Shouts of "Who’s that bloody pink blob that keeps nicking my fruit?" rang across the office long after we should’ve all been hard at work on other things and it’s safe to say that Kirby 64 is going to be a game that will get a lot of use in the coming months.

The repetition and the lack of variety, of entering one room that is simply is a replica of the last, may well get the better of you. The name isn't indicative of the game, but for excitement and real horror The Suffering just lacks that killer touch. [XBM]

We love this one too, though it's more out of loyalty than out and out lust.

This sequel is everything you'd expect, and not much else. Whether that's a good thing or not is down to your own judgement.

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.

Although it makes some effort to disguise the fact that it's just a textured mesh over which you constantly travel from A to B for no good reason, the game never truly manages to convince.

As far as racing games go this is currently unrivalled and you would be more than hard pushed to find a better motorbike title.

Not the revolution we had expected, perhaps, but it's still got classic Revolution written all over it, and that's just about fine with us.

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.

Get your fix of mindless killing right here, you won''t regret it - this is after all ''Unreal''.

It's such a shame that the missions don't use the area to its full potential and, unlike GTA, there's very little to keep you coming back once you've completed them all.

The whole experience is beautifully rendered in high resolution, which makes for some sumptuous details in the graphics.

The game is full of good, original ideas that allow you to tackle familiar situations in a fresh way, and despite flaws that we'll discuss later on, playing through it proved to be an immensely enjoyable experience.

This is as much fun as working in a butchers, if you happen to be one of those spooky automatons that stand in the window and carve meat for eternity.

Although the AI is good having a human wingman can be a great help. It's just a shame that this can't be extended onto live.

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.

One for the novice, or those more interested in ‘larger than life’ gaming than the real sport.

No doubt the satisfaction gleaned is as alien to some as the allure of Sudoku to others, but being in that small Tactics RPG clique makes it all the sweeter.

This is what Doom is, and for those who’ve never played the PC original before, it’s wonderful.

We’re amazed that Splinter Cell is as good as it is on the GBA. It’s almost as if Ubi Soft took the original Xbox game and siphoned away all the superfluous elements (such as the oh-so-pretty lighting effects, shadow-casting and highly-detailed graphics) until all that was left was the GBA version.

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

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

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.

Pool Paradise confirms Archer Maclean's reputation as a man with his finger on the pulse of the snooker/pool genre. By combining a highly accurate and satisfying physics engine with the addictive world of gambling and the all-important storyline, his team have created a game that should appeal to a far wider market than your average pool/snooker title and it's only twenty notes. A winner.

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.

The second [half of the game] - and arguably the more addictive - is the car customisation.

It's SOCOM meets Hitman and it makes lying in the rubble of a blown-out rathaus a tense, exciting and deeply satisfying pastime.

The main problem with Patrician 2, however, is the lack of delegation.