It's odd and slightly throwaway, much like Attack of the Friday Monsters itself, yet it also captures the inquisitive naivety of childhood, and of a world where young imaginations blossom to fill the long hours of hot summer afternoons.

Judged purely as a standalone game, it's an unambiguous success.

All of which puts GoatUp 2 right up there with Gridrunner as Llamasoft's best work on iOS. It may have one foot in the past, but even with all that methane this is a daisy-fresh delight, as sprightly and joyous as anything on the App Store. In other words, a taste very much worth acquiring.

That's a testament to how beautifully Sprinkle Islands captures the childlike joy of splashing around, but it does tend to leave the puzzling element feeling progressively soggier as the levels progress.

It has the de rigueur iOS mission structure - complete x number of objectives to increase your crab rank - and power-ups to spend your in-game coins on, but the joy of Crabitron is in just grabbing a claw or two and making a big old mess.

What's most striking, though, is that Pikmin still feels like strategy seen with fresh eyes - strategy, perhaps, by designers who were unconcerned with labelling, and just let their ideas lead them where they wanted to go.

Vanguard's created a decent blaster which offers a couple of moments of genuine bullet-dodging glory: Halo's touch-screen debut is good-looking, colourful, and fun.

This is pared-back game creation at its most sharp-edged: a sewing needle through the tear duct, a razor blade lodged in your brain.

With its moreish pace and compelling presentation there's the basis of a really great tablet RPG here, but Warhammer Quest makes two misguided assumptions that hold it back. It assumes that role-playing works better with all the dice and messy statistics brushed off the table, and it assumes that a multiplayer board game and a single-player video game are the same experience.

The world did not need this Leisure Suit Larry game, and it does not need any more.

Canny enough to keep you hooked, but sufficiently honest to throw in something a little more nourishing too, the genetics are pretty strong with this one.

Dynasty Warriors remains a series that contains greatness, then, but that's not quite enough for higher marks - although, inevitably, it will still be just about enough to bring along Dynasty Warriors 9.

TrackMania 2 Valley's another Nadeo title as brilliant as it is scruffy, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

The additional content of Brave New World ensures that, now more than ever, Civilization 5 feels like a complete package; a game to lose hundreds of hours to as you build an empire to stand the test of time, and one to which you'll sacrifice many a cup of tea along the way.

All of which makes Dota 2 an absurd video game to try to recommend. Being the largest and most immediately open MOBA, with Valve showcasing its talent for rewarding and fostering a community, it demands and offers more than literally any game I can think of. It's almost more comparable to basketball than most commercial games. Something utterly opaque bearing no endgame, but that could happily fill every waking second of your life.

Beneath the hysterical presentation, the frantic battle segments and the skittish storyline, then, Project X Zone is a thin game. The emphasis on fighting game reactions in the battle segments should appeal to genre fans, but these are too simplistic for genuine expression or mastery. Likewise, the tactical elements of positioning and unit movement on the battlefield lack urgency and true significance. The result is a humorous curio, perhaps, but one without the underlying game to adequately serve its stars.

Perhaps Neverwinter has more potential, perhaps it will grow beyond this, but games can only be reviewed on what they are, not what they might become, and for now the many user-forged forays into fantasy are, just like the rest of Neverwinter, mostly about going to a place, bashing heads in and grabbing swag.

This is an enjoyable but rarely essential entry to the Mario & Luigi suite, then. AlphaDream is to be commended for its willingness to build each new game around a different kernel of an idea, but, perhaps inevitably, some of those ideas will be smaller than others.

On paper, this is just the kind of iOS tie-in fans often ask for: it's faithful to the source material, filled with familiar systems and details, and it's even made a decent attempt at matching the graphical style of the main game. It's Deus Ex in cross-section, but although so many of the right pieces are in place, the energy and skill that usually brings the whole thing to life is missing.

The most imaginative thing that happened to me in my time playing this game is that a noiseless combine harvester came towards me and I had to run away from it.

As a retro revival, Chronicles of Mystara does a commendable job of raising a fondly remembered arcade game from its grave.

rRootage Online is why Kenta Cho releases his games in the way he does; it's now got a chance to hit a new audience, and be enjoyed by many more people, in what feels like the definitive version. If you've got any interest in shooters, don't let him down.

Low-budget games can be delightful and surprising, but only if the core elements work. Here, they don't. In its best moments, this is only ever a reminder of better games. In its worst moments - of which there are far too many - Dark frustrates and irritates as only a clumsy stealth game can.

It's a true classic, not only one of the best games ever to carry the Star Wars brand but one of the best RPGs of all time. The ability to carry this classic with you and play it wherever and whenever you choose is proof that we are, indeed, living in amazing times.

The individual stories are crafted with the same level of care as the main series, but divorced from a larger, more personal tale, these scattershot scenes show their hand as unused B-sides. More ambitious, but less focused than Season One, 400 Days feels like its setting: a serviceable pit-stop on the way to a (hopefully) brighter future.

Vengeance offers one great map, two really good maps, one decent map and more Zombies stuff for the players who still understand what Zombies is about. That's enough to call it a win, but it'll be interesting to see if the formula holds once Ghosts is out.

Van Helsing isn't a polished game, or even a particularly thoughtful one for most of its campaign, but it has scrappy charm and schlocky character, and it benefits from leaning on one of those design templates that is ultimately really, really difficult to screw up too badly.

These three games are worth buying for a tenner on iOS if you have never played them (or if you have a real need to play them again and your DS makes you sad).