A charming little tower defence title with a decent story and challenging gameplay.

There's clearly been a lot of effort put into the presentation, authenticity and lifespan of the game, but it falls down in its appeal to newcomers to the genre. A tutorial may be present, but the steep learning curve and tough difficulty level will put many off.

Never does it come close to touching Sands of Time in terms of majesty, and what you’re left with is a beautiful looking piece of art, masking a depressingly above average adventure.

It's colorful, requires strategy, and there's a lot of stat-building for those into it along with a decent variety of maps and challenges. However, there are serious drawbacks such as the repetition, difficulty curve, and less than ideal control scheme.

Despite whatever disagreements may come from its adjusted gameplay, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 can still be a fun game, and even more so with its amended online components.

The classic Civilization quirks still remain - completely illogical backstabbing AI players included! - but the game now provides a much richer toolbox for budding conquerors.

For players who don’t mind the overzealous translation, this game is a gem; for longtime fans of the series, it could be a bitter disappointment. What you get out of this game depends on what your expectations are going in.

Here we have a game that borrows too heavily from others – entertaining as those mechanics may be – robbing it of its own unique identity. The hacking rectifies this somewhat, providing that differentiating hook, but even that’s not enough to elevate Watch Dogs above the sum of its derivative parts.

Rather than merely surpassing the expectations set by its predecessors, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation provides a foundation for console-based aerial combat games of the future.

Sleeping Dogs is a great action game with a compellingly melodramatic story and an atmosphere thick enough to cut with a knife. Control issues aside, it's a great PC port, too - on a beefy gaming PC, Sleeping Dogs looks far better than its console counterparts. For fans of Hong Kong cinema and/or open-world games, it's a must.

Despite its shortcomings – even the game-stopper bugs – it simulates almost perfectly the experiences of a typical schoolchild, despite being ridiculously over-the-top in almost every manner.

Even with Scenario Mode taking up far too much time and effort, Tekken 6 is a pleasurable gaming experience and the fighting mechanics are as polished as you could hope.

Ultimately, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a decent overall package that succeeds more due to the remastering of quiet classic Butcher Bay than the somewhat disappointing more recent episode Dark Athena.

There's really only one word to describe Sid Meier's Pirates! and that's 'charming'. The excellent presentation, clever gameplay design and exquisite pacing mark it out as a unique and well thought out game.

One of the more challenging and satisfying titles I've played all year. It cleverly side-steps the tower-defense bottle neck by throwing things into reverse, creating a wholly unique tactical-strategy experience.

It's a shame the additions to Assassin's Creed: Revelations' single player aren't as impactful as before. Maybe it was inevitable considering the yearly release cycle, but the majority of its improvements are incremental at best, while the rest are disappointingly substandard.

Beyond the surface, you'll find a set of imaginative and extremely well-developed ports of games that did very well in other countries, but didn't get the recognition in this part of the world that they deserved.

Each choice feels incredibly meaningful because it affects everything.

It’s nothing short of joyous, then, that Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 is so much more than a lazily thrown together update of last year’s game.

It’s one of the best single-player games on the DS. Though the story and characters are terrible, it’ll take you several hours to complete the main quest. That aside, you’ll have hundreds of secondary quests, tons of jobs to master, and massive collection of items and abilities to acquire.

It's the mission design that proves most disappointing. Its scale is highly ambitious but Dead Island's population of living dead aren't enough to compensate for its barren lack of variety and an increasingly tedious structure.

Despite the surprising replayability, the amazing brutality of the kills, and the excellent targeting system, Mark of Kri is “only” an above-average game. The blandness of the levels really lessens the worthiness of brave Rau’s quest.

Despite its flaws the platforming and cover-based shooting are on par with its console peers. There is fun to be had with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, regardless of how badly it fumbles with its new technology.

A fun game, a mess, for sure, but a good mess. While it never reaches the scares of the original, or the compelling story and characters, it's still a rollercoaster ride of butchery, blood and out and out violence - violence that never lets up.

The feeling is that Blood Dragon is a straight-to-VHS sequel that occasionally manages to top its blockbuster equivalent due in large part to a sharp wit and an enthusiastic execution on a popular nostalgia.

Simply put, it's consistently fun, never taking itself too seriously, and instead focusing on how enjoyable the act of driving can be when you throw in a supernatural curveball.

Pacific Assault will turn heads because of its fancy graphics and original settings, but inevitably it’ll frustrate you beyond belief for a few game ruining missions.

4A Games’ followup to the remarkable Metro 2033 doesn’t quite hit the high watermark of its predecessor. At times the story and experience feel too constricted and too safe in comparison, but 4A eventually hits the perfect balance of action and atmosphere.