If you can track down Singstar Rocks on the cheap, though, you're pretty much guaranteed a few memorable drunken nights in. It's still as compelling and fatally flawed as it has ever been, where the ratio of good to bad songs is as frustrating as we've come to expect.

As much as novelty value can be a good thing during the launch of a new console, the unavoidable conclusion is that Super Monkey Ball is more fun on a joypad on the GameCube than in this flawed experiment.

This is a game for the RPG fan willing to overlook intolerable weaknesses of character just to have a desirable looking girl on their arm.

What should have been a dramatic return to form for Sonic, as signalled by the hugely promising trailer videos from earlier this year and the bold decision to use the original Sonic the Hedgehog name, has turned out to be an absolute mess.

The control system isn't much fun, and feels unfinished and somewhat unloved - but it is certainly possible to get to grips with it and to eke some enjoyment out of the superbly designed levels of the game.

A mild downhill racer with too many glitches, and beyond the grinding, nothing to do with its licence. The Wiimote controls don't ruin it, despite the madness of the button use, but they don't add anything a regular analogue stick couldn't have made easier.

Put bluntly, the combat and AI is merely average, the visuals don't really wow, and the much-vaunted weaponry makes little difference to how it plays. To say we're underwhelmed is the understatement of the year.

As it is, Genji is undercooked. It's not terrible, but it's not good enough to rise above the baggage of ridicule hanging over its shoulder.

Whoever, wherever, whatever you are, there is absolutely zero reason to own this atrocious excuse for a video game.

It doesn't have any depth to speak of, but it's unique (for the moment) and has a genuine sense of humour, a quality few games can boast. It's an apt launch title, lacking in polish but rich in character and laughs.

There is going to be an inevitable split between tabletop players absolutely delighted with the best-ever visual recreation of their game of choice (though possibly also apoplectic about some of the liberties taken with Warhammer rules) and general strategy gamers nonplussed as to why they'd possibly want to play this messy, sometimes broken-feeling thing over the hugely superior (but less aesthetically inventive) "Medieval II: Total War."

Despite the questionable long term appeal, Gitaroo Man Lives! is one of those games that you'll cherish while it lasts, but only truly get the most out of if you're lucky enough to be able to engage in multiplayer. [JPN Import]

Smackdown vs RAW is the wrestling "FIFA" - drowning in customisable settings, but the gameplay isn't always completely there. However, like "FIFA," SvsR has made some admirable steps this year.

I'm completely in love with Trauma Centre: Second Opinion. It's urgent, tense, dramatic, unique, extremely difficult and surprisingly varied, an excellent Wii game and an excellent puzzle game. For anyone suffering from scepticism and uncertainty about the validity of the Wii's control system and doubting developers' abilities to create games to live up to its potential, Trauma Centre: Second Opinion is the perfect remedy.

If you do know your Kakashis from your Irukas, add a couple of points to the score and think about picking this up. For everyone else, games like Kingdom Hearts 2 and Ninja Gaiden offer far more substantial and rewarding adventures in a similar vein. Everyone's a winner, basically. Hurrah.

Aside from championship you get standard quick race, split-screen and time trial options, and Drift Combo, an incongruous, aggressively arcadey and frankly unplayable mode that challenges you to string long sequences of slides together.

Even with a spit and polish to the visuals and the usual effortless presentation it can't help but feel tiring after a while.

Tedious repetition needs to be a little better disguised.

The real gem, though, is Mutant League Football, which more than makes up for the absence of any of the Madden titles because it's better than all of them.

Eragon drags up torrid memories of the bad old days when movie licensed games were not only terrible games, but had sod-all to do with the subject matter. Judged on its own merits, it's clearly below par game in every single area imaginable. Technically bereft, poorly designed and coma-inducing to play, it's about as far away from being an example of where gaming is today as you can imagine.

At times gorgeous, at other times frustrating, it's worth persevering with just to bask in its snug atmosphere.

Another safe, derivative, formulaic movie tie-in that's lacking in the graphical department and is way too easy for all but the youngest gamers out there.

The bottom line is that the core gameplay is tedious beyond belief - so much so that I doubt you'd even get value from renting it.

Hammers of Fate adds a lot of material for HoMM5. But to warrant a better mark, it would have to actually deal with the basic weaknesses of the game. As it is, despite the Caravan's efforts to streamline one aspect, it just doesn't.

Personally, I found the handling a touch too heavy for my tastes, with accurate cornering a skill that needs more practice than most fair-weather fans will want to bother with. Committed bike nuts, however, will be in hog heaven.

Though familiar, MTWII is breathtaking in its depth, fiendishly challenging in all the right ways and a big old phlegmy spit right in the eye of anything else foolish enough to claim ownership of the strategy crown.

It's a game that, like other examples of the genre, is utterly simplistic, and little more than a carefully engineered route down the reward pathway of the player's brain.

But really it all comes back to the fact that Yoshi's Island was doing almost everything for the first time, and Artoon is cribbing from the same notes.