It has some decent ideas and concepts, let down by bad enemy A.I. and very repetitive gameplay.

The game is a giant leap in the wrong direction for the series.

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 really the co-op mode that saves the game from utter mediocrity. Nevertheless, the abject blandness of pretty much every other facet of the game holds it back from being decent enough to purchase.

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.

The genre has moved on in terms of gameplay, presentation and even hardware, leaving Vanguard feeling like a relic from years ago rather than something to whet your appetite for EA’s next effort.

An enjoyable and engrossing game. It’s a little on the short side and it relies a bit too much on the strength of a single gameplay mechanism, but fortunately it’s a mechanism that is fun and that we haven’t really seen before.

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

Newbies may find it a little intimidating to get into, but perseverance brings reward in the shape of an immersive experience that’s about as fun as war gaming can get.

The lacklustre story plus the dated look and feel of Broken World spoil Dungeon Siege II’s reputation a bit.

It may sound bitchy, but the game is stupid in a way very few video games are: a Naruto action-RPG has so much potential, but this can’t even come close to average.

Yet again, the PS2’s outing plays a distant second-fiddle to the more established output of Climax on the 360 and, while graphically Milestone gets a good grunt out of its hardware, those who are eager to take their PS2 for a spin on two wheels will have a hard time choosing between this stunted effort or the ultra conservative Tourist Trophy.

It’s cause is certainly helped by the price tag, relatively low system requirements and the fact you needn’t have even heard of Chrome to enjoy it. Sadly, though, even if the game did take the series to headier heights, it would still be destined to be ignored and forgotten in a world filled with Half-Life 2, Far Cry and so many other top drawer PC first-person shooters.

If you are a fan of action RPGs the by all means give Silverfall a look. It certainly isn’t a bad game, but games like these are an acquired taste and are very difficult to recommend without first referring people to similar and ultimately better alternatives.

As a game it's fairly average, but the presentation is top notch.

The Incredibles will still be an adequate Christmas present to go with the branded action figures, books and random merchandise that children will be finding under their vastly over-decorated artificial trees, even if marginally more effort goes into making a Happy Meal.

Highly stylised, dark and immersive, Manhunt 2 is a study in brutality, depravity and the spiralling descent into madness. In terms of content, it’s no worse than the original, but it’s not really any better, either.

Instead of balancing on the line between arcade game and simulation, the game tries and fails to be both, giving the whole package a strange split personality that does nothing to endear you to it.

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.

For all its faults, 24 is strangely compelling largely due to the snappy story-telling, but non-fans of the show may well disagree.

With such a high investment of time needed in order to see any real gains, it’s more likely to grab the attention of the hard core of MMORPG players.

If you take it at face value and realise that it is a simple game that provides an element of fun especially in 2-player mode you wont be disappointed.

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.

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.

More typical of the PS2 (so knock a point off), but more suited to the Wii – if only for the short-lived novelty value – Heatseeker is definitely a game for the already initiated into the genre.

The strategy gets more complex and the fights more intense, but the one thing you can’t escape in this game is the sense of sameyness that creeps in soon after you’ve completed the introductory missions, from the gameplay, from the environments and from the NPCs that populate the game.

It has to be said though – as a game, LSL is pretty thin. The mini-games are weak and become pretty repetitive. Happily though, the bawdy comedy that plays out while you're going through the motions, especially during the conversations, do make it all worthwhile.

An enjoyable and engrossing game. It’s a little on the short side and it relies a bit too much on the strength of a single gameplay mechanism, but fortunately it’s a mechanism that is fun and that we haven’t really seen before.