In small doses, it's a game that finds its own old-school groove, and an enjoyable one for the most part. The touch-screen nonsense does it little favours, though, but luckily doesn't completely ruin the fun.

Despite the lacking port, the game is one of the more enjoyable super-vintage titles to appear on XBLA and it's a testament to the core design that its fun hasn't dulled too dramatically in the past twenty-five years.

While the game is otherwise an Advance Wars clone, somehow it's much less than its inspiration. Perhaps it's the fact the units' rock-paper-scissors relationships aren't so immediately obvious, or the weaker level design or the schizophrenic yet middle-of-the-roach aesthetics, but Commanders: Attack of the Genos lacks character, identity and personality.

If you're a fan of Conflict and/or shooters in general, you're likely to find Denied Ops shallow and dull. The two-man control system doesn't work properly. The visuals are ugly. The script is sub-Armageddon. Yes, it's easy to pick up and play. But if you're after an experience with real challenge and depth, you won't want to.

WipEout Pulse is faster, better looking, tighter to control, full of new content and much better arranged than its predecessor. Its impact probably won't be as keenly felt as its launch title predecessor, but even if it can't replace Pure at the top of the Metacritic listings, it will certainly replace Pure in your PSP UMD slots - and there it shall stay.

I love and hate Dark Messiah: Elements. For everything that's good about the combat intensity, the flexibility of the skill system, the quality of the puzzles and the brooding, engaging atmosphere, it's undone by massive technical problems.

If you're a fan of Conflict and/or shooters in general, you're likely to find Denied Ops shallow and dull. The two-man control system doesn't work properly. The visuals are ugly. The script is sub-Armageddon. Yes, it's easy to pick up and play. But if you're after an experience with real challenge and depth, you won't want to.

The good outweighs the bad here for sure, and Penumbra's pacing, story and genuine sense of uneasiness makes for an intriguingly dark adventure tale.

if you've got the patience to sit through its slow build up, and if you're open-minded enough to allow it to transport you, then it will take you to places that other JRPGs haven't even dreamed of visiting.

It's better than Ice Station Santa, yet not quite as good as Moai Better Blues. It remains small in both size and scope, while those who have stuck with the series since Season 1 will find that much of the actual gameplay is basic meat-and-potatoes fetch-questing. And yet...it's indecently cheap and, for all its minor flaws, the ongoing saga of Sam & Max is still the funniest game around.

This is utter loveliness, embodying everything the DS has come to mean to me. Puzzles, high spirits, and an embracing of beautiful 2D artwork over complicated 3D fuss.

If you're a fan of Conflict and/or shooters in general, you're likely to find Denied Ops shallow and dull. The two-man control system doesn't work properly. The visuals are ugly. The script is sub-Armageddon. Yes, it's easy to pick up and play. But if you're after an experience with real challenge and depth, you won't want to.

As interesting an idea as Sky Diving is, sadly the concept fails to deliver thanks to clunky motion sensing.

Poker Smash doesn't really work. Borrowing familiar poker hands is a nice idea on paper, but the need to include colours, winking icons and bombs ought to have been clue enough to leave it there alongside the spider-web doodles.

Turok is at its best when you slow down and make use of your surroundings and arsenal. The reason it loses so many points is that it can be at its absolute worst ten seconds later, and that while its lows are paralysingly dreadful, its peaks are never much more than competent, or fleeting novelties spoilt by cliché, repetition or sloppiness.

Turok is at its best when you slow down and make use of your surroundings and arsenal. The reason it loses so many points is that it can be at its absolute worst ten seconds later, and that while its lows are paralysingly dreadful, its peaks are never much more than competent, or fleeting novelties spoilt by cliché, repetition or sloppiness.

When we finished "DMC3," we wondered what Capcom would do with new hardware. The answer is not an awful lot. The visuals are better, the combat's more accessible, the upgrade system's pleasingly flexible, but in practically every other sense Capcom has passed up the opportunity to do something new and exciting.

When we finished "DMC3," we wondered what Capcom would do with new hardware. The answer is not an awful lot. The visuals are better, the combat's more accessible, the upgrade system's pleasingly flexible, but in practically every other sense Capcom has passed up the opportunity to do something new and exciting.

There's the kernel of something really interesting in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Glimmers of a free-roaming kids adventure game with RPG overtones, based on actual folklore. Sadly, it only manages to be that game for an hour or so, before steadily becoming less interesting and more generic and annoying, culminating in an ending that is absolutely cruel considering the age of the intended player.

There's the kernel of something really interesting in The Spiderwick Chronicles. Glimmers of a free-roaming kids adventure game with RPG overtones, based on actual folklore. Sadly, it only manages to be that game for an hour or so, before steadily becoming less interesting and more generic and annoying, culminating in an ending that is absolutely cruel considering the age of the intended player.

In a genre as densely (and impressively) populated as the platform game on DS, a short, prickly adventure that makes tokenistic use of the stylus strikes us as a bit disappointing.

I appreciated the chance to play the lost levels, but it didn't take long to explore them all - and in 2008 they just didn't have the same "wow" factor that they might have had in 2001. Newcomers who own a PS2 would be better off purchasing "Twisted Metal: Black."

It's one of those rare strategy games that actually has its own view of how the genre should work, which is entirely separate to what the rest of the industry is considering.

Joy has rarely come so reasonably priced and, whatever the price, videogames, rarely come so joyful. Indispensable, then.

In addition to the core Chess games there's a huge range of different and enjoyable challenges to play through, as well as timed matches and online play.

Pursuit Force remains a great idea in search of the right execution, and there's clearly a fantastic arcade game in here absolutely bursting to get out, but it's still not there yet. Not quite.

There's a good day or so's simple, colourful fun in there for those who can stomach Bomberman's sugar-coated world.

Absolute masochists might be able to sift through the pointless junk crudely glued onto the Rainbow Islands concept, and manage to find enough of the original's appeal to justify the time and expense but in a world where Taito Legends is readily available, offering the rather wonderful untouched arcade classic along with many others worthy of your attention for a fraction of the price, why would you even want to bother with this garish mockery?