There should be no shame in sticking to a formula, but Arkadian Warriors reproduces it with so little ambition it plays like an ABC of what the genre needs to avoid to move forwards; appearing content to wallow in a stereotype because action role-playing games are under-represented on Live Arcade.

The truth is that there's more than a whiff of exploitation about this wholly unnecessary release - especially as it's a game which few people rated highly in the first place. Although it does benefit from better controls, that doesn't disguise how boring the storyline is, or how mediocre the missions are.

Beautiful, broken, with flashes of brilliance, Anthem is a disorganised mess in search of a reason to be.

It's good, uncomplicated fun, but you won't ever want more than the demo version supplied with the Xbox Live Starter Kit. As a £40 purchase, Whacked! can get F---ed!

High Moon should have been given a little more time - and a lot more freedom - to play with their toys than they received for this outing. Hopefully, if we ever head back to Cybertron, the team will get another chance to show us what it can really do.

Something like Amnesia: The Dark Descent's horrible, instinct-suppressing requirement to run away, hide and not even look at your tormentor could have worked well here, giving The Starship Damrey that dash of genuine threat necessary to maintain the tension conjured by its early scenes, without burdening the game with unnecessary combat.

The Dark Alliance revival lacks finesse, and local co-op, but give it time and it's not without its own charms.

Even throwing in all the other games on the Razing Storm disc you're not looking at more than an afternoon's worth of entertainment here, and that makes it poor value for money.

In spite of its steep learning curve, dearth of content, and lack of depth (both figuratively and literally), Steel Diver grew on me. It may have less to do with being a submarine commander than Trauma Center does with being a doctor, but it's a novel premise nonetheless, and the tactile fidgeting with the sub's controls is strangely rewarding.

The combat's inexcusably awful. The duelling is absolutely mind-numbingly uninspired. The platforming and exploration feel tacked-on, overly basic and adds little variety, and the fetch quests plumb new depths in their tedious pointlessness...One of the most dreadfully vacuous and uninspired movie tie-ins in recent memory.

Hardcore? Don't be fooled, chaps. Maybe, somewhere, deep within the bowels of the hardcore gamer there's a desire to play endless, sprawling, repetitive games which offer no motivation to continue, but really, if you're looking for a hardcore RPG status symbol, then pick up Breath of Fire II or Golden Sun - or buy Zelda, because that's a real-time RPG done right.

A wrist-flicking rhythm game already has something stacked against it in keeping players engaged, but a bare bones gesture set doesn't give the gameplay much spark.

That [50] down there is starting to look a bit mean isn't it? It would be if EE2 wasn't buggier than a shrew's breakfast and outgunned by a better, cheaper, alternative.

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.

There are no glaring technical problems, or insurmountable design cock-ups, just a rather dull platformer with a central creative gimmick that's too clumsy to be liberating, poorly incorporated into the action and often bizarrely sidelined by the game's structure.

If you don't have a Dungeons and Dragons background, the game will seem impenetrable and dull - and even players of the tabletop game will appreciate the detail, but hate the incredibly clumsy interface and lack of information and feedback.

A curious game: an improbably boisterous departure for a series that has slipped into conservative compromise in recent years.

Ubisoft's long-in-the-works pirate adventure boasts a beautiful world and bombastic ship-to-ship combat, but it sinks amid boring busywork and tedious traversal.

It is, at best, a sidestep, one that neither advances its series nor the genre into which it has lunged.

It's polished and accomplished, and certain aspects of it, such as the meta-game structure and the player customisation, are fantastic. Even so, there's no escaping the fact that the game is hugely disappointing. The flashes of brilliance only serve to throw the mediocrity of the game into even sharper relief.

The problem underlining it all is that the games are way too easy.

The game looks and sounds excellent, but is let down badly by simplistic puzzles, fussy location routes, and it's essentially linear nature.

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.

A game that entertains without inspiring, doing enough to settle comfortably into the realms of "good" while never exerting the additional effort required to raise expectations any higher.

Charming little platform riot, but not a game that has aged well at all. Perhaps one for curious Spectrum owners to download - if only to check out what the original looked like.

Rated next to proper, real life combat platform games like Jak & Daxter and Sly Raccoon it's evidently a pale shadow of what else is out there, but next to other kids' games it's a massive improvement over what we've seen this year.

I wanted to love Secrets Of Raetikon. It's always intoxicating when you see a project so clearly fuelled by passion and vision - but its substance just doesn't live up to its style.

Where Shellshock succeeds is when it resolutely refuses to pull punches in its general content, and when it hits the spot it's briefly thrilling. But for those occasional flourishes it's simply weighed down by being an average shooter, albeit one that's boosted by contentious context and some well-realised attempts at atmosphere building.