A pirate’s life for me? Not if it involves this much brainless scavenging. Cruise 2 is hardly a standalone adventure, but the second half of a bigger game simply hacked off in the name of money-making. Cruise 1 abruptly ended and Cruise 2 abruptly begins, dropping you in to flee a boss you technically fought two months ago. ...

Rats are put on earth for two things: spreading disease and starring in Pixar movies. It seems Splinter didn’t get the memo. The pet of ninja Hamato Yoshi, he spent his days observing his master’s martial arts, mimicking routines he would one day pass on to his amphibious acolytes. Developer Game Arts did much the same. ...

Finally, a game based on the most popular band of all time! And not only the most popular but also the most critically revered, the most historically significant, and so on… It’s a 3D platformer, right? And, after all the hype, it must be so much more than a simple tie-in like the Aerosmith and Metallica versions of Guitar Hero, right? Ahh, about that hype… ...

Spyborgs is about thumping things in the face. You thump hard. You thump soft. Or you play your cards close to your chest by thumping hard, then soft. Technically, only robo-bruiser Bouncer does any thumping, but Clandestine’s swordings and Stinger’s gun arm follow the same combo patterns, and Stinger is so ineffectual at range that you might as well treat his projectiles like close-quarter lead thumps anyway. ...

Remember Bit.Trip Beat melting our eyes a while back? Gaijin Games’ retro homage continues in Core, where the up/down Pong-alike evolves another axis. You’re the core, a stationary gun turret amid waves of pixel blips. As blips pass above, below or to the sides, you hold the respective D-pad direction and snag them with a 2-button laser jolt. ...

“Water Warfare is the first family-friendly first-person shooter for WiiWare!” proclaims the PR patter. We’d rather be spraying bullets made from alien acid blood into our opponents’ faces, but hey, let’s give H2O a chance. There’s an eight-player online mode and everything.

Chance given. This is trash. ...

This harks back to an era when 2D platformers were frustrating affairs that caused the onset of stress-induced baldness in 12-year-olds. We’re not saying we don’t like a challenge (we do), but when a limited-lives game punishes you like this one through its own poor controls and basic design flaws, we’re apt to throw the remote at the nearest editor. ...

Thank goodness, the first one wasn’t a fluke. Telltale’s episodic Monkey Island revamp kicked off on a splendid high, and this second episode is easily up to the first’s satisfying standard. Strong puzzles, funny writing and a fantastic new villain in the form of Morgan Le Flay, a sexy pirate hunter who’s simultaneously Guybrush Threepwood’s biggest fan and greatest threat in ages. ...

Some games are stupid, and some games are G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It’s so stupid we’ve invented a new genre for it: stup-’em-up – games that primarily involve lasers. Sometimes, instead of firing lasers, you’ll lob a grenade – that’s called variation – and sometimes you get in a car and crash into a mountain because of the worst driving controls known to man. ...

For a game that left us with such an abiding impression of unfulfilled potential, Mini Ninjas is remarkably likeable. The characters, for all the promise shown in their brilliant artwork, are disappointingly underdeveloped and the majority of the gameplay quite repetitive. ...