The basic thrill of playing Starfighter cancels out these minor gripes and most players should find this an engrossing and explosive experience.

The speed, responses, combination moves and array of fighting styles intertwine to present a tactical beat-’em-up with enough edge to coax even the most-hardened arcade junkies out of their smoke-caked games dens.

A very accomplished title, as you’d expect from Rowan, if only all the polish that’s gone into the three dimensional section applied across the sometimes clunky menu and map screens. That’s a small criticism when looking at the whole game that offers a fantastic flight simulator and complex battle management game in one.

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.

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.

If you love real-time strategy but are getting a little bored of tank rushes and linear opposition then you should snap this up as soon as you can – it’s worth every penny and then some.

Taking the accepted route and reviewing the title on the quality by which it ape’s real-life however, we find a game which delivers exactly what hardcore b’ball fans would want. You know into which camp you fall.

Ultimately, while Kingdom Under Fire might be considered a Korean homage to Blizzard, there’s plenty here to enjoy in its own right.

A suitably impressive game, if not for its sparkling gameplay, then for its determination to do something different with the whole genre, in which it remains almost unique.

The multiplayer mode is where the real fun lies then, and this game can genuinely suck hours from your existence with the aid of a few bloodthirsty friends and an unhealthy obsession with scrap metal.

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.

With no difficulty options there is little extra challenge to be had once you’ve finished the game and with no multiplayer, its lifespan is limited but for a tour de force in stealth and tactics, it beats Delta Force into a cocked hat.

A pretty plain, non-radical slice of action that can’t even get close to other Extreme Sports games.

My favourite touch is that your forces have only limited ammunition, while in many RTS games your guns seem to have an infinite supply of bullets.

The sea battles are great, but they do take quite a bit of time, and it is a shame that the rest of the game does not live up to the high standards they set.

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.

What the original was intended to be - but it's still no "Alpha Centauri." [Feb 2001, p.78]

The first thing that strikes you about this game is the feeling of sheer quality that runs throughout it.

Should you feed this particular 12 shiny purple centimetres of powerful, liberating gameplay to your hungry PS2, you’ll be grateful too: you won’t remove it until you’ve finished the whole thing at least twice.

Meritless in terms of taking their genre forward or, worse even, invoking the warm glow of nostalgia. Spend £15 on a NES and the original games instead.

The battles soon result in simplistic tat-for-tat assaults using the boosted special attacks whilst the tactical differences between various sections is questionable.

A lot of fun, although not particularly advanced from "Delta Force 2" in either scope or quality.

For those that have completed the game the credits are one of the funniest things I have ever seen in a game. The credits run on for quite a while and almost make having completed the game an afterthought.

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

An excellent techno break beat soundtrack featuring the likes of Mix Master Mike and Rahzel puts the ice on a very tasty snow cake. The only thing that really lets this game down is a lack of game modes.

H3O’s problem, in a nutshell, is its subject matter – the wave, whilst a stunningly beautiful natural phenomenon, provides a most monotonous forum for a videogame imaginable.

Put simply, Fantavision is a work of art. It’s beautiful.

What began as a second rate Virtua Fighter clone with dubious buster designs has evolved into a dazzling tactical fighter, littered with original and superbly implemented ideas.