As you'd hope from the series, this is faster than Usain Bolt with rockets on his feet and a perfect showcase for Vita's technical heft. Avoid the new dumbed down controls and this is as pure and addictive a racer as you'll find on any handheld.

Solid shooting and a handful of suicide-inducing party tricks can only get you so far, and it's this absence of atmosphere and lack of connection to your surroundings that holds Syndicate back from becoming a fulfilling experience.

Fun in parts, but Prime would destroy this for breakfast. [Feb 2012, p.115]

A happy surprise. [Feb 2012, p.115]

Perhaps when this arrives for Vita it'll feel less like a watered-down potion and play like a charm. [Feb 2012, p.113]

Tedious. [Feb 2012, p.112]

Point and click in the other direction. [Feb 2012, p.112]

It's ace. [Feb 2012, p.107]

Fighting fun. [Feb 2012, p.107]

A dire, one-dimensional bum-biscuit of a game. [Feb 2012, p.107]

While the story at least tries to play on reality, the gameplay lurches back and forth between sim and arcade. [Feb 2012, p.107]

There were questions over whether the Undisputed series would be another journeyman fighter, occasionally shoring up weaknesses but never quite improving enough to beat the best. Instead, this addresses virtually every criticism of the last game, then throws in a load more that nobody even thought to ask for. Champion.

Between the travel sickness, the lurid colours and the nightmare-inducing soundtrack, one level is the playable equivalent of food poisoning. Another over-used puzzle has you rolling around collecting stars as time ticks away in a manner horribly reminiscent of a smartphone app that would cost around £17 less.

This does so much right, in fact, that if the controls didn't make our thumbs sad that score would be higher – as it is, this fighter comes oh-so close to a flawless victory.

It's a simple story: if you like tennis games, buy this. It's a brilliant, if unoriginal, on-the-go version of an already solid game. If you don't like tennis games… well, you might enjoy this anyway, providing you're not allergic to them like Andy Murray is to smiling.

At least there's four-player multiplayer to alleviate the hollow AI racing. There's an even bigger spanner in the spokes than dim-witted drivers: it looks perplexingly terrible. The tarmac's shine and rubbering still pleases, but tracks themselves are super-low detail.

Although it's enjoyable from start to nearly finish, the game's 11-or-so-hour running time (told you it was fully-fledged) is about two hours too long. The last sections just recycle the same set-pieces and environments, dragging out the run-up to a conclusion that, although fitting, comes more as a relief than a busting great climax.

The genius of Unit 13 is it doesn't try to take that glossy, cinematic action experience of a console shooter and give it to you on a handheld – instead, it takes all the best parts of mobile gaming and gives them to you in a shooter.

There are esteemed shooters to draw loose comparisons with, but The Darkness II essentially exists in a field of one – no graphic novel has been bought to life in such a deliciously gory manner, with offing goons turned an art form. It's the game your inner darkness has waited years for.

Niggles with the art style and slightly sub-par storytelling mean this isn't a classic, but with a few minor tweaks there's no doubt it could have been. Roll on the sequel.

Never Dead might be a scrappy mess in places – it's blighted by severe screen-tearing and dialogue so bad it makes the original Resi look like Citizen Kane. Yet it's a game about throwing a man around who's usually missing 75% of his torso, meaning it's impossible to be too scathing of its faults.

It all adds up to the perfect environment for a game that rewards timing, perception and strategy in a way that just about any gamer can understand. But don't be intimidated by the good looks and graceful moves; shimmy on over and get to know Soulcalibur V. You've got nothing to regret but the shakes.

FF XIII-2's reliance on recycling locations and reluctance to indicate the next course of action hold it back from scoring as highly as XIII, despite its improvements – but its grand ideas, bigger monsters, and bigger still haircuts make it an adventure worth getting lost in time for. Lightning can strike twice after all.

This sequel's main addition is that you can now play co-op online as well as locally. If you manage to get a good trio together the game is best enjoyed in threes, so it's definitely a good addition – although snapping between the characters (using the trigger buttons) is so instant that nothing gets lost if you choose to go solo. Beyond that it's an extension of the old formula, but when that formula involves some challenging gameplay and this much prettiness, that's no bad thing.

If Just Dance 3 was another girl on a nightclub dancefloor, I'd probably be a bit intimidated by her. I can practically feel her derision seeping from the TV as I awkwardly flail my limbs, Move controller in hand, in an attempt to emulate the steps shown on-screen.

I wanted Amy to be good. It's a small developer trying to do something different, and a quality PSN survival horror game would have been perfect. But this is technically shoddy, poorly designed and unbearably frustrating. There's the odd moment when you care, but a dose of pure anger is never far behind.

A Move interface would have worked better. [Jan 2012, p.114]

The gameplay is addictive as ever. [Jan 2012, p.114]