We'd like to apologise to Sid Meier - this game, while not terrible, has sullied your good name and brand. Our only suggestion is to never let someone else make a game for you and to make sure the inevitable next game in the franchise explores a less familiar environ and period.

Judged solely as a collection of such textbook tasks Hot Brain is passable enough, but it pales alongside the original Brain Training.

If you thought that Crash's first appearance on the next generation of platforms might enhance its appeal from a technical standpoint, forget it. This is very much a game designed primarily with the PS2 and Wii in mind, with a fairly lazy high-def makeover late in development.

It's not NBA Live, it's not NBA Street and it's not NBA 2K. And playing Chosen One you'll be reminded of this every couple of minutes.

You could get away with this kind of guff in 1994 when we were all thrilled just to have justification for the £180 we'd shelled out for a CD-ROM add-on. Walking around a 3D tech demo was interactive! And immersive!

This is nineties videogame cliché; an unrelenting gangbang of tired mechanics presented in mostly derivative clothing. The script, dialogue and voice acting grasp for irony but only manage weak cliché.

LA Rush looks fine, sounds generic and plays irremediably. If you've ever played any of the other Rush games, this game will be a disappointment.

The camera never becomes comfortable and the graphical glitches are an embarrassment to the development team, the publisher and the player.

In the end it's far more frustrating than it should be, particularly given that it's an idea with so much potential - and Fuse Games clearly has come up with a lot of good ideas in making this.

The problem isn't that TiQal is a casual game, but that it's a lazy casual game. A game so mired in existing formula that it has nothing to offer beyond bland distraction.

It stops being fun alarmingly quickly.

While the game certainly has aspirations to action-RPG greatness, it falls far, far short of the mark by instead boiling down to a trudging mess of relentless combat, character statistics and more quests and side-quests than you could shake some kind of magic stick at.

An artefact. It's completely anachronistic in today's world.

The Collective appears to have over-egged the pudding a little, putting far too much needless emphasis on repetitive and increasingly tedious action elements to the detriment of the already unpolished adventuring.

The Devil's Cartel is functional and fuss-free, a game that delivers the expected genre tropes with as little imagination and as much bluster as possible. It's not a bad game, but nor does it have anything beyond basic mechanical competence to mark it out as "good" - and even that competence wobbles more than it should.

Although Harvest Moon DS possesses the same base addictiveness as its forebears, it has no charm, no originality and no ambition.

If you're in the market for a proper jet-fighter game, I'd recommend hunting down a proper PC simulation. I remember EF-2000 from about 1998 being about 1998 times better than this. And if you want an arcadey dogfighter, try "Crimson Skies" for Xbox 1 instead.

With about triple the number of mini-games, or a budget price launch, we'd probably recommend it as a quirky curiosity/novelty purchase, but if we have to hear another squeaky kid utter the word 'like', we'll probably self-combust.

There is nothing to set this apart from every other mediocre first-person shooter you've ever played, and nothing to make it worth recommending.

The trouble is, it's a little too easy, even for a game aimed at children.

With a slow burn opening that lays the groundwork for a potentially brilliant sci-fi thriller, Fort Solis initially shows plenty of promise - but its story loses momentum in its later chapters, and fails to stick the landing.

But there are flashes of inspiration here, clues to the competence and ingenuity of the developer. Sadly these are drowned out by unnecessary bulk and repetition, resulting in an experience that's flabby and uninspiring regardless of your appreciation of its aims.

When you've got a quiz where players don't even need to understand the question to win, you've got a quiz that doesn't really work all that well.

You're going to get stuck, regularly, without remorse. And the main reason you'll get stuck is the terribly unresponsive controls' unholy alliance with the drunken camera that render the proliferation of tediously precise jump puzzles much more of a challenge than they should be.

If you're very young and easily entertained, Boogie might keep you occupied for a bit. But if you're looking for a game you can enjoy playing with kids or with friends after the pub, this isn't it. Not even after a bucket of Cheeky Vimto.

In fact, if, like me, you find yourself the victim of a game-breaking glitch, which requires you to hold down the SELECT button the whole time you're in the air, you'll definitely be disappointed.

It is blighted on so many levels by the blundering stupidity of its malformed stillborn design that recommending it is beyond us. The blue pill never looked so tasty.

Fascinating and frustrating by turn, there's just enough to make you cling to the hope that one day the development team will actually find him. For now, I'd love the big, glossy, elephant folio art book of the Epic Mickey series, but I can probably do without the games themselves.

Lacking both a challenge and soul, and failing to even engage on a narrative level, what you're left with is an overly forgiving shooter with weak strategy elements, which only serve to make it even easier for you. Having played right to the end, I wish there was something I could point to in its defence, but all I'm left with is the empty realisation that they've managed to somehow make this even less entertaining than the flawed original.

The multiplayer mode is more a case of surviving the longest than exhibiting any competitive skill (in which case, why not just play Survival mode?), and while those who get stuck in will find plenty of stages and difficulty levels to work through, it's all still quite basic even after a few tortured hours, and the occasional lazy design decision (like refusing to accept chains bigger than those asked for in "get 4 chains of 4" style scenarios) conspire with the general lack of urgency to turn you off completely.

Mario Party 8 is a "would have, should have, could have" kind of game. With such an depressingly long list of wasted possibilities, and so many other mini-game collections available for Nintendo Wii (The excellent Rayman Raving Rabbids, for one) It would be wrong of me to say you should pick this up.

Where "Gregory" and "Joe" were as often inventive and ingenious as they were incomparable to anything else on the shelves, Under The Skin's clever thinking dried up before it even made it off the blackboard.

There are clearly some talented people at Playlogic - notably whoever did the endearing cut-scenes, which play out like Hanna-Barbera doing The Matrix. How something so colourful and quirky became so bland is a mystery of the creative process.

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.

And if the shield was gone and the enemies were fewer, and more varied, it could have been a lot like an actual videogame, with a difficulty curve, rather than a bewildering ascent up a six-foot cliff onto an endless plateau of tedium.

It's not thunderously bad, but it is offensively plain, and there are some really daft design decisions lurking among the ridges of this DVD.

Mafia II gets the last word by destroying the myth that the mafia is interesting at all. It contends that the mob world is a hell of boredom populated by aggressively stupid automatons. These drones wake up each morning, carry out a series of repetitious tasks, and return home.

Mafia II gets the last word by destroying the myth that the mafia is interesting at all. It contends that the mob world is a hell of boredom populated by aggressively stupid automatons. These drones wake up each morning, carry out a series of repetitious tasks, and return home.

The games are neither entertaining nor plentiful enough to keep you playing for long. That applies to the multiplayer as well as solo mode.

In short, this isn't going to please anyone, apart from the few of you who are after a decent Virtua Racing for the lounge.

If you can tolerate the predictable levels, bad AI, targeting nonsense and the general sea of mediocrity that persists throughout then you might discover a flicker of entertainment.

There's a hellish amount of "...", even by J-RPG standards, and many sentences don't quite make sense - it's either a poorly written game, a crap translation to English or, probably, both.

Another hour that just offers the bare minimum of gaming, another shrug of disappointment.

It's short, shallow and repetitive, and where humour might elevate the experience, the pointless and clunky motion controls drag it down again.

Ultimately, Cake Mania is too expensive, too slow and too limited to excel in this overcrowded field.

The intricate layering of tasks and guard puzzles merely proves frustrating, and with the lack of anything beyond the game's eight lengthy single-player levels, which you probably won't feel much like completing, it's a game that looks good in theory but falls flat in execution.

There is some value in The Legend of Korra, both as a game and as a tribute to the cartoon on which it's based, but it falls far short of its potential on both counts. Perhaps the third-person combat theatrics for which the studio is known are not replicable on a small budget.

Since the saber-play is occasionally exciting, and that those of you who desperately want something that reminds you of the film might be prepared to put up with this in spite of its flaws. Me? I thought this was crap.

If you're a fan of online multiplayer slaughter, then it's a safe bet that you've already got plenty of games that do the same thing as War World, and do it a lot better.

Super Contra might appeal to the extreme hardcore retro apologists out there with oceanic reserves of patience and superhuman skills. It's certainly a challenge, and if that sounds like you, go for it. But if you're a mere mortal and squeal when the going gets tough, then the chances are you'll agree that the sequel is just too damn bloody minded by design to warrant much attention 19 years on.

Okabu's first impression is dazzling because it gets the audio and visual design absolutely right, but it has neither the depth nor imagination to sustain this. And when the simple act of playing isn't fun, you're just going through the motions.

The thrill of taking control of the family in action is soon soured by some nasty control and camera glitches, but youngsters who can't get enough of seeing Mrs Incredible stretch herself around won't really care about the finer points of directional play.

A brain teaser that borrows the aesthetics of PS1 horror, The Tartarus Key's repetition sadly dulls the impact of its spooks.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown's technical issues, both online and in performance terms, do a disservice to a novel, detailed game world.

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

Wise WW2 strategy gamers will stick with "Company of Heroes" and "Faces of War" for the moment.

If you're a die-hard adventure apologist with a CSI fixation then step right up, but the rest of you can put your curiosity to one side - especially at its current stupidly high price point.

The best reason to buy Hydrophobia Prophecy - not for entertainment, but as a kind of digital tourism. You're paying for a look at everything the developers achieved over Hydrophobia's exceptionally long development, and to see what this game might have been.

Lair, sadly, is a classic example of the apocryphal polished turd. Strip away the HD bluster and the game beneath is little more than a basic PS2 shooter with a makeover.

Later levels tend to get merely more irritating rather than more enjoyable, and the many fans of the Oddworld series would have been better served with handheld versions of "Abe's Oddysee" and "Abe's Exoddus," rather than this frankly overpriced, lame effort.

For all it brings to the table - space combat, Halo's shield, varied levels - not one single aspect is truly worthy of praise.

The titles that truly impress on bite-sized platforms are rarely those that try to ape "proper games", but the ones that turn hardware and storage restrictions into opportunities and innovations. Hero of Sparta isn't one of those games, and there are better Minis more deserving of your money.

What makes a good fighting game is a well-designed combat system offering at least some degree of challenge and long term reward, and that's missing in Bleach: Shattered Blade.

If you're one of those who has enjoyed the series on console, you'll enjoy it on DS. Otherwise, steer clear.

It's sort of enjoyable because swishing a sword and firing a gun and seeing off billions of stupid enemies without having to think about it too much can be fun. Not fun for long, though, and not the kind of fun it's worth spending 30 or 40 quid on.

Hardcore? Don't be fooled, chaps. Maybe, somewhere, deep within the bowels of the hardcore gamer there's a desire to play endless, sprawling, repetitive games which offer no motivation to continue, but really, if you're looking for a hardcore RPG status symbol, then pick up Breath of Fire II or Golden Sun - or buy Zelda, because that's a real-time RPG done right.

It's the biggest Mario Party game yet, but fails to find the fun at almost every step.

The comic book presentation is enthusiastically funny, the freeform action concept is commendable and the technology itself, when it works, is promising.

The saddest thing about Sakura Samurai is that the foundation is there for a much better game.

The sad fact is that there isn't a single spark of imagination or joy in this entire game. Despite some obvious effort, Wario: Master of Disguise is just utterly tedious in every respect and an absolute chore to play.

The main linear quest path provides the bulk of Mage Knight, with little in the way of sub-quest trimmings, and the replay value is low despite the temptation of trying out new characters.

Mediocre, unimpressive and uninspired. The handling and physics are competent, but the missions are dull and the presentation is shoddy. The most fun to be had is in laughing at the voiceovers.

If you like the sound of a game which feels a lot like playing an extremely early build of Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time on a broken television then go ahead and drop forty notes on this abomination.

Editing in game design is as important as it is in writing or filmmaking. Get to the point. Respect both the time and financial investment of your audience. Above all else, don't send me chasing after the goddamn lorry.

If you are looking for a multiplayer version of the classic board-game you're almost certainly better-off going to community sites like www.diplom.org and exploring some of the free Play-By-EMail options (bewilderingly Paradox have chosen not to include a PBEM or a hot-seat mode).

Broken Roads neglects its best ideas, padding out its runtime with fetch quests that leave you asking "why am I here?" for all the wrong reasons.

You begin to think that behind Bodycount there is perhaps the story of an heroic development team tasked with doing far too much with far too little, who have performed a minor miracle in simply shipping something that works. Well, works some of the time. It's an explanation. But the killer fact about Bodycount is that it's nowhere near good enough to compete in the FPS arena, and serves nobody - player, developer or publisher.

So once again, we have here a modern day Sonic game devoid of the elements which made olden days Sonic games so good - speed, simplicity, a decent control system, that sort of thing. Sonic Riders Zero Gravity is not hateful, just pointless. A complete waste of time, effort and the planet's resources.

Devotees may still play along, through fandom obligation if nothing else, but there's no spell that can change the fact that Harry Potter's videogame saga ends with a whimper rather than a bang.

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.

Having Gary Oldman and Frodo do voiceovers doesn't make up for the fact this game looks and plays like something made five years ago.

All in all, it's hard to see how even the most ardent SpongeBob fan could get a lot out of this game, even with three friends and four controllers on hand. There's just not a big enough selection of games, fundamentally, and too many niggles.

It's a game that, like other examples of the genre, is utterly simplistic, and little more than a carefully engineered route down the reward pathway of the player's brain.

If you're looking for a slick, tactile contraption puzzler, then you're far better off looking to the mobile scene for the many superior (and cheaper) offerings. By comparison, Crazy Machines Elements is a step into a murky past best forgotten.

The more interesting large-scale fire fights and planning truck upgrades provide some reasons to stick with it, along with nostalgia for dear old Interstate 76. If only Targem had concentrated on lending the missions more of the depth I76's sported, the other faults would be far more forgivable.

It's worrying when the nicest thing you can say about a game is that the early sections manage to be boring in an interesting way, but it's true for Lost Planet 3. It's a game that manages to make third-person shooting feel like work - and one that makes work feel like something that more games should explore.

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.

It's yet another example of a distinctly average "extreme sports" game that lacks the polish and creativity of the real-life sportsmen it's trying to emulate-slash-harness.

RF Online is like playing an endless game of slow-motion whack-a-rat, without the entertainment of the fairground surroundings.

This empty feeling you get from playing The Omega Strain will be etched all over your drained face within minutes - it's a depressingly bland experience, and frankly not one we'd advise anyone but the most committed online console gamer to even bother having a look at.

Gone is the marriage of lush, detailed and hugely compelling space combat missions to key moments in the film trilogy, replaced by poorly put together ground-based approximations of the old style, and a series of gimmick-driven vehicle missions that barely even summon up an initial "wow" factor.

Maximum Impact 2 feels so incredibly sloppy and dated that the only real benefit of its existence is highlighting just how great sister title "KOF XI" really is by comparison.

The intricate layering of tasks and guard puzzles merely proves frustrating, and with the lack of anything beyond the game's eight lengthy single-player levels, which you probably won't feel much like completing, it's a game that looks good in theory but falls flat in execution.

While fun can be had here, it's from the mini-games and the experience rather than solid table designs - and that's a cardinal sin in pinball.

Pathetically short, entirely uneventful and clearly stuck together from existing assets, Awakened doesn't add anything to its parent game other than a punchline that makes it clear that Isaac's trials on Tau Volantis were ultimately a waste of his - and our - time.

It is an exercise in immense frustration and painful tedium. When it works, and this feels a stupid sentence at this point, it does manifest the correct semiotic indicators of first-person shooting. You are mowing down literally hundreds of baddies with big metal guns. But that's it. And it isn't all that much.

Barrel Blast is an abortive and uncannily anachronistic attempt at a character racer with impossible controls, dreadful, imbalanced AI and boring design. It's not even worth the hour of your time that it takes to get completely sick of it.

Art of Murder is poorly paced, illogically structured and often downright laughable.