One of the great open-world templates fails to come into focus in this well-meaning, if embattled, sequel.

Although persistence is rewarded with a host of unlockable cars, weapons, interviews and the like, it's doubtful whether you'll have the desire to get drawn into the experience as obsessively as the developer requires you to.

The gripes are really mainly relating to the individual games, which for anyone remotely experienced will quickly become far too familiar and untaxing to warrant extended interest.

Most importantly, it's got that utterly absorbing hypnotic je ne sais quois that all the best games have, and it's that which will keep you coming back for more and more, checking out all the characters and all the play modes, and devoting an unhealthy amount of time in the quest for dominating other players, both online and off.

While riddled with design disasters, "Too Human" seems like an action-RPG holy grail by comparison to this startling mess. Better yet, play "Shadowgrounds: Survivor" instead of the both of 'em.

Weighing in at little over the price of an XBLA download (about a tenner from the right shops), Art of Fighting Anthology is a rare bargain - especially from new.

A thoroughly unnecessary isometric brawler that ranks alongside Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean as being one of the worst uses of a high profile license we've seen this year.

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 doesn't have the best execution and it probably costs too much, but there ought to be room in everyone's life for at least one slapstick physics puzzler, and if you're in the right mood then perhaps Rigonauts can be your Bridge Builder.

For pennies, you really can't go wrong. Just don't expect too much, and you might just find Dracula satisfying in an endearingly low-budget sort of way.

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.

Metal Gear's first post-Kojima outing plays fast and loose with the formula, with results that are equal parts brilliant and baffling.

It's a straightforward game, then. The capacity for expression and technique is limited to the exacting rhythms of blocking.

It's no fun to drive, and in fact driving itself is something of a challenge. On top of that, having begun life on other formats (including N-Gage), it makes only a token gesture to adapt to the DS's featureset, allowing you to navigate menus but do nothing else with the stylus, allowing wireless multiplay but demanding multiple copies of the game, and using the bottom screen for little more than a topographical overview of the course with markers for each car.

The fort-versus-fort gameplay definitely doesn't gel with the Worms dynamic. Instead it robs a once-proud series of almost everything that made it so memorable, and the result is a game that tires as much as it feels tired.

If you've already played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue/Red Rescue Team, the improved Wi-Fi functionality is the sole reason that it might be worth playing Explorers of Time/Darkness.

It's the little things that add up, one by one, to an often hypnotically bland, slapdash campaign. The core is sound enough, but Burning Skies is far too shabby in places for what is supposed to be the flagship first-party shooter on the Vita - indeed, the flagship shooter on handhelds, full stop.

If you were hoping for the return of Time Crisis to herald some kind of rebirth for on-rails shooters, then you'll be sorely disappointed. The arcade mode is dumb fun for a short while, but is little more than a tired throwback, while the addition of FPS missions will be barely tolerable to even the most forgiving shooter.

Heatseeker feels like a step back, a simpler, uglier, dumber but friendlier jetfighter that plants you firmly in the role of the one man army. To put it another way, "Ace Combat" expects you to be upset at the scripted, drawn-out death of your wingman and Heatseeker lets you fly into the ground and bounce off with a bit of damage.

That's really Blade Dancer in a nutshell: a decent combat system and an interesting crafting mechanic, but in terms of the rest of the game, Hitmaker doesn't really cut it.

Not quite "Project Zero" in space, that's for sure. It does begin as an initially promising ghost train ride, but given its short nature - about twelve generous hours or so if you get hopelessly stuck like me because you didn't talk to that damn woman - it's a shame it lapses into average fetch-quest territory all too quickly.

A fundamentally broken game, riddled with graphical glitches and bizarre bugs, that doesn't even have the good grace to be a fascinating failure. For all its yelps and screeches, it's deathly dull to play and so there's no incentive to suffer its idiosyncrasies.

Movement is on the analogue nub, camera controls on the face buttons. It's a system that has worked okay for other PSP shooters, but there's a stiffness here that makes it feel more like Super Treacle Squad than a simulation of impeccably-trained Special Ops.

This is yet another quality downloadable shooter that deserves both your money and your love.

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

Though, admittedly, expectations might have been a little low, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is surprising in all the right ways. Its loading screens offer a stunning blend of animation and FMV straight from the show, and while the in-game graphics don't quite share the same slick polish and the combat can feel a little stale, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a thoughtful, unusual take on Escobar's legacy. Yeah, I'm a bit surprised, too.

This isn't how nostalgia is supposed to feel.

You'll find yourself cursing the lack of inventory spaces, and the inability to drop objects (which was only introduced in Resident Evil Zero), and all told the trip down memory lane merely serves to illustrate how far games have come generally, and how forgiving we must have been back then to put up with such wholly irritating fundamentals.