Stretching your limbs across the battlefield to stop an impending throw is good fun, but there's absolute anarchy when you throw in an extra body. The mediocre mini-games, and antiquated single-player further block the punch of Arms.

That the game feels overly familiar is undoubtedly a good thing.

It brings a classic game world up to date, throws in simple but intuitive controls and doesn't rely on constant fire-fights to bring excitement.

A game that comes frustratingly close to excellence without ever justifying such a tag. Though the gameplay has depth and simplicity, it often feels more like a multiplayer game with single-player tacked on, than a genuine single-player title in its own right.

In relation to the other titles on the Live Arcade, it's a high price, but this is a game that you'll be coming back to months down the line, making it an essential download.

Does it succeed? Well, I don’t know—I’m not an astronaut—but I can report that it has a pleasing gravity.

It might be a simplified version of Hitman, but it does simple very well.

The Godfather feels pretty dated but it's still a solid and often entertaining free-roaming action title. The Wii game includes some pretty solid controls that for once haven't been simply tacked on to an existing release.

Graphically light years ahead of everything else in the turn-based genre and is easily on a par with the best looking real-time strategy games, such as "Dawn of War."

Doesn't quite live up to its Star Wars cousins, mainly due to the fact that Star Wars is simply a more memorable series, but it's still a brilliant adventure and great fun.

The game isn’t above jolting you with the odd jump scare, but it’s far happier to politely trouble your sleep.

Possibly a spin-off too far, Persona 5 Tactica conceals a reasonably fun tactical turn-based strategy game behind a wearisome visual novel-style story.

If I was wearing a hat, I'd doff it to the DS development team at Nintendo, who for me can do no wrong... or rather I would, except that I need both hands to control DK, so maybe it's best that I'm not wearing one. This is though, another definite winner from the big N.

For all its stumbling blocks, much of the core Operation Flashpoint experience has survived the transition from PC to console. For this achievement alone, Codemasters deserves our respect.

Dead Nation adds a lot to the standard twin-stick shooting affair, with welcome dungeon crawler mechanics, co-op play and social features that are likely to attract a solid little community. For anybody whose patience hasn't been gnawed to pieces by zombies this past year or so, Dead Nation is easy to recommend.

The biggest complement that I can pay to Stranglehold is that when I'd finished it, I wanted to jump straight back in and play through again.

Doesn't quite live up to its Star Wars cousins, mainly due to the fact that Star Wars is simply a more memorable series, but it's still a brilliant adventure and great fun.

So, I'm happy Transformers Devastation exists and thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with it, but it's not quite the game I imagined as an idealistic child. For one, it's not based on the original animated movie complete with soundtrack. And secondly, it's four hours long.

Quantum Conundrum is a fine adventure with a mechanically competent series of puzzles, and I definitely recommend it, but while the game has got plenty of brain it doesn't have nearly enough heart.

If you've already experienced the charm of Pikmin you're better off waiting for the tweaked second game, but if you missed out on the GameCube and fancy some easy to play real-time strategy there's no reason not to pick this up in preparation for the sequel.

Thanks to the strength of its stories, its fat pack of content and its irresistible charm, even those initially resistant to the prospect of another three terms at Hogwarts are likely to be won over.

It's great - I can see myself playing it for months to come - but it is just Call of Duty with a fresh lick of paint, and with competition as stiff as it is, no one could blame you for sitting this year's game out. But to do so would be to miss out on one of the finest Call of Duty campaigns yet, and an online multiplayer that stands up with the best of them.

There's a good experience to be had but it's hard to shake the fact that this is a bit of a niche title.

Regardless of that feeling of déjà vu, Carbon is another solid racer from EA, and the Auto-Sculpt feature is absolutely fantastic, not to mention the impressive car roster and functional online component.

If you aren't a fan of the silver screen steer well clear, because the pleasure inherent will be alien to you. Otherwise, the return of the Jedi of quiz games is of Oscar winning quality.

It's a fairly simple adventure with equally basic RPG combat, but that's exactly why it works.

You could consider the game’s numerous glitches as a kind of meta-contribution to this aesthetic, but, having laboured through a number of instances where my HUD was obscured by the lingering letterbox format of the kill cam, or where I have been inexplicably insta-killed, I have come to the conclusion that I would prefer a patch.

Once you get over the fact that playing EndWar makes you look and sound like a bit of a twat, you start to have quite a lot of geek-fuelled fun ordering your army about the battlefield, but we can't help but feel that EndWar is more proof of concept technical showcase than fully fleshed out triple-A title.