Iron Man 2

Oh. My. God. I am truly shocked at just HOW utter shite this game is. I literally couldn't play it for more than 20 mins.

Iron man is pretty much uncontrollable either walking, flying or fighting. How someone thought the control system was a good one I just don't know.

The cut scenes are well voiced but look awful! The character models are pretty poor and when compared to current gen games, well, they look last gen.

Sega should be fined for releasing this in this state and Microsoft should also be fined for allowing it to pass their quality checks. I haven't got a single good thing to say about this game - and that's quite unusual for me. I know I shouldn't expect a great game from a movie tie in, but this harks back to the 16bit days when they were completely unplayable!

Awful, awful, awful.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars racing

Started playing over the w/e. Too much to go into why Sega can't develop a decent Sonic game. The last one was Sonic Adventure 1 on the Dreamcast!

Anyway. This - unsurprisingly - adds to the dearth of good Sonic games. It's basically a Mario Kart clone (no surprises there then) and you choose from a bunch of characters and drive around racing tracks. Simples.

Visually - the tracks are nice. Some of the cars are cool, most are pretty average. The characters are ok - one or two to get excited about, but not that many tbh.

Playability wise - it's just like every other MK clone out there - offers very little new or original. I've only kept playing for three days in the hopes of finding some secret hidden game play gem amongst the cookie cutter design. No luck so far.

Word of advice to anyone making an MK clone: Play Diddy Kong racing (N64 NOT DS). Play it to death and see a brilliant fusion of the racing and platform genres. Note: NOT the multiplayer - just the SP story mode. It's just fantastic and has never been matched - even by MK itself IMO!

Splinter Cell Conviction

Started playing this last night. Very mixed start tbh. Big Splinter Cell fan from #1. But the series has been steadily getting less playable with each new game.

Very awkward playing the first level - they throw too many mechanics at you in such a short space of time and each one isn't explained properly. It all happens too quickly to take it all in and it's not a fun first level - more stressful as you constantly think you've missed an important piece of information.

The combat is a little too clumsy for my liking. You can't really judge enemy movements very well as their are lots of corners and open doors with AI walking around quite freely - so 90% of the time, you end up being seen and just having a shoot out with them. This would be ok, but shooting doesn't feel great.

The cover system is lacking something (isn't quite solid enough) and the whole thing just falls short for me.

That's a very quick reaction to the first hour - I'll keep going for now to se if it gets better.

Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands

Just started playing it last night.

It's Prince of Persia in every respect. Plays very similar to 'Sands of Time' on the last gen consoles (its prequel).

No surprises here - which is a dissapointment tbh. Yet another sequel in a long running series where they've not evolved the game in any way. I just don't get this - the perfect way to ruin a franchise - see Tomb Raider.

BTW - am I the only one who actually really enjoyed playing the cel shaded POP? I think I remember reading it wasn't a financial success, but was it really such a poor game? I really liked it. [Shrugs]

Anway - I'm pretty sure I'll get bored of this very quickly as I've played it already seven years ago. We'll see.

South Africa World Cup 2010

Does exactly what it says on the tin. Reproduces the WC very well. Good options at the start (you can play the entire qulaiifying campaign, just the WC etc and nice combinations of all of them).

Game play - it's FIFA 2010 with a few minor tweaks. Plays well.

WC2010 is a perfect fix for any football fan wanting to play with the national teams and the WC tournament. An excellently executed game I have to say.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

Really enjoyed the beginning. I like the mood that they've brought to the game. Gets quite tense. Think the difference between this and COD is that COD goes for trying to emulate a world with life in it - i.e. they put a lot of detail and movement into each scene. Bad company uses tension - I do like any game that invokes an emotional response from me.

I didn't play it for too long in the end - not through any fault of he game. Just have too many other games to play right now.

The one thing I will say is that I'm getting a little bored with FPS's. Nothing really new is being done and they seem to be very similar to each other now; an entire string of linear, scripted sequences.

Need more variety!