While I am disappointed that the story failed to deliver in the end, Dishonored is still easily a top contender for Game of the Year 2012. The gameplay is just that fun and special.

If your creative heartstrings are tugging and heavenly ballet of the Wonderplane is calling, go grab LittleBigPlanet 2. Your inner child will be endlessly thankful for it.

Prime is great, Echoes is great, Corruption is great, and in this release gamers have been given a real treat.

Bayonetta 2 is bigger, faster, crazier, and prettier than the original, and is very much deserving of your time.

But for all those FIFA fans who are annoyed at the dodgy AI and lack of real control in FIFA ’09 – I think it’s safe to say you won’t be disappointed with this year’s edition. Whether playing single player and pushing your team through tournaments or taking your personal ‘Be a Pro’ player online and making a name for yourself – there are hours upon hours of pure football brilliance here.

Blizzard have made a really good game with Overwatch, and succeeded in building a foundation from which they can build another mega-franchise. But it’s not perfect. Despite their inclusion of so many eSport friendly features and an incredible diverse cast of uniquely powered characters, a lack of modes, party options, and a context-creating campaign are sore points in my eyes.

An epic and gorgeous drive through Oz scenery, and the best driving game this year.

What I like about Borderlands 2 is that the game can be as complicated or straightforward as you like.

Crysis, like "Halo 2," is like foreplay without sex. The journey is great but its abrupt ending leaves you speechless and annoyed.

The engaging atmosphere, excellent gameplay and replay value make this one of the best titles to hit the PSP in not only recent times, but in the entire PSP catalogue.

A beautiful, fantastically enjoyable adventure, and a bittersweet goodbye to Geralt of Rivia.

For all its guts and glory, for all its taxing, gritty fortitude, Killzone 2 adheres too strictly to the rules of its genre to send itself into the stratosphere. What will stand the test of time is its pitch perfect grasp of said genre, its wonderfully taxing, take-no-prisoners assault on your senses and your trigger finger. It is the ultimate conservative First-Person-Shooter, whether it wants to be or not. And this is why it’s worth your bucks.

So should you buy it? If you like Halo, it's a resounding yes - this is the best Halo ever (even if it is - by far - the hardest). If you like multiplayer first-person shooters, it's an "almost definitely" (fans of realistic shooters need not apply). If you want the world's most polished single player experience? A less enthusiastic response is appropriate.

Take 1 cup of Star Wars, blend in 2 tablespoons of Firefly and mix thoroughly. Mass Effect might not create as much of a stir as KOTOR did, but it's an undeniably good game that manages to showcase the incredible talent and dedication of the BioWare team.

It’s not a cheap app, but it’s a great game! The basic gameplay is identical to the game on PC and consoles, except that you use the touch screen. To do each action you’ll need to press a button on the screen (as opposed to double-tapping). I found this to be an excellent idea because you do not want to lose a soldier to an errant double-tap.

Jaw-droppingly beautiful...If you are into hotting up rice-rockets, drag racing supercharged yank-tanks, or delicately carving through the twists in a finely tuned Italian thoroughbred, you'll find Forza 4 to be the best console racing title around.

Arkham City, despite its squalor, is fantastic to look at.

Epic has not re-invented the wheel with Gears 3, they've simply improved on a formula that was pretty awesome in the first place.

A very nicely delivered RPG with loads of content to explore, plenty of replayability and genuine options to choose in the branching dialogue.

There’s no difficulty curve, there’s no personality to the characters, and it’s all over a little too quickly - but I'm damned if I didn’t enjoy every minute of it nonetheless.

The tweaks made to the formula perhaps hold Dark Souls II from being quite as good its precursor (and it’s for this reason I’d suggest serious newcomers to give Dark Souls a try first), but it’s still an excellent game that will keep Souls series fans hooked for months to come.

The sequel possesses hours of extra activities, a more complicated plot and still manages to maintain a great gameplay engine while adding some much appreciated tweaks to expand the controls slightly.

Despite online idiots, NBA 2K12 is a very big win. The players, game modes, gameplay, and incredible attention to detail make sure of that. It's complex and very tough to learn, but in a good way.

Bravo, Blizzard, Bravo.

The combat is sublime (even the dodging is fun), the environments are bizzarre and the action incredibly intense. Bosses are spectacular, many and varied and there's lots of it to go around.

Diablo III: Ultimate Evil Edition is as good as it could possibly get. The only problem it has is the obvious one; if you have the original release on PC, or on the last-gen consoles, it’s up to you if you want to spend $80 on an expansion pack. And is any expansion pack ever going to be worth the price of a full game? But, if you didn’t buy the original game, get this.

It's a fun first person shooter. One with story issues and awful characters, but also with hunting and manta rays and hang gliding over beautiful scenery.

The improvements - while not always immediately in your face - add up into an extremely tight, polished gem. Very few people will regret buying FIFA 12.