For your massive 59 pence outlay, you get 27 tricky-as-you-like courses, rendered with the requisite loving care, and the chance to obsess over your times with your equally OCD friends. Honestly, what's not to love?

Codemasters has succeeded in curating another superlative festival of driving. It's a package more inclusive than any of its predecessors, shot through with the quiet innovations that have defined the studio's more recent efforts. With its off-road events celebrating the series' past and Gymkhana presenting a potentially bright new future, it's another great racing game from an outfit that's proving itself to be a master of its craft.

There's simply no competitor that can touch it in terms of poise, characterisation and storytelling, or the way in which it treats you not as a player - someone to be pandered to and pleased - but as an adult, free to make your own mistakes and suffer a plot in which not everyone gets what they deserve.

If you don't have fond memories of the arcade cabinet or Saturn game, it's still a truly feisty little racer that looks great and handles well. Tearing up dirt tracks with indestructible rally cars is enormous fun, and this XBLA title delivers those thrills in their purest, most undiluted form. It's just a shame that there's so very little of it.

As a side story to the main event, Honest Hearts is forgettable and predictable. Where it justifies its asking price is in the takeaway benefits it supplies to the long-term wasteland wanderer. More levels, more perks, new weapons and new enemies - this is what really benefits the game, and Honest Hearts delivers more than enough to make it a worthwhile diversion for players of all levels.

It's a game about games, and stuffed with the kind of scenarios and salacious tidbits that presuppose a largely male, largely 20-something audience ready to get lost in them...So let's put it this way. If you masturbate with any degree of regularity, you'll probably really enjoy No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise. And you can quote me on that.

It helps that The First Templar's endearingly off-kilter presentation keeps expectations low, and even at its best it's still only pretty good at what it does. But being surprised by a game that succeeds on modest terms is often more satisfying than grudgingly accepting a hyped blockbuster that fails to deliver, so while the final "not bad" score might be the same, the actual experience couldn't be more different.

L.A. Noire is slow but quietly engrossing; its mechanics are suspect, but you can't fault the ambition, attention to detail and commitment that went into its making. It risks stumbling over its own earnestness at times, but it's saved by its star – and I don't mean Staton, who does his best with a dry character. That star is Los Angeles.

The studio's happy knack for punting out charming little retro platformers continues with this moving tale about a monster and his desire to digest big-headed baby boys.

Like the equally awesome Dark Nebula, Gears pitches the challenge perfectly, and gives you that one-more-go feeling without also instilling the need to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. When developers make games this good, it's only right and proper to reward them with cold, hard cash.

As it is, Imaginary Range feels like a waste of everyone's time.

The results feel neutered and unfinished.

The lack of multiplayer is a bit of an oversight, but if you can live with that, Castle Conqueror represents another persuasive reason to consider thumbing through Nintendo's virtual racks.

A mildly engaging way to spend an otherwise empty hour of your life.

A promising start, but one that will sink or swim on the quality of its puzzles. If State Of Play can balance things up there, this quiet optimism could break out into something altogether noisier.

By bringing nothing particularly new to either genre that it borrows from, Gatling Gears fails to justify its inflated price of 1200 Microsoft Points, and is far from an essential purchase.

The worst accusation I can hurl at With Fire & Sword is also the kindest compliment I can pay it. Despite the new setting, infernal weaponry and bespoke story quests, most of the time the game plays just like Warband or the original Mount & Blade.

For those of us living in the now, it's joyless tat and should be smashed with hammers. Big ones.

If Pirates seems less ambitious than the last two Lego titles, lacking the cohesiveness of Potter's Hogwarts hub or the epic scale of Clone Wars', um, wars, then it makes up for it with an overall confidence borne from TT Games' experience with the licence.

But the clean menus and HUD have a slickness and simplicity of interaction that elevate the squad-shooter genre to a new level of style and polish. Likewise, in moment-to-moment play, this is often a more engaging, tighter experience than Valve's Team Fortress 2. For those who can leap that first hurdle, Brink should run and run.

Who cares if it's no longer free? Slap your money down and feel the warm glow of supporting Raptisoft's sterling efforts.

With only one attempt allowed, this score-chasing affair becomes another insidious time sink.

It might be cheap and considerately tooled for both the iPad or iPhone, but it's no Piyo Blocks. But hey, it has birds, and we all know that's all that matters.

Despite having wings, your Unpleasant Horse's flying abilities are poor to say the least, so getting around requires leaping from cloud to cloud while stealing passing birds.

It's approximately 47 times more appealing than it looks.

For me, though, Your Doodles Are Bugged strayed perilously close to feeling like work.

A mere 12-level campaign rather curtails your wistful pleasure, but the presence of four 'Arcade' modes doesn't hurt, especially co-op.

Offers a smorgasbord of treats to delight and infuriate in almost equal measure. The mean, almost contemptuous difficulty curve is something that shouldn't be celebrated, but almost everything else is golden.