It has inspired moments and a substantial single-player venture, but the whole thing is undermined by the terrible presentation and the all-permeating impression that Red Steel isn't quite finished, from the story-board-sketch cut-scenes to the jerky animation and weird, basic, placeholder textures.

Had Ascaron reigned in the content a little, and polished a smaller game to a higher standard, the score below would have been at least a couple of marks higher.

It's deeply frustrating. There are some great ideas in here, the presentation is top-notch and the options are plentiful, but none of these good intentions add up to a game of any real depth or longevity.

With only genre basics in its bag of tricks, and hobbled at every turn by clumsy implementation, in a gaming landscape that already offers Battlefield 1943 and Call of Duty: World at War's Nazi Zombies mode, Wolfenstein's bargain basement charms are of limited appeal.

Despite some truly awful sections to put up with, enough of the old magic remains to make it worth sticking with if you loved the original. The real puzzle is how Telltale let it out of the door in this state.

The starkness of the choice - RTS or RPG - is quite arresting. Sadly, it was also plainly a balancing nightmare.

Cities of Tomorrow makes SimCity a better game but, unfortunately, it still doesn't make SimCity a particularly good game. While its presentation is excellent and the act of laying out a city is alarmingly addictive, nurturing and developing that city is less compelling.

Mortal Kombat 1 envisions an exciting future with fluid combat, a fantastic story mode, and superb visuals - but receding features, underbaked mechanics, and a dated online experience keep it in the past.

Knights in Tight Spaces expands on every part of the Fights in Tight Spaces template, but an abundance of new ideas swamps the clarity the original game had.

Overall, when you strip away our automatic affection for the universe, you're left with a simple story full of thin characters and predictable twists, where the combat quickly descends into a repetitive war of attrition, and a small suite of online modes that can't compete with the bigger boys in the genre.

All the effort in the world won't make up for a lack of vision. This game is blind to imagination and focus.

The opportunity to revisit Human Revolution is a welcome one, but this is a competent expansion rather than an unmissable one.

True Crime is a game looking to score the ultimate dope hit of Grand Theft Auto genius, and it has the contacts to make such a score, but fails to use them.

Lumino City is an interesting design sketch, then, but the real building work is yet to be done.

It's simple, but has noodles of charm.

There's just not enough at stake to make this secrecy worthwhile.

There's no question that Order & Chaos Online is a remarkable – albeit cheeky - achievement for the mobile gaming scene. You shouldn't buy it because it's an outstanding game (it's not - at least not yet), or because you'll receive an experience on a par with it's clear inspiration (you won't). While it's certainly a thrilling ride in the short-term, longer-term it will simply leave you pining for WOW itself.

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.

Nothing special - you won't find many original ideas or much variation between levels here, and it's all over a bit too quickly. But if you're looking to buy a game that will entertain a Scooby fan who just wants to play the cartoon, or a younger gamer who just wants some simple running, jumping and collecting to get on with, this will do the trick.

So I'd rather play an erratic instalment of Alan Wake than a highly polished cover-shooter clone, because even when it fails, the former gives me something to think about in the ensuing days. Put another way, The Signal gets better the more I don't play it.

A fiercely likeable time-waster. But with console download services delivering increasingly brilliant games these days, DeathSpank has yet to make the transition from an entertaining diversion to something that's truly essential.

If you're a fan of the genre, though, and think you're willing to put up with weak framerate and some ill-conceived technical features in return for trying out genuinely interesting tracks and innovative weaponry - then by all means, put Fatal Inertia through its paces. For the rest of us, though, the search for racing carnage should probably lead back to superior franchises like FlatOut and Burnout.

It's not a bad game to any degree, is technically very polished with beautifully rendered craft bursting with technical detail and slick in almost every sense - but it lacks soul.

A moreish snack of a game that's a bit thin, a bit lacking in nourishment.

Whether it's the art, the depths of its secrets or even the control layout (ZaxisGames has opted for a rather weird approach that sees jumping ending up on the left trigger) 99 Levels to Hell can't match up to its obvious inspirations.

Overall not a bad attempt to move the Mario Kart formula into the skies by any means, but one that's initially far too easy, then bizarrely too tough, and chock full of fairly irritating and unavoidable shoot-'em up-boss encounters that simply take you away from what you'd rather be doing.

Another merely serviceable theme park ride; a brief, unchallenging jaunt through linear corridors decorated with just enough "official merchandise" appeal to mask the threadbare design.

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.

Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is actually a very good simple basketball game, but the simplistic AI and chaos factor often prevent that from shining through.

The net result of all this control confusion is that SSX Blur demands just as much mastery as its predecessors, but sets the bar for entry much higher, and never gives you the sense you're fully in control of clearing it.

Despite all of these complaints, those hordes of starship captains are quite happy. They may not have many different things to do, and the missions and UI may be rather buggy, but there does seem to be enough content to sustain them - at least until the endgame - and even at its worst that content is knockabout fun with more instant appeal, and more suitability for casual, short-session, low-commitment play than most MMOs.

Slick but rather empty.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

Let's just slap a score and a verdict on the bottom here and we can all forget the game ever happened.

A competent and comprehensive simulation of the actual sport, but there is no flair in its gameplay or presentation. It's snooker (and pool, and billiards) by numbers, with none of the realistic-looking players or visual authenticity or visible effort of its golf, table tennis or basketball compatriots on the Xbox 360.

It lacks the style, glossy finish and gunslinging simplicity of Max, and particularly its unadventurous but hugely enjoyable sequel.

That Quake 4 is merely a glossy, standard, by-the-numbers trudge through past glories is an irresponsible way to treat such a revered franchise; to then cock up the conversion to the 360 subsequently and then charge extra for the privilege is bordering on scandalous.

A smart combat system straining under the weight of a characterful but ponderous pseudo-medieval soap opera, with some of the grandest bosses and dullest sidequests in FF history.

This beautiful mix of shooter and tower defence still lacks in the progression department: with richer upgrades and more flexibilty and customisation options, Endless Dungeon's pleasures would last us longer.

Definitely an improvement on THUG 2 in getting away from the outrageous slapstick and prank ideas and back to skating as it should be.

A solid entry in a mostly wretched genre. It's cute, it's charming and makes you smile without ever really winning your heart. Still, if you've been fiending for a decent PS2 kart racer you can play without vomiting your bones out in horror, here's where your money should be going.

Given its high price tag and scant innovation Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced is unlikely to win over any new converts by playing it so safe and so young.

American Arcadia isn't as memorable as Call of the Sea, and it has its frustrations, but overall this is a well presented adventure-platform game with an almost irresistible personality.

A pretty decent but ultimately average racer.

Attaching a score feels a little mean, because in terms of what the games are worth (even collectively) it wouldn't even register on the scale, but as a sensibly priced package it somehow serves its purpose admirably.

It's a decent drive that wears its iOS clothing unconvincingly, perhaps a symptom of 2K's inexperience in the area. 2K Drive could have been something special, but it's missing the guiding hand Lucid needed to take it beyond half-heartedly evoking memories of old.

Worth a look, then, but probably only if you're in a very exclusive set: FPS-obsessed gamers who only own a Nintendo DS.

A worthwhile addition to any Sims fan's expansion collection.

There's no denying that this year's edition plays a good game of golf, and the changes to the game's core systems are well-judged - but they're arguably not enough to make it worth buying again for anyone but the most ardent fan of the sport. While the likes of FIFA have made clear progress in recent iterations, it's hard to see what benefit there is to having a Tiger game every year.

We're huge fans of the genre, and really buy into the thought of regular episodic content, but we'd demand it at a significantly reduced price and with an approach that actually panders to the long-term fans of this style of game - as opposed to young kids with no patience.

With a longer, more substantial campaign mode, a bit more polish and less pointless peripheral missions we could have been talking about The Godfather more fondly, but as it is, its place is history is as a flawed GTA clone that really didn't need porting to the 360.

At this point, criticising a Lego game for being much like the other Lego games feels somewhat pointless. It's tempting, especially after so many, but it's a series that's long been more comfortable changing the wallpaper than rebuilding the entire house, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

There are enough flaws in it to stop recommending it to anyone but real X-com fans - who, it seems, are busy trying to mod it into something closer to their desires.

We're left with a game whose main improvements are all disappointments. And yet I'd still I'd put money on me pouring hundreds of hours into it. That's Football Manager. I'm sure that once a few patches have been released and a few things have been tweaked I'll discover that magic again. I just expect it might be a little bit harder to find than last year.

I love and hate Dark Messiah: Elements. For everything that's good about the combat intensity, the flexibility of the skill system, the quality of the puzzles and the brooding, engaging atmosphere, it's undone by massive technical problems.

Rather like "Angel Of Darkness," if you're prepared to stick with it and cast off your frustrations and the game's limitations, you'll slowly begin to enjoy what is actually a rather solid enjoyable, well paced adventure game.

It's a fun distraction on your mobile, giving you a few hours of entertainment to rack up a high score, finish all the stages, and gawp at the tremendous graphics. Like I said, worth a bob or two.

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.

BloodRayne can be forgiven on a lot of levels because it's so silly it's fun, but for everything it does which is endearing, there's something to frustrate, bore or alienate the player.

Obviously the game is targeted with a marketing sniper's precision to appeal to a certain type of young girl, but it's well crafted enough to interest a wider, inquisitive audience.

The structure of each area is pleasingly freeform, allowing you to wander around and tackle the various tasks in the order of your choosing, and the standard of the visuals is well above par for what we expect from kids games.

As an excuse to spend another mildly diverting evening in Ferelden, Witch Hunt does its job, but it's a functional offering rather than an inspiring one. Hamstrung by the piecemeal nature of Dragon Age DLC, and squandering a lot of the brilliantly constructed narrative from the full game, it's for completists only.

Much like the recent MouseCraft, which at least had a Tetris twist, Flockers struggles to move out of the shadow cast by Lemmings' brilliantly pure concept.

The camera is crap, the scale is awkward, the story and characters are basic and cringe-worthy, the combat is tedious, the platforming and puzzling is too basic, and I was well bored of it by the time I conquered the final level with the first of the four Teams, which wasn't even that long after I first grabbed it out of the shrink-wrap.

Silent Hill: The Short Message shows glimmers of the classic horror series at its best - despite the very heavy-handed metaphor, a frustrating chase sequence, and the long shadow of P.T.

The physics engine, as always, is the main attraction - it's just a shame that Milestone didn't apply a little more drive and ambition.

Later in its shelf life, Groove will be an excellent little budget purchase to have in your collection for those amusing drunken party moments, but right now at £29.99 we'd strongly advise potential EyeToy converts to check out Play before they go splashing the cash on "Groove."

A curious mix. Some undeniably strong and distinctive pieces of game design, tarnished by some elementary errors, such as the lack of a decent training program or real in-game help.

In a final note, which may just be where my head is at the moment, but there's something really disturbing sexual about the battering ram's swinging animation.

In short, there's a lot of game here but none of it immediately demands you buy it, unless you just need a few new things to insert into Civ 4 to justify returning to it. In which case, hey - go do it. Civ 4's awesome.

A pretty broken game but one that is loaded with entertainment value regardless.

Sucker Punch's sequel offers more great swordplay and heartfelt storytelling, but would be better served as a linear action game, freed of its poor sidequests and dated open world.

And away from the core experience, WRC 3 is lacking, if not a little regressive. The involved if slightly flabby career experience of previous games, which had you recruiting a team as you worked up through the ranks, has been replaced with a character-driven affair that apes Codemasters' more recent efforts while getting it horribly, horribly wrong.

A stylish but slow-paced mystery anthology that's just a little too sluggish for its own good.

With the story and some of the more interesting recruitment features from the original game removed and with an RPG experience system that ultimately breaks both the offline and online play, it's hard to recommend this over its forebear, even if it is cheap at half the price.

The coin-gobbling design exists to kill you off as quickly as possible, and with such a repetitive design you've soon seen all there is to see. But that said, it's a coffee break fix to remind yourself of a lost era of gaming innocence and comes for the price of a large drink in Starbucks. We still dig it.

Just as Dark Angel is guilty of repetitive character models and backgrounds, the game design is guilty of repetitive action, which is unbelievably stagnant.

Yuke's has had a captive audience for so long that the incentive to improve seems to have withered away.

It lacks tension (combat is totally one-sided), set pieces (there are two whole bosses in the entire game), a gripping story (Krystal's kidnapped, you rescue Spirits, you fight General Scales), and any of the myriad different things that the game it principally tries to emulate (Zelda) was so famous for.

It's sad to have to say that, since we still think Nintendogs is an amazing achievement and a great game - it's just not a great game for very long. In other words, if you're a grown-up, if there are limits to your patience and your time, and if you want a game that's not just for Christmas, it's probably not a good idea to pick Nintendogs.

Trouble is, it once again errs far too much towards the arcade style of play, and is not only unrealistic, but makes the game feel too easy.

The developers deserve a lot of credit for getting all the best Simpsons people involved with the game. For me though, the humour can only carry it so far. If you want a videogame platformer to make you and a friend laugh, you'd be better off playing Lego Star Wars. If you want to enjoy The Simpsons, you're better off buying one of the box-sets.

If you like the sound of Second Sight, make sure you play it on a console. It is possible, we suppose, that you might get on with the PC version, but in truth we just can't see it.

What we get here feels like a place-holder, a nostalgic diversion that exists so there's product on the shelves to coincide with the movie, rather than something driven by a flash of inspiration as to where the series could go next.

It's difficult to overly criticise Calling All Cars! because it's cheap, looks and feels good (native 1080p at mostly 60fps does make a difference) and in multiplayer mode you definitely get a decent return from the impulse purchase price tag. It's just hard to avoid the sensation that some select gameplay tweaks, a couple of extra maps and a wider range of weapons could've made Calling All Cars! a minor classic as opposed to a promising but ultimately disposable game best sampled in small doses.

This game would clearly benefit from a more rigid and thought-out structure for a start: focus for some of the better ideas found within.

More often than not, though, the game feels hobbled by irksome jump and swing mechanics, and merely getting around always feels far more of a faff than it probably should.

A well-designed, well-conceived game.

Dante's Inferno is worth considering if you're a diehard hack-and-slasher fan who loves blood, gore, fire, brimstone, layered but simplistic combat systems and tits. This is more than one big lava level and it's not a terrible game. It's just not an original one, and it's arrived a little too late.

Ultimately, your perseverance with the sluggish pacing can be rewarding, but Shenmue 2 consistently proves itself an ageing game with ageing looks. It should never have happened like this.

It's unique, unlikely and uneven, but also the kind of unsafe game that is rarely created in mainstream circles these days. For that reason, despite the simplicity, the linearity, the dearth of meaningful systems, it is also curiously fascinating.

Mega Man 10 doesn't quite perhaps have the sparkling feel of reinvention that its predecessor enjoyed, but if you were one of the many who considered MM9 a welcome return to form, then this is another must-buy. Everyone else is perfectly entitled to look confused.

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.

It's actually quite dull, even though it's certainly playable.

As much as novelty value can be a good thing during the launch of a new console, the unavoidable conclusion is that Super Monkey Ball is more fun on a joypad on the GameCube than in this flawed experiment.

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.

With some tighter programming, and far fewer invisible barriers and dumb deaths, BiA could have been rather good. As it is - flawed and fun - it's a fantastic signpost.

There's a faint whiff of missed opportunity about Enter The Dominatrix, then, but four or five really good laughs are enough to warrant a cautious thumbs-up. Volition's made a half-decent fist of reheating its own leftovers, and with the injection of fresh ingredients, the next episode - brilliantly titled How The Saints Saved Christmas - promises to be even more of a giggle.