With well-considered new features, glorious artwork and fantastic music, it demonstrates Funcom's design and art teams firing on all cylinders, building on the work done by the technical team in bringing the game up to scratch over the past two years.

You'll need a hot bath and some strange dreams to get over this one, but then the same is true of Peggle.

A gaudy glimpse of the bad old days of mid-1990s 3D. And no-one wants that.

To put it bluntly, Dementium II represents one of the better survival horror experiences on a system not known for its support of the genre.

So, yes, there's definitely a decent game lurking somewhere in Iron Man, but we haven't seen it yet. This one isn't a disaster, but it can be a rather bleak experience.

Providing Fatshark can quickly patch the problems, then the player base may build. But that's a big if, and while its problems remain, it's difficult to see Lead And Gold making a big impression on players schooled in big-budget multiplayer thrills.

Zombie Panic's gleeful initial charm and quirky visual appeal wane once the frenzied, bullet-spraying repetition kicks in after a couple of stages. It's evidently one of those games best sampled in small doses.

Crazy Golf is hardly a revolution in handheld gaming, but sometimes all you want to do of a day is flick balls across pretend courses, if only to ward off the impending existential crisis.

Like most games from the Nippon Ichi stable, though, it's not one for the majority - obscured as it is by obtuse mechanics and a sometimes-vicious difficulty level. Hurrah for them all the same.

The jackhammer gameplay won't necessarily win over new converts, but for everyone else, this silky remake is a must buy.

Dead to Rights is a lot like its belligerent hero, getting the job done in the crudest manner possible, leaving behind nothing more memorable than a sticky adolescent mess of blood, bullets and profanity.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

Super may lack the impact of its immediate forebear, which grabbed headlines with its heady combination of brilliance and novelty. But this is the very best sort of evolution, a perfection of detail, one that diminishes its faults and amplifies its successes.

There's undeniable satisfaction in combining to undo a tough defence and seeing those points totals totting up, and in some respects this is the best mode in the game, because playing together towards a long-term goal heightens the fun and drama.

There's undeniable satisfaction in combining to undo a tough defence and seeing those points totals totting up, and in some respects this is the best mode in the game, because playing together towards a long-term goal heightens the fun and drama.

Absolutely enormous, endlessly gorgeous, but maddening (especially in its final moment), The Whispered World is a muddled shame.

It's absorbing and challenging without being irritating, and you should give it a crack.

The new campaign's a solid enough addition, if a brief one.

Brimming with character and a knowing wit, Monsters is almost an essential purchase. With a focused appeal, and an immediate, addictive set of mechanics, this is (probably) the best PSP Mini game to date.

For all its speed and visual attraction, Climax lacks the tactile thrill of OutRun's drifting and can often feel more like a frantic scramble to paint the screen with your cursor than a measured challenge.

Tri is definitely the best way to introduce yourself to this incredibly involving and rewarding series.

Conceptually beautiful, it takes the basic mechanics of a twin stick, top-down shooter and then essentially procedurally generates enemies - and therefore entire levels - based on the ebb and flow of any given music track.

With the trademark sharp witticisms layered onto challenging and inventive puzzles, this is the best possible start to the new season.

With the trademark sharp witticisms layered onto challenging and inventive puzzles, this is the best possible start to the new season.

At its best, Conviction is played as a high-stakes puzzle game, taut and thrilling when everything is going your way. But when cover is broken, the floodlights go up to reveal a mediocre shooter. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Splinter Cell: Conviction appears brightest in the dark.

While it probably won't get the adrenaline pumping for long, AiRace is certainly high-octane fun while it lasts. (Am I fired yet?)

When it's firing on all cylinders, AlphaBounce can be a riotous diversion; full of inventive ideas and bold scope, the potential's clearly there. But rather than make a tight, focused design that continually entertains, MotionTwin waste far too much of your time.