This game is pure, unadulterated, ultra-violent fun, and should perhaps be compulsory for anyone who needs a bit of stress relief in their life, or have an urge to shoot aliens for no other reason than because they can.

This is a game you could think of as real 'summer blockbuster', although this is meant in the best possible way.

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.

Crysis turns out to be a pretty perfect woman. It's beautiful, clever, fun loving, doesn't mind what you get up to and does its very best to keep you happy (it even has the option to turn the volume down). In fact if I wasn't already spoken for I may be getting ready to introduce it to my parents.

As it is - in this unfinished state - Kane & Lynch's all-too obvious lack of Q&A follow through makes it impossible to recommend for anyone other than hardcore shooter fans willing to trawl through hours of mediocrity in return for minutes of unfulfilled promise.

Assassin's Creed arrives as a glorious but flawed masterpiece that deserves to be praised for all that it does so brilliantly, not shamefully criticised for a smattering of minor detractions that never threaten to do anything but temporarily blemish an otherwise glistening gem.

By losing the open city nature of previous games and restricting you to organised events the series has lost a large part of what was fun about it in the first place. Add to that the fact that the driving itself seems to have become horribly broken since last year and suddenly you're left with a game that's relying solely on its image to shift copies.

It is just SimCity Lite, and really provides no new challenge or choices. Of course, I did still enjoy raining a meteor shower on my metropolis - probably a little too much, thanks to the frustration I had built up while playing.

All in all this is essentially a game for fans of the series. Its innovations will mostly go unnoticed by the masses and rightly so as they have been primarily designed to titillate the faithful.

Overall, this is certainly a game that will get the family playing together this yuletide, but it is unlikely to see very much action on into the New Year.

Medal of Honor Heroes 2 is not a bad game in the way that Midway's Hour of Victory is a bad game, but it is most definitely bland, dull, uninteresting, and yet further proof (if any was needed) that EA is still reticent to relinquish its grip on the profit-turning safety of established franchise titles in order to expand upon those mainstay releases with a much-needed infusion of invention and ambition.

AvP:R is an action game that fails spectacularly to doing anything exciting with a license built on the promise of exciting action. Instead it comes off feeling like a shell of a game waiting for someone to come along and add the ideas and fun.

Overall, the game is good for a quick blast of stealth action on the go, but the game is not really deep enough for anything much more.

Galaxy opts for a slow strong confident delivery rather than the showy tricks of its impostors. This may mean it takes a little while before you are really convinced. But, spend a little time and we are sure that you will be coming back again and again, just to be reminded of what it takes to make a great platform game in every sense of the word: running, jumping and exploration.

In actual fact I found this, while admittedly less spectacular, as enjoyable as anything else I've played on the 360. BlackSite never attempts to be innovative, but knows what it does best. A well-oiled working game is ridiculously hard to find these days and, if nothing else, BlackSite is certainly that.

Anyone who is interested in the mythos of Silent Hill will do very well to buy this game, settle back, turn the lights off, and enjoy some good old-fashioned psychological horror.

Despite these few niggles, if you can overlook the moderate repetitiveness of the missions in Bladestorm, and conquer its slightly confusing initial battles, it's an extremely rewarding and fun game.

Unfortunately for Empire Earth III, some very bad AI coupled with terrible path finding, a watered down experience, frustrating battles and terrible use of character speech leads me to suggest that you spend your hard earned cash on one of the finer genre examples of late, such as "Age of Empires 3" or "Supreme Commander."

This is more of a distraction until a proper Wii Sports game appears on the scene. There just isn't enough substance here to keep the committed player coming back for more.

LSW has a certain charm about it that one cannot help but recognise, great for family and friends alike.

Taking it as a whole its blatantly not perfect, in fact it's almost shoddy at times, but there's a nugget of gold inside SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Tactical Strike that shines through bright enough to almost make up for the numerous problems.

The only relation to what Championship Manager used to be and what it is now is the name. All the talent left with Sports Interactive.

It all feels a bit like the fun has been sucked out of this, and a paint-by-numbers rendition of a F.E.A.R game has been put in its place.

Overall the game just has a very mediocre feel about it. It seems a bit like someone just got the basic elements of a point and click adventure game from 10 years ago and assumed that this would do fine.

The single-player is a little short, but the action is relentless and polished to the point of reflection, the multiplayer, meanwhile, will keep you coming back time and again. This is the next-generation. A bona fide masterpiece.

One of the most polished FPS titles I've ever played, it does not redefine the genre but simply shows others how it should be done. An immersive storyline captures the imagination but falls down by being too short.

If Hellgate: London had appeared on shelves with no hype and no known links to past gaming glories then we'd probably be sat here at the end of the review chatting about how it was a bit of an undiscovered gem that fused FPS sensibilities with Diablo-esque loot collection and character customisation to provide a thoroughly enjoyable, if slightly unpolished, experience. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury and the game's high profile throws niggles like the repetitive level design, the often dull quests and the stability issues into harsh relief.

Despite the strong competition of World of Warcraft and Everquest 2, Tabula Rasa manages to add some unique and innovative features to the genre such as the cloning system, and hopefully with a few more patches under its belt (adding extra features); it will be guaranteed a strong player base for many years to come.