Xenosaga 2, is a big commitment for any gamer. If you want to get the most out of the game you're looking at weeks of concentrated staccato playing/watching/playing/watching as you work your way through the huge narrative arc.

With the dreadful lack of effort in the PS1-like visuals, and ghastly AI, even those with especially designed tattoos should consider their old friend exactly that: old.

Bugs aside - and indeed notwithstanding the bugs in our case - it's relentlessly entertaining and commands your attention as well as anything else on the handheld to date. We only wish it put up a bit more of a fight, and did more to take advantage of a system that once seemed purpose-built for it. [Import]

If it was ten solid levels of proper Star Fox space combat delivered with the same degree of glorious detail and a challenge that rose from the promising double boss-fight climax of the second section to the kind of crescendo Star Fox reached at its peak then they would fit like silk gloves.

Once the combat stops being a one-button-win it builds into a genuinely captivating series of varied events and manages to present the futile bloodlust in an unsympathetic light, yet making the process of limb removal, beheading or carving someone's torso straight down the middle a thrilling experience.

It's one of those games that reminds you how far we've come over the years, because it's just full of the old bad design habits that we all used to take for granted.

Sadly, as far as Sims clones go, it's actually one of the best... but you'd probably be better off going for one of its better expansion packs than spending money on this. It's just a little too slight a proposition for a full game.

Stranger's Wrath simply isn't a better game for having first-person mode, and many of us would have maybe preferred the choice.

The portability, extra modes and various refinements of the DS version make for a much more satisfying game than the Flash effort we're continually referencing, but the DS is already home to a good few equally satisfying puzzlers (including "Mr. Driller" and "Polarium") and we'd seriously suggest looking to them before haggling for a copy of Zoo Keeper.

But the trouble is, as soon as you remove the novelty death sequences it's actually the dictionary definition of the average third-person shooter.

Overall not a bad attempt to move the Mario Kart formula into the skies by any means, but one that's initially far too easy, then bizarrely too tough, and chock full of fairly irritating and unavoidable shoot-'em up-boss encounters that simply take you away from what you'd rather be doing.

By no means a bad game. It's just horribly average, with some hugely disappointing lows counterbalanced by some genuinely excellent high points.

Maybe if any of the significant flaws of the original had been ironed out, and the missions were actually compelling, we wouldn't mind, but the excitement and thirst for vengeance of the original has been replaced by exceptionally ordinary shoot-'em-up missions, one on-rails shooting section, and a few awful stealth encounters.

A relentlessly compelling title that feels so rich with atmosphere, breathless excitement and palpable tension that virtually all our minor quibbles go out of the window.

If you can accept that it won't last you as long as you might like, then your quest is clear: leave no stone unturned in your search for this game, and then leave none of its stones unturned either.

Maybe it gets a little too tricky for its own good sometimes, maybe it's just plain dull between missions, but when it gets things right it's a brilliantly enjoyable all-action extravaganza of blockbuster proportions.

Intriguingly, the presence of an all-encompassing online mode called Conquest ties up all the various strands of multiplayer game into a coherent whole.

As far as block or blob-based puzzlers go, Puyo Pop Fever is perfectly adequate, but the PSP happens to have a few better alternatives: "Lumines" offers a more classy experience, while "Koloomn" is a more original title, and one that will take every brain cell to master.

In the end, it's a golf game fundamentally redesigned to its detriment, shorn of many of the little things that made up the rest of its appeal, and now merely flawed but enjoyable.

The definitive way to experience one of the games of the year.

Overall, despite the admittedly sloppy combat, Kuon manages miraculously to be even less than the sum of all its parts, diminishing and lowering the playability of the game as a whole.

It'll still have the piss ripped out of it for being a spreadsheet number crunching exercise, a game that reduces passion into numbers, but take no notice. It's an abstract extrapolation of emotions. A beautiful game of the beautiful game. Chaotically absorbing.

There's just too much about it that gets up our nose, and however much we jam our finger up there trying to straighten it out, favouring the outside line or not, it still slides back and forth just out of reach.

A really excellent GBA game which pushes the little system to a degree that few games have tried.

Would be an impressive game even if it weren't based on Lord of the Rings. It's a clever and well-constructed strategy title with plenty of innovation of its own, and a genuinely great use of the franchise. Easily the best of the Lord of the Rings games to date.

While there's a thrill in returning to locations you're familiar with ten years on in game terms, it can't overwhelm the realisation that these are just the original levels stripped bare and re-fabricated according to Obsidians whims.

Offers too much tedium and not nearly enough fun, mic or no mic.

If the parent release fulfilled your thirst for Mentalist twitch shooting and you feel like topping up then you can't really complain at what's on offer here, but for us it's almost the dictionary definition of an average shooter. For those wanting something a little more cerebral and fulfilling, this sure as hell isn't it.