And viewed as what it's meant to be - a game for kids - Jambo! Safari isn't too bad. It's simple to understand and there's plenty of stuff to do. You get to drive a big car and throw ropes about and pat lions. There are no guns or scary bits. You might even learn something, although nothing you learn will be very interesting.

It can't engage and enchant groups in the way Wii Fit does, nor does it attempt to. But as I said the first time around, if you are serious about improving your fitness levels and have neither the inclination nor the funds to join a gym, Active is currently the best of its kind

Whereas once we treated Left 4 Dead as a stopgap between Half-Lifes, this is no longer a weird little side project with modest expectations, and Valve is confident enough to play around with it, safe in the knowledge that you can trust your players. Left 4 Dead proved it. And whereas that game had a personality, this one is overflowing with it.

Without a doubt, EA isn't treating the expansion of The Sims 3 lightly - World Adventures might be a bit of a thematic stumble, but it makes for a significantly bigger and more varied game, far more so than any prior Sims 1 or 2 expansion has achieved. It's impossible not to recommend it to avid Sims players, but anti-Sims snobs will inevitably find it to be an annoying side-order of collectormania and repetitive puzzles.

Once on-track, few F1 games have managed to be as encouraging when it comes to pushing yourself to attack corners and better your lap time, and fewer still have proved as much fun. This may not be the revolution the Formula 1 sub-genre has been waiting for, but you're not likely to find many Wii owners complaining.

Who knew that, locked in the time-honoured traditions of Super Mario Bros., one of the greatest co-op games ever was waiting to get out? Well, Shigeru Miyamoto did. In unleashing it, Nintendo hasn't moved its classic series forward one jot; it hasn't had to. But it has given it a riotous new lease of life.

It's fundamentally a great game and the best option for console-owning quiz fans.

Modern Warfare 2 balances the spectacle and silliness of its single-player campaign with a deep, enduring multiplayer core, carefully covering its bases for players of all persuasions. But there is no denying it seeks merely to build upon the successes of its forebear while doing very little to expand its scope or redefine them.

Modern Warfare 2 balances the spectacle and silliness of its single-player campaign with a deep, enduring multiplayer core, carefully covering its bases for players of all persuasions. But there is no denying it seeks merely to build upon the successes of its forebear while doing very little to expand its scope or redefine them.

Want a challenging, tactical experience with long-term rewards? Then PES 2010 is the game for you, though if you bought last year's version you may want to give the outlay some serious thought as this year's nuances are few and far between.

Although still passably entertaining much of the time, stood next to other shooters on the Wii it doesn't even come close to matching the look and feel of games designed specifically for the system.

This is no Trials HD, but it's still great to play as a chummy pass-the-controller game, and nice to have stuck on an SD card for a rainy Sunday afternoon when there are no Columbo re-runs to watch on television. Nostalgic, colourful and modest, this is retro-gaming at its least self-conscious.

Shaun White's ideas are starting to look a little thin on the ground. You'll still likely enjoy playing World Stage for the four or five hours it will take to see a fair amount of what's on offer, but when it's all over, it may be harder to argue that the game itself is particularly special.

Despite all that, you may find that you can't quite forget Fatale, that you come back to its problems, its frustrations, and its ambiguities even when the memories of more fully-realised games have faded. Trapped somewhere between survival horrors and full-blown gallery installations, Tale of Tales remains a fascinating studio.

As it is this is kind of game that neither soaks up my general leisure time, not leaves me yearning for a clan. I've enjoyed my time messing around with it, but I don't feel compelled to return to the game for more serious consideration, as I seem to with a whole bunch of other multiplayer titles.

In its desperation to infuse this setting with "maturity" - be it of the sober, political kind, or the game's painfully clumsy gore and sex - BioWare has forgotten the key ingredient of any fantasy: the fantastical. Without it, you're still left with a competent, often compelling, impressively detailed and immense RPG, but it's one that casts no spell.

Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier is one of the best platformers available for PSP (the other ones being LittleBigPlanet and the three-year-old Daxter). It also stands as evidence that there's life in the old Naughty Dog series yet. Any chance of a Jak game for PS3 then?

Ultimately as pointless as it is lovable.

Ultimately as pointless as it is lovable.

PES 2010's team management options are a warning sign that the Japanese developer still has some tricks up its sleeve, and people for whom the transition to another football game is simply too much to countenance will buy and enjoy this, and discover it still plays a good, grass-roots game. For everyone else though, up is still down, because FIFA wins again.

What does make it a poor game is the crappy driving, ridiculous shooting, cackhanded interface and nonsense story.

RPG fanatics without a PC will probably want to fight their way through these flaws to get to the meat of Dragon Age: Origins - which is all still hanging off the bone, and which still makes for a filling, if slightly flavourless, meal. But they won't be able to escape the knowledge that they're playing an inferior version, a game that's been squeezed into a suit that doesn't fit. PC gamers can - with a flick of the mouse-wheel - look down on them.

Band Hero does not add anything to what we already saw in Guitar Hero 5, so in the end buying it just depends on your opinion about its track list.

Where Guitar Hero 5 hauled the series up to a quality plateau, adding a load of features that fans of the series can really appreciate, Band Hero is nothing more or less than a reskin. And even though it's a reskin of a superb game, the lack of concern for the credibility of the music and presentation can't help but cheapen it.

Even the distinction between car classes fails to develop the gameplay, and within the first half an hour you feel like you've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. It might scream 'excitement' at the top of its tiny lungs, then, but Need For Speed: Nitro's initially endearing zest quickly degenerates into repetitive strain.

Not everyone is going to enjoy this. Some people will never warm to Ubisoft's anarchic little fiends, many will find the constant enthusiasm draining. This isn't a purchase for hardcore enthusiasts or steely battlefield veterans with a thousand-yard stare and a pico-second response time. The rest of you, should you be able to engage your inner child, could well find a big old slice of the fun pie cooling on your windowsill.

While FIFA Manager 10 is by no means a poor game, there's an underlying suspicion that the energy that's been pumped into the hit-and-miss multiplayer features would have been better spent on genuinely innovating the single-player game, which sadly feels a little too similar to last year and a little tactically thin compared to FM and CM.

Perhaps Tony Prince does nothing to drag the series forward - somewhat fittingly for a man with his head stuck in the eighties - but the episode Rockstar has named in his honour is a colourful and pleasingly unpredictable adventure that gets better throughout and ends on a high.

Had Namco spent a bit less time on the forgettable Scenario Campaign and more on sorting out the netcode, however, this could have gone higher. A miracle patch would be very helpful.

Had Namco spent a bit less time on the forgettable Scenario Campaign and more on sorting out the netcode, however, this could have gone higher. A miracle patch would be very helpful.

There are no glaring technical problems, or insurmountable design cock-ups, just a rather dull platformer with a central creative gimmick that's too clumsy to be liberating, poorly incorporated into the action and often bizarrely sidelined by the game's structure.

Weak multiplayer and control issues prevent it from being the instant classic Guitar Hero was four year ago, but FreeStyleGames has nevertheless created a slick and enormously enjoyable music game that deserves to succeed and evolve.

Turn 10 has sacrificed flash for a faultless 60 frames a second, and understood that in simulation, what you feel is far more important than what you see. It has diverted all of the 360's resources to giving you the smoothest, most believable, most physically rewarding drive you've ever had.

It's not that A Crack in Time is all fur coat and no knickers. The problem is, it's all fur coat and the same knickers it's been wearing for seven years. Time for a change.

More time, heart and money has gone into this than any other free game I can remember playing, and I think Riot Games is going to make good on its promise of post-release development. Until further notice, this is the DOTA game you should be playing.

There are clearly some talented people at Playlogic - notably whoever did the endearing cut-scenes, which play out like Hanna-Barbera doing The Matrix. How something so colourful and quirky became so bland is a mystery of the creative process.

Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all, that it so confidently and prettily takes the fight to Blizzard is an enormous compliment about how well put-together this is.

Borderlands is unusual, playable, and an artfully violent step in an interesting direction for Gearbox. The story aspect of the game could have been better - I'd love to have seen the role-playing influence extend beyond stats, levels and loot - and the ending is a disappointment. Even so, this should be a favourite game of the year for a huge number of people, since it plugs into gamer impulses at such a fundamental level.

It's just a shame that while EyePet has clearly been designed to stretch the PlayStation Eye hardware, it never tests the boundaries of the virtual life genre with the same vigour.

The art style is very appealing, with lots of crisp cartoon sprites, but the core gameplay feels truncated and shallow.

Panzer General: Allied Assault is not for everyone. It will definitely gain a small subset of rabidly devoted XBLA players and rightly so - it's a great tactical turn-based game. But the average gamer will be a long way outside of their comfort zone.

And, of course, there's the music. Which, as we've already is discussed, is awesome. The fight to have this music piped through every PA, loudspeaker and radio station in Britain begins now. Viva la revolution.

Having convincingly overtaken its main rival last year, FIFA 10 nevertheless consolidates its lead with great authority. Last year, I said FIFA feels like football, rewards football, and punishes football for football reasons. The difference between FIFA 09 and FIFA 10 is that the latter knows exactly where the former fell short of that, and makes up the distance in almost every case.

Want instant pick-up-and-play entertainment from a game that doesn't take itself too seriously? Then FIFA 10's Wii waggling action is the way to go, so long as you're prepared for the novelty to wane fairly quickly.

Between the clever mission design, comedy storyline and imaginative drug-dealing angle, it represents many hours of play, all of which live up to its legacy.

Way of the Samurai 3 wastes too much energy juggling the numerous ways it can end your story and not nearly enough on making the journey to get there worthwhile.

The real problem, however, is that Lips: Number One Hits doesn't just fail to move this series forward - it fails to resolve the serious issues with the first game.

Space Invaders Extreme 2 is more balanced and involving than its predecessor. Its intricate combo scoring is more accessible, deeper and more addictive than the first game's, and it has plenty of longevity.

It's a tightly designed adventure, in other words, and although I'm not willing to mention Winter of the Melodias and its season-switching intricacies in same breath as Link to the Past, Frontier's game certainly makes a decent My First Metroid, bringing the environment and Toku's powers together in a series of clever set-pieces while the map grows ever busier as his agility increases.

Machinarium is a treat for the senses that demands more of your brain, a paradoxically gentle yet punishing riff on a genre that, until now, had been revived but sadly defanged for modern players.

Repetitious combat, shallow RPG elements, and imagination-free quests might put you off. But if the basic process of combat and casual partying up for missions a few minutes grabs you, you'll forgive Dragonica a lot.

But for those willing to sit back and savour the unhurriedness, the experience can be both enlightening and rewarding, revealing as it does truths about this world even as it paints a vivid picture of another. Axel should be proud: that surely is the highest calling of any artist.

Schafer, Double Fine, and Black haven't just created a story about roadies: they've become them, scuttling about energetically, heads down and minds focused, as they pull a handful of simple props together in order to put on an amazing show.

Whether or not the multiplayer sticks, however, is arguably a footnote, because at the core of Uncharted 2 is an action-adventure masterpiece whose minor flaws are washed away on a tide of rhythm and spectacle - one that would still be an essential experience even without the option to pull your friends off cliffs and play capture-the-heirloom.

There's no sense of urgency or pressure to break the mood. It's a game that invites you to wallow in its languid depths, wriggle your toes, stretch your brain a little and take in the view.

It's true to say that Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is no Mario Kart. But it's a fun, polished party game with broad appeal, and a marked improvement over the previous one.

To be fair to publisher Rising Star, it does deserve tremendous credit for regularly bringing unheralded, obscure Asian titles to Europe. Sadly though, in the case of Ju-On: The Grudge, it has picked probably the most excruciatingly leaden survival-horror game of all time, and that took some doing.

While Half-Minute Hero will be best appreciated by gamers familiar with its surface inspirations, it can nevertheless be savoured by anyone.

I've enjoyed myself here, but Cities XL does not live up to its ambitions. The solo city-builder is a well-paced project for those who like to plot boulevards, but the appeal of the larger game remains unresolved.

Highly addictive.

The blend of emotions and puzzle mechanics in Lucidity invites more than a few comparisons with Braid. But while the melancholic tone and understated delivery suggests a good match, in truth, Lucasart's game is neither as complex or as original.

A nice puzzle/adventure based on struggle and sadness, able to grab the player in a beautiful world made of paper and shadows. LucasArts has created a deep gameplay system evolving the Lemmings formula and linking it to a Tetris touch. Try it and you'll experience few hours of intense pleasure.

Afrika is one of the most pleasant, enjoyable and gently engrossing games I've played in a while. It's a shame Sony isn't releasing it here, and it's worth importing. [JPN Import]

There is, however, just enough range between its difficulties to appease both ends of the spectrum: those who want an unflinching recreation of island-based warfare, and those who want a manageable, mostly enjoyable military videogame. But its mild shortcomings ensure that, until Codemasters can fill its framework with a little more imagination and purpose, neither group will come away fanatical about the effort.

Anyone with a taste for realistic military entertainment will find plenty to enjoy here, but its hard to shake the feeling that Operation Flashpoint hasn't got the brave, superbly equipped sequel it truly deserved.

Right from first touch, it's clear that Republic Heroes hasn't undergone nearly enough of this sort of testing, and the uninspired foundations are further compromised as they are built upon. As a result, this is a product that will make children frustrated and unhappy, the very opposite of that to which Star Wars should aspire.

Right from first touch, it's clear that Republic Heroes hasn't undergone nearly enough of this sort of testing, and the uninspired foundations are further compromised as they are built upon. As a result, this is a product that will make children frustrated and unhappy, the very opposite of that to which Star Wars should aspire.

It's stoic, uncompromising, difficult to get to know, but also deep, intriguingly disturbed and perversely rewarding. You can learn to love Demon's Souls like few other games in the world. But only if you're prepared to give yourself over to it. [JPN Import]

With just six short chapters to wade through, Saw is never in any danger of outstaying its welcome, despite its flaws, and that's probably just as well. Its puzzle-centric design is satisfying for a while, but the game's reliance on the same stock challenges wears thin, as does the hilariously broken combat.

With just six short chapters to wade through, Saw is never in any danger of outstaying its welcome, despite its flaws, and that's probably just as well. Its puzzle-centric design is satisfying for a while, but the game's reliance on the same stock challenges wears thin, as does the hilariously broken combat.

This rock-solid Race 07 variant is a difficult game to wholeheartedly recommend, despite being superb in both single and multiplayer.

Despite doing its level best to offer impressive variety, slick 3D visuals, and a decent raft of challenging stages, it's a game that seems determined to irritate the player.

Wii Fit Plus is indeed an enhanced version of the original, as Miyamoto said. It's just a shame those enhancements aren't expansive or extensive enough to guarantee long-term value, or to justify the higher SRP.

Ironically, while the PC version inarguably shows up the flaws in the 360 effort all the more, it also fares far worse when compared to its peers. Consoles have relatively few RPGs in this traditional mould, but on the PC the competition is much fiercer and so well-intentioned failures are harder to tolerate.

The titles that truly impress on bite-sized platforms are rarely those that try to ape "proper games", but the ones that turn hardware and storage restrictions into opportunities and innovations. Hero of Sparta isn't one of those games, and there are better Minis more deserving of your money.

With a clean, pleasing visual style and gameplay that reveals its nuances through natural play, Fieldrunners is a wonderfully crafted casual nugget. It's a shame that more hasn't been added for this version, but that's no reason not to surrender to its charm.

If it were a 59p iPhone app it might be easier to overlook such clumsy and uninspired construction - or at least not feel too aggrieved when you delete it - but by staking a place at the top end of the Minis price list, Alien Havoc draws too much attention to its shortcomings.

Ultimately, all Funky Punch has going for it is the price. It's certainly cheaper than Tekken, but it's also a pale shadow of virtually all its genre peers. If you value frugality over actual value for money, then by all means give this a spin.

This is a restrained and worthy modern update that keeps the essentials clutter-free.

The game isn't particularly satisfying or even all that interesting.

Coupled with archaic AI and the isolating absence of PlayStation Network support, this makes for a game that feels unfocused and regressive, despite its considerable technical and mechanical accomplishments.

The opportunity to record your own live music over the top of your sequenced compositions, to export Midi files with your loops and to save out songs as .wavs are features that go beyond where console-based music packages have ventured before.

Luckily for a game with such unapologetic cinematic pretensions, Dead Space: Extraction does a fine job of weaving an engaging sci-fi narrative into a slick action game. Far from being a stripped-down side-show to the main event, Extraction provides yet another reminder of how brainlessly entertaining the on-rails shooter can be when it's done properly.

However, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge has inherited a few too many of its predecessor's weaknesses as well: a lumpy single player campaign, some arbitrary physics made more noticeable by the less sophisticated engine, and a tendency for the less inspired tracks to merge into one grimy muddle.

As games steadily become more ingratiating, Team Ninja offers you an increasingly rare prospect: the chance to truly master something brutal.

Another strong, if understated slab of zombie-smashing from the people who wouldn't be told that a four-player FPS that lasts four hours was commercial suicide. In 24 hours I've already gone through it nearly a dozen times in various modes on Xbox 360, and I don't regret parting with five quid for the privilege (in fact, it was mis-priced at 800 MSP when I bought it, and I don't regret that either).

Ion Assault is an extremely polished and well-executed twist on a very pure gaming genre.

A streamlined, structured, gorgeous grind, an addictive and even rewarding grind if you're that way inclined, but a grind nonetheless. An ultimately grim and unvarying pursuit.

Its value for money is significant: there is a lot of bulk here, much of it excellent. But its wider value to gaming, to Takahashi's message and to the series it celebrates, is diminished. Like a balloon deflating, Katamari Forever feels like the series' final exhale, all puff and energy now gone from the idea. Metaphor!

It's the shadow cast by Halo 3 itself, and its contemporaries then and since, that proves slightly too long and broad for Bungie's valiant efforts of the past 18 months to escape, because no matter the quality of what's on offer, they can't reasonably make the same demand of your wallet, and yet they still do.

A thoroughly generic game with overly simplified beat-'em-up mechanics, extremely repetitive gameplay, and a crushing lack of variety.

For something so apocalyptic, it feels like it's got a bright future ahead of it.

At a lower price point, this underachieving might be tolerable, but for 1000 Nintendo Points we'd hope for something that had more than a good idea and abundant promise to its name.

It's shamelessly derivative, gloriously over-the-top and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Most of all, it's brilliant fun.

SHIFT is a solid basis to start building a motor sport series on. It's got all the features you expect, it looks fantastic, and the track action is exciting, if fraught.

The new elements fail to meet expectations, but the bash-and-grind basics haven't changed at all.

If you're a newcomer to the series, this iteration is well worth the investment. It's a highly polished game with instantly accessible gameplay, a smooth difficulty curve and some fun new power-ups. There's scope for both long-term strategising and mindless ball-blasting.

Inside Story is absolutely a return to form.