Taking into account the superbly judged playability, classy visuals, variety, welcome element of stealth and replayability, Sucker Punch has managed to ensure that Sly Raccoon is elevated from being Just Another Platform Game.

Spyro 2’s major and quite glaring shortcoming – boredom. There’s plenty to do here, but none of it really makes you want to carry on the story through to its end because none of it is particularly fun.

It's by no means anything remotely original, borrowing almost all of its ideas from a three year old PC game, but in terms of console fragfoolery, it's up there with the best of them for visual splendour and all out intense action.

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.

It’s a curious gaming experience, and strangely enjoyable, even if, like us, you haven’t got even the faintest interest in fishing.

While the game certainly has aspirations to action-RPG greatness, it falls far, far short of the mark by instead boiling down to a trudging mess of relentless combat, character statistics and more quests and side-quests than you could shake some kind of magic stick at.

The ports themselves are weak, perhaps the victim of an unrealistic development deadline, and the games aren't actually all that classic.

It lacks tension (combat is totally one-sided), set pieces (there are two whole bosses in the entire game), a gripping story (Krystal's kidnapped, you rescue Spirits, you fight General Scales), and any of the myriad different things that the game it principally tries to emulate (Zelda) was so famous for.

There’s more fluency to the [Hitz] gameplay, and the “on fire” element is handier than EA’s aptly named “gamebreaker”.

Stood next to any of the better games of the year, Gungrave feels like a depressingly hollow experience designed to showcase some nifty graphics.

It’s as cryptic to begin with as any game ever conceived by Square, and it lures you in with some tremendous combat mechanics and a unique selling point (Disney), but it also tries to piss you off with a vacuous opening zone and the Chipmunks.

Playing Animal Crossing feels like the gaming equivalent of watching 70s/early 80s children's TV. Think Bod, think Magic Roundabout, and try not to smile while you're playing.

The voiceovers are also crushingly generic, featuring the kind of stereotypical scripts that gamers ought to be well and truly sick of by now.

It’s one of the most detailed, old-school RTS titles we’ve come across since "StarCraft."

The sense of scale is also slightly lacking, with cars and tanks actually looking like teeny tiny cars and tanks instead of making your mech look huge.

If this came free with the PS2 Network Adapter - as it does in the US - we might be more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

If you're adept with the Medal of Honor/Halo style control scheme then by all means prove us wrong and shake your weary fists at us in combat, but if you're uncertain then we recommend you try it out before committing, or simply wait for SOCOM 2.

The sheer variety in level design and objectives will keep you coming back for more even if you think you're bored.

But if you can deal with that, the useless camera doesn't sound like a showstopper and motion sickness isn't a problem, then strap on your simian capsules and spout some unintelligible Japlish, because the monkeys are back and your Cube needs this game.

Better than Midway’s "RedCard," and more violent than the average ice hockey game, Sega Soccer Slam is pure arcade fun, albeit not very long-lived.

The proliferation of save points also strips any element of tension away from the experience.

Despite throwing in a canine companion, button-tapping mini-games and retweaking difficulty levels and so on between NTSC and PAL, Dead to Rights is fundamentally underwhelming to look at, repetitive to play and riddled with more flaws than bullet holes, and this'll stick like rigour mortis after your fiftieth fistfight.

As a multiplayer game though, Beach Spikers is exceptional – up there with "Virtua Tennis," "Soccer Slam" and "NBA 2K3" in Sega’s hall of fame.

Kri's got a lovely story though, and otherwise it is very compelling, thanks to thoughtful level design and so on, but we just don't want San Diego throwing different styles of combat into the periphery if they're going to screw up the main one.

After driving around the three cities, picking up fare after fare and learning your best routes and so on, there's really very little the game can offer you that "Grand Theft Auto 3" and "Vice City" doesn't do far better with its throwaway Taxi missions.

You should buy this game because it's frightening in a way that few games ever have been, and because it's a vividly explored, engrossing narrative the likes of which few out-and-out storytellers like "Final Fantasy" can compete with.

The single player campaign is, if anything, too long, and focuses more on continuous combat than actual role-playing. The lack of any support for parties in the single player mode is also disappointing, and makes the game far less involving than it should be.

One of those games which stands inches away from greatness.

One of those games which stands inches away from greatness.

One thing in its favour was the gorgeously rendered fruit, that look so realistic and juicy that we swear we were salivating during our time with the game - but that's about as good as it gets.

Once you get it on a big TV or monitor and hook it all up to a meaty stereo system, it really is something special to behold.

The PAL conversion with its enormous borders is a big disappointment, but the strength of the story, the battle system and the combination of clever dialogue, visuals and soundtrack conspire to captivate the player.

A decent length for a videogame at roughly ten hours, and it boasts an enormous number of hugely varied tasks to complete and beautiful sights to see. Capped off with an elegant control system and intelligent game design, this is the platformer to bury both mediocre rivals like "Banjo Kazooie" and old classics like "Mario 64."

An exotic cocktail of entertainment for Nintendo fans, who will slurp up every last drop, and if you want to talk about longevity, I've had this game on import for about six months and I still haven't finished it.

You can’t help but want more once you've rushed through it all. I wanted to take it all in at my own pace without sacrificing the life of little Olimar.

The absolute pinnacle of Star Wars games. It's bloody hard in places, but it pampers the nostalgic and conveys so effortlessly the beauty of the galaxy and the sheer tyranny of the evil Empire that you will Force your way through it until there's no stone left unturned.

A competent, atmospheric adventure and truly a new direction for the characters, but at this length it simply isn’t worth the £35, let alone the cost of the console.

The first half is fast, exciting, beautifully designed and constantly full of surprises. The second half is festooned with gobsmacking plot twists and great cinematics but let down by repetitive paint by numbers level design.

As stunning and enjoyable as ever. You may feel foolish gripping the controller throughout a 40-minute cut scene, but MGS2 is something which must be experienced.

One of the key successes is the complete abandonment of convention - screw physics, we want to breakdance on the boards in mid-air. SSX Tricky is bigger and better, with more explosions.

A luscious, sprawling epic of a game and one of the most complete experiences I have ever encountered. If this is what I've waited a year to see on my PS2, then I would have waited ten. Magnificent.

Perhaps not the deepest of games, revolving as it does around slaughtering demons and finding the appropriate key-substitute to open the next door, but it's certainly one of the most stylish and downright entertaining I've played in recent months.

In an industry justly accused of leaning towards style over content, ICO is a beacon of light and a bastion of superb game design.

The feeling of jubilation once you have Gold awards for every area of every test is immeasurable.

There are some nice stretches of track to travel on and plenty of things to do along the way, but several of the activities are downright dull, while others are marred by questionable design decisions such as lengthy stops and the excessive use of temporary speed limits in the most boring parts of a track.

It's easy to be wooed by Echelon's glorious graphics and its sometimes epic atmosphere, but the game is marred by a few problems which could sadly bring it down with a disappointing thud for many.

A huge, varied and utterly addictive game. Acting and dialogue is a bit hit and miss at times, and the voice acknowledgements when you give your characters orders soon get rather repetitive, but overall the storyline is strong enough to keep you involved in the game.

An excellent strategy game which is sadly somewhat marred by its overly difficult campaigns and unimpressive enemy AI.

If you can overlook the niggles with the island's economy, Tropico is one of the best city building sims of recent years and certainly the most amusing.

In short, then, you should buy this game, and if you play anything online this year, make it Tribes 2.

One of the most innovative real-time strategy games we have come across in recent years, reinvigorating the genre with features more usually found in turn-based titles.

The drab lunar landscape which makes up much of the game is a poor substitute for the rich snowfields and forests of Earth 2150, and poorly balanced campaigns make the single player experience less satisfying than it perhaps should have been.

But the biggest problem that Battle For Naboo suffers from is that it is just too short. There are fifteen missions, but they only take five or ten minutes each to complete, and only a few offer any real challenge.

Much-improved this time around, the only things I can hold against it are the car's questionable propensity to stick to the track even when you steer it markedly off-course, and the rather sizeable learning curve for newcomers.

Flight simulations are notoriously difficult to get right and Battle of Britain is a valiant effort: experienced pilots looking for a challenge or a history lesson should consider this game - beginners might be better off elsewhere.

It's very playable, with quite a nice engine and a strong leading lady, but the storyline is a touch frail, the game is severely limited by its lack of multiplayer and the long gaps between save points make certain sections almost too challenging.

The poor AI and lack of an in-game save option makes the single player campaigns frustrating and unrewarding, and the role-playing elements don't quite work as well as they perhaps should.

The game looks and sounds excellent, but is let down badly by simplistic puzzles, fussy location routes, and it's essentially linear nature.

The graphics are great but come at a high cost, the new weapons and items are amusing but encourage random kills, and the maps are stunning but far too big for the number of people playing the game at the moment.

A must-have purchase for any action gaming fan, and is a testament to what can still be done with the genre with the proper amount of thought.

If you let the game draw you in, the fantasy world becomes much more real than you could imagine -and the game much more compelling.

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!

The lighting system more than makes up for this lack of colour though, with pyrotechnic multi-coloured dynamic lighting, and full day and night cycles.

The constant changes in scenery and obstacles also help to lift the tedium of endlessly chasing sheep around brighly coloured mazes, and while the game is best handled in small doses it is addictive enough to keep you coming back for more.

A dreary, badly made game which offers no real closure to the series and bears no relevance to either Blair Witch film. A waste of your pennies, despite the reasonable price tag.

For anyone who wants a mech "simulator" this is by far the best offering out there and has much to recommend it over its predecessors.

Some of the old charm is still there, but it's starting to wear a bit thin after four years, and for those of us with more refined tastes there are much better third person games out there now.

Improved menus and controls make it rather less intimidating, and the open-ended nature of the game and the massive range of units, buildings, technologies and strategies on offer means this is one game that you can play time and time again without ever repeating yourself.

Gunman Chronicles has a cracking storyline running throughout with its fair share of twists and turns. All of this is set upon some truly stunning landscapes and against some pretty fearsome foes.

I love it - the challenge, the atmosphere, the blood.

An engrossing and highly entertaining adventure game with characters that you can care about, an involving storyline to keep you hooked, and settings and characters that are both beautiful and bizarre.

A solid storyline backed by hauntingly good graphics and sound, with entertaining combat and weaponry make this a hard game to put down.

Although at times little more than a culmination of spy films and stereotypes over the last forty years, No One Lives Forever is an adventure and a half for the single player, and well worth investigating if you’re sick of world-threatening plots and Quake-engine oddities.

If you are a fan of "Alone In The Dark," and are longing for some more French-influenced zombie fun, you will probably want to snap this up right away.

As with most adventure games, it's startlingly linear, but don't you dare let that rob you of the experience; this is a game that should be bought, played and cherished.

Its stunning graphics put most other third person games to shame, the ferocious hand-to-hand combat makes for a more visceral experience than is usual in this rather stale genre, and the heavy dose of Norse mythology provides an interesting and unique setting for the game.

The camera view is frustrating, the controls are frustrating, the AI is frustrating, the resource system is frustrating, the missions are frustrating, and above all the fact that this game isn't half as good as we were all hoping it would be is very, very frustrating.

Although it looks like Rustin Parr and uses the same technology, there’s none of the flair and precision of its big brother, and it’s decidedly shorter, which isn’t great since "Rustin Parr" was over too quickly to start with.

With the PC's internet potential yet to be realised it could well be the making of a classic.

One of the best games ever thanks to its gameplay, it also happens to be visually stunning, with beautifully designed 3D polygonal characters, all animated exquisitely with very few (if any) perceptible glitches in the modelling.

It has jaw-dropping graphics, gripping gameplay and if it weren’t for the stodgy AI and lack of damage skins on vehicles, the game would be untouchable.

It plays a rockin' good round of golf, and looks simply stunning into the bargain.

Has all the right atmosphere and, for once, really comes across as how a game of a film should look and feel, and it's just the game to successfully bridge the gap between role-playing and strategy.

If you are looking for a festive thinker to play in between consuming copious amounts of booze, this will be ideal, although I wouldn't recommend playing it with a hangover. A thoroughly addictive, engrossing game that ranks among my top five for this year.

The single player campaigns are great fun, and multiplayer has been very well balanced and improved so that most of the rough edges have been smoothed out, resulting in a game that is simply great fun to play.

One of the game's greatest strengths though is quite simply the Pacific Theatre setting - there is next to no competition here, and the game does a lot to teach you how it feels to turn in for that critical run at the enemy carrier.

Unquestionably a triumph, marking a great improvement over the last game... It relies on gameplay rather than on cutscenes and ephemera, and the variety and suspense of individual battles combined with the simple but effective campaign system mean that it will stay on a good many hard disks for a long time to come.

With the inclusion of a Software Development Kit in the package, the door is also wide open for user modifications and new missions for the game, which should extend SWAT3's life for the foreseeable future. I couldn't recommend your acquisition of this game any more.

One of my biggest problems with Nocturne was its system requirements, which placed the game frankly rather ahead of its time.

The welcome return of a massively branching campaign structure, along with dozens of battles to fight, units to deploy, and officers to lead them gives an almost unlimited amount of replay value for the lone wargamer.

It's also rather obvious that the developers realised towards the end of the game that it was going to be far too short, resorting to the old trick of forcing you to backtrack across large portions of the game world (no less than three times!) to make it seem longer.

What we have here is a role-playing game in which little could be improved - the story and quests are captivating, the gameplay tried and tested, and the overall feel is professional and entertaining.

It's not without its gripes - it locked up on me several times during our brief relationship, and I'm not a big fan of its commentary, but once it has you in its grip it won't let you go until you've utterly exhausted it, and vice versa, and that should be enough for anyone.

An exceptionally enjoyable first person shooter and should not be discounted on the basis of its length. If you fancy a new first person adventure and already own "Deus Ex," this is the game to buy.

An exceptionally fun game to play - the fight model is spot-on (entertainment wise), and the missions and storyline are both sufficiently interesting to keep the player involved in the action.

Marginally better than the original. The single player game is undoubtedly more enjoyable, whilst the multiplayer is still flawed but nevertheless worth a few games.

The beautiful graphics and authentic Trek feel aren't enough to overcome the confused AI, awkward interface and glacially slow pace in what is ultimately a disappointing game.