There’s an abundance of chrome, explosions, flashing lights and sincere-sounding commentators exuding a casual enthusiasm regarding the brutality taking place before them. Welcome to Metal Drift, a futuristic sporting arena that has a lot in common with the likes of Rollerball and Speedball, but with oh-so-floaty hovertanks. ...

In our first race, we took the corner too fast. As we smacked into the crash barrier, we saw the hood fly up and away. In the rearview mirror, about 20 cars thundered past in a billow of dust, and one of our wheels followed meekly behind them.

A lot of RACE On’s energies are devoted to letting you live your WTCC (World Touring Car Championship) fantasies. ...

As dream-walking, tough-talking psychologist Alice Drake, you must enter your patients’ nightmares to fight their fears. With a minigun. The world’s only First-Person Freud-’em-up. The 12 dream-levels are a series of lush set-pieces connected by short corridors; the diverse gallery of baddies is often functionally identical – either a little dude, a slow dude with rockets, or an enormo-dude. ...

Remember the smart, weird kid in your class? This platform puzzler is that boy: clever, but no looks or personality. It’s just you and a grapple gun, trapped in 22 levels of cuboid puzzlement. Reach a teleporter to escape each level, pick up the access codes along the way, avoid electrified panels. The trick is to use your grapple gun to hook onto the green areas dotted tactically around levels. ...

Imagine a game where you plant trees that grow on asteroids, produce seedlings that fly, and send these to new asteroids to grow new trees. What makes the resulting RTS so smart, beautiful and compelling is the neatness with which this astroscience fantasy is presented. Clear, logical relationships and a look halfway between Japanese inkbrush art and scientific insemination diagrams. ...

This is a fizzing neon vision of the scrolling shooter: a limited left-right arena in which waves of beautifully abstract baddies come whirling towards you, spitting bullets as they go, and turning into even more deadly enemies if you don’t deal with them swiftly. In other words, Astro Tripper is pure videogame. ...

From the weird-merchants behind The Path comes the game of Salome – the princess who asked Herod for John the Baptist’s head. It begins in clunky first-person, with you in a dungeon with nothing to do but be tormented by randomly appearing snippets from Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. ...

The last few years have seen Defense of the Ancients devour millions of man hours, both in its original incarnation as a WarCraft III mod, and in its refined DotA Allstars evolution. League of Legends, by the original team, is here to provide the definitive version. It’s a multiplayer-only RTS battle between two teams. ...

According to the official website, Painkiller: Resurrection had “a Catholic priest advising” it and offers “painstakingly researched details” of its purgatorial setting. You have absolutely no idea how much we want to see those notes. The official word on whether Satan could have his bottom handed to him with a shotgun? That’s edutainment! ...

Three playable characters: a brute, an archer, and a mage. A town atop an endless dungeon that’s randomly stitched together as you play. Hundreds of enemies that die in a torrent of clicks. Scrolls. Health and magic potions. Quests. Leveling. Loot. More loot.

Diablo is the obvious comparison you could draw with this combat-heavy RPG, but Torchlight is more than a clone. This is like a super-clone with psychic powers. ...