“Clayton Kauzlaric and I created the character of DeathSpank for the Flash comics on my website,” Ron Gilbert explains. “He came to embody all the little things we hated about the games business. At one point, we looked at each other and said, ‘He needs his own game!'” Alarm bells ring. Games that try to poke fun at the medium’s cliches only end up rehashing them. ...

Sin City. Grand Theft Auto. Inglorious Basterds. Moulin Rouge. Indiana Jones. Daniel O’Donnell. All these things seem to inform Pandemic’s World War II-set open world kill-’em-up.

It’s German-occupied Paris as a big-budget action movie: explosions, preening Nazi race drivers, base-jumping off the Eiffel Tower and sexy secret agents. By which we mean it’s trashier than a gossip magazine. ...

Titles that absolutely describe their game are a dying breed. What is there that ‘Super Meat Boy’ doesn’t tell you? He’s made of meat, he’s super, and he’s a he. What else do you want?

It’s a retro-esque platform game that proudly describes itself as incredibly hard, and comes from two of the more ingenious but twisted minds of the current indie development scene. ...

Dave Jones’ initials are tattooed across our nipples. We have a mullet, a moustache, aviator shades and a belly that arrives in a room a few seconds before we do. “Players are going to have to think very carefully about who they want to be,” Jones tells us. “You can be a psycho, quiet, on-the-streets kind of killer." ...

The Divinity series, like its classmate at High Fantasy High School, Gothic, is a big deal in mainland Europe. Until now, neither RPG has made much of a dent in either the UK or US. With its impressive translation, convincing animation, inventive quests, and combat and reward systems reminiscent of Diablo, Divinity II has the best shot yet.

Cast in the role of a Dragon Slayer, your role is, oddly enough, to slay dragons. ...

The painterly multiplayer world of Love is, for now at least, a place as much as a game. It’s the passion of one improbably talented, audaciously unconventional programmer named Eskil Steenberg; a man who seems to have found a new way of doing just about everything. The result is an incredible experience to explore, like nothing else you’ve played. ...

We haven’t covered LotRO much recently. There’s no dark reason for this, no sinister conspiracy – it’s just that this is an MMO that’s remarkably adept at keeping its head down and getting on with things. On the quiet, it’s accrued a massive and very happy audience. On the eve of its new expansion, it seems a good time to peer at what the game as a whole is like these days. ...

Unlike their last effort, Age of Conan, Funcom is using an original setting for this online game: the real world. But don’t worry: this isn’t a game that has you washing +1 dishes before travelling to the supermarket to purchase increasingly nutritious vegetables. Like the classic shooter/RPG Deus Ex, The Secret World is grounded in our most intriguing urban legends, myths and secret societies. ...

The world is a post-apocalyptic dustbowl populated by mutants and proud retro-fitted scavengers with fast, growling cars, deadly makeshift crossbows and upturned woks for hats. You, the unwitting outsider, emerging prematurely from your Armageddon-proof panic room, find you’re somehow better at surviving in this hostile environment than those who’ve been living in it their whole lives. ...

Generals are shifty buggers. Hitler, for example, would often call up Churchill and claim to have sent 4,000 Maus tanks to Newcastle. Winston would hop on the train to go up and have a look, leaving Number 10 undefended. Such deception is a key element of war, as established by Sun Tzu in The Art of War – a book now read exclusively by advertising bumholes. ...