Three confessions: we enjoy hunting sims, we’re rather partial to venison, and we once killed a real deer (accidentally. With a Ford Escort). In theory we’re the best chance Cabela’s Trophy Bucks has of getting a decent score around here. In theory.

The trouble is we’re also not a complete idiot happy to spend hard-earned moolah on a game with all the depth and allure of a cow-pie. Truly, this is the worst ...

If there’s one word that sums up World At War for us, it’s ‘brutal’. The latest Call of Duty, developed over the last two years by Treyarch – not series creator Infinity Ward – is a brutal slog through a WWII setting unlike any other. You may think you’ve ‘been there’ and ‘done that’ when it comes to this particular global conflict, but after five minutes in either the blood-soaked single player campaign or the frenzied multiplayer you’ll realise that this is far from your average, tired WWII shooter. ...

After apocalyptic future worlds, there can be few settings less original than the Old West. Chuck in a desert, some dueling and a few authentic guns and you have yourselves a game, right? Well Techland don’t subscribe to that – Bound in Blood, like its predecessor, has ideas coming out the wazoo. ...

It’s an all too common mistake made by developers of short games. New attacks and abilities are introduced as the levels progress, building toward a big climax. But the result is the entire game feeling like a tutorial, with only one proper level to play at the end. Predictably enough, Caster’s third-person action only gets going right as the game is coming to a close. ...

Been hiking recently? If you have you may have noticed that OS maps don’t come printed with handy ‘You Are Here’ arrows. Unlike GPS screens and game maps, they don’t actually tell you where you are. Apparently (there are no instructions so we’ve deduced the following), you’re meant to compare the squiggly lines on the map with the hills, roads and woods in the landscape, and figure out your location. ...