To my mind, BattleBlock Theater is (a crude) Adventure Time to Super Meat Boy's Ren And Stimpy: just as crazy, but more forgiving.

This is a frustrating game, not just because it can be occasionally unfair but because these guys clearly have an idea how to promote fear. Running around playing kiss chase with a trans-dimensional being doesn't really cut it.

A lot of what comprises Army of Two: The Third is total crap, and yet I had a lot of fun playing it. We don't know how EA has done it. They probably don't know how they've done it. But they have. And I'm glad they did.

It is fascinating, and also boring. It is important, yet forgettable. Its world is enticing and unappealing. It attempts to move things forward, yet is in places stuck in the past. For a game that has the potential to open up the franchise up to a multitude of different ideas and interpretations, BioShock Infinite can feel curiously limited.

Luigi's Mansion 2 is a joy, showcasing a love for characterisation and wonderful attention to detail that gives the game an inimitable personality. It never outstretches the limitations of the 3DS, but continuously proves the system's lofty capabilities.

The game's main problem, everything considered, is that it makes what should be a test of skill and patience into a series of shooting galleries that require little skill. Instead, it's a woeful Call of Duty with a telescope.

The multiplayer and campaign go to great lengths to make themselves more inclusive for new players, and yet the requirement that you already own Wings of Liberty ensures that very few of these people will play it. For a campaign this excellent that’s a huge shame, but the damage is more substantial when you look at the competitive multiplayer.

A solid effort that, in some ways, changes the Gears formula for the better. Whether it will be remembered as anything other than a stopgap is questionable, but small qualms aside, it's a good one.

Ultimately, it’s kind of hard to judge Lego City Undercover as a typical open world effort, because in truth, Lego City Undercover isn’t actually that much of an open world game. Some missions do let you smash the place apart in a car chase or pootle about in a chopper, but outside of this there’s little to do.

The campaign is simultaneously more of the same and less of the same, being marginally shorter than God of War III’s story, yet lacking that game’s ferocity and pacing. It arguably has the lowest ‘wow’ factor of the four mainline games to date, and in a series that trades on spectacle, that’s not the best sign. Yet the multiplayer component is as fresh as the single-player is familiar.

Its mixture older-style exploration with LoS' combat results in not only a truly great Castlevania game, but also a great action title and one of the best offerings on Nintendo's console.

It is extremely impressive, on both technical and artistic levels. With that degree of sheen does come a lack of edge, of course, and Tomb Raider is not a brave game. Nor is it one that’ll likely live long in the memory, but while you’re walking in Lara’s muddy size fours, it is spellbinding.

By the end of the game I was bored silly, and considering the scope of what was going on that shouldn't have been the case. Sadly, bar a few exceptions – a Jurassic Park-style hunting section in long grass, an open-ended assault on Ceph AA emplacements – I'd rinsed and repeated the same thing so much that I couldn't care less.

Revengeance is pretty sweet, then, but the aftertaste it leaves can be disappointingly bitter.

What is most frustrating is the constant self-sabotage: every time the game does something right, it immediately then ruins it. A section of the game takes place in the derelict ship from the first film. There's a wonderful sense of intimidating scale here – think Kane lowering himself into the same ship. And then, as you contemplate the space jockey, a group of brainless PMCs run in and start shooting.

Unlimited may once again frustratingly fail to reach the potential of Scribblenauts’ terrific core conceit. But if any game this year makes my son and I laugh as much as this has over the past week or so, I’ll be absolutely delighted.

Dead Space 3 is a let down because it’s not a very good action game, and a really substandard horror game. It is devoid of ideas, hung up on laborious combat and obsessed with making even the exciting seem boring. In truth, it’s a bit of a shocker.

It may be stunningly unoriginal, but Table Top Racing still manages to deliver a functional racing game. The short race times lend themselves to the platform and it's at its best when power-ups are fizzing all over the screen.

Three very worthwhile games then, in a package sadly marred by poor decision making from the publisher. With a bit more care this could have been essential. As it is, there's a load of nonsense waiting for players to wade through before they get to the good stuff. Which seems to be a fitting description of the franchise as a whole these days.

The lack of an overarching story seems unfortunate considering Ron Gilbert's pedigree, too. However there is a strong thematic link throughout the game: archetypes are turned on their heads by egotism, and by the time you make it to the bottom, one man's treasure has become another's trinket.

But with one massive, graceful, Welsh-tinged sweep, the combined might of Level-5 and Studio Ghibli has reinstated credibility to a flagging area of gaming. It's taken years of craft and - likely - a hell of a lot of money, but Ni No Kuni is a wonderful, wondrous experience and will keep you captivated and enchanted for dozens of hours.

It's a game that's more respectful to the ethos of the series than its narrative canon, and as such it's more sure-footed in its systems than its storytelling. That's a surprise coming from Ninja Theory, which waits until the very end to match that early moment of daring. It's likely to prove every bit as divisive, but would a developer this ballsy want it any other way? Not in a million years.

So, there's little doubt that Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge is a superior game to Ninja Gaiden 3, but in a console market that's about to be assaulted by Dante, Raiden and even Kratos, it's seriously lacking in precision and balance. And considering the subject matter, you'd think that would be paramount.

It's easy to lump all military online shooters together and cast them aside if they're not your bag, but going back into the Battlefield is as rewarding an experience as I've had online this silly season.

Such is the disappointment of Epic Mickey 2 that fans of the original will feel that the entire soul of the game has been ripped out and replaced with a cheerier but gormless imposter, while anyone who didn't rate it will find even less to enjoy here.

The magic of exploratory freedom is rife here, and not even the weaknesses of the main plot manage to excessively taint what is top-quality DLC.

ZombiU has more than enough value as a solo experience to strongly recommend. It's a hell of an achievement for a launch title from a third-party team getting to grips with strange new hardware – who'd have thought that not Nintendo but Ubisoft would have created the defining Wii U experience?

Stealth Bastard Deluxe is a competent little head-scratcher, then, and while the death of your anonymous clone subject is constant, it is rarely aggravating.