An imaginative concept and some strong design are undone by a game that's gruelling in all the wrong ways.

Too much tinkering means Pure barely feels like football and becomes a chore.

The pairing of large-scale online battle game with the thrill-packed Lord of the Rings series should've been a winner, but as it's turned out, Conquest won't possibly satisfying any Battlefront fan or Lord of the Rings buff at all.

New Zealand Story Revolution is a hard unforgiving platform game dressed up like a child's game. Think very carefully before splashing out. We used to love it but playing it again only brings back all the frustrations we thought we'd forgot about.

Sub-standard stuff - its only redeeming feature is the very unlikely prospect of online fun. A bargain bin title.

Immensely hard difficulty levels aside in single-player, the co-op mode is fun and much easier to tackle. Oddly it's painfully slow in places with more than five enemies on screen at once. We didn't expect this at all from our next-gen experience of Double Dragon.

There's very little to recommend with this title, besides some pretty visuals and the concept of being a knight. No, this just won't do at all. I wouldn't play this and you shouldn't either. [PC Zone]

The faster the car, the more jelly-like things seem to become. The gorgeous Ford GT 2005 handles like the entire world was one big bouncy castle, as it bobs and lurches around like it had helium-filled wheels. [Official UK Xbox Magazine]

The AI is predictably primitive and inconsistent, with enemies failing to hear gun battles right outside their windows, yet spotting you with unerring ability at unlikely distances across the map.

Crime Life fails in both gaming and moral terms. What we wouldn't have given for a few shiny rings to collect. Y'getme?

At least the level design in this one is vaguely interesting at some points. As a competitor to the likes of Ratchet and Jak, though, Pac-Man is starting to look ten times his age. [PSW]

It's like people just can't bring themselves to accept the truth here: The Matrix: Path Of Neo is an irredeemable abortion of a game that Atari, Shiny, the Wachowski brothers and anyone even remotely associated with it should be ashamed for ever thinking about releasing in this form. [PC Zone]

After five minutes of this you'll be bored stiff. [PSW]

Text can't be skipped, which may be fine for a dramatic piece of dialogue, but is eminently frustrating when you're having to wait for your character to lengthily tell you that you can't do something for the umpteenthmillionth time.

Considering just how much the FPS genre has progressed, specifically the squad-commanding, war-themed FPS sub-genre, it's really not worth your time unless you're particularly fanatical about the original. [PC Zone]

Okay, so there's two-minutes worth of multiplayer chuckles in "Badlands" and "Super Off-Road," and "Hydro Racer" is marginally better than the terrible "Stun Runner," but that's it. [PSW]

It's almost as if Midway has run out of retro games to repackage, apart from some crappy old driving titles it found in the back of a filing cabinet that weren't good enough to make the first two Treasures titles.

It's so gangsta. It's so street. It's so shite. Painfully forcing every urban cliché going into every line of dialogue, the cutscenes reduced us to fits of laughter. That's laughing at, not with. [Official UK Xbox Magazine]

The ominous Willy Wonka himself, whether it was intended or not, looks and sounds disturbingly like Michael Jackson, and his army of Oompa Loompa slaves are no longer the orange-skinned and green-haired midgets we know and love. [PC Zone]

(Altogether now) Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dah, I'm stunned I bothered getting so far. You will live in misery too, if you play this Oompa Loompa Loompa Doompadee Doo. (Doompadee Doo.)

The combat quickly becomes repetitive, simply involving mouse-clicking on-screen to shoot at the blindingly stupid enemies blundering towards you, retreating if they get too close, then shooting again, maybe using a barrel of explosives for a bit of a change.

The widescreen beauty of the PSP is entirely compromised by the fact that the action takes place in a TV shaped box to the left, while maps and stats fill all that lovely extra space. It's nice to be able to see where you're going, sure, and we appreciate not having the action cluttered by displays and icons, but it kind of takes a way the whole point of having a screen the size of Kansas, doesn't it? [PSW]

There's a smattering of good ideas in Samurai Legend, but they're quickly crushed under the obesity of mindless combat and poor design. One to avoid. [PSW]

For every second of satisfaction, there is a minute of monotony; where cardboard enemies fall under a cloud of red paint, physics offer no value whatsoever, AI is largely non-existent and gameplay follows the worn-ragged formula of coloured keycards and enemies that appear from thin air. [PC Zone]

It left us shaking our heads in utter bewilderment. Fans of EA's other Street games will be rightly embarrassed by the sheer awfulness of this faux street culture. [PSW]

While the game boasts an impressive array of hardware, you're sadly only allowed to play as the forces of the 'right and just' in a linear two-pronged campaign that starts with the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and finishes in Iraq.

The premise is certainly unique and brimming over with potential, but the execution is so lazy and ham-fisted if it were a killer it would have shot itself in the foot. Shame really. [Official UK Xbox Magazine]

Despite its smattering of positive elements though, D-Day reeks of being rushed to the table like a pot of undercooked sauerkraut.

Sadly, the developers have completely missed the point of the TV show, knocking out a second-rate two-wheeled racer that will disappoint fans of the programme and appear pointless to anyone else. Even the ever-excitable Teutul boys sound bored of it all. We can't blame them really. [PSW]

A mess, a hurriedly produced and lazily-designed RTS produced to cash in on gamers hoping to relive the film's stunning battles. Just make sure you're not one of them. [PC Zone]

With only two way multiplayer returning, this really was a missed opportunity to improve upon a disappointing franchise. As it stands, BW2 gets the smack put down on it by virtually every other fighter out there. [Official UK Xbox Magazine]

Part of the problem is that instead of playing to the original game's strengths, what the developer has devised is a lily-livered RTS that's a pale shade of the Kohan engine on which it's based. [PC Zone]

If Shade was scrapped and given yet another redesign, the to-do list would be endless - wishy-washy combat, braindead AI, insipid level design, soul-crushing puzzles, a towering stack of bugs.

By far the worst aspect of the game is the horrendous control system, which flicks confusingly between third- and first-person views, while the camera sweeps all over the shop and does its best to disorient you.

It's only when something large or coveted decides to take a bite that the game lurches from 'pleasant but dull' to 'almost quite exciting'. Well, for about thirty seconds anyway, until your would-be prize catch drops the lure and swims off. After that it becomes dull again. [PSW]

But this is gaming at its most depressing - it's clear to man and beast that the controls of this game simply do not work and are no fun whatsoever. Why don't you just fix it? Or, perhaps, you could just STOP MAKING ARMY MEN GAMES.

An empty shell of a shooter with a bottle of Costcutters own-brand vodka at its core, Kreed plays like a badly translated Russian tech demo from two years ago.

It's not all bad. Apart from the acting and character animation. Oh, and the interface. And the story. True, some of the puzzles do make a twisted kind of sense. But there's nothing gripping about it. Life's too short, basically.

What we have here is a Spidey-themed action title aimed squarely at the younger PC gamer - think bright colours, no real-life guns (the bad guys tote silly sci-fi bubble-pistol thingummies instead) and gameplay so easy you can sail through it in a single afternoon. Gritty it ain't.

If you're going to have a game that lets you bet in excess of thousands of dollars, it might be an idea to have a system that lets you type in the amount of the bet, rather than forcing you to click a hundred f***ing times to get anywhere near the high numbers. You know, just a suggestion. [PC Zone]

Limited and uninspiring, Spartan won't satisfy anyone with an inkling of the quality of other games on the market.

The developer has actually managed to make the original Pac-Man games worse than they were 20-odd years ago. Jerky animations, a Pac-Man that's not even round and... Oh, I give up. Lucky it's only a tenner or we would have been really piqued.

If there were a decent multiplayer mode it would perhaps be more worthwhile, but sadly there isn't even a shit one. And since the AI opponent spouts the same dialogue over and over, the whole game gets tiresome very quickly. [PC Zone]

It's dull, mistranslated, claustrophobic (in a bad way) and thoroughly aimless. No amount of naked women adorning the walls can disguise the fact that Midnight Nowhere simply isn't much fun.

God knows what happened to LOTR3, but the usually dependable Impressions Games has lost the plot on this one. Even if you're a long-standing fan of the series - no, especially if you are one - avoid this like a bearded, Black Death-infected Saxon whore.

Lamely rolled out on the back of the film, it's one of those strategy games where you have an overwhelming urge to stop playing after three or four near-identical missions.

Place Battle Chips into your Deck. Hit "A" 'til the battle is done. The end.

This is a craply-plotted sci-fi novel meets a game of chess meets Industrial Light & Magic meets Yu-Gi-Oh!. Fanboys: silence.

Sounds like a good idea in premise, then, except it's during these combat sections that the game emerges flatter than a blind hedgehog on a motorway. Limited fighting moves, weedy spells, monotonous pace - it could hardly be any less entertaining.

The lack of design nous displayed here makes it feel as though it was knocked out by two guys over a weekend.

What we have is an inept third-person hack and slash number, combined totally unsuccessfully with a dull-as-ditchwater RTS. Harsh words, granted, but you'll thank us for them.

Everything from the AI to the interface to the laughably inappropriate resource system is basic. Admittedly, there are thousands of troops to command, but controlling them is a nightmare and the whole experience is best forgotten. [PC Zone]

There's no aspect of the game that isn't abysmally implemented. I would dearly, dearly love to sit here and go on for five or six pages listing the faults, but it really isn't worth the effort. Just avoid UC like you would a diseased badger or rancid tramp. [PC Zone]

The interface is nigh on impenetrable. The system of exploration is ludicrous (the whole map is blacked out at the start, so at first you don't even know where the mountains lie). The scenarios are uninspiring. The combat is pointless and passes practically unnoticed. [PC Zone]

An archaic tri-click method of delivery, a truly awful interface, a bunch of sorry camera angles and some ridiculous environments/opponents for you to play in/against.

There's almost no difficulty either. Unless there's a timer on your mission, you'll find it easier to turn wine into water than to actually fail.

Playing Medabots: Infinity is about as much fun as eating poisonous glass.

Running around Hogwarts is a curiously flat experience, and not helped by the chronically jerky frame rate.

A well-executed... thing that's somehow being mis-sold as a video game. Either somebody at Nintendo is a certifiable maniac, or this is the future of video games. We're pretty sure it's the former.

It's all but impossible to defend the dated presentation and clunky interface that are constant reminders Anito was designed and developed by a small start-up development company. [PC Zone]

The levels are dull-looking and you might have a job seeing what's happening on a standard GBA. If you are a fan of the films, even the third one, don't expect to relive the adrenaline rushes in this mediocre, disappointing GBA effort.

But it's slow, it's sluggish, the controls are unresponsive and it's a real chore to play. That equals no fun.

The Cat In The Hat? A book filled with wit. As for the game, a big pile of sh...

2D side-scrolling shooters don't really have much place at home on Xbox. Those such as Blowout should be cast out of the Xbox residence like a shamed family junkie and take refuge in the last-gen console crack house where they well and truly belong. [Official UK Xbox Magazine]

The special attacks look crap and make no sense. How can you possibly electrocute a skeleton? Dry bone doesn't conduct. Someone wins. You're bored. The end.

There's little joy to the gameplay, unless you like hammering one of the two attack buttons and simply aiming your hero at the next batch of fodder for your angry reptilian idiot.

The tracks want to be like "F-Zero's" but they're lacklustre to say the least and the vehicles don't have the required speed to make the twists and loops anything other than ordinary.

All the stages are based around areas in the cartoon like Bikini Bottom and Jellyfish Fields, but it's all so low-res and blurry that everything looks plain bad.

Ultimately, since Core Combat's best features can be enjoyed by both the expanded and unexpanded players, you might as well let other mugs go to the expense of buying the pack and doing all the work required to gain them. Then you can just have all the fun and reap the rewards above ground.

The worst fighting game (and pretty much the worst game) I have ever insulted my hard drive with. [PC Zone]

The dialogue is so bad, the voice-acting so hammy and the text interludes so laced with obtuse meaning that you'll be reaching for the quit button before you can say perestroika.

The puzzles are simple, the graphics are bland, the controls are limp. Only the most severe Neutron head would consider this over a number of superior platformers.

It's a shoddy game, full of graphical bugs, requiring a PC a damn sight more powerful than stated on the box, and lacking the under-the-hood accessibility that might otherwise endear it to the arcade racer.

The missions are very basic and straightforward, with no real need for strategy or tactics. So unless you're a sadist and get a kick out of being disappointed, steer well clear.

One good aspect for people who tend to get stuck on these detective game (and I mean myself here) is 'artificial intuition', ie help. When you seem to have hit a wall, this swirling symbol will suggest areas to concentrate on in that location - and the more you use it, the less subtle the hints get! It's a good way of offering a helping hand without spoonfeeding players.