For all that's been added, it was never going to recreate the dumbfounding awe of Rapture when experienced for the first time, which, unfortunately, played a pivotal role in the first game's appeal, and something required to allow the sequel's combat to flourish.

EA have really thought about NHL 09 and with the introduction ‘Be a Pro’ this year, they have taken things further. The bar has well and truly been raised by EA and others will have to respond.

A gripping, and challenging, single player mode should eat up a good ten to twelve hours, and the wealth of multiplayer options should keep you going for a lot longer.

This really is one of the best looking console shooters I've ever played.

The much vaunted Gotham TV is fun, but more welcome is being able to save your replays when playing with friends rather than watching strangers.

It’s a full GTA on an UMD, capiche? Besides the controls and a few way too difficulty missions LCS provides you with more fun and durability than three standard PSP games put together.

The best PC strategy game I've played for ages, since Rome: Total War in fact. Even if you aren't entirely happy about the period covered, it being something of a retread, there's so many new features and depth in this release to make any comparison with the first Medieval: Total War rather pointless.

It may lack the cinematic punch of the big guns of Jak and Ratchet, but it never plumbs the depths of Ty or Crash.

Doom 3 definitely has gameplay to back it up but it's gameplay from a few years ago while the rest of the world has moved on.

A technically and graphically stunning port of a game that was already pretty damn good, with the potential to deliver bigger and better things in future. And you can’t complain too much about that.

Fun though it is, the stalking, hunt-em-down-and-bring-em-in approach begins to wear thin – but just as it does, Stranger's Wrath...changes. It's not a twist, per se - it's pure Western convention – but it prompts a re-evaluation of the character and events of the game.

Sid Meier and his crew have managed to update one of the major classics of gaming so that it is now a worthy example of the fact that good gameplay never goes out of fashion.

Armadillo Run is one of the best PC games I've played in a long time.

A fantastic achievement for a first gen PSP title, it is immensely playable and arguably the best Ridge Racer on any console or hand-held to date.

Criterion has made a major mistake removing crash junctions and replacing them with the rather poor red-headed stepchild showtime. But the racing events and seamless online integration mean that Burnout Paradise remains a game that I can still highly recommend.

Right out of the box (no patch needed) the game ran smooth, looked awesome and kept me both terrified and unable to walk away. The pacing is perfect and the production value unmatched.

Grid won’t be for everyone, the handling is to blame for that, but Grid is far from stale and is exceptionally good at delivering wow moments, something that many other games in the genre fail to do.

It is an oddity in the gaming world which is mercifully free of the shallow obsession over improved graphics. Instead the focus is on fulfilling your managerial fantasies and the gaps are filled in by your own knowledge and love of the game. If you aren’t at least mildly obsessed with the results on a Saturday then you’ll never understand the appeal of this.

BlazBlue is a finely crafted fighting game with some real depth to it. Polished art, great character designs and some solid mechanics make this addictive once it gets under your skin.

It chooses not to innovate in the racing genre but smartens up its looks and sounds enough to look like an evolution.

FIFA 09 is very much like Arsenal actually; great to look at, at times an absolute joy to play and has a fantastic future if they can build on what they have, but it’s just made too many silly and needless mistakes to stop it from being great this year.

The game looks and sounds as good - and with moderately decent hardware looks even better.

Sins of Solar Empire is a must have for any strategy fan and is definitely a contention for game of the year. For me it just falls short of a score of ten.

I have never played anything so momentous or revolutionary as Heavy Rain. In the coming years I expect the game's influence to be felt throughout the industry in terms of gameplay, storytelling and interactivity. This is a game that deserves all the plaudits it can get. So please go out and buy Heavy Rain and reward those that have made such a groundbreaking videogame event.

It certainly feels like a complete segment, in that the ending is satisfying, interesting and leading towards the next episode.

Nintendo has good effort to make a multiplayer platform game here, but it just doesn't feel quite right, it's not bad but if you think of it as nothing more than a tacked on extra to a single player game then that's about right. But as a traditional 2D platform game it's the business.

A more focused game than the GTA series and you're more likely to plough ahead and actually get somewhere with the story. Those of you who found the scale of San Andreas a little bewildering and ultimately off-putting will find a challenge here more to your liking.

Portable Ops is a difficult game for both newbies and experienced players, but the way in which the whole aura of MGS has been transferred to a portable platform impresses to no extent.