The drag racing sections truly capture the magic of the recent The Fast And The Furious flicks, and these one-on-one cock-fights make for a refreshing change after endless laps of spittle-covered urban wasteland.

The game is so diverse that it'd take months, maybe years, to see everything.

The one problem with the game is that cycling through the Brothers' many different moves and skills with the shoulder buttons isn't very streamlined.

The genius of it, though, is that Rambo tactics will just get you killed.

Sure, you can save up energy and then turn into a bloody great beast, but it's just a gimmick really. Bloody Roar isn't original enough to innovate and isn't polished enough to epitomise the genre like "Soul Calibur II" does.

It's a welcome and entertaining addition to an excellent game. [PC Zone]

You'd also have thought there'd be a fair share of humour in there, what with a Goblin's lack of social etiquette but it's a poker-faced affair, with your troops acting more like honourable Knights of the Round Table than dirty, thieving, man-flesh eating gits. Damn shame.

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

Ultimately though, this is a shallow console experience, especially when compared to the likes of Max Payne 2, and really has no business being on the PC in the first place. [PC Zone]

For the most part Sphinx looks amazing. It's super-smooth, very fast and some of the exterior cityscapes are breathtaking, although close up the textures are sometimes very plain.

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]

Its banality is perfect. Even an inexplicable side-scrolling fish-tank shoot-'em-up level that pops up between the soporific platform stages fails to raise an eyebrow.

The Firaxis tweak-stick has hit the main campaign big-time and if you're a veteran returning to Civ III, you'll find the main game more finely tuned and balanced than ever before. [PC Zone]

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.

The gaming equivalent of buying a massive bag of crisps only to find that half the packet is filled with fresh air. There's still plenty to enjoy, but not nearly as much as there should be and you end up feeling a bit cheated.

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.

What really lets Ops down is a lack of finesse. There are very few nice touches and an almost total inability to interact with the environment.

You're not going to find another MMOG that's anywhere near as welcoming as this. While the whole PlayOnline front-end interface might initially seem a cumbersome folly, it's not long before you're wishing all your online games could be handled through such a console-style browser.

Still, if you're a hardcore fan, you'll want it just for the neat interface tweaks, the one new race per realm and the slick look - provided you have a current-generation graphics card and the Shrouded Isles expansion pack.

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.

More niggly than the GC version and less accessible. If you're prepared to give it some attention you'll be rewarded with a deep and challenging experience. If you want an easier Tony Hawk game try the GameCube ones.

All we get is A-to-B puzzles mixed with a huge amount of zombie splatting that takes you from London to The Pyramids. [PC Zone]

It's slow, steady and pretty dreary - but it's got enough intrigue to keep you clicking away for a few hours.

Classic horror, average action.

The GameCube and GBA versions have possibly the most exciting exclusive option, with players able to download special mini-games to their GBA which will earn them Simoleons and other goodies to use in the Cube game.