The seemingly simple process of having a working camera and an enemy lock-on system has been neglected and as a result we’re left with a ‘nearly’ title – one of those ‘it could have been really good’ situations.

A solid and fun, if not very challenging offering that will appeal to children and casual gamers rather than the seasoned players of adventure games amongst you. The basic cel-shaded visuals and smooth animation gives it a unique style and the story is pretty entertaining along the way.

A great puzzle element, eye grabbing funky visuals and a nice array of bonus features gives a nice sprinkle of longevity for any puzzle fan. Well worth checking out, even if it can be the most unfairly frustrating game ever created at times.

The occasionally dodgy AI, the god-awful music and the camera grumbles make Blitzkrieg 2 feel a little rough around the edges, and when you’re competing against strategy games like THQ’s seminal "Dawn of War," you can’t afford that.

There’s no one title that makes the package an absolute must, but if you want an arcade-perfect (and multiplayer) Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, you’ve come to the right place.

Petroglyph have done a nice little job on expanding what was already a good game. Granted it isn’t the same as all the other RTS games out there, but isn’t that what you want – a little diversity? If the first game left you wanting more, which it certainly did for me, Forces of Corruption will most certainly fill a void in your Star Wars craving.

To call this game pointless would be trite, but it’s unrelentingly shallow and really nothing more than mental chewing gum. Nothing else tastes quite like it, though, and if you have any sense of fun about you, you’re bound to enjoy the goods.

You'll not appreciate the "on-rails" feeling that Killzone provides. You will appreciate the wonderful graphics and score that ' barring the enemy voices ' is one of the best I've heard in a long while.

It is fair to say that I was completely amazed when I booted the PSP up for a quick go, and then realised that I was still playing the damned game four hours later. I can’t reiterate enough, that I never thought that a handheld FPS could work as well as this.

The development team have gone all out in the tension stakes and made the game into one of the most palm-moistening titles available for the Xbox today, but the lack of AI and some incredibly shoddy graphical work takes off a considerable amount of sheen.

It’s well put together, a joy to behold and a marvel to look at, but it’s just a lot of never ending sameness.

The greens play far too slowly, even on the desert courses, and despite the greens being covered in a nicely implemented undulation marker when you come to putt, they are incredibly difficult to judge.

The only issue I have with the package as a whole is the random shoddiness of the emulation. One minute you can play through a section with all guns blazing from every part of the screen and you’ll get bucketloads of slowdown occurring.

If you like ice hockey, then NHL 2k6 delivers the goods – and how. The franchise mode will suck you in for the long haul, and the party games are easy enough to pick up for some multiplayer action.

The level design is regrettably less inspired. Many stages are disappointingly contrived to funnel the player into acting out a fixed, linear solution, precluding creative tactics and diminishing the realism created so well by the visuals.

Gets a final score of 70 simply because the minor changes to the PS2 version have somewhat lowered the quality of the gameplay experience. A lot of the tension has been forceably removed by the anomalies with the lighting system and for a stealth game, if you don't have tension, you don't have much else left to be going on with.

If you liked the "Codename: Panzers" or "Sudden Strike" series, you’ll love Rush for Berlin. It’s a challenging and fun game with some real highlights and nice surprises in most levels.

This game probably won’t win any awards for originality. But even as it is, comic fans will be especially pleased, and it’s more than capable of providing the desired bang you’d expect for your buck.

You'll be simply crying out for more after you've waltzed through the missions on offer in just a few short hours. What you do get for your money however, is a solid multiplayer game and an unfortunately short but immensely fun single player game that is well worth investigating.

Graphical flair is measurable in bucket loads, and the longevity of the title is not in question since multiplayer and Xbox Live modes are included (with both working well). What confuses me is how I can play the game for half an hour, and then be so bored with it that I'm desperate for the match to end, so I can save my progress and do something else.

Technically a poor game, but this is one time when the overall value is greater than the sum of the parts – just.

Scaler was never going to set the gaming world alight, but if you're looking for something to while away a few more of those cold winter hours, you could do much, much worse.

Lazy level design and the inability to die make the game too easy, leave you questioning why you want to carry on, and may even lead you to just not bother completing the game.

Whatever the future may hold though, Fahrenheit is itself a compelling, truly adult adventure of rare literary and filmic qualities, and that’s more than enough to satisfy for now.

A terrible shame and no mistake. Just a little variation in the missions would have been enough to send the game into the upper echelons of greatness. As it stands, you’re looking at a massive amount of style over not a great deal of substance.

An above average game. Most people will love the intense action and gunplay that features so prominently, whilst putting up with the control issues, occasional camera problems and sometimes downright annoying fact at you can complete a mission and feel very proud of yourself, before being told that you failed and that you have to do it all again.

A solid title for the greater part, but is not only flawed, but not massively difficult to beat. However, I'd rather play a game that made me smile for four hours and one that made me frown for twenty.

The single player experience is good enough to practice on before you go into battle with your friends, but the battle itself is where the action is at.

Xtreme Legends is – quite simply – the game that Dynasty Warriors 5 should have been. Some real improvements have been made, and the game is much deeper than it ever has been before.

Despite some putting issues that can be worked around and the fact that the “spin” system just doesn’t seem to work 90% of the time, the game holds up well and provides an involving experience that suits the system down to the ground.

Overall, this is a none too shabby collection. The decision to buy will depend on your desire to have a true arcade version of the games and how sentimentally attached you are to each title.

If you're after a genuinely funny game that features a massive challenge, then if you can overlook its obvious faults, Worms Forts: Under Siege will serve you well. The exploding refrigerators are just a bonus.

But if you are tempted by it’s smooth retro, isometric 16-bit leanings and complex combat-mechanics, then it’s as good as a starting point as any in the Nippon Ichi catalogue.

Indeed, Polarium isn’t so much about your stylus skills, rather your ability to create continuous paths on the screen to change as many blocks to the correct colour in one move as possible.

If you've played and enjoyed other fighting games on the Xbox or any other platform for that matter, but you've never played "Third Strike" then this is well worth a try. The fact that you also get "Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition" and the Street Fighter II animated movie thrown in as part of the deal is purely a bonus.

What surprises me about Top Spin 2 is exactly how accurately it resembles a real game of tennis.

You can’t help but feel that this is the type of game perfectly suited to the DS; inventive, addictive and something quite refreshing – a genre injected with a new lease of life on a new platform. It won’t take you long to complete Another Code, but the nature of the game mechanic will ensure you will enjoy doing so.

A bit of a mixed bag. Astounding presentation, some very clever innovations (such as "Warp Speed" as standard on a 1940's aeroplane) and some very slick flight action is broken up by slowdown and a feeling that you've seen it all before.

It could have been a great game rather than a merely average one if it backed up it's shiny new exterior with some added substance. Expect to be pleased, but don't expect any surprises.

If you have Xbox Live, then let the good times roll and be prepared to get pasted by the world's best players. A lot more could have been added.

Despite the intervention of the US Marines, there are some glaring flaws, which have somehow been overlooked.

If you can get past the delinquent, fiddly menus, then you can play a pretty decent third person stealth ‘em up, which has some ingenious little gimmicks and a decent storyline.

Sometimes, try as you might, you can’t put your finger on what makes a game fun to play, and this is one of those occasions.

The single player experience is good enough to practice on before you go into battle with your friends, but the battle itself is where the action is at.

As a Suikoden game, its lacking something - that sparkle, which could be found in the first two in the series. Suikoden IV may not be quite the Suikoden game we were hoping for, but a decent role-playing adventure none-the-less.

An incredibly sold game. The on-court action is on a par with NBA Live and for the price £19.99, you can’t really go wrong. The atmosphere of the arenas and the passion of the fans is there, the gameplay is there, and a huge chunk of addictiveness is certainly there.

Some things are incredible. Some things are dull. It seems that the game’s good points outweigh the bad though – even if only by a bit.

Technically, the game could be classed as above-average, but no matter how many times you make use of the more-than-adequate control system and your far-too-limited selection of moves to grind your opponent down, they always seem to pop back up and have the amazing ability to pin you without really doing any work beforehand.

Some less "hardcore" players will find themselves frustrated to a fault, as Tails falls into a pit of spikes for the hundredth time, but if you can put up with the heartbreak, harking back to ten years ago can be great fun.

Had Evolution been released as a full price game the short single-player campaign would have been a huge disappointment, but considering that it retails for under £20 and there's an impressive set of online game modes included as well, it's a steal.

One for multiplayer action mainly then, but still much, much better than the last few Olympic attempts.

The combat system is as well done as anyone could ask for and is enough to make you play again and again. Unfortunately, the sections involving Octavianus’ are only punctuated with such pleasures, generally coming across as uninspired and fairly clumsy.

UGAG can very comfortably be compared to a Rubik’s Cube – it isn’t very pretty or enticing, it’s just an extremely straightforward, ball-bustingly hard challenge. It almost deserves two separate scores. If you like a challenge, then add [30] more points to my final score. If you prefer a bit more of an easier time, then detract [50].

It really does little better than Tekken or DOA. Possibly time would have been better-spent working on a PS3 title rather than releasing this. It’s time for the genre as a whole to move forward.

While it is playable – Onimusha enthusiasts will still probably enjoy it – there isn’t a huge amount here that you won’t find in previous instalments. And that’s it; ultimately there just isn’t anything here that hasn’t been done better by another game.

There are genuinely funny moments and the soundtrack and voiceovers are some of the best I've heard in a game for a long time, but that doesn't stop the action from being hackneyed and predictable.

Good, but ultimately a shallow experience.

Kill stuff, level up, and do it all over again. Whether the endless repetition is a good thing or not really depends on your threshold for endless button-mashing and levelling-up, since there’s really nothing else to the game.

Any action/adventure fan is looking at a fairly solid proposition here, but don't be surprised if the beauty of the game isn't enough to push those feelings of deja vu and boredom to the back of your mind.

If you’ve seen the TV show, don’t play poker but fancy having a go yourself, then it’s a perfect initiation to the game – complete with some of the crazy calls and raises that go on from inexperienced and tilting players. For the hardcore poker fanatic though, there’s a massive, massive amount of room for improvement.

World Poker Tour isn’t a complete loss. If you want poker on the go, then this is a fine choice. Just don’t expect to use it as a training tool, or to hone your skills, since the gameplay more often than not suggests that the title should be World Bingo Tour. Fun and atmospheric at times, very, very frustrating at others.

A tiny map exists in the top right hand corner, but in a full race, it only indicates your position – which renders it useless when you need to know how far in front the leader is.

To enter the racing genre successfully, you need to have some boiling hot IP, promotion that would make EA jealous, or some gameplay twist so innovative that the next bored developer will rip you off instead of vice versa. Jak X has none of those.

Unfortunately, now the major problem of mundane backtracking has been remedied, the minor flaws have become overly pronounced. Despite this, Kingdom Hearts II is still a hugely pleasurable experience.

The soft-focus haze of the original has inevitably suffered due the PS2’s lack of hardware anti-aliasing and indeed, the watery recreation here simply makes the low-res textures and dull palette look muddy and indistinct.

Shoots for the stars but barely breaks orbit.

In some cases, I'd have preferred to see the home console versions being ported over. Off Road Thunder for example, was a much better game on the Dreamcast than it was in the arcade.

Bringing your very own creation up from nothing and turning them into a successful member of the gaming society can prove to be curiously addictive.

When you’re on the fifth one in the series and it doesn’t play all that different to the first one, it’s probably time to stop. That’s not to say that Ace Combat Zero is a bad game, it’s just that you’ve seen it all before, done it all before, and got the t-shirt.

A fair game that tries to do a little too much. The puzzle, platform and racing genres are all represented as advertised, but none of them are pulled off well enough to provide a particularly engaging experience.

Not a terrible game by any means, but a bit more time in the testing tank would have surely turned it into a masterpiece to stand alongside the Conflict series.

Good, but not nearly as great as the entire world would have you believe.

There is improvement to be had here, and given that the jungle drums are sending a message that Madden 2006 is on the way to the DS, we’re hoping that the developers can see where they’ve faltered and that they get a chance to try again.

If asked to sum it up in one word, Pokémon Dash would be termed as “interesting”, rather than “essential”.

Feels like a very short game. The extras, as I mentioned, will serve as a tasty bonus once you've completed the main game, but get dull fairly quickly.

What the game could have done with is more content and a darned sight more polish – both of which it severely lacks.

If you aren’t a Dragon Ball Z fanatic, then you’re pretty much looking at a very average beat ‘em up with some pretty graphical effects and a few aerial manoeuvres. If you are a fan, then I have a feeling that this will fill a portable gap, but certainly not for long. Badly flawed in places, but not a terrible way to pass the time.

UFO Aftershock is, in short - strategy gaming brilliance, spoilt by lacklustre interfaces and controls, and one truly terrible camera.

Graphical improvements are minor, the gameplay enhancements are built to match and the AI is still as awful as it ever was.

The attention to detail in Yakuza is extraordinary but the overall effect is like getting everything you wanted for Christmas and not being allowed to play with it.

I couldn't get past the bad spelling, lack of save ability and the general frustration. For some reason Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes just gave me very negative feelings.

The ability to build your own weapons and suchlike with things that you’ve found is a nice inclusion which – while limited – works out to be cheaper than going to ye olde item shoppe to pick up a new blade every time your favourite one decides that it’s going to break.

If you come into Enchanted Arms looking for something as epic as the Final Fantasy series then there’s a hefty chance you’ll leave disappointed. That’s not to say this is a bad game at all. Enchanted Arms plays like most would expect - an average RPG. Nothing more, nothing less.

Despite the superb presentation which, as usual, is currently unmatched by any other game, the players still feel like they are sliding about the pitch, rather than running. When kicking the ball, the contact between ball and boot is more realistic than in previous iterations of the game, but the trajectory of the ball is still very strange.

You can overlook the sloppy graphics, the poor narrative and the occasional rudimentary puzzle, because the design of Penumbra sometimes reminds you how inspired it is, offering the player some genuinely interesting puzzles in a properly spooky setting.

Although Kao the Kangaroo: Round 2 seems to constantly offer up a new genre at every point the action might otherwise become dull and lifeless, there is a persistent feeling during play that the game never seems to stand on its own feet.

On the one hand, Spy vs. Spy is a fun, engaging, throwaway platform game that comes in at the right price. The addition of the multiplayer modes and classic game are just a bonus. On the other hand, you've got a fairly buggy and technically inferior platform game that contains just enough inventiveness to get by.

Players that are new to the KOEI party will undoubtedly feel overwhelmed in the first mission, stunned in the second mission, and then ultimately bored by the time that missions five and six rear their blood-stained heads.

The graphics are poor, the game play is old fashioned, the music is just plain annoying, but it has character. This attribute alone elevates it above the rest of the samey RPGs out there, but it still manages to be just that – samey.

This game may be worth playing in about a year’s time when Obsidian has finished patching this clunky monstrosity, but right now, it’s a strictly average affair.

On one hand, SingStar owners will love the new tracks but will hate the fact that there are absolutely no new features to be had – so we’re looking at a five or six out of ten. For gamers who haven’t played SingStar and don’t own the game, we’re looking at an eight or a nine. I fall into the former category, and I’m pretty sure that most people will too.

Genuinely funny in places, groan-making in others – Under The Skin is a bizarre concept that could have been really good fun. Unfortunately, it needs a few more strings to its bow, as the final package feels very much like it could have been named "One Trick Pony."

Do you feel like hacking the living hell out of a thousand-plus enemy factions that you can easily defeat? Do you want to just repeatedly press the square button until you grow a blister? If so, then Devil Kings will be superb for you. If not, then you’re likely to be somewhat bored.

The bottom line is if you can put up with some quirky controls and are a massive fan of the originals then this is probably worth a look. However, if you are a purist and perhaps have a favourite Metal Slug outing, then you should wait for it to appear on the Virtual Console.

Basically more of the same, albeit with a little more freedom to roam.

The cracks show very clearly after the game drags you in by providing a trouble-free first mission, and they are enough to completely kill the game for anyone who only has a passing interest.

What can't be overlooked though, is the fact that the game started out as a technical demo to show off what the DS can do. Since then, little has been done to turn it into a fully fledged game.

As far as racing games go, Full Auto’s arcade handling provides a welcome change to the rigours of the superb "Project Gotham Racing 3," but the slowdown and – in some cases – downright bugginess means that it won’t ever take you to gaming nirvana.