If you can overlook the niggles with the island's economy, Tropico is one of the best city building sims of recent years and certainly the most amusing.

In short, then, you should buy this game, and if you play anything online this year, make it Tribes 2.

One of the most innovative real-time strategy games we have come across in recent years, reinvigorating the genre with features more usually found in turn-based titles.

The drab lunar landscape which makes up much of the game is a poor substitute for the rich snowfields and forests of Earth 2150, and poorly balanced campaigns make the single player experience less satisfying than it perhaps should have been.

But the biggest problem that Battle For Naboo suffers from is that it is just too short. There are fifteen missions, but they only take five or ten minutes each to complete, and only a few offer any real challenge.

Much-improved this time around, the only things I can hold against it are the car's questionable propensity to stick to the track even when you steer it markedly off-course, and the rather sizeable learning curve for newcomers.

Flight simulations are notoriously difficult to get right and Battle of Britain is a valiant effort: experienced pilots looking for a challenge or a history lesson should consider this game - beginners might be better off elsewhere.

It's very playable, with quite a nice engine and a strong leading lady, but the storyline is a touch frail, the game is severely limited by its lack of multiplayer and the long gaps between save points make certain sections almost too challenging.

The poor AI and lack of an in-game save option makes the single player campaigns frustrating and unrewarding, and the role-playing elements don't quite work as well as they perhaps should.

The game looks and sounds excellent, but is let down badly by simplistic puzzles, fussy location routes, and it's essentially linear nature.

The graphics are great but come at a high cost, the new weapons and items are amusing but encourage random kills, and the maps are stunning but far too big for the number of people playing the game at the moment.

A must-have purchase for any action gaming fan, and is a testament to what can still be done with the genre with the proper amount of thought.

If you let the game draw you in, the fantasy world becomes much more real than you could imagine -and the game much more compelling.

With a predictable storyline, childishly designed puzzles and some simply awful graphics, there is very little to haul this game from the clutches of Pantsville!

The lighting system more than makes up for this lack of colour though, with pyrotechnic multi-coloured dynamic lighting, and full day and night cycles.

The constant changes in scenery and obstacles also help to lift the tedium of endlessly chasing sheep around brighly coloured mazes, and while the game is best handled in small doses it is addictive enough to keep you coming back for more.

A dreary, badly made game which offers no real closure to the series and bears no relevance to either Blair Witch film. A waste of your pennies, despite the reasonable price tag.

For anyone who wants a mech "simulator" this is by far the best offering out there and has much to recommend it over its predecessors.

Some of the old charm is still there, but it's starting to wear a bit thin after four years, and for those of us with more refined tastes there are much better third person games out there now.

Improved menus and controls make it rather less intimidating, and the open-ended nature of the game and the massive range of units, buildings, technologies and strategies on offer means this is one game that you can play time and time again without ever repeating yourself.

Gunman Chronicles has a cracking storyline running throughout with its fair share of twists and turns. All of this is set upon some truly stunning landscapes and against some pretty fearsome foes.

I love it - the challenge, the atmosphere, the blood.

An engrossing and highly entertaining adventure game with characters that you can care about, an involving storyline to keep you hooked, and settings and characters that are both beautiful and bizarre.

A solid storyline backed by hauntingly good graphics and sound, with entertaining combat and weaponry make this a hard game to put down.

Although at times little more than a culmination of spy films and stereotypes over the last forty years, No One Lives Forever is an adventure and a half for the single player, and well worth investigating if you’re sick of world-threatening plots and Quake-engine oddities.

If you are a fan of "Alone In The Dark," and are longing for some more French-influenced zombie fun, you will probably want to snap this up right away.

As with most adventure games, it's startlingly linear, but don't you dare let that rob you of the experience; this is a game that should be bought, played and cherished.

Its stunning graphics put most other third person games to shame, the ferocious hand-to-hand combat makes for a more visceral experience than is usual in this rather stale genre, and the heavy dose of Norse mythology provides an interesting and unique setting for the game.