For the price, it's an admirable effort. Expedition mode alone will keep you occupied long after Euro 2012 is over.

In short, if you own the original or a similar game go buy a copy you'll love it. Everyone else should keep their sanity by going out, buying a good book and reading it.

Until someone can come up with better controls, more interaction at key gameplay points and still keep a rugby game playable, rugby fans will have to struggle through with what's available. The only other option is to make rugby like football, so simple that anyone can pick it up in 2 seconds, but I hope that day never comes, you have to separate the men from the boys right ;).

It has a bad sci-fi fascination to it, assisted by some excellent graphics, and kept me involved like a Sunday afternoon serving of "Star Gate."

ACE Team’s mastery of visual imagery finds a welcome home in solid Roguelike(like) elements and capable, cancel-heavy Fighting mechanics. Abyss Odyssey is their most impressive all-round title to date.

The weakest part of BioShock Infinite in four unremarkable wave-combat arenas.

I hope that, when episode two launches, I'll be bemoaning my own idiocy and falling over myself to award the complete game a much higher score. For now, though, I'm playing it safe: until I know how the whole thing plays out, my recommendation is guarded.

I would have given Battlefront II a strong recommendation if it had infrastructure mode (Internet) online multiplayer but unfortunately it doesn’t which is a show-stopper, especially when you consider the retail price of the game.

An enjoyable pirate adventure for those who can tolerate its innumerable flaws.

If there’s a redeeming factor to the game, it’s that it’s a bargain at £19.99, considering you get the original Chaos League too. If you like your sports games with a touch of evil and a pinch of sadism, then you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Clever in oh-so-many ways and almost endlessly replayable but, the level of frustration on offer might pose a health risk to those with blood pressure problems.

It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure – it’s like buying a birthday cake for no real reason and just eating the entire thing by yourself in one sitting. You’ll enjoy yourself more than you have any real right to, but you’ll probably feel a little bit ashamed. That’s Resident Evil 6.

I Am Alive is a brave experiment, and one that works more often than not. In terms of creating tension through a scarcity of resources, creating combat that relies on something other than twitch action, and creating an atmosphere so thick you can taste it, it's a total success. It's a shame that it doesn't do more with all of this, and that the mechanics in question are never really pushed, but if you're interested in spending a few hours with a very unique game possessing a very unique atmosphere then it's certainly worth your while. Even at its absolute worst, it remains... interesting.

World of Warplanes needs fleshing out. In time it could be what arcade flight buffs are after but at the moment it's lacking.

It is, however, a game with truly stunning production values. There's some great animation, fantastic voice acting, and the levels have jaw-dropping visual design. It's also painfully repetitive.

It's a light game but with a lot of entertainment for 800 Microsoft Points, and while you might not play for hours at a trot I daresay you'll keep coming back to it. Burnout Crash doesn't quite have the weight for me to call it a must-have, but it's certainly a must-strongly-consider.

An utterly horrible PC port mars an otherwise very, very average Call of Duty game. Nothing to see here.

The action is predictable, clichéd and, ultimately, unsatisfying. There’s probably a good hour or so of entertaining game play here.

Good-looking and intelligent game with GSOH but bad temper seeks high-caliber players for many hours of fun. Those with high blood pressure or without significant platforming experience need not apply.

If you're looking for an in-depth, engaging experience that rewards practise and team work, and represents a welcome break from the stagnate place the genre has found itself, then you can do a lot worse than Brink. If you're looking for a drop-in/drop-out, ten-minutes-a-night-and-I'm-done shooter then you could do a lot better than Brink.

It’s a confident attempt at tackling the platform genre, but the playing mechanics don’t quite meet the expectations set by the accomplished artwork and graphics.

A decent pool model that tends towards natural-style simulation, let down by several minor annoyances and one crippling problem. It’s a multiplayer-leaning title, and Pure Pool’s PC server troubles mean any online play is currently a non-starter.

A bold mod-turned-full-game with inventive ideas and dubious pacing.

Bruce Campbell was great but, perhaps with a little more time, Crankypants could have done a lot more with this one.

Arrowhead has managed to capture the essence of the original Gauntlet in this fast and fun co-op experience.

Some good moments are suffocated by terrible level design and inept A.I. While a slight improvement over the original, HAWX 2 primarily serves to demonstrate that the series still has a long way to go.

Hatoful Boyfriend’s goofy pigeon dating antics belie a smart, on-tone parody with a moment or two of sincerity.

A fine version of Bejeweled that, as with other games in the series, is a surefire way to see those precious hours tick away.

A combination of a not particularly good puzzle game and a not particularly good platformer, helped out by strong writing and animation.

EA’s most recent effort at representing our spectacled wizard is good enough to please this rabid bunch as well as providing a somewhat entertaining game for the rest of us. Although it may be a little easier than most titles out there.

A sound concept that will attract some space strategy fans but currently lacks long term appeal.

If you like shooting infinite hordes of monsters from a top-down perspective, Crimsonland is one of the best options you have.

Tex Murphy is back, and that's exactly as good – and as bad – as it sounds.

It's inevitably going to be lumped together with other "zombie games" in the minds of some, but it actually does something fresh and unique both with the theme and with the inspirations it pulls together from games as disparate as Another World and Mirror's Edge, and it puts them together with enough aplomb that – for my money – it's certainly worth the asking price.

Gentle RPG systems collide with robust pinball design, triggering a modest gaming jackpot.

The thing that does keep it different is that fact that each character has access to unique weapons and spells, which makes it worthwhile to go through the game with each class of character.

WFaS still has the core of a Mount & Blade title, but it fails to distinguish itself as a standalone game. Everything feels too much like a retread of old territory, and it's questionable whether the addition of guns really benefits the single player combat system. The multiplayer side of things is as excellent as ever, but (Captain mode aside) unless you're eager to roleplay as a 17th Century Swedish musketeer, it makes more sense to just pick up Warband on the cheap and apply a suitable firearms mod.

If you can put up with the visual inconsistencies, then Squad Assault is an okay choice but if not, then you should dig back through your desk drawer and grab one of those "Close Combat" discs for your battle-realistic, WWII RTS fix.

There are much better Men of War games out there. This one is a gruelling quagmire.

And Then There Were None is a pretty solid attempt to revive the long neglected point and click genre with some fiendish puzzles that even hardened wannabe detectives will have a hard time figuring out.

Big guns, big explosions, big waves of enemies, and full co-op support. A bit like a side-scrolling Serious Sam, then, only with more guns and more fishnets.

I wanted a great deal to love this game. X-Com, after all, owned me. UFOA throws few surprises your way, resulting in monotony...The game is good, but with a little more depth and clarity it could have achieved greatness.

Simply a solid, family game that brings yet another TV show to the shiny black box. If you’re a fan then this game is definitely worth adding to your video collection.

A faithful and enjoyable update of an overlooked FPS classic. It won't set the world alight, but Rise of the Triad deserves the attention of anyone who fondly remembers the FPS games of yesteryear or resents the slow hand-holding and cover-taking of recent corridor shooters.

SOCOM: Special Forces was obviously designed to be a more accessible experience than its predcessors, but I suspect this will prove to be a mistake. Long-standing SOCOM fans are likely to protest against the changes to the mechanics, while those new to the series are going to wonder what all the fuss was about.

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China is a wonderful setting for a competent, but fairly unimaginative, 2.5D stealth title. Hopefully this won’t be Shao Jun’s final appearance.

Visually and aurally stunning, and delightfully clever in places, but marred by repetition and frustration.

Wreckateer offers some chaotic catharsis, but it's got too many problems to be easily recommendable.

Cloudberry Kingdom is a very varied, very clever, and very, very hard platformer. It never quite hits the heights its competition does, but then, it's really trying to be a very different game.

ALTAR Interactive has done an admirable job of improving upon UFO: Aftermath and delivering a very deep, fun game. The learning curve is steep, but gamers who like obsessing over details will find rich, rewarding gameplay.

To be blunt, TS2012 is a hard game to score. It's a fearsomely niche title (and I play Paradox strategy games for heaven's sake) with a fanbase who'll be judging it by a completely different set of criteria. To them, the interest may be in how accurately the Horseshoe Curve is represented or the potential for inclusion of their favourite engine. My job is to critique it as a game.

Cheap and fairly entertaining, but Primal Carnage needs to solve some rather large problems before it lives up to its sizeable potential.

Not even an army of laser totting, one eyed martians can save X-Files Resist Or Serve from being confined to gaming mediocrity.

It falls short, sadly. What was a wow in the early 90s is merely pedestrian today.

Resident Evil 6′s main achievement is that it makes me worried about the future of the franchise. I was looking forward to Resident Evil 6, I'm not looking forward to Resident Evil 7.

While more serious in tone than say, Mario Golf, TS isn’t quite a simulation (really, do you normally play golf with a stylus?), but True Swing's interesting controls bring gamers closer to the greens than any other handheld golf title.

Like the redacted CIA documents featured so heavily in the game’s marketing, The Bureau comes across as disjointed, baffling and inconsistent. But moments of clarity may well keep you interested in what lies beneath that faltering surface.

KickBeat isn't going to revolutionise the rhythm-action genre, but it nonetheless provides another perfectly solid, perfectly enjoyable opportunity to get into the flow of your music and have some rhythmic fun.

In a year awash with excellent PC strategy titles, Rise of Venice is stranded on the shores of disappointment. But at least the trade skills it imparts may enable you to swap it for a better game.

There may be no backstory but there's plenty of combat. A solid wave-based space shooter for a bargain price.

Starts out fun but soon becomes a tedious exercise as one 'extreme' jump, boost or corner leads blandly into the next; the lack of variety quickly muting the initial pleasure.

While Honest Hearts didn't quite grab me like Dead Money did, it's another satisfying few hours in a fresh Fallout location. Once you get over Joshua Graham being an actual person rather than a myth, his character is expansive and refreshing (it's rare that to find a religious NPC this nuanced in RPGs), and the hiking trails of Zion make for decent exploration. It definitely favours players who will stray off the guided track though, as those who focus exclusively on the main quests will miss out on some of the add-on's hidden narrative treasures.

An engaging, if niche, trading sim. Hampered by some obtuse user interface choices and unwieldy combat sections.

King Arthur II is less ambitious but more refined than the glorious, sprawling reach of the original. Where that game threw everything into development and didn't seem to care what stuck, King Arthur II has opted to remove (rather than improve) the parts which didn't quite function correctly.

But enthusiasm alone can't cure fatal problems with the flat, tedious gameplay; and while almost everything about Serious Sam Double D sounds and looks fun, it is barely any fun to play at all.

There are flashes of comic genius in Whiplash, but equally as many missed opportunities. While this game is good, it narrowly misses the mark.

May not be the most cutting edge looking shooter around, the PC version could have looked a lot nicer, but it does offer a challenge even if it's a little on the short side compared to other similar titles.

It may have dumbed down the puzzles a bit, but what’s there is a solid lump of gameplay.

A fairly solid space shooter with a few niggles but worth it if you're a fan of the genre.

It's a light game but with a lot of entertainment for 800 Microsoft Points, and while you might not play for hours at a trot I daresay you'll keep coming back to it. Burnout Crash doesn't quite have the weight for me to call it a must-have, but it's certainly a must-strongly-consider.

An ambitious narrative, with some uneven characterisation and halfway successful puzzle design.

Battle Engine Aquila could be cruelly summarised as a poor man’s Yager. It’s fair-to-middling, fun but shallow, and suffers for its missed opportunities.

The sense of speed is exhilarating and winning a race is a cause for celebration. If the multiplayer community grows this could be a title RC fans will spend a lot of time with.

An exhilarating experience and the best new game I’ve played in months.

It's nice to see Dragon Age II content that avoids the pitfalls of its base game, but it's a shame that there isn't more to it.

The spark of a fine idea, extinguished by fussy mechanics, jumbled ambitions and tonal inconsistencies.

A breath of fresh air in the adventure genre. Considering the level of detail that has gone into its design, the exceptional musical score, an overall enjoyable pace, a good story, over 40 hours of gameplay and 2 possible endings, this a title worth owning.

Unrest is a short narrative full of ethical dilemmas, presented through the eyes of an unusually diverse cast of RPG characters. Those choices have an isolated impact, but don’t expect them to alter the story to a radical degree.

If you are sceptical of games that feature co-operative multi-character play, you needn't worry too much; it's handled reasonably well.

Repetitive, basic, and banal.

A simple to play but hard to master strategy game at an absolute bargain price. A must-have for strategy fans.

An intuitive and hectic burn-fest. But it may well cost you some friendships.

Decent flying/shooting action with inertia, humour, and a number of design decisions that combine to provide endless amounts of frustration.

NWAC is a little clunky around the edges and could do with some mission-creation options, but it's worth two tentative periscopes up.

Not exactly the cross-media revolution that was promised, but there's a decent (if flawed) third-person shooter inside this light MMO structure.

Cargo! is a little on the short side (I finished it in five hours and probably could've improved on that), but it delights and surprises at every turn as it propels you through its frankly baffling narrative. Much like Ice-Pick Lodge themselves, you'll never quite be able to predict what it's going to throw at you next.

Beneath the crashes, the clumsy mission design and the comically inconsistent environment lurks a perfectly average stealth adventure.

A sizeable free slice of casual flying.

Only players seeking the gaming equivalent of "easy listening" will derive significant enjoyment from this title.

Like a smoke filled wheel spin, it looks good but it gets you nowhere.

For just over a tenner, I'd say it's absolutely worth a punt.

Well, I certainly had a better time with it than with Serious Sam: Double D (an indie title, like this one, commissioned by Croteam to help promote Serious Sam 3), but the game doesn't quite live up to the potential of its premise.

Despite its shortcomings, SimCity is proving a compelling and absorbing city builder. Given a few months to implement community suggestions this could be everything we had hoped for from this beloved franchise.

Gods Will Be Watching is an interesting and novel little game, but one that's quite horribly flawed in a number of ways.

Wedged between survival horror and arcade shooter - but succeeding at neither - Descent is a poorly designed, camera-hampered end to an already weak trilogy.

Less an endless voyage through the stars, and more a space-bus journey to the shops. If you're intimidated by Civilization this is an reasonable starting place for the 4X genre, but it's not for those seeking a deep or lengthy experience.

By no means an essential purchase, Van Helsing is decidedly better than the average. If you’re into cool moves and lots of action, you’re going to enjoy this. We’d stake our reputations on it.

Unfortunately the game misses the mark on so many issues that gameplay is behind even the current market leaders which are at least 2 years old.