While it still has all the quirks and flaws of the traditional JRPG genre, Final Fantasy IV continues to shine for its intoxicating sense of adventure and surprisingly interesting plot.

A pretty atmosphere and reliance on nostalgia don't make up for the simple gameplay, low amount of content, and buggy nature of this release.

A well-built and entertaining deck-builder, Penny Arcade The Game: Gamers vs Evil is playable enough for anyone to enjoy.

Captivating art and fun gameplay come together in this runner. With a few tweaks to the controls, this will be an extremely solid title.

While there might be flashes of a decent game, more often than not Last Knight is disappointing.

It takes its time to get going, but once it does Surge is a compelling and visually arresting puzzle title.

Pudding Monsters is cute, creative, and eminently playable. But it's a bit too familiar, and a bit too easy, to be a truly essential puzzler.

A well constructed piece of adventure gaming, The Journey Down: Episode One is worth checking out even if you're not a point-and-click sort of person.

Lazy Raiders unites excellent controls with a simple conceit, and then builds on this firm foundation to create a top-tier puzzler. Well worth excavating.

Freeze is a simple and rather drab-looking game, but its tactile physics-based gameplay and imaginative level design lifts it above the humdrum.

Big, brash, and beautiful, Anomaly Korea doesn't quite have the wow factor of its predecessor, but it's still well worth a download.

Ravensword: Shadowlands's enthralling fantasy world, solid RPG mechanics, and wide-eyed sense of adventure make it an epic proposition - despite a couple of obvious weaknesses.

Solid tower defence gameplay with a nifty, if entirely skippable, augmented reality feature thrown in for good measure.

Frobisher's Mega Fun Pack is a bit of a mixed bag, but still well worth the asking price if you're up for a bit more of the Frob.

Littlest Pet Shop's routes to success are paved with crummy video ads for other freemium games, or painfully slow, tiringly repetitive grind. It looks lovely, but so do the adverts on TV, and you don't enjoy wasting your time watching tens of those to get to the content you want, do you?

A top down, arena-based shooter with more to it than first meets the eye. Gamelion nail the basics of combat, throws dozens of enemies at you at once, and give you a solid chunk of weapons with which to wipe them out.

Full of blood and death, Minigore 2: Zombies is a brief blast of gibbet-fuelled fun.

A less involved version of the 3DS rhythm game, this iOS venture is suited to those who have a deep love - and deep pockets - for Final Fantasy franchise.

A superbly crafted combination of tower defence game and management sim that's consistently thought-provoking, yet never heavy-handed.

A fresh twist on a genre that's starting to grow stale, Potshot Pirates won't be to everyone's tastes, but it is a lot of fun.

Those looking for an opportunity to build a world, while destroying someone else's, will find Clash of Clans a very appealing package with surprisingly deep layers of strategy to dig through.

A charming twist on the Scrabble formula with more than enough content to keep you playing into the new year, Spellwood is well worth the investment.

If you're not a fan of the original, you'd be best to give this muddled revamp a miss.

A surprisingly thoughtful and nuanced casual shooter that, once you attune to its rhythm, proves difficult to put down.

Magic Orbz is a cheerily presented Breakout clone that adds physics-based destruction and some fun power-ups to the mix. But, it's still a Breakout clone.

A quality upgrade of Mega Run, Monsters, Inc. Run boasts gorgeous visuals and engaging gameplay, and is only slightly dulled by repetition on later stages.

With some essential new features, the best football management sim on mobile just got even better.

Despite the reliance on cardboard and other stale tropes, The Adorables is as fun as it is challenging.

An enjoyably simple management sim that threads its theme and humour through every part of itself, Middle Manager of Justice is well worth your time.

Motorblast very nearly plays as good as it looks, but is still well worth a few laps if you're a fan of combat racers like Mario Kart and Wipeout.

A busier game than Tiny Tower, it's unfortunately a little worse off for it. An action packed and good-looking tower builder, this will delight freemium fans that want a little more to do out of every play session.

A kid-friendly, snowball-infused shooting gallery game that delivers a surprising amount of festive fun given its simple setup.

Yawn-inducing shmuppery in the guise of a dress-up game, this odd combination of genres doesn't work here, compounded by low production values and poor handling.

Panic offers up a decent enough setting, but its inconsistent touch screen interface and jerky visuals prevent it from living up to its promise.

Who knew sorting out luggage would be so hard, or so much fun? Saito's skewed view on the world strikes again in this top-notch puzzler.

In attempting to add further RTS elements to the tower defence genre, City Conquest has failed to produce much in attack, leaving an experience that's only half-satisfying.

An impressive and feature-rich enhancement of the endless-runner concept, Catcha Catcha Aliens! may rely on celebrity connections to get itself noticed, but it has the quality to stand on its own merits.

It won't win awards for innovation or style, but Offroad Legends is still an entertaining little game.

A wonderful platformer with oodles of content, Mini Dash is charming, challenging, and inventive. An essential addition to your collection.

There's fun to be had here, but Hollywood Monsters has you reaching for the hint button too often to be considered a classic.

You'll come for Big Sky Infinity's gorgeous visuals, and stay for the addictive masses of content and online leaderboard climbing.

The iPhone finally gets its own Wipeout, but the puzzling absence of pure racing excitement makes this a tricky one to recommend.

Gorgeous to look at and with a control system to suit every taste, Sky Gamblers: Storm Raiders is a great flight and fight sim.

Four of the best shooters money can buy in a single collection, Raiden Legacy is shooter perfection.

Tense and atmospheric, with a compelling mission system, Into the Dead scares the endless runner genre back into action.

Mutant Mudds remains a fun yet frustrating experience on iOS, with its quirky plane-switching mechanic going some way to making up for its frustratingly exacting 2D platform gameplay.

A unique idea that's well implemented, Finger Hoola might be a bit thin, but it's still a lot of fun.

It might not do much with the famous franchise, but The Walking Dead: Assault still manages to offer some enjoyably tense, if simplistic, shoot-and-loot action.

Occasionally messy, often offensive, but sometimes brilliant, Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour is a blend of entertainment and frustration unlike anything else.

Rockstar has done a commendable job of bringing a stone-cold classic to mobile. Controls let the package down, but it's worth the cost for the memories.

Using Roger Dean's art is a masterstroke, but Dragons Dream looks better than it plays and offers little that hasn't been seen elsewhere in the genre.

Well made but ultra-repetitive, PIX3D is clearly the work of a very talented team, but runs out of ideas within five minutes of play.

A delightfully jovial game, let down by miserly levels of reward. If you're a fan of the cartoon, then definitely take a look.

There are a few problems with 21 Days, but if you can get past them, you'll find a decent, if frustrating, stealth game.

A challenging, surprisingly imaginative match-3 puzzler - but there's little reason to tolerate its free-to-play fussiness with so much stellar competition in the field.

Uncharted: Fight for Fortune is a fun little time-waster in between real Uncharted releases, but it's one that's riddled with issues.

QatQi is a fun and immensely stylish word puzzler, though its solo Scrabble gameplay isn't quite as innovative or compelling as its presentation would suggest.

Deeply silly and full of gimmicky distractions, The Bowling Dead simply isn't fun enough to match its outrageously daft concept.

A fun concept that feels a bit rushed in execution. Keep an eye on it for future updates, as it might be a good game someday.

Don't be put off by The Denpa Men's silly name - this is a great dungeon-crawler with some carefully considered ideas packed in.

A broken version of one of the finest electro-rollerblade games ever made, Jet Set Radio is a disappointing coda to a gloriously multi-coloured legacy.

Scribblenauts Unlimited hones the original open creativity concept, and comes away with a fine-tuned must-have experience.

Lego The Lord of the Rings: The Video Game is fundamentally a good game based on a great licence, but it's let down by the squiffy port to Vita.

An interesting and engaging puzzler, Dream of Pixels isn't revolutionary, but it's an enjoyable beast all the same.

Extremely short if you can get the hang of the infuriating mini-games, The Cube is a cynically produced tie-in of a ropey-looking British TV show.

A frustrating experience with the occasional glimmer of hope, Vengeance: Woz With a Coz isn't worth your time right now.

There's some fun to be had here, but too often Ghost Racer is a source of frustration rather than enjoyment.

Help Volty is a charming, engrossing little puzzle game, but one that comes with a few disappointments and frustrations.

It might try something a little different with the match-three puzzler, but Zookeeper Battle doesn't make enough changes to the basics of the game to really stand out.

A solid RTS title that would definitely have benefited from a bigger budget and more challenging difficulty gameplay.

Lean, responsive, and surprisingly varied, Monotaur carefully borrows its key elements to craft a fine iOS arcade experience.

A simplistic, reasonably captivating blend of turn-based exploration and real-time combat that's disappointingly hollow without additional investment.

Buggy and unpolished, Chronovolt isn't worth your time, no matter how many times your turn the clock back.

Putting forth a few good ideas before wringing them dry through overuse, Real Heroes: Firefighter 3D is worth a go if you find it on fire sale. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

Great fun with plenty of explosions, rock music, and pageantry. It goes over the top in all the right ways.

A dull, by-the-numbers twin-stick shooter, Total Recoil does nothing to lift itself above the crowd.

A brilliant and original game that tests your dexterity and your brain power, Micro Miners deserves your attention.

Bladeslinger's combat is a mess, the controls are clunky, the story is dull, and the whole thing is hobbled by monetisation. Avoid.

There's definitely promise here, but Motley Blocks stumbles at the last hurdle.

Gorgeous to look at but ultimately frustrating to play, Shadowgun: DeadZone needs a lot of work before it becomes the finished article.

Gameloft expands its Order & Chaos universe with this excellent multiplayer online battle arena game, which is packed with depth and playability. Once more content is added and stability is improved, it will become a mobile must-have.

While it might not knock your socks off, 300 Dwarves is still a thoroughly entertaining tower defence experience.

Railbot is entertaining initially, but your attention will soon wander thanks to the fact that it brings little to the distance runner genre that is really new or interesting.

It's pouty, it's pink, it's pretty darn good - Nintendo presents: New Style Boutique is the game to get your non-gamer sister / daughter / niece this Christmas, and they'll never know you've snuck them a shockingly hardcore management game with excellent production values.

A slick first-person hack-and-slasher that really benefits from some colourful and imaginative enemy design.

It's Burn the Rope again, but this time with a bumped-up price point. Only grab if you don't own a mobile device.

Plenty of fun while you're playing, Captain Cat isn't going to change the world, but it might brighten up a dreary afternoon.

Reflec Beat + injects the rhythm-action genre with sugar and caffeine, and the resulting buzz is as thrilling, exhausting, and short lived as you'd expect.

A slick, accessible platform-puzzler with a satisfying emphasis on fast reactions and quick thinking.

A cynical reskin of Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth will be a disappointment to Tolkien fans and experienced freemium city-builders alike.

Strange, obtuse, and a little unfair, BreakQuest Extra Evolution is a more artistic take on the typical game of Breakout.

Fun for the first few days, but you'll eventually find yourself wondering why you would want to spend so much money on rather basic gameplay. Thankfully, if you're patient you can enjoy what's on offer every now and again for free – and that's worth it.

Real Boxing looks and plays nicely, but flawed countering and training systems unbalance a promising beat-'em-up.

Compulsive toy collectors: beware! Skylanders Lost Islands is a superbly made world builder, with enough hooks to make you return time and time again

Looking for a quick and easy eShop game to occupy your time? Considering Johnny HotShot? STOP AND PUT THE NINTENDO 3DS DOWN

A fun if familiar concept that is hamstrung by wonky controls. Might be more fun following a round or two of updates.

Outlaw shoots first and asks questions later, but its entertaining brand of arcade gunplay and sympathetic approach to IAP make it strangely refreshing.

Frustrating at times and vague to the point of being obtuse, Paper Mario: Sticker Star still shines where it counts.