It's arguably a perfect simulation of real-life social media, but it unfortunately doesn't make for an edifying game experience.

It's certainly not terrible, but then there's absolutely nothing special or interesting about it either.

There are games that are complex and games that are just complicated. This is one of the latter. There will be those who penetrate Plättchen's opaque exterior and return with tales of gaming joy. Given that this is the second most expensive game on WiiWare, it's a journey most players will find unrewarding.

Even its cleverest ideas are generally just amalgamations of things we've seen before - like a puzzle where you have to replicate a five-tone tune by touching five symbols on the ground in the right order. It fails to take advantage of so many breaks - the technology, the voice actors at its disposal, the potential for the synchronicity of the two worlds, the use of four characters in designing dungeons.

In its better moments it's a guilty pleasure, in its worst it's embarrassingly retrograde. By being consistently fairly slick with it, it easily avoids skimming the lowest depths, but really it's the kind of game we've all long since grown out of. Or so I like to tell myself, anyway.

There's the kernel of something really interesting in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Glimmers of a free-roaming kids adventure game with RPG overtones, based on actual folklore. Sadly, it only manages to be that game for an hour or so, before steadily becoming less interesting and more generic and annoying, culminating in an ending that is absolutely cruel considering the age of the intended player.

There's still an argument for considering other mini-game collections with better ratios of good-to-poor games. The ratio in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 isn't even as good as it was in the first game. And overall the game isn't as entertaining as a rabbit doing a poo on a stage, which should tell you something.

Competent in its own right, playable even, but deep down as nutritionally void as the popcorn you'll scoff while watching the movie.

At its best Infinite Undiscovery is just another standard action JRPG following a strictly linear route through the same predictable story about another reluctant young hero overthrowing yet another evil empire. In its worst moments, it's an unwieldy collision of ill-conceived ideas and sloppy technical implementation that will test the patience of even the most hardened player.

You can get a game of poker out of it, and you can persist with the desire to win to reach the next tournament, but the volume of frustrations along the way mean it cannot be hailed as the first great poker game. It's getting there, but not there yet.

Apart from the odd frustrating puzzle, there's nothing much at fault here, aside from the fact that what you're buying is a small collection of puzzles and nothing more. As long as you realise that's all Safecracker is - and there's no adventure element to speak of - then you won't be disappointed.

Dead to Rights is a lot like its belligerent hero, getting the job done in the crudest manner possible, leaving behind nothing more memorable than a sticky adolescent mess of blood, bullets and profanity.

This isn't a great game, it's not even a good game, but it is the closest thing we've got to a cops-and-robbers MMO - which is, I suspect, one of the all-time great video game concepts. One day, somebody's going to do it right, and they're going to become very rich indeed.

If you have the free code then there's no reason not to give Bloodbath Arena a try, even if all it really adds is a place to quickly grind your way up a few levels. As a paid download, however, it's uninspired stuff.

Pixel People is an addictive proposition, one that many players will happily play - but few will be especially happy while doing so. Its pay-offs are irregular and require no skill, simply perseverance in clicking through the splicing options.

By the time you're getting each and every character in the game to hail the glorious Sammun Mak for the 30th time of asking, you just want it to end. After such a fantastic introduction, we really didn't see this one coming. Did someone steal Telltale's brain?

White Knight Chronicles II flounders. It's a hybrid that fails to find its own identity in terms of its structure, and its convoluted battle system is poorly explained and, once mastered, reveals itself to be broad but ultimately shallow. Those improvements from the first game are overwhelmed by a more general sense of ennui; what were once interesting innovations lack the polish and endurance to inspire over the course of a sequel.

It's a genuine shame. The game is well-presented and polished, the control system works nicely, and the progression lays the groundwork for a really enjoyable experience - but the team decided to come over all Zen minimalism when it came to the games themselves.

Would Heavy Armor be a better game if it ditched Kinect and focused purely on the tried-and-tested buttons? In all honesty, no - because without the novelty of raising your arm to pull down a periscope or punch your fleeing co-pilot in the face, this would be a comparatively dull experience.

In terms of his strength and abilities, The Invincible Iron Man is one of the wimpiest game heroes we've encountered and deserves to be locked away in this rather limp platformer-with-guns.

Chrome isn't a dreadful game, really. It's just so deeply, incredibly average in every aspect of its gameplay that our enthusiasm for it went limp the very moment we bumped off our first enemy grunt.

Treasure World has a nice idea at its core and is fun as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

The major problem with the game is that you have to learn how to use it. The beauty of the likes of "Virtua Tennis" and, to a lesser degree, "Top Spin," is that you don’t.

If you've never played any of the Dancing Stage games, it's well worth a try - but don't buy the Xbox 360 version. For the same money you could pick up one of the old PS2 games and two mats. Or, best of all, spend a very happy afternoon down the Trocadero.

Certainly one of the more passable products of the recent retro-gaming fad, but packaged up in the guise of a modern RPG - without the decency of the NES Classics range in terms of admitting to its own clapped-out state - it's going to be a major disappointment to most who pick it up.

The game isn't terrible; it's visually slick, there's a decent variety of events and they're entertaining to play through the first few times. But there's nothing special about it and no long-term value.

A generic and quickly tiresome shooter, with a contrived premise which, unfortunately, does nothing to elevate it.

Like Craig David covering Marvin Gaye, Söldner X-2 makes you pine for the real deal.