So there you have it – a darts game that offers a fairly miserable experience for non-darts fans, but uses the licence well enough to divert the attention of a fan of the televised sport for ever-so slightly longer.

So there you have it – a darts game that offers a fairly miserable experience for non-darts fans, but uses the licence well enough to divert the attention of a fan of the televised sport for ever-so slightly longer.

This is not a bad diversion for a few hours, but Boing! Docomodake feels like a very short game that could actually have done with exploiting its unique features further. In conclusion, there is still mush-room for improvement.

Shows an obvious fondness by the game’s creators for classic videogames, but that’s not really represented in the gameplay, which has sadly run its course here.

Shows an obvious fondness by the game’s creators for classic videogames, but that’s not really represented in the gameplay, which has sadly run its course here.

Judging by Square-Enix’s immense standards, unbeatable by most developers on their very best day, then Last Remnant is a disappointment. It’s not the epic life consuming RPG we were expecting and falls a long way down the list of top RPG titles for the 360, which is saying something.

If you know your laser flips from your rocket airs and don’t mind enduring a little hand cramp while you train your brain to skate and draw at the same time, then Skate It on the DS packs an impressive simulation of skateboarding.

A game that falls short of expectations. You can see from the early levels and even a few of the later rooms that a lot of really creative ambition and skill was employed in its making, but for whatever reason it’s as though that particular tap of talent was turned to a trickle towards the end. Combined with some control issues that weren’t in the previous two games, Tomb Raider Underworld represents a bit of a downturn for the series.

A game that falls short of expectations. You can see from the early levels and even a few of the later rooms that a lot of really creative ambition and skill was employed in its making, but for whatever reason it’s as though that particular tap of talent was turned to a trickle towards the end. Combined with some control issues that weren’t in the previous two games, Tomb Raider Underworld represents a bit of a downturn for the series.

What Storm of Zehir does best is in bringing a little bit of Forgotten Realms to life without going too over the top on the story.

It’s hard to really dislike Need for Speed Undercover simply because the core game is similar in many ways to the excellent Most Wanted. But it under-aims, underperforms, underachieves and does so while practically throwing a begging bowl at you in the form of purchasable unlocks.

For atmosphere and an authentic Star Wars feel (Clone Wars or otherwise), Jedi Alliance does a good fan service. The gameplay elements aren’t very imaginative or even especially enjoyable when taken in isolation, but overall there are enough different challenges spread out across each level that it’s much less of an issue than in might have been.

Ultimately Clone Wars is a bit of a failure for several reasons, and the fact that it doesn’t do what you’d be forgiven for thinking it should do is just the main one. With disappointing lightsaber controls, the limited gameplay structure, simplistic combat and lack of core audience appeal only provide further excuses not to bother. High expectations or not, Lightsaber Duels doesn’t deliver.

Overall the third Strong Bad episode is more of a Homestar Jogger than a Homestar Runner. Baddest of the Bands lacks the novelty of the first episode and the imaginative gameplay elements of the second, settling into a formula that fans will most likely find mildly enjoyable at best.

Overall the third Strong Bad episode is more of a Homestar Jogger than a Homestar Runner. Baddest of the Bands lacks the novelty of the first episode and the imaginative gameplay elements of the second, settling into a formula that fans will most likely find mildly enjoyable at best.

That the story and dialogues are actually quite good might make the game bearable or even enjoyable to play, but unless you’re very young or don’t play games much there’s really very little to recommend here.

While it’s kind of cool to see a new take on such an old game, the presence of a muddy palette and outdated game mechanics combined with the inexplicable absence of co-op makes Beast Rider forgettable and so much less than it could have been.

While it’s kind of cool to see a new take on such an old game, the presence of a muddy palette and outdated game mechanics combined with the inexplicable absence of co-op makes Beast Rider forgettable and so much less than it could have been.

Prey the Stars is still an imaginative, good looking game that can be enjoyable in short bursts. Single card multiplayer is a definite highlight, online play not so much.

The Crash Bandicoot games seem a little stuck in a rut, and despite some apparent efforts to expand the gameplay, Mind Over Mutant does nothing to pull the series out.

With its slow pacing and detailed puzzles, Rhiannon: Curse of the Four Branches is definitely a game for confirmed adventure fans rather than casual players, but aside from the spookiness factor being somewhat hampered by the low budget aesthetics, the story does a great job of pulling you in thanks to its intimate nature and everyday setting. A minor gem, but a rough one to be sure.

While control frustrations take the edge off the competitive element of the game, it’s still possible to have plenty of fun. Samba de Amigo is part rhythm game, part dancing game and part social game – you tend to feel more silly playing on your own than with others.

As long as you go with the flow, soak up the excellent atmosphere and don’t let yourself get too frustrated by some of the puzzles, there’s a pretty enjoyable adventure to be had.

For some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky will reek of a badly designed game, while for others it will resemble a well designed reality, but for us it’s somewhere in between the two and none the better for it.

The idea behind it is good and there’s a lot of polish in the presentation, but the gameplay is just so shallow and unevolving that it’s really hard to recommend as a full-price purchase.

The idea behind it is good and there’s a lot of polish in the presentation, but the gameplay is just so shallow and unevolving that it’s really hard to recommend as a full-price purchase.

There’s nothing really outstanding or recommendable about the game. Just like the protagonist Capell, the game itself is nice and well intentioned, but a bit dull and hesitant at following things through.

Mercenaries 2 is arguably a bigger and more ambitious game than the original, but it feels less polished and less satisfying.

Mercenaries 2 is arguably a bigger and more ambitious game than the original, but it feels less polished and less satisfying.

It’s worth a shot if a relaxing ball rolling puzzle game sounds like your ideal PSP experience, but it’s unlikely to stay in your active playlist for long.

For the most part it’s an enjoyable if unremarkable shooter, where satisfying gunplay and alien carnage struggle to overcome a shallow plot and quirky controls.

It’s as though no effort has gone into the gameplay beyond what merely works, and little thought has been given into making either the main single player or multiplayer modes fun or worth pursuing.

It’s as though no effort has gone into the gameplay beyond what merely works, and little thought has been given into making either the main single player or multiplayer modes fun or worth pursuing.

It’s mildly entertaining, mildly disappointing, mildly challenging and overall just mild.

A brave but ultimately over-ambitious waste.

As a fairly cheap (fifteen quid) racer, it’ll probably do until Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and floaty-ship-racing-game-beginning-with-W turns up, although the futuristic trappings and weak techno soundtrack do it few favours in terms of comparison to other, better, racers out there.

It’s not that the game doesn’t look great – it does. It’s not that it doesn’t control well – it does. It’s not that it has bugs or camera issues – the camera never presented a problem and, aside from falling through the floor a couple of times, the game ran smoothly. It’s just that this is a short game, and yet still not short enough to stop the gameplay from wearing thin.

It’s not that the game doesn’t look great – it does. It’s not that it doesn’t control well – it does. It’s not that it has bugs or camera issues – the camera never presented a problem and, aside from falling through the floor a couple of times, the game ran smoothly. It’s just that this is a short game, and yet still not short enough to stop the gameplay from wearing thin.

While not a bad game, our overriding feeling while playing Lego Indiana Jones was that we really wanted to play through Lego Star Wars again. The game works, for all its glitches, and will undoubtedly provide a good few hours of co-op fun with a like-minded second player. Nevertheless, the painful fact is that Lego fatigue has set in far sooner than we had expected it to.

While not a bad game, our overriding feeling while playing Lego Indiana Jones was that we really wanted to play through Lego Star Wars again. The game works, for all its glitches, and will undoubtedly provide a good few hours of co-op fun with a like-minded second player. Nevertheless, the painful fact is that Lego fatigue has set in far sooner than we had expected it to.

While not a bad game, our overriding feeling while playing Lego Indiana Jones was that we really wanted to play through Lego Star Wars again. The game works, for all its glitches, and will undoubtedly provide a good few hours of co-op fun with a like-minded second player. Nevertheless, the painful fact is that Lego fatigue has set in far sooner than we had expected it to.

The graphics are worse, joypads are a poor substitute for keyboard and mouse control, online play is laggier and there aren’t enough people playing. And to rub it all in, you can pick the PC version for a good deal cheaper.

The graphics are worse, joypads are a poor substitute for keyboard and mouse control, online play is laggier and there aren’t enough people playing. And to rub it all in, you can pick the PC version for a good deal cheaper.

If you’ve always fancied getting one of those home gym kits that are always in the Argos catalogue and Sunday supplements, then Wii Fit would make an ideal substitute. Without will-power, though, you might want to consider waiting for the inevitable clutch of games to appear that’ll use the potentially excellent balance board in a way that’s just more fun.

Overall, Speed Racer is a very solid F-Zero clone with a few niggles dragging it down. Mainly, it’s the lack of a real sense of speed that disappointed us, which is something we adored about the F-Zero series.

It may offer a richer gameplay experience than Uno, but Lost Cities just doesn’t have the fast, fun and addictive quality of that particular social card game.

Turok is far from a revival of the series. Aside from having dinosaurs and lots of frantic fire-fights, it doesn’t offer a great deal of new stuff or even good stuff for shooter fans.

Battle of the Bands is disappointing in many respects despite the promise held by its central premise.

Actually worse than "Ankh" in many respects.

Teenage Zombies feels a bit like a normal platformer made in a haphazard fashion with slightly dodgy, sluggish gameplay, that has had the whole zombie thing tacked on afterwards in an effort to pretend it was meant to be dodgy, haphazard and sluggish in the first place.

This is by no means a stellar adventure game, being too strict and occasionally lacking atmosphere, but it does some justice to the license and has enough unique elements to make it at least stand out from the rest, if not tower above them as it probably ought to.

Overclocked’s complex and rich setting is ultimately just that – a setting. Too many things let the game down for it to be truly recommendable, like stiff animation, poor audio editing and a lack of insight into your own character’s agenda.

It’s such a shame to see what could have been a splendid old-school RTS with mostly decent presentation (aside from the fact that the camera doesn’t zoom out enough) and three imaginative and well-balanced factions being ruined because of so many niggling problems.

Ultimately Viking: Battle for Asgard is almost a complete waste of Norse mythology. It’s bloody and epic, but the boring, repetitive combat and hours you spend doing un-Vikingly menial tasks leaves a sour taste in the mouth, washed down with a swig of bitter, pointless stealth idiocy.

Ultimately Viking: Battle for Asgard is almost a complete waste of Norse mythology. It’s bloody and epic, but the boring, repetitive combat and hours you spend doing un-Vikingly menial tasks leaves a sour taste in the mouth, washed down with a swig of bitter, pointless stealth idiocy.

It's incredibly hard not to spend hours just wandering about the beautiful rooms that form the foundations of Opoona's play, but it's just a shame that most of the time there's little to do in them.

Every aspect of the game design has been mishandled in some way or another.

There really is no excuse for the workmanlike presentation though – if Sony are going to keep releasing these games, they should at least put something new in them.

Sega Superstars Tennis offers some interesting diversions, but the main meat of the package is lacking the bite it requires to be a great game.

Sega Superstars Tennis offers some interesting diversions, but the main meat of the package is lacking the bite it requires to be a great game.

It’s huge and ambitious, but you run the risk of losing the will to live in the process of playing.

The gameplay is very basic and badly dated and, with all the top-end city building sims out there now, that makes it doomed to failure. With very little in the way of redeeming features, it is only going to have any kind of appeal to the most hardened of Roman history vets – ones who don’t know games very well so won’t know better.

It's an absolute must for any fan of the genre, and whether you think it is value for money or not is purely down to how much you enjoy shooting zombies in the face, again.

At its best, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters is a half-arsed port of a decent PSP game that owners of the handheld should give a try if they can catch it at a reasonable price.

The game is short and sweet but with little to offer any replay value. It’s a mishmash of good ideas that have been thrown together with only some success. It bodes well for a sequel, though.

The game is short and sweet but with little to offer any replay value. It’s a mishmash of good ideas that have been thrown together with only some success. It bodes well for a sequel, though.

To the less than fanatical, the drawn-out story, poor pacing, terrible script, crappy acting, plethora of typos, repetition and badly designed game engine will see to it that the most chilling prospect of The Lost Crown will be the thought of sitting through it.

What is important is the difficulty to distinguish between things you’re supposed to collect and things you’re supposed to avoid, especially when the screen fills with lasers and power ups. Even after several hours of play, dying because of this was fairly common.

When a game is this easy, predictable and limited, hardcore gamers are too busy praying for DS versions of the original Dragon Quest games to be bothered with it.

This could, and indeed should, have been a market leading game, blowing people away with clever tactical shooting action. Instead, it’s flawed and with the exception of the co-op mode, has nothing to make it shine.

This could, and indeed should, have been a market leading game, blowing people away with clever tactical shooting action. Instead, it’s flawed and with the exception of the co-op mode, has nothing to make it shine.

This could, and indeed should, have been a market leading game, blowing people away with clever tactical shooting action. Instead, it’s flawed and with the exception of the co-op mode, has nothing to make it shine.

The bulk of Spiderwick is fuelled by what might be called the game’s ‘action’ sections, where players take on goblins and ogres by mashing just one attack button. These levels are the least inspired and try any motivation the gamer might have, which is unlikely to be great if they haven’t already seen the movie.

Bomberman Land Touch! 2 is something of a glorified update, albeit to an admittedly still enjoyable game that benefits greatly from competitive online play.

Considering the combat by itself is so inelegant, propping it up with a cardboard narrative and banal set-pieces inflicts upon Samurai Warriors: Katana a far more serious wound than any of the in-game arsenal could manage.

Well made and fun for kids newcomers, Boogie Bunnies still sadly amounts to little more than a handy Puzzle Bobble clone for Live Arcade – one that will ultimately be superseded when Taito decides to make the most of its own franchise.

Magnificent, beautiful, well designed, yet cruelly flawed in its structure, Nights: Journey of Dreams is absolutely worth playing. Whether you’d want to pay full price for it or wait a little longer, though, is less of a certainty.

It’s such a shame though to see what could have been a splendid old-school RTS with mostly decent presentation (aside from the fact that the camera doesn’t zoom out enough) and three imaginative and well-balanced factions being wasted on a single player campaign that’s broken, and a multiplayer mode that nobody’s yet playing.

Of course, we wouldn’t change the core gameplay for the world, and we’re glad it hasn’t been messed with here, but more options for tweaking and a few more game-modes wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Kane & Lynch is very much a case of what could have been. With a little more time for polish and tweaking Eidos could have had a game worthy of the hype and its British Academy Video Games Award nomination (which was somehow secured before the game’s release).

So while Ghost Squad is a perfectly reasonable lightgun shooter which only significantly falls short in terms of its length, what really sticks in our collective craw is the price. Asking thirty quid for it would be a piss take at the best of times, but considering the US version is being sold for the same figure in dollars, making it around £15 in real money, that’s quite frankly unacceptable.

We can only really recommend this to long-term fans who will be contented solely with the Arcade mode.

If you’re absolutely desperate to play something like this on your 360, there’s very little else out there.

What we don’t understand is why someone allowed this to soil the reputation of one of the best FPS series of the last generation.

Link’s Crossbow Training does an excellent job of throwing in an entertaining couple of hours to start you off with your brand new peripheral.

With the amount of in game advertising that is all over the place, EA probably don’t need to sell many copies to make enough money to guarantee the next instalment in the franchise. We just hope they make more of that opportunity to evolve the series than they did with this somewhat lacklustre effort.

What we don’t understand is why someone allowed this to soil the reputation of one of the best FPS series of the last generation.

Despite its problems, Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle is still playable on the DS, and fans of the genre looking for some portable point-and-clicking will find themselves with a game to really get stuck into. You’re going to have to forgive a lot of minor annoyances, though.

Kane & Lynch is very much a case of what could have been. With a little more time for polish and tweaking Eidos could have had a game worthy of the hype and its British Academy Video Games Award nomination (which was somehow secured before the game’s release).

Please, THQ, we know you can do decent wrestling games, so stop insulting us with these annual updates to a flawed and bug-riddled game engine.

Kane & Lynch is very much a case of what could have been. With a little more time for polish and tweaking Eidos could have had a game worthy of the hype and its British Academy Video Games Award nomination (which was somehow secured before the game’s release).

It’s just too simplistic to hold the attention of any serious management fan.

King of Fighters XI is more of the same, giving fans exactly what they want and completely ignoring the possibility of opening up the series to new players. It’s perfectly balanced and intricately developed, improving upon its predecessors yet still offering nothing so ‘new’ that could improve its score.

What we don’t understand is why someone allowed this to soil the reputation of one of the best FPS series of the last generation.

The gameplay had the potential to be really quite good, but its limitations – i.e. the interface – seem to be borne of the PSP’s shortcomings, which rather defeats the purpose of this being a handheld game. The best feature of Squad Command we have found is the multiplayer.

The good implementation of the strategy makes up for what would otherwise be a pretty unimaginative and uninspiring game that would at best be described as a homage to a much loved aging genre.

As something new, Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War is familiar but refreshingly new, even if doesn’t exactly work out quite as nicely as Koei probably would have liked.

As something new, Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War is familiar but refreshingly new, even if doesn’t exactly work out quite as nicely as Koei probably would have liked.