This is clearly a game designed for light-hearted communal family play, with everyone chipping in with suggestions of what to photograph. And, on those terms, Sea Life Safari is a sweet, amusing and enjoyable little experience.

It's one of the few truly original games on Live Arcade, and deserves your attention for that, but it can't quite shake off the sour tang of unfulfilled potential.

To make matter worse, the race will stop dead at certain points to forcibly initiate a mini-game in the guise of one of Dastardly and Muttley's futile foils.

If you like 'clever' shooters, those that offer you a challenging and unique range of ways to reach for the highest score, I'm not sure you can do much better than Space Invaders Extreme at the moment.

And thanks to poor ball physics, the ball can quickly get stuck in a "loop" of identical bounces against indestructible blocks if you're unlucky.

It's like eating a bowl of tasty different flavoured ice creams, but finding a fag-end in every fourth mouthful. Secret Agent Clank is excellent in parts, but it's not consistent enough. And it's got stealth in it.

While it acts like a pre-order incentive, in actual fact, playing the Creature Creator, it absolutely justifies itself. Even if you never plan to play Spore, it's absolutely essential you play this.

It's surprising how much fun the simple joys of bat and ball remain, and it's surprising how nothing more than a varied selection of power-ups, some cunning level design and uncluttered gameplay can still produce something so enjoyable. I downloaded it out of duty, but have kept returning to it for fun.

It looks cute, it has a couple of nice ideas, but it's just not fun.

Guns of the Patriots is a frustrating, fractured game that turns Metal Gear Solid's world upside down several times over, but never changes it.

If, however, Konami plans to turn this into an ongoing spin-off with commercial potential then it needs serious work to either shape it into something outlandish that could only be done online with the Metal Gear series, or to better blend the Metal Gear elements into the established tropes of the multiplayer action genre.

The gameplay is solid enough. Although the level design of the five short campaigns doesn't really inspire, the sticky quirk keeps things interesting and makes replays worthwhile. The higher difficulty levels are insanely punishing, offering plenty of challenge for completists.

Absolutely horrible execution.

To some extent it suffers from selective authenticity. Ten two-minute rounds against a tough opponent can be tight, tense and technical, but the skills you're applying are arbitrary.

Soul Bubbles definitely has enough distinct charm to override the inevitable "LocoRoco" comparisons, with a superb control system and delightful art style carrying you through for the entire game. Were it not for the slow start, it might have left a deeper impression sooner, but some wonderful level design and smart ideas later on eventually deliver on its obvious promise.

There are moments as you roar around the tracks when NASCAR 09 is vastly more entertaining than you'd expect. Sadly these brief thrills are almost always muted by the typically sensible EA Sports corporate sheen, which ultimately reduces the game to another technically minded racer of limited scope rather than the over-the-top metal-shredding redneck rumble of the real thing.

Its kinetic manga style makes for a refreshing change compared to the more earthbound Tekkens and Dead or Alives of this world, and for those who are willing to invest time in the deep combo system the rewards are numerous.

Had this been offered as a free (or at least dirt-cheap) bonus download for Pokémon DS owners, the sweet graphics and empty-headed concept might have been charming. At the same price point charged for the sublime "LostWinds" it's a brazen insult, and marks a new low in the exploitation of the Pokémon brand.

The poor technical quality of the game isn't quite enough to dim the innate amusement of thundering around New York as the Hulk, but it's certainly enough to drop this from "long awaited next gen remake of a great game" to "yet another movie tie-in that's only really good for a weekend rental".

With Commando 3, Capcom manages to both wash away the bad taste of Rocketmen and prove that old-fashioned blasters can be made to work today without losing the naïve verve of the 1980s.

There are moments where the noise and fury onscreen coheres into an honest and intuitive arcade rush, but there are also too many where you get the impression that it simply isn't playing fair. Whether or not this is actually the case, such suspicions crank up the frustration and make the full 800-Point purchase less desirable.

It's a fiendishly fast-paced puzzler. Beneath the gentle pastel exterior lurks the heart of a beast.

There are still times when you'll enjoy yourself, but they're few and far between, and ultimately prove to be poor compensation for the loss of the intrigue, subtlety and intelligence that characterised the films and books whose bullet-riddled back the game is straddling.

There's a difference between kicking your arse until you learn from it, and kicking your arse until you get lucky, and Ninja Gaiden 2 fails that crucial test all too often.

Otherwise, GRID is a great success: the single-player is varied without being confusing; the online multiplayer supports 12 players and damage modelling, reducing the number of first-corner pile-ups; tracks and cars are well chosen and recreated; and Flashback allows you to race with the same determination on lap three as you did on lap one, mitigating risk in a manner of which other racing game developers will soon be envious.

Kung Fu Panda won't be winning any awards, and it won't be gracing any end-of-year lists, but that's not to say it doesn't deserve carefully measured praise.

In gameplay terms it represents a commendable improvement on an already solid framework and seems to captivate its young players with the same gently challenging grip o' fun as LEGO Star Wars did. It's just a shame that this evolution seems to have come at the expense of many of the peripheral activities that made the previous LEGO games a more robust and varied experience in the long term.

It's a quick loader, too, with minimum turnaround between holes.