From its stripping down of the series’ most successful gameplay elements to its obviously desperate addition of weapons and ‘street’ cool this is still a product of a development studio with a good imagination. But also, it seems, a lazy one only too happy to jump on the same GTA bandwagon that’s currently carrying way too many developers.

The silly parts in Stolen make up most of the game. There are some truly neat stealth bits but my feeling is that they were sloppily inserted into an adventure fraught with ridiculous AI hi-jinx and an unbelievable and really, negligible storyline.

There's no attempt here to take a risk and try something new, which may have turned the whole series around...If they couldn't be bothered to make the effort and create a decent game from the plastic soldier concept, why should we be bothered to play it?

Grasshopper has made one of their more mechanically satisfying titles, but to enjoy it you have to put up with all of the other muck. You’ll have to choose whether Killer is Dead is the loveless romance for you.

Generally, Rango is a much more disappointing game than it is actually bad. It's perfectly functional, and maybe even rarely enjoyable, but it fails to truly capitalize on the license and does little to differentiate itself from pretty much any other 3D platformer that's come before it.

Scarygirl is riddled with countless inherent flaws that make the game, in no simpler terms, bad.

Clearly a lot of love and effort has gone into making this game and both Endeavor Bros. and Monkube should be applauded for creating one of the best-looking and most endearing games on the casual market, but the fundamental gameplay issues cannot be ignored.

Whether you're fighting Gustav Graves, Blofeld, Oddjob or Sanchez, it's all done via these poorly disguised Quick Time Events. Every time a boss would step forward and assume the position, I cringed.

The game’s combat system needs an overhaul, the levels lack inspiration, and the presentation will make your eyes water. When compared with its contemporaries, this game lacks the shine and polish that gamers are expecting when they try out their DS for the first time. This is shameful way to start the new batch of DS games.

While its myriad of technical issues are certainly detrimental to anyone’s enjoyment, it’s the lack of ambition in reinventing its aging mechanics and tired mission design that leave Unity treading water.

Using the wind and terrain to your advantage, firing the cannons at the perfect time to launch the perfect assault; it could have been amazing. Disappointingly, with poor A.I, little replay value and poor use of the systems trademark features it’s turns out to be as entertaining as scurvy.

If you’re determined to see the purchase of the Voralberg toy factory finalized, you’d be better off accompanying Kate Walker on the unabridged PC version.

An unfortunate conclusion to a once promising trilogy.

Shamefully, Fists of Plastic won’t have you reliving your childhood memories for long, as the tiresome challenges and lack of online execution will have you beating yourself up quicker than you can fling your joypad across the room with dragon-punch shaped irritation.

It's a pity that a video game which attempts to revel in back to basics no nonsense escapism - through a hail of bullets and bodies - somehow ends up being more forgettable than the Black Ops campaign. And that's saying something.

This reckless, half-cocked release is not just insulting to the thousands of gamers who’ll pay full price to receive an inferior product that others will buy cut-price a few months down the line when it’s finally been chopped and changed into a playable state, but detrimental and damaging to a team of developers who clearly have a real passion and love for the games they create.

The character models in the cutscenes look embarrassingly poor, with Mary Jane not even looking like Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire looking fat.

The story is a compelling piece that will drag most bookworms through the many gameplay obstacles, if only to find out what happens at the end, and truth be told it really is worth the wait. Problem is, you could just go and buy the novel and save having the experience marred by a disappointing effort of a game.

When you first take a gander at Daxter, you see a beautifully recreated Jak & Daxter game on the portable Playstation. Some thousand bug squishings later, you’ll realise that looks can be extremely deceiving.

As an ARPG it’s average at best, but its MMO trappings only compound the frustration.

With better pacing and a lot more balancing, Mars: War Logs could have been a fresh, satisfying take on BioWare’s proven formula. Its intriguing premise and characters eventually succumb to its broken systems, creating a fiction you’ll hope sooner to finish than completely understand.

There are a couple of decent ideas here, but the game as a whole needs some serious refinement in just about every way to have any hope of standing out in what is a fairly crowded genre.

A bitter disappointment. It's a soulless, miserable outing that manages to make zooming around on crotch-rockets dull and frustrating.

Overall the game is a big disappointment - often frustrating, dated and has little in the way of reward or replay value.

To top it off, an experienced player can get through the game in five hours, and there isn't much in terms of replay value. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is a poorly executed, thoughtless game that is best to be avoided.

The art, the audio, the level design, it’s all just sorta “there”, and feels creatively bankrupt.

Despite the flaws in the execution, it's more Choplifter. And for a select few, that still means something.

The straightforward progression is perfectly suited for a diet RPG, but the underdeveloped systems and mindless combat bring the breakneck pacing to an exasperating crawl.