Looking visually identical to the PS2 version is forgivable (just about), but loading in-between the level sections isn’t – especially when you continue from exactly the same point as you stop... [yet it's still] an exceptionally good game.

Our main gripe other than this that there is too much emphasis placed on completing the tasks in order to open up new levels – this is very restricting.

Having played Morrowind, however, we did feel rather constricted.

As far as a war game goes, Conflict: Desert Storm II is fun and easy to play and it manages to be realistic without getting bogged down in its own intricacies. However, we did find the much vaunted AI to be flawed, which soured our overall enjoyment of the game.

In all likelihood, we can see the charm of this game fizzling out in a couple of weeks, but it's damned good fun while it lasts. [JPN Import]

It's worth a look for fans but once again this is a non-essential Star Wars adventure.

An empty shell of a game that revolves around non-stop action. Which is great, if that’s your favourite flavour of jam.

The element most central to the game - combat - is very flawed and completely un-strategic. As such, Throne of Darkness fails to be anything more than mediocre.

A slapdash port of a PlayStation 2 game ported across simply to cash in on a total cow of a licence.

The mini documentaries on each beach at the start of every run and the cool jazzy music suit perfectly. This would seem to make Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer the perfect game for hard-core surfing fans.

Though the Chaos mode great fun, there really isn't much to enjoy beyond this. The wealth of game modes, secrets and graphical wizardry we saw in "Kung-fu Chaos" is simply lacking in State of Emergency.

Grumbling aside, Hit & Run is a decent stab at doing something different with a The Simpsons game, but it still can't help being very, very unoriginal and dragging everything down to the lowest common denominator - collect stuff!

As for the new and imaginative innovations that we now expect from every EyeToy game, they're just not here.

Eight missions, plenty of multiplayer maps (including the most popular four from Ghost Recon) and the promise of at five downloadable desert missions means this is worth your cash.

What you have is a mish-mash of two gameplay styles, neither of which is particularly enthralling. Particularly not when you’ve got games like "Timesplitters 2" hitting the streets at almost the same time.

Playing Serious Sam is like one long deathmatch only the grunts youíre up against are far from clever.

An enjoyable yet unoriginal game.

The tight and sometimes confused battles may be bad for the gameplay but great for the overall 'Nam experience.

The best accolade Philosopher's Stone can receive is that it makes the events of the first story (published way back in the twentieth century) seem fresh for the fans, while hiding nothing from the uninitiated.

It may not be a startlingly original game but Need for Speed: Underground is an enjoyable one, and for racing fans, it's a must.

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.

Despite our disdain of the very concept of this game we did find it fairly engrossing.

So you're looking at what, three nights of fun for £69. There are ladies here who don't cost much more than that, and ladies, as we know, have boobs.

A major problem (though one that is sadly unavoidable) is the way in which activities can’t be fast-forwarded... The result is that a great deal of time is spent watching a Sim doing something utterly trivial and dull.

The game has scope. And so another question pops into your mind: What exactly has been sacrificed to accommodate this? The answer: A young girl, a goat and, unfortunately for Xbox owners, some technical proficiency.

With the bonus of a simple-yet-effective track editor, your ‘stunted’ growth is only limited by your imagination and patience, making this a game that will appeal to those inclined towards all things extreme.

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.

Walks a middling line between being a straightforward RPG and an action explorer but unfortunately excels at neither style.

It's a good, solid adventure game with plenty of cool little touches along the way, but (and there's always a but) it's nothing worth getting frothy at the mouth for.

Despite improvements, the game does look visually dated, and as such can't hope to top PGR2 in a beauty competition.

It’s just too short: the game takes around ten hours to complete.

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.

The trouble is that The Thing just doesn’t scare us and that, you’d think, is a vital part of any horror game.

If there were a little more meat on this, we’d be looking at one of the best pinball games around, but as it stands, we can’t help but want for more.

Does little to break the classic platform mould but those of you who enjoy these types of games should find enough in it to provide some enjoyment.

Below the surface insanity though, is a much deeper fighter.

Stylistically, it's all neon pinks and shiny gadgetry. Think "Halo" or "Phantasy Star Online" viewed from above. Its strange then, for such an organic looking game that the control interface is awfully clunky.

There's no denying that Amped is a far more accurate depiction of snowboarding as a sport, but if it's fun you want you can't go far wrong with this.

Just about manages to deliver the goods. If you’re after a solid simulation of the sport of basketball then you could do a great deal worse than this.

Perhaps most notable is the undeniable beauty of the surroundings in which all of this takes place.

The intelligent imagery used in the novels gave them a universal appeal, whereas the relative simplicity of the videogame would suggest that the target audience is far narrower.

It's definitely more playable than 2004, but you're still better off with "Winning Eleven 6."

Aside from being a hell of a lot easier than "Colin" to get to grips with, the overall experience is not as engaging as Codemasters’ title.

Overall, this is a decent, efficient addition to the genre, with a few good additions here and there for hardcore fans while the game's accessibility makes it a fine starting point for newcomers.

It doesn't include as many next-generation enhancements as we would like to have seen, but at the end of the day the original game was ahead of its time when it launched on Dreamcast.

It’s not 'impossible' hard, just so unforgiving that it fails to be 'enjoyable' hard.

The intelligent tactical basis should certainly make this a massive hit with hard-core strategists, but the average gamer may struggle to be inspired by the map-based gameplay action and heavy subject matter.

The only downside to Night Of 100 Frights is the sheer lack of originality and so-so difficulty level.

It is also, bizarrely, needlessly fiddly to walk in a straight line. Its almost as if the game is expecting you to strafe as your viewpoint veers to the left and right, causing you to correct the movement on a constant basis.

The music, sound effects, cool fight scenes, bullet time and being able to fight an Agent. It's all good. This is the very nature of a license – you love to hate them and hate to love them. They bring as many problems as they do solutions but every once in a while the good stuff outweighs the bad.

If you can adjust to the tricky controls and the shockingly hard difficulty setting, then you'll find a fun, original title that mixes current 3D game design with the style and atmosphere of a retro classic.

Visually the game is competent, but having seen the PS2 version, we were disappointed to discover that this Xbox port looks nigh on identical.

If you can forgive the faults, love bikes and have the patience of a saint, then you will enjoy Speed Kings. The game’s major failing is to borrow so much from the real king of speed, Burnout 2, and never innovating in the process, merely imitating.

The two things that platform games rely on the most - the level design and your degree of interaction with them are both massively flawed, and to add insult to injury the usual Sonic technical misgivings are all correct and present: good looking graphics, but prone to tearing and glitching.

Although Blinx has its flaws, it is innovative and unusual enough to make it a worthy purchase.

Ever played "Secret Of Monkey Island," "Day Of The Tentacle," "Full Throttle" or "Sam And Max Hit The Road"? Then you’ll love Neighbours From Hell.

The main problem is that, aside from some rather nice visual effects, everything about the game feels out-of-date.

Call us old fashioned, but shouldn't a game be tougher at the end than the start? Amped 2 does start to pick up after several stages, and once the methods have been mastered there is some serious enjoyment to be had.

The Quest mode is too loose and culminates in boss battles that do away with the puzzle element completely, in favour of random dice turning. The result is a game that's great with some friends, but fails to ignite when played alone.

The no-holds barred combat fails to provide the variety you’d want and the gore of the real event isn’t in evidence.

An above average RPG when released on the lesser Dreamcast system, on the PS2 it is merely average.

The vehicle and character designs seem to have been built from a kit consisting of ideas from games that share a similar theme, and in such a hurry that someone forgot to add grime and wear definitions.

There is little here to sparkle the imagination and the best we can say is that it’s a fair time-filler. If only the developers had the nerve to try out some fresh ideas, or even implemented old ones in exciting ways then we’d be looking at a much healthier product.

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.

There are some great touches, like how you can throw a gas canister over a crowd, shoot it and let hot fuel rain over the heads of multiple enemies, but they’re simply not held together.

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.

The graphics vary wildly from very nice when you’re up high doing a bombing run to absolutely horrible when you get near the ground – what the hell is pop-up doing on a Gamecube?

We’d recommend Primal to those of you who like games to act as a dictator rather than an instigator. And those who find fetching cups off coffee comparable to the heroic tasks undertaken by the heroes of Greek mythology.

The nail in the coffin for Wrestlemania XIX has to be the decision to include the completely horrible Revenge mode as the main single-player option, as opposed to any kind of Career mode.

Unfortunately the handling can leave a lot to be desired and often you can find your self weaving along the straights and spinning out around the sharper bends.

Basically a vanity game made by Anime fans for Anime fans which sticks to its guns to create a shallow shoot-’em-up with an inspired styling.

Sadly, your competitors behave like drones, slaves to the racing line. When a rider glances over at you, your presence has not really been registered.

Whilst its general pace is unequivocally pedestrian and the missions are overly long and drawn out, Top Gun remains a surprisingly seductive prospect, albeit one devoid of significant exhilaration.

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.

With all the new franchise options Madden 2004 is a definite must for anyone who likes to get into the nitty-gritty of the game, but otherwise you might be better of waiting for the rather nifty-looking "NFL Street." Overall though, this is the best American football game you can get.

If anything lets the game down it’s this combat system, which really doesn’t need to be there.

When not having "almost fun" by busting ghosts (see boxout) we're left wondering what the game wants. Gallons of paint and polish can't disguise the fact that the heart of Ghosthunter is very old.

With no improvement of note this one is for hard (armored) core fans only.

The end result is, like the best blockbuster movies, a flawed but enjoyable waste of time.

Then you meet the game’s other personality, the ‘stealth’ bits, thrown in to remedy the aforementioned mindless repetitiveness. And it’s an unpleasant little turd whom you won’t be wanting to spend much time with.

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.

In short, there are no clear delineations in skill level. Whilst this is one way of making Virtual On more inclusive, it also removes much of the game’s innate charm. To make matters more complicated, Marz lacks a TwinStick peripheral.

The extra games are all very nice and shiny but some more work should have gone into creating a level field of play, wherein each character can compete fairly and we aren't left damning Kobra's utter rubbishness as Noob-Smoke kicks seven varying shades of faeces out of him yet again.

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.

There is enjoyment to be had here but it is so short lived that there is no point donating much more than one evening to the game. For a franchise that started out so well this does indeed seem to be the fall of Max Payne.

Onimusha's stars aren't exactly in the same league as Dante, Jean Reno or Mr Viewtiful and B) The eccentricities of the series don't make for a beginner friendly combat game.

The action, story and move-set keep things moderately interesting, but after a while the woolly targeting starts to grate.

For our thoughts on Doubles in Smash Court 2, take the implied criticism of the last sentence, breed it with a retarded monkey suffering with diarrhoea, square the answer and you'll have some idea how awkward a mode this is.

To get the most out of this you will need to play it for quite a while, and those of you that do will no doubt find the extra features rewarding – if you only dabble with the game this is not an essential addition.

Maybe if it actually looked better, if more of the levels weren't so sparse or uninspiring then we'd be able to forgive the shallow gameplay and the fact that combat is too straightforward.

It rapidly descends into an overly-linear memory test which, without the physical act of aiming or the genuinely engaging ducking mechanic of "Time Crisis," all too quickly becomes repetitive and dull.

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

In such a saturated genre perfection is necessary but Vexx only comes off as average.

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.

An engaging and amusing game that should appeal to the young and young at heart alike.

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

On one hand the characters and art endear you towards it, but when it comes down to it, the fighting is just too shallow to recommend this over any other boxing game out there.

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