For someone who has nothing planned for a weekend, this is a fun thrill-ride with cinematic action that delivers on many levels.

As something built for the fans, you can’t really fault it. It’s the best guitar game out there at the moment, and anything coming after this in terms of band specific titles has a high benchmark to be measured against.

You know, it’s not the end of the world, but it seems aimed squarely at people who have either never driven a car or like the cut of Vin’s jib. I’m neither, so I found it a difficult thing to appreciate in any way, shape or form. It’s too easy, too simple, too contrived. People who demand very little from their time on a game might disagree.

It looks good – the game world and the models fighting in it, despite some lacklustre opening cutscenes – but the means to get anything done is too painful to recommend. This has been, without a doubt, one of the times I found it hard to face going back again for another go. Which is a shame, because how this game design went through Creative Assembly’s processes and came out the other end mystifies me, and on that basis, this is almost impossible to recommend.

If you were a fan, even if you haven’t been in a decade, this should provide enough smiling moments to make it worth a look and then a trade in. It’s worth the investment is you know the origins of the WWE franchise. On the other hand, if you’re a stalwart of the wrestling genre on consoles then there are other, more rewarding, games to invest your time and piledrivers on.

A half decent storyline and inspired source material do little to conceal the miserable effort Weapons of Fate turns out to be. This is not primetime playing or even pastime stuff, its B-side gaming best left on its own to die an unimportant death. Fans of the movie or the cult comic series by Mark Millar may want to try it, but approach with caution.

PES fans may get a lot from this as they’ll selectively ignore some of the glaring issues, but if you’re only going to buy one football game this year, make sure it’s FIFA.

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a monster, multi faceted game on a mini-system. It is as well designed as a game could be, makes wonderful use of the system it is for and is by far and away (and I mean very far away) the best game I have played on the DS.

Just remember: when possible, aim for the head (if it has one); don’t be afraid to run like a little girl; and this being a Resident Evil game, expect everything living to mutate horribly with the expressed purpose of using your internal organs as a hat. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

That’s not to say it’s a poor game, because if you’re one of the following: a massive Halo fan; someone who needs to learn how to play an RTS; or you’re under 10 years of age, then this would be an awesome game to play, I’m sure. And although it’s a solid release, stick it beside some of the other RTS titles out there, and it just doesn’t have the depth.

Provided you have some patience, and a computer with enough horsepower to run it, the game is addictive, rewarding and a lot of fun. It would be nice to see Creative Assembly support this title following release, particularly given how much “character” Empire has. A few bug fixes and overhauls could turn this into one for the ages.

One of the weakest Clancy games to date, although not because it’s broken in any way, it’s just so pedestrian it never grabs the gamer like most of the other titles in this stable. And, I know, it’s not a flight sim. What it is though is a middle-of-the-road arcade game.

Drop dead gorgeous visuals and Guerrilla getting adventurous with the multiplayer makes this one of the must-play games on the PS3.

Goddamn if I don’t look back at the time I spent on it and grin. It’s significantly longer than you’d imagine too, with perhaps 15 hours game time if you try and challenge yourself a little bit and put it on Hard. So really, what more can you ask for – reasonable physics, good soundtrack, loads of gaming, multiplayer, replayability? Believe me, nobody is as surprised as I am by that sentence. But I tell you, this is worth a go.

Relic’s last few titles have been a triumph, and there were high hopes for Dawn of War II. At the end of the day, it just doesn’t quite measure up to the previous iterations of the series or Company of Heroes. Relic are capable as ever at implementing some thoughtful and well-designed game mechanics, but the campaign design and multiplayer balance are both severely lacking.

While it’s a little buggy in places, and even though Capcom have not acknowledged the existence of a third dimension, there’s nothing wrong with SF4 that cannot be quickly patched out, and even the most distractible of gamers will find it hard to put the controller down for long.

It might weigh in at a massive 1.78Gb of a download, but the sheer volume of new content is the reason why. The Lost and Damned has set a new benchmark for the quality of downloadable content and other developers take note. Two or three hours game time in an unrelated zone hardly comes close to matching this. Quite simply, anyone who enjoyed GTA IV should make downloading this their highest priority.

Although this doesn’t lead from the front in the horror genre any longer, it’s still a competent shooter that always entertains but never taxes the player's intelligence.

It may be out of the question if you’ve got a PC and have MAME, where I’m sure all these games are available for free, but if you’ve got the cash and the memories, then this can provide a lot of what games used to be all about – fun.

House of the Dead: Overkill may be a bit short on content but it more than makes up for it by achieving exactly what it set out to do, supplying a gruesome blood splattered shoot’em up, with its tongue firmly in its rotted cheek. Now if only I could import some of the other Wii characters in to replace the mutants.

While it may only be a hack and slash, button mashing experience at its core, the art work, gore factor and voice acting means that for those who allow themselves to ignore the simplicity of its combat, and the usual problems like camera angles that games like this are burdened with, it's a refreshing and entertaining experience.

Grinding and flips have never been so much like the real thing, and despite being rather complex in the controls department, most of the time, it always comes off.

Lord of the Rings: Conquest follows in the same tradition of so many other games based on Tolkien’s world: full of promise but lacking in execution.

The Prince’s debut on the PS3 and 360 may be impressive, but changes in the formula mean that it’s not going to appeal to everyone.

From a gaming era that you would think was long forgotten comes a remake of one of the best RPG games ever to be released, now available on the DS, and a must play.

Sonic Unleashed brings the SEGA icon to the 360 and although there should be masses looking to get a handle on it, it quickly becomes apparent that technology has left our little hedgehog behind.

I think there is still life left in the Tomb Raider franchise, but rather than working on the unimportant storyline, Eidos would do well to work on the controls and camera angles if this series is going to survive. In a day when everything is about co-operative and multiplayer gaming, you can't just rehash out the same old game over and over and hope the fanbase won't dwindle.

A fun exercise that needs continual updating to keep making it work.