Sadly the lack of variety and repetitive nature of what's there does little more than throw the half hearted story telling and horrible voice acting into even sharper relief.

Unfortunately, Frontline: Fields of Thunder offers little in the way of diversity. Not only with it's own linear-nay-similar gameplay, but from the tried and test formula of RTS games of old.

Ultimately, what we have here is collection of mini games that range from the dull to the sublime with unfortunately slightly more emphasis on the former.

Ultimately though the shallow game play means that this is one present that, unlike the puppy, is just for Christmas.

By making the start of the game so poorly balanced and infusing the whole experience with the control scheme from hell, Monte Cristo ensured that it took a certain amount of will power to play through far enough to get to the good bits which surely isn't good enough.

It ticks a number of very basic and previously-defined boxes with unbending efficiency, throwing in a few commendable moments of surprising fun, drenched in the usual superficial fineries (the visuals, recognisable characters, plotlines, set-pieces, et al) with which many an EA game has plied its trade in the past.

Eventually the grind is going to get you.

It's inferior to developer Cing's own Hotel Dusk and occasionally rather dull, but as far as Wii titles of this ilk are concerned, Code: R is your best bet.

It just lacks passion for me. It all feels very, very functional; much like a slice of white bread in fact. You may eat a slice of white bread and there is nothing wrong with it but you would never think it was the best food you had ever eaten; it'd just fill you up until something better came along. Codename: Panzers - Cold War is the white bread of the RTS world. It is perfectly adequate, it'll keep you occupied while there's nothing better to do, but you'd never choose it over the chocolate of the RTS world, Dawn of War 2, or the cake: Empire: Total War.

The models and textures are very low rate, the enemy AI knows only to attack or run and the gameplay - despite having added a couple of additions - is very stale.

It's a sparse game, and after you've sunk about ten hours into it you'll feel suitably empty, too. It's not rewarding, satisfying or endearing.

Despite a genuinely well designed central character and a delightfully surreal sense of humour it's now two failures out of two for the Death Jr series.

With the exception of the combat nearly every part of Saw the Game works in isolation. The visual styling is an excellent reiteration of the sets, and the recreation of the movie ordeals is handled well, including such classics as bobbing for a key in a toilet full for syringes or going swimming in vats of liquefied pigs guts. However, as soon as the player is forced to repeat the trials and traps over and over, down identical grimy corridors, pestered by identical combat instances, the excellent head start is blown and what started as a smartly made, genuinely scary experience degenerates into unimaginative straight-to-DVD splatter, gorily painting by its own repeated numbers.

Superb controls aside, when properly assessed by the FPS genre's merciless yardstick of quality, The Conduit echoes the same linear design disappointments as Resistance: Fall of Man and finds itself languishing uncomfortably close to Turning Point: Fall of Liberty in terms of dour quality.

As a full-price purchase Mini Ninjas is hard to recommend to anyone other than those keen to snap up some easy Achievement Points by rushing headlong and unimpeded through its lacklustre adventure - for which a rental would be best advised.

As it stands this is an interesting development in the struggle to divine a way forward for the blue hedgehog. But unfortunately it's an experience that isn't nearly as much fun as it sounds.

It is cheap and cheerful but it ultimately fails to do itself justice on the PS2.

At the end of it all, Dragon Ball Z has a solid fighting mechanic behind it. The controls make sense and are responsive. However, I always felt that I was missing out by not being a fan of the show.

Weapons of Fate does a perfectly serviceable job in continuing the film's story, delivering decent enough in-game likenesses and equally accomplished voice acting, but the end product just doesn't boast the level of polish we had hoped for.

If there's one thing that pisses me off without exception it's a full-price retail tag slapped shamelessly onto a distinctly half-arsed product. Now there's a quote for the box.

Impressive visuals and physics don't make up for frustrating controls and a sense that the game is lacking a certain congruency. I'd rather be playing one of the old SSX games to be honest.

As a game to stick into your DS and play from time to time, Mini-Land Mayhem will not disappoint. It really does the basics right - very right in fact. Keen puzzle-goers, though, may feel that if it had the charm of Mario and the simple touch controls stripped away, then the game would be a bit too forgettable.

Completists might get a kick out of collecting every last item and Pandorapedia article, but everyone else might find themselves getting very bored, very quickly. Still, as far as movie titles go, you could certainly do a lot worse.

This kind of open-ended, creative gameplay is theoretically what people want "these days", but I think many gamers will be disappointed and not really know what to do with the game. Wii Music has been crippled by a disappointing song selection (mostly nursery rhymes or Nintendo theme tunes) and will probably only appeal to much younger gamers or really musical types.

The whole package fails to do the actually racing justice. You'll be bored of the small number of courses within the first few hours and, unless you have a decent number of friends who own copies, the multiplayer mode won't ever get enough use to make it worthwhile.

It's got some nice touches, like the tiny d-pad mini-games used when tackling booby traps and the authentic 1967 soundtrack, but with the likes of "Call of Duty" and "Day of Defeat" out there, Shellshock is simply too easily forgotten.

You can see the core of a decent game in here if you ignore the problems, albeit one that would be let down by uninspired mission design and a dodgy plot.

SOCOM Confrontation is a game that will get a select few very excited indeed; the unforgiving nature of its hardcore multiplayer action will prove to be exactly what they've been looking forward to. The rest of the gaming masses however can cite the near vertical learning curve, lack of any real multiplayer originality, drab visuals and unfriendly interface as reason not to join the party.