Metroid and Castelvania face a new challenger, as the bizarre world of Mexican wrestling inspires one of the most entertaining action adventures of recent years.

A good quality port that maintains almost all the original features, and even adds a few of its own, but the game itself is still a disappointing and unadventurous sequel.

Another indie classic makes the successful leap from PC to console, in this masterful mix of Minecraft and Metroid.

Team Ninja has done everything to please fans short of making a brand new game, but despite its successes this too often feels like an awkward compromise.

Beneath its cute exterior beats the heart of a demandingly difficult brainteaser which rewards invention and persistence, but has no time for trivial puzzles – or gamers.

The scares are still there but in gameplay terms the experience is far too… slender to justify the repetition and frustration of this sequel.

The Behemoth’s best game yet and a hilarious mix of co-op platforming and absurdly entertaining multiplayer madness.

An instantly accessible control system opens the floodgates to satisfying gameplay, hilarious upgrades and highly replayable levels. Ridiculous Fishing rarely makes a misstep.

A hugely disappointing side venture from the creators of Pokémon, which barely seems to understand the rhythm action genre let alone try and evolve it.

The best multiformat Wii U game so far, even if the improvements are mostly minor and the underlying game still lacks personality.

A masterpiece of mediocrity and a crowning achievement in unambitiousness. The Devil’s Cartel has sold its soul, not to Beelzebub but to boardroom suits and focus groups.

A classic example that sometimes less is more, as a deadweight of mini-games and side characters dilutes an otherwise fun, if unambitious, platformer.

A TV tie-in of such depressingly low quality you’d think it was the ‘90s once again, especially when you see the terrible graphics and artificial intelligence.

Daringly ambitious in terms of both subject matter and structure, BioShock Infinite is the most successful mix of storytelling and action this generation of gaming has ever seen.

Cheap, obvious, and unambitious but the zombie theme does at least help to circumvent the technical problems of the original, and offer up some novel co-op options.

Utterly charming and subversively clever in that classic Nintendo way, this is one of the best games on the 3DS and one of the mostly perfectly polished titles on any system this year.

They may not be directly related but Mario’s would-be siblings have some interesting ideas of their own, although they lack refinement to make the most of them.

A stodgy middle episode for what is still a promisingly unique slice of downloadable content, but its true worth won’t be clear until the final episode.

A sequel that seems to have learned almost nothing from the deeply flawed original, and which still only hints at the wider potential for a proper sniper sim.

Judgment doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to either Gears or third person shooters in general, but with just a small change in perspective it does help to reframe it as something identifiably different. It is still the same game underneath, and we probably didn’t need four of them in six years, but arguably Judgment does more to justify itself than either of the two direct sequels.

It’s not much more than an HD update, but if you and your friends have the perseverance this is one of gaming’s most uniquely challenging co-op experiences.

There’s little attempt at innovation in Starcraft II’s first expansion, but enough refinement and fine-tuning to please fans both new and old.

It’s a not a very good advert for the Wii U but this is still a hugely entertaining open world game, with one of the funniest video game scripts ever.

Possibly the worst value for money expansion of the modern era, with little more than an hour of generic action, bad storytelling, and zero scares.

A welcome return for a significant but sadly overlooked part of Capcom’s fighting game heritage, and one of the best HD updates of a 2D game ever seen.

It’s a genuinely revolting vision of the future, of a games industry that treats its players as enemies to be bullied and manipulated – not customers to be entertained and attended to. If SimCity really was a city we’d realise we weren’t welcome and move out immediately.

A satisfying end to an impressively varied series of downloads, with a strong restatement of everything that makes Battlefield so unique.

An extremely poor port of what had been the highlight of the franchise up till now, with nothing added but plenty taken away.