It's quite dreadfully competent, sufficiently more-ish that you're in danger of forgetting that you could do better, like a packet of supermarket brand tortillas.

The last thing the unloved flight combat genre needs is a specimen that sticks to its guns.

It still feels like a budget project, a slice of throwaway fun jury-rigged to a more significant release, but this time there's no Halo 3 to hide behind, and the downsides are too conspicuous to ignore.

In the end, though, there's only so much we can praise an exercise in teaching old dogs old tricks. Forgotten Sands is exactly one step back for one step forward. Let's hope a flying leap is on the way.

There’s nothing broken about Dante’s Inferno, and much that’s enjoyable, but it’s more an act of homage than a game in its own right. Like the shade of the Roman poet Virgil, the Ghost of Sparta keeps Visceral company throughout its underworld adventure, but unlike the former, Kratos casts a very long shadow.

Ultimately your purchasing decision rests on your comfort with the Wii Remote as control method. If you are a die hard SMB professional that truly mastered the Wii Remote and you’re longing for 70 plus levels of challenge, the main game will satisfy that.

The potential is there for a third game to capitalise on the series’ positive features, but until that day, the 40th Day stands as a perfectly competent but ultimately disposable title.

The potential is there for a third game to capitalise on the series’ positive features, but until that day, the 40th Day stands as a perfectly competent but ultimately disposable title.

It’s a good purchase if you loathe intricacy, enjoy reliving foreign policy quandries in sci-fi guise and are eager to get to grips with Cameron’s universe, but the Next Big Thing it most certainly is not.

Darkside Chronicles is a vast improvement on its predecessor and offers the dedicated RE follower an archive of unlockable memories, reading materials and fan service in an especially well-presented package.

Ratchet and Clank might be living on borrowed time, but between the gags and the glitz we’re happy to forgo collecting a little longer.

It’s a graceful, carefully contained experience, heavy on finesse and features but oddly short on competitive spirit.

Drop-in local multiplayer, though a decent laugh on higher difficulty settings, can’t quite save Dead Space: Extraction from solid rental status.

My biggest objection to Arctic Edge is also what I most like about the game: it’s the same old Motorstorm in pocket-sized form, a solid “diet” reissue of a sensationally stupid racer.

Given this and a stab at serious inventiveness, Mini Ninjas might have drawn abreast with LEGO Star Wars, rather than sidling warily around the perimeter of essential purchase.

Never bring a chainsaw bayonet to a game of cloaks and daggers. The new maps are great, but that stealth sequence should have stayed dead.

Bound in Blood is a slow but steady cowboy crowd-pleaser which rides close to the beaten track. An excellent story is left to shoulder much of the entertainment value while the gunplay sits back in the saddle. Never less than competent, but not essential.

Ghostbusters is a good game because it's everything it should have been.

A good tennis game, let down by a frustrating slow campaign and terrible loading times.

An offer we can probably refuse, despite the great script and solid sim-management blueprint.

Ninja Blade is certainly a game with two different sides, but fortunately each side has enough to recommend it - the glamour of the QTEs, the workmanlike derivativeness of the combat - that you can forgive this rather jarring division.

Brainless fun in small doses, but so many spare parts in the long run.

Very much the well turned-out but unremarkable flight sim we first thought it was, despite mid-development flashes of promise.

That most damning of all things - neither memorably awful, nor memorably brilliant, but simply decent. The sureness with which Monolith revisits the original game's themes and dual gameplay structure is commendable, but the spark isn't quite there.

Diehard fans will once again enjoy this title, but for the Sonic franchise, it's another missed opportunity.

An intriguing marriage of direct and indirect control plus a serviceable gather-build-annihilate template don't quite redeem Robocalypse from a sheer lack of substance.

From the off, Shaun White Snowboarding is an easy game to hate, thanks to a combination of counterintuitive controls, broken physics and the fact that it almost refuses to give you any guidance as you learn the basics.

Relentlessly unoriginal but well turned out.

Fracture has staked its reputation on one main mechanic of making the earth move and for that, it doesn't deliver.

Not so much Silent Hill returning home as Silent Hill rooting through its own garbage. A polished but utterly complacent slab of survival horror.

A diverting tactical shooter curbed by ageing design principles, flawed story-telling and run-of-the-mill tech. Easily the best Brothers in Arms title so far, but after three years in development we were expecting something more evolutionary.

Half Val Kilmer, Half Christian Bale, the formula is looking a tad trite and jaded. Too apathetic for many but fans and kids alike will still find its cute and simplistic ways endearing enough.

It's not what I wanted, it's not what I expected and it's fundamentally broken in many different ways. It's a callous cheat of a game, it's shallow, short and has a man doing a crap Darth Vader impression.

Spore was meant to be everything to everyone; casual, hardcore, old, young, fat, thin, ugly, uglier. But it isn't.

A big brash bully of an open world shooter which rarely shines.

If I had the option, though, I'd still prefer to simply buy the songs I like rather than buy the full retail disc.

Wall-E is a much better game than many could have hoped for.

Yep, it's a fun game. Nothing earth-shattering, but more of the same fun and frolics you would associate with a Ratchet and Clank game.

What could have been so good and what - according to the hype - was going to be so great has proven to be nothing more than a complete and total let down, tied together with some decent ideas but coming out as nothing but totally, completely and utterly shonky.

There's no real need for repeat playthroughs, nor will the urge be there once you've finished it the first time. Multiplayer is a great addition, but it surely won't attract the crowds that Halo and CoD consistently pull in, thus making it a (most likely) unfortunate dud.

When it's ripped, forcefully, from its original home and forced into the alien territory of the home console the title just dies on its arse, becomes pointless, and doesn't even raise a smirk. I hate you, Size Matters, I really do.

It's certainly a game that can kill a bit of time between a group of friends, and it's not like there'll be many negative memories associated with the game afterwards, but I just don't feel it's that good.

Good for a laugh, hurts your arms, Ghost Squad is better, Samurai/Dynasty series still haven't convinced me, good god it hurts your arms.