This collect-'em-all compulsion will see a certain type of gamer through, as will the charm and comedy of the Nippon Ichi fanboy. But for many gamers the infuriating platforming and a combat system that rewards pattern-learning and slow progression over fast, reaction-based advancement of Nippon Ichi's off-kilter design decisions will be insurmountable obstacles to true enjoyment.

It's a game that boasts an indisputable wider significance - but today, it's worthwhile primarily because it's a joyfully innocent fable, albeit one whose impact lies in the telling more than in the tale.

Shadow Dragon will live long in a lot of DS slots - and probably even long enough to show the US gamers who's boss for a while in 2048 or whenever it comes out over there. Sorry guys.

It is, simply, a game where you want to see what happens next, because whatever does happen next will be delicate, beautiful and pleasurable, and never so hurried as to overburden the spectacle and sense of immersion.

If you've never played a first-person shooter before, you'll probably be in love - this is as archetypal a corridor-shooter as has ever been made, and there's a reason why it works. But for anyone who's been running down corridors with shotguns for most of their adult life, this is so uninspired that you worry for the spark of Monolith's soul. You guys made "No One Lives Forever," remember? You're smart. You're better than this.

Ostensibly the same again, then, LocoRoco 2 nevertheless pulls its charm tight and burrows deeper into the mechanics, level layouts and set-pieces, presenting more elaborate rewards in visuals and gameplay, and doing a better job of sharing them with you so that you don't always feel as though you're searching for cuddly needles in a Teletubbies haystack. It comes across as a refined, more elaborately constructed sequel that remembers why it was good in the first place.

For many of us trying to recapture those childhood feelings of awe and wonder, Retro Game Challenge gets to the very heart of why we still play videogames and for that is to be applauded.

Incredibly for such a simple and strictly limited game, it almost never tries your patience, and it's made with such infectious and irreverent glee and such obvious pride, you can't help but join in.

Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad might have been enjoyable, in a silly, disposable way, if the gameplay was halfway decent. It isn't, and not even the nicest bottom in the world can make up for that.

Deadly Creatures has an intriguing premise, and makes a strong first impression with its shudder-inducing animation and cute environmental details. That may be enough to curry favour with Wii owners starved of action games, but over the long haul the scariest thing about these critters is how shoddily constructed they are.

It's just a shame that, much like its moping hero, it never ventures far enough from its comfort zone to become truly memorable.

The bike pack on its own, included as standard in the Ultimate Box, adds yet more value, but even in the small details (i.e. adding 1080i support to the PS3 game post-launch) Criterion hasn't let its audience down. And yes, it has a restart option. Best of all, the game is still evolving through yet more DLC. It's just getting better and better, and deserves a score to match.

Another Code R is a finely-crafted mystery adventure that's recommended for fans of the form with some time and patience on their hands, but anyone else looking for something engaging to read and solve might want to consider alternatives. Including the kind that comes printed on paper.

A tough but lovely recreation of two of the greatest orthodox shoot-'em-ups ever made.

Still, on the whole Savage Moon is a well-executed and polished example of what tower defence has to offer, and for GBP 6.29 offers a great play-for-pound ratio.

Even if you remember the PS2 game with fondness, don't buy this one; your rose-tinted glasses will smash and you'll be left picking the splinters from your eyeballs as tears of blood roll down your cheeks. Also it's not worth £29.99.

It's beautiful, bloody and undemanding, a vacant button-masher with just enough attitude twinkling out from under its heavy stoner's eyelids to get by. But like most heavy stoners it's also frustrating, unrewarding and a bit dull to spend time with, and rather lazy.

I love Fallout 3. I love it to an almost indecent extent. It was far and away my game of 2008, and doesn't look like being knocked out of my personal top spot for a good while yet. But when you sift out its role-play, the ammo-box inspection and the exploration and draft in a fleet of health and ammo regeneration points to compensate... well, affairs just feel shallow and somewhat naked.

I love Fallout 3. I love it to an almost indecent extent. It was far and away my game of 2008, and doesn't look like being knocked out of my personal top spot for a good while yet. But when you sift out its role-play, the ammo-box inspection and the exploration and draft in a fleet of health and ammo regeneration points to compensate... well, affairs just feel shallow and somewhat naked.

Sports Interactive has massive experience in creating single-player management games, but this is the developer's first stab at an MMO - and for the most part, it's a genuine success. While it never quite scales the heady heights of the single-player games, it's still an experience that every Football Manager fan should try, while budding managers intimidated by the demands of Football Manager 2009 are likely to find this a much more enjoyable and accessible entry point to the world of management.

If you've got massive amounts of patience and skill you might enjoy this game, but we're talking the kind of patience and skill required to solve Rubik's cubes in the dark and balance marbles on tightropes.

But for the vast majority of players there will be a challenge hurdle at some point that is just too high to overcome. It's no accident: the game has been designed that way. It's testament to the strength of the surrounding package that Skate 2 continues to be compelling place to inhabit even after its primary purpose is gone and all that's left is the playground.

The Maw is the sort of game you'll play for an afternoon, giggling like a fool the whole time. There's not much more to it beyond that brief but satisfying flurry of amusement, unless you want to go back into each level to harvest all the Achievements, but not every game needs endless replay value. The Maw is charming, cheap and memorable enough that its short lifespan shouldn't put you off.

It's a game fundamentally incapable of not running you down now and then, but the clarity of control and aspiration give wry subtext to its rightful claim to "high definition".

As effective as the Hundred Cell method may be, it would have been good to see more fun exercises included instead of just yet more black-and-white sums. The exercises are too simple for adults.

While there is some enjoyment to be had here, it is hard-won and rarely fulfilling. The imprecision of the combat and its lightweight feel combined with the ropey visuals conspire to date the game considerably.

There are undoubtedly high points, such as the (mostly) excellent soundtrack, the fantastic controls and the truly impressive engine, but Moon is really just a supermodel in the Emperor's clothes, intriguing at first - but leaving very little to the imagination.

I certainly enjoyed the quest, brief as it is, and for all its flaws I was happy to be lured back into Fable's world after a few months out. But I was still left underwhelmed once I'd sucked all the new content dry though. Worth experiencing for the Fable faithful? I'd say yes. But is it worth 800 Points? Probably not.

Mastering the game's in-body platforming is an urgent thrill, beaten down less violently here under the auspices of our old friends keyboard and mouse, and stands out from the homogenised interfaces of modern first-person and platform games.

It's a slight game, but a fiercely memorable one, and like all the best puzzlers, it flicks its players back and forth between two simple states: moments of rage when a level seems impossible, and that sudden rush of adrenaline when you finally beat it.

Having your drawings come to life is just wonderful, and when you choose to do something inventive and imaginative, you'll have a fantastic time. If only the level design forced this kind of innovation on the player, it would have been even better.

And that's the Saints Row 2 PC experience neatly encapsulated: a great - and often underrated - game, but one that is rendered significantly less appealing than in its original console incarnation.

It's a multi-tiered gameplay system that demands not only fast reactions, but also mind-bogglingly complex mental agility to take account of all the factors in play.

Although the new toys fail to entirely justify themselves - and if you can forgive the absence of online options, and look past what many perceive as the heresy of playing the game on anything other than a handheld - Lumines Supernova is probably the fullest incarnation of the game yet available.

It's a good fit for the DS, the top screen showing your list and time, the bottom the interactive scene. But it's a shame it's rehashed PC backgrounds, and low-res images. I'd love to see more originality applied, but there's no denying this is idiotically absorbing.

FIFA Manager 09 is undoubtedly the most comprehensive club management simulation money can buy. While the 3D engine fails to capture the ebb and flow of matches with Football Manager 2009's aplomb, and despite a few tactical shortcomings, it's an excellent alternative with an exhaustive feature set.

Instead, the game concludes disagreeably, as virtually everyone Jason is supposed to protect is left tortured and dead by his original departure, and he simply has a party because he got what he wanted. For an action RPG elevated beyond its serviceable components by the allure of rich mythology to end in such a desperate contradiction is comprehensively self-destructive.

For Xbox Live Arcade it's not quite the return to last summer's form, and there are more substantial falling-blocks puzzle games with comparable production values elsewhere on the service (Lumines Live, for instance), but if you can look past its slender framework and online issues then Meteos Wars is a decent death blow to a few otherwise productive evenings, and more proof from Q that there's life in the old blocks yet.

Powerful rather than perfect, then, Persona 4's a status ailment rather than a killing blow - it's not going to bowl you over with one strike, but it will quietly gnaw away at you until you succumb.

Super Stardust Portable is still an exemplary Western shooter, but for fans of the PlayStation 3 original, there is little here to inspire repeat purchase, the convenience of portability offset by the hardware's other limitations.

Although it's always competent, Söldner-X rarely revels in its own arsenal, and the result is a game where shooting things never feels like a particularly big deal.

It's still a solid platformer with some neat ideas, but it's undone by a host of camera and control issues. If you popped your gaming cherry playing Banjo as a youngster, prepare for nostalgia tinged by disappointment, as you discover it's not quite the classic you remember.

A genuinely ground-breaking blockbuster in videogame history. There were moments playing GTA IV that I thought back to my initial experiences with games, and realised exactly how far we've come. There's never been anything quite like GTA IV in the world. That there makes me genuinely happy to be a gamer.

The platforming fluency is seductive, but it's a language of indifferent thumbing yawned through timing windows as wide as a house. The crushing thing about Prince of Persia, however, isn't this. It's that we're faced with yet another poor game planted in a bed of fantastic technology and interesting mechanics, which, rather than empowering the player to solve interesting problems in new and exciting ways, merely sends you for a long and elaborate stroll through a beautiful world devoid of challenge or variation, and marred by excessive repetition.

The haircuts alone make SingStar Abba worth the asking price.

It's as if Pandemic's once shiny, happy puppy grew old and tired, as is the way of things, but then instead of being put down was handed over to a bunch of tramps. Who shaved all its hair off and fed it on Tesco Value Pilsner and let it get mange. It's time for THQ to get the shotgun.

The core of Puzzlegeddon remains a fun, engaging take on a classic genre with a clever twist - but played against the soulless bots, with no bragging rights or trust in equanimity, there's a limited appeal which probably won't justify the admittedly low price-tag (GBP 10.95 at Direct2Drive). Find a similarly-minded friend, however, and feel free to adjust the score according to your love of competition.

HD Remix is a worthy stop-off on the road to Street Fighter IV's console release next February, and a good training ground for anyone who wants to learn or relearn the Street Fighter fundamentals before then.

Chrono Trigger is a masterclass in RPG design, its execution so far beyond the quality and poise of contemporary JRPGs it's embarrassing. It represents the work of a company at the very top of its field, a team of designers so confident with the rules that they helped establish that they felt free to subvert and invert them to glorious effect.

While it's a competent integration of popular license into popular design, the constituent parts don't perform to the best of their ability, and the result is inessential and often bland, even though it's easy to sit and play contentedly for several hours.

This is a well-made package that takes advantage of the handheld's capabilities as much as you could hope any interactive recipe guide would.

The longer we've spent with The Last Remnant, the more we find ourselves wishing that it were a pure strategy RPG, because the more time you invest, the more interesting the battle system becomes - and, as a consequence, the more you begin to resent everything that prevents you enjoying it. [JPN Import]

Compared to Mario Galaxy or Ratchet & Clank - heck, even compared to Crash Bandicoot, another platforming mascot mired in mediocrity - Sonic Unleashed is an obviously poor effort from a series that is still hopelessly lost in the modern gaming landscape.

Easy Golf certainly offers enough variety and worthwhile features to justify far more than a condescending pat on the back and a certificate for being "Very Good for a Community Game".

There will surely be a great skateboarding game for the Wii, perhaps with the next iteration of the balance board, but this isn't it.

It took me around ten hours to complete, and while I was never on the edge of my seat, I was charmed for most of that time, sticking with it until I'd picked up the last gamerpoints. If your gaming palate favours such gentle fare, A Kingdom for Keflings is a lovely way to spend the day.

More often than not though, Eden succeeds, and once you get to grips with creating Molotov cocktails, shooting bottles in mid-air, and using aerosol cans as makeshift flamethrowers, it hardly seems to matter that shooting itself is so ineffective.

Stripped of unnecessary narrative nonsense and forced to use new camera views and level designs, it's simply a more satisfying rendition of the same thing, more faithful to the original series and undoubtedly the version that Sonic fans should pick up.

At its worst, Tomb Raider: Underworld is everything that's wrong with videogames - clichéd, predictable, frustrating, inconsistent, repetitive and derivative. Legend was supposed to be the game that marked the series' return to form, and it achieved that. Underworld is better than Legend; meatier, more challenging, more atmospheric and with less silly nonsense like quick-time events. But Underworld was supposed to be the first real next-gen Tomb Raider game, and it isn't...At its best, however, Tomb Raider: Underworld is everything that's great about videogames. It's beautiful, exciting, challenging, rewarding and absorbing. Many of the locations are stunning, and so's Lara.

It's too easy, too isolated from other players, and too buggy.

The shrink from arcade to DS screen in no way cramps the experience, offering the same amount of exacting control as it ever did.

Since you can pretty much exhaust the available gameplay within half an hour of switching the DS on, it seems likely that this curiously half-baked compilation was simply a way for Activision to use the Tony Hawk brand to get their motion sensing peripheral into the market. Yet so flimsy are the games that it feels like they simply bundled the internal tech demos designed to test the hardware and dressed it up as a commercial game.

A mixture of good and bad. On one hand it's the finest, most complete and visually fulfilling game the series has ever enjoyed, but on the other it contains so many niggles you'll feel irritated almost as often as you feel elated. The good news is that a patch has been promised soon after release, but in the meantime we have no choice but to mark it down accordingly.

It feels off-kilter. There's surface polish, but the more you look, the less deep understanding of the genre is present.

Another deeply professional, personality-filled and progressive take on the shooter from Valve. In a cultural landscape that has as many zombie touchstones as ours, it takes something special to make them shamble appealingly, and Left 4 Dead, both literally and metaphorically, makes them run.

Moria is an evolutionary expansion in which Turbine has honed what it does best: storytelling, an enjoyable, constantly changing levelling curve, and atmosphere in big, rocky buckets.

Despite overwhelming condemnation from the wider world then, Undercover is eventually a reasonably decent game. It's just a shame it takes so long to get there, when a simple difficulty level could have jumped the tedium.

People don't live in movie studios. They live in houses and flats that are lit for comfort, not to fulfill the technical requirements of an aging webcam. If you really want to put yourself and your friends on the TV, leave this failed experiment on the shelf, and put the money towards a digital camcorder instead.

A solid fighter for dabblers.

But by far the most irritating aspect of the handling is the inability to simply make your board go where you want it to.

It can't reach the heights of SSX or the first and second Amped, but what it lacks in precision, it makes up for in slightly mindless fun.

This is the best execution of Animal Crossing so far, but it is difficult to view it as anything other than a lazy remake of what's gone before.

This is just a song pack, really - one that carries an RRP of GBP 29.99 (or GBP 39.99 if you need the guitar grip too). That's too much to ask for a sequel which barely does anything its predecessor didn't do, and doesn't even fix any of the problems with it.

Yes, some of the enemies don't seem particularly interested in your existence. Yes, some of the characters' weapons are so brutally overpowered to turn bosses into braggart-mush with worrying haste. But the game doesn't really care, and neither do you. It's a run-and-gun that chooses to step back from the difficulty cliff and just show all the gleeful nonsense its managed to think up to anyone who cares to persist.

Wrath of the Lich King takes the best-of-breed MMO and improves everything about it. It's a work of supreme confidence and quality that is twice as fun and ten times as beautiful as classic WOW, not to mention anything else in the genre. But above all else - in the breathtaking sweep of Northrend, in the assured, epic storytelling, in the constellation of brilliant quests - it is a grand adventure. Perhaps the grandest adventure in all gaming.

Sacred 2 is the best Diablo clone since Titan Quest and its excellent expansion, Immortal Throne, and while the compulsion to play is there, the unholy alliance of clicking and collecting works and works well.

But for those who can shrug off the contradictions and the limitations, ignore the tearing cityscape and lingering qualms about value for money, this will shove you so deeply into the experience of being in someone else's body, and taking it on a terrifying, breakneck joyride, that nothing else will matter.

Overall, between the inconsistent campaigns and the botched co-op feature, there's enough here to nibble away at what is an otherwise enjoyable RTS game, and you can add the finer points of control to that list of grumbles as well if you're an impatient sort.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is not a platform game. The game it has become instead demands thoughtful, exciting challenges that inspire the player to pitch in and help get the most out of each level, but it fails to provide them, and even though it's worth persevering with for the occasional hurdles race, egg-and-spoon and a game-world in aptly Rare form, ultimately it's a brilliant shell with a mostly hollow centre.

Here I sit on a cold December night in 21st century Britain. I am a 31 year-old woman. I have a degree. I am playing virtual Yahtzee with a computer-generated version of Mr Potato Head. I feel sick.

All quibbles about presentation and content aside, the game is simply incapable of delivering the sort of fluid gameplay the concept demands.

The best mini-game collection we've played on the Wii.

A game that by any objective measure now languishes in second place behind EA's spirited new-look FIFA. And yet it's only with a heavy heart that we mark it down a point lower, because we still love PES for its personality.

The lack of grouping levels does it a real disservice, and once again that it's a remix of an old PC game with a new title isn't enamouring. But the same hypnotic power is present here, and even now, having played the stupid thing to death, I've a horrible suspicion that if I loaded it again I'd end up playing all over again.

The addition of a robust and varied co-op option helps to mitigate the disappointment of the by-the-numbers traditional multiplayer modes. However, looking back to Kristan's review review of Call of Duty 3 you'll find the exact same complaints being raised two years ago. Corridor gameplay. Outdated features. Flaky AI. They're all still here, albeit masked by even more whiz-bang effects than ever before.

It's just that what it does still isn't that exciting or memorable, and without the lure of permanently capturing your Poképals, it falls to the rather dull storyline to try and keep players engaged.

Given the option of a good bike simulation and a great arcade bike game, I'd actually prefer to see SBK head further down the latter path for future instalments. Heresy, perhaps, but on the evidence here I'd even be open to the idea of Black Bean being tasked with reviving Road Rash for the HD generation.

The real star, however, is Horde, a ballistic assault on your worst score-rush tendencies that transforms maps into Gears-flavoured Mutant Storm: weapons spawn, then a wave of enemies hits, then more weapons and then another, tougher, wave.

It's never going to be a game I'd recommend though, purely because fundamental elements like control and camera are so frustratingly unpolished.

With songs catering for multiple generations and all manner of tastes, and a disc packed with excellent tracks and none of the filler which has polluted previous Singstar releases, Legends is perfect family Christmas fare.

EndWar gets a lot of things right: a beautifully slick interface, stripped down mechanics, and the best voice-recognition system of any game we've played. It's got plenty to offer armchair strategists, but balancing issues, pathfinding and AI niggles and a disappointing lack of variety in factions stop it just short of its obvious potential.

Legendary is the gaming equivalent of cheap supermarket own-brand beans, but instead of costing eleven pence it costs the same as a prime steak cooked by a top chef. It's a bad, bad game. One of the worst I've played on this generation of consoles, in fact. In that regard, at least, the title is surprisingly accurate.

Make no mistake, Valkyria Chronicles is a really, really, really good tactical RPG, and fans of the genre should pick it up without delay, but beneath the inviting exterior and thoughtfully designed battle system lies a game with a few too many clunky inconsistencies which directly impact the strategic heart of the experience.

As a piece of interactive merchandise for the masses, it does its job: it's polished, intuitive to control, and approximates the Bond Experience, albeit with about as much subtlety as Vesper Lynd's neckline. For everyone else though, it's brainless, dull, and ridiculously easy. Rather than giving the Bond game its Casino Royale moment, Activision and Treyarch have simply carried on in the joyless tradition of dumbed-down shooters designed for thickos, and GoldenEye has never seemed so far away.

Improving tenfold on its predecessor in almost every area, it not only belongs on the shopping list of existing Resistance fans, but those who were underwhelmed with the original will also want to check it out, and then fight for it on the internet.

It's a beautiful, thoughtful curiosity. But somewhere in getting at the essence of strategy gaming, Eufloria has become a sketch, a distraction, a showcase, and a toy: it's an experience that you'll enjoy, rather than a coherent and satisfying game.

It's a funny game, it's a better game than its predecessor and there are certainly worse ways to spend four or five hours. Episode Two nudges the series up from Just Okay to Actually Pretty Good. Let's hope that the third instalment continues the trend.