Marvel Super Hero Squad: The Infinity Gauntlet is pretty short and very easy, and like any game aimed at the younger market you go in reluctant to pay full price and still come out the other side feeling a bit ripped-off.

While being the first brain training title for the 360, it does little to enhance the genre, or make itself stand out from the portable brain training crowd. However, it does provide a solid test of your mettle, and for the paltry price you could do much, much worse.

At the very beginning of the game the United States President tells Duke Nukem he is a relic from the past. As sad as it seems, perhaps he was right.

A great deal of time devoted to very little gain. Revolution’s lacklustre action RPG gameplay is matched by a nearly complete disregard for building sympathetic characters, who exist to serve an underwhelming narrative. Valkyria Revolution fails on almost every level to recapture the qualities that made its predecessors cult classics.

Harry Potter for Kinect really failed to pull me into the Harry Potter world.

A mixed bag.

The music and dialogue is standard fantasy epic fare, although delivered flawlessly. The locations and graphics are adequate, without being spectacular, and the character models are smooth and serviceable, perhaps a consequence of the game’s online focus.

Minesweeper Flags is a great ‘pick up and play’ live arcade game. The extra mode, content, multiplayer are a welcome addition to the series. Best of all you know what to expect: hours of addictive gameplay and it’s only 400 points.

It doesn’t offer anything new to gamers but maintains the genius story-telling that made the show so successful.

Explorers of Sky is a bizarre mix of child-like presentation with hardcore gameplay mechanics which have long since been abandoned by most other hardcore games. It's simultaneously simple and obtuse, easy and challenging.

With repetitive combat, an item system that doesn’t accommodate the player’s intelligence, A.I. that can be as dumb as a bag of hammers, and small design decisions that feel like they exist to make bullet-points on the back of a box, Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Z is a mechanically tame game that expects little from the player, and respects them just as much.

Like candy, but filled with annoying gameplay choices.

It's repetitive and full of admirable yet ultimately failed experiments, and there are many better titles worthy of your attention.

The sheer volume of content is really good, and the "entry level" program was well pitched for me at my beginner level.

This feels like a waste of time, let alone money.

While a few annoying quirks threaten to get in the way, overall this is definitely more of the same.

All in all, a very average sort of an action-adventure game.

But if I got this for Christmas, I’d be writing Santa a somewhat angry letter, and asking where in the hell my puppy was.

All in all we've got a pretty simple game with very little content and no single player of any substance whatsoever. It's fun enough but it feels pretty expensive at 800 points.

Inversion is at its best when played cooperatively, and the gravity mechanics are built around that fact.

It’s been more than 30 years since the Friday the 13th franchise launched, and nearly 30 since the last game was released. While graphically and technically superior to the 1989 NES game, gamers now have higher standards, and unfortunately Friday the 13th hasn’t lived up to those. A myriad of bugs, server issues, and gameplay glitches plague the summer camp, and at times it feels like Jason isn't the only problem you need to worry about.

PlayStation Move Heroes has attempted to combine certain aspects of the platform, shooter and party game genres without being pigeonholed into any one of them. While the overall effect is a little disjointed, it will still hold plenty of short term appeal for younger gamers, being better looking and more sophisticated than the Buzz Junior-type games they are used to.

Normally we recommend this level of product only to the serious fans of the series but frankly we cannot even bring ourselves to do this. Avoid it.

Frustratingly, there is a perfectly good game lost in there somewhere. It should be a polished, sleek and enjoyable ride. But, the whole things plays like such a rusty old clunker that if you found it on the side of the road, wouldn't even be worth breaking up and selling for spare parts.

Bound by problems and suffocating great ideas.

Your thumbs will ache in the morning and you may need to fork out a hundred dollars on a new controller but sometimes we all need a bit of cartoonish mayhem in our lives.

Its gameplay is tedious and lacks imagination. Its narrative experience is immature and poorly executed. When it comes to good adventure titles, gamers are spoilt for choice. Deadfall Adventures is just spoilt.

The result is a game that unfortunately showcases why controllers exist in the first place. If you've got a brand new Kinect, stick to the dance and fitness games and avoid this one.

I have had to concede it a good score in terms of value. Although it has much of the polish of a $100+ title, Xotic can be yours for only 800 Microsoft Points. I'm genuinely impressed by the production values for a game in this league. I just don't want to play it again.

If you’re considering this game, stay away. There are better Yu-Gi-Oh! games out there, and there are better digital card games out there. The only reason I can think of to buy this - and there’s no hyperbole here - is for the three exclusive physical cards it comes with.

The grenades take an age to equip and throw. Considering that chucking a grenade the moment before I die has been the only thing to get me close to a positive kill / death ratio through the years, this is a major concern.

Mighty No. 9 began life as one of the most anticipated concepts in recent memory. While there is fun to be had – especially where boss fights are concerned – there is an overall lack of fresh ideas to bring it all to life.

Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles 2 simply repeats a lot of the mistakes of its predecessor and proves that it wasn’t just the escort missions holding Uzumaki Chronicles back: it was an overall flawed design.

Ultimately Hustle Kings VR lacks a lot of polish. The fact that there’s a banner advert for LittleBigPlanet 3 in the background of one of the levels is a perfect example of how this title looks like a rushed effort to be in the VR line-up. Once the novelty of being able to look around wears off, you’re stuck with essentially the exact same experience that the franchise delivered back on the PS3.

Ghost Warrior 2 falls into the trap of trying to be accessible to a wide audience - however the end result is casual and veteran gamers will feel ultimately let down by a complete lack of freedom and unoriginal gameplay.

Mixed bag: On one hand, the vehicular combat is solid. On the other, it's let down by poor mechanics and a slew of unwelcome gameplay additions.

Once you've had your fun with a few nifty control mechanisms, various weapons and other pieces of movieland technology, and seen enough explosions, I'm gonna hazard a guess at you looking around for something else to play.

While the action is fun, there is no way to avoid feeling it's stuck in the past.

The only thing you will find confrontational will be the game itself.

Daylight’s claim to fame is its reported replay value; that no scare will ever be the same twice. While it is technically true that the level geometry does change from playthrough-to-playthrough, the scares certainly see some overlap, and the writing isn’t worth a return visit. There are no nascent ideas in Daylight – just the desperate, flailing attempts to throw every horror cliché at the wall.

Flashback isn’t a particularly long game, clocking in at around 4-5 hours with limited replayability beyond collectibles for completionists. For $12.95 though, that’s a decent amount of playtime; it’s just a shame that it runs out of steam so early and leaves you wanting flashbacks of the first few levels.

A mess. And not just all the blood and body parts.

Disappointing. But, I know a twelve-year-old fan of the series who absolutely loved it - for a couple of hours, at least, until they hit a big difficulty spike and went back to watching Naruto and Deltora Quest on the Cartoon Network. And that's probably how it will end for all of us.

While the cut scenes look good, and Megadeth really gets the adrenaline pumping, the gameplay is too repetitive and buggy.

Still, the game is kind of brilliant. More importantly, and I can't emphasize this enough, when you first play it, or see someone you know play it, it is the funniest thing you will see in your life.

Something that will be eagerly demanded by the children of your household, only for that eagerness to be replaced by boredom and irritation.

The raw ingredients for a fun, fast-paced, high-adrenaline racer that the Kinect sorely needs are all in place. But sadly CrossBoard 7 is ultimately let down by a lack of fine-tuning in the motion-control and gameplay department.

If you're a fan of the series and want a game that delivers, go watch the show while you wait for a different Voltron game - one where you have more control over the super robot than simply pushing buttons on cue.

Naruto Shippuden 3D: The New Era feels like an original DS game with texture filtering, poorly executed 3D, and game breaking motion sensor controls tacked on.

Everything about this game screams "minimal effort".

It is woefully inferior in every important way to almost every MMO ever released - let alone recently.

Disappointing. The sound and graphics seem to be an afterthought. The characters are generic - fantasy characters 101 - all with very basic fight animations. Even the strange little dances they do, when they make it to the other side of the board, hold little interest. There are eight of them, and once you've seen them, that's it.

Dragon Ball Z for Kinect proved to be surprisingly impressive. Graphically it really pulls off the anime to video game jump, and the gameplay matches well by allowing you to play through the original storyline.

Functional. The motion controls work fine and there's very little lag in tracking your movements. The game’s iconic visual style also translates beautifully onto the big screen in high-definition. But what’s completely lacking here is the casual fun and simple addictiveness that made the mobile game such a success. And without that, I’m not sure why this Kinect port of the game exists.

Unique art style, clichéd humour, irritating controls.

Everything they've thrown in says "look what we can do" - and that' a sentiment New Zealanders can probably appreciate more than most.

As a package NFL Tour doesn’t quite cut the mustard. The tour mode is all well and good but there just isn’t enough content behind that to support a game, despite its cheaper retail price, and its enjoyable gameplay.

If you're looking for a decent multi-purpose joystick, buying one with this game isn't an entirely bad idea. The game's not as good as, well, any other flight sim on the platform, but it does have its own charm.

If shooting your balls into the mouths of clowns is your thing then go for it. Otherwise you'd be better off waiting until it's half price, if only to play the addictive Frog Leap.

The biggest issue with gameplay was the autosave feature. We’re all used to autosave these days; the swirling icon that either means you’ve just added something to your character or that presages an encounter. In H:TR the autosave feature also means that the game will freeze for a few seconds. It’s an ugly glitch and one that ruins that feeling I described earlier of dashing from cover and hoping that the patrol won’t see you. It’s a pretty big glitch and I am surprised it hasn’t been patched out yet.

Visually Terminator: Salvation matches the gameplay and is an equally dull affair.

I reviewed this on the Xbox One and, in hindsight, LocoCycle would probably be a better Xbox 360 title. It certainly doesn’t show off any next-gen prowess, so don’t buy this game to show off your new hardware.

It’s a shame that a title seven years in the making could result in something so lackluster. Aliens: Colonial Marines had the foundations of a solid game, involving writers (David Weddle and Bradley Thompson from Battlestar Galactica fame) and a talented artist (Syd Mead from Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron). It even had the right voice talent bringing back Lance Henriksen as a Bishop-model clone...But it appears that the elongated, ‘stop-start’ development ultimately resulted in an inconsistent and disappointing final result.

Could have been so much better, but it's not garbage.

Fans of the films will like the quotes and the general "Jigsaw-ness" of the aural experience but it's so perfunctory even they will have a tough time getting too excited about it.

Sonic Free Riders might look like just another board racing Kinect game, but it's a league above others like CrossBoard 7 in terms of depth and replayability.

As the plodding narrative progresses, these repetitive fighting and stealth tasks grow quickly tedious.

The worst thing about X-Men: Destiny however is the complete lack of any multiplayer whatsoever. A game like this screams for at least 2 player co-op, along the lines of far superior games like X-Men Legends. Even if it's just so you can share your pain with someone else.

The game is great, the Singstar Mic app isn’t.

Sticks to the farm formula and delivers a pretty ordinary game.

Overall Shadow Assault: Tenchu feels as though the developers just wanted to put out an Xbox Live Arcade title for a quick buck, so they threw something together and slapped the Tenchu license on it.

Uninspiring, unpolished, and unnecessary.

Graphically the game would have been very impressive, if it was a launch game for the GameCube.

With workable controls, this could have been a half-decent, low-priced download game. As it stands, however, it's one of the worst games on the platform and one of the worst launch games on any system, ever. Avoid.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted is definitely more engaging as a team effort, and we're not ashamed to admit that a couple of the mini games had us giggling with childish glee.

An average game that doesn't live up to the brilliance of the cartoon.

This sort of gameplay, while not being too terrible with a controller, is still much more suited to a DS stylus or a mouse. When you throw in a lot of repetition amongst objects and a general lack of varied gameplay, Interpol is hardly a game I’d recommend.

Red Bull X-Fighters just doesn't measure up and is therefore destined to disappear without a trace amongst a wealth of other titles.

A great game wrapped in a blanket of bugs.

But if anything is going to distract you from the mangling of classic Bond movies it will be the awful gameplay.

A rental at best, but better we just sweep The Cartel under a sombrero and forget about it.

Not a Megan Fox in sight... and it’s still terrible.

What it comes down to of course is do you like Mahjong? Are you interested in learning it? And would you like to play it online? If you answer yes to these then yes, Funtown Mahjong is well worth a download.

If it was released for free, as a platform to hook people on paid-for DLC, Ridge Racer would be pretty cool. As it stands, at full retail price, it's one of the most preposterously ridiculous and - frankly - offensive attempts at separating a gamer from their money that we've ever seen.

The visuals are decent in Battleship, albeit extremely monotonous, and the controls are solid - but there are just too many negatives in the game to ever appreciate them.

One can only hope that Tony Hawk: Ride marks the end of these pointless bits of plastic, and not the end of the series itself, which surely calls for a more sophisticated makeover.

If, however, you're after something inoffensive to entertain the youngsters without having to explain about death, the birds and the bees or any other adult themes, you could do worse.

The soldiers Ivan’s teamed up with are a bunch of generic - almost cliché - and didn’t add to the story, or help with bosses, making them fairly pointless. However, despite all that, it was fun, and in the end this could have been a great straight up beat ’em up if they had left out the shooter aspect.

A very atmospheric, but unfortunately mediocre rinse-repeat horror title.

It’s a fun title for the kids, and even older gamers may get a bit nostalgic value of their old Hot Wheels cars.

It’s a fun, if shallow, platformer that’s held back by poor design beyond that core hook, a sense of humour that’s crass more often than it is funny, and plenty of bugs.

If you’re a One Piece noob, it’s a 6/10. It plays fine but suffers from a ‘this is for the fans’ attitude. This of course could also be a positive thing, and if you’re a huge fan of the series it’s probably going to be closer to a 7 or even an 8/10.

The gunplay is unimaginative and outwardly unfun.

Some very good writing bumps up the score for this one, but the lazy gameplay decisions make finishing the game a chore.

Unfortunately, the overall polish on the title can only be described as "a quick buff".

The visuals are generally clean and bright, while the audio is made up of your generic menu music, and a series of beeps and tones when instructed to move or perform a certain action.

As the plodding narrative progresses, these repetitive fighting and stealth tasks grow quickly tedious.

The only thing being scared away by the Wayward Manor’s ghost is this reviewer’s patience.