Be wary of the secret costs though, I can’t express enough that those are a very sneaky way of robbing you out of your hard earned cash. A lot of people fell for it, a lot of people are bound to fall for it and it’s just a sh.tty thing to do on MS’s part. It’s a true shame that they picked Lumines Live! to try out this approach on DLC, Lumines deserves better.

At its core, the game is founded on a terrific physics engine that makes for an enjoyable sci-fi puzzle-solving romp.

I like this game. I think my 400 Microsoft Points were well spent. However, it does have some flaws that are a result of simple design choices, and some flaws that are a result of a few programming glitches.

For a first time poker experience it’s quite fun, although I can imagine people who’ve played a million different varieties of the game find it a little underwhelming.

While Overlord sets itself apart from other 360 titles by offering a genuinely unique experience, it suffers from a lack of execution. Despite this, Overlord is still worth a shot if you have the patience to deal with its flaws.

The foundation is there; memorable creature designs, epic boss battles, and strong gameplay make Lost Planet worth experiencing. Though slightly marred by some odd decisions with gameplay mechanics, the experience is still delectable and is an easy recommendation.

The product is better than most other offerings in the Arcade areas, and most of you won’t regret spending money on this. However, with it being a fully focused multiplayer game, the single player feels rushed and unloved, offering you nothing to go back to.

The gameplay is unlike anything else offered, and even though it’s technically a port, compared to the rest of XBLA it qualifies as original content.

The disappointment with Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting, is that despite the delays, despite the additional time they had to get this game out and right, the online mode (quarter match in particular) has some fundamental flaws which stops it from being the quintessential Xbox Live Arcade title.

While it certainly isn’t perfect, great features like an excellent story and quite a strategic battle system make it hard to put the game down at times, and will appeal to RPG fans.

Despite some room for improvement, a linear nature and disappointing lifespan, Prey has a great deal to offer. It has fluent and dependable gameplay, one of the most fantastic video-game stories of recent times, some nifty innovations, a great atmosphere, along with two of the most emotionally harrowing boss-fights ever seen in a game.

The variety of online play is a great boost to replay value, as you can play for hours without having the same game experience twice.

While the graphics and the game mechanics, coupled with an excellent introduction and finale, absolutely make the game highly enjoyable, its flaws and the lack of challenge and variation pull the game back from its potential classic status into mediocrity, destined to gather dust after a single playthrough. As a package, it stands above the crowd, but not remotely as far as it could and should have been.

Not mind-blowing, but it’s worth checking out if you like sports games.

Although it doesn’t do anything revolutionary or ambitious at all, it’s a solid arcade racer to last some cold winter afternoons until the more ambitious games like "PGR4" and "Forza 2" come along, and it has all the classic Need for Speed feeling about it you either love or hate. I must admit I liked it despite its obvious shortcomings.

The game is and always will be great, and you’re getting unlimited plays for the price of twenty, don’t get me wrong; but Namco-Bandai made a sloppy port, and the neglect of a multiplayer mode of any sort is a huge mistake.

The main problem is, like most arcade games, I can’t see it lasting too long, or not long enough to justify a ten-dollar purchase. You’ll have to ask yourself, then: “Do I like racing around and crashing things?” If yes, this is probably the XBLA title for you.

It looks awful, it’s incredibly linear, all the characters are basically the same and the game just isn’t a real challenge for the competent gamer. Yet you’ll play this game and realise that it’s pretty fun.

Overall this not a bad game, but it’s short, real short. I’ve worked my national team all the way trough the qualification rounds and won the World Cup in 1 evening. Then it’s just another few days or so before you have everything unlocked, and completed all 40 Global Challenges.

A mixed bag overall. Initially it will seem excellent; puzzles are fun and challenging, the graphics look nice and it seems quite thought provoking. Discover the solution in the START menu and it begins to change, because lingering in the subconscious is the thought that this puzzle can be easily solved.

The Xbox Live Vision mode isn’t anything special and the time the developers spent on that would’ve better been invested in more tables. The Multiplayer features don’t do Xbox Live any justice due to the lack of exciting game modes.

Just don’t buy this if you are going to be playing on your own, or if you think Live will it make up for it, because it really doesn’t, not by a long way.

The problem is the fact that it all feels average, like a game that’s only intention is to compliment the movie with a fun few hours of gaming. It pains me to see that done to such a license.

The overall feeling of the game is that it doesn’t really excel at anything, but neither does it do too many things wrong to give it a bad grade.

The game has no savepoints in game. You can save your progress after going through a level but that’s it. This wouldn’t be a big problem if a. the levels weren’t as long as they are now (they can easily take up to 40 – 60 minutes of your time) or if b. there would be enough items to restore your health. I literally wanted to destroy my N3 DVD a couple of times because of these 2 problems.

If you already have Smash TV (which is basically the same but 400 Points cheaper), then I cannot stress enough that you do not need this game. If you don’t have Smash TV, then Assault Heroes would be better option, but even then, you will tire of it quickly.

Yes, the multiplayer is fun, but playing as just Americans and just Germans grates, and the single player is far worse than it ever should have been.

It’s definitely a fun game for a couple of hours, but after that you’re probably done with it.

It is a shame that it appears that most of its long development time was dedicated to balancing and testing online play against Vista users, instead of actually finishing up the game to meet 2007’s common expectations from a dedicated multiplayer title.

All problems with the multiplayer aside, this game is lots of fun, especially if you’ve never played it before. The achievements are a bit easy, and lack of used screen space will wear on the nerves of any HD user.

Without Ultimate Team mode, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of new content to see here. The FIFA series is certainly making progress but if you already own "FIFA 2007" we recommend you hold onto it until "FIFA 2008."

As far as achievements go, the list is fairly well balanced and is everything from beating Level 1 with no extra weapons to beating the whole game (which is where that code comes in).

In true J-RPG fashion this game doesn’t have a lot of real gameplay and I accept that that’s one of the merits of the genre, however the battle system gets really old really fast.

Slowdown in single player is unforgivable, particularly because the replays were done fine last year. To see them so broken on what should be a superior version is very disappointing. PES 2008 is more of the same in most areas, with slightly improved gameplay mechanics thanks to better physics and speedier reactions to fouls.

An underwhelming experience. The game has some great ideas, like the co-op manoeuvres, but doesn’t hit home with them. Instead it leaves them floating around in the park, crying out to be used better.

While almost every facet of this game is atrocious, there is a sort of charm that EDF carries that has so far been unseen on the platform.

This game feels more like "Fight Night: Street" than a next-gen Def Jam game, regrettably. All we ever wished for were new moves, new fighters, better graphics and online and EA gave us all that but in the process they broke the main thing that made this series interesting in the first place; the fighting engine.

Don’t throw the game into the deep depths of the sea, but throw it into a small pond where you can retrieve it every now and then.

Not a real good racer. Tuning your car will give enough variation, but you will notice that the gameplay isn’t that great and won’t really give you a challenge. What bothers me most is the fact that the overall presentation of the game gives the impression of a budget game to me, instead of a full featured product worth 60 bucks.

With AI that require two headshots before they go down, and a dodgy frame rate that for some reason drops when not a huge amount is going on, it lets itself down. The multiplayer is good fun if there’s a room without people using rocket launchers continuously, but again apart from the parachuting the whole affair is pretty generic, although good fun in small doses.

The free-falling dynamic feels fresh and acts as the element that sets the title apart from the rest of the pack, but due to the poor execution of the intriguing gameplay formula and downsides, like too little “bang for the buck”, Screwjumper! falls flat on its face.

Considering the enhanced graphics actually make the game harder at times and the multiplayer feels like a lame plugin that is highly frustrating without a crisp network connection, this is just a well executed straight port of a 1982 game, and then I’d honestly recommend you spend your 400 Microsoft Points on the more than excellent Geometry Wars if you want a multidirectional shooter.

There needs to be more single player for the game, because Tournament just isn’t enough. If you have no Live and no friends, the single player will tire so quickly.

Shadow and Silver are decent characters, Sonic’s not so amazing, and one of the very worst problems is load times of all things. If you like Sonic, rent.

Mad Tracks goes to show the limitations and constraints Microsoft put on XBLA developers with the 50 MB limit, which sadly Mad Tracks had to comply with. And you can tell.