An enjoyable diversion for a couple of hours, but lacking in depth or replayability to warrant serious consideration.

It's long, it's tough, it's huge fun, and it's cheap. But it will never be perfect.

Yet another exceptional puzzle app to add to your growing pile. Absorbing, challenging and unlike anything else out there, buy it and soothe away the stresses of public transport.

A thoroughbred classic, a tactical RPG with all the immediacy of Advance Wars and all the long-view flexibility of Disgaea.

It's far from a revolution – much of the framework will be familiar to Fight Night fans – but as the best-looking and most technically accomplished game the series has yet produced, this evolution exceeds our expectations, without totally blowing us away.

This is a game that wants you to laugh so hard that you sneeze on yourself, but it's also a game that wants you to experiment as much as possible with the tools you've been given. Its cleverness is as lightly worn as it is unexpected. It's the best kind of guilty pleasure.

This is a game that wants you to laugh so hard that you sneeze on yourself, but it's also a game that wants you to experiment as much as possible with the tools you've been given. Its cleverness is as lightly worn as it is unexpected. It's the best kind of guilty pleasure.

The lack of multiplayer and a few soundtrack changes may irk some, but overall this is a surprisingly enjoyable conversion that old hands will get a lot out of.

Maybe with a price cut and some rebalancing work this could be worth getting, but right now it's a bit of a shambles.

Far more fun than it reasonably ought to be, Steambirds is the kind of game whistling was invented for.

As crisp and vibrant as the game looks, there's little to elevate this above far cheaper and more interesting games designed around the controls - rather than shoehorned into them.

Fortunately, the game does at least make it possible for the non-hardcore to eventually grind some extra powers (in the Rising mode) to make things slightly easier - but, you guessed it, you have to work pretty damned hard to get them.

The game hooks you by virtue of a well-judged difficulty curve allied to a drip-feed of upgrades.

Despite its throwaway appearance, Viral Survival is probably the only WiiWare game released so far this year that warrants a second glance. That's not saying much, admittedly, but if you've got 500 points knocking about, you could do a lot worse.

As a homage to past glories, Keen Games has done an admirable job. All you need is a Friday night, some old friends, gallons of beer and a gigantic pizza and the past is yours.

Those able to see past the idiosyncratic, somewhat stale visuals to perceive the zeros and ones ticking away beneath the surface will discover one of Cave's finest achievements: a game that lowers the barrier to accessibility without compromising its ultimate depth, a new Defender of the shoot-'em-up faithful.

There's something undeniably pleasing about basketballs - except when they hit you in the nose - and while there isn't much to Hotshot, you'll lose more time to it than you might expect.

It's a simple game, then, but an extremely polished and engaging one.

Simple, beautifully illustrated and packed with addictive lunacy, you should give this a spin immediately.

It's barely got any good ideas, and the few it does have are not its own. It could have been a Monster Hunter Lite, with more emphasis on big bosses and gory finishing moves and less on collecting raptor talons and moss to make into a hat – but instead it's just a hollow, characterless echo of the game it's trying to be.

Sure, the slightly inexact nature of the controls make it somewhat hard to be as effective as you might be, but The Hero is still well worth checking out.

WayForward frequently sends you from one corner of the map to the other on simple fetch quests and back again, and with enemies respawning every time you pass from one area to the next, finding new secrets is much more of a chore than it should be.

Disappointing, but not necessarily boring.

With its insidious wit and gothic charm, Helsing's Fire is a joyously original instant classic that iPhone owners should buy immediately.

The heart of AI War is in its asymmetrical nature, but that uniqueness permeates the entire game, from the way each fight works to your overarching strategy.

The payoff is always worth it, though, with some of the best one-liners and crackpot characters seen in an adventure game since the mighty Day of the Tentacle. Yes, it really is that good, and insanely good value for the three hours of fun it provides.

Through Cave's uncompromising vision, Espgaluda II manages to squeeze one of the most frenetic, frenzied and thoroughly enjoyable shooters onto iPhone without sacrifice. That should, without hesitation, be fervently embraced.

Capcom fans deserve so much better than this.

Battleheart's also far deeper than you might give it credit for, and horribly addictive. It truly is the Pringles of gaming.

If you're not someone who gets too existential about the games they play, then step right up.

Faster, faster, the dizzying spins. The rainbow streaks. Man, the blue tunnels. Mind the gap.

When Chaotic Box produces a unified binary for iPad users, this will be an essential app, but right now it feels like an excellent game held back by some minor design quirks.

Far more welcoming to button-mashers than Street Fighter IV, this is a game in which you can tap stuff and watch sparkly miracles happen. But to begin to understand and master its systems will take just as much practice as it did in Ono's game – and quicker reactions to boot.

But with a miserly six songs present in the set list (versus 28 songs in the marginally more expensive Rock Band), and a pathetic selection of songs in the store, it hardly hits the ground running.

Unlike Canabalt, a definite structure awaits, with 30 levels to bound through - each with checkpoints - allowing you the chance to become mired in gleeful trial and error. He might have vengeance in his heart, this Gravity Guy, but his aim is true.

As simple and fun as Fruit Ninja evidently is, it feels like a Wario Ware game isolated for a single release.

The game's watered-down nature is likely to appeal to those of a casual gaming disposition looking for a quick game on the commute to work - but if you're hoping to carry around the FM experience you know and love in your pocket, be prepared to be left feeling slightly underwhelmed.

If you're looking for a game that will end your Angry Birds obsession, hit Flick Kick Football up. It could well be your new favourite waste of time.

Offering all the satisfaction of flossing with overcooked spaghetti, FIFA 11 provides an object lesson in how not to make a football title for mobile platforms.

Being a blatant clone doesn't preclude I Must Run from being enjoyable, though, especially now you can pick it up for free.

As is seemingly the law with platform games, new abilities get bolted on, the challenge becomes more multi-faceted, you go blue in the face, forget to breathe, and pass out in front of your PS3 from platformitis. It's a common condition. Look it up.

Viewed without the surly baggage of a retro purist, you'll take it for what it is: a jolly old-school throwback with dozens of dastardly levels to mine and a hideous art style. Can you dig it?

With a loveable art style and knockabout humour adding gloss to its warmly familiar gameplay, Tales From Space: About A Blob is the perfect platform snack.

With its demented twist on tower defence, ZombieSmash is not only a quite brilliant timesink, but a sure-fire way of getting a train carriage all to yourself.

It's intelligently designed, skilful and quick to play, and intentionally egalitarian.

As downloads go, this is generous and imaginative, then, and the richness of the world is more than enough to make up for an occasionally tricksy camera, a fair amount of backtracking and a tendency to pad things out as it heads towards the final act.

All of this would have been acceptable in the nineties, but expectations change. Sure, it's only a few quid, but for once it feels like you're getting what you pay for.

If you can look past the lack of polish and horrible graphics, there's a compelling and unique take on cover-based shooters here, along with an interesting lesson on how games deal with plot. It's a rewarding little game, if you can hack it.

If you can look past the lack of polish and horrible graphics, there's a compelling and unique take on cover-based shooters here, along with an interesting lesson on how games deal with plot. It's a rewarding little game, if you can hack it.

It's a long journey through this huge game and TDU2 offers an unrefined, bumpy ride. Thankfully, if it all gets too much, you can set the grind aside for a long journey of your own – just following your front wheels across the islands, revelling in one of the great videogame open worlds...Unsteady but passionate and ambitious, TDU2 is fantastic escapism. It's just a shame it sometimes needs to escape from itself.

Given that the original came features eight levels of a similar quality (and can be tried out free first), you might be better off checking out the original first. If you just can't get enough, come back for second helpings.

We should reserve judgement until Namco releases a proper version, but from what we've seen, it's worth it.

At this early stage, there's only 10 levels to battle through, but with more to be added in Surveillant's upcoming free update, this is a keeper.

Quite unlike anything you've played, Osmos is the kind of game even Brian Eno would admire.

Hot Pursuit sees the publishing behemoth finally doing justice to its properties.

It's a delightful nod to early eighties platforming, but one held back by an ill-suited input method.

MaXplosion might lack some of the depth of its rival, but given that it's less than a tenth of the price, it's entitled to. Buy both with the money you're not spending on beer tonight. Make everyone happy.

Mobile games always work best when they're simple and refined, but LEGO Harry Potter's debut on iOS feels flabby and unfocused.

The bottom line is that Guardian of Light is plainly ill-suited to touch-screen controls, so if you like what you see, you're far better off playing it on the platforms it was actually designed for.

Set over seven beautiful retro-style levels, half the fun of The Incident is in seeing what craziness can be thrown your way next while humming along to the giddy chiptune.

Nice work, Revolution. With BASS and now Broken Sword, the developer has proved that the iPhone can handily support some of the best classic adventure games.

Braveheart is completely mindless yet absorbing, repetitive hack-and-slash fun. Looks great, won't change the world, simple as the Beckhams, but what the hell: absolutely no buyer's remorse – guaranteed!

It's not all bad, though. Unlike Papaya Studio's murderously terrible Ben 10 efforts, Vilgax Attacks and Cosmic Destruction, The Rise Of Hex opts for thoughtful-but-repetitive Shadow Complex-lite 2D platform-puzzling.

Go and bust some heads and sever some spiky limbs in the name of slightly disturbing entertainment.

If it had a decent checkpoint system, Babylonian Twins would be excellent, so let's hope future builds respond to the feedback.

Fans of Killzone 2 will love the improved multiplayer, but may find that the single-player side of things has lost a lot of its identity. It's always polished and breathlessly paced, but it no longer offers a distinct change of pace from the rest of the shooter herd.

As relentlessly daft and shallow as it is, Nail'd is a very hard game to dislike. It's almost tailor-made for a weekend rental, which should give you enough time to rinse the single-player, have a few knockabout online races, and return it before the simplicity and repetition sours the happy memories of your brief time with it.

First Strike, then, is a well-balanced collection of different styles of map, its highlights undoubtedly favouring those who tend to play away from Free For All and Team Death Match.

Falls awkwardly between two stools; neither retro enough for the purists, nor accessible enough by contemporary standards, it's a disappointing backwards step from its flawed but fascinating forebear.

But as much as I'm certain I should be warning you off this bizarre, broken thing, I can't quite bring myself to do it. Clearly, if they'd localised it properly, fixed the numerous bugs, and made it in an engine that remembers John Major as Prime Minister, the score would go up significantly.

For pennies, you really can't go wrong. Just don't expect too much, and you might just find Dracula satisfying in an endearingly low-budget sort of way.

While some players may find Doom a little too twitchy an experience for the iPhone, Classic succeeds because the basic formula is so beautifully uncomplicated: a series of rudimentary pleasures ranging from spotting something nasty, through to blowing it to pieces, and then stepping over the corpse.

Once described as "a Tetris for the 21st Century", there's a beautiful design simplicity that belies some of the most fiendish block-sliding puzzle design you've ever encountered.

You might somehow eke a crumb of satisfaction out of discovering new weapons, but the chances are it'll just make you want to boot up the real thing on a home console. The sooner this stench of mobile putrefaction is buried out of sight, the happier we'll all be.

Pitched perfectly for casual on-the-move play, it's the kind of game you can happily fill a couple of bored minutes with, or power through for a couple of hours, trying to snag every star. With 100 stages included for starters, and more on the way via updates, welcome to your new favourite waste of time.

With 24 levels to work through, and a entire Winter Assault campaign thrown in as an added bonus, Crap Of Defense boasts untold hours of palpitating fun for its paltry asking price.

During hectic moments, the friction of the screen tends to work against you, while the tilt controls are simply too sensitive to be usable.

It's stupid. It's simple. You probably won't want to bother playing something so absurdly shallow. And, hours later, you might just be able to convince yourself that you've got something better to do.

Depending on the response, Minter reckons this won't be the last the iOS market will be seeing from him. With the prospect of more enjoyably warped re-imaginings like this, maybe his best work is yet to come.

Unexpectedly original.

The game itself continues to justify its enduring popularity, thanks to sharp writing, narrative intrigue, quality voiceovers and concise puzzles that challenge but rarely frustrate. Maybe if enough of you buy this one, we can persuade Cecil and co. to finally deliver us an all-new game.

This apparent desire to cut to the chase means that you'll blast through the 12 chapters in about four hours; short enough for the repetition not to set in, but long enough to satisfy. As a taste of what's to come, this is not to be missed.

There's a strange kind of charm in the very concept of Babel Rising. The infidels may be building a tower, but Bulkypix has built a folly - and while I'm glad I don't have to play it any more, I'm at least a little bit happy that it exists.

Although decent fun in short bursts, Age Of Zombies is a little too relentlessly repetitive to enjoy over the longer term, and this general lack of variety makes the inflated price seem a tad questionable.

If you can live with the lo-fi elements, there's an awful lot to enjoy.

The presence of three subtly different modes (Dodge, Juggle and Infinite) twists the rules a touch, but its lustre soon diminishes. What you're left with is the skeleton of a cute idea, but for the price, that's probably fair enough.

Endearingly odd.

Every time you think you've had enough, a spark of inspiration drives you on to the next one, and the next thing you know, you've missed your stop and you don't even mind.

Anything that's this determined to be unhinged is thoroughly deserving of our loose change.

Halcyon might well ask that you untangle the currents of the wind, land, sea and air, but it's as vicious and unpredictable as a Friday evening jog across Victoria Station concourse.

With its nugget-sized level design, intuitive mechanics and impressively lavish production values, Perfect Cell is one of those perfect on-the-road games to savour one tasty chunk at a time.

With iPhone games, it's the absolute minimum requirement to get the controls right, but in that regard Plunderland fails. And considering that it seems to get everything else right, that's a big shame.

So get it. Get it because it's ferociously satisfying, well designed and well executed. Get it because it easily reaches far greater heights than a mere tech show-off. In fact, it's so much fun I didn't even feel the need to mention Unreal Engine 3 once. Except there. Damn.

Poorly upscaled visuals and a price wholly out-of-step with what you'd expect.

While it's a bit on the short side and a tad easy, this is a hugely promising start for Launching Pad Games. More, please.

I'm all for artistic-minded developers that push the boundaries of convention and dare to try new things - I just want to be entertained along the way. Is that too much to ask?

If the team can perhaps fix a few niggling issues via an update A.R.E.S. will be well worth a look, but until then this is a case of try before you buy.

A few more of these and the big boys will be casting a few nervous glances in the direction of the download sector.