"I'm Alan Wake, and I'm a writer" narrates the eponymous protagonist before a sweeping camera shot showcases Bright Falls, roughly thirty minutes before he starts exploding the town's shadow-covered inhabitants with a combination of torchlight and plenty of bullets. Crikey. In my experience the lifestyle of a writer involves being able to have a nap on command and spending hours every day worrying about whether or not you'll ever be seeing another paycheck.

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What a difference a year makes. Back in the archaic days of June 2009 - back before the iPad, Jedward and when Wii's were only available in white - Star Ocean: The Last Hope seemed like a decent investment for the Xbox 360 crowd. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was entertaining enough to whittle away the dreary summer holidays. Eight months later, Star Ocean: The Last Hope - International unceremoniously arrives on the PS3 with almost all of the flaws of the original and no new content. It's also a damning indictment of the ear-bursting Western voiceover work that the option to select the Japanese voice actors is International's main selling point.

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The ocean? Brilliant. I bet there are all sorts of things to kill down there, like the batty inhabitants of an underwater capitalist society free of religion and governments. Maybe there's some mutant sharks you need to shoot with harpoon guns, or even underwater terrorists. This is a videogame, after all.

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Nobody has actually read the whole of Inferno, though many Literature students keep a copy on their shelf to look clever. Dante Alighieri's fourteenth-century poem opens with Dante, a middle-age man, pondering his existence in a dark wood. Pretty boring. Dante's Inferno, the 2010 videogame, starts with Dante pulling off a 100-hit combo in Jerusalem, killing Death so he can nick off with his scythe and falling into hell so he can rescue his woman Beatrice. Cha-ching!

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If the dream match you've been waiting for since Street Fighter came about in the late eighties was a scuffle between a stable of Capcom classics and some stars from huge-in-the-seventies anime company Tatsunoko, you're probably one of the people who petitioned for the game to be released in the West to begin with. For the rest of us, who have no idea what it means to dragon punch Yatterman-1 in the face, you'll probably be wondering why they couldn't have made Marvel Vs Capcom 3 instead.

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When the 2010 Winter Olympics finally kick off this month there's no doubt in my mind the land will be awash with white, crunchy snow. Fun snow. Not like snow here, which is only fun for two hours before it turns brown, forces everyone to spend more money on their heating bills and quickly reduces the entire country to a quivering wreck. This official licensed videogame of the event definitely gets it white, with Vancouver 2010 doing a splendid job recreating the firm crunch of the snow-crusted arenas with some of Sega's trademarked crisp blue skies to boot.

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Few people would have rallied for the return of high-spirited frat-pair Salem and Rios after the mess the two made in their chest-bumping, fist-pumping, mass murdering lads tour through the first Army of Two back in 2008. But return they have, complete with a character select screen where they jostle for your attention and finish by flexing their considerable bulk and psyching themselves up in front of the camera before loading your last checkpoint. Lads!

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Returning to Resonance of Fate, after previewing it last August, was like having a good time with an old friend I didn't realise I'd missed. Tri-Ace's steampunk fantasy continues to hiss, puff and chug out a universe that, whilst familiar, is continually endearing.

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There's a point near the start of Dark Void where Will, the game's hero, unsuccessfully leaps off a collapsing bridge, his outstretched arm mere inches away from solid ground. He's caught by Ava, the game's female love interest, in what is clearly intended as a dramatic moment but is an unnecessary conceit: Will's wearing a bloody great jetpack, after all. Later on, a character asks him how he manages to achieve the things he does. Our protagonist laughs, proclaiming that he just tries to stay out of his own way. But, really, the answer - once again - is his amazing experimental jetpack. It's made by Nikolai Tesla and it's got guns on it and everything.

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It will probably come in very handy, the game says. It's referring to the Spirit Flute, and is making the understatement of the year. The latest Zelda might happen to be called Spirit Tracks, and its imagery might be suffused with steamy, quasi-industrial iconography, but it's the magical pan pipes which underpin the entire experience. It's the game's equivalent of the Ocarina or Wand of Wind, just without receiving nearly as much recognition in the game.

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