Frontier's annual management sim offers some small refinements over its predecessor but a lack of major upgrades means it doesn't snatch pole.

More than the script (generally witty and sharp, if occasionally undercut by an iffy voice-actor) or the graphic design (a brother to Fable's faux-fantasy charm), the constant capering of your charges is what gives the game its personality. That is, they have a lot of personality and so does the game.

It's perfectly pitched between the frustration of failure and the high-speed, adrenaline-fuelled euphoria of success, and it's a welcome return to a more old-school Burnout formula.

Blind jumps, enemies that re-spawn almost instantly combined with boss battles that often require repeated attempts make this a difficult game. But the formula has been expertly updated here and, while the game never achieves the excellence of those titles from which it draws heavy inspiration, this is still a competent and engaging proposition.

A glorious ride down a futuristic California that never was. [Recommended]

Despite the odd camera and control niggle, it stands out an unpretentious and largely unique example of how to blend strategy and action in a relentlessly entertaining way.

It's charmingly designed from the ground up to be as fun and accessible as possible, yet despite its astonishing simplicity, it still managed to hold our interest well beyond our expectations.

The squeaky eccentricity of proceedings leaves you charmed, if a little frustrated with the lack of a truly solid baseball game.

Overall, while it certainly captures a lot of its source material on spec, Wallace & Gromit's other strengths - Peter Sallis, Gromit shrugging or staring despondently into the camera, needless contraptions and simple directorial flourishes - are sorely missed in Fright of the Bumblebees.

The marriage of Zelda and Musou is an unexpected success, then - a game that recounts the Zelda myth not just in a new way, but in a whole new language.

An open-world Hawaii and a generously spirited racer, chafed by always-online irritations and a lack of originality.

What really delivers now, however, is Elite mode. Forget the needlessly intimidating name; this is shooter-as-sport par excellence, an exquisitely balanced and enormously fun mode unlike anything else in the genre.

Legion's near-future London is almost too close for comfort, though the game it hosts is a characterless slog.

More of a smash and grab than a smooth raid, then, but you can't deny that it's come away with the goods.

Perhaps the developers were too focused on not breaking all those wonderful toys, or perhaps they were bound to a tight deadline, but the game feels slightly flat as a result.

While the game certainly has aspirations to action-RPG greatness, it falls far, far short of the mark by instead boiling down to a trudging mess of relentless combat, character statistics and more quests and side-quests than you could shake some kind of magic stick at.

The inescapable truth for Konami is that it has not just failed to better itself, but has gone backwards to the extent that it's no longer our favourite horror series ("Project Zero 2" ["Fatal Frame 2"] claims that throne for now). [JPN Import]

It might not take as much effort to overcome or offer as much content as arcade stalwarts "Midnight Club" and "Burnout," but neither game has the same depth online, and only hot seating Burnout's crash sections with a few friends can rival the Hollywood playground DICE has built here for sheer fun.

A couple of omissions grate and it's hardly cheap, but this is a sumptuous collection for the grandest of shmups. [Eurogamer Recommended]

Problem is, with the lengthy time it takes to move between any location in the Sims 2 - especially if you're only going to be there for the few minutes a date takes up - is particularly taxing.

Brilliantly embodies the Wii's dramatic premise: that this kind of control can appeal to people who don't play games and people who used to play games as well as people who've been playing them for as long as we have.

So if Konami Arcade Classics was a bag of Revels, I would happily munch my way to the bottom of the bag with very little spitting and surreptitious dog feeding. With far more good than bad, plenty of variety in the titles and some nice extras this collection sits proudly at the top of the DS retro compilation pile.

There are also some very sloppy mistakes, which are just frequent enough to make you wonder whether the game was proofread and fact-checked.

While there are giant leaps towards putting things right this is a game that seems to be grasping for what once was rather than setting its paths straight into a bright and engaging future.

The polish of the game - the truly glorious soundscape, the astonishing art of the characters and the maps, and the clear joy of the basic idea - do point to a talented crew of developers, but the endless bugs, the limited content, the badly balanced upgrades, and the half-implemented ideas feel like the game was polished before it was finished.

It just would be nice for Nintendo and Game Freak to supply the other demand next time: the demand of something actually more different, or at least palpably new, for our hard earned. Let the pitchfork laden debate begin.

As a freebie to PlayStation Plus subscribers, Me Monstar Hear Me Roar is a cackling feast of projectile-vomiting silliness to while away an hour on, but you might balk at having to actually pay for it.

While not as essential as a title like Geometry Wars, Roboblitz can still be a charming and enjoyable experience, definitely setting new precedents for future Arcade releases. However at times it feels a little too much like an Unreal Engine 3 tech-demo than a game in its own right.