Despite a few quibbles, Overcooked is terrific because of its commitment to uproarious, hilarious and challenging co-operation. As long as your friendships, family bonds and marriages can take the odd dropped champignon à la crème, of course.

For Honor’s fighting mechanics are weighty and gratifying, communicating the violence and impact of medieval combat through handsome visuals and animation. Your heavily armoured warrior (of which there are 12 different classes) has a plethora of stances, light and heavy combo attacks, guard breaks, dodges and parries that are governed by a quickly depleting stamina bar.

Unravel never entirely shakes that aura of niceness over its five hours or so. It is both its strength and weakness. The background tale of Yarny searching through a family’s memories is a bit mawkish, but the little fella’s determination to trek through the challenges Coldwood chucks at him is adorable and endearing.

First Strike's maps did a terrific job of throwing Call of Duty's strengths into sharp relief.

Will I ever understand such faith? No. But now I understand how much it can help people through something so unspeakably tragic. While nothing can ever bring back their little boy, I am glad the Greens had that faith. And I am glad they were brave enough to share it with us.

True, it’s flawed, occasionally messy, and could do with being a little more accommodating to beginners. It also happens to be one of the boldest and most original visions on any system this year, and surely cements Hideki Kamiya’s place among the great game creators of his generation.

Harmonix remains the master of mapping note charts to the music.

The improvements in AI and excellent online modes are a solid basis to continue re-building PES to its former glory, but the weird physics and newfound lack of weight are a concern. It still feels like PES just isn't 100% sure where it should be going.

A long overdue return to form, with a focus on what made Sonic fun in the first place. He's always been fast, but it's good to finally see him speeding in the right direction.

A campaign focused on spectacle benefits from next-gen heft (the PS4 game is comfortably the best looking console version) but hardly innovates, while the multiplayer game remains as fast-paced, responsive and downright noisy as ever. Yet if Call of Duty is, as some have suggested, the gaming equivalent of junk food, Infinity Ward has prepared it to gourmet standard.

At its best, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon hits a glorious balance of careful tactical play and explosive bombast. It's frustrating because it comes so close to perfecting the formula, only to throw it away by growing tedious when it has the opportunity to shine.

El Shaddai isn't perfect, then, but it's got a lot going for it because of the sheer energy that's gone into its construction: energy you can see in the focused poise of its combat, and in the game's astonishing desire to top itself with each new vista it flings before you.

Bar a few flaws and annoyances along the way, it's geeky, funny, genuinely spooky in places, packed with blistering, ghost-catching action and beautifully captures a unique charm and atmosphere that has bewitched audiences for 25 years. Simply put, it's The Ghostbusters.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a single-player construct through and through, and tossing in an extra player doesn't do it many favours, particularly in the limited confines of a handheld screen.

The satisfaction felt at the end of a hard-fought point is all the greater for the knowledge that you’ve guided that perfect shot with a deft flick of your wrist as opposed to a well-timed button press. Though ultimately lacking the precision a truly great tennis game needs, EA should be commended for a superb Wii effort which amply demonstrates the publisher’s commitment to the format.

The oddest thing, however, is how a game that's so breathlessly paced for a good 12 hours succumbs to bloat. As Dead Space 3 creaks towards its denouement, you get the feeling that Visceral packed the first three quarters of the game with such incident, they ran out of stuff to include in the final stretch. It's never dull, but never as consistently engaging either.

A quirky, delightful title. Calling it one of the best movie tie-in games we've ever played sounds a little like we're damning it with faint praise. So instead we're just going to go ahead and say it's one of the best games we've seen on the Nintendo DSi in quite a while.

The terrifying debut of Red Barrels is a masterclass in the art of video game horror that is stretched a little thin.

An extraordinary piece of work, with things to say about pacing, writing, world-building and the communication of emotion that feel profoundly valuable to the industry...Its sense of purpose is overwhelming.

The noticeable improvements aside, there are some very real problems with the core gameplay of PES that aren’t easily forgotten. The engine is well past its sell-by-date, its clumsy brand of football is given a real thrashing by FIFA in realism and too many aspects of the package remain disappointingly unrefined.

FIFA 22 has focussed squarely on the on-pitch action and has succeeded in creating the best pure football game from the series in quite some time. For me, at least, there is no better measure.

So no, it's not another Wii Sports. It isn't a game-changer, nor is it likely to be nearly as successful as a seller of hardware...But it might just be the better game of the two.

What Birds of Steel does right, it does far better than any similar game on consoles. If Second World War flying is your thing, you'll find a dizzying amount of content here for the money.

Most importantly it feels great. The colourful, muscular artwork lends extra weight to already ferocious scuffles, moves landing with crunchy force, accentuated by its brilliant habit of a split-second freeze for fierce hits. Everything is quick and forceful, with fights quickly taking on their own rhythm depending on both the characters and the players using them.

With a comprehensive class-based multiplayer rounding off the package, Bound in Blood is an altogether more polished prospect than its predecessor. At the very least it’s a hugely enjoyable parade of satisfying shooting galleries. But when it finds its stride, it’s a thrilling, wild ride down a road that remains surprisingly less traveled.

The third Motorstorm may have stripped away some of the class of its predecessors and replaced it with noise and bluster, but it has done so with a technical bravado that is, at times, astonishing.

It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and a couple of levels and challenges see Sonic slipping into some of his bad habits, but largely this is an enjoyable, breezily compelling platformer that captures some of that old magic that made us all fall in love with Sonic 20 years ago.

Fiddly bits notwithstanding, Thomas Was Alone is a game crafted with real love and attention. It shines through most prominently in its neurotic set of blocks, a cast so delightful you'd give them a cuddle if they weren't all sharp edges. Mind you, I'm not sure Chris would like that too much. But even that grumpy old square would admit that spending time with Thomas is, actually, a whole lot of fun.