The game may not have a huge amount of depth, but its clear a great deal of care and attention has gone in to making it as polished and as faithful to the subject matter as possible, from the colourful voiced menus to the dazzling special effects and cinematic camera cuts.

If you’re a dedicated enough player to have a nicely customised character with a reasonably full tech tree, or even just someone who enjoys a weekly dose of almost-massively multiplayer sci-fi FPS gaming without the monthly fees, the decision to get hold of Northern Strike will be an easy one to make.

Don’t expect it to raise your IQ, but do expect it to kick off a long, long line in copycat titles.

The multiplayer really does save this latest Final Fantasy game from suffering the indignity of a bad score due to incompetent AI.

The trouble is it’s not especially outstanding either, and lacks the hook enjoyed by the likes of the Tetris or Bust-a-Move games.

The real downfall for the game is that there simply isn’t enough content in Rayman: Raving Rabbids to keep you interested for a great deal of time.

There’s no getting away from the fact that FlatOut 2 is damned good fun, and will bring you back to the days of Destruction Derby and its ilk. However, as much as we appreciate the tweaks – and that’s really all they are – to the first game, there are still a few too many fundamental flaws which bring out a wail of frustration or a tut as you consider how easily certain annoyances could have been avoided.

Treyarch have done a commendable job with the single-player in such a tough development cycle, that just managing to make a multiplayer mode that improves upon Finest Hour's is a fantastic achievement.

It offers that shallow kind of fun that plays on the novelty of the experience rather than anything else. The game is undeniably well-polished, but the longevity value is a bit questionable for anything other than hardcore Star Wars fans.

Legends does absolutely nothing to advance a series which admittedly doesn’t really need advancing, but carries with it the finest selection of tracks since "SingStar ‘80s."

It’s not trying to be particularly clever, but what it does it does very well and when the political and economic side of things starts to affect how you play you will find yourself in a very immersive world that will surprise you and keep on doing so.

This game will probably appeal to people who bought the first, if only to continue the story.

It may not be the most technically accomplished game to have graced our screens, but the plain and simple fact is that it's so much fun to play, it's almost indescribable.

Surely everybody knows the score by now: EA ever so slightly update FIFA. It gets new stats, new players, new kits and slightly better graphics whilst remaining pretty much the same game it always has been.

Scarface the game is not a classic befitting of the film, but it's an edgy, uncompromising, sometimes humorous and overall positive offering, which makes the blatant cadging from a superior game series just a bit more forgivable.

At least if you do take in everything the game has to offer on the first sitting, you’ll easily feel like you’ve had a fulfilling experience, but unlike a GTA game, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll come back for more once you’ve finished.

If Command & Conquer’s 45 minute matches are too meaty for you, or World In Conflict’s system specs too demanding, then Multiwinia may be the lean and achingly stylish RTS you’re looking for.

If you're a Penny Arcade fan then Episode One is an enjoyable if overpriced and short-lived experience.

The pounding soundtrack, the huge campaigns and the four different approaches with each side you control will certainly make this one to keep the midnight oil burning for strategy gamers.

The amount of content and the price point is just on the right side of comfortable, with the story trading ambition for authenticity. As a result, this first game can be called 'pretty good', but it’s still a little short on awesomeness.

What they have done is filled a gap in the current console market we didn’t even know was there. They have made a video game that is an essential purchase for anybody interested in arcade shooters. It’s outstandingly good fun for the first weekend or so that it will take to peek at what it has to offer, and it’ll be outstandingly good fun for the next couple of years when you dip into it from time to time in order to have a breather from "Gears of War 5" or some other interactive movie.

The humour from the original game returns in full flow, too. A lot of the dialogue is laugh out loud funny. [JPN Import]

That said, this collection of safe, well known chart singles from the past four decades is sure to go down well at parties, and if you’re canny you can pick it up for less than £20, making it actually pretty good value, relatively speaking.

If you’re looking for an extremely cutthroat head-to-head mode then you should certainly take a look.

The Ship is a fresh and different slant on multiplayer death-matching; one not dependant on speed of reflexes and advanced techniques. It’s fun and innovative – something that some of the big name games dominating the charts seem to forget about every so often.

It scores well in all areas, but the inclusion of StarForce will put a lot of people off. Note to Monte Cristo: Seriously, guys, don’t use StarForce on one of your products again. Ever.

Wario Ware is a fun game, but above anything else it's a simple one.

In the end, Destroy All Humans! just doesn't provide good value for money, and that's something the developers seem to have lost sight of.

Race Driver: Create & Race is an extremely well assembled racer which falls short of excellence thanks to its handling style falling squarely between two stools, and the niggles relating to the opponent AI and graphical in-game presentation.

Overlord won’t keep you coming back and again for more, but it’s a satisfying, amusing experience that’s fairly unusual in today’s games industry, even if it isn’t quite the bad boy it wants to be.

It’s accessible, addictive, and an excellent tech-demo for the Wii-mote, not to mention an obvious choice to whip out when you want to show off your new purchase.

While it undoubtedly falls short in certain key areas – the imperfect controls, the repetitive side missions, the slightly bland engine... – it will certainly be more than adequate for any Spidey fan feeling the need for some web-slinging.

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.

As a non-serious racing game that manages to combine Wipeout and Burnout in carting form, Jak X has a lot to offer – at least if you don’t already own a dozen or so such games.

To Avalanche Software's credit, The Great Juju Challenge represents a valid step towards a final acclimatisation.

It's too short, too easy, way too repetitive, and the level design is left wanting.

A huge, lazy and sometimes glitchy disappointment of a game. The character progression really doesn’t provide a strong enough excuse to keep playing after the initial joy of the combat has dissipated, and the number of times you find yourself going through the same old motions during missions smacks of padding of a magnitude normally associated with the corpulent Don.

It's a violent, cinematic and mature experience that will keep you hooked, even if the characters do use the word 'f..k' like they’re in a Tarantino film.

Area 51 is a good solid shooter with a decent storyline and rather nice graphics for a PS2 game.

To Avalanche Software's credit, The Great Juju Challenge represents a valid step towards a final acclimatisation.

It doesn’t look as good as it could quite easily have done, and nowhere near enough progression from the first title has been made to justify it being referred to as a sequel. However, the engine is still solid enough to provide an enjoyable and often blister-inducing game of tennis.

This is the Xbox 360 dammit, show it some respect and put some effort into your ports people.

Worms feels more dumbed down than watered down, and 800 points is a lot for the novelty of playing an old game in HD. Still, if you buy it, people will most certainly come out to play, and ultimately the gameplay transcends the rather sparse contents.

Episode Two is still thoroughly ridiculous and amusing, but compared to the first episode it pales, feeling much more like a stop-gap than a fully-fledged follow-up.

Port Royale 2 is certainly a game of two halves – on the one hand, there’s a dull and tedious economic engine that could suck the life blood out of many gamers quicker than Dracula with a busty virgin. But on the other hand, there’s the engrossing and open-ended combat system that allows you to carve out a career as a buccaneer.

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.

With more characters than anyone could possibly master in one lifetime and plenty of variety in the form of Motor Kombat (we’re still laughing after playing this) and the Konquest adventure mode, not to mention the scary number of unlockables to be found, it’s enough to make you start daydreaming at what they could do on the next gen consoles.

What it lacks in overall content it makes up for by having damned enjoyable and addictive gameplay and enough variations on a theme for the game to last much longer than the four or so hours it takes to complete the main mode.

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.

The game’s saving grace is the entertaining Mission mode, which adds some much needed longevity to proceedings, with plenty of tasks to complete for more ryo.

While more linear than the likes of the excellent Fahrenheit, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is compelling enough to maintain your interest through to the conclusion, which itself is disappointing since the game comes to and end too quickly and fails to match the quality of the remainder of the story.

In terms of overall content, TrackMania DS does a pretty good job of mimicking the PC version.

Anyone who has played through FEAR will probably have been starting to tire of the dark and increasingly familiar locations by the time they reached the final (and slightly clunky) scenes of exposition, so a couple more evening’s worth of the same thing is unlikely to appeal to anyone who’s after something more.

Evil Genius is a flawed strategy title very much in the Dungeon Keeper mould, but that doesn’t mean there’s no fun to be had. It’s certainly entertaining enough to keep you playing, but the numerous faults do serve to irk throughout, which ultimately strips away some of the pleasure.

With the exploration element falling short of usual standards in terms of both control and interesting things to do, the combat stands out as being a real saviour of the game, and you can even go head-to-head with a friend.

All told, even with the addition of unlockable race and time trial modes, Pursuit Force is actually a very short game. Certainly it is if you give up due to frustration (we wouldn’t blame you), but even if you spend ten hours completing, about eight of those hours will be failed attempts.

For anyone with the inclination to be educated in how games used to consist of pure gameplay magic, or for those who wish to revisit their gaming pasts, Taito Legends is a superior collection of titles, some of which are truly classics in the absolute sense of the word.

Predictably Savage 2 has its detractors as well as its supporters, but there’s no denying that there’s absolutely no other game series out there that does what it does.

You’d expect the first of a trilogy to be the most novel and at least as good as future instalments, but in this case we’re really hoping for a greater effort for the next outing. It’s worth noting that there’s no multiplayer and little replayability, but a Steam version of the original SiN has been bundled with it as a sort of bribe.

Sometimes it’s too complex and sometimes it leaves you feeling hopelessly powerless over certain situations, but these facts are more of an inconvenience and don’t significantly affect your chances of success.

It’s a full blown advert for anyone doubting the need to upgrade and a serious slur on the series’ newfound "Unlimited" take on the racer.

Every step of the way during Folklore, it’s as though developers Game Republic have been afraid of experimenting with the capabilities of the next-gen, sticking rigidly to formulas that were outdated and poor on the PS2.

Balance and a few physics issues aside, guns are really satisfying to shoot, and the vehicles – including tanks, helicopters and planes – are great to take a joyride in.

If this Mercury was put into a thermometer, it would be floating just above “lukewarm”.

The magnificence of rolling around, attaching yourself to everything that moves or doesn’t move is lost on you so called gamers, too afraid of the words of us game journalists to buy something unique, entertaining and insanely brilliant as this. Even if it isn’t great on PSP.

Scarface the game is not a classic befitting of the film, but it’s an edgy, uncompromising, sometimes humorous and overall positive offering, which makes the blatant cadging from a superior game series just a bit more forgivable.

Vice City fans might have fun with the game for a while, returning to familiar haunts one last time, but ultimately Vice City Stories is a great handheld game through and through, and this PS2 port does little more than emphasise the difference between the formats.

Yet no matter how straightforward Still Life is and how simple it looks, it’s incredibly easy to fall for. Aside from a few unnecessary inflections and misplaced accents here and there, the storytelling and voice acting is superb.

Featuring jumping, gliding, twatting things with sticks, and bucket loads of what some would call "wit", this game has it all.

What the series needs is not useless gimmicks and badly rehashed game mechanics, but good, old-fashioned racing fun. We don't need customisable bells and whistles; what gamers really want is a Need for Speed that uses its strengths, and doesn't try to shoe-horn in its weaknesses for the sake of bullet points on a press release.

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.

The terrible music and pointless battle animation do nothing to help out what is already a well balanced card game.

Even though it has open-ended free roaming aspects, it feels far more like a short linear game supplemented by hidden areas and bonus missions.

While it undoubtedly falls short in certain key areas – the imperfect controls, the repetitive side missions, the slightly bland engine... – it will certainly be more than adequate for any Spidey fan feeling the need for some web-slinging.

If you’re not offended by constant references to burritos, fajitas and, erm, chickens, then Chile Con Carnage does demonstrate how a third-person shooter can be fun on the PSP in spite of its controller deficiencies.

An unfortunately aimless and inadequate sequel: a game that somehow manages to improve many areas but makes others worse in the process.

Pokemon Link may well fall short in several key areas – most notably with the lack of play options – but on the whole, it’s actually a fairly pleasing puzzler with all the right ingredients to keep you engaged for a decent period.

Yes, technically it’s a port of FlatOut 2, and a pretty belated one at that, but just because it’s the least visually impressive version of the game doesn’t make it the least technically accomplished.

The story is derivative, the aliens are clichéd and stupid and the gameplay is pretty bog standard for the most part.

Unlike the innovative "Rainbow Six 3," Lockdown doesn't introduce a great deal new to the franchise aside from some miscellaneous aesthetic improvements.

A Vampyre Story is clearly a labour of love, although whether that’s a love lost on you will be down to how accepting you can be of what is for all intents and purposes a point-and-click adventure styled after those of the early to mid nineties.

We’ve also learned that its d-pad isn’t kind to the thumb when playing beat ‘em ups.

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.

At less than £1 a game, there’s plenty of opportunity to get your money’s worth, although don’t expect to be bowled over by the gameplay – this is still strictly a package for nostalgics and those with a keen interest in gaming’s history, in the books for which Capcom certainly deserves a second chapter.

The level of depth and historical accuracy is not going to sit easy with most gamers, but if you consider yourself a war-gamer or even a historian then this has your name written all over it.

There isn’t anything to say about the multiplayer mode apart from “avoid”. Single player though is still good fun, and perhaps more importantly it is simple, which should help it appeal to the masses who can look past the sickeningly cute graphics and sounds.

Formula One Championship Edition is a weak debut for F1 on PS3, trying to hide its complete lack of progress and innovation behind a high-def exterior; but it’s not all bad.

No game can claim to be as visually and aurally stunning as Killer7. There has been no video game as heavily and expressively stylised before, with the beautiful, cel-shaded visuals forming an integral part of the game, rather than a back of the box bullet point.

In the end, Destroy All Humans! just doesn’t provide good value for money, and that’s something the developers seem to have lost sight of.

Epic in places, bland in others, Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony is certainly a premier dungeon crawler on the PSP, but doesn’t quite live up to the PC games on which it is based – not that they were ever true classics to begin with.

Solid at its core and deft in attack, Genji is still a swipe or two away from being something seriously special.

The irony is, despite Meteos: Disney Magic being an inferior update, it’ll probably sell more purely due to the fact that the Disney licence is there. The fact that said licence has been wasted is hugely disappointing, as is the mishandling of some of the updates to the thankfully still-good gameplay.

We wonder if anyone’s working on software to increase the size of other parts of one’s body. Now there’s a product that’d make serious money…

What the series needs is not useless gimmicks and badly rehashed game mechanics, but good, old-fashioned racing fun. We don’t need customisable bells and whistles; what gamers really want is a Need for Speed that uses its strengths, and doesn’t try to shoe-horn in its weaknesses for the sake of bullet points on a press release.

There’s nothing of note here – nothing thrilling or stirring, or any part fuelled with even a hint of passion for the sport it wants to portray. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Offers neither the palm-moistening, heart-racing action of a really great arcade racer, nor the challenge and satisfying controls of a decent simulation. It seems that Namco has seriously misjudged the level of challenge in the game.

Still, not bad when you consider it'd cost you the same to get a GBA cartridge with just one NES game on it, and what price nostalgia, eh?

While it undoubtedly falls short in certain key areas – the imperfect controls, the repetitive side missions, the slightly bland engine... – it will certainly be more than adequate for any Spidey fan feeling the need for some web-slinging.