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.

When the curtain falls DeathSpank feels like something of a disappointment, but there's undoubtedly a market for the end product. If you like your loot-'em-ups, and you're looking for something humorous and a bit different, this is clearly the game for you. Just don't expect it to sparkle in the way which many, myself included, hoped that it would.

It's a game that's just not clever enough by half. Modelled, shamelessly on a game that's too clever by miles. So it's not necessarily bad. It's just not good enough.

Borderlands 4 brings a more sensible script and a true open world to its pseudo-cel-shaded gun-show. But these moderate improvements are undermined by frustrating exploration and combat that takes too long to properly shine.

A cliffhanger ending for a sequel to a seven-year-old game that most people haven't heard of just isn't acceptable. Plonk, it lands safely on [60].

For all my reservations about the format, there's definitely an audience for this sort of thing out there and while 800 Points puts this in the upper price bracket for Live Arcade, it still makes it the cheapest brain game option around. In that regard at least, it gets the job done.

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.

Warm-hearted, funny, and never less than sincere, Wanderstop is a pleasant place to while away the time, though less successful as a vehicle for mindfulness in itself.

Maybe the shoddy controls won't even bother you. Alternatively, if you're willing to use the d-pad, Rivals is a decent game that has an interesting mix of car customisation, skill-based driving and reasonable speed.

Persona 5 Tactica marks a welcome return for the Phantom Thieves, delivering a fun strategy spin-off with plenty of heart.

This is a very simple, very brainless third person shooter for people who want to be Jango Fett – it won’t challenge for a spot on your Christmas list, but it won’t have you crossing anybody off yours if it finds its way into your stocking.

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

If you're the kind of gamer that enjoys immersive, atmospheric graphics and a surreal world to explore, then you might well find the patience to plough through Ghosthunter's many faults.

It's worth buying if you can find it at a bargain price, and works as a decent alternative to Wii Fit for balance board owners. Just don't expect too much.

It's the weakest of the series by a long way, and an ill-judged attempt to drag a narrative driven adventure game into the realms of sub hackandslash by removing much of the actual thinking and forcing the player to engage in less than challenging puzzles while foisting repetitive and unengaging combat upon them.

Concord's snappy combat and colourful character abilities make it a perfectly playable shooter. But muddled hero designs and unimaginative maps and modes leave it struggling to stand out.

It won't frustrate you too much, but likewise it won't inspire you either. It's a straight up hackandslash that anyone with friends to play it with will probably enjoy, falling somewhere between Gauntlet's button-mashing traditions and Dark Alliance's intelligence and fun.

What you end up with is thirty battles masquerading as a fairly rigid sports league, in which you can try each fight as many times as you like, using whatever weaponry you want.

The gameplay, meanwhile, is largely basic and undeniably old-school, but it can be fun, fast, furious and reasonably deep if you find a map and mode you like, and are lucky enough to get a team that works together.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

Frontier's annual management sim offers some small refinements over its predecessor but a lack of major upgrades means it doesn't snatch pole.

As it is, Genji is undercooked. It's not terrible, but it's not good enough to rise above the baggage of ridicule hanging over its shoulder.

The game succeeds with this approach simply because it has so few contemporary rivals but it's a modest sort of success, one that proves the strategy RPG in its traditional form has run out of steam - but suggests that nevertheless, there's enjoyment to be had in revisiting old flames.

Disney Universe is far from a bad game. Its general competency is evidence of a capable team that has cherry-picked designs (both systemic and aesthetic) from other titles and paired them with a clutch of inspiring licenses. But the disparate parts only click together in a rather mundane way, failing to capitalise fully on the licenses or match up to the quality of its video game inspirations.

Completely harmless and sure to get a giggle from younger gamers.

If you can look past the lack of polish and horrible graphics, there's a compelling and unique take on cover-based shooters here, along with an interesting lesson on how games deal with plot. It's a rewarding little game, if you can hack it.

If you're looking for somewhere to start on turn-based strategy, there's no way this should join your collection before you've picked up Square Enix' significantly superior game. ["FFTA"]

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