Medieval Moves' downfall is how repetitive it becomes. This is a game clearly designed for kids, yet the sheer exhausting monotony of bashing your way through each level is never rewarded with any meaningful pay-off, just more of the same against a different backdrop.

It's GUN on a handheld platform, but it doesn't work quite as well as it does on consoles.

Little more than a seriously undercooked run-of-the-mill shooter that labours along with poor AI, botched squad handling and undemanding combat. With a desperately unfinished feel about it, Midway has ended up rushing a mediocre game onto the shelves at precisely the point when there's an embarrassment of riches for shooter fans.

There's definitely potential here to build something more robust, with multiple power-ups and numerous enemy types, but Defend Your Castle becomes a mindless slog far too quickly to warrant repeat plays.

We get this perfunctory morsel, where the narrative treads water as the action goes in circles. With his final act looming, Shepard deserved better.

One of the best expansions for The Sims, but as the latest in a series of six it's about as exciting as news of another "Friday the 13th" sequel.

A generation ago this would've been held up as a fine game, but it's been radically usurped in almost any area you care to mention, and in this day and age just slapping a licence on the front of the pack isn't enough to make it anywhere near interesting.

Mostly, the game disappoints because it fails to pass the Brand Name Test. Would we still care if it wasn't James Bond? Almost certainly not.

If you can divorce yourself from the fact you're playing an agony simulator, you would at least hope to extract some enjoyment out of the 'puzzle' nature of the game. But the humdrum truth is that there's not a great deal of challenge within Torture Bunny either - just a whole heap of trial and error and an element of luck.

Some aspects are incredibly polished and fun, but others are terrifically broken, and while there's a real sense that it could have earned a lot more than a five, overall it doesn't.

There are much better retro compilations available - not least the first two incarnations of Midway Arcade Treasures, which both feature some all-time classics.

Plot-wise, this is an unnecessarily confusing experience.

It soon dawns that Pariah is your archetypal regular, by the numbers sci-fi shooter and doesn't appear to aspire to be anything more.

Drakengard 3 isn't a very good game, then, but it's an interesting kind of failure, and as such is impossible to completely dismiss.

The problem really is that, even online, the only incentive to carry on braving Circle of Doom's tedious environments and simplistic action is to obtain a high-powered character, or a monstrous weapon. Except once you've done that, it renders the game even more tedious and simplistic as you one-hit-kill your way around the same stultifying environments that you've been grinding through.

There are about five games out of the 20 that we'd ever want to spend time with again, and another half-dozen modern day fillers that have been usurped massively since, while the rest are just truly awful reminders of why things are better just the way they are.

Insipid character and course design married with inherently repetitive gameplay, obsessive collecting and an array of horrible touchscreen features make this feel like a waste of time. It's got plenty of content, and is a perfectly serviceable, occasionally competitive kart racer, but there's not much distinguishing about it.

Dark Void's extremely short campaign - with no motivation for replay and no multiplayer options - is more like a portfolio of half-baked concepts hurriedly crammed into an uninspired package for ease of presentation, more show-reel than show-stopper.

Anyone over a certain age is likely to be highly embarrassed if they get caught playing it though, and for flip's sake, don't actually buy the thing unless you wipe with ten pound notes.

Get past the "popping bubbles?" incredulity and the game does offer a decent amount of depth and no-frills gameplay, but I can't quite bring myself to see it as 700 Points' worth of fun.

We'd like to apologise to Sid Meier - this game, while not terrible, has sullied your good name and brand. Our only suggestion is to never let someone else make a game for you and to make sure the inevitable next game in the franchise explores a less familiar environ and period.

Judged solely as a collection of such textbook tasks Hot Brain is passable enough, but it pales alongside the original Brain Training.

If you thought that Crash's first appearance on the next generation of platforms might enhance its appeal from a technical standpoint, forget it. This is very much a game designed primarily with the PS2 and Wii in mind, with a fairly lazy high-def makeover late in development.

It's not NBA Live, it's not NBA Street and it's not NBA 2K. And playing Chosen One you'll be reminded of this every couple of minutes.

You could get away with this kind of guff in 1994 when we were all thrilled just to have justification for the £180 we'd shelled out for a CD-ROM add-on. Walking around a 3D tech demo was interactive! And immersive!

This is nineties videogame cliché; an unrelenting gangbang of tired mechanics presented in mostly derivative clothing. The script, dialogue and voice acting grasp for irony but only manage weak cliché.

LA Rush looks fine, sounds generic and plays irremediably. If you've ever played any of the other Rush games, this game will be a disappointment.

The camera never becomes comfortable and the graphical glitches are an embarrassment to the development team, the publisher and the player.