So that's 400 Microsoft Points (£3.40 / €4.80) for a mission that certainly wouldn't make it into the game's ten best quests, and two other additions that are essentially little more than variations on ideas from Fable II.

Active 2 on Wii is a confident addition to the best fitness series on any platform, and the new features strengthen the offering - if not revolutionising it as EA would have us believe.

You won't find a game on PS3 right now that will work you harder than Active 2 – but I want to see EA Canada working up more of a sweat next time.

Its redeeming features are those it shares with Odyssey to the West – a sweet and nicely told story, an essential humanity. However, their redemptive powers are outdone by anachronistic trial-and-error gameplay, which grinds its gears and snaps your patience once too often.

It's just a pity that a developer with the unmistakable talent of Housemarque hasn't seized the opportunity to tweak, twist or otherwise refresh an overused formula.

Beyond the HD refresh, you can play all three games in 3D if you've got the right kind of telly; it's a decent stab at giving the games extra depth without going overboard, although you can't turn on the 3D until the game gets started, which is a bit clunky.

No-one cared when this was released on PSP in summer 2009, and they certainly won't give a flying fig about it now.

The truth is that Hudson's perennial classic is still best played in its original form without the associated fluff, so if you've held out for the last 27 years, perhaps it's time you succumbed to being continually blown into little chunks by your friends.

For those with infinite patience and actual artistic skill, then Creation Mode might offer some entertainment, giving you the chance to show off your talents, or, more likely, import pictures to daub obscenities over.

With its strict linearity preventing you from trying out songs in the order of your choosing, it's a little too easy to get snagged on one in particular. Without even basic hints on offer, you can end up faffing around to no effect for ages.

Sometimes the formula twists slightly, with the task focusing on, for example, helping prisoners bust out of prison or a simple checkpoint race. For the most part, mind you, it's smashing for smashing's sake, and therefore entertaining in short bursts, but a bit mindlessly intense over the long haul.

But perhaps the greatest value of this pack is the packaging itself. Owning a physical copy of Super Mario All-Stars on Wii allows these games to sit proudly on your shelf, a statement to everyone who enters your home and sees it.

A game that entertains without inspiring, doing enough to settle comfortably into the realms of "good" while never exerting the additional effort required to raise expectations any higher.

You might not readily associate the humble rat with an ability to get their groove on, but needs must when you're being held captive in a lab and you've got electrodes attached to your genitals.

This is a robust FPS, comfortably the strongest on its platform and, while derivative of its strongest rivals, it's still able to compete in key areas.

An unqualified triumph. It's stuffed with content but rarely for the sake of it, and knowing Criterion it will be handsomely supported for months to come, even though it's already the best pure arcade racing game since Burnout Paradise.

The campaign is relentlessly aggressive and spectacular – a Jerry Bruckheimer tribute act stuck in permanent encore – while the multiplayer modes are a mixture of smart tweaks to working formulas, as focused on protecting that guaranteed bottom line as the campaign's yellow objective cursor is on making sure you never falter.

This game has the potential to win over a whole new generation, and to do so without eliciting any whinges from those of us old enough to remember the taste of a McRib washed down with Tab Clear.

Perhaps Sports Island Freedom is best summed up by the person I forced to help me test out the multiplayer mode. His verdict, following several long minutes of tedious menu navigation and 48 seconds of gameplay: "What is the point of this? It is appalling."

Bejeweled 3 is one-more-go gaming at its most polished.

For all its big ideas, Disney Epic Mickey never quite weaves its disparate strands into a convincing whole. Its conceptual ambition is let down by merely adequate mechanics, and Mickey himself remains a rather abstract figure at the centre of it all.

It's an off-kilter vision of the future, a cumbersome game with odd priorities, certainly. But it's equally a game that heads off in unexpected and exciting directions, makes a few notable improvements, and overflows with love – for cars, for games technology and for its own mad pursuit.

This isn't how nostalgia is supposed to feel.

This isn't how nostalgia is supposed to feel.

There's a solid, clever, comprehensive fitness game buried away in here that's fighting to get out. And I hope EA can at least issue a patch that resolves some of these problems.

With the full complement of players, NBA Jam is great fun in short bursts, but it's impossible not to feel that EA has swamped a simple game with extraneous modes desperately to try and justify a retail release.

With the full complement of players, NBA Jam is great fun in short bursts, but it's impossible not to feel that EA has swamped a simple game with extraneous modes desperately to try and justify a retail release.

Even Harry, Ron and Hermione's limp-wristed spell-casting animation looks half-hearted. It's an insult to the fiction, an insult to the increasingly good films, and an insult to bad videogames.

Players wanting an exciting, fast-paced, on-rails light gun shooter on the Wii are far better served by SEGA's Ghost Squad and House of the Dead: Overkill. The developer's failure to fully embrace the arcade approach ensures this game serves no-one, least of all its tired licence.

A masterful combination of the many things that have striven to define the series in the past, each presented at its best and accentuated by considered design.

Despite the wealth of options and the addition of infinite continues – which will no doubt lead some to complain that it can be completed in 20 minutes – Guwange makes few concessions to a modern audience, and as such, Cave has almost certainly restricted its game to a niche crowd. But that's an observation, not a criticism.

There are tried-and-tested action-game formulae in Sonic Colours, and while they're consistently well-executed, there's little inherently new or innovative on show. For me, Sonic Colours' pace and thrill-power overcome these concerns. It's a simple, neon-tinged blast of action gaming, and sometimes, that's all you really want.

On consoles, at heart, it's the same rewarding, anecdote-rich and very personal experience as it ever was. If you've got the option, then the PC version is still the one to go for, but in every significant way, this is just as good.

With a more refined combat system, BGT would be a fine prospect at its slim price tag. As it is, it doesn't quite live up to its title, but then Fairly Good Time doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

YourShape revolutionises fitness gaming with its amazing use of technology, but fails to back that up with a game that does enough to encourage you to be active. Which is ultimately the whole point.

There are hours of fun on offer here for serious solo players and groups of drunk idiots alike.

Our advice: load Adventures as soon as you unpack your Kinect and enjoy it, preferably with small children to hand. Within a couple of weeks it will be gathering dust: another brave bundled game, first up out of the trenches, first to fall.

But as a lively, funny, polished and varied genre title that will slap a smile on the face of the most jaded cynic, Kinect Sports does its job admirably.

Of all the Kinect launch titles, this is perhaps the one with the most actual substance. Hopefully it's but a hint of things to come.

Mostly, the game disappoints because it fails to pass the Brand Name Test. Would we still care if it wasn't James Bond? Almost certainly not.

At its best, it's all very bite-sized and relaxing, like a bucket of M&S flapjack bites, a glass of red and some ill-gotten American-strength meds.

Real pinball fanatics will be in tinkering heaven, too, thanks to the ability to fiddle endlessly with all manner of settings. Just don't get into a conversation with anyone who does this, ok?

This is, frankly, how DLC should be done. Persistent and minor issues with the game engine aside, Undead Nightmare offers a generous amount of polished AAA-grade new material and finally gives fans of the single-player game a compelling reason to dust off their spurs and head back to the ranch.

Breathtaking in ambition and crafted with the skill of a studio that's been making music games for 15 years, Rock Band 3 is Harmonix's masterpiece – a towering achievement not just for the genre, but for the medium itself.

5th Cell's puzzler was always astonishing, then, but now it's enjoyable to play, too. That's nice.

Like labelmate Trinity Universe, Atelier Rorona is a hard game to dislike, but it ultimately feels a little too tied to JRPG convention for its ideas to bear fruit. It might be admirable for a game to promote such a diligent work ethic, but it never quite rewards you handsomely enough for your efforts.

A game that feels like it was created out of obligation rather than inspiration.

It may be messy and clunky from time to time along the way, but Fable III is only guilty of indulging its designers' whim at the expense of necessary polish, and in the royal scheme of things it's a crime you're happy to pardon. Many more RPGs will follow between now and whatever Lionhead does next with the series, but few if any will possess half as much heart, and most importantly, whatever else they have to offer, none will have Albion.

It's a staggering achievement that makes it difficult to imagine a better handheld God of War today. And yet, as with the stories upon which it's based, this is a game with nothing new to say, a myth told many times before and, in some cases, told better.

But the really depressing thing about PlayFirst's spirit-crushing little game is that it'll probably sell enough to result in a deluge of the bloody things, and force us to question the sanity of mankind. Again.

But the really depressing thing about PlayFirst's spirit-crushing little game is that it'll probably sell enough to result in a deluge of the bloody things, and force us to question the sanity of mankind. Again.

Despite the pretence of gaming structure, let's call The Polynomial what it is: an invitation to sit around in self-medicated bliss.

Indeed, with its comic visuals and light-hearted touches at every step, Swords And Soldiers wants to be this year's Plants vs. Zombies, and damn near succeeds.

The game is all the better because it doesn't strain to give its puzzles a superficial connection to its script – I don't need to see that pointless struggle.

There's nothing sadder than a great idea wasted, but it's no longer enough to simply come up with a concept and let it do the heavy lifting for the entire length of a game.

In short, it takes having fun extremely seriously. As long as you've got the patience to handle it, you'll find that's no bad thing.

The idea of an interactive comic as narrative expansion is a sound one, but Ignition entirely fails to do the concept justice.

Sure, the poop gags are a little wearisome, but a sprinkling of the old Gilbert magic makes it a worthwhile ride.

It's another delightful look into the minds of children; a window into their vivid imaginations, and the wonderful places their ideas and dreams can take them – and you.

Just Dance 2 is impossible to play with a furious frown of concentration on your face, and just as impossible to play without a wide grin. It doesn't reduce music and dancing to precision beatmatching or button-pressing: it's about surrendering to the free-spirited, glorious silliness of it.

With an evident determination to cut the crap and get down to business, it's a tight, brutal no-nonsense corridor shooter. Completely predictable, but fun all the same.

Four heads might not necessarily be better than three, but it's yet another of a great many reasons why Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow compares poorly to the peers it so desperately tries to ape.

It certainly does little to advance the theory that videogames are responsible enough to tell stories within sensitive contexts - it's compelling and enjoyable to play on a visceral level, but it's a shame it lacks the creative bravery to match the courage of the heroes it so reveres.

A balanced game, at once idiosyncratic, infuriating, funny and ultimately compelling. In both its story and its systems, it holds life and undeath in delicate tension; and as a result, all the loud-mouth college humour and violence fail to mask its tender heart.

If Shank was an animated short, I'd happily roll a fat one and sit hurgh-hurghing on the sofa at the dumb grisliness of it all. But as a game, it just feels pointless and irritating, and about as engaging as repeatedly attacking the sofa with your own face.

For now, those prepared to invest the necessary commitment, ignore the blandness and live with the game's failings will find that – once on the dirt, gravel, snow or asphalt – WRC FIA World Rally Championship delivers moments that are indisputably thrilling.

Beneath Arcania's often outstanding art direction and technical achievement lies a dry spreadsheet of must-have RPG elements, none of which is sufficiently developed to compel and all of which fail to balance against one another.

Enslaved is a solid, well-built offering which is a pleasure to play. The excellent storytelling, great acting and fantastic pacing elevate it above the ranks of your average action adventure, and indeed your average videogame.

In short, this is the game SEGA should have made 15 years ago. It's just a shame that to be this good took ages.

In a perfect word, the meta-games would be as good as the mini-games themselves. But with four people, Lambrini and deely-boppers (just me?), Wii Party's still a reliable, if fairly thin, source of entertainment all the same.

It is, at best, a sidestep, one that neither advances its series nor the genre into which it has lunged.

Although it gets a lot right with a well-structured fighting system – which has a solid mix of subsystems to master – it doesn't have the same level of hardcore appeal as the current champion.

Obsidian has created a totally compelling world and its frustrations pale into insignificance compared to the immersive, obsessive experience on offer. Just like the scorched scenery that provides its epic backdrop, New Vegas is huge and sprawling, sometimes gaudy, even downright ugly at times – but always effortlessly, shamelessly entertaining.

Super Meat Boy starts out as just another indie game that revels in driving you crazy, but you end up crazy in love.

Doubtless the best third-person shooter ever to come out of Japan, Vanquish builds on Western developers' triumphs to push the genre in new, interesting directions, shifting the balance of power, and cementing Shinji Mikami's position as one of the best directors working in videogames today.

DJ Hero 2 is the freshest thing in rhythm gaming right now, a lifeline for people bored of guitars and drums and genre veterans craving the purer, simpler rhythm-action kick of a pre-Guitar Hero world.

There are reasons to play Allods: the visuals, the lore, the grab-bag of clever features, the astral ships, and the dim satisfaction that automatically comes from levelling up - for free! It's just that none of these are very good reasons, because this isn't a very good game.

A cliffhanger ending for a sequel to a seven-year-old game that most people haven't heard of just isn't acceptable. Plonk, it lands safely on [60].

The chucklesome cut-scenes and warbling background music briefly raise a smile, but beyond that this is only a mildly entertaining throwaway.

Art Academy's potential to encourage latent talent or simply inspire a new hobby shouldn't go unnoticed.

While FIFA 11 may be the better, more polished and controllable simulation of football, in many respects PES 2011 is the more charismatic of the two games. If you're only interested in the finished article then you might want to wait another year for further progress, but in the meantime PES fans can hold their heads high, and fans of the beautiful game are on the road to being spoiled for choice again in light of this encouraging instalment.

It's cute and clever, then, but still more than a little clunky.

From the outset, they've dulled the bold strokes of the Alan Wake concept in a desperation to ensure that everyone got the complete experience. Well, I got it. And I'm left pining for what could have been.

The idea of an interactive comic as narrative expansion is a sound one, but Ignition entirely fails to do the concept justice.

With goofy stupidity and smart one-liners pepping up the otherwise simple gameplay, it's the kind of game you'll happily trudge through just to see what nonsense Twisted Pixel can throw at you next. Frankly, it's worth it for the stat screen song alone.

So even though the wait continues for a 3D Castlevania that truly matches the elegance, complexity and spatial intelligence of the 2D games, this is a polished and enjoyable blast of musty Gothic action in its own right.

Its back-to-basics approach strips away much of the pointless frippery of the modern JRPG without stripping out the satisfaction of playing them. The DS isn't short of absorbing RPGs, but 4 Heroes of Light is a worthwhile addition, particularly for anyone with fond memories of simpler, happier times for Japanese role-playing.

Only dedicated deadheads need apply.

So, while Hydrophobia breaks new water, it treads old ground. The systems beneath the ebb and flow of its technical accomplishment are archaic and, without exception, lack finesse.

At its best FIFA 11 is enormous fun and brilliantly engineered, but in its battle to be more varied and realistic it has lost some of its momentum, and off the pitch returns are starting to diminish too.

At its best FIFA 11 is enormous fun and brilliantly engineered, but in its battle to be more varied and realistic it has lost some of its momentum, and off the pitch returns are starting to diminish too.

The game's central conceit, which has you infiltrating giant towers with the aim of bringing them down from the inside, encourages uninspiring, repetitive internal environments, a problem the game's art team fails to overcome.

It's revealing that Warriors' most famous track, Bohemian Rhapsody, is the one that most clearly highlights its limitations.

The Borderlands gameplay is still as strong as ever. This may be more of the same, but when the same is this good, it's hard to feel too aggrieved, even if it never quite feels like the experience is worth another 800 Points (£6.29 on PS3 and PC).

As well-intentioned as this remake probably was, the harsh truth is that the gameplay hasn't aged well. If you can stomach even a quarter of the game's 16 levels, you'll deserve a Medal of Honour for special feats of tolerance.

The best F1 season in years deserves the best F1 game in years – thankfully, that's exactly what it's got.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.