Super Hexagon punishes more than it rewards, but the adrenaline rush you get from playing far exceeds any mental anguish. Well, at least until you check out the best times on the Game Center leaderboards. Sobering, to say the least.

It's tough to dislike Blood Roofs, simply because its creators a.) set off to release something more ambitious than the competition, and b.) it's still an enjoyable video game. With this mind, don't be afraid to give it a taste.

Dishonored: Rat Assassin may be a twisted Fruit Ninja clone, but it's a great one, complete with a gruesome edge that sets it apart from other games of this type.

As a toy to play with, Splice is a wonderful thing. As a game however, it just lacks that essential moment where you feel that you've made progress entirely through ingenuity rather than random experimentation.

It's far clumsier and less polished than the big-name endless-runners, yet it packs in considerably more variety through the dynamic environments.

This is without question one of the most entertaining and smartly designed adventures we've seen for the iPad, a game brimming with visual splendor and old school dungeon crawling.

It's nice that it's something different in such a clone-happy genre, but the aiming and firing methods often felt unsatisfying.

There's more purpose to the battling, there's no longer the ridiculous spike that accompanied the original game's single player modes, and doing battle against real-world opponents is frighteningly addictive.

The upgrade system will keep you coming back, there's some good humor that's more hit than miss, and you'll get a lot of gaming for that dollar. Multiplayer's coming in a future update too, so you might want to start mastering this matching mayhem now.

At it's worst, it's a terribly frustrating physics puzzler by anyone's standards, and I'm not sure what the presumed target audience of younger gamers is likely to make of it.

Mikey Shorts manages to stand tall amongst the best the platform genre has to offer, and you should make a point to download it in the very near future.

A well-made, light-hearted runner that packs hours of fun within a tiny 39.5MB package. Oink, Oink.

So while we expect the Presidential race to get especially nasty in the months ahead, some lighthearted fun is just what both sides need.

If you've tired of physics puzzlers and fancy a platforming experience with just a little more bite, then One Tap Hero deserves to go straight to the top of your download list. It's precision platforming at its best, with enough charm and ingenuity to win over even the most jaded mobile gamer.

Beyond the crisp and bright graphics and hit-and-miss humor, One Epic Knight may be just another endless-runner with an upgrade store bolted on, but if you have an endless appetite for the genre then the opportunity to smash up enemies and blast through scenery should be more than enough to motivate you into just one more run.

We'd loved to have seen an alternative to tilt controls on offer in the game, as the precision required to pull off a strategy with any kind of satisfaction is held back by the current controls.

A solid and largely entertaining side-scroller with retro charm to spare. Random Heroes didn't wow us as expected, but it's another fine game in Ravenous' growing portfolio, as well as a cool retro homage to the good old days.

Fans of The Last Rocket will no doubt welcome the chance to continue their travels, but it's a tough sell for those who have come to expect a little more from their runners. Still, it would be churlish not to acknowledge that this is at least something different in a stale genre.

Jack Lumber packs enough content and line drawing mayhem to warrant a look, especially from players that enjoy over the top characters. After weeks of hearing about this game, however, we expected something more exciting. Instead, it made us yawn.

Fish Hooks isn't the most challenging physics puzzler we've ever played, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, given how often these games come to lean on mere frustration in lieu of satisfying gameplay.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out does nothing new when it comes to freemium gaming, but the opportunity to create one's personal Springfield, along with trademark Simpsons humor, makes it hard to resist. It's less "doh", and more "woo hoo."

An immensely enjoyable action RPG.

A high bar's been set in both arcade and simulation soccer games on the App Store over the last 12 months, and while Fluid Soccer has its moments, they never shine as brightly as the competition's.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is yet another superb platformer from Nintendo, filled with all the elements fans crave.

Puzzle Craft is a wonderful example of how to attract the casual, the hardcore, the cynical, and even the most bitter cash-for-progress gamers of the world together. I am addicted to an empire-building game, and if you've read even a fraction of my previous polemic against the genre, you will know by now that this is the highest accolade I could ever bestow on the game.

Learning curve aside, it's one of the most competent competitive racers available on the App Store, and the multiplayer and ghost-racing components will give you considerably more value for money than the majority of the competition will.

Bad Hotel is, in short, the stuff of wonderful nightmares: an eerie soundtrack, a menacing palette and an all-pervading sense of inescapable doom. Yet it's also one of the most original and atmospheric tower-defense games we've played all year.

It's a fresh and enjoyable take on the physical gameplay we've all become familiar with at drunken parties in the past, and you shouldn't let any freemium quibbles put you off at least giving the game your best shot.