Downloadable Games

No one has benefitted from Gran Turismo 5's long delay more than O-Games, which, in addition to poking brilliant fun at said delay, has softened the wait in just the right way.

It's entirely fitting that Dream Chronicles got lost among the sea of big-ticket Xbox Live Arcade games that were released around it, and not just because it's a game centred around finding proverbial needles in proverbial haystacks.

ZEN Studio's continuous post-release support for Pinball FX made it feel like a platform more than a stand-alone game, and Pinball FX 2 embraces that notion from the start with magnificent results.

The 350-level Super Meat Boy easily marks its territory as the year's most difficult platforming game, but its real claim may be the startling gap it opens between challenge and frustration.

Last year's Trials HD took Excitebike's time-tested brand of 2D motorbiking and modernised it with physics, stunts and lots of clever new modes.

Puzzle Agent marks a pleasant change of pace for Telltale Games, which has done the vast majority of the heavy lifting responsible for the point-and-click adventure game revival.

Given the number of perfectly good Bejeweled clones lurking in the iTunes Store, it's impressive to find one, like Smiles, that goes its own way by changing just one rule.

Apple has slowly warmed up to the iPhone and iPod Touch's accidental transformations into portable gaming juggernauts, but Game Centre makes the embrace official.

Shank For: PS3 via Playstation Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade From: Klei Entertainment/EAPrice: $US15 ($NZ20.50) Everything about Shank has been done before and will be done again, but maybe no game has put it all together and made it look this easy to do so.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero

Stunning though today's games are, there may be no better demonstration of gaming's rapid technological growth than the ability to open up a browser window and play something that brought computers to their knees barely 10 years ago.

Considering the enduring popularity of the two things - Diablo-style dungeon-crawling and comedy - DeathSpank attempts to merge as one, it's rather amazing it's taken this long for the two to come together as naturally as they have here.

Final Fight: Double Impact