Quite a challenge to control, with his Sonic-style attacks, and many acrobatic skills.

It’s slow running, sluggish to control and there’s some horrific pop-up.

Despite the obvious simplicity of such basic controls, Mad Maestro manages to play fairly convincingly.

Overall, pleasant is the best word to describe this. Musashi: Samurai Pleasant. Sounds far more apt.

It is a hell of a lot better than the previous incarnation of Silent Hill but if you’re planning on getting the third tale, you’re going to have to be a real survival horror fan.

A pleasant surprise. It's a game that focuses on having fun and the fact that it stretches your grey matter at the same time is an added bonus.

This is aimed at the younger player so don’t expect too much, but it remains a solid introduction to the genre that’s easy to get into and fun to play.

It’s not going to keep you amused for a very long time.

A game that does everything it needs to do with just a touch of garnish here and there.

The trouble is, with the likes of "Project Gotham Racing 3" and "Test Drive Unlimited" looking pretty awesome - that level of expectation is very high - and this latest Need For Speed adventure doesn't quite have the weight to match it.

It really does feel like being there, or at least watching it on the television in the early hours of the morning, without having to stay up late.

Whilst the game certainly contains plenty of exciting and innovative touches (such as stamina, hero units and the points scoring system to improve units) these are all somewhat nullified by the utterly chaotic nature of combat, and the fact that the single player campaign always pits you against impossible odds that make the game much harder - not because the computer is clever, just because it has bigger and better units.

While the single-player may be short work for the fans and hard going for the casuals, the multiplayer action is a massive incentive to pick up this excellent bargain buy.

The combat system has a depth that allows you to learn new moves and string together long combos for some slick fighting while the vivid comic book style goes some way to explain the occasionally basic look of some of the sections.

It's more indicative of the current crop of racing games that a 15 year-old concept feels so refreshing.

There's little cohesion between one level and another, which makes the whole experience like fast-forwarding between fight scenes while trying to understand the story.

And there's Dark Alliance's core problem in a nutshell – it plonks you in one of the most painstakingly created gaming universes to ever emerge, and yet you're more than happy to be kept within this episode's central, linear plot-path.

The fairly simplistic gameplay mechanics may not appeal to rallying purists, but anyone looking for an accessible, if somewhat unorthodox, racing title will find much to enjoy here.

Essentially, what we have here is a lightweight arcade-style driving game that’s great fun to play in the short-term. Sadly, the whole thing comes to an end to rapidly.

The Warriors doesn't do anything particularly wrong - it's a perfectly acceptable game - but at the same time it doesn't do anything spectacular.

SOL's storyline (and this is being generous) is woefully inept, consisting of such high-calibre nonsense that there's absolutely no point following it.

Overall there's more to do and experience in Return of the King than in The Two Towers, but consequently this tends to frustrate more than please.

If the action sequences weren't so damn good it would be difficult to overlook this.

Burnout is the worst example to date as you can be in first place yet still run out of time, a facet which is both infuriating, common to several courses and, considering the likelihood of at least a few collisions, utterly predictable.

The worst part of all is the shocking lack of a multiplayer mode, and this is one of the main reasons why it doesn’t get a higher score. Still, jolly good fun… for a while!

Playing as Kong is a joy, (see boxout for details) but it's all too brief a flirtation with primal rage - scooping Ann up in his oversized hand and fending-off a Jurassic Park of tyrannosaurs with wrestling inspired moves, after swinging through a jungle canopy with all the grace of Ico is inspiring, but it feels like little more than a cameo.

For Britney fans the inclusion of exclusive unlockable DVD footage will make this a must-have. As for everyone else there are far better (and cheaper) examples of the genre on the market which we suggest you check out first.

For such a promising, daring game ultimately to play no differently at the end than it did at the beginning only underscores what a tremendous disappointment it is. As a pure cinematic experience it's absolutely unrivalled; as a videogame, it falls tragically short of the mark.