There is some dark-ish humour but it never goes far enough and borders on embarrassingly bad in most places. Those attuned to adventure titles will feel their puzzle sensibilities tickled but definitely not itched.

Playing through Disney's Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two was one of the most irritating and unrewarding experiences I've had the misfortune of completing in over 30 years of gaming. It should be banished to The Wasteland where other unfinished and incomplete ideas wait in limbo to be restored into a functional, more complete version.

Hitman Absolution is a mistake. Even if in your mind the plot loops all the way past 'so bad it's bad' and back to 'so bad it's good' again, Hitman Absolution has more bugs than a service station meat pie and less direction than a headless chicken. A genuinely fun mode like Contracts can't save that. IO Interactive needs to restart from the Blood Money checkpoint and try again - they screwed up this run spectacularly.

The environments and the reasonably compelling flashback atmosphere lend what would otherwise be a pretty poor game a glimmer of hope.

Crippled, but not useless. Even though its main story mode presents no challenge whatsoever - you can find that elsewhere - going through all the special moves was fun enough for the first little while.

All the licensing in the world can't help you if the core gameplay is faulty, and in the case of Grand Slam Tennis 2 it just keeps serving double faults. The more you play it the less you find to like about it until eventually you just wish you hadn't started at all.

Postal 3 wanted to offend me and it succeeded. It wasn't the racist stereotyping, the rampant sexism, the spankerchiefs or the laughable gore. All of that is done in a manner so pedestrian that I'm more embarrassed for them than I am offended. What offended me was that people are actually selling this. That RunningWithScissors/Akella would have the balls to slap a 'finished' label on this title and start taking people's money.

Rather than build upon Shattered Dimensions and further refine the Spider-Man experience, Spider-Man: Edge of Time takes a step back and feels like something that was quickly rushed out the door while still trying to trap consumers in a badly tangled web.

The game might look decent enough, but the overly scripted racing and under scripted plot fail to engage the player or give the feeling of a white knuckle battle to reach the finishing line. You end up barely caring about Jack's plight and when it comes to the gameplay... Lets just say if you're a fan of the franchise stick to Hot Pursuit, it's where Need For Speed shines - The Run on the other hand just crashes and burns. Repeatedly.

Some people - die-hard fans of the sub-genre spring to mind - might be able to get some entertainment from it, but for me and (probably) most gamers it simply gets bogged down in its hundred and five minor flaws and doesn't have enough 'fun' to make it worthwhile... it dies the death of a thousand tiny paper-cuts.

The threadbare story is filled with pointless motivations, poorly realised characters and bad dialogue - so cross out 'wanting to know what happens at the end'. The way the game challenges you is by simply sending more of the same at you and hoping you run out of ammo. It doesn't have story, it doesn't have gameplay - so why would you keep playing?

The most forgettable, bland, fractured game I've played this year which only gets points for some interesting concepts albeit extremely poorly executed. In a year boasting Duke Nukem Forever, that's really saying something.

From Dust needs a mouse, at the very least. It's hard enough to draw with a mouse - but most people can manage it to some extent. Painting mountains on the world with an Xbox Controller is utterly horrible. Worse still, the game suffers from the same sort of problems many RTS games do - scrolling around the game world isn't as intuitive as it should be.

They would have been better off just remaking Duke Nukem 3D, as it had some interesting level design at least. If you took Duke Nukem out of Duke Nukem Forever it would have been one of those games you see for sale at discount stores, the kind you didn't know existed and people only buy as a joke.

If it's the genre you're after, grab Lara Croft instead, or maybe dig up a copy of Hunter: The Reckoning from last-gen. If you're a die-hard Ghostbusters fan, there's a passable fix to be had here – just don't expect too much.

Breach is barely worth the effort, a plodding experience that sucks you dry of your time offering very little long term reward and a minuscule amount of instant gratification.

I started Magicka over from the beginning six times in my attempt to give it the best possible chance I could. In the end though, I can't possibly suggest anyone spend any money on a game released in such a broken state, whether it's ten dollars or ten cents.

Platformers shouldn't have half-arsed interpretations of physics. They shouldn't have a continue system which is for all intents and purposes simply an inconvenience generator. And they shouldn't have half-thought out continue systems, designed solely to annoy.

Do not buy Blade Kitten. The best case scenario is Krome didn't know what they were doing with this first game but have the experience to make the second one decent. The worst case scenario involves the developers slapping round robin high fives for their excellent work and retexturing it for a 'sequel'.

As the multiplayer is the only reason to play Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days and as the multiplayer is almost pointless without a group of people you know aren't idiotic yelping pre-teens, there is no point in purchasing the game - unless you can convince your friends to purchase it as well.

For a game to go to so much trouble to replicate its predecessor in so many ways it is downright amazing that it should fail so spectacularly. Co-op and competitive multiplayer adds an extra dollop of playtime, but if you've never played the first game you will have a much better time for a lot less money - and if you have played the original you will only end up hating both Crackdown 2 and yourself for wasting your time on this garbage.

It could have piqued interest and numbed the pain of the incredibly dull gameplay. In the end, Naughty Bear gives you the bear necessities, and very little else.

Heavy Rain looks amazing and it puts in an outstanding effort to further how video games can be used to tell a story, but it's not good enough. David Cage - the game's Creative Director - has argued that Heavy Rain isn't a video game, it's an interactive movie. If you were to remove the interactive part of Heavy Rain and focus on the plot, characters and acting you'd come away disappointed, and by misunderstanding fundamental elements of character representation in interactive media it fails to utilise interactivity to its advantage either.

The biggest issue I have with Terminator Salvation is that it doesn't even try. It's resigned to the idea that it is a shameless movie tie-in, and it's not going to try at all to do any better.

If it weren't for the QTEs during cut-scenes I'd say it was nothing special but nothing brutally terrible and probably worth it if you desperately wanted something like Ninja Gaiden to play.

The game's worst enemy is the clearly rushed production time. You can feel a decent idea inside Stormrise, yearning to get out.

Shaun White Snowboarding just isn’t very good. With completely uninspiring mountain designs, a pitiful single-player quest and awful controls, there’s really no reason to pick this one up.

Looks great, is super fun for about five minutes, then every second you play beyond increases the chance that somebody is going to get hurt. If you need to see some terrific visuals and brilliant animation, rent it out then breathe a sigh of relief you didn’t pay full dollar.

The unfinished, unpolished story mode, the average graphics and worst of all the frustrating, annoying gameplay make me think the Quality Assurance team on the game must be either punch drunk or non-existent.