If you're one of those who has enjoyed the series on console, you'll enjoy it on DS. Otherwise, steer clear.

The Wii Remote and Nunchuk work perfectly fine on their own - especially considering the Wii Zapper is both less accurate and less comfortable.

By starting with a great control and camera system, building on that with excellent combat and a wonderful spin on Ico's platform adventuring, and then topping it off with a decent storyline, Naughty Dog has cooked up one of the most relentlessly entertaining, fat-free games to emerge in ages. Topped off with the most stunning use of the PS3's underused technical prowess yet, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is, for my money, the first must-have PlayStation 3 title.

There's still an argument for considering other mini-game collections with better ratios of good-to-poor games. The ratio in Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 isn't even as good as it was in the first game. And overall the game isn't as entertaining as a rabbit doing a poo on a stage, which should tell you something.

It's tolerable enough and will certainly last you a long time, but it seems a shame that what used to be one of EA's better, more reserved racing games has become quite so loud, desperate and mediocre in an attempt to distinguish itself, and that what it does get right in this year's iteration is almost completely divorced from the track where so many of its contemporaries excel.

This Impossible Mission remake won't set the scene alight as it did during the '80s but it's a solid, faithful rendition of a cherished old classic.

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

The gameplay is repetitive - not a problem for puzzle games if they also have an addictive quality, but Shrek-N-Roll just doesn't.

Charging 800 points for this when the aforementioned Castlevania: SotN comes at the same price is taking the proverbial. Steer well clear of this one.

A game that feels supremely engineered, like a precision machine, or a German automobile. It's makes "Half-Life 2" seem old and frail, but by the same token it does nothing to diminish the imaginative achievements of that series. Crysis is impressive, but not imaginatively bold. Nor does it engage us like some other great shooters - such as "BioShock" - have done with their world and their personality. It's far better than "Far Cry."

Factor in an exceptionally short single-player campaign, an undercooked tactical squad element and a distinct lack of gameplay variety and it's impossible not to see this as a very big missed opportunity.

It's a fitting end to a game that starts off brightly, wriggling elusively as you try and grasp what's going on, delighting in the mechanics and beautiful visuals, before sinking into a pattern that, while fairly gratifying, never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive.

Yuke's has had a captive audience for so long that the incentive to improve seems to have withered away.

Needless to say, Umbrella Chronicles isn't the most long-lasting affair, and in absolute gameplay terms it's probably one of the most wafer thin offerings you'll have experienced for years. But in a landscape dominated by epic, sprawling complexity, it's refreshing now and then to kick back and blast away in a game that's as knowingly brain-dead as this.

Factor in an exceptionally short single-player campaign, an undercooked tactical squad element and a distinct lack of gameplay variety and it's impossible not to see this as a very big missed opportunity.

If you haven't played the PC, PS2 or Xbox 360 versions, do. They're brilliant. This isn't.

For everyone else, it's a tough and not entirely rewarding slog that you may tire of before you see the fruits of your labour. If you're not prepared to wallow in the minutiae of Dragon Ball Z, there are far more competent fighters out there.

One of the better examples of a DS companion to an established game series - not much threat to Mario Kart in pure playability stakes, but home to surprising depth and fun all the same, providing you can look past the fact it's designed for people to play when they're not the one talking on Jeremy Kyle.

Societies doesn't stumble just because "it isn't SimCity". Fresh takes on old concepts should always be welcome. It stumbles because it's a generally unsatisfying patchwork of a game, dragged down by inconsistent gameplay, outdated design and weirdly implemented ideas.

As a single-player game, Sonic Rivals 2 is brilliant fun. It's fast and exciting and pretty and happy, just like the old games. And like the old games, it's a bit hard. It could have done without the silly battles but the races are so good they're worth putting up with.

While Contra 4 is, at its core, a great 2D shooter that's refreshingly difficult, there are too many places where it stays true to its past in the face of innovations that could only make it a better, more accessible game.

The cheap bordered 50Hz conversion is a touch disappointing but when the rest of the game is so damn great and taking into account the fact that you'll get change out of fifteen notes for this little beauty, it seems harsh to keelhaul XI over cut corners like this.

This game gets a low score because there is no point to it.

Where Orcs & Elves leaves me is wanting a decent, full-length dungeon-crawling RPG for the DS. What it gives me is the first five or six hours of one that was already beginning to feel a bit repetitive. Nothing's inherently bad about it (apart from the attempt at touch-screen movement controls), but it's rarely unapparent that this belongs on your portable telephone.

Next to ageing titles like Frontlines and European Assault, it feels soulless, hastily cobbled together and depressingly formulaic.

Indeed, you could go so far as to say that it's old news, a little tedious, and there are countless other, better things around right now that improve on it in so many ways.

It's not a badly made game. With the exception of the camera, everything works. It looks all right. It's not the worst videogame we've ever played, and it's certainly not the worst movie tie-in. But it's entirely lacking in imagination and innovation. There's nothing that hasn't been done before and no incentive to keep playing.

It's simple, but has noodles of charm.