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.

Broken down into its base mechanics, Spirits probably doesn't sound especially exciting, but in practice, its charming hand-drawn aesthetic and calming pace make it a perfect game to unwind to on a lazy Sunday.

Regardless of whether you've played a Virtua Tennis game or not, this is one of those games that no self-respecting gamer should miss out on, because not only is it the best tennis game on the market, it's also one of the best sports games ever made, full stop.

The game's brevity is a positive, ensuring Bit Trip Beat burns brightly without having to grind on after it's extinguished its best ideas. The result is a brisk, radiant creation, presenting a nostalgic celebration of the medium's beginnings as well as a bold testament to how those narrow compulsions that inspired people to play videogames thirty years ago are, in fact, timeless.

Not a bad package, really, just not a great one. It's never going to trouble the likes of "Super Mario World" or "Yoshi's Island" in the sheer artistry and quality of gameplay stakes, at least not in this reviewer's book.

Even at 800 Microsoft points (so, six-quid-eighty), it offers a lot of value compared to some of its fellow test-subjects, and while it does occasionally frustrate or bore, the urge to keep going remains.

A masterful sequel to one of the genre's most beloved games, but it carries an ink stain that's hard to ignore.

Conquest isn't just that rare Pokémon off-shoot that isn't a limping abomination - it's a reminder that the best consoles don't slip into the night very quietly. They stick around, defiantly showing up the machines that have replaced them.

A true step forward for open-world gacha games, Infinity Nikki finally brings some much needed competition to the miHoYo monopoly.

Arcade elegance meshes perfectly with a glorious wilderness. [Eurogamer Recommended]

I'm completely in love with Trauma Centre: Second Opinion. It's urgent, tense, dramatic, unique, extremely difficult and surprisingly varied, an excellent Wii game and an excellent puzzle game. For anyone suffering from scepticism and uncertainty about the validity of the Wii's control system and doubting developers' abilities to create games to live up to its potential, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion is the perfect remedy.

My daughter played Happy Action Theater for about three hours when we first downloaded it. We had to drag her away. She shows it off to her friends, who are equally enchanted by it. She now asks to play it after school rather than watch TV.

Tooth and Tail is a deft and minimalist RTS that's slick as a knife through the ribs. [Recommended]

This might be the most gripping tactics title I've played in getting on for a decade.

It's a different game without being a different game. Enjoyable without being extraordinary.

Embark Studios' multiplayer shooter dazzles in the moment, but its AI voices are symptomatic of a broader issue with artistic vision.

The multiplayer is worryingly addictive too. Rounds last anything from minutes to hours depending on the quality of the players involved, and things can get very strategic.

With the gameplay mechanics reduced to a largely predictable run of conversations and (in)appropriate use of objects, The City That Dare Not Sleep feels stuck in a rut much of the time.

If Revengeance didn't have camera issues this would be the easiest 10 I've ever given. As things stand it's still brilliant, staking out new territory in the genre and adapting certain Metal Gear characteristics so well that it makes the competition look outrageously bad. This is simply the ultimate one-man show, worth its ticket price many times over, an experience that improves exponentially as it gets faster and as you get better.

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.

A beautifully crafted side-scroller with a restless puzzle imagination.

If you already own SoulCalibur IV and aren't interested in a portable version then Broken Destiny is hard to recommend, because you're essentially buying the same game. But much like Link in the Gamecube version of SoulCalibur II, the inclusion of Kratos will be hard for fighter fans to pass up.

But however good a game this may be, it's still left falling off the shoulders of a true giant, and even without online play and custom soundtrack options "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004" still hits the clubhouse well ahead of its rival.

Pokémon's Switch debut deftly toes the line between returning fans and all-new ones, with a few small wobbles along the way. [Eurogamer Recommended]

It probably won't finish on many best-of-the-year lists, but if our experience is anything to go by then Lock's Quest will live long in any DS cartridge slot.

Combat and RPG progression get an ingenious social twist in this disarming slice of fantasy.

It's a familiar mix of wonder and frustration, and it's eclipsed by Monolith's more intoxicating vision of the JRPG's future. The end result is a tale that's worth hearing out, but hard to hold dear.

You can't fault the craft of this painstaking remaster, and the game itself still has an ornery magnetism - but Diablo 2 is showing its age.