Despite all of the criticisms, Assassin's Creed III: Liberation isn't a complete disaster and if a portable slice of Assassin's Creed is what you a looking for then there is some enjoyment to be had. Even so, it remains a huge missed opportunity with its attempts to expand the horizons of the series nearly all fizzling out, not through any conceptual problems but through lacklustre and often glitchy delivery.

If you’re a hardcore turn-based strategy fan, feel free to disregard this review and seek out the opinion of someone more schooled in the genre. But if, like me, you’re a novice in the genre and have been taken in by Elven Legacy’s promise of a gentle welcome, then keep well away. You’ll only end up getting hurt.

Unfortunately tedium occurs sooner than it should as a lack of diversity and online play cut your attention short.

Children will garner some enjoyment from the cute mascots and simple gameplay but the game fails utterly and completely in its attempts at being a practical brainteaser.

There’s certainly a market for pick up and play arcade thrills, but Scrap Metal simply isn’t delivered with enough gusto to make much of an impact, with the looseness of many elements resulting in a game that is ultimately quite forgettable.

Blood on the Sand has been developed to plough straight down the middle and appeal to the largest possible demographic; it's a jack of all trades, and master of none. It's not as bad as his previous game, disastrously melodramatic movie attempt or second album. It is, however, entirely standard.

The visuals and treasure-hunter plot (and the role that the tarantula and scorpion will play in it) hold just enough intrigue to keep you playing, but as a whole, it’s more a chore than an adventure.

As polished and as faithful to the source material as Samba de Amigo is aesthetically, the lasting impression is of a missed opportunity. A tighter game would have made a massive difference, though the essence of the license is so strong that an impulsive purchase won’t be a complete mistake - especially if a games party is on the agenda.

But ultimately Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D, for all its combo streaks and rank awards and nods towards arcade addiction, can't quite shake off the feeling that it's a game that, like its predecessors, would have been more satisfying as a bonus mode, perhaps to the forthcoming Revelations (a brief demo for which is included here). Isolated and presented in the way it has been here, the limitations of Mercenaries are exposed.

In some ways we can’t help but think that Ubisoft Montreal would have been wise to be less ambitious (was the support for 3D TVs – which are currently as rare as hens-teeth – really justified?) and deliver a more linear experience that simply gave you a chance to relive your favourite bits from the movie.

With a collection of diverting though non-essential sports, your enjoyment of Mario Sport Mix will largely depend on the likelihood of constant multiplayer battles, though admittedly in that respect the title still pales in comparison to Wii Sports Resort and even the original Wii Sports.

Hardcore 3DS owners are advised to save their money for the meatier and more absorbing releases on the system, but children may well find a few events to love given the novel way in which the hardware is used. Regardless, Mario and Sonic won't be winning a medal with this one.

Crash's latest iteration ultimately feels strangely empty and sadly devoid of any real soul outside of its delightful cutscenes.

Section 8 isn’t very good. It’s bland, generic, lacking in original ideas, poorly executed in nearly every department and you’ll probably grow bored of it within the few essential hours it takes to complete the awful single player campaign.

Yoostar 2's developer Blitz Games got it right by calling their game a 'movie karaoke' experience – and in all senses of the word, it truly is best defined this way. Having your bodily image projected into film and TV scenes is as charming as it tedious in practice. But more so than many other party games, the on-disc limitations of choice on offer as well as the brevity of each film's clips might spoil the experience for some.

Both Spider-Men deserved better than this, but avid fans might want to consider a weekend rental if only to hear the performances. Everyone else should flush this particular spider away.

Unless you’re actively looking for a new generic arcade racer to play, there’s no outstanding reason to give Motorcross Madness a spin.

Full of potential and desperate to push away from its own mediocrity, Lost Planet 3 could have burst onto home consoles in a fountain of glowing orange. As it stands and regardless of what might have been, there’s not enough reason for a jaunt in the frozen wastes.

It may be time to close the saloon doors for good on this one – we've just witnessed the fall of Juarez.

It may have something to offer to destruction derby fans and the low price point means it's hard to be too critical, but most players will still want to avoid a collision with this one.

The orchestral score is decent, the physics are impressive if not revelatory, and the whole affair is certainly competent, if utterly uninvolving. Is that really good enough though? No, of course not. The one attempt at uniqueness – the Entrencher – is a flop, and the whole enterprise lacks any finesse or charm to transcend influence.

Saw II outstays its welcome after a couple of hours and keeps on forcing the hackneyed plot on you when you want it all to end.

Saw II outstays its welcome after a couple of hours and keeps on forcing the hackneyed plot on you when you want it all to end.

If you're a Suda-51 enthusiast or if it's on sale, then it'll be worth it, but other than that, it's a tiny distraction that provides a little entertainment, closer to an app game than something you'd play on a proper console, even a handheld one.

It's not enough to save Operation Raccoon City though, which ultimately is a title that feels too rushed to warrant any great investment on the part of the player. That it's sold in such high numbers (at time of writing it's number one in Japan) says a lot about the strength of the Resident Evil brand which, if ORC is anything to go by, is in danger of being fatally diluted.

The most damning aspect of Gotham City Impostors is that the tutorials and the NPCs stand out as the main highlight, which for a multiplayer focused title is a considerable problem. Add to this the slightly whorish way in which DLC is pushed to the fore, and you have a game that sadly lives up to its title; in other words…it feels like something of an imposter.

The King of Fighters deserves better than this sloppy port.

If you’re looking to kill a few hours with a mate, then this would do the job; if you want any more than that, steer clear.

As a self-contained music game then, Guitar Hero: Van Halen really isn’t substantial or appealing enough to warrant extended play.

It's not just that Need for Speed Undercover is a bad game; it's that it's a bad game with an incredibly erratic engine. The flaws, problems and issues that exist in NFS Undercover are virtually inexcusable for a popular franchise from such an affluent publisher.

Tragic in unused potential and perplexing in design, Hydrophobia never becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Duke Nukem Forever is a strange enough novelty all on its own, but when all is said and done, it is a vastly aged shooter that is left trailing in the dust of its modern contemporaries.

Duke Nukem Forever is a strange enough novelty all on its own, but when all is said and done, it is a vastly aged shooter that is left trailing in the dust of its modern contemporaries.

As a package Black Knight is competent: the frame rate is consistent while the visuals, taking their cue from Secret Rings, suggest that Sonic Team’s capability with squeezing results from the modest hardware is more successful than their understanding of how Sonic should feel as a game.

In fairness, there is some fun to be had here, and Supermassive Games do show a degree of competency in utilizing the PlayStation Move, but sadly competency really isn't enough to get a party jumping.

Creative Assembly deserve a fair amount of praise for at least attempting something new (the whip select system could have worked well with a smaller Full Spectrum Warrior-type army) and for some of the neat ideas lurking beneath its derivative post-apocalyptic trappings – most notably the ability to command units on different levels, as opposed to a flat playing area. But unfortunately, Stormrise quickly degenerates into a war of attrition.

Deathly dull and completely without purpose, it’s an alien piece of software that appears to have crash-landed in from another, entirely more forgiving era.

The pros of Hotel Giant 2 are outweighed by some of its cons, most notably the repetitive and non-engaging nature of the gameplay.

Bugs which do not impact gameplay can be forgiven – when they work against the core aspects of the game, they are far more egregious.

As a pitch, EDF2025 sounds like buckets of fun. But once the novelty inherent to the concept wears off, EDF2025 is boring, and it long outstays its welcome.

Overall Carnival Island is something of a disappointment. Its position as a budget game does go some way to excusing the rather thin content within, but its biggest problem is that the content that it does have just isn't very compelling or interesting.

So Rock Revolution isn’t quite the revolution it claims to be. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s a game that cuts every corner possible to create a soulless, low-cost venture that happily plays second fiddle to its competitors.

Overall, it's not that Blacklight can't be enjoyed on its own merits, because it can in the most basic sense. But when held up to scrutiny and measured against those gunning for the same lucrative audience, it's hard to recommend Blacklight: Tango Down with an absolute guarantee that you'll be completely entertained.

With a short, linear and derivative campaign plus a multiplayer offering unlikely to distract for long, Bodycount just doesn't have enough going for it to warrant a purchase, even at a bargain bin price.

Though Pokemon Rumble's simplicity may have been easier to overlook when it was released as a Nintendo WiiWare title, this full price follow up should be seen as little more than a stop-gap that fails to advance the series in any meaningful way while delivering a gameplay experience that is forgettable as it is monotonous.

It’s artistically weak, lacking in substance, and as a result is somewhat cut adrift from the rest of the battling pack.

By removing any sense of strategy and skill EA has broken the two most fundamental rules of a fighter. Instead, FaceBreaker is nothing more than a mere exercise in button-bashing.

If anything Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll is the simplest in the series if played with a Wii Remote and possibly the most difficult if using the Board, for all the wrong reasons.

As a whole, Pokédex 3D Pro is a nice little device, however the biggest problem with it is the expense. At £13.49 (or $15), it's at least twice as much as it should be. This isn't a game, despite the quiz elements. It's a 3D viewer at best, and all the useful information is more accessible in Bulbapedia or Serebii or one of dozens of free (or cheap) Pokédex apps on mobile devices.

There’s little here to recommend, even for the most loyal of fans. Instead, don your best shell-suit, hook up your mum’s old telly to the SNES in the loft and play out your childhood battles with the original. It’s far better.

To its credit, The Cave has amusing writing and a neat visual style – but charm alone cannot make up for its many technical flaws.

The visual novel-esque method of storytelling could work for a game based on a comic strip – games like Comix Zone have experimented with using comic-panel based graphics – but Romance Dawn does not feel like a comic despite using the aesthetic. There are not enough of the full-screen images to depict key scenes of the plot, and too often important developments are reduced to screen shakes and sound effects.

With a little more love, Way of the Dogg could have be a pretty cool rhythm game. Even if its framework is a silly attempt to pasteurise Snoop’s waning branded image and cultural relevance, the basic pitch is still solid and curiously inspired. But in practice, Way of the Dogg’s lifeless rhythm styling and maddening technical hiccups join forces to forge something truly ghetto.

Otherwise The Eternity Clock is a buggy, forgettable game. Although this is the first in a proposed trilogy of new Doctor Who titles commissioned by BBC Worldwide, it feels as though it would have been better to focus the entire budget and creative ideas on just one, more refined game, than to release such an uninspired, tedious insult to the great Doctor's name.

Sanctum of Slime is ultimately a missed opportunity that deserves to be missed.

Sanctum of Slime is ultimately a missed opportunity that deserves to be missed.

From its tired mid-1990s 'cool kid' chic and offensively putrid design; to the slipshod quality of control that consistently fails to map proper movements into the game's on-screen action, it's fair to say that Crossboard 7 is not the 'system seller' show-piece for Microsoft's intensively technical Kinect hardware, but more of a case study for developers to learn exactly what not to do with it.

Amazingly, EA are still surprising us, but for all of the wrong reasons. Who knew that they still had the capacity to deliver such awful, creaky, shoddily-constructed software? Once a seemingly forgotten page in EA's coloured history, we can only hope that this disgrace to the near-legendary universe that Tolkien crafted is simply an anomaly.

Ultimately, it’s a shame to see a game with such an intriguing concept go to ruin.

More Game Party is a casual game aimed at a casual audience, for whom the insipid, dull and unengaging mini-games might provide the type of minor distraction they were looking for. For everyone else, it's best avoided.

There’s no good reason to play Scourge: Outbreak. It functions (sort of), I’ll give ‘em that. But realistically, and even at a cheaper asking price, why would anyone ever want to play this game? Even the most middling third-person shooter is more desirable, and thankfully the last eight years has got your back pretty well covered in that regard.

It's a sad truth to report, but the great ideas of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour have been laid on some considerably crooked foundations. If anything, it's an indictment of the Kinect's over-promise, as its unresponsive method of control ends up drowning out any potential of its ambitions coming to life in a truly satisfying manner.

Definitely one to avoid.

Blue Omega certainly has the vision, but evidently lacks the talent to do it justice. Damnation indeed.

In total, it is an ugly game which misuses its aesthetic, feels archaic and unfinished in its execution. Final Exam sits as a poor relation within a genre which has already given quality titles like Guardian Heroes, Metal Slug and Viewtiful Joe.

Another day, another game about the horrors of conflict. For the six of you that still care about wanting to trudge through a true Vietnam War setting, the choice is simple – you either play Shellshock 2, or sit through the four hour cut of Apocalypse Now whilst daubed in body paint and playing The Doors on the stereo. Here’s your last clue – it’s not the first suggestion.

With insipid art, painfully boring gameplay and a lack of any sense of professionalism or class, Star Raiders just can't come recommended to anyone, even to those with more time and money than they know what to do with.