On paper, this is just the kind of iOS tie-in fans often ask for: it's faithful to the source material, filled with familiar systems and details, and it's even made a decent attempt at matching the graphical style of the main game. It's Deus Ex in cross-section, but although so many of the right pieces are in place, the energy and skill that usually brings the whole thing to life is missing.

As a single-player experience, Unreal 2 is undoubtedly one of the more forgettable shooters on the Xbox; joining the likes of "Jedi Academy" and "Soldier of Fortune 2" in that club of below par PC ports that have been unceremoniously dumped on owners of this capable machine.

A cheerful, happy little game - it's got some lovely ideas in places and doesn't take itself too seriously - but it was far more at home on the PSP than it is on a home console, and it has gained pretty much nothing in the transition to the PS2.

Even proper strumming seems to be measured inconsistently, breaking otherwise-perfect sequences and potentially losing you points or even getting you booed off if your performance dips below a certain threshold, forcing you to replay the entire song.

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.

Come not for the enticing Game of Thrones name, certainly not for the ugly graphics, clunky interface (as appears to be Cyanide's habit of late) and soulless writing, but instead, perhaps, for what genuinely is an ambitious new take on real-time strategising. With verve and wit and gloss, Genesis could have been the start of something fascinatingly, enthrallingly cruel: as it is, it's a song of needless branding and sad compromise.

The Novelist suffers because we are essentially examining a family that doesn't care for us or know about us and we don't really feel an emotional attachment to them.

Graphically bland, the game still manages to create some tension through its rudimentary presentation with some clever pacing.

If you fancy a spot of no-frills arcade dogfighting this will keep you entertained for a while, and there's also a LAN/Internet multiplayer (offering free-for-all and teamplay modes).

That it's over in a few short hours (whatever your abilities) and that everything's very contrived and undemanding is, in fact, rather the point.

If you have the sort of disposable income that allows you to spend thirty quid on a short-lived and rather bland diversion, or if you have an intensely adolescent fondness for flames, skulls and chains, then I dare say you'll find Ghost Rider to be 'not that bad'. And it's not.

Shallow and repetitive, Costume Quest 2's winsome appearance and occasional wit never quite obscure the busywork at its core.

The absolutely tiny amount of adventure content, and the fact that the puzzles simply won't be any challenge to a child of reading age, makes it impossible to give this game a particularly good score.

Centipede and Millipede are the sort of simple, repetitive, no frills shooters you can get more than enough fun out of by playing the free trial version of, so we should be grateful to Microsoft for allowing people to find out why they probably shouldn't bother with this one.

As generic as a platformer can be. It's a game in the tradition of the original "Jak & Daxter," but comparing the two is like holding a light to the abyss.

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.

But at least this game does have potential, unlike Iron Man and Thor, and if you can make your peace with its clunkier aspects then it's a passably enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

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.

The mark below is an average of the 10 for the script/animation and the 1 for the game design. If you need more Birdman, you'll suffer to get to the superb stories.

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.

It's arguably a perfect simulation of real-life social media, but it unfortunately doesn't make for an edifying game experience.

It's certainly not terrible, but then there's absolutely nothing special or interesting about it either.

There are games that are complex and games that are just complicated. This is one of the latter. There will be those who penetrate Plättchen's opaque exterior and return with tales of gaming joy. Given that this is the second most expensive game on WiiWare, it's a journey most players will find unrewarding.

Even its cleverest ideas are generally just amalgamations of things we've seen before - like a puzzle where you have to replicate a five-tone tune by touching five symbols on the ground in the right order. It fails to take advantage of so many breaks - the technology, the voice actors at its disposal, the potential for the synchronicity of the two worlds, the use of four characters in designing dungeons.

In its better moments it's a guilty pleasure, in its worst it's embarrassingly retrograde. By being consistently fairly slick with it, it easily avoids skimming the lowest depths, but really it's the kind of game we've all long since grown out of. Or so I like to tell myself, anyway.

There's the kernel of something really interesting in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Glimmers of a free-roaming kids adventure game with RPG overtones, based on actual folklore. Sadly, it only manages to be that game for an hour or so, before steadily becoming less interesting and more generic and annoying, culminating in an ending that is absolutely cruel considering the age of the intended player.

There's still an argument for considering other mini-game collections with better ratios of good-to-poor games. The ratio in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 isn't even as good as it was in the first game. And overall the game isn't as entertaining as a rabbit doing a poo on a stage, which should tell you something.

Competent in its own right, playable even, but deep down as nutritionally void as the popcorn you'll scoff while watching the movie.

At its best Infinite Undiscovery is just another standard action JRPG following a strictly linear route through the same predictable story about another reluctant young hero overthrowing yet another evil empire. In its worst moments, it's an unwieldy collision of ill-conceived ideas and sloppy technical implementation that will test the patience of even the most hardened player.

You can get a game of poker out of it, and you can persist with the desire to win to reach the next tournament, but the volume of frustrations along the way mean it cannot be hailed as the first great poker game. It's getting there, but not there yet.

Apart from the odd frustrating puzzle, there's nothing much at fault here, aside from the fact that what you're buying is a small collection of puzzles and nothing more. As long as you realise that's all Safecracker is - and there's no adventure element to speak of - then you won't be disappointed.

Dead to Rights is a lot like its belligerent hero, getting the job done in the crudest manner possible, leaving behind nothing more memorable than a sticky adolescent mess of blood, bullets and profanity.

This isn't a great game, it's not even a good game, but it is the closest thing we've got to a cops-and-robbers MMO - which is, I suspect, one of the all-time great video game concepts. One day, somebody's going to do it right, and they're going to become very rich indeed.

If you have the free code then there's no reason not to give Bloodbath Arena a try, even if all it really adds is a place to quickly grind your way up a few levels. As a paid download, however, it's uninspired stuff.

Pixel People is an addictive proposition, one that many players will happily play - but few will be especially happy while doing so. Its pay-offs are irregular and require no skill, simply perseverance in clicking through the splicing options.

By the time you're getting each and every character in the game to hail the glorious Sammun Mak for the 30th time of asking, you just want it to end. After such a fantastic introduction, we really didn't see this one coming. Did someone steal Telltale's brain?

White Knight Chronicles II flounders. It's a hybrid that fails to find its own identity in terms of its structure, and its convoluted battle system is poorly explained and, once mastered, reveals itself to be broad but ultimately shallow. Those improvements from the first game are overwhelmed by a more general sense of ennui; what were once interesting innovations lack the polish and endurance to inspire over the course of a sequel.

It's a genuine shame. The game is well-presented and polished, the control system works nicely, and the progression lays the groundwork for a really enjoyable experience - but the team decided to come over all Zen minimalism when it came to the games themselves.

Would Heavy Armor be a better game if it ditched Kinect and focused purely on the tried-and-tested buttons? In all honesty, no - because without the novelty of raising your arm to pull down a periscope or punch your fleeing co-pilot in the face, this would be a comparatively dull experience.

In terms of his strength and abilities, The Invincible Iron Man is one of the wimpiest game heroes we've encountered and deserves to be locked away in this rather limp platformer-with-guns.

Chrome isn't a dreadful game, really. It's just so deeply, incredibly average in every aspect of its gameplay that our enthusiasm for it went limp the very moment we bumped off our first enemy grunt.

Treasure World has a nice idea at its core and is fun as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

The major problem with the game is that you have to learn how to use it. The beauty of the likes of "Virtua Tennis" and, to a lesser degree, "Top Spin," is that you don’t.

If you've never played any of the Dancing Stage games, it's well worth a try - but don't buy the Xbox 360 version. For the same money you could pick up one of the old PS2 games and two mats. Or, best of all, spend a very happy afternoon down the Trocadero.

Certainly one of the more passable products of the recent retro-gaming fad, but packaged up in the guise of a modern RPG - without the decency of the NES Classics range in terms of admitting to its own clapped-out state - it's going to be a major disappointment to most who pick it up.

The game isn't terrible; it's visually slick, there's a decent variety of events and they're entertaining to play through the first few times. But there's nothing special about it and no long-term value.

A generic and quickly tiresome shooter, with a contrived premise which, unfortunately, does nothing to elevate it.

Like Craig David covering Marvin Gaye, Söldner X-2 makes you pine for the real deal.

You'll still catch glimpses of the game you remember in amongst that clutter; whether that's enough to have you splashing out on virtual gems is another matter.

Another adequate yet uninspired entry for the Ford Racing brand.

SuperCar Challenge sadly makes the same mistake, focusing so much attention on the minutiae of car physics that the actual gameplay feels like an afterthought.

Somewhere out there, there is a player this game is perfect for. But he or she would still be advised to wait another six months before even thinking about Final Fantasy XIV, because Square Enix hasn't yet got its head around its own players.

That Killzone doesn't live up to expectations shouldn't come as a major surprise to anyone; that Sony has chosen to release such a damp squib at this outrageously competitive time of year most definitely is.

With genuinely appalling voicework setting the tone for development incompetence, it's compounded by a few dreadful levels, camera issues and the feeling that the whole project was ported onto the 360 as an afterthought.

High Voltage deserves credit for its technology, for its commitment to multiplayer, and for tuning a perfect set of FPS controls on a console that was begging for them. Its efforts shame everyone but Metroid developer Retro who's gone before, and certainly do prove that you can do a great FPS on the Wii. It's just that The Conduit - slender, derivative, mechanical and uninspired - isn't it.

If there is a poignancy to A Valley Without Wind, it's that you really are playing through a post-apocalyptic world, just one that's failed creatively rather than ecologically. The designers were too ambitious, built to high, and you're free to explore what's left.

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.

Not quite "Project Zero" in space, that's for sure. It does begin as an initially promising ghost train ride, but given its short nature - about twelve generous hours or so if you get hopelessly stuck like me because you didn't talk to that damn woman - it's a shame it lapses into average fetch-quest territory all too quickly.

As a game in its own right, and if you compare it to combat flight sims on other platforms, it simply doesn't really ever get off the ground.

Epilogue doesn't even have the grace to live up to its literary title. There's no closure here, just a finite story extended by transparent and clumsy means. The conclusion, when it comes, so blatantly leaves you hanging for Prince of Persia 2 that you wonder why the game itself couldn't have ended this way.

The real gem, though, is Mutant League Football, which more than makes up for the absence of any of the Madden titles because it's better than all of them.

Even with regular shopping trips ArmA veterans will chew through RF in a couple of longish evenings.

By the time you're getting each and every character in the game to hail the glorious Sammun Mak for the 30th time of asking, you just want it to end. After such a fantastic introduction, we really didn't see this one coming. Did someone steal Telltale's brain?

Your on-screen plane may capture, almost perfectly, the movements of the Wiimote in your hand, and a trio of extra moves - the speed boost, rapid brake and 180-degree turn, activated by thrusting the Wiimote, pulling it quickly back and flicking the point to the left or right - allow for a greater range of movement options, but the degree to which it accepts input is actually counter-productive, often forcing you slightly off-line when you're trying to approach something at a precise angle.

The usually reliable Pandemic has produced a game that not only fails to compete with any current-generation openworld, but somehow takes a backward step from the original. With uninspiring combat contributing to a succession of desperately poor missions, the only remaining question is whether the developer will get a third chance to rectify matters.

A relatively solid but entirely uninspired expansion - one for the dedicated fans only, albeit one with a very clever new control system. It's by comparison with the PC expansion that this game starts to look seriously bad.

Something like Amnesia: The Dark Descent's horrible, instinct-suppressing requirement to run away, hide and not even look at your tormentor could have worked well here, giving The Starship Damrey that dash of genuine threat necessary to maintain the tension conjured by its early scenes, without burdening the game with unnecessary combat.

Whereas the DS game could be defended for ignoring significant depth for the sake of accessibility, Cook Off's controls are simply too ropey for it to earn any flavour of respect, and leave its repetitive, flash-in-the-pan mini-games open to assault.

At various points, Killer is Dead shoots for the visual surrealism of El Shaddai, the hyperbolic intensity of Asura's Wrath, the oddball melodrama of Deadly Premonition, the extravagant showmanship of Bayonetta. It misses by a wide margin every time. Those games are punk, but Killer is Dead is just posturing. It's just product.

But this game is just too slow, bottom line, and lacks the finesse and style required to elevate a street racer above the ranks of just plain average.

Limited is really the word that sums up Foul Play. It's a difficult game to dislike, thanks to its whimsical tone, but it doesn't do much in gameplay terms to win your affections.

So, yes, there's definitely a decent game lurking somewhere in Iron Man, but we haven't seen it yet. This one isn't a disaster, but it can be a rather bleak experience.

To call this a bad game would be grossly unfair, but it's a truly unexceptional one. For a series like Shinobi, that is dishonour enough.

It's possible you might be picking up The Doctor Who Cloned Me in order to get a glimpse of what Gearbox is planning to do with the franchise for its inevitable reboot. If that's the case, you'll be disappointed: this campaign is the work of Triptych Games, a studio formed to help finish Forever back in 2009. While the new content's got the odd decent joke and the occasional smart encounter, it's lacking the sharp design wit that characterised Gearbox's own download work on Borderlands.

Until the bugs are squashed, Eurogamer cant recommend Wings Of Victory to anyone but wealthy sim completists with a gambling streak.

Given its level of difficulty, and general synaesthetic terrorism, my mind and body were woefully unequipped to deal with what Bandai had unleashed on me.

There's no denying Asobo's achievement in building such a daring, beautiful landscape on such a vast scale, but the core of any good racing game is falling in love with its vehicles, the things you can do with them, and the places you can take them, and by that measure FUEL is distinctly average.

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’.

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

Painfully average.

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.

A budget game, and Swift and her team can't be expected to match the perfect cohesion of Portal. The disappointment is that, in trying to do just that, they've undersold their own good ideas as well as inviting unflattering comparisons with a classic. Despite its frequent frustrations, it's a solid, intelligent puzzle adventure and represents good value for money, but it could have been much more by trying to be a bit less.

Visuals aside, the game ultimately gets too repetitive too soon. It claws back some respect by providing additional challenges for each map and offering different characters with slightly different abilities for replay value, but the mechanics never really change enough to capture your interest for long.

You can sort of see how the concept for Rocket Bowl must have seemed like a good idea, and for a few minutes it's certainly interesting to play around and enjoy the admittedly good physics.

Dynasty Warriors obsessives can be sure they're getting something as comfortingly familiar as the delicate aroma of their own dribble-infused pillow.

Despite the lacking port, the game is one of the more enjoyable super-vintage titles to appear on XBLA and it's a testament to the core design that its fun hasn't dulled too dramatically in the past twenty-five years.

Despite these inventions, the abiding sense is of a lack of variety and a game that fails to fully express its best ideas.

Platform game fans would be better served by Jak & Daxter, while action game fans can go back to God of War. Bloodlines isn't a terrible or frustrating game, but it's as unnecessary as all those chickens.

F1 2014's a strange game, then, and one I can't even accuse of being just a casual reskin. It's a quantifiable step back for the series, saved only by the fact that what's there remains a satisfactory companion piece to this year's season if you're fortunate enough to have a decent steering wheel.

While fun once through, the broken online component and repetitive design means this'll soon be consigned to a dusty game shelf never to be played again.

Torturing yourself with frankly ridiculous load times isn't acceptable, nor is the choppy frame rate or the sound stutters. [U.S. version]

With iPhone games, it's the absolute minimum requirement to get the controls right, but in that regard Plunderland fails. And considering that it seems to get everything else right, that's a big shame.

As a relatively cheap mechanism for bringing you back to what is still fundamentally an excellent game, Operation: Omega Dawn is as good an excuse as any to get back into Warhawk's superb online multiplayer.

That there are a couple more modes for fighting other humans underlines that this is a pack that exists primarily for those who play online - and without even giving a decent experimentation zone to play with the new possibilities of the ships without embarrassing yourself in front of a peer by crashing into a pier. Or something.

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.

If you want a laugh, the show's a much better bet, and if you want to play a decent platformer you might as well dust off NEW Super Mario Bros.

There's still a very small part of us that can't help but still be slightly impressed by the appearance of a 3D platformer on a handheld, but given the control issues it's not a happy marriage.

The wonky camera and repetition is annoying, but it still just about works as an average exploration game. What it doesn't offer is any sort of Free Play option where you can do your own thing.