If you spend a lot of your time online, then it's far more than a consolation 'bonus mode' to make up for the lacklustre single player offering - it's without doubt one of the better online games that console gaming has offered us all year.

While exaggerated and impossible, it's all executed properly. Every wobble, every turn, all motion-captured. The ragdoll on the bails is barking mad, even allowing you to augment its lunacy by extending the skeleton-destroying impacts, but that just makes the boring bit - falling off your skateboard - more fun.

The story's less interesting than SOCOM 3 and the levels, objectives, bonus objectives, enemies, prisoners and hostages all blur together into one big brown blur.

As we perch on the cusp of a bold new console generation there's simply no justification for games this anaemic and sloppy, especially at full price. Even in its best moments, The Sopranos is dull, shallow and repetitive - a game already five years past its sell-by date.

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.

It might not be what Mrs. Hudson wants for him, but Bomberman's still one of the best multiplayer games you can buy, and whether or not you want another version you should at least dig out one of the ones you already own and raise your rollerskates in acknowledgement.

For me, Guitar Hero's real genius was its universal appeal, its ability to cater for any taste and any ability with its varied track list, infectious enthusiasm and unique immediacy, and that inclusiveness is - arguably, I must stress - not quite so present here as it was before.

Solid fundamentals, a good selection of modes and a huge cast will no doubt make this top of the must-have list for followers of the series but unless you're ga-ga for Goku, there are definitely better, flashier and more rewarding fighting games out there.

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.

The problem with moving a lot of the skins over to songs familiar to a Western audience, though, is that it's harder to maintain that illusion of interaction when the player already knows the song intimately.

Overall, sure, Elite Beat Agents has trouble making the same impact as the unexpected brilliance of Ouendan, but it does a miraculous job of avoiding the constraints of the culture it arrives in, and infuses the player with the same borderline prescience of tap-judgement that rendered the original's level design so inspired.

What you've got here is a deep, distinctive game that should satisfy all but the most slaughter-obsessed strategy gamers, and cause deep vein blood clots the size of turtle eggs in all but the most fidgety and small-bladdered.

This is more than just a museum piece for today's JRPG fan. The speed of the gameplay is in stark contrast to today's lumbering epics, something that suits and shines on the GBA.

But Scurge is still hugely attractive - packed with charismatic enemy design and pin-sharp pixel-art, it's a real looker, in its old-fashioned way - moderately addictive, mildly nostalgic, and pleasantly to the point.

The combat system is nicely balanced, it's just that you'll probably be tired of it by the time you're a few hours in. Multiplayer definitely adds value, while the presentation, as noted, is absolutely beautiful.

It's not hard to see us looking back in five years time and seeing FFXII as a pivotal, changing moment in how RPGs are designed; a game which drew on the experience of Final Fantasy's branches into tactical strategy and massively multiplayer, as well as on the more mature storytelling of other mediums, and folded it back into the number series, to wonderful result.

It's not the future of PC gaming, but a glorious slice of the recent past. This may be the last adventure like this you'll ever go on. And there's a certain style and grandeur to anything like that.

An intense, challenging and well-designed game, simple enough to come off extremely well on the PSP and strategically engaging enough to keep cerebral players involved.

Do your bit for this hugely underrated fighting series and pick up this reminder of why the franchise deserves a sequel. If enough people do just that, Capcom might even think about that third game after all these years.

A commendable example of a last-gen game that's still willing to evolve and offer more for your money.

F.E.A.R. is the 360's first shooter to score a [90] on Eurogamer for the simple reason that it's such a consistently exciting game that gets the core of the experience so absolutely spot-on that most of the niggles are swiftly swept aside. Slow-mo gunplay and cunning AI don't sound like next generation ideas, but somehow Monolith combines the two so expertly that it feels more alive and more exciting than could ever seem possible.

A backward step from last year's release. The fact that it's less challenging may make a lot more accessible to the mass market audience that it's so desperate to pander to, but the net result is that it's also, on balance, a slightly less exciting and enjoyable game.

While this particular GTA game wouldn't inspire me to sit in my bedroom at night trying to make animated squish graphics to put on the top of my website, it's still happily one of the best games on the PSP, and well worth looking into if you still haven't hit your GTA ceiling.

But as much as we wanted to hail EA's proactive progressive approach to FIFA as the great slayer of Konami's complacency, the fact remains that "PES6" is marginally the better game in ways that matter.

Dungeon Siege starts out exceptionally well but really does fail to build in its promising foundations as the game progresses, and this lack of development means that as you approach the eight hour mark (the whole game works out at somewhere between 12 and 15 hours), you'll really feel like you've seen everything on offer.

It makes some small progress in freeing point-and-click from the needless bonds of tradition but is it really a compelling, imaginative experience that proves mouse-based adventuring isn't dead? Nope. Not even close.

The real disappointment, aside from the painful hand-holding of the main storyline, is the glint of true potential the game's main mechanic shows at times.

A pretty decent but ultimately average racer.

as adventures go Nightfall feels much more open than previous Guild Wars modules. While many of the quests had been tied to tightly linear the maps, the missions of Nightfall are far more open-ended.

While the hacks and cheats may be gone, they have simply been replaced by new chaos and a design disorder that does everything in its power to dissuade anyone but the keenest of sentimental subscribers.

You won't remember Dark Messiah's busty-woman character guide, but you will remember the sheer joy of mutilating the orcish, undead and assorted monstrous hordes in a variety of imaginative ways. When mass slaughter is as imaginative as this, it can't help but be memorable.

Although the overall atmosphere is far removed from the tense, dialogue-heavy trappings of the film, this is a consistently enjoyable action game that will keep you entertained for the few hours it lasts.

With an excellent atmosphere, diverse set of characters, intriguing storyline and endless unlockables it's the sort of game that's essential for comic book obsessives, and great fun for everyone else.

It does lots, and it does things reasonably well. It's just, well, it's doing the wrong things reasonably well.

A bit of a boost for exhausted gameplay, and a stack of new content for those people wanted to send more crawling, floating, bleeping Star Wars things to their death. That's going to be more than enough for the thousands who were thrilled by the original, but for the rest of the world this is simply another commercial footnote.

There's certainly plenty of nostalgia to be had here - and for the money you can't really complain about a compilation that been created with a great deal of care - but sadly Capcom Classics Reloaded offers only a snapshot of what retro gaming offers.

Basically this is still worth a go if you're obsessed with what happened in F.E.A.R, and must know more, but otherwise you'd be better off buying an FPS you haven't played yet, or renting a few horror films instead.

Flushed Away is absolute toilet. Sorry, again (but not as sorry as anyone involved in making the game should be).

Another solid instalment in a brilliant series of games, and with the single-player campaign's branching structure providing about a million campaigns and battles, there's certainly enough to keep you going till Vol 3.

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.

A cheap, but rather lovely remake of the simple shooter that kicked off Rare's legacy. It's a wonderfully playable link to UK gaming's past, and well worth the 400 points Microsoft's charging for it, but way too repetitive to keep you amused for long.

The fantasy armies really do provide a fun twist, and the castles that are rapidly erected in Stronghold's clever building system are stunning. Ultimately though I wish this game had been Sandcastle: Legends, but it completely wasn't.

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.

It may not have the production values of Final Fantasy III, but Magical Starsign combines a superb and intriguing battle system with a genuinely fresh look at how to control this kind of game on the DS.

A pretty broken game but one that is loaded with entertainment value regardless.

The PSP isn't exactly overwhelmed with decent multiplayer FPSs, and while imperfect, Heroes does offer a much-needed online fragfest.

If you can bear the disappointment, and push on through, you'll realise that, between the whole intertextual thing and the interesting-but-average RPG mechanics, there's still a decent game in here. It's just a shame it's not the amazingly brilliant one it could have been.

Probably the only thing to say to people who feel cheated or ripped off by this tiered content set-up is that they simply shouldn't buy into Lumines Live until the range of downloadable content is broad enough to justify the cumulative cost - if indeed that happens - unless they have a powerful urge right now to play Lumines again on a big screen.

A wonderful piece of entertainment, and easily the best adventure game since the days of "Grim Fandango."

And upon that base of competency, Bully builds an empire of fun, and hits some really high notes - with now perhaps a good time to mention the orchestral soundtrack, which is memorable from beginning to end.

By giving players a real incentive to be the stealthy super-spy, it's opening the game up to being what it should have been. And by wrapping it in a memorable narrative and giving Sam Fisher the ability to be evil, you actually start to care not only about your actions, but the characters in the game too.

Battlefield 2142 may be a glimpse of the future of games. I'm just not sure that I like it.

Enjoyable, but perhaps another instance of the 'reviewer's trance'. That's the mildly hypnotic effect that seems to take over when games aren't dull enough to be boring but aren't exciting enough to cause any kind of, erm, arousal.

While the game is not perfect (the saucer is still too slow), Pandemic has made a game that's a lot more fun than the original. Crypto's return to plague sixties Earth is filled with amusing NPCs, psychic powers, anal probing, adult humour, and the chance to play on the other side for once.

All told, it's quite a lot of newness from an expansion pack, and in many ways makes for a pretty considerable shift from how the original game works.

Woods games have often done volume, but this one does fidelity - and while the next-gen golfing genre isn't exactly broad, we suspect being the best in a field of one will do them fine, especially since, in this case, it feels like it is mostly as good as it could be.

If you already have the Sims 2 on PS2, it depends on how much you want to buy the same game again, but with dogs and cats.

FSX is the finest non-combat flight-sim money can buy assuming you've got the sort of cutting-edge system that can do it justice.

Another adequate yet uninspired entry for the Ford Racing brand.

Neither particularly clever nor particularly beautiful. Instead it's relentlessly videogamey - distilling most of the clichés that onlookers might hold about both comics and videogames.

Those with less animated imaginations, less patience, and lower tolerances of fusty graphics and long turn resolution times should probably stick with Civ and Total War.

It's sad to have to say that, since we still think Nintendogs is an amazing achievement and a great game - it's just not a great game for very long. In other words, if you're a grown-up, if there are limits to your patience and your time, and if you want a game that's not just for Christmas, it's probably not a good idea to pick Nintendogs.

A fundamentally broken game, riddled with graphical glitches and bizarre bugs, that doesn't even have the good grace to be a fascinating failure. For all its yelps and screeches, it's deathly dull to play and so there's no incentive to suffer its idiosyncrasies.

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.

It's GUN on a handheld platform, but it doesn't work quite as well as it does on consoles.

It's a brilliantly pitched game that, while will inevitably turn many players off either by its reliance on random battles or by the generally low technical standard, is far more accessible than it sounds in synopsis.

It could have been an interesting title but the problems with control, weird gameplay style, terrible graphics and rigged, repetitive games just kill any joy that would be garnered from playing it.

If you loved the original games then that might carry you through to completion but for those who are new, prepare for a long slog.

It's really, really good gaming, assuming you don't let the game push you around like a playful big brother with little a superiority complex. God Hand just wants to have fun. And so do we.

There's little argument overall that Tiger Woods 07 is the best possible starting point for golf-game beginners...but anybody who was getting a bit bored of the same formula last year will be even less impressed with this outing.

The core combat is still as rigid and throwaway as the Mortal Kombat series has ever been and bereft of the kitsch appeal of the earlier games, Armageddon is pretty much as forgettable as brawlers come these days.

Like the Opera browser, 42 All-Time Classics is a software package, and a brilliant one, the perfect match for its format and the perfect Christmas present for a Mum who's finally bored of Brain Training. More than that, it's so adaptable, so sociable, so easy to enjoy in any situation (over lunch, between train stops, with your least favourite uncle) that it's nothing less than an essential component of any DS library.

It's only masquerading as its own game - really, coming straight to this without having played its predecessors will be frustrating and bewildering, and the inability to play as Space Marines, Orks et al online a real slap in the face.

Scarface is certainly several notches above the derivative insult we expected it would be, and those who can bear to wait another year for the next GTA will be well served by its faithfulness to the popular formula. Groundbreaking it isn't, but fun it is.

The DS's wireless abilities means that it's able to offer two-player mode on a handheld, which would be tremendous, if it didn't require two copies of the game to play. A ridiculous rip-off for a game nearly two decades old.

Regardless of it being very hard to picture how its tedious, clumsy mechanics could possibly evolve into something fluid and entertaining, any game that puts you through a good 15 or 20 hours of overwhelming despair to get to even a chance of something worthwhile - which the server-wide near-silence suggests actually isn't, and certainly won't be until if and when there are enough players to populate large-scale tussles - is a failure.

Unlikely to be the killer app that gets people swapping their DS for a PSP. But if you're looking for a compilation of pub games, and a simple, quirky, turn-based strategy, you could definitely do worse.

A massive improvement on the previous Taito-related DS efforts issued to date. As short-lived as it is, and despite some irritating control and level design issues it's a lot of fun.

Not only is Meltdown bigger and better to look at though, but it offers new and compelling scenarios, and proves more appealing to new players as well as a more consistent proposition for hardcore fans - not everyone's going to be able to beat the incredibly punishing latter levels, but there's still hours of fun to be had beforehand.

You wouldn't think it possible, but cartoon games have an even worse track record than film adaptations. South Park, Futurama, The Simpsons - all have debased themselves thoroughly when making the leap from telly to joypad. And yet even by those low standards, Family Guy is a pretty desperate experience.

El Matador is an unsophisticated action shooter which might have been a decently average blast - there are elements of simple fun to be had in its running and gunning - but it's all messed up by the transparently scripted and static enemies, patchy AI and poor clipping detection.

Race sims don't come any better than GTR2.

Defcon is as pure and direct a game as its inspiration, and its limitations are ones of the game's basic scope.

With brainless autoaim combat, forgettable missions and little in the way of challenge, the flash stunts and crazy moves can't hide Just Cause's flaws, and ultimately, rather than being some sort of "GTA"-beater, it's more of a poor man's "Mercenaries," ludicrously padded out with hundreds of entirely worthless side missions that sprawl over uninteresting terrain.

ParaWorld isn't without its charms, particularly its diverse and enticing set of armies, but it's truly a dinosaur of an RTS, bog standard in terms of mission design and somewhat messy in the combat department.

Doom is the rarest of retro games, in that you can enjoy it just as much as you did when it was first released. Better still, you can appreciate it with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, and see not only how enormously influential it is, but how perfect its design was from the very beginning.

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.

It's just doing pretty much the same generally reliable job it always has done, putting in its hours and going home again - if anything, it's getting sloppier with age.

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

Die-hard followers of drift racing and modification will applaud the unforgiving accuracy of the game engine but, given the importance they tend to place on shiny shiny good looks, they're also the people most likely to be turned off by the scrappy presentation.

The potent mixture of action with the high-level statistical balancing will quickly seduce the right-minded player.

While this remains a great multiplayer, social game for some people, and it's certainly a good way to work up a sweat, at heart it's still an eight year old game with remarkably little alteration from the original.

A very precise, slick, and technically impressive game. It just lacks a crucial spark.

Many won't appreciate the simplicity, or the fact that there doesn't appear to be enough of a substantial challenge to grab your attention for very long. Not for everyone, then, but well worth further investigation if puzzling's your thing.

NBA Live 07 does the basics, but when the competition, namely Take 2's NBA 2K7, does everything so much better (and we do mean everything), there's no reason at all why you should be wondering which title to pick up.

But if this is the sport you're dedicated to, Visual Concepts has made the game entirely for your pleasure. And it's not very often you can credit a game with giving you a year's worth of play. Go get it.

Right from the start it conjures an atmosphere of being something special, but to keep that level of quality up consistently over 60 hours ensures that this will be a game that will be talked about for years to come...A work of art, you might say.

With a longer, more substantial campaign mode, a bit more polish and less pointless peripheral missions we could have been talking about The Godfather more fondly, but as it is, its place is history is as a flawed GTA clone that really didn't need porting to the 360.