Despite overwhelming condemnation from the wider world then, Undercover is eventually a reasonably decent game. It's just a shame it takes so long to get there, when a simple difficulty level could have jumped the tedium.

A budget game, and Swift and her team can't be expected to match the perfect cohesion of Portal. The disappointment is that, in trying to do just that, they've undersold their own good ideas as well as inviting unflattering comparisons with a classic. Despite its frequent frustrations, it's a solid, intelligent puzzle adventure and represents good value for money, but it could have been much more by trying to be a bit less.

Visuals aside, the game ultimately gets too repetitive too soon. It claws back some respect by providing additional challenges for each map and offering different characters with slightly different abilities for replay value, but the mechanics never really change enough to capture your interest for long.

You can sort of see how the concept for Rocket Bowl must have seemed like a good idea, and for a few minutes it's certainly interesting to play around and enjoy the admittedly good physics.

Dynasty Warriors obsessives can be sure they're getting something as comfortingly familiar as the delicate aroma of their own dribble-infused pillow.

Despite the lacking port, the game is one of the more enjoyable super-vintage titles to appear on XBLA and it's a testament to the core design that its fun hasn't dulled too dramatically in the past twenty-five years.

Despite these inventions, the abiding sense is of a lack of variety and a game that fails to fully express its best ideas.

Platform game fans would be better served by Jak & Daxter, while action game fans can go back to God of War. Bloodlines isn't a terrible or frustrating game, but it's as unnecessary as all those chickens.

F1 2014's a strange game, then, and one I can't even accuse of being just a casual reskin. It's a quantifiable step back for the series, saved only by the fact that what's there remains a satisfactory companion piece to this year's season if you're fortunate enough to have a decent steering wheel.

While fun once through, the broken online component and repetitive design means this'll soon be consigned to a dusty game shelf never to be played again.

Torturing yourself with frankly ridiculous load times isn't acceptable, nor is the choppy frame rate or the sound stutters. [U.S. version]

With iPhone games, it's the absolute minimum requirement to get the controls right, but in that regard Plunderland fails. And considering that it seems to get everything else right, that's a big shame.

As a relatively cheap mechanism for bringing you back to what is still fundamentally an excellent game, Operation: Omega Dawn is as good an excuse as any to get back into Warhawk's superb online multiplayer.

That there are a couple more modes for fighting other humans underlines that this is a pack that exists primarily for those who play online - and without even giving a decent experimentation zone to play with the new possibilities of the ships without embarrassing yourself in front of a peer by crashing into a pier. Or something.

With just six short chapters to wade through, Saw is never in any danger of outstaying its welcome, despite its flaws, and that's probably just as well. Its puzzle-centric design is satisfying for a while, but the game's reliance on the same stock challenges wears thin, as does the hilariously broken combat.

If you want a laugh, the show's a much better bet, and if you want to play a decent platformer you might as well dust off NEW Super Mario Bros.

There's still a very small part of us that can't help but still be slightly impressed by the appearance of a 3D platformer on a handheld, but given the control issues it's not a happy marriage.

The wonky camera and repetition is annoying, but it still just about works as an average exploration game. What it doesn't offer is any sort of Free Play option where you can do your own thing.

Fans angry that they need to fork out more money to see the "real" ending of the game can rest easy. The events of Lonesome Road build to a suitably apocalyptic climax, but it has none of the depth, pace or meaning of the face-off between House, Caesar and the NCR that rounded out the original storyline. Completists will want to see it through, just to say they did, but it's a shame to see such an epic atomic age narrative go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

That's Keane - a potentially enjoyable game, broken by terrible performances, and puzzles that make little sense.

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.

American Football fans looking for a cheap retro fix will probably squeeze 400 points worth of fun out of Cyberball before déjà vu sets in, but the absence of any real multiplayer challenge means any amusement comes with a built-in expiry date, one that arrives sooner than you'd like. It's no Speedball, that's for sure.

Despite doing its level best to offer impressive variety, slick 3D visuals, and a decent raft of challenging stages, it's a game that seems determined to irritate the player.

The multiplayer modes deserve some credit, as fans will no doubt get off on the prospect of playing Deathmatches and truncated Capture The Flag sessions while in the guise of 50 or Slim Shady, but the maps are unlikely to inspire anyone with real multiplayer experience.

Indeed, you could go so far as to say that it's old news, a little tedious, and there are countless other, better things around right now that improve on it in so many ways.

As simple and fun as Fruit Ninja evidently is, it feels like a Wario Ware game isolated for a single release.

The good news: it's fun to play and nice to look at, and does a fine job of showing off what the PSP can do. The bad news: it's all over in the time it would take you to nip down Blockbusters, rent a copy of the movie and watch it. Skipping the credits.

As comebacks go, Bounder's World never really gets out of first gear, and is a bit of a false start for Urbanscan's Gremlin reboot project. Maybe it's keeping the powder dry for Monty Mole.