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.

If you're a die-hard adventure apologist with a CSI fixation then step right up, but the rest of you can put your curiosity to one side - especially at its current stupidly high price point.

The implementation is rushed and slipshod, however, ignoring fundamental problems and expending limited energy on the wrong things. What you're getting for your money feels a little like somebody else's office in-joke: you can sense the well-intentioned laughter, but you can't really join in.

A fun gimmick is hampered by a lack of polish and structural issues, making this a transformative shooter with serious growing pains.

Some aspects are incredibly polished and fun, but others are terrifically broken, and while there's a real sense that it could have earned a lot more than a five, overall it doesn't.

But even if the controls did work properly, the level design and enemy AI are so stultifyingly generic that it feels like the last 12 years of game design didn't happen.

Even if it were polished to an acceptable, 2013-standard AAA shine, Colonial Marines would still only be a generic effort coasting on borrowed iconography. Weighed down by so many grindingly obvious mechanical issues, it never even gets off the ground. For a game all about exterminating bugs, it's a fatal irony.

FlingSmash's title might be short, snappy and to the point, but the game itself only manages the first of those three.

Dogz isn't just a poor man's "Nintendogs" - it's a fundamentally rubbish game, regardless of the competition. Put simply, there's just not enough to do, and it's so repetitive that it's hard to see how even very young children could be entertained for more than half an hour or so.

It's yet another example of a distinctly average "extreme sports" game that lacks the polish and creativity of the real-life sportsmen it's trying to emulate-slash-harness.

Eragon drags up torrid memories of the bad old days when movie licensed games were not only terrible games, but had sod-all to do with the subject matter. Judged on its own merits, it's clearly below par game in every single area imaginable. Technically bereft, poorly designed and coma-inducing to play, it's about as far away from being an example of where gaming is today as you can imagine.

The presentation feels generic, with washed-out grainy visuals and a tepid hip-hop soundtrack, while the fighting never really finds its balance.

There are endless beat-'em-ups, platformers and third-person action adventures that do everything Crouching Tiger does infinitely better, and manage to make it fun while they're at it.

At the end of the day this isn't a matter of graphics whorishness, it's just that the GBA can't do the game justice. Underneath it all you can feel the spirit of the game struggling to get out.

At least the game bit's quite good fun. The visuals are too small and too brown, but the gameplay's still classic; it's a bit like playing chess with pieces made of rat plops.

It is broken in the literal sense of not working as sold and, as such, must be scored appropriately. That the game underneath the bodged localisation is also, figuratively, a broken shell of what it once was and absolutely nowhere near as good as it should have been, is more than anything, deeply, deeply sad.

If you're so deep into professional cycling that you'd want to play a game where you navigate sterile menus and tell other people how to ride bikes, then there may be some small morsels of enjoyment to be found here, provided you accept that your own enthusiasm will be picking up the slack for a drab and technically sloppy game.

The quality and overall consistency is better than Beijing 2008, although it lacks visual flair and presentation, but once you factor in the crippling absence of online play, it becomes harder to make a call the better of the two.

If you fancy the beautiful Christmas garlands or a customisable snowman or a Christmas tree... well, why not just head over to the Sims 2 site and download them. They've been up there for a year, after all. No, I'm not joking.

Perhaps it's because death is only a temporary setback that arbitrary cold-blooded massacres of innocents are met with a gaming blind eye.

Playable over three levels of difficulty/irritation, Fishie Fishie is one of those games where it'll be about 20 minutes before you've had your fill and will want to hurt soft toys for their part in the conspiracy.

There's just not enough at stake to make this secrecy worthwhile.

Had this been offered as a free (or at least dirt-cheap) bonus download for Pokémon DS owners, the sweet graphics and empty-headed concept might have been charming. At the same price point charged for the sublime "LostWinds" it's a brazen insult, and marks a new low in the exploitation of the Pokémon brand.

Legendary is the gaming equivalent of cheap supermarket own-brand beans, but instead of costing eleven pence it costs the same as a prime steak cooked by a top chef. It's a bad, bad game. One of the worst I've played on this generation of consoles, in fact. In that regard, at least, the title is surprisingly accurate.

Basically What's Cooking? With Jamie ****ing Oliver is great if you're after an interactive cookbook. There's an extensive selection of excellent recipes, the instructions are easy to follow, the step-by-step system works well and the shopping list feature is useful. If you're after an actual ****ing game, though, **** this ****. Jamie should have put his *******s on and ripped off an existing classic, like me.

The main linear quest path provides the bulk of Mage Knight, with little in the way of sub-quest trimmings, and the replay value is low despite the temptation of trying out new characters.

Generic and boring, Terminator: Resistance's only redeeming feature is its fan service. [Eurogamer Avoid]

Your on-screen plane may capture, almost perfectly, the movements of the Wiimote in your hand, and a trio of extra moves - the speed boost, rapid brake and 180-degree turn, activated by thrusting the Wiimote, pulling it quickly back and flicking the point to the left or right - allow for a greater range of movement options, but the degree to which it accepts input is actually counter-productive, often forcing you slightly off-line when you're trying to approach something at a precise angle.