The sad fact is that there isn't a single spark of imagination or joy in this entire game. Despite some obvious effort, Wario: Master of Disguise is just utterly tedious in every respect and an absolute chore to play.

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.

It's a game I found myself enjoying in ever shorter bursts as the prospect of farming more XP and Crystite from yet another nest of alien bugs, or finding another lost family member for a crudely modelled NPC, became less and less enticing.

Compared to Mario Galaxy or Ratchet & Clank - heck, even compared to Crash Bandicoot, another platforming mascot mired in mediocrity - Sonic Unleashed is an obviously poor effort from a series that is still hopelessly lost in the modern gaming landscape.

All Zombies Must Die takes a timeworn premise that should be fun and cathartic and seemingly goes out of its way to make it repetitive, fiddly and annoying. If you have a trio of friends close to hand, the co-op aspect might just be enough to rescue it from the depths of mediocrity, but if you're planning on playing solo you'd be far better served by trying one of the dozens of other zombie blasters on the market.

As much as I feel like setting fire to Beijing 2008 with its own Olympic torch, it's not an unmitigated disaster. At least a quarter of the 38 events available are mildly enjoyable, especially if you're a retro-head who actually gets excited at the prospect of going online and taking on like-minded buffoons in their 40s.

This isn't how nostalgia is supposed to feel.

It's never as smooth and intuitive as it needs to be. But don't let that put you off at least trying out one of the most creative motion-based games yet.

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.

For the thick-skinned (preferably male) gamer looking for some fairly harmless stupidity to amuse themselves with, this resurrection of Leisure Suit Larry is surprisingly good fun, and a welcome change from the constant array of samey me-too sludge that's peppering the landscape this Christmas.

One of the great open-world templates fails to come into focus in this well-meaning, if embattled, sequel.

Although persistence is rewarded with a host of unlockable cars, weapons, interviews and the like, it's doubtful whether you'll have the desire to get drawn into the experience as obsessively as the developer requires you to.

The gripes are really mainly relating to the individual games, which for anyone remotely experienced will quickly become far too familiar and untaxing to warrant extended interest.

Most importantly, it's got that utterly absorbing hypnotic je ne sais quois that all the best games have, and it's that which will keep you coming back for more and more, checking out all the characters and all the play modes, and devoting an unhealthy amount of time in the quest for dominating other players, both online and off.

While riddled with design disasters, "Too Human" seems like an action-RPG holy grail by comparison to this startling mess. Better yet, play "Shadowgrounds: Survivor" instead of the both of 'em.

Weighing in at little over the price of an XBLA download (about a tenner from the right shops), Art of Fighting Anthology is a rare bargain - especially from new.

A thoroughly unnecessary isometric brawler that ranks alongside Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean as being one of the worst uses of a high profile license we've seen this year.

White Knight Chronicles II flounders. It's a hybrid that fails to find its own identity in terms of its structure, and its convoluted battle system is poorly explained and, once mastered, reveals itself to be broad but ultimately shallow. Those improvements from the first game are overwhelmed by a more general sense of ennui; what were once interesting innovations lack the polish and endurance to inspire over the course of a sequel.

It doesn't have the best execution and it probably costs too much, but there ought to be room in everyone's life for at least one slapstick physics puzzler, and if you're in the right mood then perhaps Rigonauts can be your Bridge Builder.

For pennies, you really can't go wrong. Just don't expect too much, and you might just find Dracula satisfying in an endearingly low-budget sort of way.

The inclusion of some unlockable Tekken characters and a slightly more balanced multiplayer mode might be enough to give you a fix if you do absolutely nothing else in life but play beat-'em-ups and you've actually run out, but otherwise there's no reason to take an interest.

Metal Gear's first post-Kojima outing plays fast and loose with the formula, with results that are equal parts brilliant and baffling.

It's a straightforward game, then. The capacity for expression and technique is limited to the exacting rhythms of blocking.

It's no fun to drive, and in fact driving itself is something of a challenge. On top of that, having begun life on other formats (including N-Gage), it makes only a token gesture to adapt to the DS's featureset, allowing you to navigate menus but do nothing else with the stylus, allowing wireless multiplay but demanding multiple copies of the game, and using the bottom screen for little more than a topographical overview of the course with markers for each car.

The fort-versus-fort gameplay definitely doesn't gel with the Worms dynamic. Instead it robs a once-proud series of almost everything that made it so memorable, and the result is a game that tires as much as it feels tired.

If you've already played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team, the improved Wi-Fi functionality is the sole reason that it might be worth playing Explorers of Time/Darkness.

It's the little things that add up, one by one, to an often hypnotically bland, slapdash campaign. The core is sound enough, but Burning Skies is far too shabby in places for what is supposed to be the flagship first-party shooter on the Vita - indeed, the flagship shooter on handhelds, full stop.

If you were hoping for the return of Time Crisis to herald some kind of rebirth for on-rails shooters, then you'll be sorely disappointed. The arcade mode is dumb fun for a short while, but is little more than a tired throwback, while the addition of FPS missions will be barely tolerable to even the most forgiving shooter.

Heatseeker feels like a step back, a simpler, uglier, dumber but friendlier jetfighter that plants you firmly in the role of the one man army. To put it another way, "Ace Combat" expects you to be upset at the scripted, drawn-out death of your wingman and Heatseeker lets you fly into the ground and bounce off with a bit of damage.

That's really Blade Dancer in a nutshell: a decent combat system and an interesting crafting mechanic, but in terms of the rest of the game, Hitmaker doesn't really cut it.

Not quite "Project Zero" in space, that's for sure. It does begin as an initially promising ghost train ride, but given its short nature - about twelve generous hours or so if you get hopelessly stuck like me because you didn't talk to that damn woman - it's a shame it lapses into average fetch-quest territory all too quickly.

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.

Movement is on the analogue nub, camera controls on the face buttons. It's a system that has worked okay for other PSP shooters, but there's a stiffness here that makes it feel more like Super Treacle Squad than a simulation of impeccably-trained Special Ops.

This is yet another quality downloadable shooter that deserves both your money and your love.

Despite these inventions, the abiding sense is of a lack of variety and a game that fails to fully express its best ideas.

Though, admittedly, expectations might have been a little low, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is surprising in all the right ways. Its loading screens offer a stunning blend of animation and FMV straight from the show, and while the in-game graphics don't quite share the same slick polish and the combat can feel a little stale, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a thoughtful, unusual take on Escobar's legacy. Yeah, I'm a bit surprised, too.

This isn't how nostalgia is supposed to feel.

You'll find yourself cursing the lack of inventory spaces, and the inability to drop objects (which was only introduced in Resident Evil Zero), and all told the trip down memory lane merely serves to illustrate how far games have come generally, and how forgiving we must have been back then to put up with such wholly irritating fundamentals.

The apes are charismatic and the storyline is passable, but this interactive drama tie-in forgets to find a role to cast the player in.

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.

Okabu's first impression is dazzling because it gets the audio and visual design absolutely right, but it has neither the depth nor imagination to sustain this. And when the simple act of playing isn't fun, you're just going through the motions.

Though it doesn't stray far from the standard survival game formula and often lacks polish, The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria offers a moody, atmospheric descent through Tolkien's world - with plenty of lighter moments to be found along the way.

Dark Void's extremely short campaign - with no motivation for replay and no multiplayer options - is more like a portfolio of half-baked concepts hurriedly crammed into an uninspired package for ease of presentation, more show-reel than show-stopper.

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.

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.

With just six short chapters to wade through, Saw is never in any danger of outstaying its welcome, despite its flaws, and that's probably just as well. Its puzzle-centric design is satisfying for a while, but the game's reliance on the same stock challenges wears thin, as does the hilariously broken combat.

With a predictable storyline, childishly designed puzzles and some simply awful graphics, there is very little to haul this game from the clutches of Pantsville!

Instead of the kind of solid, varied combat which the RTS genre has been steadily evolving towards over the years, Ancient Wars: Sparta falls back on resource management for its core gameplay. Distressingly, this is a sub-"Age Of Empires" affair which rapidly becomes a chore.

A nice puzzle/adventure based on struggle and sadness, able to grab the player in a beautiful world made of paper and shadows. LucasArts has created a deep gameplay system evolving the Lemmings formula and linking it to a Tetris touch. Try it and you'll experience few hours of intense pleasure.

Playing World Series is like going to see your favourite band live and finding out most of their setlist is made up of new songs. It's nice to see something new, but that's not why you bought your tickets. You bought them so you could mosh along to the oldies.

It's all just a bit sad really, and while devoted Jackson fans will find more reason than most to gloss over the practical shortcomings of the game, they run the risk of being left even sadder.

It's a shame that SEGA opted for a simple port rather than properly updating the series, but this is still a fine game - if extremely niche in its appeal.

While fun once through, the broken online component and repetitive design means this'll soon be consigned to a dusty game shelf never to be played again.

It's a measure of how far we've come that just over 20 years ago the sight of blood alone was enough to shock and offend, whereas now it is nowhere near enough.

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

The problem lies in the way you coast through the levels without any real sense of progress or achievement until you realise you’re finished.

"SmackDown" retains the belt.

Contrast is a game of light and dark: a puzzle platformer with two well-realised female leads that occasionally buckles under the weight of its own mechanics. It's beautiful in parts, but also a little broken; I admire it for the first and can almost forgive it the second.

a stuttering start for F1 on the 3DS.

A wonky blaster retains its charm, but Rogue Trooper still deserves better.

So, while Hydrophobia breaks new water, it treads old ground. The systems beneath the ebb and flow of its technical accomplishment are archaic and, without exception, lack finesse.

Eve Online is now 10 years old. Dust 514 may also have a decade of evolution ahead of it, so I hope this is far from the last word on what has started out as a distinctly average and rather buggy shooter. It could well be a game with a bright future, but right now it's saddled with a very dull debut.

There's the kernel of something really interesting in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Glimmers of a free-roaming kids adventure game with RPG overtones, based on actual folklore. Sadly, it only manages to be that game for an hour or so, before steadily becoming less interesting and more generic and annoying, culminating in an ending that is absolutely cruel considering the age of the intended player.

Beautiful music, cute visuals, and a peculiarly charming attitude make you want to like it. Recognising that it's aimed at younger players makes you want to forgive it. But it cannot be denied that this is a big ol' mess of nice ideas executed badly, with the most important ingredient completely missing.

"V-Rally 3" may have glitches and the same Outrun-style engine mechanics, but it's more fun than Sega Rally, and that's a shame, because otherwise this has all the trappings of an excellent rally game.

Put it this way: if your kid gets stuck on a game like Open Season, you know something's amiss. Consider it a good test of whether videogames really are for them.

It strikes me as an unrefined throwback that recreates a cult game without asking how it might have evolved in the past couple of decades, or what it can bring to modern racing games that they have been missing since then. It's a time capsule, a way to step back into that smoky living room and close the door behind you. I had fun back then, but these days I'd rather leave the door open - I think we need the air.

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.

The original Super Monkey Ball wasn't designed with a balance board in mind, any more than monkeys are meant to wear waistcoats, and the end result is just as odd and incongruous. It might well be time to stop grinding that organ.

It's not bad because it's unplayable. It's bad because everything it sets out to do feels 15 years old, or frustrating and repetitive.

This generation is drowning in impossibly good racing games. If you want something technical, you've got DiRT, if you want something easygoing, you've got SEGA Rally, if you want something cool, you've got PGR4, if you want Nascar 08, you've got problems.

Lifeless Planet is bold and memorable and oddly sweet in the earnestness of its message and its preoccupations. It's a truly efficient payload. Fire it up and be transported.

It's easy to pick up and play, has generally tip-top production values, has a moreish appeal and only a couple of bits where parents might have to help out the little ones. Sadly, grown-ups needn't feel like they're missing out, for as much as it contains most of the ingredients that should make it interesting to everyone, Monster House quickly becomes too repetitive and shallow to deliver on its early promise.

Ultima's character has been corrupted and trammelled into a grotesque parody of itself in Ultima Forever. This game is a desecration.

If you're used to the sensibilities of modern gaming, I can imagine this being a massive let-down thanks to its unforgiving nature and lacklustre audio-visuals. See past the limitations and embrace the challenge and you may well enjoy what's on offer here.

The Lost in Blue series is still the most compelling and realistically punishing take on the excitement and hardships of survival on a desert island that videogames have to offer, even if it still has much room to improve.

If you've already played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team, the improved Wi-Fi functionality is the sole reason that it might be worth playing Explorers of Time/Darkness.

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.

If you can live with all the problems, irritations and lack of inspiring gameplay, there’s actually a reasonably big game locked away. Real, hardcore Tolkien nuts, who live and breath the man’s work, may get something out of this.

Even the main characters - the ones voiced over in cut-scenes - have an annoying American accent that just shatters the whole illusion, and they sound like they're talking to you through a king hangover mixed with a few pints of disinterest.

Sight Training is no fun. There's not enough to do and what there is to do is tedious. It's hard to believe it improves your visual abilities any more than eating carrots makes you see in the dark.

If you have any love for the manga, feel free to add the final scar to the tally. For everyone else, this is just an old-school brawler that's partial to shouting ATATATATATATA. Because you're already dead.

Fascinating and frustrating by turn, there's just enough to make you cling to the hope that one day the development team will actually find him. For now, I'd love the big, glossy, elephant folio art book of the Epic Mickey series, but I can probably do without the games themselves.

Sadly, as far as Sims clones go, it's actually one of the best... but you'd probably be better off going for one of its better expansion packs than spending money on this. It's just a little too slight a proposition for a full game.

A little more faith in the player's ability to cope with deeper strategy and Heroes of Dragon Age would be a genuinely good game. Conversely, it would only take a few more turns of the micro-transaction screw for it to be intolerable. Strange as it sounds, this somewhat awkward middle ground actually represents huge progress for EA's freemium ambitions.

Its shortcomings far outweigh its merits, but what merits they are - Disaster Report 4 is silly, humane and utterly charming.

Absolutely up there with the best of the series so far. It's as good as the game has ever been.

The game isn't particularly satisfying or even all that interesting.

I can't pretend that Soul Suspect is a particularly great game, but I do know that it's the sort of game I'll still remember - and remember fondly - in five years' time, which is more than can be said for most of its glossier rivals.

This is nineties videogame cliché; an unrelenting gangbang of tired mechanics presented in mostly derivative clothing. The script, dialogue and voice acting grasp for irony but only manage weak cliché.

Ship Simulator 2006 doesn't have the feature-set to compete with sims like MSFS and MSTS, but it's a solid start. The developers are already talking about the next instalment and making encouraging noises about wave modelling, long voyages, and multiplayer (not included at present). Unless you've got salt in your blood, I'd recommend sitting on the dock of the bay until SS2007 arrives.

The cinematic cut-scenes are poorly voiced, the characters unconvincing, and the plot is so-so at best.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.

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.

The core process of gathering up pellets and delivering them to the goal simply isn't as fun as it should be. For a game built upon this crucial cornerstone, no matter how many ideas are added on top of it, the whole construction remains unstable and, soon enough, un-enjoyable.

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.

Painfully average.

With just six short chapters to wade through, Saw is never in any danger of outstaying its welcome, despite its flaws, and that's probably just as well. Its puzzle-centric design is satisfying for a while, but the game's reliance on the same stock challenges wears thin, as does the hilariously broken combat.