For all its big ideas, Disney Epic Mickey never quite weaves its disparate strands into a convincing whole. Its conceptual ambition is let down by merely adequate mechanics, and Mickey himself remains a rather abstract figure at the centre of it all.

Grandia III can be an enjoyable trip for the 30 to 40 hours it takes to complete, as each battle is a joy even in the most boring of dungeons.

There are improvements, and there are problems - business as usual. The era of EA Sports' FIFA may be over, but the game goes on.

Black Knight Sword is a stylish anachronism, but an anachronism nonetheless. Its richest ideas are to be found in the presentation, the aesthetic, the art direction and stage direction. Elsewhere, this is a rather rote production, its substance plainly enjoyable, but mostly forgettable.

A decent enough result after 20 years in the wilderness.

There's just not enough depth and nuance here to sustain prolonged play.

As brightly as it burns, it's an all-too-brief fix that doesn't leave you wanting more.

Homefront floats in the limbo between "not bad" and "pretty good", and is hamstrung by a single-player element that feels like a half-hearted obligation. What's most disappointing is that Homefront wanted so much to join COD and Battlefield at the top of the genre, but has ended up as merely a weekend timewaster for players waiting for the next shooter fix.

And viewed as what it's meant to be - a game for kids - Jambo! Safari isn't too bad. It's simple to understand and there's plenty of stuff to do. You get to drive a big car and throw ropes about and pat lions. There are no guns or scary bits. You might even learn something, although nothing you learn will be very interesting.

Lack of coherency, imagination and self-awareness.

A zany, knockabout co-op action adventure that's kaleidoscopically colourful but wears you out before you get to the good stuff.

While its battles can be surprisingly punishing and occasionally uneven, there's a lot of heart in this gorgeous turn-based tactics anthology, and the scale of its ambition just about sings through.

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.

As a concept, it works. The physics is decent enough, but the game itself never finds the tone or hook that elevates its gameplay model into something truly compelling.

But we've all done Lemmings at one time or other, there's nothing new about this, and as much as it might sound like a good idea in your head it's a nostalgic itch you can scratch without spending £30 on another PSP game that makes you wonder why you ever doubted the DS would kick it all around the playground until its shiny little face was thumbsmeared to death.

A strangely compelling, if completely non-essential, diversion for adults and definitely a recommended rental for the youngsters.

Aliens: Dark Descent is an occasionally wayward but on the whole, inspired movie adaptation, and a suspenseful real-time tactics game.

A shallow shooter that doesn't offer anywhere near enough bang for your ill-gotten buck.

As there's no real burden of expectation on its shoulders, it's hard to imagine anyone getting angry with Fable Anniversary, and yet it's equally hard to shake a feeling of disappointment. It's the original, rather than this update, that's the problem. Fable's fundamentals already had a major overhaul in 2, and while a return to those ideas in rawer form provides an insight into the evolution of game mechanics, it also serves as a stark reminder of its age.

Perhaps biggest problem with the game: it's too short.

With its moreish pace and compelling presentation there's the basis of a really great tablet RPG here, but Warhammer Quest makes two misguided assumptions that hold it back. It assumes that role-playing works better with all the dice and messy statistics brushed off the table, and it assumes that a multiplayer board game and a single-player video game are the same experience.

It's nice to be reminded of where games started going wrong back in the '90s. It wasn't 3D, it wasn't FMV; it wasn't anything like that. It was when we did away with big stupid smiling still photos of sportsmen gnawing on trophy handles as background graphics, with preposterous guitar music playing over the top, like a sort of hungover Sunday morning TransWorld Sport nostalgia vomit fantasy.

Developer Harebrained Schemes returns with an evocative and pulpy tactical adventure, where enjoyable turn-based combat just about offsets some woeful real-time stealth.

A charming, if flawed and anorexically shallow, kids' action game. Parents shouldn't feel bad about buying it. Kids won't feel bad playing it.

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.

As a standalone experience, it's shambling but lovable: two parts quirkiness to one part tedium. Compare it to the original, however, and it's hard to escape the fact that a once-brilliant game has been put through a mangler. Somewhere along the way, Capcom's zombie apocalypse has been bludgeoned into a zombie compromise, and, unless you really like poodles, the Wii offering can't really be said to add anything that the 360 version was lacking.

A decent arcade tennis game but not a classic - and this New Play Control! conversion isn't anything more than a more-or-less functional reboot that gives away a little precision, and doesn't add much in return apart from a sore arm the morning after.

A vast world and even vaster array of MMO-like activities mix with glittering fidelity in Crimson Desert, but what good is it without much character, texture or charm?