Intelligent, fun, challenging and beautifully realized, DX:HR is an incredibly polished game that lives up to the impossibly high standard of its predecessor.

It will be like playing "SFII" for the first time all over again, only with the years of love and experience you've since gained already built in. To long-term Street Fighter fans, everything old is new again. To the new players, we simply say welcome to the party. You're going to have a hell of a good time.

With its riveting story, beautiful visuals and surprisingly lifelike world, Assassin's Creed is an incredibly deep, enjoyable game that kept us addicted from beginning to bizarre end.

For $10 more (and if you can find it) the Special Edition of Subsistence includes a third disc with all of Snake Eater's cinematics re-cut and re-edited into a three-hour movie, complete with new narration. It's an extra special bonus for an already extra-amazing game.

Aside from moaning about the shortcomings the Wii's technical limitations force upon the game, the only thing to complain about with Rock Band 2 – and it’s barely even a complaint - is that it polishes rather than reinvents.

Spelunky is for the West what Cave Story represents for Japan: the maximum expression of the indie philosophy. You shouldn't ask yourself if you want to play it. You absolutely have to, if you haven't yet.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was the greatest superhero game of all time. The sequel, Batman: Arkham City, is five times bigger and about a billion times better. You do the math.

The streamlined, focused structure eliminates potential tedium without dumbing anything down, and the battle system strikes an elegant balance between strategy and fast-paced action. Stunningly beautiful graphics and a pervasively meticulous level of polish throughout only add to the experience.

Half-Life 2: Episode One demonstrates how games ought to be made, forged by dedication, imagination and risk-taking. It's an outstanding, stirring experience.

What does make it great is that it actually delivers on nearly everything it promises while still being fun to just pick up and play.

What does make it great is that it actually delivers on nearly everything it promises while still being fun to just pick up and play.

Adding so much as to be a little intimidating at first, LBP2 brings a slew of impressive new creator features, while still offering plenty of cool new things for those who just want to play. The basic, flawed platforming of the original is still there, but compared to the possibilities LBP2 opens up, it's insignificant.

No game is perfect, but the HD redux inches Wind Waker ever closer to that ideal.

Its storytelling is peerless, as affecting and multi-layered as it is grounded, underplayed and real. In terms of everything the modern action game has strived to be, The Last of Us is the full-stop at the end of the sentence, leaving no more to be said. Until next-gen. If this is our starting point for that, then the next five to ten years could be truly amazing.

Anyone who already has issues with the single-player ‘style’ of IW’s games will still find fault with the scripted, linear experience, but in terms of sheer drama and show-stopping set-pieces accompanied by laser sharp FPS controls, Modern Warfare 2 is your daddy. And that’s without Spec Ops and Multiplayer.

Mario Kart 7 is THE game the 3DS has been in dire need of. Sadly, it raises the bar so high for almost everything else, most 3DS games don't even look like they belong on the same system.

Buy this game. The content is plentiful (and crucially, more is en route) and the fantasy experience is pure rock and roll excess. Your personal stairway to heaven awaits.

We would normally hesitate to give any rerelease such a high score, but this is the ultimate edition of a true classic.

A huge improvement over the first game, Assassin’s Creed II offers up an enormous, beautiful open world that’s easy to get lost in, an epic storyline and all the fun that comes from creatively killing villains and tearing across 15th-century rooftops at ridiculous speeds.

The weapons are better. The plasmids are better. The enemies are better. At some points, even the storytelling is better. What's most amazing and surprising about BioShock 2, however, is that by diving deeper into Rapture's tortured history and exploring more of Rapture's haunted world, it actually manages to make the original BioShock better, too.

The world is massive and detailed, the gameplay is damn near perfect, and though there are some lackluster side missions, the actual story is filled with memorable personalities that feel more fully-realized than even the best of GTA's previous characters.

It maintains the mechanics that made the prior games great while modernizing them to excellent effect. Between the arcade mode and multiplayer, there's enough substantive content to keep you hooked for some time.

The combination of sublime gameplay, unprecedented level of compelling historic team matchups, and an excellent update to My Player puts NBA 2K12 at a level no hoops game has ever been. The absolute mountaintop.

Huge, muscular combatants move like giant men wearing heavy gear, fine details are everywhere, and splattering blood never looked so beautiful - and we mean that in an uncreepy, non-Hannibal Lecter kind of way. It just looks incredible.

You've never seen a strategy game with combat as intense as Company of Heroes.

The streamlined, focused structure eliminates potential tedium without dumbing anything down, and the battle system strikes an elegant balance between strategy and fast-paced action. Stunningly beautiful graphics and a pervasively meticulous level of polish throughout only add to the experience.

Truthfully, the entire game feels like a defiantly kickass celebration of music. Combined with the complete success and undeniable innovation of Pro Mode, how could anyone resist Rock Band 3?

Truthfully, the entire game feels like a defiantly kickass celebration of music. Combined with the complete success and undeniable innovation of Pro Mode, how could anyone resist Rock Band 3?