Bah +10! A pox upon Square Enix and their unquenchable thirst for WiiWare micro-transactions, because they’ve gone and hobbled something that could’ve been quite special here. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is fan service with a smile; less a true sequel to FFIV and more a ‘where are they now?’ update set 17 years after the original. Needless to say, those who enjoyed FFIV will be in their element here. ...

What EA giveth, EA taketh away. For every improvement or addition to the Harry Potter series there must be a subtraction – presumably to keep the universe balanced or something. Order of the Phoenix introduced a sprawling, detailed version of Hogwarts, for example, but scraped out every shred of ‘game’ as a result. ...

The Guitar Hero series has usually had a stellar track list – seriously, how many people would be willing to shred out to a ridiculous looking plastic guitar if the tunes were lame? So on one hand, it makes sense for publisher Activision to release this compilation, which collects 48 songs from five previous Guitar Hero titles (Guitar Heroes 1 through 3 as well as Rocks the ‘80s and Aerosmith). ...

Gambling? It’s a mug’s game. That’s not to say we object to losing a tenner every now and again at a friend’s poker night. Hell, we even won a few bucks once. But you won’t catch us watching televised poker championships for tips before hitting those online casinos that seem to make up half the internet. ...

The Mayans were wrong and the apocalypse is here three years early. Earth is in the path of a string of decidedly large, random objects hell-bent on Earth’s destruction. Our only hope rests on the withering shoulders of a decrepit grandfather and his two ambiguously gendered grandchildren. ...

Newsflash, people: a game can have more words than bullets. Another Code R has more words than anything – a surprise after the more controlled ratio of chat to puzzle in the DS original. In actuality it feels like the first game filtered through Hotel Dusk, adopting the extensive nattering but keeping Code’s more innovative puzzle design.

Disappointingly, R drops Dusk’s adult vocabulary and attitude. ...

A pirate’s life for us? Not if it involves this much brainless scavenging. Continuing on from Ganbarion’s so-so Unlimited Adventure, Cruise bears little proof of two years’ development. Button mashing. Hiking around confusing maps. Scooping up an inordinate number of coconuts. Have we slipped through a wormhole back to 2007? ...

Wii Fit’s been sitting high in the charts for months. It seems that Nintendo’s Wii is in people’s consciousness as much for being a fitness tool as it is for gaming.

So it’s hardly surprising that a Wii Fit contender has stepped onto the scene. What is surprising, however, is that it delivers a far more compelling and well-rounded package than Nintendo’s own personal trainer. ...

Nintendo are loving re-releasing games at the moment. So it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise to see a re-released re-release of Resident Evil. The original PSone game was remade for GameCube with swankier graphics and new areas, items and creatures and now that game has been remade for Wii with not very much new at all. ...

On the internationally recognized scale o’ evil Overlord Dark Legend is more Walt Disney than Pol Pot. The central premise might suggest it’s a game for megalomaniacs in waiting but the contrived plot actually has you thwarting baddies rather than stealing children’s lollipops. That said, there’s still much to recommend this Wii exclusive prequel. ...