The whole thing just feels a bit half-baked, with moody but unimaginative environments, done-to-death one-dimensional characters, exceptionally tired gameplay mechanics that favours basic A-to-B object collection rather than injecting anything even vaguely resembling a puzzle and a combat system that's at best functional, and at worst unhelpful.

Bolder souls, as interested in commerce as they are in combat, can buy with much greater confidence.

The Medium is the studio's most successful, accessible offering yet, and a sign that Bloober continues to improve, mature, and innovate. I cannot wait for its next terrifying adventure. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Somehow Third Law have managed to take the best elements of old fashioned pure action shooters and build on them to make something that is entertaining and nostalgic for us old fogeys, while still managing to stand up against the rather higher standards of modern games when it comes to plot and gameplay.

Where the game falls down is its length; at around eight hours it's going to take you less than a good weekend session to plough through it, and for £40, frankly that's not good enough. It's "Luigi's Mansion" all over again.

Ultimately as pointless as it is lovable.

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.

There are still times when you'll enjoy yourself, but they're few and far between, and ultimately prove to be poor compensation for the loss of the intrigue, subtlety and intelligence that characterised the films and books whose bullet-riddled back the game is straddling.

A game that's ingenious but ultimately a little tedious, this puzzle oddity is a brain-teaser that will boggle your mind at least as long as your patience lasts.

I love the concept, and applaud the idea of using the Sims framework to create something more hands-on in nature...But the game is undeniably patchy and full of scrappy design decisions that push the player away rather than drawing them in. It's so rough around the edges that I even ejected the disc to check it said review code.

The combat scenarios escalate nicely as you battle your way out of Hock's fortress home, culminating in a robust boss battle that is predictable yet very satisfying.

As you might expect, continual death loops start to chip away at your initial fondness for Intrinsic's stylish attempt, and once you get snagged on a particular problem, the temptation to part ways grows strong.

Assault Horizon Legacy is mediocre, but what's worse is you feel it never even aimed for the stars in the first place.

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.

The gameplay, meanwhile, is largely basic and undeniably old-school, but it can be fun, fast, furious and reasonably deep if you find a map and mode you like, and are lucky enough to get a team that works together.

The game lacks the precision of a professional-level shooter to satiate the genre's dedicated players and its whole concept is undeniably more attractive on paper than in polygon.

Battle Fantasia certainly isn't going to have anyone cancelling their pre-order for Street Fighter IV; it's not even in the same league as Capcom's superlative re-envisioning. But if you've room in your life for more than one 2D fighter, then Battle Fantasia is a polished if slightly standard gem worthy of any would-be fighter's time.

Boasts such good combat that it doesn't matter if the loot, traditionally the heart of these games, is disappointing. In fact, it's so good that I think I'm going to go back and play it right now.

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.

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

FlOw is what it is - download it in the full knowledge that you're participating in an experiment of sorts and I think you'll get good value from your £3.49. If you're looking for something more like a conventional game, I'd lop off a mark or two from the final score.

For the PAL consumer, it's one for the absolute die-hards we're afraid, and even they might have issues trying to live with the lack of online play.

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.

It's an adventure built of other adventures, then, and its originality comes from the manner in which everything comes together. If you love old games - and old movies and all that other old jazz - there's a good chance you're going to love this, too. It has an ancient heart, shot full of bullets and criss-crossed with tyre treads.

A magnificent nightmare, for those with the stamina to master the gruelling card game that houses it. [Recommended]

Pac-Pix was always going to struggle to be more than a cute little concept game that showed off how cool the touch-screen idea was, and so it has proved. For a few hours it's a really entertaining diversion that's unlike anything we've seen before.

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

Monster Rumble doesn't quite match the quirky charm of Wario Ware or the challenge of Big Brain Academy. However, the style of the game should still appeal to kids.

Prepare yourself for a mixtape of lurid brilliance.

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].

A game designed for people who like the idea of Monster Hunter, but for whatever reason – whether it's sharpening your weapon, eating steaks for stamina, laying traps for captures, being stampeded by an enraged Barroth or failing to bag a Deviljho Gem for the tenth consecutive time – find the game too demanding.

Where the original Mass Effect games kept you moving through the story, Andromeda relegates its critical path to second place, offering up a spread of loosely associated scenarios that just happens to include a fairly uninspired tussle with a genocidal tyrant. It's a game that is more interested in keeping you busy than keeping you in suspense about what happens next, or making you feel the consequences of your actions.

The game quickly gets repetitive, and becomes one of those retro games you'll dip into now and then rather than have extensive score-beating sessions on like the best games on Xbox Live Arcade.

Here's the difference between "Everything or Nothing" and From Russia With Love: whatever you thought of its approach, "Everything or Nothing" had to be invented; From Russia With Love just had to be filled. And it has been - with stuff from "Everything or Nothing."

The best thing you can say about Rogue Trooper is that (despite some clunky control decisions) is almost always good fun. Thanks to well-paced design you'll certainly never feel like downing the pad in abject frustration, or out of plain boredom: it's the gaming equivalent of popcorn sci-fi action movie fodder.

What scuppers Leviathan is nothing more than a slightly slapdash release - and greed.

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.

As an updating of an old favourite, this is a lovely piece of work; as a friendly shoving-off for a strange new handheld, it's wonderfully judged.

Somehow, though, prancing around like a sweating monkey makes the magic happen, and turns it into the craziest fitness game yet. Never mind UFC Trainer, I may yet get buff from repeatedly removing the stupid tufty hair of imaginary pineapples.

For a mere 500 points, this is well worth digging into.

If you’re close to a wall, Blinx regularly disappears, so you’re left waddling around in first person mode, completely unable to judge distance or aim properly or in fact play the game properly.

Wonderful, lo-fi sounds and hand-crafted visuals make A Musical Story a clear a labour of love, sadly let down by its rhythm mechanics.

The problem is, it's hard to ever truly engage with it when so many of the The 3rd Birthday's key encounters are fundamentally spiteful. If you're really determined to eke some enjoyment from the rubble of frustration, there are a few moments that might make you feel like it's worth it. Sadly those occasions don't come along nearly enough to justify all the joyless attrition en route.

Placed on a handheld, the gravitas of the shock scares is gone, and with unrealistic graphics and a cheese factor turned up to eleven, any feeling of genuine creepiness is lost. While it does keep all the flaws described here, the GameCube remake does at least offer beautiful graphics and some decent shocks.

Dropchord demonstrates Double Fine's expanding range and competency as the studio begins to diversify. This may be a palette-cleansing effort for the studio's staff, but in Dropchord's case that sense of creative liberation works in our favour.

So, what's the time? Oh it's time for good-expansion-but-not-good-enough-to-make-anyone-return-to-the-game-if-thoroughly-sick mark o'clock.

Like Police Quest meets Papers, Please on a grim day.

Blades of Fire manages to feel original, lovable, and born of genuine passion, despite the near overwhelming number of problems that could have extinguished it.

Inconsistent, wearisome gameplay.

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".

Chromehounds is really, really, really boring to play...Not one that I can imagine Xbox 360 players sticking with for more than a handful of hours tops, no matter how starved they are for new releases at the moment.

An entertaining slice of Pokémon sleuthing set within a vibrant version of the series' world. [Recommended]

If you approach All-Star Battle as a fighting game first and foremost, you'll discover a satisfyingly complex combat system with a few lacklustre modes. Not a 10, then, but this Jo is far from average.

For those willing to tolerate a few boardgame-style abstractions, a little thumb-twiddling (sometimes turn calculations can take a minute or two) and the odd bit of bafflement (fundamentally simple, the game does have a few confusing elements like supply simulation), purchase options are pretty diverse.

It'll soak up plenty of your time, but it's a real trudge, and rarely presents anything new or exciting - you've experienced most of the good by the time you've qualified for the PGA Tour itself, and indeed most of us will have experienced it all by, er, well, had experienced it all by 2003.

Alongside a rhythmic and uncommonly accessible beat-'em-up, Asura's Wrath is part rollercoaster, part anime blockbuster and part stress-ball. The end result may stretch the definition of a video game, perhaps, but it's also extremely hard to get angry about.

ParaWorld isn't without its charms, particularly its diverse and enticing set of armies, but it's truly a dinosaur of an RTS, bog standard in terms of mission design and somewhat messy in the combat department.

With camera issues, a cowardly gaming mechanic and the frankly awful stealth sub levels, what you're left with is perhaps the best example of graphics over gameplay we've ever seen. Unless you get off on repetitive bash 'em ups, leave well alone.

Staking its claim in the under populated wilderness betwixt classic story-driven RPG and balls-to-the-wall splatter action, it's a worthy evolution of a still-fresh franchise and a rather impressive addition to the PSP line up in its own right.

This is a cautionary tale: nowhere in Unbounded does it tell you that you have to hold down the drift button the whole way through a corner, going against instincts built up by every other arcade racer ever, in order to have fun. When you do hold it down, though, Ridge Racer Unbounded is brilliant.

Once Human offers a deeply moreish open world scavenge-em-up, but weak action and generic clutter hold it back.

Hellgate: London is filled with gorgeous artwork and dripping with atmosphere; it's got a delicious sense of humour and finely tuned combat systems that will be keeping action RPG nuts happy for a long time. Despite this, we've got vast reservations about key aspects of the game; the randomly generated levels feel increasingly hollow, pointless and gimmicky as you progress, the user interface is clunky in some important areas, and there are clearly some hefty bugs here that need patching.

If you haven't played it already - and are curious and very patient - it's worth suffering Deadly Premonition's rickety construction and lumpy pacing for York, and for Greenvale. If you're already a fan, this Director's Cut can be considered the definitive version of the game; it alleviates the worst flaws of the original but preserves most of the others for posterity - just as you'd want it, really. And there's still nothing else like it. Not in video games, anyway.

What annoys me here is that Castlevania was always doing several smart things at once and this one, conversely, is founded on a presupposition that pandering to the klepto sword-swinger niche is all Konami needs to do.

As long as you're all in the same boat, Top Darts is fun in its haplessness, and a cheap bit of Move-related throwaway entertainment.

Bionic Commando succeeds in resurrecting a good idea lost to the Capcom archives, and giving it a new lease of life, but it falls foul of a few old standards in the process.

One of those middle of the road games which adheres to a familiar template closely enough to provide adequate entertainment in the short term but is unlikely to inspire any devotion. It falls over itself to make you feel like an unstoppable badass, but then rarely gives you the opportunity to show off.

Nothing much to look at, and with a premise that has been dulled through repetition, Dead State is a game that requires you to approach it with an open mind and a forgiving nature. Make the effort, and you'll find a game that makes up in charm what it lacks in polish.

This ambitious survival game emerges from Early Access fully featured but just as in danger of toppling in on itself as ever before.

Missing the elegance of FromSoftware, Lords of the Fallen is let down by Soulslike clichés and performance woes.

The cliché regarding this sort of game is that it changes the way you view your own world: I know for sure that I'll be seeing those last few Orbs in my dreams for months to come. If you need any indication of Crackdown's brilliance, that's surely it, right? If you seek its monument, look around you.

Despite the joys offered, Sonic Frontiers is a hot mess of a reinvention that can't commit to its new direction.

Age of Empires, great as it was, doesn't quite stand up against the best in the RTS genre today - and Age of Empires Online doesn't improve on its mighty predecessors in any meaningful way in-game, while adding a lot of bumf around it of questionable value.

A slick psychological horror plagued by poor pacing and infuriating instakills

An earnest and impactful adventure, written within the margins of an homage to 80s cinema. [Recommended]

The resolutely linear nature of the gameplay, as well, is a throwback. There are so many possibilities for a Silent Hill game set in a more expansive environment with multiple threads running concurrently, with a more fleshed-out cast, but that's never the case here.

The mini-games have different faces but they play ostensibly the same, and even with the visuals buffed to a sparkle the overall effect is very much ‘more of the same’.

The core strength of the experience ensures Virtua Tennis 4 is best in class where it matters, on the court. Likewise, a well-structured World Tour mode, while slightly anachronistic in its straight Japanese presentation, provides a sense of journey and progression that is wholly engaging. But the motion controls, core selling points for many buyers, are woefully implemented and provide little interest or value.

Too simple and childish for adults, and too one-note to convert the kids, Lego Horizon Adventures does little to recommend it to either existing Horizon fans or series newcomers.

Empire mode becomes repetitive too quickly, and doesn't provide either the strategic depth in the "board" sections or the real thrill, bluster and mania of "Dynasty Warriors 3" (elephants!) in the combat sections to keep you truly interested.

It just doesn't hang together as a coherent package in its own right, and while the gameplay certainly doesn't sully the memory of the original, the thin spread of content is cause for concern.

But the chief difficulty is simply sustaining your interest. It's boring and easy, and it takes too long.

But Scurge is still hugely attractive - packed with charismatic enemy design and pin-sharp pixel-art, it's a real looker, in its old-fashioned way - moderately addictive, mildly nostalgic, and pleasantly to the point.

It's a fine showcase for some good ideas, doing for Arkanoid what Flipnic did for pinball. But its novelty value doesn't make it a game you'll come back to for long, though.

It's a shooter without eloquence or crunch, an MMO without content or personality, and as an experimental combination of the two it's missing ambition.

A stupendously entertaining, infectiously energetic racer that could only have ever come from the arcades. [Eurogamer Recommended]

What we can't get past is how ordinary the combat feels, the distinct lack of tension throughout, the constant repetition and one-track lack of variety. And as much as the multiplayer is better, you're still hamstrung by uninspired combat, not to mention the game's all-round lack of technical impressiveness.

It isn't as good at the core Assassin's Creed loop of picking an icon on the map and then getting diverted by entertaining side content on the way there, but where it does make a play for your attention it generally does so by asking you to, you know, be an assassin, creeping up on people and taking them down without them or anyone else noticing. That's fun.

But while Actionloop Twist has strong presentation and depth of content, it's the controls and Quest mode design that elevate it to essential status.

There's a good game somewhere within Real Racing 3 - and there are plenty of free-to-play games that prove this model can work successfully while respecting the player. Firemonkeys, and perhaps more pertinently EA, have got that balance horribly, horribly wrong, to an extent where the business model becomes the game - with gut-wrenching results.

The things it does are rife with potential it doesn't really exploit, and the result is adequate but nothing more - worth picking up in the January sales when you've overdosed on the competition, perhaps, but otherwise unremarkable.

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.

Cygni stages impressive action from a bird's eye view. It could do with a little more variety, but will appeal to more than just experts.

Despite the criticisms, Team 17 has still managed to pull off an impressive evolution of a much-loved series. The core game has remained barely unchanged, but the 3D engine introduces a lot of unexpected elements to get used to, both good and bad.

If you don't have fond memories of the arcade cabinet or Saturn game, it's still a truly feisty little racer that looks great and handles well. Tearing up dirt tracks with indestructible rally cars is enormous fun, and this XBLA title delivers those thrills in their purest, most undiluted form. It's just a shame that there's so very little of it.

It's not really simulating football; it's emulating football spectacle, and with the addition of Challenge mode and a clever reward structure on top of an accessible and plainly enjoyable arcade experience it does that effectively enough to be a worthy purchase for footy lovers who want to, as the yanks would have it, punch a hole in the score bag.

Never bad, often good, but only occasionally great. Its frustrations are fleeting but with core gameplay that struggles to be as clever and witty as the script, it never quite manages to bring together its best features in a truly satisfying way. Plunge into The Cave and you'll definitely have fun finding your way out. It's just a shame it doesn't go deeper.

A concentrated dose of twisted real-time strategy for your money.