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.