Microsoft's Live Arcade offerings are generally well worth the asking price, but Feeding Frenzy, sadly, isn't one of them.

The coin-gobbling design exists to kill you off as quickly as possible, and with such a repetitive design you've soon seen all there is to see. But that said, it's a coffee break fix to remind yourself of a lost era of gaming innocence and comes for the price of a large drink in Starbucks. We still dig it.

With the story and some of the more interesting recruitment features from the original game removed and with an RPG experience system that ultimately breaks both the offline and online play, it's hard to recommend this over its forebear, even if it is cheap at half the price.

It's still the hardcore spectacle we know and love, with its Moonlight laser blades and hidden AC parts, but by bringing mecha enthusiasts together in a team-based environment that isn't restricted to one-on-one arena battles, we finally have a game on which an online community can be built.

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.

Much like the recent MouseCraft, which at least had a Tetris twist, Flockers struggles to move out of the shadow cast by Lemmings' brilliantly pure concept.

Like labelmate Trinity Universe, Atelier Rorona is a hard game to dislike, but it ultimately feels a little too tied to JRPG convention for its ideas to bear fruit. It might be admirable for a game to promote such a diligent work ethic, but it never quite rewards you handsomely enough for your efforts.

MaXplosion might lack some of the depth of its rival, but given that it's less than a tenth of the price, it's entitled to. Buy both with the money you're not spending on beer tonight. Make everyone happy.

While the storyline blooms from the initial boredom into something more intriguing, it fizzles disappointingly as the game comes to its rather abrupt end.

Disappointing, but not necessarily boring.

Yes, it's a button-masher, but nobody does button-mashing quite as well as KOEI with Dynasty Warriors, and Strikeforce gets more important things right (great animation, fluid controls, good weapon variety, PSP-sized missions) than it gets wrong.

It's one of the few truly original games on Live Arcade, and deserves your attention for that, but it can't quite shake off the sour tang of unfulfilled potential.

It won't change your world, but Avalanche Software - veterans of several Rugrats games as well as the forgettable 25 To Life - have delivered a game that is perfectly attuned to the capabilities and sensibilities of its tween audience, and filled it up with solid gameplay that assists or challenges them at just the right times.

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

As a piece of interactive merchandise for the masses, it does its job: it's polished, intuitive to control, and approximates the Bond Experience, albeit with about as much subtlety as Vesper Lynd's neckline. For everyone else though, it's brainless, dull, and ridiculously easy. Rather than giving the Bond game its Casino Royale moment, Activision and Treyarch have simply carried on in the joyless tradition of dumbed-down shooters designed for thickos, and GoldenEye has never seemed so far away.

Awkward, riddled with plot holes and unintentionally offensive, this is Dontnod's worst offering to date. [Eurogamer Avoid]

We get this perfunctory morsel, where the narrative treads water as the action goes in circles. With his final act looming, Shepard deserved better.

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.

It deilghts in the moment-by-moment empowerment of piloting a 1970s vintage mecha in battle, the medium-term enjoyment of turning the tide of a battle through strategic thinking, and the long-view 'gotta catch 'em all' collecting loops. If you have never tried a Musou game before, this is where you should start.

The thing that upset me, though, was that by the time I got through most of it there was a real sense that these ideas - however basic - could have been applied so much more exotically and with so much more freedom than they have.

This is a very simple, very brainless third person shooter for people who want to be Jango Fett – it won’t challenge for a spot on your Christmas list, but it won’t have you crossing anybody off yours if it finds its way into your stocking.

When it's good it's fantastic, but when it's not it's a spirit sapping experience. That's Mafia in a nutshell - a flawed classic that'll certainly provide good rental value if nothing else.

If you're just looking to punch someone in the face, Rocky Legends might just be the therapy you need.

Dynasty Warriors remains a series that contains greatness, then, but that's not quite enough for higher marks - although, inevitably, it will still be just about enough to bring along Dynasty Warriors 9.

Maps are too long and slow-paced when they should be frenetic and bite-sized.

It's a strong package that suffers partly because we were promised so much in the first place, partly because so much of it is available online for free, and partly because the new stuff is exactly the sort of thing Valve would have released for free in times gone past.

Whether you're a Warhammer 40K aficionado or not, this is just the right kind of uncomplicated stress relief to distract you from the BBC News 24 ticker.

Capcom fans deserve so much better than this.

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

An exceptionally generic platformer shaped around quick trial and error design and limp enemies, and built around a tired looking cel-shaded engine that does little justice to the visuals of the arcade original.

Gotham City Impostors offers a minimum of substantive content - maps, in particular - and a maximum of unlockables that put unrealistic demands for grinding next to a 'buy now' button. It is possible, apparently, to reach character level 1000 in this. I cannot imagine it. The gadget-enabled shooter at the heart of Gotham City Impostors is fun, smart, and hard to dislike. But it's impossible to recommend.

The people behind Grow Home return with an ingenious multiplayer battler. [Recommended]

Despite Capcom's protestations of Chaos Legion being some 'intense gothic opera' fusion of action, RPG and strategy, it's still an essentially simple game at its heart, and might not be as involving as many would like.

Baja is a fussy racer, held back by twitchy control and incredibly dull design. Truly dedicated fans of the real race, or hardcore racing nuts with vast reserves of patience, may well get something out of it. Most people looking for a grimy, gnarly rock-hopping racer will be quite happy with something like "Pure."

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.

Factor in an exceptionally short single-player campaign, an undercooked tactical squad element and a distinct lack of gameplay variety and it's impossible not to see this as a very big missed opportunity.

For most of us, though, Opoona is a curiosity - it's charming, strange and often fun, but too shallow and stretched out to make for a genuinely engrossing RPG experience. [JPN Import]

This unforgiving approach may well please dedicated tennis enthusiasts but it will only frustrate those just looking for a fun experience.

TV Show King is a quiz game, and it features questions. That basic level of expectance is all it manages to meet, and it's horribly clear that this is simply a "make do" release, put out there to mop up an existing market with the minimum of effort.

Like all the best games, there's a whole world of subtle strategy beneath this simple concept and the Street Fighter branding is cleverly used.

At its core, this is the most entertaining Resident Evil game we've ever played, and easily the best use of a light gun ever. With a bigger and more focused game attached to it, this could have been a must buy classic, but instead has all the hallmarks of a classic weekend rental.

There's a bit more up and down, certainly, but all that really distinguishes it is the sharp, cartoony look, smooth framerate (even if we couldn't find a 60Hz option) and web-like interface for loading each level.

It's impossible to hold that shallowness against it. This isn't meant to be a game you plug away at for hours on end, trying to beat your high scores or to unlock additional stages. It's supposed to be a daft bit of throwaway entertainment for a gathering of family or friends, a game that anyone can pick up and play and have a good time with.

While never terrible, Darkspore feels like it's had its heart surgically removed. All the components for a giddily stupid, aesthetically imaginative action RPG are here. Somehow, however, they combine into a shambling golem that knows its basic purpose, but not a whole lot else.

There's definitely potential here to build something more robust, with multiple power-ups and numerous enemy types, but Defend Your Castle becomes a mindless slog far too quickly to warrant repeat plays.

Black Knight Sword is a stylish anachronism, but an anachronism nonetheless. Its richest ideas are to be found in the presentation, the aesthetic, the art direction and stage direction. Elsewhere, this is a rather rote production, its substance plainly enjoyable, but mostly forgettable.

It's casual to the core, designed to be playable by everyone from little kids to open-minded grandparents, and that's no bad thing. In those terms, Feeding Frenzy 2 is a decent package that improves on the original in terms of size, if not gameplay.

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.

It's just a shame that such a fundamental feature as combat takes the shine off what could have been the sequel to make Risen popular beyond its small audience of devotees.

As is seemingly the law with platform games, new abilities get bolted on, the challenge becomes more multi-faceted, you go blue in the face, forget to breathe, and pass out in front of your PS3 from platformitis. It's a common condition. Look it up.

It's easy to see Dr Luigi as a symptom of the current malaise affecting its home console business. It features a strange gimmick no one's really that interested in, it highlights an increasing reliance on past glories, and most will find it somewhat overpriced.

It might look a little like Yoshi's Island, then, but it's a worse game in every regard. 19 years on from the original, its design has been denuded of almost everything that made it great: a series once fecund with ideas is now coasting on past glories.

A fiercely likeable time-waster. But with console download services delivering increasingly brilliant games these days, DeathSpank has yet to make the transition from an entertaining diversion to something that's truly essential.

In a world of compromised visions, The Falconeer is dazzlingly original. An aerial combat game unlike any other. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Minecraft's blocky charm is present and correct, but the rest of Minecraft Legends is only as deep as the skins it wants to sell you.

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.

A promising conspiracy that's over before it's begun.

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.

Despite its exaggerated cartoon characters and picturesque sunsets, Powerstar Golf feels surprisingly staid and lacking personality.

WRC 2 is a very slightly improved game, but a year on, gaming has left it behind.

If you can get used to the nunchuk and remote as a surrogate wheel then the experience is passable, but nothing more.

An average entry-level action RPG. If you're a heavy user of wizards and orcs, you'll have probably played something very similar only last week.

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.

There are loads of gameplay modes for your money - including online multiplayer for up to eight players, specific puzzle-style challenges, and a classic survival mode where you have to nosh as many balls (wahey etc) as you can before you gobble your own tail (wahey etc).

Titan Quest on Nintendo Switch looks and plays every bit like the 2006 original. While this might be exactly what some fans hope to hear, for others it may feel as though not enough's been done to reimagine this classic ARG for a 2018 audience playing on the go - all of which sadly makes it one of the Switch's more disappointing ports to date.

A serviceable, sometimes-engaging official Star Trek version of Stellaris that makes sense for generic space war fans, but flounders when it comes to narrative logic and Trekkie authenticity.

Zombie Panic's gleeful initial charm and quirky visual appeal wane once the frenzied, bullet-spraying repetition kicks in after a couple of stages. It's evidently one of those games best sampled in small doses.

With repetitive, largely uninspired corridor combat, and boring, linear and samey mission design, the least you'd hope is that there would be some supplementary side quests to extend the lifespan - but not so.

Gunman Chronicles has a cracking storyline running throughout with its fair share of twists and turns. All of this is set upon some truly stunning landscapes and against some pretty fearsome foes.

For those expecting massive advancements or a radical departure from the original, this will come as a disappointment. A more honest, realistic assessment would be to treat this as a mission pack, and for those who do just want more of the same, you'll come away a satisfied customer.

No one should really expect it to be cutting edge entertainment, although it does succeed in providing a new spin on long abandoned gaming principles. Despite its overtly simplistic nature, it's still a blisteringly entertaining romp in small doses, providing you take it in the right spirit.

Sometimes the formula twists slightly, with the task focusing on, for example, helping prisoners bust out of prison or a simple checkpoint race. For the most part, mind you, it's smashing for smashing's sake, and therefore entertaining in short bursts, but a bit mindlessly intense over the long haul.

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.

Much like the conceptually similar Gin Rummy, the presentation is scrappy, the options minimal and the overall impression is of a game that will satisfy the demands of dedicated Shogi players but has little to offer anyone else.

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

So it's up there with Just Dance 2 and Dance Central as a fun, accessible, well-produced dancing game. But none of them could be described as the ultimate dancing game.

The musou genre needed new ideas - but reinventing it as a shoddy open-world game wasn't the answer.

The Mercenaries gets off to a promising start, and in the short term it can be a thrilling blast, but by refusing to augment or develop the core idea from its mini-game roots, Capcom has doomed it to second tier status.

There is unique and unusual pleasure to balancing this world just so, but without a straightforward way to restart chapters, or way to wind the clock back to undo decisions, the troughs of frustration eventually come to overwhelm the peaks of delight.

A smart and inventive RPG-lite, and a worthy entry in the TRON canon.

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.

So easy on the eye visually that if you saw a demo of it running you might actually think it was going to impress you. But keep watching and, like a drunken rejection from a girl in a nightclub, it will quickly dawn on you that it's not going to happen. Like the gameplay, a solid base was never built upon and the end result is just boring.

It's a content-packed, well-produced handheld game - they can put that on the box if they want - but the racing's a bit boring, the load-delays are too regular and too long, it's very punishing when you start getting somewhere, and the lack of online options hurts it.

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.

Overdose started life as a fan-made mod and it shows. While it's since gained official approval and funding, Counter-Strike this ain't.

Somewhere along the line there was a wholesale misunderstanding of what made Sands of Time good, and the result of the change in approach is a game that manages to be less likable in just about every single way.

Concord's snappy combat and colourful character abilities make it a perfectly playable shooter. But muddled hero designs and unimaginative maps and modes leave it struggling to stand out.

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.

It's hardly an arcade classic, in other words, but if you're after nothing more than a friendly and frantic fifteen minutes of action every now and then, Choplifter HD just came to the rescue.

It may not last long, but it's entertaining while it does.

For the majority of Wii owners, I suspect this will prove simply too dry and convoluted to really catch on.

The major drawback of Summer Heat is an issue of longevity; there really isn't much to keep you at it for longer than a couple of days, despite the fairly entertaining co-op and versus multiplayer modes.

Stood next to any of the better games of the year, Gungrave feels like a depressingly hollow experience designed to showcase some nifty graphics.

Hopefully the community will build and become more sociable over time, but until that happens Clone Wars Adventures is a nice website full of decent mini-games with a less than rewarding membership scheme.

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.

It's brilliant because it presents a slick and fast-paced management puzzle within firm boundaries and rules that manages to teach the player all of its lessons before he or she gets bored and moves on.

Pared-back and wonderfully focused, this is a welcome blast of Burnout magic. [Recommended]