Big Brain Academy's certainly fun in an innocent kind of way, but it's probably a better bet for your offspring than for you - although you won't regret joining in for a bit of multiplayer.

It just doesn't hang together as a coherent package in its own right, and while the gameplay certainly doesn't sully the memory of the original, the thin spread of content is cause for concern.

I just didn't feel the same magic, the same excitement that flowed from "Sorrow."

It's another small step forward for the series, but that's not quite enough to dispel the suspicion that Codemasters' F1 team doesn't have the resources to create iterations compelling or different enough to justify the annual churn. F1 2012 is a good game, but it's some way off from being the classic it could be.

Coupled with archaic AI and the isolating absence of PlayStation Network support, this makes for a game that feels unfocused and regressive, despite its considerable technical and mechanical accomplishments.

Fans of Japanese RPGs should bear in mind that behind the problems lies an extremely competent, if not terribly imaginative, RPG which will certainly fill a couple of dozen hours of your time in an entertaining and involving manner.

Yes, some of the enemies don't seem particularly interested in your existence. Yes, some of the characters' weapons are so brutally overpowered to turn bosses into braggart-mush with worrying haste. But the game doesn't really care, and neither do you. It's a run-and-gun that chooses to step back from the difficulty cliff and just show all the gleeful nonsense its managed to think up to anyone who cares to persist.

Another solid instalment in a brilliant series of games, and with the single-player campaign's branching structure providing about a million campaigns and battles, there's certainly enough to keep you going till Vol 3.

As a package it's excellent to have two timeless games to dip back into whenever you feel like it, but there's still the niggling feeling that Nintendo's pricing strategy for such things is bordering on insane.

SEGA fans, run don't walk to the shops, but be prepared to give Superstars a few hours before the gameplay starts hugging you as hard as the graphics and sound. Everyone else, dust off Virtua Tennis 3 for a more complete alternative.

as adventures go Nightfall feels much more open than previous Guild Wars modules. While many of the quests had been tied to tightly linear the maps, the missions of Nightfall are far more open-ended.

There's little argument overall that Tiger Woods 07 is the best possible starting point for golf-game beginners...but anybody who was getting a bit bored of the same formula last year will be even less impressed with this outing.

The trouble is that Shadowgrounds was a game bursting with unrealised potential, and this sequel still leaves too much of that potential untouched.

Held together by Sellotape rather than superglue, LittleBigPlanet 3 is in constant danger of falling apart.

Despite a dozen little annoyances, despite that sluggish pace and some dated visuals, Case Zero remains a lazy pleasure to plod through as you divide your time between story missions and a therapeutic culling of the masses.

It's pretty, it's quite a challenge, and is loaded with rewards. But you'll quickly come to the conclusion that for all its charms, it doesn't offer enough new ideas, and that its competition is just too strong.

Of the shooters available on the 360 at launch, Call of Duty 2 is easily the most accessible and consistently entertaining single player offering, but if online is your thing you're better off considering what Rare has to offer ["Perfect Dark Zero"].

But as ultra hardcore as Flux remains, concessions have finally been introduced, such as checkpoints, and the ability to select each mission at your leisure.

If you love the film it's impossible not to like this game, despite its faults. That would be like hating a puppy just because it's got a wonky leg. This might not be the best videogame ever made but it's one of the better movie tie-ins out there, and it's the closest to being a Ghostbuster most of us will ever get.

Another one of those weird little offerings that is as much a place as it is a game: an old tree filled with strange life, in which dazzling secrets lurk under every stone. Click!

A mixed success. In terms of its childlike spectacle, Klonoa is quite brilliant, offering a number of memorable set-pieces and an unforgettable, wistful ambience throughout. But its challenges, while obvious, are often fiddly to overcome, and the sense of deep achievement that comes from completing one of Super Mario's tasks is here replaced by mere relief that it's over.

In a perfect word, the meta-games would be as good as the mini-games themselves. But with four people, Lambrini and deely-boppers (just me?), Wii Party's still a reliable, if fairly thin, source of entertainment all the same.

No matter how good it is - and in Skirmish mode, it really is pretty good - it's a bit saddening. The future never seemed so far away.

If you can bear the disappointment, and push on through, you'll realise that, between the whole intertextual thing and the interesting-but-average RPG mechanics, there's still a decent game in here. It's just a shame it's not the amazingly brilliant one it could have been.

There's precious little depth lurking in Hammerwatch, then, but if you've got a few friends handy or are willing to wait around online for the worryingly small community to make itself known, this is genuine old-fashioned skeleton-bashing with a gloriously tidal approach to chucking in the enemies.

The fine-tuned excellence of Army of Two's co-op gunplay will easily sustain you through one run through this gutsy, broadly enjoyable game. But the desire to revisit it is weak, and for game that's designed with social online play in mind that's a big problem. Any level of the current co-op king, "Halo 3," has more spectacle and incident packed into it than the entirety of Army of Two.

The audio doesn’t live up to the visuals. Digitised audio has been a standard fixture of SF titles for years, but the infamous “Hadoken!” and “Shoryuken!” are both scratchily rendered for SFA3, and the music isn’t much better.

Overall, it's a solid and unique JRPG which, thanks to some brave and interesting design decisions is worthy of attention, even if it will do nothing to convince genre detractors of that fact.