There's an inherent appeal in shooting targets that never seems to dim, but Wild West Guns is far too content to let that natural amusement carry the load for its own tepid design.

Fairly dull - a sensation that the "zany" presentation usually accentuates. The Vs. mode makes up for it slightly, as you try and outpace your friend, but even then it's hardly essential, despite a single-cart download-play option.

There's much to be said for games which simply polish an existing formula to a shine - but Loki, sadly, doesn't even quite accomplish that. It's solid, and it's competent, but unless you're absolutely crazy for point and click action RPGs, we find it hard to recommend a game on the basis of competence alone.

If you're the lucky parent of patient children or you're happy enough to relive faded old glories, then you might just find enough here to justify the price. Everyone else should probably steer clear of what could have been a solid platformer, but quickly becomes an all-too-familiar grind.

After thirty-odd rounds of Duæl Invading, it becomes increasingly apparent that a Game Over screen isn't going to appear any time soon. With extra lives spewing out at a rate of knots, it seems like the difficulty level wasn't quite as finely tuned as it could have been.

A very poor introduction to the genre for Xbox owners. It's by no means terrible; but without borrowing Sakaguchi's rose-tinted glasses, it's not much fun either.

You certainly can't fault Firefighter F.D 18 for fiery originality, but its ambitions are cruelly extinguished by overly simplistic game design and a clunky control system makes it the kind of cult curiosity that only the true hardcore would ever dare parting cash for.

Sadly, torn between a character license it can't fully use and an experimental format of vague structure and uncertain purpose, Wonderbook's magic spell grows weaker over time, rather than building to a fantastical crescendo.

I really, really hope the developer gets a second crack at Move Fitness, as the core concept clearly works and there are some screamingly obvious things that, if added, would make the game a much better, potentially excellent, fitness game. But as it stands, what should be Mr. Motivator is very much Mr. Average.

By bringing nothing particularly new to either genre that it borrows from, Gatling Gears fails to justify its inflated price of 1200 Microsoft Points, and is far from an essential purchase.

A fairly limited package that quickly runs out of ideas.

There's a lot of game in Crash Tag Team Racing, but there isn't a lot of good game. And since there isn't really a lot of kart-racing game either, on a system that seems to have more pure racing games than any other in recent memory, it's hard to think of a good reason to tag it any other way.

A once-reasonable game for the 360 is now a distinctly mediocre game for the PC.

Eight years in purgatory hasn't really been long enough to justify the move into down into the rosy red-tinted fires of Hell & Damnation. Sorry, Lucifer.

You can just about forgive a game you enjoy for being short. When it's a game you just endure... well, the urge to staple it to the back of a group of hobbits heading southeastward is increasingly attractive.

As a whole the game feels undercooked, unpolished and ultimately unsatisfying.

The first Lords of Shadow was a sweet surprise. The follow-up is a hostage to a story it tells badly, and a prisoner within a dull urban maze that refuses to become a characterful exploratory playground. To live on but to be diminished - that's the fate of the vampire in Castlevania's lore. Sadly, it's a bit of an epitaph for this well-meaning but bloated game as a whole.

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.

This is the kind of game you'll only get out when you've got people round who want to play the Wii cos they've seen it on the telly, and you'd rather eat soap than play one more round of Wii Sports baseball.

While it is fun, although not magnificently so, in its own right, it fails to offer a convincing reason to buy it over the many other fine EyeToy outings that have gone before.

If you're a fan of Conflict and/or shooters in general, you're likely to find Denied Ops shallow and dull. The two-man control system doesn't work properly. The visuals are ugly. The script is sub-Armageddon. Yes, it's easy to pick up and play. But if you're after an experience with real challenge and depth, you won't want to.

With its shaggy construction and wild ambition, E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy is as difficult to dislike as it is to recommend.

Combat is the brightest highlight, though it's still dulled by clumsy controls. Beyond that, the environments are so monotonous as to kill any passion for the thing.

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.

The gameplay is repetitive - not a problem for puzzle games if they also have an addictive quality, but Shrek-N-Roll just doesn't.

Those who own previous incarnations of the game won't find it a worthwhile upgrade, as it merely adds some new scenarios (which aren't much different to the old), a fresh dollop of buildings and an editor that allows for importing satellite maps. Nothing to get too excited about, really.

A mildly engaging way to spend an otherwise empty hour of your life.

The fact that we actually did play it through to completion - despite the sort of flaws that have sent us flying off the handle in countless other reviews - is a testament to its continued accessibility and the continuing attraction of the Buffy franchise.

Rare said that the game was basically completed on past systems anyway, then touched up, and that's incredibly obvious.

It's clear from the thoughtful setting and the commitment to Buddhist myth and ritual underpinning the plot that genuine effort has gone into the game, but that doesn't show in the final product. Perhaps fittingly for a game based around scaling a peak, playing Cursed Mountain is more a matter of endurance than anything, despite its worthy intentions.

Ford Street Racing's biggest crime is to be an ambitionless entry in a genre already overstocked with faster, cooler titles.

It's not a terrible game, just an utterly unoriginal and instantly forgettable one.

A passable addition to the game, but one that doesn't do anything to make itself essential. Better than a lot of BioWare DLC packs, but nowhere near as satisfying as their best work.

The poor technical quality of the game isn't quite enough to dim the innate amusement of thundering around New York as the Hulk, but it's certainly enough to drop this from "long awaited next gen remake of a great game" to "yet another movie tie-in that's only really good for a weekend rental".

There is absolutely no reason to trade money like that for a game like this, for a mouldy time-capsule that will likely mar your memories of the original. This time, history needs to be left to rest.

Eckert's game is too exasperating for a recommendation, but it's an interesting failure nonetheless. One of the best-looking and most chic indie titles of the past 18 months, it's evidence of a keen artistic talent - albeit one that needs pairing with more scrupulous game design in order to fully blossom.

EDF 2025 is a shorthand for every game. Just shooting GIANT INSECTS, whilst someone shouts SHOOT THE GIANT INSECTS from your TV.

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.

There's something endearing about invulnerable enemies dropped into the action to create tense stealth bottlenecks, but whose AI is so bad they frequently end up falling off cliffs and killing themselves before they've laid a claw on you.

Zeno Clash 2 is not an unambitious game, and nor for that matter is it a bad one. The melee mechanic at its core is well-tuned, lots of fun once you've got the hang of it, and could carry a different game. But the new structure makes you wonder why it's there at all. Why the fetch quests and moth-collecting? Why the silly wrist-mounted puzzles?

Societies doesn't stumble just because "it isn't SimCity". Fresh takes on old concepts should always be welcome. It stumbles because it's a generally unsatisfying patchwork of a game, dragged down by inconsistent gameplay, outdated design and weirdly implemented ideas.

Sadly, as far as Sims clones go, it's actually one of the best... but you'd probably be better off going for one of its better expansion packs than spending money on this. It's just a little too slight a proposition for a full game.

Full Auto feels dead in the water. It's okay - not awful enough to slam, and not good enough to recommend. But with a year to build on its predecessor, it needed to be a lot more than "okay".

Some gamers might relish this challenge, but the lack of any in-mission saving combined with unforgiving objectives and an imperfect interface will prove overly frustrating for many.

If you've already got Samurai Warriors 2, then I can't really see this slightly remixed version being worth the GBP 20 (EUR 25) asking price.

Choose to ignore these (and other) oversights, persevere with the drudgery of the maintenance aspect (the bit where, in a more conventional RPG/god game, you'd actually get to do stuff, like solve puzzles or kill things), and there's a lengthy itinerary of tasks to discover and perform - something that still appeals to my completist urges.

Some committed souls might eke a few hours of mild entertainment out of Red Faction: Battlegrounds, but only if they try really hard. It might not be irredeemably terrible, but there are so many better games in the download scene. Don't waste your time on this forgettable spin-off.

One thing in its favour was the gorgeously rendered fruit, that look so realistic and juicy that we swear we were salivating during our time with the game - but that's about as good as it gets.

The proliferation of save points also strips any element of tension away from the experience.

A cynical and at times deeply boring game to play. As a platformer, it won't have Naughty Dog barking [groan] or keep Insomniac up all night.

Charming little platform riot, but not a game that has aged well at all. Perhaps one for curious Spectrum owners to download - if only to check out what the original looked like.

It's the Citroen Saxo of rally titles - small, well rounded and not horrible to look at, but it is pretty horrible to drive, it sounds like a chainsaw dragged over sand paper and the sales guy is going to have his work cut out selling it.

The fact this is the best SEGA can come up with after years of waiting for Dreamcast re-releases does not say much for the publisher's ability to evaluate the worth of its own back catalogue.

It's not all that good, and it's got some horrible flaws, but at the same time, at least for a while, it's a laugh.

While riddled with design disasters, "Too Human" seems like an action-RPG holy grail by comparison to this startling mess. Better yet, play "Shadowgrounds: Survivor" instead of the both of 'em.

Just like the mad scientist whose baffling plot drives the action, Rise of Nightmares is a failed experiment.

It works well enough. There's nothing here to appeal to adults, or anyone who isn't a Ben 10 fan. But if you know one of those, this is a great present - and at under GBP 20 it's a reasonably priced one, too.

Capcom, in trying to shoehorn one of their hack-and-slashers into this world, have produced something which is beautiful, but incoherent and ultimately rather average.

Trouble is, the arcade machine used Tempest-style spinners for control and the joypad is a poor substitute when playing the classic version.

The voiceovers are also crushingly generic, featuring the kind of stereotypical scripts that gamers ought to be well and truly sick of by now.

What we're left with really is a Saturday morning cartoon retelling of the tale, with none of the memorable dialogue, very little actual exposition, too much brainless padding and key events reshaped to fit the brief.

Pineapple Smash Crew's weapons are by far its strongest point, an arsenal well engineered enough to support a much more intense game. Here they're wasted on a shooter that starts slowly and never speeds up, with solid foundations but nothing on top.

It's a wholly unoriginal game, devoid of interesting play options and mostly inaccessible for the multiplay ambition around which it was designed. Nevertheless, even the most average things can still be enjoyable, and in this regard Battlezone is not an unpleasant distraction.

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.

It's fun for a while, but by no stretch of the imagination is it worth £35.

It's barely got any good ideas, and the few it does have are not its own. It could have been a Monster Hunter Lite, with more emphasis on big bosses and gory finishing moves and less on collecting raptor talons and moss to make into a hat – but instead it's just a hollow, characterless echo of the game it's trying to be.

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.

Time may not have been particularly kind to Flashback, but 20 years on, it hasn't been forgotten. It's unlikely we'll be able to say the same for this remake in 20 days.

There are some highs, but they all come early, in the thrill of your first Air Jack or Cyclone, or the first hilarious ragdoll enemy death or the sight of Vin Diesel on a scooter. After that, nothing really changes. It's all smoothly presented, accessible, and easy enough to play for a few hours, but it has very little to offer beyond not making you especially angry.

Eve Online is now 10 years old. Dust 514 may also have a decade of evolution ahead of it, so I hope this is far from the last word on what has started out as a distinctly average and rather buggy shooter. It could well be a game with a bright future, but right now it's saddled with a very dull debut.

It's easy to pick up and play, has generally tip-top production values, has a moreish appeal and only a couple of bits where parents might have to help out the little ones. Sadly, grown-ups needn't feel like they're missing out, for as much as it contains most of the ingredients that should make it interesting to everyone, Monster House quickly becomes too repetitive and shallow to deliver on its early promise.

At best, this might have been a cute piece of original downloadable content on a system that sorely needs some. As a full price piece of software, it's genuinely worth less than forty quid's worth of dog-eared primary school maths books.

If you were hoping for the return of Time Crisis to herald some kind of rebirth for on-rails shooters, then you'll be sorely disappointed. The arcade mode is dumb fun for a short while, but is little more than a tired throwback, while the addition of FPS missions will be barely tolerable to even the most forgiving shooter.

Even if the surface mistakes were removed, its problems are so fundamental to its design that it's hard to imagine it transcending into a serious competitor for the big boys.

Fan of the first two games will initially feel at home here but, under prolonged scrutiny it reveals itself to be the weakest of the set.

As you alternate furiously between confusion and excitement, the explosive gaggle never lets up even for a moment. You'll launch a curtain of certain death, dash, homing missile strike, dash. Dash dash. Laser in the face. Die! WHY WON'T YOU DIE?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine may be unapologetically violent, but it's also unapologetically repetitive, and it's the one apology that needs to be made.

Remove brand loyalty from the equation and between the existing online pleasures of Warhawk, Killzone 2, Metal Gear Online, GRAW2 and Rainbow Six, with the promise of even more realistic and tactical games such as Operation Flashpoint and ArmA 2 in the near future, it's hard to imagine why any PS3 armchair soldier would want to invest too much time in a game this small, ordinary and generic.

IT'S LESS THAN AN HOUR LONG.

It's good, uncomplicated fun, but you won't ever want more than the demo version supplied with the Xbox Live Starter Kit. As a £40 purchase, Whacked! can get F---ed!

The problem underlining it all is that the games are way too easy.

In my mind, said mixed bag, when emptied onto the table, would yield all manner of mostly shiny looking baubles, most of which have some redeeming features but very few of which are worth pursuing for longer than a couple of minutes.

It's certainly one for the fans and Neo Geo completionists, but curious retro-heads and fighting game fans might get the wrong impression of SNK if they buy this particular compilation.

Neither a triumph of design nor storytelling and stymied by poor execution, Wayward Manor is a rough proposition. But there's something worthwhile here, even if it's the unusual power fantasy of being able to haunt an aristocratic family from the safety of the rafters.

Ease of using the touch-screen aside, it's something we'd prefer to flick to on the mobile while on the bus rather than dedicate the DS slot to. Nevertheless, it fulfils its puzzling duties.

The best thing you can say about the game is that it's technically impressive, and the openworld structure is a good idea - but that's it. The game's central purpose seems to be to make dismemberment as easy to pull off as possible, but as soon as that novelty has worn off you're left with a hollow, repetitive experience which quickly loses its initial appeal.

Combine this ruthless beating with the ugly stick with the essential lack of variety inherent in these arcade air combat games and you have a title only really worth considering once it's in the bargain bins.

Unfortunately, it also features some of the things that remind us why adventure games fell out of the mainstream, with tedious fetch quests, aggravating scenarios and a spirit-crushing trash-sorting mini-game conspiring to gradually strip the joy out of it all.

It's the little things that add up, one by one, to an often hypnotically bland, slapdash campaign. The core is sound enough, but Burning Skies is far too shabby in places for what is supposed to be the flagship first-party shooter on the Vita - indeed, the flagship shooter on handhelds, full stop.

The presence of three subtly different modes (Dodge, Juggle and Infinite) twists the rules a touch, but its lustre soon diminishes. What you're left with is the skeleton of a cute idea, but for the price, that's probably fair enough.

For pennies, you really can't go wrong. Just don't expect too much, and you might just find Dracula satisfying in an endearingly low-budget sort of way.

All of this would have been acceptable in the nineties, but expectations change. Sure, it's only a few quid, but for once it feels like you're getting what you pay for.

A bad game? Not really: just an underwhelming one. Your pulse may quicken occasionally, but your world is unlikely to turn upside down.

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.

In other words, it's just like all those other racing games you read about but never buy. Except, in this case, it's a tacit reminder that Namco has slipped so far down the field that it's actually being lapped - by games we bought almost five years ago. Oh sod it: ARGH!

It doesn't help that you're saddled with an inelegant control set-up that demands constant use of all four shoulder buttons at once.

Nicholson Electroplating doesn't have time for that slow-burn organic process. It attempts a brute-force attack on greatness and comes up short.

The overall experience tends to favour the functional over the thrilling. It's adequate amusement for the price, perhaps, but still falls short of the gut-busting potential presented by online crazy golf.