A beautiful but flawed game, with easy controls and imaginative design marred by a surplus of platform hopping puzzles and a disappointing finale. It's also rather short.

This isn't a game that sets out to change the world or to redefine the genre, but rather to rehash an existing genre in a solid and playable way. An objective which it achieves with room to spare.

Somehow Third Law have managed to take the best elements of old fashioned pure action shooters and build on them to make something that is entertaining and nostalgic for us old fogeys, while still managing to stand up against the rather higher standards of modern games when it comes to plot and gameplay.

But if you have battled your way through "Warcraft II" and still lust for more real time swords and sorcery, then Warlords Battlecry will provide you with hours of quality entertainment.

A nice blend of arcade and sim, which in my mind would be perfect for the uninitiated amongst you and die-hards alike. The split screen two-player option is also a bonus, and works extremely well.

The length of the game might seem a little short for some of the more dedicated RTS players out there, but then remember that "Homeworld" only had 17 missions!

The combat intensive dungeon romping is fantastic fun, and recreates the table top AD&D experience like no other game before it.

The wealth of online servers, the randomly generated dungeons, the difficulty of missions, not to mention the three difficulty modes which change the way you have to fight to survive, all add some staying power to the game.

Moody and atmospheric, compelling and addictive, this is first person gaming in grown-up form, and it truly is magnificent.

Everything about the game smacks of good research and authenticity, down to the ability to select a Japanese voiceover with English subtitles rather than having English voices all the way through.

The weak cutscenes, poor combat system and somewhat redundant spell system don't help its cause, and the game falls far short of what it could have been.

It sparkles with polish, detail and originality.

Reinvigorate your childhood fantasies of living in a cartoon and pick up MDK2 - there ain't much better in the genre.

It is the best looking space combat sim we've seen so far... Unfortunately it is let down all too often by poor mission scripting and incompetent wingmen, not to mention the occasional random crash.

The variety of enemies to fight, skills to learn, and people to meet have a pulling power that most games can only dream of.

But with more interesting and varied missions, bigger and more detailed levels, new enemies (and allies), a few new toys to play with, and some vital tinkering under the bonnet, Thief II stands on its own merit.

The lack of any real objectives becomes somewhat tedious after a while, but it is still hard not to recommend The Sims to everyone.

X manages to fail on almost every level.

This is not a game to play casually - it requires a major investment of time and effort to get anywhere. But if you're willing to give it the commitment it needs, it can soon develop into a rewarding relationship.

A wargame that only hardcore wargamers could love. Historically accurate to a fault, vast in scale, unnecessarily complex and poorly presented, it isn't going to win any new fans for the genre.

The graphics are a match for anything else on the market, and the game doesn't need a supercomputer to run it.

The spoken dialog is at times so badly acted, and the story so complex, that in the end you simply stop caring about the uninteresting characters under your control.

Asheron's Call is also very addictive - I sat down and told myself that I was only going to play for an hour, but after I finished playing I noticed that I had been playing for over four hours, which pretty much explains that I'm hooked.

A superb game with a truly deep story. Couple this with a rather good looking graphics engine, some great dialogue, detailed environments, and an all round attention to detail, and you have a great game. Unfortunately though, thanks to the nature of the adventure system and the pauses while loading scenes, the game can become tedious at times.

But playing the game makes you realise just how little effect any one pilot has on a war, and how futile and dehumanising the whole thing is. I'm sure it wasn't meant to, but there you go... The world's first pacifist space combat sim?

It isn't the perfect game, and the anal attention to detail may reduce the appeal it has to the general game playing populous.

I never got into the original game, yet I find AoE II enchanting. The sheer depth of the technology tree and evolution of the civilisation are always a surprise. I particularly like the intuitive logic that makes battles more tactical.

The visuals are beautiful, the soundtrack atmospheric, the single player campaign (mostly) engaging, and the multiplayer is excellent. It's only really let down by suspect AI and a few tedious missions.

Make no mistake, it has the occasional show-stopping bug, it looks a little bit haggard at times, nobody in the known universe is playing the multiplayer modes, and it's a quick-saver's dream, but surprisingly you could do a lot worse.

A splendid game. The pathing issues do incur a degree of frustration, but never enough to drop kick your monitor into next door’s garden.

The best version of the best football management game ever made... The best just got better. Again.

While it is fun, although not magnificently so, in its own right, it fails to offer a convincing reason to buy it over the many other fine EyeToy outings that have gone before.

It's certainly good to look at, the visual gags work well enough, and most of the brainteasers are intuitive. Yet, in a genre that advances as quickly as the pyramids, the few knobs and whistles that modern technology brings really don't drag Ankh up to the level of its glorious forebears, and the linguistic difficulties and its brevity knock it down.

This PS2 incarnation of the cross-platform offence is entirely without worth. It's agony in 1s and 0s. Don't even touch your bargepole with a bargepole.

This is a poorly thought out, drab racer that might have been considered passable on mobiles but on dedicated games machines we deserve better. Don't buy this. Don't let anyone else buy this. Don't let the games industry know it's okay for them to port mobile phone games to superior hardware without upgrading them in any way.

If you want a game that lets you take a club to glorious heights or just go on a one-man sabotage mission to ruin Manchester United, then this is by far the most refined, in-depth and yet most approachable version Sports Interactive has come up with to date.

Where it counts Sega Presents Touch Darts is a triumph. Whether idly playing through the various mini-games or bucking down to a tricky leg in a long tournament the game is perfectly accessible, easy to pick up but hard to master and, even without wireless multiplayer or an adaptive AI this is still comfortably the best Darts videogame going.

The gameplay in Undercover: Dual Motives consists entirely of finding a thing, using it to do a thing, then having a conversation with someone who tells you you need to find another thing, and going to find the thing. There is no sense of suspense or mystery whatsoever.

Even the best endeavour seems futile in the face of a clunky control system and a lack of strong visual feedback. To call it a relaxing piece of leisure software doesn't excuse it, either.

The presentation is of a high quality, there's enough data to please fans of the TV show and they haven't mucked about with the classic Top Trumps gameplay. It's a shame none of the modes really make the most of the fact you're playing on a DS, and grown-ups are likely to memorise the cards and find it gets repetitive rather quickly. Still. Dr Who Top Trumps!

There's just not enough to the game, and by the time you're frantically scribbling increasingly complicated symbols in order to chip away the health of some super-blocking AI opponent, the initially appealing simplicity of the concept proves a hindrance rather than a help.

SuperCar Challenge sadly makes the same mistake, focusing so much attention on the minutiae of car physics that the actual gameplay feels like an afterthought.

Fine game that it is, though, Flight Control is still better suited to filling time waiting for public transport. Out of context, it just doesn't have the same allure.