I’m probably fractionally more persistent than most in this area – an unfinished game will niggle at me for an extended period (it took over a month of regular attempts to polish off Flirtin’ With Disaster and finish Rock Band’s solo guitar tour on Hard, f’rinstance) but particularly capricious or tedious game design can easily see me off, and with so many other shiny distractions available it seems ridiculous to endure frustration for any length of time. I feel no guilt at all for dipping into the marvellous resource available at GameFAQs to get me past particularly obtuse puzzles or aggravating difficulty-spikes. If that fails, well, there’s a wonderful feeling of liberation that comes with the realisation “hey, I’m just not enjoying this” and switching the offending game off for good. Mirror’s Edge and I are currently undergoing a trial separation based primarily on its fondness for unfair and irritating combat, f’rinstance. And I never got past the end of the first chapter of Neverwinter Nights after it was clear to me that a double-cross was about to take place but I was given absolutely no way of warning the party primarily involved. When said party then wanted to send me on a long-winded errand arising directly from said double-cross, I uninstalled the game in a fit of pique.

So. Here’s the full list of every EggBox game I’ve conquered over the past year then, with micro-reviews appended for your delectation, delight or at least fleeting distraction. Ranks are assigned on a Capcom tip, with a scale that runs from F for games which are functionally broken through to A for a slice of fried gold. The elusive S-rank is reserved for works of transcendent excellence, genuinely essential experiences that I’d recommend to anyone without qualification or hesitation.

In rough chronological order, then:

Crackdown
(Completed the story)
Still only got 99 of the 100 bloody agility orbs, though, and this generally excellent sandbox-em-up was marred slightly by the not-fun vehicle bits, unreliable camera, one-trick missions and touchy cops. Still, bounding from skyscraper to skyscraper like a heavily armed cyborg facist super-kangaroo was hours of fun, and “popping up” from behind terrain like an Apache gunship never got old. When dealing with large groups of n’er-do-wells, I’d hide behind cover then jump thirty feet straight up, lock on to an enemy, fire off a sniper bullet / missile at the top of the leap then drop back to safety giggling like a loon before their mates could shoot back. Triffic. Rank: A

Virtua Tennis 3
(Ranked 1 in World Tour)
The best thing about VT3 is that when you manage to set your feet and pull off a full-power groundstroke, the resulting shot genuinely feels like it should have a verb like “rips”, “unleashes”, “thumps” or “crashes” attached to it. It’s a game that repeatedly, pathetically drove me to make Tiger Tim fist-pumps at my TV as, f’rinstance, my heavy serve would see my opponent forced to float a diffident return allowing me to punch a volleyed winner into the open court. It’s a satisfying, nicely tactical game of tennis, it’s stuffed with fun, borderline-bonkers minigames and it had cutscenes featuring famous players who all looked absolutely terrifying. The cold, dead eyes of Zombie Lindsay Davenport haunt my sleep to this day. Rank: B

Ace Combat 6
(Completed all operations of all missions on Easy and Medium difficulty)
And I’m about halfway through Hard. It’s Outrun: The Dogfighting Game. All the thrills of barrelling about the sky at Ludicrous Speed blowing stuff up, none of the tedious realism to get in the way. Tearing through canyons at several zillion miles an hour chucking rockets at stuff with Cheap Trick or Gustav Holst in the background put a coathanger-wide smile on my face. Stupid, portentous, unintentionally hilarious cutscenes aside it might be my favourite game on the Eggbox outside of the towering monolith that is Rock Band. Rank: A

Guitar Hero III
(Five-starred all songs in main tour on medium difficulty)
If I never hear Raining Blood again it’ll be too soon. Could have done without so much forum-kiddie-pleasing heavy metal rubbish, could have done without the maHOOsive difficulty spike about 8 songs from the end, could have done without the casual misogyny, could have really, really, really done without the boss battles. Great guitar peripheral, though. Rank: B

Project Sylpheed
(Completed story missions, medium difficulty)
Or “Project Slaphead” as it rapidly became known. It’s a space-based action flight-sim – Ace Combat with lasers. To say that PS is a visually busy game is like saying that the England batting lineup is a bit below par. It looks like an explosion during a Jean-Michel Jarre gig at a disco ball manufacturer’s convention. That’s being held in a fireworks factory. Run by Martin Fry, still wearing his gold lame suit. On November the fifth. During a thunderstorm. Whilst seven volcanoes are simultaneously erupting in the background. In a… you get the idea. It’s also very anime. Very very anime indeed. This may be a selling-point for some people, but I’m not one of them. Within 15 minutes I sincerely wished lingering, painful death on every moronic, wittering, whining, mopy, stupidly-haircutted fourteen-year-old character in the game. Still, when you’re barrelling around space launching umpty-thrumpty thousand missiles in one eye-shattering salvo Project Slaphead is great, if a bit up-and-down in terms of difficulty. Rank: B

Call Of Duty 4
(Completed single-player, medium difficulty)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Game. For all that sandbox gaming is en vogue, there’s still a lot to be said for a really well-done rollercoaster ride. And that’s exactly what CoD4’s single-player mode is, so many ups and downs and loops and spins and adrenaline-pumping thrills only a pedantic moron would complain that it’s completely on rails. It’s got a strong story told in a novel, arresting way with several tremendous set-pieces – the entire sniper level and the eerie, weirdly affecting turn as the gunner on an AC-130 gunship being particular standouts. Rank: A

Dead Rising
(Completed main game, overtime mode, achieved “true” ending)
The first game I played on the 360 that would have been genuinely impossible on the previous generation of consoles. When it’s good it’s very very good. When it’s bad it’s horrid. The brilliant setting – a shopping mall teeming with zombies – and by-turns hilarious and terrifying mood is thoroughly undermined by a mental save system, rubbish controls and several baffling design decisions. The sequel’s just been announced, and with a bit of a nip and a tuck and an annoyingbitsectomy it could be a stone-cold classic rather than just a very good game. So long as it still lets me dress up my burly macho chump of a character in a teddy bear mask, floral print dress and slingbacks I’ll be happy. It certainly made all the puzzled looks NPCs kept throwing at me in cutscenes 300% funnier. Rank: B

Guitar Hero II
(Five-starred all songs in main tour on medium difficulty)
Its existence is justified by the presence of Sweet Child O’ Mine and the glorious final level with Freebird followed by just the perfect game-ending cutscene but the tracklist isn’t quite as good as the original game taken as a whole. This year I’m going to take my newly Rock Band-honed fifth-button skills and finish this bad boy on Hard. Rank: A

Conan
(Completed, medium difficulty)
It’s God Of War, but nowhere near as good. Bought for about seven quid to tide me over for the three days of my week off before Rock Band arrived. Featuring the delightful combination of slightly stodgy, imprecise controls and ledges that’ll happily let you plummet to your death without pause or warning. Further featuring comfortably the cheapest, most hateful, most hair-tearingly frustrating final boss I’ve encountered in 25 years of gaming. Rank: C

Rock Band
(Completed solo drum tour on easy, vocal tour on medium, guitar tour on medium and hard, band inducted to Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame)
“We’ve been The Red Winkiez, you’ve been terrific. Thank you very much and goodnight!” Rank: S

GTA IV
(Completed story missions)
A game I admired more than I liked. The story generally didn’t mesh well with the mechanics, the cars were uniformly horrible to drive, it wasn’t as funny as previous games in the series, the mission checkpointing was a bit of a mess and my GOD, did the clingy whiny friends thing needed to go. However, the gunplay was generally good, there were a couple of storytelling moments that genuinely stirred the blood and it’s impossible not to be impressed by the depth, scale and spectacle of the gameworld. On balance, it’s a good game just nowhere near as good as it might have been and nowhere near as good as its two immediate predecessors. Rank: B

FIFA 09
(Finished Be A Pro mode, won International Cup with England to become a National legend)
I’ve spent the majority of my time with FIFA on the play-as-one-bloke Be A Pro mode, and the longer I’ve played it the more niggles and irritations have revealed themselves. Chief among them is a crippling bug that seems to make players disappear from your club side over the course of a season. This got so bad that at the end of my year in Milan I was playing two reserve strikers and seven defenders, because Kaka, Ronaldinho, Pirlo, Ambrosini, Emerson, Gatusso,and Antonini had all inexplicably gone walkabout. And contrary to all expectation, Manchester City weren’t involved. Despite promises there’s no sign whatsoever of a patch to sort this out, which is hardly a surprise given that the Madden series had lingering issues that would last for 3-4 years at a time despite every forum dedicated to the game anywhere ever being chock-full of justifiably hacked-off gamers grumbling/screeching about it. Rank: B