Much fuss is made about realism in gaming. In the drive to recreate the real world in smaller and more numerous polygons, game developers have had to pass through the “uncanny valley” where things look nearly right but subtly, creepily wrong. The very best CGI can fool the eye but even the most canny next-gen console or PC programmer will still produce in-game graphics that are recognisably fake.

Heralded as the first true "next-generation" videogame, Watch Dogs has either been hugely overhyped or the imaginative leap required for a true new generation of videogaming is entirely absent from mainstream games. Because this cyberpunk-inflected hacking action-adventure offers virtually nothing new.

Videogames aesthetics are often misleading. There are many examples of beautiful games that have no artistic merit, emotional heft or ludological interest. There are also many examples of ugly games that grip utterly. Of course, the ideal is both simultaneously – and Transistor almost does that.

It's time to talk about time travel. The fourth dimension, as time is sometimes called, represents fertile ground for videogames designers. After all, the shift from side-scrolling two-dimensions (move left, right, jump up, fall down) to three was a huge leap.

It is almost a year since the release of Act II of Cardboard Computer's strange and opaque episodic game but Act III has finally been released. Has it been worth the wait?

There are many admirable things about Child Of Light. It's the game that the core team behind Far Cry 3 – the mega-action, gnarly dude first-person shooter ‑ went on to work on next. Yet, it's difficult to imagine two games further from each other.

The core of a great videogame can sometimes be very simple indeed. The Trials series is based around the idea of leaning back and forward while accelerating and braking on a motorbike. Such simple controls, in this series, are turned into the ability to jump, push, roll and otherwise manoeuvre your lump of engined metal over a series of seemingly impossible obstacles – very much like "trials" riders do in real life.

Noir Syndrome is a procedural detective game. That's to say procedurally-generated rather than a police procedural - the game is designed to create a random mystery for you to solve with each new game, and puts you in the worn-out shoes of a down-at-heel private eye who must catch a serial murderer who is cutting a swathe through the inhabitants of a big city.

With Wii Sports even elderly relatives could suddenly play videogames. The addition of motion control to Nintendo's console exPanded its audience far beyond traditional gamers. But then... nothing. Can Kinect Sports Rivals on the new Xbox One rekindle the excitement in waving your arms to control games?

There is a grammar to most videogames. A crate, for instance, is almost always there to be opened and looted. These two free games subvert some of the basic rules of videogames to reinvent the "platform" genre.

changeType puts you in a primary-coloured maze that immediately recalls classic Mario titles. But then lets you swap the properties of any two types of objects in the level, as long as you can see them directly to your left or right.