As is seemingly the law with platform games, new abilities get bolted on, the challenge becomes more multi-faceted, you go blue in the face, forget to breathe, and pass out in front of your PS3 from platformitis. It's a common condition. Look it up.

Viewed without the surly baggage of a retro purist, you'll take it for what it is: a jolly old-school throwback with dozens of dastardly levels to mine and a hideous art style. Can you dig it?

With a loveable art style and knockabout humour adding gloss to its warmly familiar gameplay, Tales From Space: About A Blob is the perfect platform snack.

With its demented twist on tower defence, ZombieSmash is not only a quite brilliant timesink, but a sure-fire way of getting a train carriage all to yourself.

It's intelligently designed, skilful and quick to play, and intentionally egalitarian.

As downloads go, this is generous and imaginative, then, and the richness of the world is more than enough to make up for an occasionally tricksy camera, a fair amount of backtracking and a tendency to pad things out as it heads towards the final act.

All of this would have been acceptable in the nineties, but expectations change. Sure, it's only a few quid, but for once it feels like you're getting what you pay for.

If you can look past the lack of polish and horrible graphics, there's a compelling and unique take on cover-based shooters here, along with an interesting lesson on how games deal with plot. It's a rewarding little game, if you can hack it.

If you can look past the lack of polish and horrible graphics, there's a compelling and unique take on cover-based shooters here, along with an interesting lesson on how games deal with plot. It's a rewarding little game, if you can hack it.

It's a long journey through this huge game and TDU2 offers an unrefined, bumpy ride. Thankfully, if it all gets too much, you can set the grind aside for a long journey of your own – just following your front wheels across the islands, revelling in one of the great videogame open worlds...Unsteady but passionate and ambitious, TDU2 is fantastic escapism. It's just a shame it sometimes needs to escape from itself.

Given that the original came features eight levels of a similar quality (and can be tried out free first), you might be better off checking out the original first. If you just can't get enough, come back for second helpings.

We should reserve judgement until Namco releases a proper version, but from what we've seen, it's worth it.

At this early stage, there's only 10 levels to battle through, but with more to be added in Surveillant's upcoming free update, this is a keeper.

Quite unlike anything you've played, Osmos is the kind of game even Brian Eno would admire.

Hot Pursuit sees the publishing behemoth finally doing justice to its properties.

It's a delightful nod to early eighties platforming, but one held back by an ill-suited input method.

MaXplosion might lack some of the depth of its rival, but given that it's less than a tenth of the price, it's entitled to. Buy both with the money you're not spending on beer tonight. Make everyone happy.

Mobile games always work best when they're simple and refined, but LEGO Harry Potter's debut on iOS feels flabby and unfocused.

The bottom line is that Guardian of Light is plainly ill-suited to touch-screen controls, so if you like what you see, you're far better off playing it on the platforms it was actually designed for.

Set over seven beautiful retro-style levels, half the fun of The Incident is in seeing what craziness can be thrown your way next while humming along to the giddy chiptune.

Nice work, Revolution. With BASS and now Broken Sword, the developer has proved that the iPhone can handily support some of the best classic adventure games.

Braveheart is completely mindless yet absorbing, repetitive hack-and-slash fun. Looks great, won't change the world, simple as the Beckhams, but what the hell: absolutely no buyer's remorse – guaranteed!

It's not all bad, though. Unlike Papaya Studio's murderously terrible Ben 10 efforts, Vilgax Attacks and Cosmic Destruction, The Rise Of Hex opts for thoughtful-but-repetitive Shadow Complex-lite 2D platform-puzzling.

Go and bust some heads and sever some spiky limbs in the name of slightly disturbing entertainment.

If it had a decent checkpoint system, Babylonian Twins would be excellent, so let's hope future builds respond to the feedback.

Fans of Killzone 2 will love the improved multiplayer, but may find that the single-player side of things has lost a lot of its identity. It's always polished and breathlessly paced, but it no longer offers a distinct change of pace from the rest of the shooter herd.

As relentlessly daft and shallow as it is, Nail'd is a very hard game to dislike. It's almost tailor-made for a weekend rental, which should give you enough time to rinse the single-player, have a few knockabout online races, and return it before the simplicity and repetition sours the happy memories of your brief time with it.

First Strike, then, is a well-balanced collection of different styles of map, its highlights undoubtedly favouring those who tend to play away from Free For All and Team Death Match.