Not an enthralling, tour-de-force of gaming but some great fun in short blasts, like more games should be.

We're not in movie licence disaster territory here by any means, but things could have been a lot better and definitely should have been a wee bit longer.

Certainly playable, but the majority of gamers will be turned off by the complexity that sucks the fun out of a game that otherwise promised a riotous experience.

A disappointment. It has a serious story but an ill-fitting cartoon look (or vice versa), it has fast-paced game elements tied to a slow, ponderous combat process and it’s too rough around the edges – though nothing is fundamentally wrong it has too many small flaws and they all add up.

Cross Rally Championship 2005 aims high and falls short, and whilst that's more admirable than simply creating a mediocre game for a quick buck, it's still not enough to garner our endorsement.

Though it's not that hard to get entangled in an addiction to experience gain (and, at the level 10 "endgame", start participating in endless strings of loot runs), the quest supply is embarrassingly finite, the world is far from immersive, and as soon as the addiction is broken, Stormreach becomes instantly forgettable.

Given how fast and exciting jet fighters are by their very nature, it takes a real effort (or in this case, lack of one) to make a game about them as pedestrian as this. Modified Air Combat Heroes? Mediocre Aeroplane Crap Hour, more like.

SpaceForce: Rogue Universe has plenty of potential, but unless the long wait times between action sequences are addressed (along with the other problems I’ve mentioned above), the game is doomed to mediocrity, forever wandering among the stars.

Considering that Spartan had a core staff of a dozen people and 170 QA personnel means that the game is quite an achievement – Diablo 2 took closer to 2,000 people to create. In that respect it’s a very good game and something Slitherine can be proud of, but other than that it falls short of engaging.

Praise is due to the developers who have come up with a novel idea; however it would appear that they forgot to add a sense of rhythm.

A very pretty title, one of style over substance. It doesn’t even try particularly hard to have substance; the objectives are there to provide some vague structure.

The programmers seem to have assumed incredibly hard and geologically slow pacing equals realism, yet have completely ignored any attempt at realism in other areas like e.g. being able to completely heal a marine who's been shot mutiple times with the contents of a bathroom medical cabinet (clearly, the brands of elastoplast and aspirin they have in Beirut are a lot more potent).

Paradise City does a lot of things well (the RPG systems are well put together, as are most of the RTS elements), but it never once dares to do something fresh. When it fouls up, it’s something blatant that shouldn’t have happened.

A solid, average platformer. We all know Namco is capable of better things, but at least this falls short of being poor.

Some intuitive additions to the gameplay save this title from being decidedly average, but on the whole it feels like a missed opportunity much like the Angle/Puder affair.

There are elements of this game that no one other than testers should have to sit through, and the fact that it has been released in this state is a great shame.

It’s the type of game that’s near impossible to put down once it’s been started and greatly encourages replay through the notoriety scoring system.

It's a really short game that, in the end, feels like a horribly drawn-out tutorial chapter of a bigger, better title.

A few nifty weapon ideas alone do not a good game make, and Koei would have been well advised to send this ham-fisted, yawnsome bum-up of a racer back for a bit more turbo charging.

It seems to be, in the end, a victory of quantity over quality – the parts are decent enough, but not to the degree that we can strongly recommend it. If you’re a cheapskate or just fancy a bit of action on the ice, however, it could be worth a look.

A completely mediocre title, its only saving grace being the sheer complexity of its innards.

With so many other exciting games on the horizon, this series as a whole requires a serious overhaul before it truly falls into a pit of mediocrity, something that this latest versions misses by a few inches.

The game is riddled with silly and clumsy flaws and there are numerous holes in the gameplay that make this a distinctly average game in a genre with so many far better alternatives.

A failed experiment.

It’s not bad, but it’s not great either – it’s just plain average. That was good enough for Goldilocks but it sure as hell wasn’t good enough for me. Kreed is nothing more than a distinctly run-of-the-mill title and as a result I’d recommend that you download the demo first before purchasing it.

The concept feels fresh and the idea of using formations of tiny robots to solve puzzles is in some ways inspiring. It’s such a shame that the game's potential was never fully realised and that the overall experience should be spoiled by silly camera problems.

Sadly, a lack of originality alongside somewhat flawed computer opponents, not to mention an almost non-existent soundtrack, leaves LA Duel still trying to catch up to the leaders.

Its main downfall is the fact that Ghost Rider boasts very little originality whatsoever.

The whole thing screams ‘generic Ridge Racer game X’, with its borrowed tracks, borrowed handling and overall lack of depth.

The poor loading times make the player wish he was stuck in a jungle, at least then he would have a machete to take out his frustrations with.

The worst part of this game is getting around the hospital. Think track and groove. To get from triage to trauma 1 means a long walk, and a pretty standard route every time – you'd think there'd be a quick skip feature, but it's not there.

With its limited playtime and a superfluously slapped-on storyline serving only to hinder the gameplay, Colosseum can only be a hit amongst subligaculum enthusiasts, likely occupying a special place alongside such gems as Conan or He-man: Masters of the Universe.

In an odd way Chris Sawyer's latest creation is a victim of the very sub-genre he accidentally created, that of the cynical "tycoon' cash-in - from "Zoo Tycoon" to "Casino Empire." Perhaps a better title for Locomotion might have been "Chris Sawyer's Tycoon Tycoon."

What started off very promising ended up taking a bit of a nosedive – it doesn’t do anything better than the games it draws from.

If you can get over the fact that it’s a stealth game where you can’t be stealthy and the poor viewpoint then there is some entertainment in here.

Ultimately, ROTS is not out-and-out dreadful but it is offensively average.

The RTS genre is already full to the brim with WWII clones and Frontline is nothing spectacularly different from anything we haven’t already seen.

A formula that is very much out of date and bland by today’s standards.

Overall, it offers absolutely nothing new compared to the console version (save for a few extra issues making it slightly inferior), and it is highly unlikely it could serve as means to garner any new fans.

Despite the genuinely lovely mood created by the mid 1930s settings, haunting soundtrack and clever use of lighting, even the train full of believable – if not slightly stereotyped – personalities can’t make up for the lack of care gone into the unrewarding finish of Murder on the Orient Express.

For a fun party game - even one aimed at kids, who let's face it are just witless dwarves who'd be impressed by a cardboard box if it had a picture of a monkey on a skateboard on it - Viva Piñata is horribly oversimplistic, repetitive and just plain lacking in oomph.

The premise for basing a game on one of the stupidest and, at times, funny tv shows of the last few years might seem very sound, but this has missed it's target utterly and I think this is an enormous shame and an opportunity lost.

Tries to roll driving and role-play into a neat little package, but through ham-fisted design and execution the game's faults continually blot out any true sense of immersion within the game's atmosphere.

AvP is a classic example of a production-line movie cash-in.

Yet, for all its inventive environments and distracting gameplay attributes, the borderline nudity in Outlaw Volleyball Remixed, combined with an overabundance of ill-fitting arcade traits sullies the enjoyment well beyond reprieve.

Nothing new for fans of the series and nothing that appeals to gamers, a game that had room for so much potential, sadly falls short in reality.

The game is still plagued by most amateurish of design blunders, being less than adequate in every aspect save for its "depth" (and even that is put to shame by most of the stat-based Nippon Ichi titles released in the past few years).

We've got a complete duffer dressed up in some genuinely half-decent bling.

Don’t bother buying this game, it's nothing you haven't seen before.

Trials of Obi-Wan doesn’t lay out any new framework for player cooperation, competition or any kind of interaction apart from grouping to kill a tougher opponent, and it fails at bringing real immersion in the Star Wars universe to a game where this feeling is already very scarce.

This is a below average, clunky game that I'm knocking an extra few bonus points off of for the sheer stupidity and laziness of the near-bordering-on-racial-profiling plot.

In summary, I just can't recommend this because it has virtually no purpose and is horribly tedious - it says a lot that Sam Fox Strip Poker on the ZX Spectrum from 1986 actually had more of a point to playing it, even if that point was just to see an awful, monochrome drawing of a pair of oversized norks.

While the stealth mechanic is implemented fairly well, and enemy AI at least stands up to initial tests, there’s just far too little excitement throughout the entire course of play.

Kids thrive on new ideas, excitement and imagi-nation, and can easily handle complex situations and scenarios - none of which are on show here. Just because they’re young doesn’t mean they should make do with a bland, unimaginative, unchal-lenging and in parts quite shoddily finished effort.

It has a fantastic score, an excellent cast and some genuinely good ideas, but its inability to find balance between narration and game, along with poor execution, means that this is one purple headed monster you won’t want to be playing with.

It’s a mystery how two such very different games manage to share so many things in common. In away it’s almost a relief that Maximum Impact 2 is so poor, as it allows XI to bask in its own glory, an example of how the 2D fighting genre isn’t dead and hopefully an opportunity for younger gamers to appreciate the concept of gameplay being greater than eye-candy.

The graphics are shocking, the sound does little to add to the experience, the storyline is mediocre and the controls are unfriendly.

Kazook is nothing but a host of buzzwords and heavily stereotyped characters mashed clumsily together with unoriginal games that quickly plummet into a repetitive tedium.

The humour is immature and unfunny to anyone over the age of 13 (which negates the game's 15+ age rating). The tennis is frustrating and flawed, and simply not up to the standards of the best of the genre.

Midnight Nowhere has the worst box art ever. Fact. That’s a stone cold, hard as nails fact. No getting around it, this box art is simply appalling. From the pathetic background picture to the cheap Photoshop job done on the text, it reeks.

The bitter irony of this game is that, despite the purpose of videogames being to relieve one from boredom, this one will actually drive you further into the depths of tedium.

At its worst, Scarface is a clumsy, angst ridden and self indulgent idea with a game tacked on as an afterthought. At it’s best, it is tired, clichéd and derivative.

Metal Heart: it’s like that funny looking pastry next to the apple Danish that looks delicious but I’m sure as hell not eating it!

I'll have to either return to watching paint dry or tuning in for Celebrity Big Brother…I think I'll opt for the paint, it's far more entertaining.

Here’s a one word review – crap.

This is an absolutely diabolical game, a bloated, leaden, enjoyment-free shambles which Sonic Team should be ashamed to have their name on and you should under no circumstances part with any money for. The only way it could have been any worse is if a representative from Sega had put an actual dead hedgehog in every box.

Mission objectives are the standard “find this” and “hit switch” variety and almost feel like an afterthought to break up the mindless slaughter.

Aura 2 is terrible and I have no sympathy for it – Telltale Games have shown us with Sam & Max that you can still produce funny, clever, well designed and playable adventure games on a very low budget.

I could go on and on about the other dreadful aspects of this game - the fact that there is virtually zero replay value because once you've solved the puzzles they never change, or the stupid setup that has speech subtitles appearing OVER parts of the screen you need to see to perform actions at some points - but I really can't be bothered.

Though it boasts a whole host of different modes in both the single and multiplayer game, as well as a variety of extras, including the ability to watch the two previously released music videos as many times as is necessary, in general it all feels far too much like it’s been thrown together in an attempt to squeeze the final drop of milk from the long dead and buried Crazy Frog cash cow.

This game is so flawed, so monotonous and deathly, deathly dull that I'm struggling to think of any reason whatsoever to waste your time and money on it.

My biggest problem with this game is the sheer fact that the “Thoroughly modern storyline” is anything but. In fact it is as about as exciting as a show about painting fences and watching them dry and is as easy to follow as tracking a goldfish in the pacific.

An utter disgrace. It’s tedious, blatantly made on a zero budget with zero effort, and consequently is about as much fun as spending a day transcribing random pages from the phone book.

A dull and unimaginative affair and if you are unfortunate enough to receive this as a gift, you should start thinking about what you did to offend the person who gave it to you.

Most games are labours of love that many people have obviously spent a lot of time on. Patriots, however, feels like it was made in an afternoon by three bored computer science students. Please avoid this.

And by God, when I find whoever told Vivendi about Fight Club and convinced them to make a game out of it, I’ll run their scrotum through a cheese grater.