rekindles the Modern Warfare magic with a more tactical first-person shooter - for better and for worse.

For all its frustrations, you'll spend much longer in the sweet spot than you spend getting there. Elite: Dangerous demands much, but repays your devotion many times over.

Acclaimed point-and-click studio Wadjet Eye's gently paced, time-travelling genre-hopper blends elegant puzzling and intricate, affecting storytelling to beautiful effect.

Taken as a rousing aerial shooter, it's easy to recommend - and sadly rather too easy to complete. There's a ton of content, at least, and it's all presented in a whiz-bang style that draws you in with heart-pounding action without belittling the history behind the explosions. It's just a shame that for such a venerable simulator series, it's the more serious game modes where Birds of Prey feels most compromised by its hardware.

Team Ninja evolves Nioh's formula in a Three Kingdoms-era action RPG where allies, flags, and stealth make its brutal challenges more manageable than ever. [Eurogamer Recommended]

The single-player campaign is uneven and, at its best, fails to match the zenith of what's gone before - a myth growing weaker with each retelling. But the punchy multiplayer broadens the game's aspirations and its appeal in a welcome way, offering a refined competitive arena.

Woods games have often done volume, but this one does fidelity - and while the next-gen golfing genre isn't exactly broad, we suspect being the best in a field of one will do them fine, especially since, in this case, it feels like it is mostly as good as it could be.

In terms of creating a stable online environment where you can adjust the GGPO delay and see your opponent's ping rating before a match begins, Resurrection is hard to fault.

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.