A solid racing game. It fails to inspire or innovate, but anyone looking for a decent racing game on PSP will find something here. Its biggest issue though, however, is that both Gran Turismo and MotorStorm Arctic Edge offer up a better standard racing game (whether you’re looking for realism or thrills and spills) on PSP.

Every area of the game feels polished and complete.

Ultimately, this blockbuster is just another version in the Modern Warfare franchise and whilst failing to live up to the unreachable hype that was developed prior to release, Infinity Ward have produced a very impressive title. One good enough to even convince this sceptic.

If Konami can build upon 2010 and add a little innovation to the mix while fixing the online modes, then PES 2011 should be on to a winner. Better, but not the best.

A triumph of a game. It has depth and scale which will keep you interested for many, many hours.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with Band Hero – it is a good game – however ultimately it is a tweaked version of more of the same. If you’ve never liked the series, there is no reason to buy Band Hero. If you are a fan of earlier games and have a preference for pop, you’ll probably love it.

LocoRoco Midnight Carnival is a fantastic addition to the ever increasing PSP library. It’s smart, well balanced, packed with content and a penny under twelve quid is actually pretty good value.

A great new way to play pool, a great way to play straight pool, and a great way to get friends playing together. It needs just a little more variety, but with no other faults it is an essential purchase from the Playstation Network Store and a demonstration of the quality we should now come to expect from Dark Energy Digital.

DJ Hero could easily have been perfect – there’s a huge amount of potential in the idea but I can’t help feeling that a little more time would have evened out the poor mixes and given more in the way of a creation mode.

Overall A Crack in Time is a brilliant addition to the Ratchet & Clank franchise and it manages to keep its charm and character despite the introduction of so many new features. The control issues, along with some repetitive content, do jar on occasions but they aren’t enough to distract you from your overall enjoyment of a game that is well worth the money.

Great presentation and plenty to unlock makes Vempire highly recommended.

The graphics are rather typical for a game of this style, the controls are a bit iffy when you’re trying to navigate towards a specific tile with just the d-pad, but it’s nice to have a mahjong game readily available on the XMB and this is as good as you’ll need.

The wow moments will come with the over-the-top gore but don’t expect system breaking visuals. However, do expect a unique style and a long adventure that will better cater for those that like to “grind” through a game.

Smackdown vs Raw 2010 is a fun, well presented title which will appeal to core fans of the genre but shouldn’t be overlooked by casual players.

FIFA 10 is currently the best footie game you can buy but not by as wide a margin as in previous years, and I’m left with the sense that EA should stop adding minor game modes that can surely only have limited appeal and get to grips with some of the oddities which stop a great game being even better.

More PSP exclusive content would have sealed the deal, but as it stands this is wonderful stuff.

But you’ll find that behind the bad animation and dodgy plot is a game that has sound ideas at its core.

For anyone that enjoys third person adventures Uncharted 2 represents a thrilling experience with some breathtaking set pieces and enough challenge to retain your interest far longer than most console games this generation, and it's almost worth buying just for the graphics which I don't think will be bettered for a good couple of years.

It’s a smart, humourous post-ironic dig at everything from Zelda to Final Fantasy which never takes itself too seriously.

Critter Crunch is a charming, funny and extremely well-presented game with solid and engaging gameplay mechanics. There are issues with the multiplayer but for fans of puzzle games this is a must-have which will amuse and entertain you without ever becoming frustrating.

Demon's Souls is a very good game. It's not a fabulous game. On the one hand, it's hard to recommend to anyone who isn't a hardcore RPG fan or who doesn't have a mountain of patience at their disposal. On the other hand, Demon's Souls rarely puts a foot wrong – the game mechanics are tough but fair.

I so wanted this to be much more than it ended up being: I’ll happily rewatch all of the Saw movies back to back each year, but probably won’t head back into the video game unless Konami patch in better combat.

A good, fun shooter that excels in multiplayer but fails to reach the heights it could have.

The sound is awful, the fighting is incredibly repetitive (no combos, just mash square and triangle) and worst of all, it’s very glitchy: on one occasion I got near the end of a level, only to actually get stuck in the graphics.

Absolutely the best of the launch titles in our opinion, and one that should be right at the top of the list for anyone wanting to see what all the fuss is about. Lets hope multiplayer gets patched in at some point, even if we have to pay for it.

There are only 20 levels, it can get repetitive repeating levels over and over again and because there are no save points it can be extremely challenging – still, great fun.

Extremely addictive it may be, but it doesn’t move the game on in terms of originality or push the limits of what can be achieved with PSP Minis, instead, Tetris just plays safe.

Brainpipe is difficult to grasp and will almost certainly not appeal to everyone, but it is completely and utterly original and unbelievable addictive.

With loads to do, decent music and high production values, the game’s an absolute bargain, and given the current licensing issues Q’s having with the digital format it’s as close to Lumines as Go owners are going to get. Great stuff.

Easily the PSP’s finest tuned racer so far with loads to do if you’re happy without the career mode. Online would have bolstered the score a notch, though.

More maps, local and online multiplayer and stacks of secrets to unlock make this undoubtably the definitive version. We're impressed.

Excellent stuff. For newbies this is a decent introduction to electronic music construction, and a brilliant little portable test bed for the experienced producer. It even exports MIDI.

Undead Knight offers an original take on the Dynasty engine, with plenty of huge battles to get through but it’s let down by finicky controls and a little repetitiveness.

A fun dual-stick shooter that does the zombie genre well. Great for multiplayer of any kind. Lack of originality and clear repetition does hinder the game though.

Fans of the genre will love what’s on offer here – leaderboards, multiplayer, it’s all present and correct. The rest of us will be left scratching our heads.

WET has taken the third person shooter genre and turned it completely on its head – not for everyone, but I loved every last second of it. Tarantino would be proud.

Need for Speed: Shift is far from perfect, however it has real soul and you can tell the developers have a real passion for racing. A little more EA polishing would make this the best racing game around.

There’s one hell of a game here, and we can’t find a single thing we’d really want to change: whilst it’s not perfect, it’s as near as we’re going to get right now. Wonderful stuff.

Neversoft have polished and tweaked the franchise to a very high standard, but I still can’t help but thinking that there is nowhere else to go now for the inevitable Guitar Hero 6.

A fantastic video game, worthy of all the praise it receives. Although there are a couple of minor flaws in its execution (lack of sound-awareness in the poor AI and a relatively cheap final boss stand out) there really isn’t a lot that you could fault with this game. It is certainly one of the best releases this year.

A fun and very well-balanced game with great potential but it is let down by a repetitive stunt mechanic and a scarcity of content.

It would be nice to have a few more types of enemy rather than ninety percent being standard soldiers but what there is comes thick and fast. It is certainly not the most accomplished example of the genre though and for those people who like an FPS but are on a limited budget it might not be worth the ticket price.

Try singing Fat Bottomed Girls or We Will Rock You without pretending you are at Wembley Stadium or I Want to Break Free without pretending to do the hoovering. This is great fun especially after a few drinks with a group of friends and a far better bet than Next Gen and Vol 2 for an all round good time.

Fat Princess offers some of the most addictive and rewarding gameplay in recent times and can be a fantastic joy to play with friends online. Over time, it wouldn’t be at all surprising for Fat Princess to get better and better as players settle down into their roles and really engage with the teamwork – much like has happened in Killzone 2’s multiplayer.

Eurocom have captured the look and feel of the film perfectly and the characterisation (complete with the real cast doing voiceovers) is superb.

For a tenner this is an absolute no-brainer – an utterly wonderful online fighter and one that shouldn’t be missed by anyone.

Its replay value is extremely high, and although you’ll unlikely play it for huge stretches of time a couple of rounds with a few friends is incredibly entertaining. It may be on the slightly more expensive side of the PSN content, there are few that offer such a fantastic online experience.

Not quite a triumph, then, but it’s leagues ahead of The Order Of The Phoenix – and if we’re being cheeky with the scores, hardcore Harry Potter fans should treat this as an [80].

Thematically the game succeeds with aplomb, the story line works well, the co-op and alternative routes through sections with your brother never feel forced and there’s some welcome appearances of both characters and plot twists during the campaign.

BlazBlue is a wonderfully presented game which should appeal to the more casual audience thanks to its easy and accessible control system. It also looks absolutely fantastic and is a blast to play. If you’re after a 2D fighter then you will certainly not go wrong with this one. Outstanding stuff.

Despite a smart, exciting start, towards the end you’ll be tired of the game.

Bomberman Ultra is exactly as expected and should be merited for that, although it’s very similar to the Xbox 360 version if you have that already. Regardless, Bomberman is just like riding a bike, you may not do it for years, but you never forget how to blow stuff up. Nothing overly ground breaking, nothing unexpected, just great fun.

Unfortunately they’ve been over ambitious and so in taking in as much as they can, they’ve lost out on what really matters - detail, interesting missions and polish. You feel like you’ve seen everything within the first 4 hours and so finishing the games begins to feel like a chore.

For fans, this is a first service short of unmissable.

If you like a challenge and your games with a large portion of character, then this is definitely worth a punt.

An essential purchase for anyone after a massive game with plenty to do. That is, once you have gotten over just how much fun blowing stuff up in this title really is.

With Codemasters publishing this title you would expect a decent end product. But as it stands this game is in need of a new title, such as “Damn-we fluffed that one”.

Recall your fondest sandbox memories: discovering The Truth, learning to fly, or climbing the central tower in Crackdown. There’s nothing like this in inFamous. Sure, there’s some nice boss battles, some great shoot-outs and, when it’s all said and done, a decent overarching story, but the moments, the single sections that must piece together to form a whole, are rarely that enjoyable and you certainly won’t be discussing most of them with friends around the watercooler.

The gameplay, whilst initially entertaining, quickly becomes tedious and incredibly monotonous after it has been rinsed and repeated over and over again.

It is just possible that everything is falling into place at the right time for this title. An affordable, massively fun and entertaining take on an old classic done with real class and prowess. This might just be the beginning of another golden age of pinball.

I would like to give this game a higher score to reflect this, but the bugs mentioned in this review are unforgivable and can ruin an otherwise great gaming experience.

Ragdoll Kung Fu is a witty, charming and frantically fun game that suffers from a puzzling lack of online multiplayer and is perhaps a little bit light on replay potential.

So, another quality PSN title just perfect for those afternoons when all you want to do is take our your anger on a pack of hungry zombies. Burn Zombie Burn! is well produced, smartly priced, great fun and a nice addition to anyone’s XMB.

The Wheelman isn’t perhaps the prettiest game on the PlayStation 3, but it’s certainly not ugly: Barcelona looks fine, there’s plenty of variety and lots to explore but everything has a slightly flat feel to it.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate is like buying a car from a shifty looking guy down an alley. It has some nice features, it works well, it may even be really, really fun, but then you realise that you’re missing a massive chunk of what you paid for and you can’t help but feel somewhat cheated.

A well-presented, enjoyable game of football that suffers from a few issues involving sound and physics. If you loved PES 6 you will love PES 09 and in many ways I think this is the game’s biggest strength and, at the same time, its biggest weakness.

Nicely produced, consistent but with a few flaws and some silly wingmen mechanics that often threaten to get in the way of the fun, but there’s nothing else like this on the PS3 and for that reason H.A.W.X stands out more than perhaps it might if it were a FPS, for example.

For the most part Killzone 2 is utterly, mesmerisingly brilliant and polished to perfection: the gunplay is solid, the controls, once tuned to your liking are superbly weighted and intuitive and the action, when good, is relentless. Time will tell whether or not the single player campaign will be held in as high regard as we’d all want it to be, but right here, right now, this is as good as it gets. [single-player review only]

It’s not a game, it’s a toy, and it’s one that will only work long term if people keep stretching. It’s a wicked idea, though, and is priced at that impulse-buy level so hopefully enough of you will take the chance with Noby Noby Boy and see what all the fuss is about.

An evergreen classic.

If you don’t own this you are doing yourself a disservice. Some may think that £6.29 for two hours of gameplay isn’t good enough value for money. My response is simple; never before has a game moved me so strongly, never before has a game made my day better, never before has a game affected my view on life and never again will I be so content with the spending of a handful of pounds.

This is a cracking set of games, filled with fond memories and frustration alike, and is recommended to everyone from grizzled old fogies like us to those born into Generation PlayStation that fancy a look back on how things used to be. Brilliant stuff.

It is so compelling though and that "digital crack" joke is funny because it is so true.

Sure, there’s no damage modeling, the crash physics are nonsense and the graphics won’t bother Polyphony - but this isn’t the point: GTI Club+ rewards continuous play with a perfectly pitched learning curve: your laps will get quicker every time until you’re in that Wipeout-esque zone, chicaning between traffic and drifting around corners without even thinking.

Magic Ball is a charming title that will appeal to a much wider range of gamers than most PSN downloads. It’s a little short, but younger gamers will appreciate the smooth learning curve and the two online modes will provide a little extra life, especially as they come complete with leaderboards.

Conquest is a third person 16-player brawl around some of Tolkien’s most famous landmarks, marred by poor visuals, unintuitive controls and repetitive gameplay.

For a mildly cerebral experience it’s probably up there with the PSN’s other puzzle titles. It is overpriced, however, and the score reflects that.

It may not be as epic or mind-blowing as some titles currently on the market but it is a very solid game and one that provided me with a very enjoyable experience.

If EA can patch the framerate issues and tweak the handling, Undercover could be a great game.

There’s not a single part of the game we didn’t enjoy replaying, it’s a visual tour-de-force (albeit a rather minimal, Designers Republic style affair) and the music is to die for (and has it’s own player in the options). Could have done with a co-op mode, perhaps, but the promised DLC will surely keep us going for some time.

It’s all numbers, of course, but dressed up in gorgeous visuals and oodles of charm and individuality. You’ll never once feel like you’re in a real war, this isn’t Call of Duty, but you will feel attached to the main protaganists and the various plot twists along the way will keep you entertained.

Quantum of Solace is hugely enjoyable, and a complete surprise.

What makes Resistance 2 so enjoyable to play is the way that, cheap restarts aside, the single player campaign is really well designed. It’s consistently good, never great but never dull and repetitive, and that counts for a lot as you plug through the story.

Fallout 3 is a wonderful game for fans of the genre. It's humourous when it wants to be, yet also deep and worryingly tragic when required to be.

SingStar Volume 2 is the absolute epitome of what we think videogaming should be about.

The major issue here is one of expectations; Pacific Rift falls well short of them. Motorstorm was a stellar introduction to the PS3 and the sequel feels like a watered-down, consumer-friendly game that doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts. If you’re looking for an arcade racer there’s more on the market than back in March 2007, and many of these have made advances while Pacific Rift is stuck in Motorstorm’s beautifully realised mud.

A stunning, powerfully confident title that deserves all the praise it’s ever been awarded, the Media Molecule guys should be so pleased with what they’ve managed to accomplish and just as much good feeling goes the way of Sony for putting so much faith in the game and getting behind it 100%.

While I enjoyed Prince of Persia Classic, it’s hard to recommend to someone who has never played the original because they will see an old-school platformer and wonder what the fuss is about.

Bioshock is one of those once-in-a-lifetime games. Think "Super Mario World"; "Legend of Zelda"; "Ocarina of Time"; "Halo," genre defining classics that are still just as stunning years later. It’s a richly constructed, lavish game which wraps you up from the first second to the last, and yes, the PS3 version is every bit as brilliant as 2007’s Xbox 360 version.

Far Cry 2 is a brilliant game, beautifully presented and intelligently executed with a few problems with the multiplayer side of things and a couple of frustrations in the story mode.

So, with a decent selection of cars (and bikes), the most extensive modification options yet seen in a video game, real-car traffic, race editors and loads of online modes (not to mention a total of 60 hidden unlockables) this is amazing value for money.

SR2 has its flaws and plenty of them, and whilst it’s possible for the game to descend into little more than driving and shooting, the sheer amount fun to be had and the fact the game just wears its heart on its sleeve makes it impossible not to have a great time in Stillwater.

Sound too is expertly done, and this is where the PS3 version wins out over the otherwise identical 360 version in that the digital sound is utterly incredible.

So, with the official license, stunning graphics, a whole host of online options, 7 player local matches and a lengthy single player campaign this is the ultimate football game.

If old-school knockabout fun is your thing then SARPBC is probably the best the PSN has to offer you.

There was huge scope for something here, but we can't help shake the feeling that someone got involved at the wrong stage and changed what could have been an impressive technical example of the PS3's graphics muscle into a rudimentary, almost insultingly basic joystick tester - as a demo it's great, but would have benefited from remaining a demo. Budbrain Megademo, all is forgiven.

If you’re excited for today’s PSN update and can’t wait to get your hands on HD then you’ve got a solidly crafted, highly playable and visually stunning upgrade of Pulse.

A great game and the user-created DLC is better than watching someone fail to win a penny on Millionaire.