If you can cope with the archaic gameplay elements you'll find a JRPG that shames many of its more modern cousins with its entrancing plot and bewitching charm.

It's a game that reaches a baseline of enjoyment – and that baseline is fairly high – and doesn't raise it further. The mission loop is too samey – drive here, hack a few things, sneak/shoot out – and multiplayer is too throwaway to really affect much. You'll undoubtedly enjoy your time with it, but it won't linger long in the memory.

With a stunning single-player campaign, a wealth of capable online multiplayer facilities and the provisions of raw power the 360 offers, Ace Combat finally feels like it has become what it has always strived to be.

The flight controls are clunky, and the character switching is nonsensical, leaving several buttons seemingly perfect for the job completely unused, but none of these tarnish what is the strongest Lego title yet, and the best Marvel game ever made.

You'll care about sneaking back to your dorm after curfew, forgetting to buy flowers for the girl you quite fancy, or earning a few quid before school starts. It's a fun experience from start to finish (something that will take longer than you might think) and a welcome breath of fresh air - even if it is a port.

Treading an all too familiar path with little in the way of major changes, Black and White 2 will satisfy the itch while we wait for a true 3DS successor, but this tried and true formula is well overdue for a few more evolutions of its own.

Veterans will still find the nuanced fighting system rewarding to master and, essentially, pixel perfect. But in a year destined to be remembered as the one that saw the resurgence of the fighting game, Tekken 6's star is too dull to shine brightest.

Rocket Riot is a simple game in all areas, but the core gameplay is great fun and the visuals have a retro feel that gives the game a trendy appearance.

With two great games that will take somewhere in the region of 15-20 hours to complete, superb presentation and a sense that you're playing something different to the norm, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena comes highly recommended. If it weren't for a few unfortunate bugs and the odd strange design decision that score below this paragraph might even have been a notch higher.

Hugely addictive, it works really well on the PSP (apart from the lengthy load times), and is great fun. There's not a whole lot to it though, so if you're expecting hours upon hours of gameplay, you're likely to be disappointed.

The lack of challenge in The Artful Escape, not just in its play but in its emotional texture, somewhat shreds the odyssey.

So, for the first time, a new Assassin's Creed game is worse than its predecessor, the first time the short development period has had a noticeable impact on the game's quality. It's a game of nearlies and might-have-beens: summed up by the hookblade, a supposedly key new feature which in practice merely extends Ezio's reach slightly, and allows him to glide down the occasional zipline.

A noble, if distinctly old fashioned, effort to capture the magic of a classic series in the palm of your hand. Amazingly, it even gives the sublime Advance Wars Dual Strike a run for its strategy money.

Far superior to its predecessor in just about every way, despite some glaring issues that prevent this year's gridiron game from being a true classic. The problem here is that Madden is still in desperate need of a makeover.

Early-game issues aside, Volume is an entertaining and addictive mix of Metal Gear Solid and Trials.

It may be unusual, insistent on clinging to a long-gone gaming era, and incredibly hard at times, but by including every major Metal Slug game, is without doubt one of the finest platform shooter titles yet released.

Easily the best game in the series to date, and a must-buy for WWE fans - especially if you've been giving it a wide-berth for a few years. The controls are refined, the game modes are plentiful, the presentation is top class and the customisation features will excite the little kid in WWE fans the world over.

Despite these minor grievances Grimoire of the Rift is a deep and involving game, with excellent presentation and a great sense of scale.

Bold and brilliant, Reanimal is a strangling, grim adventure that’s anything but little or nightmarish, leaning into legitimate, unsettling horror through its stellar artistic direction, tense atmosphere, and grisly, haunting world.

The changes are quite slight, but the putting is vastly improved and the new features make for a better game than before, so if you like the sound of those you won't be disappointed.

So, for the first time, a new Assassin's Creed game is worse than its predecessor, the first time the short development period has had a noticeable impact on the game's quality. It's a game of nearlies and might-have-beens: summed up by the hookblade, a supposedly key new feature which in practice merely extends Ezio's reach slightly, and allows him to glide down the occasional zipline.

Sadly, that string of hours, spent clambering up towers and defogging the map, bounding across the fields in a hopeful, happy loop, was the last of the fun on offer.

This is an enjoyable game, and Studio Bend has proved itself capable of competently shepherding Sony's trusted franchises, but its limited spectacle and lacking script also make it the worst entry in the Uncharted series since the original Drake's Fortune.

1-bit Ninja's appeal is immediate, and its visual style will easily curry favour with anybody that remembers growing up in the '80s and early '90s. Even two decades later, however, Super Mario Land vastly outshines this simple imitation.

It's the audio that steals the show though.

It's slightly disappointing, but I found myself returning to Blood Dragon after I'd finished it. The compulsive appeal of the parent game carries over, and it's nice to play a sci-fi shooter that's not trying to tell a so-called 'epic' story. Here you shoot people, a lot, and for most of its short running time that's good fun.

Driver San Francisco could have been a one-trick pony, but it has managed to use that trick in a variety of clever and interesting ways, ensuring the driving gameplay never becomes tiresome or generic.

Complete Saga is just a bringing together of those two games with a smattering of new levels. But for those of you who haven't tried Lego Star Wars before and are looking for one of the best games for the Wii, Complete Saga will charm your socks off.