You’ve been chasing the enemy ace for ten minutes with your engine running hot from being pushed too hard and too long. Fuel is running low and ammunition even lower but you’ve finally got the drop on your foe. His German-made fighter can out-turn and out-gun your British crate but you have altitude and surprise in your favor. ...

Ten minutes in, we had to eject the disc to confirm this was Summer Athletics 2009 and not last year’s inaugural iteration. Same controls, lack of online play, charmless monkey gyrating around on the loading screen, and – barring two skeet shooting events – the same disciplines. Hell, half the Achievements are identical. Summer Athletics 2008: now with added skeet shooting. There’s a shining endorsement. ...

Games used to be like this all the time. Stick two dudes (or dudettes) in a level, give them some big guns and throw wave after wave of even bigger enemies at them. Strap your finger to the fire button, keep moving, shoot everything that looks at you cock-eyed. Die, repeatedly. Hurl the controller at the cat’s smug face. Start the whole process again. With a sob and a sigh. ...

What possessed Metropolis we’ll never know. We’re guessing they thought enough gamers weren’t subjected to the nightmare that is Infernal, and so a game that stank up PCs two years ago has made the leap to 360 where it can smear its brown marks all over our beloved white box too.

Hell’s Vengeance certainly lives up to its name. ...

In its original incarnation, Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer on PlayStation 2 was a solid platform action game helped by colorful art design and a charming tale inspired by Native American folklore. ...

Europeans, pretending to be Americans, shooting South Americans. Works for Arnie, Dolph and Jean-Claude, so why not Hungarian devs Atomic Motion? They drop six mercs in the Amazon, armed with enough cliche to level a small country. It’s tacky stuff, worsened by truly abysmal vocal performances – these actors sure aren’t American. We’re not sure they’re even human... ...

We hated every moment of this second combat-orientated Watchmen game. Bad guys get hit. Lots of bad guys. And then blood flies everywhere, and Rorschach punches people in the groin and, like, Nite Owl breaks arms in half or something. A ‘Rage’ meter keeps track of their anger and makes them go crazy when it’s full. ...

Does killing Nazis ever get old? Actually, yes. Eventually. That is, unless they’re supernatural Nazis. Hence, we have Call of Duty: World at War’s zombie-fighting mode, as well as a little thing called Wolfenstein. Nazis are best consumed (via bullets) when they are presented as cartoonishly as possible, and what better way than to amp them up with Tesla-coil implants and crackling undeadifying energy? ...

The NFL has long prided itself on parity. Each new season has little, if anything, to do with the year that preceded it; players come and go with astonishing speed as 5-11 teams become Super Bowl competitors and champions fall apart. In many ways, the Madden games of the PS360 generation mirror this erratic arc. ...