Microsoft's Live Arcade offerings are generally well worth the asking price, but Feeding Frenzy, sadly, isn't one of them.

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.

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.

It's still the hardcore spectacle we know and love, with its Moonlight laser blades and hidden AC parts, but by bringing mecha enthusiasts together in a team-based environment that isn't restricted to one-on-one arena battles, we finally have a game on which an online community can be built.

It's beautiful, bloody and undemanding, a vacant button-masher with just enough attitude twinkling out from under its heavy stoner's eyelids to get by. But like most heavy stoners it's also frustrating, unrewarding and a bit dull to spend time with, and rather lazy.

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.

Like labelmate Trinity Universe, Atelier Rorona is a hard game to dislike, but it ultimately feels a little too tied to JRPG convention for its ideas to bear fruit. It might be admirable for a game to promote such a diligent work ethic, but it never quite rewards you handsomely enough for your efforts.

MaXplosion might lack some of the depth of its rival, but given that it's less than a tenth of the price, it's entitled to. Buy both with the money you're not spending on beer tonight. Make everyone happy.

While the storyline blooms from the initial boredom into something more intriguing, it fizzles disappointingly as the game comes to its rather abrupt end.

Disappointing, but not necessarily boring.

Yes, it's a button-masher, but nobody does button-mashing quite as well as KOEI with Dynasty Warriors, and Strikeforce gets more important things right (great animation, fluid controls, good weapon variety, PSP-sized missions) than it gets wrong.

It's one of the few truly original games on Live Arcade, and deserves your attention for that, but it can't quite shake off the sour tang of unfulfilled potential.

It won't change your world, but Avalanche Software - veterans of several Rugrats games as well as the forgettable 25 To Life - have delivered a game that is perfectly attuned to the capabilities and sensibilities of its tween audience, and filled it up with solid gameplay that assists or challenges them at just the right times.

Ms. Pac-Man is still a joy to play. Simplicity itself, elegant, addictive, manic and somehow timeless.

As a piece of interactive merchandise for the masses, it does its job: it's polished, intuitive to control, and approximates the Bond Experience, albeit with about as much subtlety as Vesper Lynd's neckline. For everyone else though, it's brainless, dull, and ridiculously easy. Rather than giving the Bond game its Casino Royale moment, Activision and Treyarch have simply carried on in the joyless tradition of dumbed-down shooters designed for thickos, and GoldenEye has never seemed so far away.

Awkward, riddled with plot holes and unintentionally offensive, this is Dontnod's worst offering to date. [Eurogamer Avoid]

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

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.

It deilghts in the moment-by-moment empowerment of piloting a 1970s vintage mecha in battle, the medium-term enjoyment of turning the tide of a battle through strategic thinking, and the long-view 'gotta catch 'em all' collecting loops. If you have never tried a Musou game before, this is where you should start.

The thing that upset me, though, was that by the time I got through most of it there was a real sense that these ideas - however basic - could have been applied so much more exotically and with so much more freedom than they have.

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.

When it's good it's fantastic, but when it's not it's a spirit sapping experience. That's Mafia in a nutshell - a flawed classic that'll certainly provide good rental value if nothing else.

If you're just looking to punch someone in the face, Rocky Legends might just be the therapy you need.

Dynasty Warriors remains a series that contains greatness, then, but that's not quite enough for higher marks - although, inevitably, it will still be just about enough to bring along Dynasty Warriors 9.

Maps are too long and slow-paced when they should be frenetic and bite-sized.

It's a strong package that suffers partly because we were promised so much in the first place, partly because so much of it is available online for free, and partly because the new stuff is exactly the sort of thing Valve would have released for free in times gone past.

Whether you're a Warhammer 40K aficionado or not, this is just the right kind of uncomplicated stress relief to distract you from the BBC News 24 ticker.

Capcom fans deserve so much better than this.