It's unashamedly one of the PSP's brightest, most endearing, beguiling and long-lasting games, and its protracted residency in our PSP slot this month speaks as a louder recommendation than any number of orthodox, adulatory adjectives.

Perfectly competent in execution, yet lacking that spark that makes us visibly excited to cough up yet more money for almost exactly the same Pokémon game as the last forty-four when Diamond and Pearl land over here.

As much as you might not be thrilled about the prospect of a 2D scrolling tank shooter, Heavy Weapon is far better than it initially appears to be. As an example of how to bring the past up to date, it's one of the best examples on Live to date.

In a genuinely striking move, The Burning Crusade simultaneously gives World of Warcraft veterans the swathes of new content they've been crying out for, and makes the end-game experience vastly more open to casual players or new players.

This is the most joyfully daft fun imaginable, bursting with in-jokes and hilarious set-pieces. [JPN Import]

The way the game utilises the controller is beautiful and - as ever - the humour superb, yet it's a game short on long-term appeal because it never really dares to test players.

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition feels like it had the potential to be a pared-down shooter classic, but never quite manages to make the core combat exciting, varied or challenging enough to elevate it to the lofty realms that early showings suggested it would reach. Nevertheless, with a glorious setting, some memorable boss encounters and some staggering visuals to enjoy, Lost Planet has enough going for it.

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.

Ms. Pac-Man is still a joy to play. Simplicity itself, elegant, addictive, manic and somehow timeless.

You've lost a lot of respect and you've ruined the enjoyment of hundreds of your admirers. Look me in the eye and tell me you're not ashamed.

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

New Rally-X is fun for about ten minutes, but that's all, and for the price that's just not enough.

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

The choice is yours: wait for all six episodes to appear on one value-packed 15 (or so) hour game, or enjoy the cheap and cheerful drip-feed that we're getting now. Either way, Situation Comedy is another solid episode that bodes well for the next four - but let's have less of the recycled locations and more new characters next time, eh chaps?

One perfectly formed, endlessly absorbing, regularly amusing word game. If you're looking for some brainial stimulation, find logic puzzles like Sudoku and Slitherlink a trifle soulless, and have a nasty 'untreatable' case of leprosy or beriberi, then I really can't recommend Bookworm Adventures enough.

Sporting a beautiful hand-painted look, and an endearingly weird lead character who communicates only in excited squeaks and gurgles like some untroubled multi-amputee baby, it's like the arthouse brother of Wik and the Fable of Souls.

Not quite the new "Geometry Wars" then (or the new anything-older), but a solid effort, and definitely one of the best original Xbox Live Arcade titles since Bizarre's opener.

Unless you already have an emotional attachment to the Star Trek universe, and feel a cheeky little frisson down there at the prospect of pretending to be Kirk, there's no reason at all to put up with the unresponsive controls, shallow gameplay and absolutely infuriating inability to save during an hour-long mission.

There's nothing special here. Elebits is a fairly competent FPS tidy-'em-up with a great edit mode, but that's all.

At no point was it an unpleasant game to play, it's merely completely retrograde in several key areas and lacking any sense of presentation or style. It's an ugly game, but one which, crucially, works as a game at its most basic level - which, to my mind, weighs heavily against the problems it has in most other areas.

Worst of all, it's missing any multiplayer option, as fighting along with a friend might have added a little bit more enjoyment. Obligatory mini-games don't really make up for it, making this a brawler that's more a nod to easily pleased fans than an essential purchase.

It feels like an undecided halfway house between two genres - both of which the PC excels at - and it's incapable of deciding which one it wants to be.

Fans of Pangya on the PC will find it over-familiar and somewhat hollow without the online community aspects, and for anyone else the random and entirely unexplained Korean fantasy setting might be a distinct turn-off.

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".

A pretty game set in a compulsive universe which is sneakily derivative and, at its heart, stale, repetitive, average and lacking in any meaningful creativity.

It's just a little annoying to know that SCEE and Team 17 are holding back on us, that this game could have been so much more.

It's pretty clear that Pimp My Ride is not aimed at us. And by "us" I mean "people who have at least a basic understanding of what makes a good game". It's the equivalent of a movie like Norbit or a TV show like...well, like Pimp My Ride.

I just didn't feel the same magic, the same excitement that flowed from "Sorrow."

The core gameplay is extremely well polished and considered, the storyline and presentation are fantastic, Kojima's addiction to cut-scenes appears to be on the mend, and the squad-based nature of the game adds a whole new dimension which no MGS game has tapped to date - all factors which contribute to make this into one of the finest games on the PSP.

Simply too generic in pretty much every way, a collection of ideas done hundreds of times before in other games, offering nothing new to excite or surprise the player. A wholly unremarkable and totally avoidable game.

This is quite long and has stacks of replay value with the multiplayer. That multiplayer mode will be hugely satisfying to anyone who happens to know someone else with a PSP (gasp!) and it represents further evidence that 2006 is the year of co-op gaming.

Those in desperate search of a new platform game after completing New Super Mario Bros. upside down and backwards might get a few hours' respite from this, but otherwise wait until it costs nothing and then buy it for the nephew you gave your old chunky DS when you decide you had to have a Lite, and maybe invest your money in some of the Virtual Console's retro treats instead.

A strangely compelling, if completely non-essential, diversion for adults and definitely a recommended rental for the youngsters.

While not as essential as a title like Geometry Wars, Roboblitz can still be a charming and enjoyable experience, definitely setting new precedents for future Arcade releases. However at times it feels a little too much like an Unreal Engine 3 tech-demo than a game in its own right.

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.

While I can understand the financial reasoning behind milking the Capcom back catalogue for two volumes, as a fan I'd much rather have had one all killer, no filler compilation with Street Fighter II, Ghost 'n Goblins, Commando, 1941 and Strider all in one place.

It still feels clumsy, and while it's possible to overcome this in time and reach a decent standard, it robs the game of some of its accessibility - something critical to its multiplayer appeal - and your ultimate proficiency in moving, jumping and firing at the same time is only likely to announce itself long after you've exhausted what depths there are to excavate.

Frankly terrible considering the rich potential the Wii controller offers for games of this ilk.

On a rainy day there's an enjoyable few hours to be had riding these highs. On a sunny day, a trip to the theme park and riding a rollercoaster would be more understandable.

The game becomes a painfully slow and suffocating linear trudge through every single cabin on the train - for the fifth time - in an effort to find everyone and get hold of their passports for investigation purposes, while asking all nineteen passengers and crew practically the exact same set of twenty odd questions.

If more of the same is what you're after, you can't really argue with what Bethesda's served up for its hardcore fans.

Indeed, if you can get your eyes past the epilepsy-inducing menus, and your head round the aneurism-inducing unions, there is a decent game struggling to break free of its gratuitously obfuscated difficulty curve. [JPN Import]

VB2's no featherweight then, whatever Ippo's boxing class, but it's certainly an acquired taste that proves satisfying if you give it time to beef up.

Superman Returns is so criminally lacking in any inspiration, though, and is such a dismal waste of the licence that you'll want to curl up and rock yourself into a trance. At least then your mind can entertain you with thoughts of what a good Superman game might be like.

To really catapult it into the very highest bracket, Ubisoft still needs to work on a more compelling premise and improve on some of the production values, but otherwise Vegas represents one of the best shooters on the market and deserves to succeed.

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.

Sure, there are times in the game when you want to shake Miyamoto and co by the lapels for including elements of the game which remain dogged by old-school convention, but they represent a flea bite on what is just a stunning and relentlessly enjoyable game.

The game's a source of surprisingly inexhaustible enthusiasm.

Brilliantly embodies the Wii's dramatic premise: that this kind of control can appeal to people who don't play games and people who used to play games as well as people who've been playing them for as long as we have.

After a jovial couple of hours in its company the scales will fall, and what had just seemed an unpretentious, unassumingly enjoyable videogame becomes a kind of existential nightmare of averageness that it's impossible to play for a minute longer. Monster 4x4: World Circuit is the definition of the lowest common denominator.

Snapping out of your glazed-eye reverie to find you've added a few points to the high-score table. Well Gunpey-R's sort of like that. Not quite as good. But it's almost as good, and that's a pretty significant achievement after all.

505 Game Street has been commercially smart to jump aboard the Brain Training bandwagon quickly, but it has made a huge mistake in throwing a faceless copycat effort out there. Hopefully people will not be remotely fooled - we're certainly not.

That's Trackmania's secret. It's deeply satisfying, while at the same time being more frustrating than you could possibly imagine. It's a contradiction until you've played it.

But the bigger problem seems to be that developer Bluepoint Games has gone after two audiences at once, and it hasn't really done enough for either.

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

Sonic Rivals still stands head and shoulders over other recent efforts in the franchise - and, indeed, over many other recent PSP titles - simply because the game at the heart of it all is downright fun.

In these days of paying over the odds to download crippled Virtual Console games, and pretending not to notice how many Microsoft points are on your credit card, this latest compilation takes on an even greater value and may even - whisper it - encourage a few of us to finally take the original boxes out from under the bed, and consider putting them lovingly in the attic.

As it is, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy is best sampled as a rental for Wii owners looking for a multiplayer party game that'll last a night or two.

If you were a massive fan of the Lego Star Wars games then by all means check out Bionicle Heroes - to a very large degree it looks like the same game, and as such you'll get the same kind of grinding enjoyment out of mining all the levels for booty.

If you're a long-term fan and haven't already bought it on one of innumerable compilations out there, then 400 points is just about tolerable for a game of this importance and stature.

If you can track down Singstar Rocks on the cheap, though, you're pretty much guaranteed a few memorable drunken nights in. It's still as compelling and fatally flawed as it has ever been, where the ratio of good to bad songs is as frustrating as we've come to expect.

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.

This is a game for the RPG fan willing to overlook intolerable weaknesses of character just to have a desirable looking girl on their arm.

What should have been a dramatic return to form for Sonic, as signalled by the hugely promising trailer videos from earlier this year and the bold decision to use the original Sonic the Hedgehog name, has turned out to be an absolute mess.

The control system isn't much fun, and feels unfinished and somewhat unloved - but it is certainly possible to get to grips with it and to eke some enjoyment out of the superbly designed levels of the game.

A mild downhill racer with too many glitches, and beyond the grinding, nothing to do with its licence. The Wiimote controls don't ruin it, despite the madness of the button use, but they don't add anything a regular analogue stick couldn't have made easier.

Put bluntly, the combat and AI is merely average, the visuals don't really wow, and the much-vaunted weaponry makes little difference to how it plays. To say we're underwhelmed is the understatement of the year.

As it is, Genji is undercooked. It's not terrible, but it's not good enough to rise above the baggage of ridicule hanging over its shoulder.

Whoever, wherever, whatever you are, there is absolutely zero reason to own this atrocious excuse for a video game.

It doesn't have any depth to speak of, but it's unique (for the moment) and has a genuine sense of humour, a quality few games can boast. It's an apt launch title, lacking in polish but rich in character and laughs.

There is going to be an inevitable split between tabletop players absolutely delighted with the best-ever visual recreation of their game of choice (though possibly also apoplectic about some of the liberties taken with Warhammer rules) and general strategy gamers nonplussed as to why they'd possibly want to play this messy, sometimes broken-feeling thing over the hugely superior (but less aesthetically inventive) "Medieval II: Total War."

Despite the questionable long term appeal, Gitaroo Man Lives! is one of those games that you'll cherish while it lasts, but only truly get the most out of if you're lucky enough to be able to engage in multiplayer. [JPN Import]

Smackdown vs RAW is the wrestling "FIFA" - drowning in customisable settings, but the gameplay isn't always completely there. However, like "FIFA," SvsR has made some admirable steps this year.

I'm completely in love with Trauma Centre: Second Opinion. It's urgent, tense, dramatic, unique, extremely difficult and surprisingly varied, an excellent Wii game and an excellent puzzle game. For anyone suffering from scepticism and uncertainty about the validity of the Wii's control system and doubting developers' abilities to create games to live up to its potential, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion is the perfect remedy.

If you do know your Kakashis from your Irukas, add a couple of points to the score and think about picking this up. For everyone else, games like Kingdom Hearts 2 and Ninja Gaiden offer far more substantial and rewarding adventures in a similar vein. Everyone's a winner, basically. Hurrah.

Aside from championship you get standard quick race, split-screen and time trial options, and Drift Combo, an incongruous, aggressively arcadey and frankly unplayable mode that challenges you to string long sequences of slides together.

Even with a spit and polish to the visuals and the usual effortless presentation it can't help but feel tiring after a while.

Tedious repetition needs to be a little better disguised.

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.

Eragon drags up torrid memories of the bad old days when movie licensed games were not only terrible games, but had sod-all to do with the subject matter. Judged on its own merits, it's clearly below par game in every single area imaginable. Technically bereft, poorly designed and coma-inducing to play, it's about as far away from being an example of where gaming is today as you can imagine.

At times gorgeous, at other times frustrating, it's worth persevering with just to bask in its snug atmosphere.

Another safe, derivative, formulaic movie tie-in that's lacking in the graphical department and is way too easy for all but the youngest gamers out there.

The bottom line is that the core gameplay is tedious beyond belief - so much so that I doubt you'd even get value from renting it.

Hammers of Fate adds a lot of material for HoMM5. But to warrant a better mark, it would have to actually deal with the basic weaknesses of the game. As it is, despite the Caravan's efforts to streamline one aspect, it just doesn't.

Personally, I found the handling a touch too heavy for my tastes, with accurate cornering a skill that needs more practice than most fair-weather fans will want to bother with. Committed bike nuts, however, will be in hog heaven.

Though familiar, MTWII is breathtaking in its depth, fiendishly challenging in all the right ways and a big old phlegmy spit right in the eye of anything else foolish enough to claim ownership of the strategy crown.

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.

But really it all comes back to the fact that Yoshi's Island was doing almost everything for the first time, and Artoon is cribbing from the same notes.

It's better in some areas than 6, and is certainly brilliant played against real people, or just picked up and played properly with the nitrous turned off in arcade mode. But it's not really as challenging.

Objectively this is a game that basically sucks. It's technically limited, characterised by treacle-slow, far-from-original gameplay that's beset by niggles, and sorely unadorned by fancy cut-scenes or easy-to-navigate menus. But subjectively, in spite of all of its flaws, what emerges is something that has the potential to be hypnotically absorbing and, yes, even fun. [JPN Import]

Aside from being just a tad too repetitive and too long, the platform levels are well-presented and plenty of fun.

As a less in-depth alternative, to Madden, you can't really fault Blitz. It stands somewhere between the feature bloat of that immensely popular series and EA's own faux-urban NFL Street games. However, whichever way you put it, Madden still comes out on top.

The activities are largely pointless, gratuitous exercises in showing off the girls in their bikinis, and any attempt to give the game some sort of justifiable kleptomaniacal purpose is beyond insulting - even to serial wankers.

Puzzle fans bored of sliding tiles as quickly as possible will enjoy the change of pace.

You just need to invest yourself. If you do, you'll discover Viva Piñata to be a subtle blend of resource management and Origin of Species (albeit mad, wackily named species with cute sound effects).

It's not the most spectacular entry in its niche, and there's no denying there are better kid's games out there, but against all odds Chicken Little's second game outing is a respectable and often charming experience.

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.

Contra is a fairly typical example of one of those games from the period that's too unforgiving to be truly enjoyable, and suffers from too many annoying design conventions that were taken for granted back then.