What lies beneath is a nostalgic, ornate adventure game, weighed down by a few stifling design decisions, but these alone aren’t egregious enough to detract from how enjoyable its style, setting and stories truly are.

By including zombies and guns, Sega have provided something new to its cumbersome, juggernaut of a franchise; but it’s been done much better elsewhere.

God of War III introduced the scale and spectacle capable on modern hardware with a massive budget, but without the same wads of cash and sense of purpose Ascension feels like a step back. A safe bet that’s simply going through the motions, padding out the end of the PlayStation 3s lifespan with one last hurrah for its angriest protagonist.

On one hand, it’s a fun, colorful, hearty little game that employs throwback platforming and collect-a-thon elements to good effect. On the other hand, it features a jarring mishmash of gameplay styles, lacks challenge and suffers from enthusiasm-sapping load times.

There’s also unevenness to the pacing between the high-energy action divided by constant collect-a-thons.

The Banner Saga: Factions’ slower pace and current lack of class variety will be enough to discourage many from trying this particular brand of turn-based strategy. But those who can look past these flaws will find a somewhat deep combat system that necessitates tactical awareness and forethought, and a rewarding experience for those who invest the time needed to learn its intricacies.

Dead Island: Riptide is simply more of the same dumb fun, and while it still might not be the game it could be, I’ve learned to embrace it for what it is, absurd.

Razor’s Edge doesn’t reach the same heights of fast, brutal action that its predecessors did, but it’s a huge step forward and warrants Team Ninja’s flawed sequel one more chance.

To their credit, Trion Worlds’ support has been admirable so far, and there’s hope for growth, but in its current state Defiance strikes a precarious balancing act between fleeting enjoyment and impeding flaws.

Playing through Way of the Samurai unlocks a battle mode for you and a friend, but it’s still missing something, and just remains average, which is the main fault of the game.

As insulting as the gameplay is, the storyline should be highly commended. It’s not too often that a narrative in a game is so successfully thought out and executed.

Its simplistic gameplay and utter lack of complicated mechanics make it far easier to pick up, but the shallow gameplay will be a turnoff to skateboarding game enthusiasts.

If you can, I recommend actually skipping past this game and trying instead to find a copy of "Red Faction 2." It’s really a much more refined game and there’s really no connection between the two games at all so you won’t miss a thing. [Sept 2005]

It’s never truly bad, so I guess that’s admirable, but now that I’ve been there, I certainly won’t go back again (see if you can catch the nerdy reference in that sentence).

Voiceovers by Bruce Campbell and some excellent unlockable features just aren’t enough to make this game worthwhile. Watch the movies or read the comic instead.

It’s sad to watch as the Bloody Roar series goes to hell. It has a decent gimmick to make it stand out among other fighters. If only the minds behind this game actually sat down and figured out how to implement the gimmick properly, it could have the makings of something great.

It could have been great, but some poor design choices, like the way your allies cannot fall in battle, really ruin the experience.

The most disturbing thing about .Hack is how short it is. Perhaps the whole series, or at least two of the games, could have easily fit on one disc.

We are captivated, taken by Hotsuma's grace of movement, the clarity of his sword's simplistic song, the will of the wind that fills his scarf. But far too soon, much like the programmers responsible: we’ll forget.

It’s not really all that scary, and the action isn’t all that great. There. That wasn’t so hard.

35% of it is quite good. It’s just that other 65% that is disappointingly lackluster. The moments where you’re soaring through the countryside burninating trolls and stuff are great but the bland dungeons are far too prevalent.

So that's L2 "PvP" for you -- seemingly dangerous at first, but then a disappointment and apparent breeding ground for grief and exploitation. Under any other name, it would just be consensual duels. And other companies were doing those competently years ago. The catch is that this is supposed to be the main draw of this modern MMOG. Without it, there's nothing but a steady stream of intolerably slow-moving experience bars and arrogant, immoral players.

But I think it's safe to say that when a game is both a retread and short, there's definitely something wrong with it. Silent Hill 4 is such a game.

Rockstar take three years to produce masterpieces, benchmarks of game design, but Reflections have taken almost double that time and give us an unfinished, unpolished mess.

The maddening difficulty level of this game destroys it. If you’re truly patient, then maybe, just maybe you might be able to get something out of it.., but if you’re like me who plays games to be entertained, I think you’re going to find yourself wanting to return this one.

We’re just left with one more game that relies on frustrating elements to make a short game seem longer, and one more game that settles at just average.

There are a number of good ideas in Spartan, and though they aren’t particularly well-executed, some of them are fun to tinker around with and try out. But only tinker: Spartan is a slow and boring game that few will enjoy.

Has far too many bugs to be worthy of your consideration. If you’re looking for a rich fantasy world then try out Morrowind or Arx Fatalis. If you’re looking for some multiplayer fun then stick with Diablo II.

Multiplayer options, offline and online, are perhaps the best way to experience 187 Ride or Die, but it's little consolation for the mediocre singleplayer modes.

Disney and Pixar have a cash cow phenomenon on their hands that is well deserved. This is what makes the game’s mediocrity all the more infuriating. Aside from the authentic look of the title, and perhaps also the jazzy and bombastic tunes, The Incredibles disappoints on every other level.

Instead of sticking to a formula that is for all intense purposes simplistic genius, Team 17 have decided to go for a game with a remarkably unnecessary amount of complexity.

The game is £20 and does have an online mode, but why bother? There are better FPS's out there, better robot transforming games out there (like Robotech: Battlecry for instance) and better games with bikes in.

I think Battle out of Hell is a fresh coat of paint for an old car that has a lot of unattended problems under the hood.

Even "Kingdom Hearts," arguably aimed at an even younger audience than this, offered more meat.

Half-Life 2 has a better story, F.E.A.R. has better combat (complete with bullet time) and Gears of War looks better.

This is a very basic FPS game that might entertain you for a while, but it’s pretty boring and repetitive and I just couldn’t get that excited about it. Sure, it’s got a lot of flash, but there’s no substance to the game.

I do know that every time I sit down to play this game, after sitting through the too-long-for-what-you-get loading screens, I just want to turn it off, and that’s not a feeling that I want to have when playing a game.

The awkward camera, the incredibly repetitive levels, and lackluster enemies make the game seem far more tedious than it should have been. The concept of having a traditional samurai stuck in the middle of a spaghetti Western is hilarious in itself, but it can’t save the game from its own mediocrity.

There’s nothing new or interesting about this game; it’s just another horribly mediocre third-person shooter with the words “James Bond” stapled on. When all is said and done, From Russia With Love lacks an important quality that previous Bond titles had: fun.

A great looking game with no personality.

In the end, Ridge Racer 6 isn’t a broken game in any sense, it’s just boring and I don’t care to play it.

At times, it can become annoying how slowly the Bones move around the screen, but it does add just a little more longevity to this first installment, which clocks in at just several hours long.

No matter how engaging the last several hours are, there's still a ridiculous giant cat and a host of other obnoxious characters that ruin it.

It’s hard to review a game like this, even with my years of experience, because nothing, good or bad, really stands out. This is a strictly average game that isn’t going to enhance or blight your collection.

The new additions to in the DS version are pleasant enough, but it’s not enough to make the game feel new or exciting.

Like every other console poker game on the market, it simply can’t compete with the real experience of playing poker. All In has a lot of goods but an equal number of bads that keep it from being anything but an average poker simulation that fails to captivate and engage the player.

The hideous load times serve the player well, allowing him or her to reflect on what they could better be doing with their time than such run of the mill drudgery. Something enriching, perhaps, because life’s short enough as it is.

Nobody is suggesting that such a marriage of styles and boundary pushing storytelling shouldn’t be attempted in gaming, and in that Hell’s Highway is incredibly brave, but arguably any effort to be both an enjoyable first person shooter and stony-faced anti-war tale is doomed from the outset. Something must be compromised, it’s just a shame that in this case it happens to be the whole package.

As you attempt to cut through your enemies in grisly fashion you’ll recall a simpler time, where you rode a purple chicken and kicked gnomes in their fannies.

More than anything, Haze feels like an appalling waste; a waste of a talented development team on a premise which never sounded impressive or interesting, and a waste of time and money which could have been put to much better use elsewhere.

It’s a shame, really. It’s sad to see one of the most popular handheld games of its time be devolved into this poor excuse of a card game.

By now, you’ve probably forgotten about the killer vagina. But while The Awakened should have been an adventure memorable for its gutsy Lovecraftian/Holmesian hybrid plot – a dark, unpredictable tale of an arcane sect responsible for kidnappings, bloody murders and dismemberments – most of that gets buried behind the sluggish game.

It may be harsh to call Super Swing Golf terrible, but it does have a lot of flaws. The poor controls, badly designed courses and an unneeded level of wackyness provide nothing more but a few hours of distraction.

Unfortunately, stellar graphics can’t save Pokemon Battle Revolution from utter mediocrity.

Compared to the hype, Two Worlds is a bitter disappointment.

If you must complete every game you play, then don’t bother. Still haven't found anyone on Xbox LIVE or on public message boards who has even claimed to have completed the game 100%.

It's a shallow, lazily-upgraded and rushed game that could have done with being taken back to the drawing board at an early stage to better encompass the power of the new hardware on offer.

The lack of all the assorted tweaks & tune-ups that the series has seen since 1987 diminishes its appeal somewhat, with the more Final Fantasy games you’ve played likely to correlate with less enjoyment you’ll be able to extract from this one (fanboyism withstanding).

This is an excellent case of style dripping over substance and if you can forgive its dire lack of the latter, you're sure to enjoy what laughs you'll get out of it.

And that symbolises the entire experience, really. It seems strange that to get my RPG fix in 2009, four years after this generation hit the scene, I have to dust off my PS2 to give me the type of experience that so many of us have been longing for in current-gen glory.

If this is the only version of Madden NFL 08 that you have access to, then you should still play it, but you’re not going to get the same enjoyment out of it as someone who has the 360 version is going to. But, despite the flaws, it is clear to see that there’s potential here.

So, King Of Fighters might be a much-loved series amongst its hardcore fans and it might deliver in all the areas that those familiar with the franchise would expect, but measured toe-to-toe against modern fighting games it just doesn’t fare well.

All style and no substance is an appropriate way to describe the entire game, really.

An interesting experiment in genre-bending. Unfortunately, the process wasn't handled with enough care for the result to be anything more than an interesting interlude in between sessions of Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.

It has some great moments in gaming, but most of the time there is only frustration awaiting you at every turn. While it could have been a great start for a new franchise, DICE should have made the game more friendly and open.

The game reminded me very much of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which did not go down well with this particular reviewer at the time, or now even).

It’s a game whose flaws consistently work against its plusses. The atmosphere is brilliant as always, the scoring and sound effects magnificent (better than ever, perhaps) – but with this latest effort, which definitely falls short, I wonder if it isn’t time for Konami to consider an overhaul of Resident Evil 4 proportions.

Silent Hill: Homecoming feels tired. The series is past its best and is in need of a complete re-work.

A likeable adventure. While it contains many frustrating aspects that gamers would do well to stand, there’s something in the game that makes it oddly appealing.

Its brevity doesn’t merit the fifty dollars you’ll have to shell out for it. The missions are a simplistic mishmash of killing, transporting, and exploration.

If you’re not a fan of Lost in any way, there is just no way I can possibly recommended this game to you.

For what it’s worth, you could do a hell of a lot worse than The Spiderwick Chronicles. It seems perfectly happy to get through the six or so hours of game time merely meeting criteria to an acceptable standard and never anything more.

Borderlands has a lot of growing to do. The concept is strong, but in execution, it just doesn’t work very well.

If you’ve not been convinced by Koei’s previous games then Warriors Orochi is unlikely to persuade you otherwise.

Project Origin delivers an experience that will have you turning off the console, and not the lights.

Sorry, Victorious Boxers veterans. This game is a step back from the titles you know and love. This was the series’ chance to shine, and it’s been doomed to obscurity yet again.

Investing time and money into Baroque comes down to your tolerance for the genre - those experienced with ‘roguelike’ dungeon crawlers should find a lot of hidden depth here mixed in with an engaging story. For everyone else, Baroque is a more often than not, distant, vague and unfairly difficult experience you could probably do without.

This is one for the hardcore basketball fans only, as they are likely to enjoy the short-burst addictive action it has to offer. With that said, don’t expect to find any challenge here.

As far as pitching and hitting are concerned, MLB 2K8 is great. But presentation counts, and when a weak presentation is coupled with fielding issues, it's a lot harder to enjoy this game.

With average graphics, adequate story, standard music and decent battles you truly end up with an average, run-of-the-mill game. Is it worth its selling price? That comes down to how bored you are.

Even little tasks, such as assigning new officers to freshly conquered fiefs become annoying. Running an empire is no easy task, and I didn’t find it particularly appealing in Nobunaga’s Ambition: Rise to Power.

City Life is a game that took social generalisations and completely sensationalised them to the point of an unrealistic nature and made them unworkable with the concept of the game.

All of the information and progress is efficiently stored, which beats writing things out by hand. Alternatively, running for a while and checking some forums could be just as effective for many people.

With such monotonous gameplay, the excellent RPG elements used to pimp out characters proves to be useless.

If the peripheral wasn’t plagued with pestering annoyances and the ability to induce cramp after half an hours play, this may have been more of a success. With a lack of original or even quality track listing, this game begins to wear thin after only one play through.

Why, Sega? Why did you do this? Why did you botch what was potentially the most amazing Sonic game of this generation? All that can be done is to hope the next attempt succeeds where this failed so horribly.

The game is nothing more than a poorly veiled series of connect-the-dot challenges.

The Incredible Hulk is an enjoyable experience that has been let down by bugs and glitches.

Although the title is easily accessible, well-decorated and simply constructed, there is very little here to justify a full price tag.

A game that just sort of ‘exists’. Dinosaur enthusiasts and fans of the card game and TV show are sure to love the cartoon shenanigans, but for everyone else, it’s most likely not worth your time or your dinosaurs.

An ambitious and in ways progressive survival horror game, whose ambition is hampered by its own numerous flaws. Whether these problems are a result of porting a current-gen title to a last-gen console remains to be seen, but the PS2 edition is very clearly a stripped down version of the impressive 360 game Atari have been displaying.

Bottom line: the whole game feels remarkably uncomfortable despite looking so smooth and natural.

After experiencing The Godfather II in its entirety, it’s impossible to deny that this is an unfinished, irrational product that fails to capitalise on the license which has been well and truly worn out after two poor iterations.

It's not that From the Abyss is a bad game. It's just that it doesn't do anything interesting or innovative.

This deserves pride of place in a gaming museum, but sadly not in your DS.

Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars is one of those “what if” games. What if the controls weren’t a mess? What if the multiplayer mode wasn’t riddled with bugs?

It's a shame that a game with so much promise in the areas that maybe we underestimate in games such as the story and scripting, can fare so badly in the audiovisual experience and general gameplay.

But if you have more MS points than you know what to do with, The Maw is perhaps worth the proverbial weekend fling. Just don’t expect it to stay around long enough for a commitment.

The plot wavers between comic-book badassery and awkward melancholy, making you wonder whether the writing team couldn’t come to an agreement on what kind of story they wanted to tell.

It’s not an abominable game, and is moderately entertaining in short bursts. It’s just that there are so many better alternatives out there that you’d be hard pressed to find a reason to pick this out of the bunch.

It can be a lot of fun and beating up familiar looking green-clad elves forces a wry smile, but for the most part the poor combat, paper-thin strategy and technical limitations hinder a product laced with potential.

For any PS3 owners craving a game of pinball on the system, this is currently the best (and only) choice, that is if the much older but more dependable likes of Pinball Illusions don’t appeal.

Amongst videogames, PDC World Championship Darts 2009 is peerless. But until the catchy theme tunes, drunken camaraderie and meaty dart-meeting-board thwack of the real game can be condensed into a handheld games console, the physical alternative will be an adversary no software can overcome.

Xtreme 2 succeeds as a budget game - it just doesn’t cater to any audience in particular. A lack of focus is the overarching problem with this decent budget title.

Even with all of its issues Bomberman Ultra! can still be a blast if you have a bunch of like-minded friends nearby and six extra DualShock 3s, but for those potential online bombermen and women out there, better wait for a patch or the inevitable sequel.

While it tries to do a lot with its MMO style quests, EXP, multiple campaigns and Conquest mode, it never really focuses on making the basic gameplay mechanics a success.

For those of us who are open to innovation and who appreciate the fantastical, immersive experiences the craft can throw up, Overlord: Dark Legend is destined to feel like something of a wasted opportunity.

The repetitive gameplay will probably stop most kids really engaging with it, and the educational value is debatable. A budget purchase only.

Some of the latter missions are quite fun and Ace Kill skill adds some interesting variety but it seems unlikely the average player will get that far as they’re inundated with a never ending sea of German fighters, useless comrades and clichéd World War II stories of heroics.

There's enough good in this episode to make The Siege of Spinner Cay a little bit more than just a mandatory stepping stone to the next chapter. But one can only hope, however, that this isn't the beginning of a mid-season slump.

At around 40 minutes Battle of Forli is also an extremely short piece of DLC. The cheap price of 320 Microsoft Points can justify it, but for such a small amount of content and the same gameplay we’ve already spent 15 hours playing, it isn’t really worth it.

But once those colourful environments are replaced with dull mechanical labs, and the few rocket pack-related ideas presented in the first stage are reused ad infinitum, any initial enthusiasm is dispelled quickly.

Though one could claim that the campaign and online rewards/achievements and the mediocre level of character customization online make the game worth looking into, in truth, this is a title that doesn't warrant your attention unless you're starved for a taste of Transformers flavour and the most basic gaming experience.

The perfect rental.

But despite its benefits, the plot is bland, predictable, and utterly cliche. By limiting Samus in such a nonsensical way, the game goes against everything the series is about. The exploration aspects are severely limited, and the linear designs are watered down versions of the stuff you'd find in the previous games.

Players that pick this game up will find a game that is certainly playable, but if you let this pass by, you won't miss much.

Prince of Persia is a great series with a lot of potential, but the developers just didn't hit the mark with this entry.

Fable III attempts to radically reinvent the franchise, a reinvention that fans neither wanted nor asked for. Instead of following on the success of the previous entries, Fable III tries to be something other than it is, but I don't think the developers were even sure what this is supposed to be.

Breach suffers from being bland. There is no visual style, it sounds dull, and without hardcore mode turned on the level design is uninspired and weapons lack impact.

Splatterhouse is wildly gory and wildly uneven. It has unrealized potential, and maybe if the kinks were worked out it would've been a great action game.

ROTT is a long forgotten fast-paced FPS that is exploding with style, let down by a lazy port. Take the time to master the control scheme though and you'll find ROTT a lot of fun to play and jam-packed with innovative features.

It's precise, practical, ticks boxes and has been too quick to shed its defining credentials; credentials that made the earlier games a must buy for any enthusiast. Killzone 3 feels generic, rushed and greatly unloved by its creators. A huge, huge disappointment.

The thought of turning epic Gundam combat into a fighting game is quite awesome, but Battle Assault falls far short of its potential. The story and characters are almost non-existent, giving you a game with little personality.

At least MoF is easy to get into, furnishing the player with plenty of quests and side-quests for the checklist-happy RPG fan.

Conflict: Vietnam earns another medal for a split-screen co-operative mode for up to four players. When your friends are controlling each person in your squad the game becomes much, much more enjoyable.

Naturally, mediocre graphics can be overlooked if the gameplay is there, but some considerable problems hinder this aspect of the game as well.

Although Path of Neo is an improvement from Enter the Matrix, it should have been much better than it turned out. I have a feeling this is going to be one of the final nails in the once lucrative and respectable Matrix franchise.

If From Russia With Love could be solely judged on its sheer Bond-ness, it would receive high marks thanks to the stunning music, the incredibly detailed in-game Sean Connery and the excellent voice acting. However, as an actual game, this one just doesn't do enough to impress.

It's fun for very young kids who may love the pokemon characters but be unable to cope with the complex rpg mechanics of the GBA titles.

It's important, however, that one doesn't expect Parasite Eve III when popping this into their PSP, as that would surely result in acute disappointment.

Considering the level of flexibility, it's still likely you won't be totally happy with Conduit 2; the campaign is lazy, marred with bad AI, lots of balance issues, poor writing and impotent weaponry. The multiplayer is the sole reprieve, but even then, it's still only a relative high point.

If you've ever gotten caught up in a multiplayer game of Jam at the arcade or experienced the console conversions during the mid-'90s, this NBA Jam reboot is likely the closest anyone's come to getting it right since Midway's Hangtime series.

Honest Hearts was promised as a long awaited harvest, but is rather, a shrub grown from the soils of poor choices.

The jokes are pulled from all over the place and most of them fall flat, and no one gameplay mechanic is particularly impressive. It feels like it doesn't quite know what it wants to be, whether it's an old school throwback or a more modern shooter, and in the end it succeeds at being neither.

A far from essential purchase and is only recommended for Fallout completists.

There could have been so much more to Samurai Warriors Chronicles…but there isn't. Unlike its source material, this game will never make history.

Dream Trigger 3D has a lot of interesting ideas, but rarely implements them well. The gameplay mechanics are needlessly contrived; by the time you've gotten over the learning curve, you'll probably want to stop playing.

The idea of barricading yourself from zombie hordes and working cooperatively to survive is a solid scenario. However, the controls and constant QTE's hinder interaction and the game hastily leaps into repetition.

Taking the series out of the Wild West has stripped The Cartel of character. While I understand Techland's desire to move forward, its lost its edge. In a crowded genre, The Cartel is solid, at times fun, but ultimately uninspiring.

With its inadequate online play, starved features, and questionable arcade perfection, Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection is, at best, a nostalgic purchase.

Simply put, Rotastic is on the wrong platform. Its casual foundations are squarely rooted in the iPhone market and it's a shame that it has gone for the console market instead.

Across the 2nd Dimension can easily be summed up by the mini games – including ski ball and a crane game – that bookend every stage: pleasant, but monotonous.

Ultimately, Max and the Magic Marker may be like many other puzzle and platforming games, but it's rarely as accomplished.

Payday delivers the kind of multiplayer co-op shooter that's been absent on PSN, although its appeal is undercut slightly by weak presentation values and an absent online community.

There is some charm to this little indie game. It's bright, it's colorful and it's unique amongst RPG's with a stylized combat system that manages to successfully replicate the series of games it is based on. The foundation, however, is weak, boring and repetitive. The only incentive to survive its repetitive battles is that you won't have to attempt them a second time.

A lazy port that could have offered players more. In a crowded and competitive marketplace, only those most nostalgic gamers should purchase this. Everyone else will get enough from the demo.

Instead of putting in the muscle to make a Bond game worthy of the canon, we have been given a port of a remake of a Nintendo 64 game. GoldenEye 007: Reloaded isn't worth your time.

A workout that doesn't work out. The flavor is that of a party game, but within multiplayer it grants no Kinect functionality for other players.

Despite its engaging combat, Tales of Graces f fails to distinguish itself from so many other JRPGs that have the exact same elements and handle them much better.

Hardcore WKC fans may be willing to pour hundreds of additional hours into this sequel, nay - expansion - but most will likely be turned off by the confusing story, niggling flaws and generally repetitive nature of the combat and questing.

The franchise to this point has been both slick and punishing, providing a variety of ways to hone Ryu's ninja craft; Ninja Gaiden 3's new direction simply doesn't cut it – especially when played alone.

Confrontation is an unfortunate a mess of a game, cluttering enough junk to prevent whatever good that lies within from shining through.

Future Soldier does what is expected. It does little else and rarely deviates from the concepts accepted as standard. There's a sense of regret there with the opportunity to be something bigger, something more, but rather than expounding on the stylistic ambition, Future Soldier camouflages itself with borrowed ideas, blending seamlessly into a crowded genre.

It's not a bad action game by definition, but it lacks everything that made the series endearing, making it an overall unmemorable outing for fans that fell in love with the white-knuckle action and hair-pulling difficulty found in previous Ninja Gaiden titles.

Those going into SOL: Exodus should be warned that it's a thoroughly average space shooter that doesn't innovate and is going to deliver a boilerplate experience.

Garbed in retro aesthetics, an upbeat soundtrack, engaging puzzles, and a story that whispered promises of a long and grandiose experience, Resonance was definitely armed to the teeth. As a puzzle packed title, it does well enough to keep players immersed and plugged in. But as a story driven spectacle, expected from any point-and-click title, having things dim down prematurely is a sure disappointment and is best kept as a one time foray.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with Jeremy McGrath's Offroad so much as there's no compelling reason to recommend it over other racing titles that have more depth, variety, and make for a more engrossing racing experience for the same asking price. Instead, it's a barebones package with a famous name in the title that nails the basics and nothing else.

It doesn't entirely make sense as a whole product. The best thing that can be said is it's the best Tony Hawk Robomodo's made.

Snapshot is not a title where you can sit down and expect to strap yourself in for an instant gratifying haul.

Perfectly fine in execution, its refusal to deviate or break the mould holds back its ideas from becoming fully realised and providing real character or polish.

Despite its fantastic, straightforward combat, Rainbow Moon is a game that buckles under the weight of its bloated runtime.

For a title that many cult followers have demanded others to acknowledge, the disregarding scrutiny on Capcom's part does more harm than good for the cause.

Inconsistency is the name of the game. Resident Evil 6 tries so much to be all things to all people, and it ends up just being bloated, unwieldy, and frustrating.

It's expanded beyond any plausible scientific explanation, with what is left being a cumbersome, grotesque mish-mash of disparate elements, barely strung together and about as subtle as a hammer to the thumb.

There are several disparate elements of it that are truly great, and only occasionally do they cross paths, revealing the game that could have been.

Too easy for older gamers, and a little over the heads of younger gamers, Quantum Conundrum finds itself in a sort of purgatory between the two, and like a younger brother it can't help but live in the shadow of its older sibling's success.

Had care and attention been given to those (not to mention some reworked visuals), it would've made for a far more compelling package instead of two classics saddled with three duds.

This is a game that wears out its welcome several hours into the show. Eight hours of the same mindless killing of identical waves of bugs is a tiresome ordeal. Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is a game with too much filler and not enough ambition, packaged in bargain bin wrappings.

Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt isn't an awful expansion, but it is woefully underwhelming when compared to the wealth of content the others have provided.

The overall experience of Adventure Time is just fine if not hampered by its reliance on old design. It’s inoffensive and is a fun one-off novelty at best.

Try to play it seriously and only anger and frustration awaits. It’s lovable in attitude for a short while but once you begin repeating cycles it soon runs out of fuel. Much like the car now abandoned on that highway.

If none of this sounds particularly interesting, it’s because it isn’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with STX, but that everything it does has been done better before. Its slapdash blending of styles reinforces its image as a generic title trying to catch up to the first Gears of War while jumping on the military shooter bandwagon and being cartoony at the same time.

Alex Kidd & Co. is a fine, if not uneven addition to Sega’s ongoing Vintage Collections. it finds the return of a couple brands which molded Sega into the company they are today and a retro arcade-centric racing game that’s been broadly overlooked with time.

Sporos is an inoffensive and mechanically sturdy puzzle machine.

You could come into March of the Eagles expecting a glorified game of Risk and go away quite satisfied. That’s reductive perhaps, but there is a solid if unspectacular base strategy game here that’s deep enough for grand strategy fans to sink their teeth into. There’s just not a lot else to enjoy.

Evoland is a small game, but if there’s anything it could have learned from the big titles it draws inspiration from is that it should have picked one style of gameplay and fleshed it out. Instead there’s several subpar reflections of olden styles, painted in a fresh coat of nostalgia.

Taken as a whole, Dead Space 3 is far more infuriating than it is bad.

ACE has mostly succeeded in creating an interesting setting – but the joy of exploration is quickly tempered by the game’s reliance on fighting mechanics that are too simple, and too rough to be engaging.

The saddest part about Breed is not that it’s a horrible game; it’s that deep inside there’s a good game. All of the ideas were right, but the execution failed on nearly all aspects.

I had pretty high hopes for the title, and ultimately, I was let down more than a kid who got socks and underwear for Christmas. If you're in the market for an FPS game, go pick up "Painkiller." Same type of gameplay, much less headaches. [June 2004]

Even Shikigami fans in particular will be displeased, because MLB2 isn't the flawless port that it easily could have been, featuring horrible dubs: Like school in summertime – no class (An enemy really pulls that unfunny Fat Albert insult out of his ass, I kid you not.)

This lack of polish could be forgiven in a game with tight gameplay, but that’s not Battlecry. Your Veritech feels wimpy and clunky in every mode.

The silly parts in Stolen make up most of the game. There are some truly neat stealth bits but my feeling is that they were sloppily inserted into an adventure fraught with ridiculous AI hi-jinx and an unbelievable and really, negligible storyline.

The game’s combat system needs an overhaul, the levels lack inspiration, and the presentation will make your eyes water. When compared with its contemporaries, this game lacks the shine and polish that gamers are expecting when they try out their DS for the first time. This is shameful way to start the new batch of DS games.

The character models in the cutscenes look embarrassingly poor, with Mary Jane not even looking like Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire looking fat.

The story is interesting, but many of the scenes seem forced. Controlling the different characters could have been cool, but their movesets are pathetically underdeveloped.

It’s a shame that the concept was implemented so poorly, an example of sacrificing quality for mindless movie-licensed mush. With the absolute lack of difficulty and simplistic design, it’s a real wonder as to what Activision was expecting when they unleashed this game upon the masses of unsuspecting gamers.

From its stripping down of the series’ most successful gameplay elements to its obviously desperate addition of weapons and ‘street’ cool this is still a product of a development studio with a good imagination. But also, it seems, a lazy one only too happy to jump on the same GTA bandwagon that’s currently carrying way too many developers.

The exact opposite of the film series. While the movies feature lavish visual effects, the game does not thanks to a poor frame rate and second-rate animations. Although the movies have impressive action and swashbuckling swordplay, the game is burdened with a clunky fighting system that rarely delivers thrills.

Imagine a free-roaming King Kong game, with a main plot line that you can ignore as you run through the jungle, beating the piss out of dinosaurs with tree trunks and rocks. That would have been awesome. Instead, we were given this six to eight hour snooze fest.

It’s good value for money to those who are interested (It lasts about 8 hours and contains the biggest selection of unlockable concept art and character costumes I’ve ever seen), but even if it’s not as bad as you’d expect, it’s still pretty bad on the larger scale of platformers.

When you first take a gander at Daxter, you see a beautifully recreated Jak & Daxter game on the portable Playstation. Some thousand bug squishings later, you’ll realise that looks can be extremely deceiving.

But once you’ve stripped away the enticing pictures, unquestionable innuendo and blatant sexual undertones, you’ve got a wrestling game that is mediocre at best. The story and characters are laughable, gameplay is dull and sluggish, the presentation is a mixed bag, and the incentive to actually complete this game is practically nil.

The combat can be fun, but ultimately it’s rather boring and uninspired, the beasts are sluggish and unresponsive, and the defence is just plain annoying.

Too Human had a lot to live up to after 10 years of imaginings and re-imaginings, and it's sad that a game which was slated for greatness fell so far from it.

I see a repetitive game without enough options to justify even a rental, let alone a pricey purchase. Robots deserve much better treatment than this game provides, particularly those rare racing robots.

Ultimately, there's no real reward, no incentive, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - there is literally no reason to play this at all. It's very, very average, way too short, has an underdeveloped plot, and only a few good gameplay segments.

A bitter disappointment. It's a soulless, miserable outing that manages to make zooming around on crotch-rockets dull and frustrating.

Though the collection features a few gems like Billiards and Laser Hockey, much of the lineup is composed of half-assed mini-games with little to no depth whatsoever.

Exploring an entire island in order to race is tedious in itself. The need to win first place every time forces you to replay a track until you race perfection. The controls are slippery, and the gameplay seems sluggish. The Touch Screen features are poorly implemented. The difficulty, AI competitors, and convoluted mini-games are pathetic at best.

In a way, the game does live up to the hype: they wanted to ban it for its gratuitous violence and I can see why. Funny how they didn't just get out and say that the game isn't worthy to be played; that would've made things much easier.

The levels are gruesomely themed, but their simplicity, brevity, and linearity are disappointing. The sheer amount of glitches, questionable controls, laughable AI, and easy stealth mechanics make the game seem like a poor rendition of "Splinter Cell."

This is another sad case of a cash-in title that will only appeal to absolute die-hard fans of the Transformers series and in particular the new film.

Maybe the fans will find something enjoyable about controlling their favorite heroes via a randomized deck of cards. For the rest of you, go play some Solitaire. You deserve it.

Quite simply Empire Earth III is a game you should never play in your life. It’s boring, it’s structured as well as the leaning tower of Pisa and in one of the best seasons gaming has ever seen, it really shouldn’t be on the shelves.

A lack of direction within the gameplay and narrative ensures that this is one gamers will overlook like so many before.

By trying to match up to juggernauts such Gears of War and Halo, Fracture ultimately becomes a prisoner shackled by predictability and poor design.

The art, the audio, the level design, it’s all just sorta “there”, and feels creatively bankrupt.