There is a great, great game yet to be made in this subset of the football sub-genre, where the depth of a beat-'em-up lurks beneath accessible showboating, but this isn't it.

If you're willing to put in the effort, it can steadily win you over. Obsidian can't really compete with the bigger boys in the RPG field, then, but it's carved out a little space to call its own. With ambition instead of budget, and integrity instead of polish, in the end the choice of whether to persevere or not is pretty easy to make.

Disney has clearly tried to make a vastly more flexible and more varied game to Pokémon but, in doing so, has broken that game's more elegant flow and focus of ideas.

4am is too obfuscated for serious music producers who will grow frustrated at the limited number of samples and the lack of visual feedback over which tracks and effects are active at any one time. And the experience is also too inscrutable for beginners, who will find themselves lost in the matrix of noise, unsure of how it may be truly directed or tamed. A fascinating toy, then, but a toy nonetheless.

DarkStar One is undoubtedly a bit of a throwback. It's not the all-singing, all-dancing AAA space combat title which could still make a lot of console owners' days, but it does go an awfully long way to proving that a game of that calibre is eminently possible on consoles, as well as providing an entertaining diversion.

Overall, NBA '08 is not a bad game. It just tries to make up in presentation what it lacks in depth.

It's one of the richest, most cohesive entries in the point-and-click genre I've seen for a long time, and I'm a little sad that it didn't come out fifteen years ago. Just think of all the sequels we could've had by now.

Platform game fans would be better served by Jak & Daxter, while action game fans can go back to God of War. Bloodlines isn't a terrible or frustrating game, but it's as unnecessary as all those chickens.

It lacks so much of what made its forebears great, and at times you look at it and wonder if they thought any of it through.

At its core, this game is also a decent platformer, but the silly drawing gimmick and incessant backtracking spoil the fun.

If you dip into Assassin's infrequently you will likely question the worth of this self-contained side-story. But for those keen to experience every nook and cranny of the Creedverse, Tyranny offers an enjoyable and different experience - if not an essential one.

Multiplayer fans will appreciate the new maps, the bounty-style quest steps are a good idea and there is certainly plenty of stuff to do and unlock, but in a game where the content has worn thin so quickly, taking aim at our precious loot just at the point we finish upgrading it is a huge mistake.

With the majestic and genuinely eye-popping Ikaruga waiting in the wings, you can happily keep saving your 800 Points without missing out on anything special.

A cult classic gets a fittingly strange remake whose patchiness can't obscure the original's brilliance.

As effective as the Hundred Cell method may be, it would have been good to see more fun exercises included instead of just yet more black-and-white sums. The exercises are too simple for adults.

A masterpiece of absurdist theatre, and a damn fine double-A mech game too. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Despite several shortcomings It is more than a cheap knock-off, though, and thanks to some smart ideas and novel twists there's an enjoyable tribute to be found here. Just be warned that NBA Playgrounds is a few steps away from being much more than an overly fuzzy dose of nostalgia.

The game's playability really suffers on the smaller screen of the iPhone, with your big fat sausage fingers liable to make it damned near impossible to see where you're laying each component. On the iPad, such niggles don't apply, and fortunately publisher RealNetworks has seen fit to make this a unified binary.

It's a beautiful, thoughtful curiosity. But somewhere in getting at the essence of strategy gaming, Eufloria has become a sketch, a distraction, a showcase, and a toy: it's an experience that you'll enjoy, rather than a coherent and satisfying game.

Maybe with a price cut and some rebalancing work this could be worth getting, but right now it's a bit of a shambles.

Wii Music isn't very entertaining and it's not very educational. There aren't enough goals for it to work as a game, and there's not enough musicality for it to work as a toy. It's not clear what it is or who it's for. One thing's for sure: it's not worth forty quid.

The blend of emotions and puzzle mechanics in Lucidity invites more than a few comparisons with Braid. But while the melancholic tone and understated delivery suggests a good match, in truth, Lucasart's game is neither as complex or as original.

The Con is about as far from revolutionary as you can get and in no way suited to extended play, but to give Sony its due, it's easily one of the stronger and more accurately pitched portable fighters out there.

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

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

The setting is elegantly eerie, but this Gone-Home-inspired first-person mystery struggles to overcome its tired, melodramatic story.

And if the button-mashing, combat-heavy missions aren't underwhelming enough, or the under-use of web swinging doesn't deliver enough disappointment, then the often-iffy technical side of the game rounds off a less-than-stellar package.

There's the Mario Kart-esque attacks. An immediately obviously very stupid idea. And they're so poorly integrated that they destroy everything in their path.

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.

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.

Fatal Fury Special thoroughly deserves the sort of audience that Live Arcade can deliver, it's just a shame that this particular version feels rather unloved, hampered as it is by frustrating control issues and lacking the game mode that many players will want most.

Fans angry that they need to fork out more money to see the "real" ending of the game can rest easy. The events of Lonesome Road build to a suitably apocalyptic climax, but it has none of the depth, pace or meaning of the face-off between House, Caesar and the NCR that rounded out the original storyline. Completists will want to see it through, just to say they did, but it's a shame to see such an epic atomic age narrative go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Four heads might not necessarily be better than three, but it's yet another of a great many reasons why Blue Dragon: Awakened Shadow compares poorly to the peers it so desperately tries to ape.

With its unique squad-based focus and the huge combat variety on offer, it breaks plenty of new ground for the genre - and were it not for a few rough edges would have been bordering on essential.

All that is good about Scrap Metal is contained in the simplicity of its premise. Cars and guns.

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

It has neither the charm, nor the innovation, nor the wicked guns, and therefore ultimately feels like a bit of a chore.

Afrika is one of the most pleasant, enjoyable and gently engrossing games I've played in a while. It's a shame Sony isn't releasing it here, and it's worth importing. [JPN Import]

The former Civ 5 director's long-running passion project is filled with nice ideas, but they never threaten to pull together.

Although it's always competent, Söldner-X rarely revels in its own arsenal, and the result is a game where shooting things never feels like a particularly big deal.

It's worse than ATV console games, thanks to a poor control system that's seemingly been designed with little thought for how the PSP itself is designed.

The evolving nature of the gameplay, and its intriguing story structure keeps you going. Not only that, the actual location design and some individual set-pieces are very atmospheric, and it somehow appeals to the old school adventurer in us that used to routinely find ourselves trapped somewhere with one single, set solution.

Scarygirl is cute, workable, but otherwise routine - its style inching ahead of its substance.

It takes golf seriously, and it makes a nice difference. Just don't expect to be teeing off on the moon or anything.

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.

A likeable indie with cracking source material and a special setting, The Flower Collectors is just missing the magic of detail.

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 most heartbreaking thing about all this is that Sonic Team is clearly trying; the developer throws everything it can at the game in the hope that something will stick. Yet the result is a disastrous lack of focus.

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.

Yes, it's bland, pick up and play fun that's simple to get into, but if you did ever find yourself picking it up for five minutes you'd probably have already seen all there is to it in that time.

Here I sit on a cold December night in 21st century Britain. I am a 31 year-old woman. I have a degree. I am playing virtual Yahtzee with a computer-generated version of Mr Potato Head. I feel sick.

Final Fantasy II was a poor videogame in 1988 and no amount of spit and polish will perform the necessary shifts to its foundations to produce a good one in 2007.

It's a game with style, in the true sense of its word. That is, it has decided what it wants to be and then just does that, without worrying what the world may think of it.

Even at its best, Caesar in Gaul wears thin long before the end of the campaign.

A charmless, shoddy, unfinished, unplayable mess and does nothing that a dozen other games haven't done infinitely better.

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.

Great ideas and a storied history are mired in mediocre combat and a disappointingly unpolished delivery.

There's none of the track furniture that shined "FlatOut" or the general gloss and roundness of "Burnout." This shallowness in gameplay is honestly the only thing that lets the game down.

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.

The motion controls of the Wii original are stripped out for this remaster, leaving an entertaining if not quite excellent outing.

Most of the problems stem from the fact that it remains a muddled, undiscerning diner at the racing game buffet table, trying to cram its plate with sleek supersonic futuristic racing, rough and tumble rally racing and knockabout arcade power-up kart racing all at the same time.

But more importantly, you do get to 'be' the Fantastic 4 and experiment with some really rather excellent superpowers, and the game isn't so bad that a serious fan couldn't overlook its flaws.

As an actual coach it really only works in general terms: there's no way to finely tailor the experience for your own capabilities in ways that an actual person could, and there's not much to commit you if the determination lapses. My Health Coach is a fair package for those who treat this as a first small step in getting off their plump behinds, though it's not essential.

A gentle cadence and quirky characters can't counter Mythwrecked's repetitiveness, making this more Greek tragedy than odyssey.

As an animated movie tie-in, we've come away genuinely impressed at the overall standard on offer.

It's a solid adaptation of a fun card game, and at 400 Microsoft Points it's priced just right.

Borderlands' latest DLC has shown me the combat rhythm I've naturally settled into: the regular back and forth between whittling away at enemies with SMGs before disappearing in a puff of magic, to either slink off and let my shield charge up again, or pop up behind an unfortunate bruiser in order to blast chunks out of their neck with a shotgun.

Taken as a whole, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days will probably amuse unfussy fans of nihilistic violence for a few evenings. But in a genre stuffed with far more interesting efforts, that still leaves it woefully below average.

Although P.N.03 is plainly flawed, with a little perseverance the gameplay still shines through as something relatively new and engaging.

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.

A very, very good videogame: another brilliant evolution of Koei's unique interpretation of the real-time strategy genre, and every bit as satisfying as previous efforts. What it lacks in terms of the speed and immediacy of, say, Gundam Musou, it makes up for with strategic range, design ingenuity, and conceptual novelty. [JPN Import]

Impressive heritage and a handful of neat ideas bubble beneath this co-op horror, though they're both ultimately squandered.

A charismatic and enjoyable gangster sim that gets a big bogged down in admin. [Eurogamer Recommended]

A tense, imaginative thriller that buckles under the weight of its own ambition.

If you're looking for a fully featured PES game, you'll obviously need to look to other formats, but if you're just after a decent facsimile that allows you to enjoy the magic of a flying football, you might find the series' best feature to be its saving grace on the DS.

But by far the most irritating aspect of the handling is the inability to simply make your board go where you want it to.

But this game is also clunky, burdened with terrible songs and much too weird for most people. It's a quirky alternative to Dance Central, but not a competitor.

Insipid character and course design married with inherently repetitive gameplay, obsessive collecting and an array of horrible touchscreen features make this feel like a waste of time. It's got plenty of content, and is a perfectly serviceable, occasionally competitive kart racer, but there's not much distinguishing about it.

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.

It's a pity that the energy that Trailblazers displays - and its upbeat spirit can prove infectious - isn't met with a little more meticulous thought and care placed elsewhere. The unfortunate thing when invoking such classics as F-Zero and Splatoon is you invoke their brilliance, and while Trailblazers has happily taken the grand ideas it's skimped out on the detail - and so this colourful mash-up ends up feeling plain sloppy.

There's just too much about it that gets up our nose, and however much we jam our finger up there trying to straighten it out, favouring the outside line or not, it still slides back and forth just out of reach.

Even in the cramped indie survival game genre, there's nothing quite like Sir, You Are Being Hunted.

The biggest problem with The King of Fighters XII is that it feels unfinished. The combat is fun and robust but not particularly innovative.

This is an art toy to savour, and a time-waster of great power.

Angry Birds Trilogy certainly benefits from the more extravagant presentation options that a TV allows, and in bringing Rovio's juggernaut to consoles it has a basic "does what it says on the box" appeal - but there's clearly a lot more that could have been done beyond bluntly porting the levels across.

Given the option of a good bike simulation and a great arcade bike game, I'd actually prefer to see SBK head further down the latter path for future instalments. Heresy, perhaps, but on the evidence here I'd even be open to the idea of Black Bean being tasked with reviving Road Rash for the HD generation.

Many of the vast list of things we object to in Fracture equal the low standard set by the likes of "Turok" and "Haze," and that if you managed to survive those games without burning down the shop that sold them to you, this will suffice for a weekend's distraction.

This hardcore off-road driving sim is focused and compelling, but just a bit too austere for its own good.

Cheap, cheerful, timeless fun, and ultimately short-lived - but isn't that the whole point?

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.

It's the sort of bland shooter that if you tried it on MAME you'd barely give it a second look - so why does anyone think that gamers will part with 400 points for it? Sometimes the past is better off left alone.

Beneath Arcania's often outstanding art direction and technical achievement lies a dry spreadsheet of must-have RPG elements, none of which is sufficiently developed to compel and all of which fail to balance against one another.

Untainted by the passing of time, and still as mindlessly entertaining as it was back in the day. Sure, Hyper Sports improved on the formula a little, and Epyx went off and took the idea to dizzy heights not long after that, but in essence this is one of those few occasions when a game concept emerged fully formed from the beginning.

Beautiful but bug-riddled, Impact Winter isn't the game it could be yet.

Once again it comes down to this: superb pop songs and amazing choreography, wrapped up in a package which could be more polished and comprehensive but which does the job. Good times.

With its distinct Voxel 3D visual style and some engaging puzzles, there's a core of good game struggling to get out here, but one that is ultimately thwarted by the fiddly controls.

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.