With a longer, more substantial campaign mode, a bit more polish and less pointless peripheral missions we could have been talking about The Godfather more fondly, but as it is, its place is history is as a flawed GTA clone that really didn't need porting to the 360.

At this point, criticising a Lego game for being much like the other Lego games feels somewhat pointless. It's tempting, especially after so many, but it's a series that's long been more comfortable changing the wallpaper than rebuilding the entire house, and that's not likely to change any time soon.

There are enough flaws in it to stop recommending it to anyone but real X-com fans - who, it seems, are busy trying to mod it into something closer to their desires.

We're left with a game whose main improvements are all disappointments. And yet I'd still I'd put money on me pouring hundreds of hours into it. That's Football Manager. I'm sure that once a few patches have been released and a few things have been tweaked I'll discover that magic again. I just expect it might be a little bit harder to find than last year.

I love and hate Dark Messiah: Elements. For everything that's good about the combat intensity, the flexibility of the skill system, the quality of the puzzles and the brooding, engaging atmosphere, it's undone by massive technical problems.

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.

It's a fun distraction on your mobile, giving you a few hours of entertainment to rack up a high score, finish all the stages, and gawp at the tremendous graphics. Like I said, worth a bob or two.

Sometimes the formula twists slightly, with the task focusing on, for example, helping prisoners bust out of prison or a simple checkpoint race. For the most part, mind you, it's smashing for smashing's sake, and therefore entertaining in short bursts, but a bit mindlessly intense over the long haul.

BloodRayne can be forgiven on a lot of levels because it's so silly it's fun, but for everything it does which is endearing, there's something to frustrate, bore or alienate the player.

Obviously the game is targeted with a marketing sniper's precision to appeal to a certain type of young girl, but it's well crafted enough to interest a wider, inquisitive audience.

The structure of each area is pleasingly freeform, allowing you to wander around and tackle the various tasks in the order of your choosing, and the standard of the visuals is well above par for what we expect from kids games.

As an excuse to spend another mildly diverting evening in Ferelden, Witch Hunt does its job, but it's a functional offering rather than an inspiring one. Hamstrung by the piecemeal nature of Dragon Age DLC, and squandering a lot of the brilliantly constructed narrative from the full game, it's for completists only.

Much like the recent MouseCraft, which at least had a Tetris twist, Flockers struggles to move out of the shadow cast by Lemmings' brilliantly pure concept.

The camera is crap, the scale is awkward, the story and characters are basic and cringe-worthy, the combat is tedious, the platforming and puzzling is too basic, and I was well bored of it by the time I conquered the final level with the first of the four Teams, which wasn't even that long after I first grabbed it out of the shrink-wrap.

Silent Hill: The Short Message shows glimmers of the classic horror series at its best - despite the very heavy-handed metaphor, a frustrating chase sequence, and the long shadow of P.T.

The physics engine, as always, is the main attraction - it's just a shame that Milestone didn't apply a little more drive and ambition.

Later in its shelf life, Groove will be an excellent little budget purchase to have in your collection for those amusing drunken party moments, but right now at £29.99 we'd strongly advise potential EyeToy converts to check out Play before they go splashing the cash on "Groove."

A curious mix. Some undeniably strong and distinctive pieces of game design, tarnished by some elementary errors, such as the lack of a decent training program or real in-game help.

In a final note, which may just be where my head is at the moment, but there's something really disturbing sexual about the battering ram's swinging animation.

In short, there's a lot of game here but none of it immediately demands you buy it, unless you just need a few new things to insert into Civ 4 to justify returning to it. In which case, hey - go do it. Civ 4's awesome.

A pretty broken game but one that is loaded with entertainment value regardless.

Sucker Punch's sequel offers more great swordplay and heartfelt storytelling, but would be better served as a linear action game, freed of its poor sidequests and dated open world.

And away from the core experience, WRC 3 is lacking, if not a little regressive. The involved if slightly flabby career experience of previous games, which had you recruiting a team as you worked up through the ranks, has been replaced with a character-driven affair that apes Codemasters' more recent efforts while getting it horribly, horribly wrong.

A stylish but slow-paced mystery anthology that's just a little too sluggish for its own good.

With the story and some of the more interesting recruitment features from the original game removed and with an RPG experience system that ultimately breaks both the offline and online play, it's hard to recommend this over its forebear, even if it is cheap at half the price.

The coin-gobbling design exists to kill you off as quickly as possible, and with such a repetitive design you've soon seen all there is to see. But that said, it's a coffee break fix to remind yourself of a lost era of gaming innocence and comes for the price of a large drink in Starbucks. We still dig it.

Just as Dark Angel is guilty of repetitive character models and backgrounds, the game design is guilty of repetitive action, which is unbelievably stagnant.

Yuke's has had a captive audience for so long that the incentive to improve seems to have withered away.