Unfortunately hampered by some annoying glitches and imperfections, the whole experience does remain fairly enjoyable while it lasts, but also leaves a decidedly bitter aftertaste.

Too bad the sugar in this car's tank comes in the form of handling that is as unresponsive as heavily handling can be. Driving like the Good Ol' Boys is often a matter of luck, while that holler button does get annoying after a few hours.

If you want destruction and racing get "Burnout 3." This feels as fun as throwing a Lego car around a bathtub while a bald man shouts in your ear about how pissed off he is. Oh, right, there's the music volume down switch. Damn.

With little in the way of originality, and a bandwagon that left three years ago, Gladiator is a game out of time.

Sadly, Shadow Of Apokolips just isn’t adventurous enough and offers little new or fun to both the Superman fan and game fan alike. More games like this and he could find himself back in the grave.

This feels every bit a PSone game whose stretch outreaches its grasp in every aspect of its being.

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

Overall, Oni is in no way without merit, it is just not original or exciting enough to keep your attention for long. As a PSone game, perhaps we would be a bit kinder but for a next generation title, there is nothing more frustrating than bland mediocrity.

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.

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.

Pirates works as a kiddie game, but has no real redeeming qualities for a tougher audience. It just lacks any attention to detail.

Far from terrible, this latest Dragonball offering may be among the best we've seen but it simply doesn't have either the widespread or lasting appeal to find the audience that the nature of the license means it once might have. C'mon guys - it may still be working for Pokemon...

As always, there are plenty of cards, beans and secrets to find if you've got a craving for that 100 per cent completion feeling, but if not, the credits will be rolling long before the proverbial cows make it home.

That’s not to say X-Squad is hopelessly flawed – if taken as more of a no-brainer than intended, it provides a serviceable blast, and the well-spaced restart points do dampen the almost random battle outcomes fairly well.

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.

While any petrol-heads who are starved of a racer would do well to get this – as it’s not a bad game by any means – everybody else would be wise to sit on their hands and wait until something a bit more ‘special’ comes along. "Colin McRae 3" will be here in March.

A decent action RPG that manages to be as good as Baldur's Gate, though not better than it, and so falls short of really offering anything new.

Tragically, Haunted Mansion is mercilessly short, and combined with the singular solution to each room ensures a frustrating experience, especially as it's so completely linear.

A deeply unsatisfying experience, although younger players may have some fun just running around as Mike and laughing at his crazy antics.

This is a fairly average title with no fresh direction and without a real challenge it won’t keep many Gameboy fanatics busy for long.

If though you're after more than eye catching cosmetic gloss and an ear stroking cinematic score, if, in short, you're after a brilliantly playable game based on one of the most celebrated, loved and epic fantasies in living memory, then sadly this isn't what you're looking for.

The only way someone would see like this is if they hung around with Timothy Leary a bit too often in the Sixties, or fought exclusively in Agent Orange blackspots during the Vietnam war. From beginning to end, a bad idea.

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

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."

What is slightly worrying though is that despite being aimed directly at kids Taz Wanted is one frustrating game, thanks to the fact that Taz himself controls like a blind three-legged badger… especially when he’s doing his trademark spin.

If you’re a youngster who’s into Shrek, loves Hungry Hungry Hippo’s, but whose Mum wont buy it for you, then Shrek Super Party will be just the thing you’re after.

This one certainly needs to be sexed up if it wants to be taken off the shelf.

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.

We had hoped that Namco was going to take this chance to fix the many obvious problems with the game – sadly no, they’ve just churned out a virtually identically sequel, warts ’n’ all. Avoid!

A few small sub quests (such as delivering a message for someone) do not lift the title out of the sea of mediocrity it’s floating in.

No matter how much extra strategy you put on top of this combat system (as it is, not much), or how convoluted the maps and puzzles (they’re not) you are still going to be stuck with a fundamental flaw in the fact that the in-game fighting just ain’t fun.

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.

It stinks!...It’s hardly challenging stuff once you’ve worked out what to do, and before long you’ll find yourself turning the machine off in general disgust.

Batting on the other hand, is about as much fun as chewing glass. You’d basically need the reactions of a Jedi Knight to be able to rack up a decent hit ratio.

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.

There are virtually no sound effects or voice samples included at all, leaving the dire music to keep your ears entertained. Add weak animation and bland graphics to these other failings and you have a title almost totally lacking in charm and appeal.

And as all this PS2 majesty seeps in through your senses you’ll find your hand reaching to the back of the PS2 as your body makes an involuntary movement toward self-preservation. Click!

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.

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 attack patterns are pedestrian, the level designs confined and the environments repetitive. The third-person adventure side to the game fails to progress beyond ‘find-the-key/unlock-the-door’ business end of the genre.

When you could buy Tekken 4 for the same amount, why would you want this average contribution to the PS2 gene pool? Sometimes it can be fun, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, and done much, much better.

The overall experience is just so average. At no point when playing WhiteOut will you ever be wowed into silence or stunned into submission, you will shrug, curl a lip and say: "Well, y'know, it is only twenty quid."

Sure, you can punish them all you want or play ball with them, but soon it all becomes rather too monotonous and, most importantly, you really don't care when the little freaks kick the bucket.

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.

The gameplay is generic to say the least – just run along a set path jumping gaps and avoiding enemies.

The mentality behind it is decidedly 32-bit, and this isn’t just limited to the models either.

The graphics are not too bad and the water effects are quite nice, but what you end up with is a side-scrolling-perform-as-many-tricks-as-you-can-in-the-time-limit game - which becomes boring after a few turns.

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.

Greater variety in terms of gameplay, the freedom to configure boats with weapons of your choice, deformable terrain and an improved damage system would have seen this as one of the top games on the Xbox, but as it is, it remains one of the also-rans.

As you can probably tell, the main problem with this game is that it’s scrappy and disjointed. The areas that show flair and imagination are cut short by generic and shockingly unoriginal elements that make you cringe and turn away in embarrassment.

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.

A fast and fun arcade racer.

Now it's here and we can't help to say with steadfast assuredness that it's not worth your effort.

We never thought we’d reach a day where we would say this but, after playing Crash Bandicoot, we’re actually looking forward to "Rayman 3."

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

It's a wannabe of epic proportions, the outer layer of which peels away almost instantly to reveal a substandard set of digital internal organs.

Essentially SEGA Soccer Slam fails to hit all the marks a fun arcade football game should hit and indeed were hit by Midway’s superior RedCard. If it’s a solid and fun arcade kick-about you’re after then plump for Midway’s game as Soccer Slam is best avoided.

A generic air combat flight experience with Dreamcast-quality graphics and a couple of new effects.

Although this hackneyed plot does have its high points, the game unfolds at a treacherously slow pace.

Graphics and sound are impressive enough, but we have come to expect more than that from top new releases, and when the poor AI is factored in, Breed looks less and less appealing. Get your FPS fix elsewhere!

When it comes down to it all, the game plays true to the film. Boring, clichéd, sometimes grimace inducing and deeply, deeply average.

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.

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.

It very quickly becomes tedious. Only look into this if you are a hardened puzzle fan.

Final gripe of the day is that you can come first or second in a race by simply holding down accelerate and bouncing off the walls. Need we say more about the skill level involved? No, didn’t think so.

A distinct lack of pace (something that made the original so absorbing) also makes the action far less exciting than it should be.

For a kids game it can suddenly leap from being simpler than tying your shoes to being tougher than tying your shoes - if you're a fish.

Little more than a shoot -'em-up for beginners. It's easy to play and simple to follow which unfortunately makes it slow-paced and largely uneventful with basic auto-locking trigger-holding action.

It's not terrible, just rather pointless.

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.

On the GameCube though, without adding any more to the game such as an extra character or stage, this seems a pretty pointless release of an average game.

While we rarely get hung-up about graphic quality, its obvious that the developer has put very little effort into this department – bare textures and dull colours do not excite.

It is fun, but certainly won't last for long and will soon crash and burn into the pile of games ready for trading in.

Vietcong is perfect proof that all the authenticity in the world doesn't necessarily make a great game.

It's uninspired and pretty ugly.

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.

You have to endure some horrendously annoying and monotonous commentary and cue-ball control is patchy at best. Nevertheless, you do get plenty of game styles (including snooker) and a trick shot mode, to keep things fresh - for a while.

All Kemco appears to have done is taken Tetris and turned it upside down. Oh, and added a load of ‘cute’ egg characters too to brighten the whole thing up. Great.

Spawn Armageddon is going to go down in the annals of gaming history as yet another licence squandered on a game which is unoriginal, uninspiring, and destined for the bargain bins. Disappointing.

In a culture that often prioritises surface quality over content, Catwoman embodies the 'videogames that look good but play dreadfully' stereotype, with some aspects of the game (ie the ones that are likely to feature in screenshots) obviously given far more development time than, say, the quality of enemy intelligence or how anyone interacts with the gameworld.

The most obvious problem is the handling, which feels more like you’re controlling a breezeblock than a car, and this carries right through to the crash dynamics, which are now virtually non-existent.

Much like the graphics, sound, multiplayer, and story (why bother with a story?) these additional game modes are merely a novelty and soon betray themselves as lacklustre additions bolted onto an admittedly great concept.

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.

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.

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

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 is in essence, a very generic experience, which is shallow and unrewarding.

CNK offers nothing new at all, failing to really improve even on its prequel, which even back then, was pretty standard fare.

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

And if they've seen the film - all the better, though you should really read them the books and put on funny voices. They'll appreciate that more.

Playing T3 was a joyless experience, and only our loyalty to the Big Man kept us playing.

Get On Da Mic does offer other options such as the opportunity to spit your own sounds and a multiplayer freestyle battle but both are about as appealing as a new Dizee Rascal record. If 'cool' is what Eidos was aiming for it has missed by an 8 mile.

Half-baked at best, parts of the game appear only half-finished, with sections of polygons not actually meeting, despicable clipping and some truly stone-age AI.

The gameplay just isn’t up to scratch. Hack, slash and float is the basic premise, and that is about the extent of it. All the shopping for new weapons and random character level-ups don’t appear to have any effect on the meat and bones of the gameplay, and the repetition soon leads to boredom.

Reign Of Fire looks impressive, creating a suitably post-apocalyptic world, but everything is so brown that the visuals become rather samey very quickly.

An unremarkable title that whilst potentially sound in concept (aside from the gratuitous use of a female lead), completely fails to deliver in terms of providing any kind of thrills.

From a stationary position there’s always a very slight pause after you move the stick before he responds, and when he is actually moving there’s a slight level of inertia so you never feel you have full precision of control.

By Great Odin’s teeth, this is an average game of the most average order. Dull alsö.