There is a big element of luck to Fluxx, but this is balanced against mastering its unusual playstyle and making the most of every hand. Either that, or I'm getting luckier.

Its purity of concept could be taken as wilful obscurity, original to a fault, but Starseed Pilgrim also has a system worth mastering, and a mystery worth pursuing.

The Devil's Cartel is functional and fuss-free, a game that delivers the expected genre tropes with as little imagination and as much bluster as possible. It's not a bad game, but nor does it have anything beyond basic mechanical competence to mark it out as "good" - and even that competence wobbles more than it should.

Regardless of how you approach things, though, the basic rhythm of this astonishing piece of work remains the same. For your first few hours, Terraria will seem like a bewildering - occasionally terrifying - strain of chore. Put in the effort, though, and it eventually reveals its true nature. This isn't a game or even a toy. At heart, it's a vocation.

BioShock Infinite doesn't blur the lines between your reality and the game's to quite the same extent as its predecessor, but it's a more complete and polished story, and that's the thing you'll remember.

It's gorgeous, as close to a playable cartoon as anything since Zelda: The Wind Waker. That's a big name to drop, but if Luigi's return doesn't quite put him in that class, it puts him in the running among Nintendo's finest.

This is arcade racing at its most simple and its most focused.

A game of limited worth, then, less enjoyable than 2012's World War 2-themed Sniper Elite V2, but which demonstrates a developer on an upward trajectory nonetheless.

It's a safe if not spectacular middle episode to Ubisoft's mostly enjoyable yarn - one that neither sets up new mysteries or concludes any existing ones. It wraps things up with a sequence that suggests we're within reach of the season's denouement, with another shift in location to New York and a cliffhanger that promises a more dramatic conclusion.

If there's a single competitive bone in your body, you really need to play Heart of the Swarm. If you're only interested in the tactical tasting menu of the campaign - you still need to play it.

Everything is of a piece, whole and entire, as if the developers set out to make exactly this game and succeeded. That doesn't mean it's flawless. It only means that, sometimes, it feels like it.

Even with the pall of over-familiarity lingering over it, Gears of War: Judgment is a timely reminder that ruthless focus on gameplay, generosity towards players and good old-fashioned design craft can still pay dividends at a time when big-budget action games are at risk of fragmenting into splinters of mindless busywork. Sometimes, being a bloody good shooter is all that's required.

The Walking Dead is a serious, solid, but clay-footed work; in truth, it wouldn't stand out from the crowd if video game storytelling wasn't so impoverished to begin with.

I can handle the graphical bugs - those overlapping buildings, the misshaped roads, the fire fighters who have chosen to stand on the station roof and spend their time endlessly vibrating. What I can't handle is the knowledge that things aren't working properly, that whatever success I've made is a sham, the result of misshapen game mechanics producing outcomes that are frequently contradictory or even nonsense.

You can't cut-and-paste the artistry and attitude that Vlambeer has brought to this extravagant bit of disposable nonsense. You can't copy a true original - even before it's out.

Lego City Undercover isn't ceaselessly brilliant - open-world games seldom are - but it's a fantastic example of what makes Traveller's Tales and TT Fusion such special developers, and the worst I can say is that it's occasionally only fun. And you know what? I'll take that wherever I can find it.

Pathetically short, entirely uneventful and clearly stuck together from existing assets, Awakened doesn't add anything to its parent game other than a punchline that makes it clear that Isaac's trials on Tau Volantis were ultimately a waste of his - and our - time.

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.

Sega seems to find it hard enough to make a decent Sonic game these days, and then it goes and publishes something like Sonic Dash - which with a little more polish could be great, but is instead rushed and spoiled by greed.

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.

You can't accuse Vergil's Downfall of being more of the same, and Ninja Theory should be commended for offering up a punchy side dish with action that boasts its own distinct flavour.

Some will fall in love with its goofy adolescent humour and sink-or-swim gameplay. If you can wade through those early matches long enough to make peace with the controls, and find yourself in a match with like-minded players (or better yet, actual friends), it can be ridiculously good fun. It too often feels, however, that praise is due more to the game The Showdown Effect is trying to be rather than game it currently is.

It's repetitive, disposable and artificially inflated. Most of all it's frustrating: frustrating because of the poor execution of a promising concept and because it's nowhere near the game that it could have been.

Battlefield is about the players, and giving them spaces that inspire such moments. End Game celebrates that, and in doing so celebrates everything that makes Battlefield distinctive from its rivals.

Whether it's the art, the depths of its secrets or even the control layout (ZaxisGames has opted for a rather weird approach that sees jumping ending up on the left trigger) 99 Levels to Hell can't match up to its obvious inspirations.

The developer has clearly had a lot of fun creating a send-off to its characters that's worthy of the series' history and reminiscent of some of the saga's finest moments.

Food Run is a pleasure to play, its only frustrations coming right near the end when the increasingly complex levels and lack of checkpoints mean some annoying restarts.

While Mirror of Fate might willingly fumble the classic structure somewhat, it's still got a touch of that familiar vampire-hunting charm to it - a charm that comes to the rescue whenever the developer's invention or polish fall short.