‘Sports entertainment’ is a big daft panto of a thing, so why are its games always so infuriatingly complicated? Because its fans are obsessive idiots. That’s our theory, anyway. But what it means is that, unlike almost any other sports game, it’s all but impossible to recommend to anyone other than fans. Which is a shame because, like pantos, wrestling games can be quite fun.

Effort has been made to make the controls more intuitive here, with lots of stuff shoved onto the right analogue stick – different varieties of grapple, that sort of thing. This is good.

But the rest of the controls are still over complicated. Take the reversal system: the button to reverse a strike is different to the button to reverse a grapple. Or the finishing moves: press two buttons simultaneously to ’store’ it, then another later to perform it. Can anyone explain why this is necessary? We’re at a loss.

It’s a similar story for the new ultimate control and environmental moves. They’re trying to be more intuitive by using the right analogue stick – and this works quite nicely – but to initiate them there’s yet another sequence of events and button presses to remember. Does it really need to be so convoluted?

To be fair, with a bit of bloody minded perseverance it’s absolutely possible to get used to the controls to the point where a match is a perfectly palatable experience. It’s still very segmented though: perform one move, watch the animation, perform another. It’s less severe than previous games, thanks in part to the reversals, but it’s still very noticeable.

As are the loading and saving times. Perhaps the best illustration is that, at one point before a match, there’s a loading screen for a loading screen. Madness. Pure madness.

For all the easy and obvious criticisms, it’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer wealth of options on offer. We’re told that the line-up of wrestlers leaves a bit to be desired, but there’s so much to get through – modes, types of match, customisation – that fans will probably get over it. And let’s be clear: the control issues won’t stop you from wading through the mass of content if you’re interested.

Admit it. You were worried when Bueua Vista Games (i.e. Disney) announced that they were going to be publishing the sequel to sublime puzzler Lumines. And you were probably even more worried when you heard that they were going to be including a licensed soundtrack featuring the likes of Gwen Stefani, Beck, The Black Eyed Peas and Missy Elliot. You can relax: it’s the same old Lumines through and through, and on most settings the licensed stuff doesn’t appear until a few skins in. Looks like we’ll have to wait until Meteos: Disney Edition for our Donald Duck avatars, then.

And we really do mean that this is the same old Lumines – the formula hasn’t been fiddled with one bit. There aren’t even any new block formations or power-ups, which is probably a blessing of sorts; Tetris went pear-shaped once pointless complications were added. Instead, Q Entertainment have spruced up the presentation, tidied up the visuals, and chucked in a few new modes and challenges. Your score is no longer capped at 999,999, and there’s a bonus playable demo of Every Extra Extended.

Newcomers are well looked after, with a comprehensive tutorial and a beginners mode. Experienced players might even learn something from the tutorial – it shows you the best ways to line up block formations and everything.

For the uninformed, the idea of Lumines is to match up four blocks of the same colour in either squares or rectangles. Once a line that sweeps from left to right touches them they disappear; if the blocks reach the top of the screen then it’s game over. The horizontal layout suits the PSP perfectly – it was only recently when we played Lumines Live on Xbox 360 that this became apparent. Lumines on anything other than PSP just looks wrong.

The new FMV music video backdrops are fairly low-res and do distract at times, but if they assist in attracting new players to the good ship Lumines then we can look past their shortcomings. We like the fact that the sound effects change to suit the licensed music – Pump It by The Black Eyed Peas is set in a car park, and thus the noises when blocks are placed and moved around include tooting horns and screeching tyres.

Staying with the music theme for a moment, on the options menu you’ll find a very rudimentary music mixer. There are four tracks to choose from and over a hundred tempos which can be adjusted and played with. Playlists can also be transferred to a friend’s PSP and vice versa. We don’t know why you’d ever want to do so, but the option’s there if you do.

If you’re already a member of the Lumines fan club, and you’re after more of the same, then this’ll suit you nicely. We’ve already said that newcomers are made welcome, which only leaves those looking for something new. They’re really the only people who are going to be disappointed, but as the saying goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – just upgrade it and charge extra.

Living in olde England and all, we know little more than the basics when it comes to ice hockey. We certainly don’t mind giving the latest efforts from EA or 2K a go when they plop through our letterbox though – you can always count on the fighting system to brighten our spirits when we’re being thrashed. We don’t even shove them to the bottom of our ‘games to play’ pile, like we do with the annual racket ball, curling and shove ha’penny updates.

Unfortunately for us, the fighting system sucks, if you’ll excuse the phrase. The animation is laughable and the punches lack the oomph we expected. At least they’re optional, and there are certainly plenty of other things to get to grips with.

The most significant new thing for this year is Pressure Control: hold the left bumper button and point the right analogue stick at a rival player and one of your team-mates will go after them. Tap it twice and two will start stalking. Which probably isn’t the professional term.

Crease Control is another new feature, albeit not one implemented as well. In essence it lets you can take control of the goalie from an over the shoulder view, but the mostly decent standard camera makes this feature redundant. It’s a gimmick, pretty much.

Team strategies can be given out with the d-pad, while there are all sorts of tricks to learn like backwards skating and wraparounds. Fifteen pages of the manual are dedicated to listing all the controls for the various stances – defensive, offensive etc – which just goes to show how long it’ll take to master.

You aren’t just restricted to playing in a stadium (which is full of 3D spectators, incidentally) as there’s a mini outdoor rink for 3-on-3 matches and a novelty frozen pond rink.

Select Skybox from the main menu and you’ll be taken over to a recreational room where stats and photos can be viewed, in addition to three mini-games including air hockey and a trivia quiz. Ugly menus – and slightly ugly players – aside, the presentation is hard to fault.

You’d think that playing up to seven others online would be a bit chaotic, but even with the maximum things run smoothly and the camera manages to keep up. When connecting, a 2K7 Sports newsletter is automatically downloaded, along with new rosters. The only complaint we have is that the rank matches are sometimes drawn unfairly. In our first online game we were pitted against four human players, and naturally got trounced. Make no mistake – this game is really hard going for novices. At least until you’ve memorised a fighting game’s worth of button presses and combinations.

We like a good retro compilation, with the Taito Legends duo, Sonic Mega Collection and the first two Midway Arcade Treasures collections being the very definition of good. Capcom Classics Collection Remixed – released on PSP only a few months ago – didn’t make that list, as it was missing Street Fighter II and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. But now that they’re here, on both this tiny UMD and in our hands, we’re reminded of an old saying: be careful what you wish for.

Street Fighter II – available in normal, World Championship Edition and Hyper Fighting flavours – brought back plenty of gooey nostalgia, but the PSP’s d-pad isn’t really suitable for pulling off dragon punches and whatnot. Don’t even try to do it with the analogue slider – more often than not Ken and Ryu ending up jumping all over the place instead of performing a hurricane kick. Wouldn’t it have been wiser idea to include Super Street Fighter II over Hyper Fighting anyway? We would have even settled for the digitised Street Fighter: The Movie. Well, maybe.

Thankfully Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts fares better. It’s the best game present by far, putting up a solid challenge and still looking and sounding pretty good. Ghosts ‘n Goblins isn’t bad, but why have a burger when you can have steak? Other titles worthy of attention include Eco Warriors – a neat 2D shooter with an anti-pollution theme – and the almost indistinguishable medieval hack ‘n’ slashers Knights of the Round and King of Dragons.

Scrolling shooter Mercs is alright, but the rest of the games – 1942, 1943 and 1943 Kei aside – just seem to be on here because they were knocking around the Capcom archives. We’re looking at you, Vulgus, Son Son, Higemaru and Exed Exes.

One thing we do like, though, is the ranking screen that appears when completing or exiting a game. Here a host statistics are gathered, from how long you played a game to how many times you pushed the X button. They’re then turned into a score, which is then transformed into credits that can be used in a fruit machine. The prizes from playing include artwork, music and cheats. Amusingly, you earn extra credits for playing games at obscure times, like in the middle of the night.

When we reviewed Capcom Classics Collection Remixed we suggested that this would be the better compilation, but we were wrong: Remixed is the better of the two. That had Strider, Final Fight, Forgotten Worlds, Mega Twins, Three Wonders and Block Block on it – more than double the number of decent games on offer here. Our advice is to either get that, or Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins on PSP and a dirt cheap copy of Hyper Street Fighter II – The Anniversary Edition on PlayStation 2. It means missing out on Eco Warriors and a few others, but at least you’ll be able to hear “Shoryuken!” every time you press down, forward, punch.

Criticising a budget game is a lot like telling a six year old boy to draw a lady then shouting at him to the point that he cries because he failed to equal the subtlety of the Mona Lisa. By that we mean that criticising a budget game is a lot like this: fun.

A couple of years ago Midas released two racing games developed by Kuju: GT-R 400 – the car one – we reviewed, and found to be basic but sort of alright in a way; Crescent Suzuki Racing – the bike one – we didn’t bother with. But now comes this from Midas: another budget bike racing game with another British Superbike team license attached. Suspicious? Not really, it’s just the same game.

We’re as certain of that as we can be without having played Crescent Suzuki Racing, anyway. Mainly because most of it looks exactly like GT-R 400. Apparently it was developed by Infusion, which presumably involved making everything that was blue in Crescent Suzuki Racing a pleasant shade of Kawasaki green.

Most of what we said about GT-R 400 applies here, funnily enough. It looks incredibly shiny in a bad way, sounds bloody awful, handles bizarrely but not to the point that you can’t get used to it, and the tracks are quite good. They may be the same as the ones in GT-R 400. We’re not going to check.

It’s almost worth playing the game for the incredible crashes. We’re using the word ‘incredible’ literally there – they lack any sort of credibility. The bike often floats happily in mid-air; the rider variously and unpredictably either goes flying or just flops off. It’s really quite wonderful.

We infrequently have high expectations of cartoon licenses, but with SpongeBob we’re always a little more optimistic. Not much, but we harbour the hope of at least being made to chuckle. And we’re always disappointed.

It seems like an attempt has been made to capture the spirit of the show, as the game has a vaguely episodic structure rather than a sprawling storyline. You go racing with SpongeBob, fighting crime with a superhero Patrick, destroying the world with Plankton. It’s still not funny though, and there seem to be even fewer speech samples than usual.

So there’s a mix of game styles, but they’re all incredibly straight-forward. The racing is simple to the point that it feels like cheating to hold the pad and look at the TV.

A hefty proportion of the game is predictable 3D action-adventuring, which is a case of doing what you’re told. There are a few on-rails sections – sky-diving, rocket-riding – which are trickier, but that’s negated by it taking much more to kill you. So you just carry on, barely paying attention.

Even destroying Bikini Bottom as a gigantic Plankton fails to entertain in any significant manner, such are the sluggish controls and not-very-exciting powers at your disposal.

But to the game’s credit, there’s very little actually wrong with it. The camera behaves, and the graphics are decent, even if some of the techniques experimented with work better than others – the comic book world of Patrick’s imagination is very smart, but the cel-shaded racing versions of the characters look rubbish.

Ultimately there’s nothing to evoke any sort of emotion: no laughter, no frustration, no elation, no mental stimulation; just going through the motions. You might as well buy some DVDs of the series and watch those. At least they’re funny.

Microsoft once famously claimed that Halo 3 would launch on the same day as the PlayStation 3 in the US. Obviously that hasn’t happened, but instead we’ve been presented with Gears of War, which not only looks better than Halo 3 – judging by the shots printed in certain publications – but was actually released a whole week before the PlayStation 3. So in a way Microsoft managed to better their word. Good!

The plot is pleasingly simple: burly solider Marcus is busted out of prison to help a bunch of other burly soldiers take on the Locusts – antagonists who’ve buried themselves deep within the earth’s crust. How long they’ve been living under our feet is a mystery, but now they’ve started rising to the surface to attack via ‘emergence holes’ in the ground. It’s your job to find and activate a device that’ll destroy their tunnels for good, literally crushing the opposition in the process.

What this really boils down to is a series of tense shoot outs and sniper battles, with the odd surprise chucked in along the way. The Locusts pack a punch, so if you go running and gunning you won’t last very long, even with the brutal chainsaw rifle attachment. Instead you have to constantly find cover, rolling and dodging incoming fire. The controls work perfectly to this end, allowing dramatic rolling from place to place and leaping over objects with the touch of a button. You can also duck and run by holding the A button, which is handy when a team-mate is ‘bleeding out’ and in need of help.

When Alain Tascan, managing director of EA Montreal, said that “Gears of War brings nothing in terms of innovation to the shooter,” he wasn’t wholly incorrect, although there are dozens of neat subtle touches. The reload system is a fine example: if you manage to stop a moving cursor inside a little white box when reloading, Marcus will jam the clip in quicker and also be granted a round of more powerful bullets. At first it does seem like a gimmick, but once you get the sniper rifle – which can only hold one bullet at a time – it becomes a lot more important.

The biggest twist occurs a short while into the game with the appearance of Krill – bat-like enemies that swoop down for the kill soon as you step into darkness. Clearly somebody at Epic is a fan of Pitch Black. They’re a vicious bunch, so in order to progress propane tanks need to be found and set alight.

A section in which a spotlight needs to be aimed on a cohort as they work their way through a ruined town is about as close to a puzzle as Gears of Wars gets. But if you get stuck the camera usually zooms in to items of interest, or team-mates will blurt out a suggestion.

As implied earlier, it looks phenomenal. A mission set in a forest during a rainstorm is the highlight, though most of the environments – including an unkempt public conservatory and a large manor with antique furniture scattered around ready to be smashed – are packed full of detail. It sounds good as well, with a suitably dramatic musical score and near-constant team-mate chatter; when your team gets split in two, your partners often provide running commentary of what’s happing on their side of things.

When playing co-op over Xbox Live it’s a bit annoying if you and your playmate get split up, because soon as one of you die it’s back to the restart point, whereas if you’re in the same area there’s the option to revive and continue. Co-op online is identical to the single player mode, but thankfully the cut-scenes and such can be skipped. Finding a game to get into can take a few attempts – usually by the time we’d found the level and difficulty we wanted, somebody else had jumped in. You can host games easily enough though.

There’s no mistaking that Gears of War has upped the bar for all things next-generation; it’ll probably be quite a while until another developer manages to make a game this good looking. But at eight hours long it isn’t the longest thrill ride around. There are loads of achievements to unlock – some of which you need to play with a friend to gain – and thirty dog-tags to find though, not to mention another two difficulty levels to tackle. Good luck with the ‘kill 10,000 people in versus mode’ achievement. By the time you get that Gears of War 2 will probably be out.

The videogame market is rife with copycats, and always has been. It would be impossible to count the number of Pac-Man clones released in the Atari era, or games that looked and smelt like Space Invaders. EA acquired the Godfather license; Vivendi went and got Scarface. THQ followed suit, bringing home The Sopranos. But should you really settle for the third pick of the mafia licenses?

The only thing we knew about this game before slipping it into our PlayStation 2 was that it had been developed by 7 Studios, who last worked on the scurvy-ridden Pirates of the Caribbean game for Ubisoft and Activision’s not-very-fantastic Fantastic Four game before that. So our expectations were low to begin with, but in all fairness this isn’t an awful game. It looks okay – if a little low resolution and blurry – and it sports a licensed soundtrack used in wise moderation. The problem is that it’s as linear as a thirty centimetre ruler, and can be finished in around four hours.

The plot is set between the fifth and sixth seasons of the TV series, and involves Joey LaRocca, a petty handbag thief new to the Italian American mafia community. The cut-scenes are full of witty one-liners and the voice acting is superb, which is no surprise given that majority of the show’s cast was involved. And that’s certainly a good thing, as most of the game is made up of cut-scenes.

The rest goes a bit like this: you talk to someone, they tell you to go and talk to someone else, then they tell you to find some guy and give him a beating. Then you’re taken back to the Bada Bing lap dance club to do it all over again. Or take a break and play a bit of poker, if you fancy.

Nobody is safe from Joey’s fists – drunks, pimps, tramps, old men, bodybuilders – everybody gets whacked if needs be. Often we were left wondering why on Earth we had to exchange punches with some guy who hadn’t done anything wrong. Which is probably why we aren’t in the mafia.

You can grapple and perform special moves – such as twisting your victim’s crown jewels by rotating the analogue stick – and there are context sensitive attacks, like sticking a head inside a washing machine then kicking the door. Weapons can be picked up, but they all have pretty much the same effect whether it’s a dumbbell or a vacuum cleaner.

It’s all held together with a paper-thin respect system. During certain conversations you’re able to choose to reply in tough, negative or smooth tones. If you’re being called a “fuckin’ ass wipe” and given hassle then obviously acting tough is the right thing to do. If you’re just being offered you a nice easy job, then it’s best to act all smooth and grateful. It’s common sense, really. The easiest way to loose respect is to use guns in public places, but you can always buy respect back by ‘donating’ money to the Soprano family, via envelopes dotted around the lap dance bar.

If you’re a fan of the show then you’ll probably want to finish it at least once just to enjoy the storyline, vocal talent and liberal use of the f-word. Otherwise buy one of the Sopranos DVD box sets, which are both cheaper and longer lasting.

The conception of the annual summer blockbuster was back in June 1975, when the original Jaws movie was released. So in effect we have Jaws to blame for the deluge of licensed pap that finds its way into our consoles every summer. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Madagascar and Fantastic Four last year; Monster House, The Da Vinci Code, Under the Hedge and X-Men III this year. Thanks, Spielberg.

Jaws Unleashed can’t really be considered amongst that lot, however, as it originally started out as Sole Predator, until Majesco decided that it would sell better with the famed Jaws logo attached. Developers Appaloosa certainly aren’t unfamiliar with underwater adventures either, having created Ecco the Dolphin on Dreamcast for Sega in the past.

After a brief tutorial that teaches how to boost, bite, drag people underwater, tail whip and activate shark senses, you find yourself imprisoned by hunters and taken to an aquarium to be put on show. Yeah, like a ferocious great white shark is going to stand for that. Once the glass has been smashed, the aquarium floods and the tanks outside – and ergo a chance of escape – can be reached. Once back in the wild you’re free to roam around the coast of Amity Island, picking up challenges and story-based missions as you please.

A game with a shark as the lead role was always going to be limited, but Appaloosa have done everything they could to keep things varied. Oil rigs have to be destroyed with explosive barrels, tankers dumping toxic waste demolished and electrified fishing nets deactivated. The challenges meanwhile include eating lifeguards before they swim back to shore, and destroying boats in set time limits. There are also 45 car license plates to find, although annoyingly you have to re-collect any you’ve recently gathered if you fail the mission you’re on.

The graphics are surprisingly good – Jaws himself looks lifelike and moves in a very natural fashion – while the water effects, explosions and destructible environments are decent. When attacking humans it’s possible to target individual body parts; biting a hole in the bottom of a boat to make it sink, then gobbling up the survivors as they float on the surface is oddly satisfying. Ripping a dolphin into two then spitting the remains onto a packed beach is always amusing too.

Yet once you’ve broken a few piers, terrorized tourists for a while and explored most of the environments – which include a forest canal and an industrial area – you’ve pretty much seen everything that Jaws Unleashed has to offer. It’s still the best ’shark game’ ever though. Expect perhaps for Armed and Dangerous, which featured a gun that actually fired sharks. We think it was called ‘The Shark Gun’.

Rockstar once said that Bully is just a light hearted looked at school life, much like Harry Potter, Just William and The Beano. We certainly don’t recall Dennis the Menace smacking Walter the Softie with a baseball bat, then calling him a prick before rubbing spit into his face though. And we don’t recall Harry Potter kissing boys either. Yes, you can kiss boys in Canis Canem Edit. Rockstar say it’s a glitch, but we think that they’re just being open-minded. Or aiming for a bit of extra post-launch controversy. Whatever the reason, it’s a game deserving of its 15 certificate.

Jimmy Hopkins finds himself outside the school gates of Bullworth Academy – a rough school for rough types – after his mother decides to go on a year long honeymoon with her new lover. After a chat with the principal – CCE is very US-oriented, despite being set in an olde English boarding school – you’re shown to your dorm and whisked off to your first lesson. These take the form of simple mini-games, which get progressively harder. Upon competition you’re often awarded new items; when you pass a chemistry test – by following the on-screen prompts – you’re granted stink bombs and firecrackers. Art lessons play like Taito’s classic Qix, while English lessons are based on anagrams. They aren’t compulsory, but if the prefects catch you skiving they’ll give you a beating. Hence the game’s original title: Bully.

It’s easy to tell that Rockstar are behind this. The cut-scenes are very upbeat and humorous, while the controls, camera and on-screen radar are similar to those of Grand Theft Auto. The fighting system seems to have been lifted straight out of The Warriors, allowing for grapples, finishing moves and taunts, plus breaking into lockers is identical to stealing car radios. The gang system is like that found in San Andreas too, with parts of the school being dominated by stereotypical types. You’ll find nerds around the library, jocks around the gym and football field, greasers in the auto yard and garage and so forth. Stick up for the nerds and you’ll earn their respect; give ‘em a kicking and other factions will start to acknowledge you.

You’re pretty much free to run around causing mischief – setting off fire alarms, breaking windows, fighting – or completing sub missions like finding elastic bands – CCE’s equivalent of GTA’s hidden packages – or spare radio parts for the drunken tramp who sleeps in an abandoned school bus. The actual story line missions, which involve Jimmy’s rag tag bunch of ‘friends’ trying to take over the school, range from protection and escort missions to sneaking into the staff room to steal a girl’s diary. There are also themed challenges – Halloween takes place near the start of the game, for instance, and allows for all sorts of trick or treat and firework related malarkey.

There’s a really good atmosphere, with plenty of mindless chatter and stuff going on in the background, such as other students playing around and getting into rucks. It’s a bit annoying that there always seem to be thugs after Jimmy’s blood, even if you’re just casually walking around, but they go down easily with a catapult and it’s also possible to reason with them. The music – best described as chilled jazz – adds a lot to the experience too, while loading screens are short and infrequent. A bit later into the game Jimmy can explore outside the school gates, on either a bike or a skateboard. The local carnival is a haven of mini-games.

The biggest problem by far is that it’s too easy. Most missions can be finished on their first go, and there’s no serious penalty if you ever get busted. There’s still plenty to see and do though, with a top-down futuristic racing arcade game as a decent distraction, and like Rockstar’s previous works it’ll take lots of after school hours to do everything. You might even say that it had us under a bit of a ‘Skool Daze’.

There was an article in a Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago, which reported that big name footballers were planning to store sperm samples to create clones of themselves in the not too distant future. We can’t vouch for the reliability of the report, but if such a thing were to happen then it would save EA’s artists and commentators loads of hassle. “Rooney Clone 1 passes to Rooney Clone 2, Rooney Clone 2 has been tackled by Owen Clone 3. Crouch Clone 2 has dropped back to the goal. Crouch Clone 1 has dropped back to the goal. Crouch Clone 3 has dropped back to the goal.” And so on.

Seriously though, the commentary in FIFA 07 really impresses. It’s fluid and spontaneous, with minimal repetition. Fluid isn’t a word that we can use to describe the player movements though. It looks like there’s a few frames of animation missing from each player, most noticeable when running with the ball or turning on the spot. The only time the visuals look as good as the screenshots is during the cut-scene-like goal celebrations – and even then motion blur and hazing effects have been applied. It’s most suspicious that out of all the hundreds – and we mean hundreds – of screenshots EA released, not one featured an actual in-game view. Probably because it looks weak and very PSone-like.

In every new FIFA, EA have a stab at introducing a new feature, which is usually half-baked or adds nothing, then silently dropped in the next edition in favour for something similarly useless. This year they’ve avoided this path, instead working hard to create a solid and convincing game of football. The improvement in AI is noticeable from the first kick off, with plenty of scope for human error. In previous FIFAs you could always find ’sweet spots’ – areas of the pitch that you could score from pretty much every time, providing you used the right type of kick or spin. Not any more. Balls can and will bounce off the posts, and we’ve seen the ball slip through players’ legs more than once.

There’s also a PSP link-up feature – which lets you swap management data, continuing your career on the move – and a deeper management mode. In the My FIFA option menu you can customise the game totally, right down to whether you want digital, classic or analogue dribbling, and of course there’s the usual licensed soundtrack that you can organise playlists for.

The real question is this though: are the improvements between FIFA 06 and this worth £30? If you’ve never played or owned a FIFA game before you’d probably be just as happy with a £2.99 copy of an older FIFA, plucked straight out of the pre-owned section. In fact, the shop will probably pay you to take it away.