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Great games demand their own vocabulary - a personal vocabulary. David is a case in point.

Given the right setting, curiosity can be all the motivation you need to be drawn into a game world. Forget map markers and quest icons, all you really need is a world that compels you to keep moving deeper inside it. That was the simple idea that drove games like Journey and Proteus and even Minecraft, and it's the same primal instinct that's at the heart of Fract OSC. You proceed because you want to see what lies over the horizon, not because there's a carrot dangled in front of it.

The best theory I've ever heard regarding the mysterious way that Mario games get made runs like this: deep inside Nintendo's development structure, there are people working on Mario stuff all the time, irrespective of specific games. They're just toiling away in the Mario mines, churning out endless ideas for anything and everything - bosses, collectables, enemies, traversal gimmicks, ghost house hallways, the works. Mario is always being made, and practically any idea can lie within its remit. Mario is games, and all games - all toys, all play - can eventually be folded into the mix.

Let's hear it for the three-click swing system, eh? Pioneered by Nintendo itself in 1984 NES game Golf, this simple but effective mechanic has been a staple of golfing video games ever since. It's endured because no one's really managed to better it: some would argue the case for Tiger Woods' analogue control, and Nintendo might point to the remote-based mimicry of Wii Sports Club. But neither quite captures the elegance and rhythm of a perfect swing the way this does.

In the confusing economy of video games, a bullet is often a unit of time. That's definitely the case with Capybara's latest, where a taut 60-second countdown presides over levels that initially seem too large to fit into such strictures. Cast as a motley of clods zipping forwards and backwards through human history, you have a secret weapon on your side, however. You can lead one death-dealing trooper into battle, and then pause the conflict, rewinding the clock and allowing you to lead another death-dealing trooper into battle alongside the first.

The first joke is that Scram Kitty and His Buddy on Rails is an on-rails shooter that is, for once, literally on rails. As in Cardiff studio Dakko Dakko's debut, The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character, your wheeled character must hug the border of the environment, an unbroken rail along which he can scoot with crab-like velocity. You trace your path along the scenery, back against the wall at all times, as you fire inwards - sometimes leaping before landing back on the rail in a shower of sparks.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has teased the upcoming Xbox One screenshot feature, which should become available for public use soon.

It is said that the hero of the Legend of Zelda games is called Link because he represents a link between worlds and eras, a link to tradition, a link to all the other various Links who have donned his green garb and picked up his sword and shield. Most importantly, he's a link to you, the player: an empty vessel through which to experience your own high adventure. That's why he has no dialogue, an opaque backstory - he's always an orphan - and few character traits beyond indomitable courage.

I approach life from a different perspective than most. I'm American Indian, and the fact that my culture and my people are moving closer to extinction all the time isn't something I often forget. As I grow, a fatalistic phrase has come to summarise my relationship with the modern American Indian experience.

It's been 22 years since Super Mario Kart and Nintendo's knockabout racing series has held its ground against the only critic whose opinion truly matters: time. Few other game series have been so dependable. Mario Kart has made a regular appearance on each successive piece of Nintendo hardware, always retaining the essence of that triumphant debut, always fending off the imitators following in its slipstream. It's been a journey defined by incremental improvements and amendments, never by reinvention: a new power-up here, an few extra characters there.

More than six million people have played the Battlefield Hardline beta, publisher EA has said.

Two gamers who earnt race seats thanks to their prowess at Gran Turismo took Nissan to success at one of the world's most daunting endurance events, as Wolfgang Reip and Florian Strauss helped take the RJN Motorsport Nissan GTR-35 to victory at the weekend's Bathurst 12 hours event.

Like so many of the things installed on your iPhone, Threes! is a game of pattern-matching. A one and a two make a three. Threes and up can be matched only with identical tiles. 'Swipe to combine tiles' is all the instruction you really need to get started, and indeed the game offers little more than that as you complete its wonderfully light-touch tutorial sequence. Of course, by then it's too late. It's much too late.

Rayman Legends is released this week on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. For full details of those versions check out Digital Foundry's next-gen face-off. In addition, here's Dan's review of the game on Xbox 360, first published on 26th August 2013. We're confident it holds true for both new versions.

It says much of the quality and depth of The Last of Us' characters and world that Naughty Dog could have picked any one of a number of threads to explore in this, the first and only story expansion for its seminal action-adventure. The strained relationship between Joel and his brother Tommy; Marlene's journey from Ellie's guardian to head of the Fireflies; the story of Ish, the enigmatic survivor whose notes detail his harrowing experiences in Pittsburgh - any might have worked.

The Last of Us Remastered is released for PS4 this week. We're confident that our review of the original PS3 game applies to this edition too, so here's the original review - first published on 5th June 2013 - in full. In the left-hand column you'll find links to our review of the included add-on Left Behind and a few of our other favourite articles about the game. For a closer look at the PS4 edition, check Digital Foundry's analysis of the remaster, or its PS3 vs PS4 face-off.

Getting Evolve, Turtle Rock's 4v1 shooter? Make sure to download the 3GB day-one update - it improves the game in a number of important ways.

The pre-release period has not been kind to Evolve, Turtle Rock's post Left 4 Dead 'second album'. The recent alpha preview did it few favours, crippled by broken matchmaking and offering a confusing and unbalanced game of cats ganging up against a rather large mouse. I spent almost every match during the alpha just walking through forests not doing anything of any interest whatsoever. Combine that with one of the most misguided, muddled and overly verbose pre-release content campaigns in history, and Evolve isn't off to the best of starts.

You can play through United Game Artists' Rez from beginning to end in less than an hour, which, in an age where size depressingly does matter to so many, could be seen as a slight against this music-infused rail shooter. That hour, though, comes closer to perfection than any other video game I know.

In the sweat mist of a late 90s techno hall, Tetsuya Mizuguchi got his first glimpse of what would become his life's work. The young Japanese designer, still fresh from the success of creating one of Sega's biggest arcade hits, found himself on a balcony at Zurich's Street Parade - an offshoot of Berlin's celebrated Love Parade - watching out over a crowd lost to the rhythm. "This DJ is playing, and 100,000 people are moving with the music. The sound changed, and the movement changed. I watched from the top, and was like 'wow, what is this?'" What if you could play this, Mizuguchi thought to himself. What if he could turn this into a game?

Less than one month from now, the Game Developers Conference - GDC - kicks off in San Francisco. Aside from the reveal of Sony's Project Morpheus VR concept last year, the show has been short of game-changing announcements in recent times - but this year's event promises to be different. A revitalised Microsoft will continue its drive to promote Windows 10 for gaming, while Valve is set to relaunch its delayed Steam Machine platform. We will be presented with two very different visions for the future of PC gaming, and while the specifics of the upcoming clash remain shrouded in mystery some nuggets of information are starting to come to light.

This week's working theory at Outside Xbox was that friendly co-operation makes zombie outbreaks 100 percent more survivable and entertaining.

My first column for Eurogamer was published four weeks ago. It was designed to fix NPC dialogue in shooters, and it worked perfectly. Since that day, not one shooter has been released with unconvincing or repetitive barks. You'd think, with such a resounding success still ringing around the internet, I'd be allowed to rest. You can imagine my horror when I received an email on Monday asking what my next column was going to be about.

Survarium, the free-to-play first-person-shooter by several ex-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. developers at Vostok Games, has finally detailed its much anticipated Freeplay mode.

Bloodborne is going to have shields, but they may not be as effective as you'd think.

Q*Bert Rebooted is heading to PS4, PS3 and Vita, Sony has announced.

Super Stardust Ultra, the fourth game in Housemarque's splendid series of twin-stick shooters, is due on PS4 come 11th February.

Our Grow Home review won't be up until next week - partly because I'm still gadding around taking screenshots of the sunset. I really wanted to bring you something about the game before then, though, because Ubisoft's quirky platformer is a real delight.

Nintendo has shown off 25 minutes of gameplay footage from upcoming Wii U-exclusive Xenoblade Chronicles X in a new Japanese presentation.

Fighting games are, by their nature, competitive. They're built for player versus player combat. This, for millions of fighting game enthusiasts, is central to their appeal. Mastering combos, learning strategies and putting them into practice online is for many - me included - what the genre is all about.