Like its predecessors, Lego Marvel has surface flaws - but it's so generous with its content, so clearly head-over-heels in love with the characters and world it's inherited from the comic page and cinema screen, and so reliably, reassuringly designed from the ground up to both enchant and inspire young minds, that it's impossible to allow the slight technical scruffiness to sour the experience.

The novelty of typing the phrases 'male crime sim' and 'flowers to womans', although hilarious in the first few stages, starts to fade a little without that ancient Sega charm. You realise that you're just retreading the slightly toothless plot of a game that you didn't ever feel nostalgic about. The bromancing leads start to get tiresome. And then you need a gin and tonic.

Rayman Fiesta Run just misses out on the majesty of its parent games, sometimes tipping from pleasant frustration into genuine annoyance thanks to its endless runner DNA, but it's still one of the best translations of a console hit into a mobile format around.

Puzzle solving is a gentlemanly pursuit, one that will perhaps never be better personified than in Professor Layton and his inquiring entourage.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is still a wonderful game, but as with the other three boss battles, I can't help feeling that this Director's Cut would have been even better if the directors had, you know, cut it.

Infinity Ward had a chance here to throw down the gauntlet for the next hardware generation, to set the new standard, to show that this hugely popular, much derided behemoth can dance to a different tune. It's chosen to play a Greatest Hits package instead.

This is a game about the beauty of science, and most puzzle games can learn from its findings.

The developers have worked around the series' foibles brilliantly.

Consider this the last gasp of the old multiplayer model then. It's a fine swansong, especially when played on the most powerful platforms, and in particular if you treat the campaign as a free bonus feature. It's hard not to wonder just what DICE will be able to do when it no longer has to hobble its designs to suit ageing hardware, though.

While FM14 feels in many ways like a standard release, the subtle changes to philosophy beneath the hood feel like a corner being turned - an acceptance, perhaps, that sometimes for a complex simulation to remain captivating, parts of it must be made simpler.

I can't say what their future holds as I'm not much of an economist (nor am I really a magpie). But I can say I've had many, many hours of fun in a game that still has much more to show me and which all of us, right now, can play for nothing at all. We're being spoiled.

Perhaps the developers were too focused on not breaking all those wonderful toys, or perhaps they were bound to a tight deadline, but the game feels slightly flat as a result.

Viewed abstractly, Dual Destinies is a straightforward sequence of locked narrative corridors.

It's impossible to hold that shallowness against it. This isn't meant to be a game you plug away at for hours on end, trying to beat your high scores or to unlock additional stages. It's supposed to be a daft bit of throwaway entertainment for a gathering of family or friends, a game that anyone can pick up and play and have a good time with.

There's a faint whiff of missed opportunity about Enter The Dominatrix, then, but four or five really good laughs are enough to warrant a cautious thumbs-up. Volition's made a half-decent fist of reheating its own leftovers, and with the injection of fresh ingredients, the next episode - brilliantly titled How The Saints Saved Christmas - promises to be even more of a giggle.

What's here at the moment more than justifies the pocket money impulse purchase price, and the few hours it will take you to bash your way through to the end.

The most heartbreaking thing about all this is that Sonic Team is clearly trying; the developer throws everything it can at the game in the hope that something will stick. Yet the result is a disastrous lack of focus.

Familiar but consistently surprising, this new Parable even fits beautifully into the existing game - a game that took its power not from a single narrative but the interaction of all its possible narratives, super-positioned and entangled.

Most importantly, the game never takes the devotion of these young players for granted, and seeks to reward and challenge them at every turn.

Device 6 is designed to linger in the mind long after the last code has been cracked and the last sentence read.

Fans of the previous games and lovers of Marvel's dynamic universe will find plenty to enjoy without having to spend anything.

As it stands now, it's a fun time-waster for retro game and horror fans. With a little more balance and polish, however, it could be something quite special.

But, story-wise, I'm hooked. The characters are fascinating, the plot heavy with potential, and my faith in Telltale's skill is high. Consider this score a work in progress then, with the expectation that it will rise over the coming months as Mr Wolf's investigation deepens.

Instead of a full-blooded reminder of a genre of games sadly departed, it's more often a reminder of why they died away in the first place.

Heavy Rain worked because it was a police procedural, a genre that's all about narrow horizons and methodical reassurance. The tight confines of Quantic's style suited it well. The same delivery just can't contain Beyond's epic scope, preposterous premise and high-octane action. You're left feeling detached from it, and its component parts have nothing more than a frail spine of story holding them together.

For the young, the game is a soothing promise that, if you work hard, concentrate and look after others, victory and success will be yours. For the young at heart it's a warm reminder of the childlike thrills of discovery, compilation and care.

The finest expression of Satoshi Tajiri's obsessive vision yet. The transition to 3D is smooth and natural and the multitudinous additions to the proven formula will excite even the most jaded Pokémon fanatic.

In isolation it's a great racing game, but in the context of the dreaded yearly churn to which Codemasters finds itself committed, the sensational but ultimately restrictive Classics Mode is the only meaningful addition.