If you're even slightly tempted, just remember that at the maelstrom's core is a very basic and ugly game made by a company that is both dishonest and incompetent. Combining disgraceful ethics with endemic failures of design, The War Z is a real disaster.

Ninjabread Man lasted half an hour. HALF AN HOUR. Three levels down and I was booted straight back to the main menu without fanfare. I thought I'd pressed the Quit button by mistake... Half an hour and one hundred percent done.

These are dross of the highest order. Rip offs at budget price.

SPOGS Racing at least gets the honour of being the worst game on WiiWare. It looks awful and it plays even worse. It's the most inept game I've played on any format, in any genre, in recent memory.

The most imaginative thing that happened to me in my time playing this game is that a noiseless combine harvester came towards me and I had to run away from it.

Because for all it brings to the table - space combat, Halo's shield, varied levels - not one single aspect is truly worthy of praise.

This PS2 incarnation of the cross-platform offence is entirely without worth. It's agony in 1s and 0s. Don't even touch your bargepole with a bargepole.

So while nothing substantial has been added to the SpellForce cauldron, the sequel's focus on smaller battles and quality questing has been refined, and the end result is a palatable expansion pack. With dragons.

Poor controls, lacklustre source material and almost non-existent extras all combine to make this one to avoid unless you have a particularly nostalgic longing for this particular slice of gaming antiquity.

It's not quite educational enough, nor entertaining enough. You'd be better off with a good history book, and a better strategy game.

Fresh, but slightly sanitised, Rock Legend isn't a game you're going to play intensively for months. However, note the price (GBP 12.50), and purchase anticipating two or three weeks of quirky, leather-trousered amusement, and you shouldn't be disappointed.

I gave up after trying three of the six short races and the simple shooting and collecting mini-games. Life's too short. I'm never going back, and God forbid gathering people together for the multi-player mode. If the controls don't kill me, the irritating farting ditty in the background just might. That's the last time I play this dreadful excuse for a racing game.

Half an hour and one hundred percent done.

This is a ludicrous amount of excellent fun to get for free, and in that price bracket, it automatically gains an extra point on the Out-Of-Ten-o-Meter.

As a relatively cheap mechanism for bringing you back to what is still fundamentally an excellent game, Operation: Omega Dawn is as good an excuse as any to get back into Warhawk's superb online multiplayer.

The lack of grouping levels does it a real disservice, and once again that it's a remix of an old PC game with a new title isn't enamouring. But the same hypnotic power is present here, and even now, having played the stupid thing to death, I've a horrible suspicion that if I loaded it again I'd end up playing all over again.

The scoring system is extremely forgiving. As long as you make some kind of noise the song bars will fill up, though they'll vary in colour from red to green depending on how well you're doing. At the end of your performance you'll get comments from the judges. Some of these are a bit snidey, but not enough to make anyone cry.

It's a good fit for the DS, the top screen showing your list and time, the bottom the interactive scene. But it's a shame it's rehashed PC backgrounds, and low-res images. I'd love to see more originality applied, but there's no denying this is idiotically absorbing.

Its skill system is like a twisted version of EVE Online's, without the intricacy or CCP's talent. Its mise-en-scène is somewhere between the grittiness of Conan and WAR's orcs and humans. Underneath the lack of originality, there's a hole where the game should be: a loose, incongruous mess of bad controls, horrible user interface, and broken combat system.

Suffice to say, there's a lot going on in Warrior Epic. But at this early stage - effectively, still a public open beta - it still feels rough, and a long way from fulfilling its potential.

Despite all that, you may find that you can't quite forget Fatale, that you come back to its problems, its frustrations, and its ambiguities even when the memories of more fully-realised games have faded. Trapped somewhere between survival horrors and full-blown gallery installations, Tale of Tales remains a fascinating studio.

If you've never played any of Nintendo's many Picross titles, this is as good a place to start as any.

But when you find yourself constantly messing up routine jump manoeuvres because of vindictive collision detection, the whole thing becomes aggravating - a war of attrition against poorly designed controls.

Those in search of a tough brawl might find nourishment in Golems of Amgarrak's slim pickings, but it's ultimately another quest-by-numbers effort that makes it very clear that the Dragon Age team's attention has now fully shifted to the sequel.

Only dedicated deadheads need apply.

As well-intentioned as this remake probably was, the harsh truth is that the gameplay hasn't aged well. If you can stomach even a quarter of the game's 16 levels, you'll deserve a Medal of Honour for special feats of tolerance.

For only 200 points, you get a good few hours of beautiful entertainment, and an Endless mode to pick through once you're done. More of this kind of thing, and Nintendo's best kept secrets won't stay that way for long.

Despite the pretence of gaming structure, let's call The Polynomial what it is: an invitation to sit around in self-medicated bliss.