Although still passably entertaining much of the time, stood next to other shooters on the Wii it doesn't even come close to matching the look and feel of games designed specifically for the system.

This is no Trials HD, but it's still great to play as a chummy pass-the-controller game, and nice to have stuck on an SD card for a rainy Sunday afternoon when there are no Columbo re-runs to watch on television. Nostalgic, colourful and modest, this is retro-gaming at its least self-conscious.

Shaun White's ideas are starting to look a little thin on the ground. You'll still likely enjoy playing World Stage for the four or five hours it will take to see a fair amount of what's on offer, but when it's all over, it may be harder to argue that the game itself is particularly special.

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.

As it is this is kind of game that neither soaks up my general leisure time, not leaves me yearning for a clan. I've enjoyed my time messing around with it, but I don't feel compelled to return to the game for more serious consideration, as I seem to with a whole bunch of other multiplayer titles.

In its desperation to infuse this setting with "maturity" - be it of the sober, political kind, or the game's painfully clumsy gore and sex - BioWare has forgotten the key ingredient of any fantasy: the fantastical. Without it, you're still left with a competent, often compelling, impressively detailed and immense RPG, but it's one that casts no spell.

Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier is one of the best platformers available for PSP (the other ones being LittleBigPlanet and the three-year-old Daxter). It also stands as evidence that there's life in the old Naughty Dog series yet. Any chance of a Jak game for PS3 then?

Ultimately as pointless as it is lovable.

Ultimately as pointless as it is lovable.

PES 2010's team management options are a warning sign that the Japanese developer still has some tricks up its sleeve, and people for whom the transition to another football game is simply too much to countenance will buy and enjoy this, and discover it still plays a good, grass-roots game. For everyone else though, up is still down, because FIFA wins again.

What does make it a poor game is the crappy driving, ridiculous shooting, cackhanded interface and nonsense story.

RPG fanatics without a PC will probably want to fight their way through these flaws to get to the meat of Dragon Age: Origins - which is all still hanging off the bone, and which still makes for a filling, if slightly flavourless, meal. But they won't be able to escape the knowledge that they're playing an inferior version, a game that's been squeezed into a suit that doesn't fit. PC gamers can - with a flick of the mouse-wheel - look down on them.

Band Hero does not add anything to what we already saw in Guitar Hero 5, so in the end buying it just depends on your opinion about its track list.

Where Guitar Hero 5 hauled the series up to a quality plateau, adding a load of features that fans of the series can really appreciate, Band Hero is nothing more or less than a reskin. And even though it's a reskin of a superb game, the lack of concern for the credibility of the music and presentation can't help but cheapen it.

Even the distinction between car classes fails to develop the gameplay, and within the first half an hour you feel like you've seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. It might scream 'excitement' at the top of its tiny lungs, then, but Need For Speed: Nitro's initially endearing zest quickly degenerates into repetitive strain.

Not everyone is going to enjoy this. Some people will never warm to Ubisoft's anarchic little fiends, many will find the constant enthusiasm draining. This isn't a purchase for hardcore enthusiasts or steely battlefield veterans with a thousand-yard stare and a pico-second response time. The rest of you, should you be able to engage your inner child, could well find a big old slice of the fun pie cooling on your windowsill.

While FIFA Manager 10 is by no means a poor game, there's an underlying suspicion that the energy that's been pumped into the hit-and-miss multiplayer features would have been better spent on genuinely innovating the single-player game, which sadly feels a little too similar to last year and a little tactically thin compared to FM and CM.

Perhaps Tony Prince does nothing to drag the series forward - somewhat fittingly for a man with his head stuck in the eighties - but the episode Rockstar has named in his honour is a colourful and pleasingly unpredictable adventure that gets better throughout and ends on a high.

Had Namco spent a bit less time on the forgettable Scenario Campaign and more on sorting out the netcode, however, this could have gone higher. A miracle patch would be very helpful.

Had Namco spent a bit less time on the forgettable Scenario Campaign and more on sorting out the netcode, however, this could have gone higher. A miracle patch would be very helpful.

There are no glaring technical problems, or insurmountable design cock-ups, just a rather dull platformer with a central creative gimmick that's too clumsy to be liberating, poorly incorporated into the action and often bizarrely sidelined by the game's structure.

Weak multiplayer and control issues prevent it from being the instant classic Guitar Hero was four year ago, but FreeStyleGames has nevertheless created a slick and enormously enjoyable music game that deserves to succeed and evolve.

Turn 10 has sacrificed flash for a faultless 60 frames a second, and understood that in simulation, what you feel is far more important than what you see. It has diverted all of the 360's resources to giving you the smoothest, most believable, most physically rewarding drive you've ever had.

It's not that A Crack in Time is all fur coat and no knickers. The problem is, it's all fur coat and the same knickers it's been wearing for seven years. Time for a change.

More time, heart and money has gone into this than any other free game I can remember playing, and I think Riot Games is going to make good on its promise of post-release development. Until further notice, this is the DOTA game you should be playing.

There are clearly some talented people at Playlogic - notably whoever did the endearing cut-scenes, which play out like Hanna-Barbera doing The Matrix. How something so colourful and quirky became so bland is a mystery of the creative process.

Even though there is nothing new or truly unique about Torchlight, nothing at all, that it so confidently and prettily takes the fight to Blizzard is an enormous compliment about how well put-together this is.

Borderlands is unusual, playable, and an artfully violent step in an interesting direction for Gearbox. The story aspect of the game could have been better - I'd love to have seen the role-playing influence extend beyond stats, levels and loot - and the ending is a disappointment. Even so, this should be a favourite game of the year for a huge number of people, since it plugs into gamer impulses at such a fundamental level.