Aside from experimental unlocks and silly novelties, the LocoRoco experience is one of undiluted fun. If the tilting, blob moving puzzle-platforming doesn't warm your heart, then the catalogue of alarmingly addictive psychotic J-Pop tunes will have you dancing around the living room.

Maybe the one notable down-side of this incredible sequel is that it is 'just' the second part of a game we all loved two years ago, and even die-hards like myself have to acknowledge that. As such, as refined and honed as the gameplay is as a whole, you can never quite replicate the wow factor of the original - even if it ends up being a better game.

The games that are presented on Metal Slug Anthology are a marvel of art and design. There are, frequently, excruciatingly tough but all of their peaks are surmountable by the persistent and/or the talented.

Just like the original Half-Life 2, Episode One keeps the player entertained almost the entire time through perfect pacing and by being inventive, surprising and getting the basics absolutely right. It's a wonderful advert for the excitement that true episodic content can generate when approached the right way.

Regardless of whether you've played a Virtua Tennis game or not, this is one of those games that no self-respecting gamer should miss out on, because not only is it the best tennis game on the market, it's also one of the best sports games ever made, full stop.

Sega Rally is easily the freshest arcade driving experiences to have emerged in years, providing more wide-eyed excitement in five minutes than most games manage in five hours. Not since "Burnout 2" has a driving game stood out as so completely different to everything else, and provided so much instant, moreish entertainment to such a high technical standard.

The potent mixture of action with the high-level statistical balancing will quickly seduce the right-minded player.

To complain that Virtua Fighter 5 isn't accessible enough would be like complaining that a black and white film isn't colourful enough, or that a vegetable dish isn't meaty enough. VF5 sets out to create the world's best beat 'em up for beat 'em up aficionados, and it succeeds.

While exaggerated and impossible, it's all executed properly. Every wobble, every turn, all motion-captured. The ragdoll on the bails is barking mad, even allowing you to augment its lunacy by extending the skeleton-destroying impacts, but that just makes the boring bit - falling off your skateboard - more fun.

Immersive, engaging and with the kind of gameplay depth that so many shooters lack, Metroid Prime 3 might not represent a huge progression as far as the series goes, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best games I've played all year - and certainly one of best yet on the Wii.

Simply one of the DS' best.

Sure, there are times in the game when you want to shake Miyamoto and co by the lapels for including elements of the game which remain dogged by old-school convention, but they represent a flea bite on what is just a stunning and relentlessly enjoyable game.

Like the Opera browser, 42 All-Time Classics is a software package, and a brilliant one, the perfect match for its format and the perfect Christmas present for a Mum who's finally bored of Brain Training. More than that, it's so adaptable, so sociable, so easy to enjoy in any situation (over lunch, between train stops, with your least favourite uncle) that it's nothing less than an essential component of any DS library.

Overall, sure, Elite Beat Agents has trouble making the same impact as the unexpected brilliance of Ouendan, but it does a miraculous job of avoiding the constraints of the culture it arrives in, and infuses the player with the same borderline prescience of tap-judgement that rendered the original's level design so inspired.

The core gameplay is extremely well polished and considered, the storyline and presentation are fantastic, Kojima's addiction to cut-scenes appears to be on the mend, and the squad-based nature of the game adds a whole new dimension which no MGS game has tapped to date - all factors which contribute to make this into one of the finest games on the PSP.

Being so excellent that you obliterate the single-player in a weekend is not enough to stop it being my favourite Xbox 360 game of recent times.

It's consistently satisfying over long periods, fulfilling its usual role of dominating a willing crowd's evening into the early hours, and now allowing you to sustain that after everyone's gone home using the Internet.

Vehicles, weapons, arenas, controls - it's all very intuitive, could probably survive without the added layers of instruction, and significantly still feels natural when the diversifications from standard multiplayer FPS modes and equipment are asked to work together. Warfare is a splendid mode.

F.E.A.R. is the 360's first shooter to score a [90] on Eurogamer for the simple reason that it's such a consistently exciting game that gets the core of the experience so absolutely spot-on that most of the niggles are swiftly swept aside. Slow-mo gunplay and cunning AI don't sound like next generation ideas, but somehow Monolith combines the two so expertly that it feels more alive and more exciting than could ever seem possible.

Nippon Ichi's games are good but Disgaea is undeniably the best. While some might begrudge the ostensible dumbing down with the return to grids and more tightly controlled play (there's no chucking enemies off the maps into oblivion or picking up map furniture as impromptu weaponry here) in reality this makes the game more accessible, more easily understood and ultimately more fun.

NHL 2K7 represents the best value for money out there, and it plays like a dream. Seriously, you're doing yourselves a disservice by buying all those guns-and-tits games that get hyped.

Not only is Meltdown bigger and better to look at though, but it offers new and compelling scenarios, and proves more appealing to new players as well as a more consistent proposition for hardcore fans - not everyone's going to be able to beat the incredibly punishing latter levels, but there's still hours of fun to be had beforehand.

Expertly put together and able to cater for both those that want a quick and simple race and those that want a true to life racing experience, Forza 2 is unquestionably one hell of an achievement. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got things to calibrate. So, so many things...

I'm completely in love with Trauma Centre: Second Opinion. It's urgent, tense, dramatic, unique, extremely difficult and surprisingly varied, an excellent Wii game and an excellent puzzle game. For anyone suffering from scepticism and uncertainty about the validity of the Wii's control system and doubting developers' abilities to create games to live up to its potential, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion is the perfect remedy.

Race sims don't come any better than GTR2.

Punishingly difficult but ultimately rewarding, games of Skate's caliber are a rare breed and as far as first attempts go, it's been years since we saw one this accomplished. Just... sick, man.

Punishingly difficult but ultimately rewarding, games of Skate's caliber are a rare breed and as far as first attempts go, it's been years since we saw one this accomplished. Just... sick, man.

Doom is the rarest of retro games, in that you can enjoy it just as much as you did when it was first released. Better still, you can appreciate it with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, and see not only how enormously influential it is, but how perfect its design was from the very beginning.