For everything else in its amazing catalogue of flaws, errors and catastrophes, though, the biggest problem is that the game just stops whenever you can't work out what to do.

There's no excuse to the get the basics this wrong and there's no reason why slicing your way through a wall of enemies shouldn't be fun. Yet there's nothing that's fun here, only a monotonous bloody grind that copies everything from its peers except their polish.

It could have been an interesting title but the problems with control, weird gameplay style, terrible graphics and rigged, repetitive games just kill any joy that would be garnered from playing it.

A total waste of a fantastic licence - incredibly anti-climactic, a mere six hours long, full of uninspired levels and identikit enemies, and achingly tedious to play. Once finished I had to quickly uninstall it lest I ever accidentally clicked on that hateful icon again.

As the back of the box says: Identify (that the game's a bit rubbish). Eliminate (it off your shopping list). Survive (with your dignity intact).

The nagging question is why on earth should a second-rate FPS game that's so indebted to its peers - and one of which, in the case of BF2, does a persistent character thing for free - think it can get away with demanding a subscription fee for any of its content? Answer: It really can't.

The inclusion of some unlockable Tekken characters and a slightly more balanced multiplayer mode might be enough to give you a fix if you do absolutely nothing else in life but play beat-'em-ups and you've actually run out, but otherwise there's no reason to take an interest.

A wasted opportunity; one that turns your anger to frustration then to plain, empty sadness.

A lazy and predictable slog through 20-year-old game design, stultifying 'action' and glaring, ridiculous omissions. There's no defending it on the grounds of being a kids' game, since most astute children will likely find this turgid, unengaging blast every bit as tedious and repetitive as their adult counterparts.

For those of us living in the now, it's joyless tat and should be smashed with hammers. Big ones.

A charmless, shoddy, unfinished, unplayable mess and does nothing that a dozen other games haven't done infinitely better.

The marriage of XBLA and boxed game is a nice idea, but the Pub Games themselves are lightweight and boring, and the potential benefits for Fable 2 players are the sorts of things typically bundled on Collector's Edition bonus disks in the first place - and typically overlooked by the majority of players who can think of better ways to spend the extra money.

But while Arc has obviously attempted a Super Smash Bros-style game within the Guilty Gear universe, the end result is something truly horrendous.

Although you can excuse Sega for trying it on with a true classic like Sonic, foisting dated crap like Ecco on us yet again feels like a monumental waste of everyone's time. Download the free trial if you must, but don't even think about parting with your hard-earned cash for this. It might still look pretty, but Ecco plays like a dog.

The game only offers a couple of hours' entertainment and they'd be better spent watching the TV show or one of the films, or trawling the Internet for erotic Wesley Crusher fan fiction.

Superman Returns is so criminally lacking in any inspiration, though, and is such a dismal waste of the licence that you'll want to curl up and rock yourself into a trance. At least then your mind can entertain you with thoughts of what a good Superman game might be like.

Offering all the satisfaction of flossing with overcooked spaghetti, FIFA 11 provides an object lesson in how not to make a football title for mobile platforms.

It's one of those games that reminds you how far we've come over the years, because it's just full of the old bad design habits that we all used to take for granted.

Apocalyptica's lazy design and sheer lack of imagination is more than enough to ruin any chance it had of developing the relatively interesting premise. Forgive Konami, father, for they have sinned.

Big Willy Unleashed is toss. The controls make playing the game feel like trying to do the washing-up with a pair of chopsticks, using clogs instead of rubber gloves. It looks revolting. The script is appalling.

The basic toilet humour running through the piece can't hide the short-lived gameplay, and leads to an extremely unfulfilling and tiresome experience that any sane person would be hard-pressed to push on with.

If you harbour kleptomaniacal tendencies and find curvy polygons racier than we do, then the increasingly repetitive bouts of volleyball and weakness in the rest of the package won't bother you.

When Soldier of Fortune Payback isn't being generic and shallow, its being utterly crap and thus does nothing to mitigate its gleeful and deliberate xenophobia.

Players wanting an exciting, fast-paced, on-rails light gun shooter on the Wii are far better served by SEGA's Ghost Squad and House of the Dead: Overkill. The developer's failure to fully embrace the arcade approach ensures this game serves no-one, least of all its tired licence.

Just consider the gorgeous and stunning packages of Resident Evil, Maximo, Devil May Cry or Killer 7. How are we supposed to accept this unpleasant lump of gristle in comparison?

Unfortunately, while the movie's version of piracy is a picturesque mixture of high-adventuring, quick-witted, swashbuckling derring-do, The Legend of Jack Sparrow is a weak mixture of low-brow, quick cash-in, button-bashing doggy-do.

A strong sense of character is let down by poor controls, fiddly implementation, and bugs.

Were your movements less plodding, the weapons a bit meatier, the enemies even basically tactical, the story and dialogue more than perfunctory, the environments remotely imaginative, or the co-operative mode online-enabled, Terminator Salvation would still be far too rough around the edges, far too short, and far too cynical to withstand much critical inspection, but as it is, it's rubbish on virtually every count.