The game offers variety, excitement, thought and pace all in tiny bundle you can wolf down in a sandwich break. In fact, that's what this actually reminds me of - the gaming equivalent of a snackette.

What annoys me here is that Castlevania was always doing several smart things at once and this one, conversely, is founded on a presupposition that pandering to the klepto sword-swinger niche is all Konami needs to do.

There's nothing devastatingly awful about this, it's just thoroughly outclassed by most of everything else on the market.

Tiny incremental tweaks to the function are all very well if your base material is simply amazing or the form changes significantly but, all told, this is an old, whiffy average GBA kids RPG, dull and tired through inbreeding.

With such a tediously unengaging storyline, vanilla locations, rubbish camera system and an all-round feel of technical impoverishment, what you're left with is a game that's certainly fun, original and hugely engaging for a while, but one that fails to live up to its early promise.

The expansion is aimed squarely at the high-level ground-based combat players, and is a solid addition of content for them. That only this one group of players is catered to fully though only serves to alienate those left behind and devalues the offering overall.

Rise of the Underminer lacks the imagination, variation and challenge of a game like "R&C," and for that it doesn't deserve any more than the score we're about to give it.

Here's the difference between "Everything or Nothing" and From Russia With Love: whatever you thought of its approach, "Everything or Nothing" had to be invented; From Russia With Love just had to be filled. And it has been - with stuff from "Everything or Nothing."

The acute sense of excitement and precision in combat of the "Halo" games is absent, likewise the intensity of being in a firefight delivered by "Battlefield 2." All the explosions and laser-fire feel a lot like window-dressing, even if the game does have some attractive scenery.

It's a fine, fine shooter, capturing a micro scale in a macro story, with a remarkable capacity for maintaining alert attention.

An exquisitely constructed expansion pack for anyone who liked City of Heroes, which also acts as a new entrance point into the world for the uninitiated. And the uninitiated really should, as it remains one of the finest online multiplayer games in existence.

There's just not enough imagination, invention, and engagement with the source material to entice me back. If you think the game plot sounds interesting then you're really far better off reading the book or getting hold of the superb 1945 movie.

So, what's the time? Oh it's time for good-expansion-but-not-good-enough-to-make-anyone-return-to-the-game-if-thoroughly-sick mark o'clock.

If the idea of 20 hours of palpitating living nightmares sounds like your idea of fun, then you have no choice but to part with your cash immediately. If only all videogames were this brilliant.

This is a game about hitting people. It's pretty damn good.

The beefed-up single-player content is worth the asking price on its own, it's still a fantastic multiplayer game (that's maybe not as perfectly balanced as it once was), and yes, it's shame there's no online play, but that's no excuse to pass up on a hugely enjoyable, addictive, rewarding title that'll last months.

Justified cynicism aside, Infinity Ward's latest effort unquestionably refines the cinematic World War II shooter genre to new giddy heights of bombastic brilliance.

It's still a fun game, and an incredibly slick one at that, but the law of diminishing returns has well and truly kicked in. It's time Insomniac got some rest and put Ratchet and Clank out to pasture - goodness knows they deserve it.

This heartwarming gestalt is a lovely and joy-bringing piece of our history, and anybody who ever popped a shiny round coin in any one of these machines' welcoming slots owes themselves a copy, today.

It’s good. Damn good. In fact, I’ll certainly go as far as saying it’s the best pure strategy game I’ve played this year, and that’s good enough for me.

In short, Shrek SuperSlam is the kind of game that kids are likely to spend a happy afternoon with, after which it will end up shoved at the back of the cupboard.

IT'S LESS THAN AN HOUR LONG.

Not a truly outstanding new Grand Theft Auto game then, but an excellent PSP game.

Choose to ignore these (and other) oversights, persevere with the drudgery of the maintenance aspect (the bit where, in a more conventional RPG/god game, you'd actually get to do stuff, like solve puzzles or kill things), and there's a lengthy itinerary of tasks to discover and perform - something that still appeals to my completist urges.

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.

Another frustrating 'nearly' package from Pterodon that's suffering from a dated look and feel. The single-player offering misses the mark, arguably, even more than it did last time.

Almost to its detriment, it doesn't play its hand early on; if anything, the game takes fully three or four hours before you really start to unravel its charms, and even then it never feels like a game in a hurry.

Fun, yes, but not exhilarating in the way that the best games should be. It also lacks the painterly detail of Battlefield 2's levels, which seem so natural in the density of their trash-strewn details.

For the poor, deprived Cube owners out there that have been thus far denied the chance to strut their stuff in front of their TV, this is easily the best Dancing Stage title on any platform.

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.

To be presented with this utterly misguided and ill-conceived attempt to reinvent one of the best strategy-RPG series of the last two decades seems criminal and unfair. It’s a mammoth level grind, bringing together some of the action-RPG genre’s very worst conventions while leaving out some of the best.

It's very easy to win races, even on the Hard difficulty setting, the platforming sections offer no real challenge, and the fun to be had from blowing up opponents when you've clashed your kart wears thin after a while.

It's hard not to find at least some love for a game which thinks (for example) it's a good idea to put a crocodile in a Croatian jersey, hide it in a level and provide a CROcodile secret bonus.

Even with the new home cities, gameplay feels tired and characterless. Bombarding players with shiny baubles and inconsequential gifts can’t hide that.

It’s a masterfully understated, beautifully simple, engrossing ride that's as palpitatingly thrilling as it is serenely calming. It's also one of the most consistently compelling and memorable games we've ever played (or witnessed, for that matter).

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.

Sure, it's repetitive; sure it's not doing anything massively new, but what it does provide is an exceptionally polished genre offering that fans of the series and kart games in general can get a lot out of.

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.

Spyro would score a 5 were it to work properly - smack bang in the middle of middlyness, doing nothing well, and utterly without imagination (for goodness sakes, travelling back and forth between two versions of reality - where did they get that idea from?!).

Definitely an improvement on THUG 2 in getting away from the outrageous slapstick and prank ideas and back to skating as it should be.

You can get a game of poker out of it, and you can persist with the desire to win to reach the next tournament, but the volume of frustrations along the way mean it cannot be hailed as the first great poker game. It's getting there, but not there yet.

Given its level of difficulty, and general synaesthetic terrorism, my mind and body were woefully unequipped to deal with what Bandai had unleashed on me.

What lies beneath its rather unspectacular veneer is a really well designed game that approaches the conflict from a different angle and provides a solid platform for a hugely entertaining game.

Average execution, terribly repetitive combat, lots of reasonable ideas that don't quite work, a general lack of cohesion: it's not diabolical, but it's far from great.

Glorious fun. Slow motion gun battles tied to an engine that articulates carnage with the furious eloquence of a caffeinated linguist, bound together by people who've seen a lot of Asian horror, uniting to spread memorable moments over a bed of visceral excitement.

Visually, The Warriors does not impress. But as a film tie-in, as a classic brawler, as a game that offers excellent multiplayer modes, quality bonus content and a unique style all of its own, it excels.

General ugliness, poor presentation, ropey tactics, and a general lack of charm all doom Shattered Union to that bargain bin in the sky. The plastic CGI storytellers and the fuzzy, characterless maps just leave you with the sour sense of wasted-time rolling around in your skull.

It starts off brilliant, then erodes your enthusiasm over time.

It's like being cuddled by fun.

Despite dodgy localisation issues - which actually serve to limit the game’s appeal - Devil Kings remains an entertaining battlefield game that marries its wild, over the top style with enough substance to keep you plugging away.

Hell, it's fun. But for a really short time.

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.

If SOCOM is to remain Sony's flagship online war title, it needs a complete overhaul in time for its PS3 outing.

It's a different game without being a different game. Enjoyable without being extraordinary.

Everything that an excellent sequel should be. It takes on board criticisms levelled at the former game and addresses them all in a way which should delight any fan of the series; not only that, it picks up the story and characters of the original title and develops them in such a fascinating way that it actually throws fresh light on the original, which now seems like a much better piece of storytelling in the context of its part in the series as a whole.

Feels like an uninspired, by-the-numbers sci-fi B-movie of a game with high production values. It's 'fun', for the nine, ten hours it lasts, but only in the same brainless sense that allows us to enjoy dumb popcorn action movies.

But it’s not fun, and it’s certainly not worth the effort. The DS, as hopefully this constructive and helpful review will have shown, is the perfect medium for recreating management sims. Just not this time.

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.

Despite being two-thirds the price of most DS games, it's still not worth it. You'd be far better off having a wash and going to a friend's house for an unfriendly, loud, fight-inducing game of poker, where at least everything can descend into betting on Mousetrap.

Minor quibbles aside, Virtua Tennis World Tour is close to a ten-out-of-ten game on the PSP, and in many respects it deserves top marks for being the best game on the system, and one of our most played games in 25 years of repetitive straining.

EiB feels grittier - closer to its fascinating yet fearful inspiration - than any other military shooter out there. Much of that feel comes from the credible mission design and AI already mentioned but a significant portion stems from fundamentals like the way the weapons look, sound and perform.

There's even a bit of scope for creativity, since you can design your own T-shirts and posters, and - the one part of the game which might appeal to small boys - draw rude pictures all over the Bratz' faces in your favourite shade of lipstick, should you so desire.

Much like Sid Meier's recent reinvention of "Pirates!,' huge numbers of ideas have been included at the sacrifice of any of them being particularly impressive. Jack of far too many trades, apprentice at only a few.

It's not that it relies on a healthy suspension of disbelief to overcome its contrived elements; it's about bringing order to foggy chaos. This, it does with aplomb.

It's a good idea, well measured and put together. Its problems are spiking difficulty and mechanical obstinacy.

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).

Until Pivotal finally delivers a game where the enemies don't run at you like angry suicidal goats, and teaches your squad-mates to find proper cover it's never going to be worth more than the 6/10 score we slap on it every single year.

As it stands, FIFA once again offers a huge amount of entertainment - but you'll be left covering your face after you've witness EA miss a hatful of chances to go top of the table.

As far as Nintendo seems to be concerned, at least until the first DS outing, Pokémon begins and ends with the Game Boy. Pokémon XD is tedious and restrictive. The message is clear: if you want Pokémon, crack open a GBA.

It's amusingly offbeat in places, but I can't help suspecting that the D&D hardcore will be deeply dissatisfied with Atari's offerings, at least until Dungeons & Dragons Online turns up.

It has straightforward puzzles, cute rabbits, an unsual-for-its-kind multi-character dynamic, and lovely brassy music. I know I'd have loved this when I was a kid. For a while. Probably.

That sense of creating security from the environment, of making home, of surviving, is enticing and exciting. But if only it would just give you the time to play it.

There are much better retro compilations available - not least the first two incarnations of Midway Arcade Treasures, which both feature some all-time classics.

If you need you thirst for adventuring quenched, Another Code is an essential purchase, but novices need to bear in mind that this style of game is very much an acquired taste, and experts should be mindful that compared to the adventuring greats it's not exactly in the same league.

If you happened to be sitting at home one evening, bored off your tits, and feel like lying on your tummy with a stupid grin splattered across your face, you could probably do worse than to rent it out - even if it is basically that "Kill all the Haitians" line from Vice City done up as an entire game. Totally.

A wasted opportunity; one that turns your anger to frustration then to plain, empty sadness.

As magnificent an example of the add-on pack as Rome is, it doesn't redefine the game completely in order to make it an absolute essential buy for anyone who was interested in the mother-game. It's an imaginative more-of-the-same, but still – at its core – a more of the same.

With some retailers pricing this at around the £14.99 mark, it's hard to resist such a great value compilation, even if there are only about a handful of real nailed-on classics in the 22-game set.

Cars, boats, guns, stealth, traps, super-strength, scent-vision - it's crowded, but its density is actually our delight, because while it may not play as strategically or controllably as something like "Halo," or as evocatively and inventively as something like "Half-Life 2," it's still atmospheric, involving, and empowering.

The mere running around, pointing the crosshair, shooting... it's all just drained of life. Not even the option of mercenary sidekicks makes much difference, they just happen to be the chaps you can't shoot. And they die without consequence. Poor fellas.

They've managed not to mess up any of the things which made the original so enjoyable. The control system is still intuitive, the camera does what it's supposed too, there's a good amount of gory moments and genuine scares and the whole thing has bags of atmosphere.

It's up there with the best platformers ever made.

For b-ball heads, it's one of the deepest, most well-rounded and entertaining simulations of the sport on the shelves. You can lose months of your life to it.

In terms of scale, it barely comes up to Battlefield's ankles, and in terms of tactics and tension it can't beat Counter-Strike, but once you've spent a few hours on a server of 20 or so people, you'd have to want not to enjoy it to fail to - and your own war stories are an inevitable byproduct.

By limiting it to repetitive and limiting challenges, the game is condemned to that of pretty distraction.

Looking firmly along the line of simple-as-possible, it's clear that the developers, in focusing so much on the presentation of the HAVEN, rather than gameplay faults, have allowed it to stray too far into the bad half.

As RTS games go Winter Assault and its parent game are more concerned with being spectacular than they are about being sophisticated, but we appreciate how that works.

For all its beauty, the areas you explore do seem rather small and hemmed in - especially when we're so used to expansive, open-ended RPG worlds.

This is a superhero game that actually makes you hate the superhero you're playing as for their rubbish attacking skills, poor movement and general refusal to do what they're told.

Consistently surprising and full of unexpected delights even for players who squeezed the last drops out of the first game; it takes the concept that we loved so much and asks "I wonder what else we can do with this" with a huge cheeky grin on its face and a pocket full of Class-A drugs, Party Rings and bathroom cleaning products. [JPN Import]

A terminally average hackandslasher.

The dreaded bottom line is that we've seen it all before, and much, much better.

Heroes could be a whole lot prettier. There's a hell of a lot of washed-out colour and bad camera wobbles in there.

Probably the most enjoyable, forward-looking and thoughtful piece of videogaming we've played in this or in any year. We never thought we'd say this, but it's a real step forward for the adventure game genre.

It's a gaping chasm of Comic Book joy, filled to brimming with great characters, unlockables, collectibles and some top-notch mutant-oriented RPG action. It is, in short, one of the best comic book adaptations in quite some while.

If EA wants people to buy these games year in, year out, then it has to fight for those high marks, and Tiger Woods doesn't know how to do that any more.

With this episode the Myst series goes out in respectable fashion. There's still nothing on offer for anyone that craves action, exhilaration or an easy ride but frankly that's no great surprise.

It involves a bit more lateral thinking than the average puzzle game, and it doesn't outstay its welcome or exceed its mandate more than is forgivable. But puzzle games can be and often are a lot better than this.