Skyrim is a huge and engaging world to explore and it treats you with great moments, from your first dragon encounter to finally being able to craft dwarven armour.

Happiness and distraction; that's what gaming is all about really and it's something that Minecraft, for all its abstractions and division, delivers in spades. You can build cathedrals with your friends; create macro-scale machines on your own or simply drift, floating through impossible landscapes that can bend to your will - do anything you want! That alone gives Minecraft a little bit of magic.

Forza 4 has great controls, interesting opponents, well-implemented online and semi-online modes, super smooth graphics, and can be customised to suit each player perfectly. The engines sound meaty and real - if your sub-woofer is good enough - and it even uses the Kinect in an effective, unobtrusive way.

A brave game, trying new ideas while also staying fundamentally similar. There are weaknesses in the recipes that Rocksteady has created - we can't say we're personally won over by the open world approach - but a weakness isn't a failure and it can't be overlooked that Arkham City is still a very strong game.

While our biggest complaint is Gears of War 3's refusal to deviate substantially from the tried and tested formula of the series, we have to concede it does what it does extremely well. Gaming clichés such as switch-flipping, sniper sections and boss battles are used throughout, and the rigid linearity can be frustrating, but underneath it all is still a refined, polished shooter that can't really be knocked for falling back on conventions it helped create.

The combat isn't the best you'll ever play, the dialogue not the punchiest, the stealth not the sneakiest...But that's missing the point. Human Revolution is a game to take as an entire experience, where you can shift at will from having exciting gunfights to crawling around in vents, and where every victory is all the sweeter for knowing you chose to do it that way.

Big, bold and ceaselessly bleak; a world where you really feel like you need the friends you've built over the last two titles. If you've come this far, it's a sin not to go further.

Battlefield 3's multiplayer is a triumph, and while the single player campaign isn't the most original, or entertaining shooter, it's the online modes that will keep us playing for months to come.

There's not enough actual game underneath the lavish setting and interactive movie trappings to elevate LA Noire to the heights reached by GTA, and the crime scene formula soon loses some of its shine.

Yes, Limbo channels the poems of our inner teenagers about being misunderstood and lonely, but it does so bravely and beautifully, and it is a better game for it; a game that should not be missed.

If there's one aspect of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings that's worth singling out, it's the fact that it's not afraid to punish you when you make a mistake. This fact, more than the gorgeous graphics, the stellar script or the incredible depth that's been built on and around Andrzej Sapkowski's lore, is what defines The Witcher 2.

While Dirt 3 fails to offer much in the way of surprise or innovation, it remains a solid racing title – provided you can cope with the constant barrage of moronic and needless dialogue, the excessive advertising and the painfully long loading times.

When we played Crysis 2 on the consoles, we honestly could have taken or left it. Only on the PC do we feel comfortable recommending and replaying Crytek's best game yet – and its first chance of matching technical prowess with good game design.

The most moreish and brilliant game I've played in years. It's responsible for me dreaming in shades of blue for the last three nights running and I wouldn't have it any other way.

FM 2012 is the first Football Manager in years which I've felt comfortable skipping in favour of returning to my ongoing tale from last year's game. The new interface can easily feel overloaded, and the altered tactical screen seems counter-intuitive rather than an improvement. The only standout feature is the new tone and dialogue system which, while long requested, doesn't make this a mandatory purchase, especially as it doesn't extend to press conferences.

The pacing does slow at points, undermining the constant destructive anarchy that the game strives to achieve to some extent, but there's loads to see and do. If you think you can handle, or enjoy, the crass tone and humour, then you'll have a blast with this; if not, best avoid it.

Trine 2 is a fantastic game, just like its predecessor, and one which we feel we can easily and flatly recommend to gamers of all tastes and ability levels - no matter who you are, you can't help but love Trine 2.

Universe Sandbox isn't a game per se; there are no bosses, aims or levels, merely an accurate model of astronomical bodies for you to fiddle with. It's really more of a toy – the virtual equivalent of a configurable orrery, except hugely more complex than any mechanical system.

We can't knock the ambition of LA Noire, and the MotionSense technology certainly makes game characters look much more realistic without the need to install a rendering server in your home, but the game lacks fun. LA Noire aims to makes you feel like a real-life police office, but real-life police-work is actually quite dull.

Both an immensely enjoyable, and immensely frustrating experience.

If you love games about simply blowing up things in a stunning fashion Renegade Ops is unsurpassed. It's only made even better with local co-op for two players, or four players online, where it stands on its own two feet as a modern master class of the genre.

Definitely an interesting and visually-attractive take on the standard four-in-a-row colour matching formula, but in practice it's just too fiddly for us to truly recommend. With some more tweaking to the gameplay mechanics and notification area, this game has the potential to be a great-looking, addictive puzzler, but at the moment it's simply too frustrating to play.

Despite several irritations, there's a lot of innovation in this title, and a lot of fun to be had with enough varied mission designs to prevent it from getting stale.

Revelations does add extra features to the series' existing template of great environments, atmosphere and visual flair propping up weak gameplay mechanics, which helps offset the effect of diminishing returns. Players who didn't mind the limited platforming and simple combat of the previous games will likely come back for more. However, we're hoping for a more radical overhaul and refocusing of the series by the time the next instalment arrives.

With superior AI, higher-resolution graphics and some more forgiving soil erosion, From Dust would be an outstanding title. As it is, it has enough personality and interesting ideas to make it a reasonable game if you feel like playing something different, but its myriad flaws prevent us from recommending it.

Wargaming.net should also be praised for the careful line the game treads between being an arcade game and full on tank sim. It's accessible enough that you can master the controls in seconds, but detailed enough to satisfy hardcore tankheads.

Fantastically fun and tight design.

It's almost impossible to die in Rage - and once you realise that it becomes hard to shake the blasé approach that the lack of fear generates. Rage's impressive variety and commitment to casual and hardcore alike is its greatest strength, but also its biggest weakness.