See if you've played this one: it's a role-playing game with real-time battles and a top-down, slightly angled view (isometric is the big word for it). You're slogging around one dungeon after another, alternately hacking baddies into little bits with handheld weapons or just pummeling them with elemental magic like fire, ice, and the like. Of course it sounds familiar. On the surface, Summon Night: Twin Age is a lot like dozens of ...

It’s a sad fact that puzzle games don’t sell magazines, spawn action figures or have blockbuster movies made about them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Without the chance of a hype-tastic viral marketing campaign to boost sales, puzzlers have to work with what they’ve got. They’ve got to play like a dream. Soul Bubbles does just that, but it looks and sounds like a dream, too - a very colourful, ...

The original Space Invaders arcade game is the videogame version of a 78 RPM phonograph record - it's a sacred totem of nostalgia for the veteran generation, but it's so primitive and clunky to youngsters that they feel actual pity for the old guys. That's why it's so great that this reinvention, Space Invaders Extreme, blends old and new into a colorful, hyperactive, deeper than you'd guess shootathon that ...

Track & Field was a great though shallow game when it burst through the ticker-tape in 1983, and to be honest, the basic concept hasn’t changed much in 25 years. Now, instead of mashing buttons to make your on-screen athletes achieve Olympic glory, you furiously scrub the stylus across the bottom of the touchscreen. Moves such as jumping hurdles, lobbing the discus and so on are handled either by tapping a separate area of the ...

Yes, this is an unashamed Elite Beat Agents clone. And yes, you’ll be tapping along to handily copyright-free classical tunes (Flight of the Bumblebee, Ride of the Valkyries and the like) rather than Elite Beat Agents’ young persons’ popular tunes. But it really isn’t too bad.

Guitar Hero-style note-hitting breaks up the Elite Beat-style circle-tapping, and a reasonable difficulty level should keep the kids ...

We’re well used to RPG characters being somewhat unhelpful, but in River King the miserable sods take great pleasure in deliberately obstructing your quest. If we had a sword or a nice spiky ball on a stick, things might be different. But with just a fishing rod and a bag of bait, people don’t have the incentive to get out of your way.

It’s the usual story: your sister has fallen into a deep sleep - otherwise known as ...

How can a game that’s identical to the brilliant LEGO Star Wars in almost every respect not be as good? Simple - the setting. The Star Wars universe is vibrant, colourful and fantastical, while Indy’s real-world ’40s setting is more subdued. This works in the context of the films, but recreated in LEGO it has none of the outlandish flair of Lucas’ galaxy far, far away. ...

Last year’s Race Driver: Create & Race showed that the DS could handle a much more thorough and serious driving game than we’d ever thought possible, and without resorting to nasty steering wheels on the touch screen. With online multiplayer, smooth graphics and the option to draw your own tracks, it was in a class of its own on DS. So it’s no surprise to find there’s a sequel, although we didn’t expect it ...

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian on the DS isn’t about the Narnia that you read about in C.S. Lewis’s books when you were a kid – and that’s the real problem. Even though Prince Caspian features a few fun elements, this RPG feels less like an adventure and more like an interactive advertisement for the recently released film on which it’s based. But really, did you expect anything ...

Worker insects are known as drones. That explains how Drone Tactics got its name. But it doesn't explain why publisher Atlus chose such a lifeless title for a turn-based battler that 1) lets you wage war with a squad of giant robotic insects, and 2) lets you customize your fighting bug-bots with spikes, machine guns, and nearly a hundred other wonderfully destructive weapons.

The school age heroes, "let's be friends" story, and ...