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

This is progressive programming at its least hurried - considered but hardly revolutionary, improved but still not quite perfect - and aimed squarely at its hungry core audience.

The healthy collection of missions provides plenty of variety to try out some of your moves, although sometimes the breakdown of these missions into short objectives can spoil your fluency.

Throughout the controls are frustratingly unresponsive and the difference between a turn and a slide is too often dependant on chance rather than skill.

OK so it's not exactly packed with originality neither will it take you weeks to complete but it's loads of fun and after all isn't that what's important? Put simply, it's quite possibly the best Bond game yet as far as its overall 'Bondness' goes.

Colours throughout are horrifically gaudy and are totally at odds with the sombre nature of the game. Overall, there's little to commend about this insipid and limp title.

Not only does multi-play work, it... you get the idea. We don't want to detract from the goodness that is Baldur's Gate but even a mother who loves both her sons has a favourite. This is ours.

It's as if Overworks were so proud of their bland, boxy environments that they thought the camera would be put to much better use tracking the grey blocks that constitute 'the world' than actually following the gameplay. If you can actually call it that.

It may look a little basic and the style does bear more in common with the mid-eighties mistakes in taste that the game's inspiration can be dated from, but give it a chance and Wrath Unleashed becomes very playable; proving old ideas need not die with bad fashion sense.

It looks like a dog's dinner, so unless you have a forgiving nature and can look past surface effects, this may not be for you. For fans of arcade gun-games though, this is about as good as it gets.

A definite shoot first ask questions later exercise. Hell, you can't even shoot the good guys and they don't get pissed at you for trying so just shoot everything that moves.

The aforementioned RPG mode is where we’ve found most of our time invested in Colosseum vanish. The darker-than-usual portrayal of the Pokémon world is an interesting and commendable change in style and the gameplay itself offers the player a substantially different experience to the handheld games. [JPN Import]

FFCC combines the instant appeal of adventures like Wind Waker and StarFox Adventures with the best parts of the FF universe...The best thing to come out of Square since "FFVII."

Beautiful lighting effects, crisp beam weaponry and crystal clear ordinance illuminate your way through to the heart of the Bydo Empire while Delta’s intense soundtrack has been replaced with a calmer and more mature score that settles well with both the game’s landscapes, and its pedigree.

Enemy AI is minimal, weapon effects lack impact and, best of all, once you're in a fire fight all the beauty of the slickness drops to just enough to make aiming more annoying than fun and that can't be good.

For everything Sonic Heroes gets right there's a massive fault ready and willing to ruin the hard work - a less than stellar framerate, especially in two-player mode, numerous glitchy moments and - dare we say it? - graphics that are actually inferior to the Dreamcast Sonic iterations.

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

Although it may be his trademark, the emphasis on speed in Sonic Heroes is exaggerated to the point of annoyance and you just need to push up to tear through sections of some levels, leaving collecting rings is more to do with luck than judgement and it's hard to feel totally in control, but there are plenty of puzzles en route that do take a little more thought.

Great for hardcore Forgotten Realms fans as well as a tasty prospect for those of us who would rather read real books and have never played a single game of Dungeons & Dragons, but still want a decent dabble into an agreeable world where numbers aren't as important as your ability to slay hordes of evil monsters and find keys.

As a sequel it doesn't falter in the same way other Capcom releases have, and we're talking "Devil May Cry" here. It seems that the developers were particularly happy with the original Maximo, or perhaps they had just designed themselves into a corner with nowhere to add anything too jaw dropping.

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.

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.

The real weakness of NFL Street, however, is the same criticism levelled at Madden just a few months ago - that completing a pass or finding a run through the defence is too arbitrary to judge.

Sadly, NFL Street feels exactly like a sub-game, and an extremely common one at that.

It's often the case with sports games, but this one is particularly geared up for some serious head to head potential. The over-the-top style is ideal for when you get the overwhelming urge to push a friend's face into a wall.

Each crevice is likely to hold trigger-happy snipers, each road blocked off with mortar crews. Fighting is far more intense this way and navigating the streets of Baghdad can be a nerve-racking experience.

Take a bowl of Capcom's Dreamcast title "Powerstone," add a pinch of Sonic then empty half of the mixture into the sink, and you have Sonic Battle.

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.