We don’t know how much of what is now Sleeping Dogs (it began life as True Crime: Hong Kong) was handed over to Square Enix, and perhaps we never will, but it would have been criminal for a game of this calibre to slip between the cracks. It is the perfect open world fix in the lead up to GTA V and full credit to United Front Games and Square Enix London for crafting this entertaining, engrossing and deeply impressive title.

Darksiders II absolutely trumps the first game, which in itself was a work of masterful art, and leaves me hoping we don’t have to wait two years for the inevitable third game. One of the year’s best releases by far...

Wreckateer is, surprisingly, the best of the first three ‘Winter of Arcade’ releases. It’s not a particularly ambitious or exciting game, but it meets its own fairly modest goals with only a few hiccups, and shows that full body motion controls can be fun, even when they don’t always work the way you’d like them to...

You could finish Deadlight in a single sitting and forget about it completely by the next day. It has some nice ideas and sections, but more than anything else it made me want to go back and finish Shadow Complex for a sixth time...

A great game for Ferrari and racing fans alike, with enough challenge to really test those familiar with the genre, but unfortunately lacking in a more approachable set-up, even for those of us who found the history of Ferrari utterly alluring even after just a few hours of play...

Yes these opinions are a bit like an old man trying to return soup to a deli, but THPS HD is not just about what was left out but also about the quality of what was left in. Rather than a graphics overhaul it’s more like a gloss, the levels, still functional in their design lack the detailed textures and effects that would bring them back to relevance

The vampiric tone is enough of a departure to reinvigorate interest in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and tempt gamers back for another round but the same frame-rate issues and glitches abound taking a little bit of the shine off it...

Spelunky is mental. It looks and feels like a relic from the distant past – the olden days of the 1980s when platform games were little more than sadistic death-traps. You control an Indiana Jones knock-off on a quest to to reach the end of a sprawling cave complex, a vast labyrinth riddled with poisonous creatures, booby-traps, and supernatural horrors...

If you’ve been waiting for a true challenge, a sense of adventure, genuine progression and a world that is filled with complex actions, real people and real threats, than you could do worse than entering The Secret World...

Project Zero 2 has held up well, and manages to challenge your mind and dexterity without resorting to the ridiculous obtuseness or brutal check-pointing that other horror games do. Plus if you’ve held onto your Wii this long, you might not get many more chances to play something new on it...

The London 2012 videogame won’t be on your playlist for very long, but if you’re a fan of the genre, I’d rate this game as one of the better games of its kind...

If you’re in the sort of position where you’re likely to play a portable game locally in co-op, Heroes of Ruin is a decent choice. If not, you’re likely to tire of it sooner than you’d like.

Pokémon Conquest is the best Pokémon spin-off I’ve played since the heady days of Pokémon Snap and Pinball, and it’s deeper than either of those games by a wide margin. It doesn’t have the desperate stench of a cash-in that all too many Pokémon games do, and for the first time in ages it feels as though the franchise is breaking new ground...

Again, the collectathon component is what will get most people over the line, or for Batman fans, being able to play around in a fully realised LEGO Gotham. It’s a giant game with excellent visuals that will keep fans well and truly interested, and is one of the better LEGO titles in recent times...

Starved for Help tells a better story than A New Day did, but the sparse puzzles and that one huge glitch hold it back from being a huge improvement...