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.

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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 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]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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

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.

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