Combat Elite makes an ideal rental title, three days being a good length of time to gauge whether you can tolerate quite so many invisible walls and German soldiers shooting you from nowhere.

Aside from the somewhat devastating problems with the camera, Combat Elite is a nifty little number that has all the addictiveness, interaction, and 'pick up and play' of many retro titles that people still cherish today.

Gladiator has a well-planned multiplayer mode that works on and offline so we're left with a fairly empty, meaningless experience of stupid weapons, coin collection and weapon upgrading that makes you wonder why you're playing. The answer: Multiplayer or you're recovering from a coma.

Why publishers can't just leave classic titles to die gracefully in the warm glow of our misguided reminiscing, is beyond us. Taito Legends represents the crème of the crop, but it still tastes a little sour with age.

LA Rush is the grubby Downtown district of LA to "Burnout's" Hollywood, if you will - the two games aren't exactly that similar but with so many better options out there, Midway's offering will be lucky not to simply be left on the shelves alongside a few rotting copies of "Turok Evolution."

The unnecessary complications lie in the sheer volume of convoluted commands crammed onto the DualShock for use throughout the game.

It's good fun, but the novelty of these funky worms waving goodbye in surreal style can wear off pretty quickly.

Race Drivin' was one of the earliest 'real' driving simulators but doesn't remotely stand the test of time. It's deadly slow and bereft of any excitement whatsoever. Unfortunately this describes most of the games on this disc.

Our demon-manifesting rage at the total mediocrity of this series isn't helped by the dodgy jaggy graphics or frequent and annoyingly long loading times, but if you played the original and kept an end of game save, you may want to continue your story.

At the very least this is a good-looking wasted opportunity, while at its most, it's a snazzy disappointment.

Sadly, Genji gameplay appears to be as stuck in the past as its setting and there's no amount of elegance that can cover a flaw like that up.

Having old enemies join forces against Apocalypse is a decent idea for an X-Men story, it's a shame that it has been rendered into a series of dull maps and substandard action. One for collectors.

Like the billions of other platformers fighting for shelf space, it's just kind of... there. The lack of frustration means it's good for kids but for everyone else, why settle for Kimberly when you can have Cheryl?

Despite there being a massive selection of attacks at your disposal, you won't use them, and after battling through your seventeenth batch of Oni bastards, you'll soon settle for the simplest and most effective means of disposal and trade any style for progress.

Our only problem with The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is that, after a while, the brainless stomping does become a little one dimensional, but then again that is the nature of the comic book licence and this is certainly a step above recent titles such as "The Fantastic Four" and "Batman Begins."

The Live options are up there with the best of them and cover everything from team support to Live stats and leaderboards. However, as with many titles that focus on the thrills of Live play, offline it is fairly run of the mill. The game's saving grace, though, is the huge scale of every battle.

The different game modes are good for a giggle, but they aren't good enough to compensate for a tennis game that promises a great deal more than it serves up.

FlatOut wants to be a cool racing and rallying game with an arcade edge, but it ends up being a routine disappointment. [XBM]

A quirky curiosity, not always enjoyable to play and not always fair, either. It'll appeal to small minority - if you like the way that the game looks, then you'll get something out of it, if you don't, then you should avoid Killer7 at all costs... It's just not much fun to play.

No matter how you approach Maximum Impact, it will disappoint. In trying to drag a 2D series into three dimensions, SNK Playmore has forgotten what made its own King Of Fighters games so celebrated and what makes 3D fighting games fun to begin with.

Seven Studios has tried its best to offer a mix of gameplay elements with rescue operations and mini-games included but these aren't enough to break up the monotony of the copious smash and saunter sections.

It's rare for a game of this type to actually be more than a mad single-button-mashing romp that creates more blisters than excitement; it's just unfortunate that the whole game wasn't as polished.

Had the develop[ers] only thought about what it was doing a little bit more it could have made an astonishingly good game using the source material provided.

Caught in an awkward middle ground where it's not as accessible as "Street Fighter Anniversary Collection," not as deep as "Capcom VS SNK 2: EO" and not as buoyant as "King Of Fighters 2002."

The biggest problem with Batman Begins is that it tries to imitate both "Splinter Cell" and "Burnout," two fantastic games that ought to combine for a very successful title. Unfortunately, with Batman at the helm, they turn into parodies bordering on farce.

The story mode is tough, but relatively short, and it becomes quite clear that Samurai Western is more of a blood soaked sprinter than a legendary long-distance athlete of a game.

The multiplayer is okay, with nine additional maps, but it's otherwise a fairly short adventure without much variety and, annoying as it is, you won't return too often.

Perhaps the game wouldn't have been so mind-numbingly average if the developer had allowed the player a little freedom - perhaps by granting movement of the camera.

Sadly for Konami, Enthusia is here, slightly queer, and we just can't get used to it.

It looks the part and it has al the right elements. It's just cumbersome and rarely rewarding to play. So close to being amazing, yet so obviously not. Shame.

Despite the cool weapons the action can often be repetitive, with weak combos leading to some blade-swinging button-bashing, all within an average world marred by cameras of varying efficiency.

While the game may be some distance from Bungie's massive shooter in terms of quality, it's well worth a look for anyone after a quick blast in a game that will remind us all that the "X-Files" was once a decent TV show.

Indeed, it's the guards that ruin it for everyone, by being remorselessly crap at their jobs, losing you when you run round two corners, shooting erratically and - worst of all - not recognising the significance of a vent shaft as something that "leads somewhere", and allowing you to escape every time you enter one.

A quick, pointless Career mode and some extremely poor multiplayer options embarrassingly fail to justify the miniscule price tag. Swerve to avoid.

Not much fun in single-player. Sure, it might make for good practice before taking your warrior online, but no-one is going to be buying it for Anubis' fight for corporate and religious ownership.

Dead To Rights II is confused. It's an action title where you spend the majority of your time waiting. It's a videogame where you'll out-swear the gritty characters onscreen. It's a sequel that's not as good as its predecessor.

A boring and almost totally uninspiring game. The initial premise and use of cinematic pace is nothing but a drunken flirtation with a situation that could have been, and its not long before you find yourself playing the gaming equivalent of being a milk monitor in a class for the lactose intolerant. During a mild thunderstorm.

It's simplicity personified, and it will never be the classic that the original was, but Spy vs Spy still has that mischievous spirit to bring a childish smile to everyone's face.

Obscure is well worth playing all the way through, and if you can stomach the characters and their irritating forced American idiosyncrasies then this title could well be one of the best £20 price-tag games out there.

It's still decent shoot-'em-up entertainment, and adding snipers, airstrikes, and mortar attacks to your armoury is a nice touch, but perhaps too much time was spent talking tactics rather than delivering an original game that has true hands-on appeal.

It's simple, it's short, but it's still great fun.

If you mature, and don't get Star Wars at all it is possible that you may consider that this is more an quality Lego Star Wars product than it is a gripping Lego Star Wars game. This is one for the younglings. Move along.

What onlookers don't see is hyper-active controls causing Kurenai to ping-pong about with the predictability of a pinball. Pinballs make rubbish ninjas.

So this is a classic 6/10 - by that we mean that it's good fun and you'll enjoy playing it, yet you'll also be wondering what else you could be doing with your time.

Barely a very, very average racing game. There are no notable qualities about the game to justify any sort of high score and the visuals are poor, but it still offers several short bursts of entertainment and at £20 you can't expect much more than that.

Any improvements to the fun factor given to a multiplayer game is mostly down to all humans suffering from the same level of confusion given by a game that could do with being more like worms and less like a squeaking game of Crossbows & Catapults. More annoying than fun and not funny.

It's no complete loss, for sure, and is likely to moderately satisfy the Resident Evil die-hards waiting for the next instalment. However, it's no classic despite some lovely physics due to some weak gameplay elements and its slightly simple linearity.

What we're left with is a game with a cool concept and a real sense of atmosphere that is drowned out by disappointment and frustration. Cold Fear could have been so much better had it built on the positives with a safe, more accessible control system and a few more hours on the design table.

The graphics are still rough as a badger's arse, the AI remains as remedial as ever and the slimmed down strategic side effectively eliminates the only reason there was to play it in the first place.

The levels are well designed with bright, colourful graphics throughout, making the game seem almost like the film, and with so many personalities to talk to there's never a dull moment.

A dumbed down first-person shooter designed specifically for the PS2, which isn't equipped to run the more exciting elements of the Deus Ex universe. The result is a bland shooting experience that may as well run under the title of 'Generic Game With Fancy Guns' - a real shame when the potential to create something truly different was handed to the developer on a plate by Eidos.

If you love old-skool challenges and want to test your SF skills against the world's best, then this is the perfect collection. If only it came with a stained cigarette holder to clip onto the Xbox the retro feel will be complete.

The problem here is simple laziness. Constantine is a dull, monotonous shooter with few redeeming features, do yourself a favour and buy some of the superb graphic novels instead.

This entire concept is ridiculous. Why, oh why is your team so rubbish? Falco is supposed to be an 'Ace Pilot' for crying out loud. Your team is supposed to be the galaxy's last, best hope, yet they can't even shoot more than two enemies on any given level. They may as well not even be there and save us the worry.

Namco's game seems content to be mediocre, and for a game that carries the Tekken legacy on its shoulders (and will probably sell a huge number of units as a result) that's just too disappointing to forgive.

Style is nothing without substance.

Luigi seems even floatier, and embarrassed head-shaking ensues when you see Princess Peach throwing shapes like a bad-ass Crip from the Wes' side. Ooh, where's she hiding the Glock?... NBA Street V3 is superfluous and expensive.

A rare victory for the kid's game genre and shining example of how these games should be done.

Unless you count the prospect of photographing a different playmate as enticing there is little to encourage you to play on. And the Playmates all look reasonably similar anyway.

Better visuals and a more complex conversation system would have made this a game to live up to the legendary magazines. Almost.

So where are the virtua fighters in Virtua Fighter Cyber Generation? They are in there, it's just they're well hidden and take some time to find. Maybe they're too embarrassed to be associated with Sei's mess of a game or maybe they got lost on their way to "Virtua Fighter 5."

Shallow, repetitious and overly simplistic.

You'll find yourself sailing aimlessly for hours - the watery setting of Suikoden IV is ridiculously vast and barren and to make matters more exasperating, your boat's top speed and handling would embarrass most tugs.

The new mini-games aren't particularly enjoyable for longer than five minutes at a time, but there are quite a few on offer making it a real case of quantity over quality.

It still feels clunky compared to the bling slickness of "NBA Street Volume 2" but that owes more to the fact that American football is more about fat men made of burgers barging each other over than it is playing with style and finesse.

DragonBall Z: Budokai 2 isn't really a fighting game, well it is, it's just not a good one.

Freakiest of all though, are those sunken-eyed ghoulish geishas that pop up every five minutes - more chilling than any slathering zombie. Brrr.

Unfortunately Rogue Agent has turned out a bit flat. All of the ingredients should have delivered a novel twist on the Bond universe, but rather than being a villainous spectacle, it's merely a competent shooter that lacks any genuine thrills.

Sadly, even with the ideas nicked from other titles, Rogue Agent leaves you with an empty feeling that while EA has studied FPS games carefully, it has no idea how to make one of its own.

Sadly, the developer seemingly hates its audience because battle is so maddeningly unforgiving.

Jam just feels remarkably like the quickly cobbled together game it so obviously is, leaving it in the awkward position of being less balanced than "Alpha 2" or "Street Fighter III," less joyful than "Marvel Vs Capcom 2" and far uglier than "Guilty Gear."

Combat is a fluid, nippy affair more in keeping with 2D fighters like Guilty Gear than Tekken and includes a fine array of attacks that can be learnt and built on.

This could have been Activision's finest hour, but it looks likely to be nothing more than an agonising five minutes of fame.

The track design however is where Crash 'N' Burn gets let down. Visually it's a hit and miss affair but the actual track layout is about as basic as you can get.

The grand, over-the-top nature means when Call Of Duty does go right, little can match it. Sadly, these moments don't happen often enough to sustain any enjoyment and being funnelled through the same linear missions over and over again is like watching the same chapter of a "Saving Private Ryan" DVD on repeat.

For all its good intentions and car modifying appeal, there's a real lack of exhilaration under the bonnet that cripples the game the moment it leaves the starting line.

Calling them puzzles is a bit of a misnomer - calling them Slightly Challenging Platformy Bits That You Don't Have To Think About is far more accurate, if not quite as catchy.

It can actually be quite a laugh in a very basic sense - but the fact remains that there are better example of both genres, albeit independently.

The Urbz is simply not fun. At all. Not only are your Urbz's bodily functions hyper-accelerated, but satisfying one of them, naturally to the detriment of another, is too time consuming with animations lasting an uncomfortably long amount of time, especially when you'll be seeing them so often.

The fact that you can't control the camera beyond a 'bring to rear' command is still very annoying when you've got enemies approaching from all sides.

We've all seen the future and the harsh reality is Spyro: A Hero's Tail is unnecessary with the superior competition around.

It's all a bit like typing while wearing oven mitts.

There's no denying the snippets shine with sheen, but while Frodo et al are off saving the world, your party feel like impostors - the real adventure is elsewhere. And it is - in a legion of other superior RPGs.

Certainly not the revolution in 2D fighting games that Arc System Works describe it as, or we were hoping for. We won't bore you with any more of the Greek myth or ornithology laboured analogy crap, we're sure you get the picture.

The biggest problem we have with this game is the sad fact that a few of the games seem to suffer from occasional slowdown.

An incredibly cynical attempt to cash in on a familiar and potentially rich license.

The camera is fine, the control system good and (like the film it follows) at no point does it patronise the audience. In other words there are no coins to collect here.

Blame the short development time. Blame laziness. Blame the film licence curse. Blame whatever you want but the end result is The Incredibles is rental-only, as you'll see everything the game has to offer by the time you hand it back to the monkey behind the Blockbusters till.

All platform games need are a healthy dose of variety and fun. If a yellow simpleton made of sponge can do it properly, then so can you.

In many ways OutRun 2 is undone on Xbox Live by the mere fact that the core gameplay wasn't designed for competitive racing.

Scaler is perfectly acceptable - if you're 5 or under. We're much older.

Crisis Zone is the proverbial over-egged pudding. The addition of a bulletproof riot shield for ducking purposes is welcome, as is the way you can blast the enemy as the game pulls you on the invisible rails that separate scenes. Unfortunately the excitement in killing is all but neutered.

The game is a showcase for the lead character and not an inspired one at that.

Some will find it frustrating, others irrelevant, while a small number of people will no doubt relish it for the very flaws we pointed out.

Ty manages to be a particularly average and uninspiring kart racer as well a particularly average and uninspiring action adventure, with opals.

While some levels are a little staid, others, the Vegas-themed level and Racoon City in particular, are riotous, with the latter requiring you to steel a rampant Nemesis' coin stash. Charming as Cosmi's grin.

You know if you like it already, and you probably know if you're going to buy it already. As for us, we like it, just don't expect us to know where to find it in two weeks' time. [Play UK]

Basically a game that is split between repetitive combat and annoying pole swinging sections.