It's a clever twist on an old standard but the cannons prove to be an irritation rather than a true challenge - their fast, ruthless volleys reducing too much of the game to a painstaking crawl, claiming a few pixels of space at a time as you inch towards a vital catapult. Fun, then, but in need of balancing.

It's worrying when the nicest thing you can say about a game is that the early sections manage to be boring in an interesting way, but it's true for Lost Planet 3. It's a game that manages to make third-person shooting feel like work - and one that makes work feel like something that more games should explore.

With 100 levels, and some cunning design that tests your brain as much as your reflexes, the only persistent issue with Breakquest is the initially annoyance of the sluggish stick control. Get past that, and you've got a solid pick-up-and-play game.

Drakengard 2 just doesn't have the style or grace or education or expertise or power, to pull it off. Like The Flaming Lips trying their hands at Bohemian Rhapsody you really want the homage to work but, to be honest, it just doesn't.

With simple, intuitive controls making combat and exploration a pleasure, what starts off as a fairly routine blade-swishing blizzard soon settles into a more interesting groove. With secret-packed levels offering countless opportunities to poke around, it's a formula that's familiar but satisfying.

The trouble is, it's a little too easy, even for a game aimed at children.

You want to love it, but it just keeps letting you down, and in the end that's the impression that sticks to the wall and stays there.

You're probably as well-served going for FIFA '08 on DS than you are this. That said, this is a decent attempt at portable football on the DS that carries Pro Evo's name, though don't let it fool you into thinking it's anywhere near as majestic as other versions.

By any objective measurement, this a poor attempt at adding a new sequence to an excellent game which already boasted a generous amount of content. Had it added more explorational elements, or another secret location to discover, it would have been worth the effort - but to simply stitch together forgettable melee encounters and chases with new cut-scenes is some distance from being enough.

Space Hulk could have - and should have - been better than this.

At times it's just too frustrating to be described as "fun", and being turned away, a stone's throw from the end of a level, by the Game Over screen just because you didn't understand precisely how to complete a fairly arbitrary objective is enough to saturate you with disbelief like an anvil landing on your face in the middle of a field.

Worst of all, it's missing any multiplayer option, as fighting along with a friend might have added a little bit more enjoyment. Obligatory mini-games don't really make up for it, making this a brawler that's more a nod to easily pleased fans than an essential purchase.

Until Koei can refine the long game, Dynasty Warriors will continue to slip from relevance, in much the same way as Xiahou Dun's good eye, or Sun Quan's colourful beard, have done before it.

If you're old, knock two points off. This game will leave you feeling hollow, miserable and longing for the days when it all MEANT something. If you're a small child add two points. Or, if you really REALLY like talking cars, six.

An unlikely revival that's spirited in its return to the genre's arcade roots, but that is uneven in its execution.

In a genre as densely (and impressively) populated as the platform game on DS, a short, prickly adventure that makes tokenistic use of the stylus strikes us as a bit disappointing.

If you like the sound of a game which feels a lot like playing an extremely early build of Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time on a broken television then go ahead and drop forty notes on this abomination.

By losing virtually everything that made the Settlers unique, Blue Byte has ended up with something that - somewhat predictably - that's the same as everything else, but not as good. From an original to the photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy.

Clearly not a wholehearted recommendation for shooter aficionados then, but as a lifelong fan of Space Hulk who's been eagerly awaiting a 40k shooter that plays to the strengths of the lore rather than tries to fit the lore into the standard shooter template, I'd probably ignore my own advice and buy the game anyway.

If you can ignore the much cheaper, vastly better-looking iPhone version (Super Yum Yum 3), then this is undoubtedly one of the best puzzle titles on DSiWare.

If you're a fan of Conflict and/or shooters in general, you're likely to find Denied Ops shallow and dull. The two-man control system doesn't work properly. The visuals are ugly. The script is sub-Armageddon. Yes, it's easy to pick up and play. But if you're after an experience with real challenge and depth, you won't want to.

The most significant obstacle to most peoples' enjoyment of the first game - namely, the over-dependant partner - has been removed, and so I really hope that Lost in Blue 2 will win a few new fans as well as delighting the old ones. There's a lovely and unique game in here, if you've the patience to find it.

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

It's hardly spacesuit gripping stuff. While there are promising facets to Lost Empire's simple yet expansive empire building, ultimately it feels unfinished and uninspiring, and more of a lost opportunity than anything else.

It's a great playground of war - one that would be done more justice by a better game for sure, but the exaggerated entertainment value of the Ascension and Hai-Genti factions go a long towards making up for Maelstrom's shortcomings.

The most absurd thing about this game - where all the scenery explodes, where one of the characters is big and green, where you can hurl cars at people - is that it thinks it deserves either your time or your money.

With the dreadful lack of effort in the PS1-like visuals, and ghastly AI, even those with especially designed tattoos should consider their old friend exactly that: old.

If you are looking for a multiplayer version of the classic board-game you're almost certainly better-off going to community sites like www.diplom.org and exploring some of the free Play-By-EMail options (bewilderingly Paradox have chosen not to include a PBEM or a hot-seat mode).