But however good a game this may be, it's still left falling off the shoulders of a true giant, and even without online play and custom soundtrack options "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004" still hits the clubhouse well ahead of its rival.

What we're left with really is a Saturday morning cartoon retelling of the tale, with none of the memorable dialogue, very little actual exposition, too much brainless padding and key events reshaped to fit the brief.

You've probably done a lot of the things you'll do in Prince of Persia before, but never to this standard, and apart from the innovations, the consistency, the logic and the spell-binding presentation, what makes it so special is just how well made it is.

It lacks the style, glossy finish and gunslinging simplicity of Max, and particularly its unadventurous but hugely enjoyable sequel.

In my mind, said mixed bag, when emptied onto the table, would yield all manner of mostly shiny looking baubles, most of which have some redeeming features but very few of which are worth pursuing for longer than a couple of minutes.

But however much positive energy we lavish on FIFA all the areas that EA beats Konami on - bar online - are simply gloss. In a straight tussle between the games, we just don't enjoy playing FIFA as much as we do "PES3," and, for most of you, that's what matters.

But however much positive energy we lavish on FIFA all the areas that EA beats Konami on - bar online - are simply gloss. In a straight tussle between the games, we just don't enjoy playing FIFA as much as we do "PES3," and, for most of you, that's what matters.

It's a surprisingly deep, involving and intense hackandslash experience that belies its apparent simplicity.

The end results may be somewhat shallow for most serious gamers' liking, but it's a quirky, fun, amusing, and heart-warming addition to the PS2.

It's everything a videogame should be; innovative, compelling, challenging, long-lasting. And spiked with controversy and a wonderful wit, it's also something that so few videogames can ever be - cool.

But however much positive energy we lavish on FIFA all the areas that EA beats Konami on - bar online - are simply gloss. In a straight tussle between the games, we just don't enjoy playing FIFA as much as we do "PES3," and, for most of you, that's what matters.

But however much positive energy we lavish on FIFA all the areas that EA beats Konami on - bar online - are simply gloss. In a straight tussle between the games, we just don't enjoy playing FIFA as much as we do PES3, and, for most of you, that's what matters.

This year's "The Getaway" - it's not GTA and it will frustrate for some on that basis, but it's a respectable enough game in its own right as long as you don't "play it the wrong way", which will lead you down a path of frustration and pad-smashing fury.

It's a game with real heart that fans of Japanese RPGs can't fail to fall in love with. It's also the best turn-based title on the Game Boy Advance since the original "Advance Wars."

Where I fell out with CoD was the fact that however many cool things I could think of, it was all too easy to peel away the layers of glitz and gloss and come up with frustratingly long list of inconsistencies, flaws and slightly irksome design decisions that remind you that there's plenty of work to be done before the definitive World War II shooter gets made.

Despite the crushing averageness that SWAT displays in the visuals and the by the numbers level design, it's a strange experience to reflect on how much we enjoyed it.

The intricate layering of tasks and guard puzzles merely proves frustrating, and with the lack of anything beyond the game's eight lengthy single-player levels, which you probably won't feel much like completing, it's a game that looks good in theory but falls flat in execution.

Despite the crushing averageness that SWAT displays in the visuals and the by the numbers level design, it's a strange experience to reflect on how much we enjoyed it.

The intricate layering of tasks and guard puzzles merely proves frustrating, and with the lack of anything beyond the game's eight lengthy single-player levels, which you probably won't feel much like completing, it's a game that looks good in theory but falls flat in execution.

Real Potter fans will love the ability to spot even minor characters from the books making appearances on the Quidditch teams and playing in their correct positions, and the whole thing has been put together with the utmost of respect for the material on which it is based.

Chrome isn't a dreadful game, really. It's just so deeply, incredibly average in every aspect of its gameplay that our enthusiasm for it went limp the very moment we bumped off our first enemy grunt.

Not essential by any means then, and it's probably not worth much more than a weekend's rental, but Kill.switch definitely proves that even a depressing list of rent-a-mechanic gaming clichés can keep us happy when administered in the right amounts.

When the core gameplay is so obviously hamstrung by fundamental design issues, there's no real incentive to get stuck into the meat of the game, and thus the chances of being able to enjoy the two-player link mode disappear into the ether.

Setting my disappointment over its distance from the original Prince of Persia design aside, The Sands of Time on the Game Boy Advance is a rather accomplished and quite extensive platform-puzzler, with some fabulous level design and genuinely considered presentation.

A great tennis sim. It's certainly less fun than "Virtua Tennis" (especially the career mode) and it's damn frustrating at times, but it's still the best representation of strawberries and cream we've ever seen.

Microsoft's biggest mistake with Amped 2 was not in shunning its chief competitor's vivacious aerial antics, but in failing to mimic its ease of control and combo structure - areas where the "less is more" idiom could most do with application.

The intricate layering of tasks and guard puzzles merely proves frustrating, and with the lack of anything beyond the game's eight lengthy single-player levels, which you probably won't feel much like completing, it's a game that looks good in theory but falls flat in execution.

The marginal improvement on display here is happily eclipsed by rival extreme sports titles which do take steps to reinvent themselves, and partly because there are four other Tony Hawk games out there and they all do much the same thing.