This button mashing hackandslash lark needs an injection of new ideas - RPG pretensions don't hide the core fact that Otogi feels a pretty vacuous beast: gorgeous or not.

For the vast majority of the gaming world, this is quite easily the best 3D beat 'em up ever made.

For the vast majority of the gaming world, this is quite easily the best 3D beat 'em up ever made.

For all its ambition and the obvious effort put into creating a fun and somewhat original title, Ghost Master doesn't have a lot of life in it past the initial novelty of scaring the crap out of people.

The fact that we actually did play it through to completion - despite the sort of flaws that have sent us flying off the handle in countless other reviews - is a testament to its continued accessibility and the continuing attraction of the Buffy franchise.

It's stylish, fun, challenging and you really do feel as if you're playing a part in a sequel to a cult classic. That's all we were after.

The two styles of play - high scoring or Pokemon catching - allow you to explore the tables twice over with different motives, while the immediate accessibility will suit players who are looking for some purely basic pinball fun. Only the most demanding of pinball wizards would be right to turn their nose up at Pokemon Pinball's charming slant on the genre.

No matter how much is going on at any given time, the frame rate is a rock solid 60, and for a game as fast as this that's a godsend.

It lacks the imagination that the design documents must have been crying out for, and ultimately feels too much like psychedelic paintball in a foam-padded adventure playground.

A cynical and at times deeply boring game to play. As a platformer, it won't have Naughty Dog barking [groan] or keep Insomniac up all night.

For the hardcore fighter, it's without doubt an essential purchase, in that it's a test of true skill and grit, has oceanic depth and subtlety, and rewards patience and persistence.

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.

May not be the best-looking tactical shooter ever made, nor does it bring anything to the genre in terms of progress, but there's little else on Xbox worth looking at in the genre until "Rainbow Six 3" shows up.

While it arguably does little in term of innovation, it has some classic puzzles, far more satisfying combat elements than ever before, some truly horrifying sections, fantastic visuals, gruesome audio and a quality storyline that kicks most of the embarrassing competition out of sight.

People shouldn't make RTS games for consoles for the same reasons that people shouldn't put square pegs in round holes: they don't fit. And people definitely shouldn't make substandard RTS games for consoles.

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.

So - here's a rating for the casual gamer. Add one point for every air show you've ever attended.

The big issue, for us, is that Mario Golf hasn't really grown much since its time on the N64 - and when you consider the sorts of things that other golf games are doing at the moment, that's much less forgivable than it is in the case of some of Nintendo's genre-leading franchises.

The best Star Wars game since "X-Wing" and/or "Tie Fighter," if not ever. Unless something entirely unbelievable descends from the heavens, it's the RPG of the year. If the remaining major players fumble even slightly, it's game of the year.

Sony has done a great job of holding new players by the hand and introducing Star Wars Galaxies in a way that makes you feel part of the action - much more so than before.

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.

Sony has at least attempted to approach the genre from a quirky and strategic angle, but our lasting impression of the game is one that mostly entertains, but rarely inspires.

That, then, is the real triumph here; an RTS game that allows you the ability to do very complex things but doesn't have an interface which it'll take weeks to learn.

A pretty respectable FPS, but like "Unreal 2" it's the game's inability to innovate consistently that compels us to give up.

For anyone who has either of the last two EA F1 games, don't bother, unless the idea of building an F1 career specifically appeals to you. For us, it just smacks of more of the same.

Sure, it's a classic, but it's so obviously a £35 mission pack, and is probably double the price it should have been. Unless you were utterly captivated by the original and spend every day pining for more, or never owned the original, it's hard to justify why you should shell out for it.

The handling is much more basic than the spongy physics used in the PS2 version, and it probably makes it an altogether more playable game as a result.

Where the game falls down is its length; at around eight hours it's going to take you less than a good weekend session to plough through it, and for £40, frankly that's not good enough. It's "Luigi's Mansion" all over again.

You're going to get stuck, regularly, without remorse. And the main reason you'll get stuck is the terribly unresponsive controls' unholy alliance with the drunken camera that render the proliferation of tediously precise jump puzzles much more of a challenge than they should be.

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.

Relentless FPS overlords might find their pulses raised briefly by the thought of endless, generic shooting and violence, but the rest of you would be well advised to direct your time and money elsewhere.

It's a straight port, with a few minor alterations, and in this day and age it just can't stand up to the competition.

Rather like "Angel Of Darkness," if you're prepared to stick with it and cast off your frustrations and the game's limitations, you'll slowly begin to enjoy what is actually a rather solid enjoyable, well paced adventure game.

For all it brings to the table - space combat, Halo's shield, varied levels - not one single aspect is truly worthy of praise.

For all it brings to the table - space combat, Halo's shield, varied levels - not one single aspect is truly worthy of praise.

It might not take as much effort to overcome or offer as much content as arcade stalwarts "Midnight Club" and "Burnout," but neither game has the same depth online, and only hot seating Burnout's crash sections with a few friends can rival the Hollywood playground DICE has built here for sheer fun.

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.

Though the game is initially good fun, there just isn’t enough variety to sustain interest for too long, and I can’t see myself picking it up again anytime soon for another blast.

Little more than an online update of a pretty dire Tetris update, Worlds simply isn't worth your cash, even if it's only 15 or 20 quid down the high street.

Fun though DKC is, it is - as many have said in the past - rather on the short side. Stumbling through the game with a fairly good idea of where everything was, it took us about four hours to get to the final boss and dispatch him, picking up some 70 per cent of the game's secrets along the way.

At times a wonderful effort and a tremendous tech demo that kept us entertained for all of a couple of hours, but that's all it eventually feels like - a tech demo. As a game, it's woefully shallow and it left us wanting something more.

A decent port and has enough going for it in its own right to be considered a worthy purchase, just maybe not an essential one.

Even if you can forgive the technical cock-ups and lack of multiplayer action, all you're left with is a fairly uninspired single player campaign that'll take you all of 12 hours to finish.

Speed Kings is vaguely entertaining, and certainly there are worse racers, but with "Burnout 2" and "Midnight Club II" to compete with, it's as if Climax couldn't see the point.

With camera issues, a cowardly gaming mechanic and the frankly awful stealth sub levels, what you're left with is perhaps the best example of graphics over gameplay we've ever seen. Unless you get off on repetitive bash 'em ups, leave well alone.

But perhaps the over-riding criticism of Brute Force is that it should have been an FPS. It seems like Digital Anvil designed it in the third person for the sake of it, without acknowledging that it completely screws up the opportunity to play it split screen, thanks to inherent third person viewpoint issues.

If variety is the spice of life, then Wario Ware is the digital equivalent of Phall curry, burning the inside of your face with its charm and originality.

The award for best/only recent IndyCar sim that manages to be strangely absorbing while faithfully reproducing the sport, albeit in an aesthetically displeasing way, goes to... IndyCar Series!

We'd also like to point out that Sega has a whole stack of arcade games in its archives, and could have been a mite more generous than including just four in the package. One for obsessives only.

This feels more like MotoGP Complete than MotoGP 2. That's not to say that you won't play this for yonks and yonks. The problem is more that you may already have done.

Entertaining though Lost Kingdoms can be when it's raising two fingers to RPG convention, it's still blighted by conventional RPG problems.

One of the most impressive strategy games we've seen in years.

There's an original story here, but it isn't very exciting, and it lacks the style and incessant comedy of its big screen brethren.

Once you've scratched the surface and delved around beneath, that's when you'll realise that a game like PlanetSide needs constant development and a flow of new content to keep it fresh and interesting. And at the moment, that just isn't happening.

It is blighted on so many levels by the blundering stupidity of its malformed stillborn design that recommending it is beyond us. The blue pill never looked so tasty.

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

One of the best expansions for The Sims, but as the latest in a series of six it's about as exciting as news of another "Friday the 13th" sequel.

It transcends the very genre it once created.

The lack of any new multiplayer options is a bit disappointing, but it's priced as an expansion pack and there's certainly enough here to keep any fan of Medieval engaged for quite a large number of hours.

Despite the fairly humdrum single player campaign, Tides of War is well worth engaging in for the Live experience alone. PC gamers, however, can save their cash.

Any game that has you physically dodging oncoming cars from your television is no ordinary game.

If you don't have the patience to learn button combinations and toil over the fine points, then perhaps there's no hope for you, but for the rest of us, the reward structure is tuned finer than Dennis Rodman's haircut, it's funkier than a jazz sandwich, and if you don't like basketball, then this is more than likely to convert you.

It's never as tense as its console sibling, and it suffers from a few frustrating flaws, but the core sneak 'em up gameplay - evading enemies and cameras, silencing alarms, collecting data and using your spy tools - is well represented.

After Red Storm beauties like "Raven Shield" and "Splinter Cell," and even more recent efforts like "Vietcong", Conflict: Desert Storm on the GameCube is a pretty embarrassing release.

The main coup of the PC version over the PS2, however, is that it that the on-track visuals have been given a massive overhaul.

If you're an old school arcade veteran looking to prove yourself again, then this is perhaps the purest gameplay experience you'll find for a long time. Even if you're a rookie looking for something 'new', you can't go wrong, but you might well find the barriers to entry a little harsh to say the least.

At times it's just too frustrating to be described as "fun", and being turned away, a stone's throw from the end of a level, by the Game Over screen just because you didn't understand precisely how to complete a fairly arbitrary objective is enough to saturate you with disbelief like an anvil landing on your face in the middle of a field.

The basic toilet humour running through the piece can't hide the short-lived gameplay, and leads to an extremely unfulfilling and tiresome experience that any sane person would be hard-pressed to push on with.

A thoroughly enjoyable game that matches its predecessor in every way. It's true that the plot never becomes as epic as Golden Sun hinted it might, and it's also true that the game will be a little too 'freeform' for some RPG fans, but it is basically the middle of a story - and thus plays as such.

It stands as one of the essential games to own on the platform, providing it's your one and only games system.

Possibly the most refreshing element of Midnight Club II is the CPU AI.

At the end of the day this isn't a matter of graphics whorishness, it's just that the GBA can't do the game justice. Underneath it all you can feel the spirit of the game struggling to get out.

Graphics whores will inevitably be put off by the old school look and feel of the title, but if you can get past that, this is one of the best god games the PC has seen in quite a while.

Most obviously, the control system on the PS2 is far more intuitive and user friendly than the comparatively clunky original that suffered from a hateful inventory management system.

It's a saccharine-sweet little big adventure, which engrossed us right through to the end, and if you're in the market for a spot of light relief in your adventuring, you could do worse than give Ham-Ham Heartbreak a little TLC.

This is the first time EA BIG have gotten the mix between style and substance truly wrong. But that's what you get for listening to the marketing department - and not the gamers.

Like most puzzle games, it's all in the gameplay, and Puzzle Fighter's model is more imaginative and works a lot better than most of the others we've seen lately.

But if you can bear to put up with the obvious lack of polish in the graphic and AI department, (similar bugbears that "Hidden & Dangerous" players will confess to), then there's a very absorbing FPS to get to grips with here.

A rank combat system, quirky camera and a lack of inspiration at the game's exploration/puzzle core make playing the game hard work.

The Dynasty Warrior reign is not in decline. It is, however, in danger of getting complacent.

To pull out an old but fitting cliché, "Amplitude rocks". It's easy to pick up (with two suitably patronising tutorials) and surprisingly addictive, despite a lot of songs we don't even like.

Simply a stunning, magical game.

We can safely say that the combat and trading aspects of the game contain enough depth to be good examples of each genre. Not benchmark, but good. Put them together though and you do have a game that deserves to be called great.

You might not think that we need another first person shooter in our collections, but when such a simple game can be fun, exhilarating, affecting, tense and stressful all at once, you begin to wonder why you ever needed more.

It's too hard, it's a bit feebly constructed in places, and it plays too much like real driving, which, for a game laden with UFOs, is a bit of a contradiction.

We haven't played a more atmospheric single or multiplayer tactical action game since "SWAT3," and despite its shortcomings there is still nothing that comes close to rivalling it for sheer breathe-down-your neck tension.

Put MicroMachines in front of four people instead of one and it’s a revelation.

Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire isn't without its charm, and for those in it for a cheerful little adventure with little in the way of challenge can't go far wrong. Just don't blame us when you start wondering what all the fuss is about.

Horrendously bad. It makes you realise how spoilt we are with modern masterpieces like "Raven Shield," which combine realistic counter-terrorism with addictive gameplay and produce enjoyable scenarios for single and multiple players.

The wonderfully directed cut scenes from Kinji Fukasaku combined with the decent plot without doubt give players plenty of incentive to keep plugging away, but despite the obvious quality on display the real meat of the game seems to lack that something extra to demand a glowing recommendation.

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.

Shameless money grubbing.

Offers quite a different approach to any other RTS games we've seen recently, and neatly occupies a middle ground between the incredibly hardcore "Total War" franchise and the more lightweight gameplay of something like "Age of Mythology."

There simply isn't enough of it. The game is packed to the gills with imagination, stunning design and addictive, hugely varied gameplay - but while it triumphs in quality, it lacks in terms of quantity.

"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.

With about triple the number of mini-games, or a budget price launch, we'd probably recommend it as a quirky curiosity/novelty purchase, but if we have to hear another squeaky kid utter the word 'like', we'll probably self-combust.

It takes a tried, tested, and thoroughly flogged old genre and injects some more speed and ingenuity into it, and there's a heck of lot of replay value here, even if the game's levels can probably be beaten in a few hours.

Rayman 3 neither comes close to toppling the mighty Mario games, nor gives a compelling argument for the merits of cross console link-up gaming, but platform addicts will be well served. The more demanding gamer won’t be.