Game of the Week

Here's what we were picking from: Out This Week.

Start as you mean to go on. At 8am on Monday, our review of the wonderfully, viciously pure indie platformer Super Meat Boy announced that this was going to be no ordinary week of new releases. Tom declared himself "crazy in love" and slapped a 9/10 on it. By Tuesday evening, we'd awarded three more. We've just closed the week out with a fifth.

Late October is the business end of the videogame year, with a ton of high-profile new releases, but even so there's no accounting for such an outburst of quality. Maybe we were just all in a really good mood (Just Dance 2 certainly cheered me up). But it does make Game of the Week a tough choice.

Meat Boy took Tom back to Mario World; Keza's retro rhythm reverie, inspired by the scratch-perfect DJ Hero 2, didn't stretch back as far but was maybe just as significant. "DJ Hero 2 is the freshest thing in rhythm gaming right now, a lifeline for people bored of guitars and drums and genre veterans craving the purer, simpler rhythm-action kick of a pre-Guitar Hero world," she wrote. Meanwhile, John found the new Professor Layton - the best yet - was nothing less than a celebration of the "joy of reason". Much like a Eurogamer comments thread, then.

These were all refreshing treats, but even Team Meat would have to allow that the biggest, most nourishing slab of gaming protein served up this week was the sprawling Fallout: New Vegas - a game so all-consuming we almost lost poor Dan to it forever. It will be many people's game of the year, and not without reason, but it's not our game of the week because it's no more (and definitely no less) than a fascinating spin on a brilliant game we've already played - while this week also threw up a stunning original.

Vanquish

Vanquish arrives, sparks flying, skidding along on its knees in a never-ending victory celebration, part footballer, part lead guitarist, all rocket-powered robot death machine.

Bayonetta was crazy and sexy; Vanquish, the next from Platinum Games, is just plain cool. It showcases the developer's talent for tight-as-a-drum gameplay mechanics allied to uninhibited style, slick technology and sky-high production values. In short, it's everything we used to love the Japanese games industry for.

What's even more remarkable is that it does this in the Western-dominated arena of the third-person shooter, nicking the popular genre and, to paraphrase Simon's review, modding the f*** out of it.

"Vanquish lets you speed up and slow down time at the touch of a button, lurching forwards and backward as you set the pace of war like a mop-haired conductor directing an orchestra of bullets. Vanquish changes everything," he wrote.

Encore!