With the game sporting high production values and an encouraging learning curve, it’s easy to recommend Toy Soldiers.

In this instance however, developer Etranges Libellules have crafted a game of rare quality, movie spin-off or not.

Fun, challenging and frustrating in just the right measures, the collection highlights the respect Sonic holds as an old-school entity, even though the years that followed spelt disaster and led to his dethroning as a modern icon.

It may struggle to satiate the hunger of the solo gamer, but the multiplayer offers enough content and variety to make it a title well worth dipping into; and for 500 points, that’s not a bad deal at all.

It definitely treads a very thin line, balancing interactivity and spectacle, but it is a balancing act that it gets absolutely right.

Whilst it wears its influences on its sleeve and won’t supersede Mario Kart DS as the handheld racer of choice, All-Stars Racing ensures a thrilling duel to the finish line.

Mario Kart may still hold the crown overall but All-Stars Racing is certainly the closest Sega has come to its own Smash Bros, and in its own little way suggests that, putting aside the welcome updates of classic franchises like After Burner, the still-mighty company has finally learnt to accept – and even revel – in its status outside of the hardware race.

The series has been off the radar long enough to appear fresh and this is exactly how it feels, making it easy to recommend to anyone after a solid game based on the AVP franchise.

There’s nothing else out there quite like it, and Darwinia+ will absolutely delight anyone who fondly remembers the arcade games of the seventies and eighties.

BioShock 2 is an enjoyable experience in its own right regardless of the few niggles which hold it back from being a true masterpiece.

So while it’s hard to fault the efficiency of Visceral’s final product – all carping aside, the controversial license has at least been handled with a certain care given that this is a videogame and not an academic study – Dante’s Inferno is too familiar, too regressive and too content to do the necessary minimum to recommend wholeheartedly

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.

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

Everything about the game – plots, combat, progression, characters – comes together in a tidy, satisfying package.

Whether or not you'll warm to it depends largely on if you enjoy the game's maniacal atmosphere: if you are, or ever were, a slightly juvenile adolescent male with a penchant for videogames and movies – and I think that covers most of us – there's a very good chance it'll go down a treat.

On one hand, MAG is an ambitious experiment that has delivered on many of its promises – it genuinely offers lag-free 256 player online battles with a huge potential for team work. On the other hand, it is a game that struggles to find a sense of purpose beyond this, or a real sense of identity.

Dark Void poses something of a dilemma. On one hand, it is an extremely enjoyable, quirky and lovingly crafted B-movie adventure delivered by a developer with obvious ambition. On the other hand, however, it has a number of fairly significant rough edges with elements that don’t stack up quite as well when compared to other titles in the action adventure genre.

If Croteam had added in some extra content or thrown in The Second Encounter it would be an essential purchase, but instead it ends up as something I’d only recommend if you’ve got cash to spare.

While it’s not pushing the boat and the game’s selling point of a ‘moral choices’ system isn’t half as deep as it wishes it was, it’s still an enjoyable 8-hour romp that improves upon the original in every department

While Darksiders is an undeniably confident package, it’s a shame the developers have fallen back on a succession of barely disguised facsimiles from proven classics to fill in the mechanics of their game.

The action is fun, fast and varied and makes for an enjoyable romp fans of the genre would be foolish to pass up.

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

It’s rather difficult to fault the game on any conceivable level, but one minor criticism is that the game-length-to-game-price ratio is a bit uneven.

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.

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.

It’s a flawed work of art, but a work of art nonetheless.

Building on what came before it technically and thematically, Left 4 Dead 2 proves itself a thrilling multiplayer experience fans would be foolish to pass up. The sequel may have arrived just a year after the first but the wealth of content and overall refinement means you wouldn’t know to play it.

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.