Despite embarking with a sound plan for another beautiful globe-trotting adventure, Lost Horizon 2 suffers from weary execution and assorted technical limitations, eventually losing the way to greatness and ending up in the land of the average.

Keyword: A Spider’s Thread is an ambitious light hacking game that is rough around the edges and highly implausible, but should still provide several hours of entertainment for fans of the genre.

Feeling more like Layton-lite than heavy-duty Holmes, Mystery of the Frozen City is for those who enjoy casual puzzling enough to overlook a nonsensical story.

Conspiracy! is an extremely short, moderately diverting research-based brain-teaser whose muddled attempts to satirically comment on current events never amount to much of substance.

The Express Killer’s eagerness to entertain is a breath of fresh air at first, but its relentless surrealism and some unnecessary pixel hunting soon undermine its creative mini-games and plot twists.

PataNoir is an amusing wordplay game that doesn’t live up to the uniqueness of its premise.

Wales Interactive has its fans (rightfully so), and they will know what they’re in for here. But for the uninitiated or those looking for a cheesy, goofy adventure story that satisfies, Mia and the Dragon Princess ultimately fails to deliver the goods.

Like its heroine, The Rockin' Dead may be pretty, but beauty is only skin deep, and to find any substance below the surface here, you're definitely going to need glasses.

Nevermind represents a worthy concept and provides an unsettling atmosphere that fans of thrillers will love, but by the time you’re starting to wonder where the story is going, you’ll realize you actually completed the game twenty minutes earlier.

Murdered: Soul Suspect is the newest addition to the small field of triple AAA adventure titles and offers some pleasant new surprises but an uneven storyline, poorly developed characters and unfocused gameplay keeps this game from rising above mediocrity.

An action-laced side-scrolling puzzler with just a hint of enigmatic story, 7th Sector’s clever and varied challenges are more fun than not, but it can be artificially difficult to reach an ending that still doesn’t provide many answers.

Alterity Experience has some really great moments of tension, but they’re tempered by a lack of any real story or character development outside of the desperate attempts to defend your home from invasion.

City Quest offers a pixelated trip down nostalgia lane but its uninspired sense of humor and lack of challenge make for a somewhat disappointing homage to golden era classics.

For Sherlock fans, I’d rank this as more of a Basil Rathbone than a Jeremy Brett on the Holmes-o-meter; somewhat enjoyable but wildly inaccurate. And for DS fans simply looking for a good adventure, I’d largely recommend holding out for better mysteries than this.

In summary, CSI: Deadly Intent is an entirely lacklustre game. The return to traditional form will please those put off by the casual surprise of last year, but even that enthusiasm won’t last for long.

Fans of CSI-type games may find it makes the grade, but for everyone else, there’s just not enough here to warrant much of a look.

Apart from a few pulse-pounding moments in an otherwise generic haunted house story, the weakest link in Silver Chains is that it’s just not very scary or engaging enough to survive as an adventure game otherwise.

While the puzzles are genuinely decent, only the most die-hard puzzle fanatics will likely be willing to play Dark Room a single time through, let alone all three times it will take to see everything it has to offer. For most gamers, the negatives will vastly outweigh the positives in the lackluster first episode of this horror/sci-fi adventure series.

No evolution here; just a splicing of new and old, resulting in more frustration than fun.

The many Nancy Drew fans and DS adventure gamers may be interested in this title, but I can’t really recommend it to any audience. Even for a younger gamer, the repetitive gameplay will likely get boring before the end, and the tedium will quickly be felt by a more seasoned adventure gamer.

As a first-person platformer, Unknown Fate has some interesting ideas; as an adventure game it is ultimately a frustrating experience.

Series fans may get a mild kick out of the latest case for Lindsay and the gang, but few others will find the point of exploring these Crimes of Passion, as there’s just not enough of significance to seek out here.

With decent art and sound design, as well as simple and generally straightforward gameplay, the news certainly isn’t all bad, but Detective Hayseed falls far short of the grand Hollywood standards it espouses. If you’re really in the mood for some crude humor (that’s actually funny), you’d be better off picking up an old copy of Leisure Suit Larry instead.

Bloodshore delivers what it advertises: as a true interactive movie, it provides some decent schlock here and there, but ultimately its narrative and characters come up lacking.

It’s based on a fun idea and setting, but Jerry McPartlin isn’t nearly ambitious enough or committed enough to its humor to leave any lasting impact. What a drag.

The superficial use of Asian motifs and a playable dog protagonist aren’t enough to flesh out the universal themes of life and death in the stylish but extremely short Don’t Disturb.

Eleusis starts off promisingly enough, but well-appointed graphics can’t make up for the lackluster story and generally poor gameplay.

Magnus Failure has an interesting setting with a fairly decent little set of partly illogical puzzles to solve, but really not much more than that.