The Smurfs: Dance Party … 
Wii; £19.99; cert 3+; Ubisoft
The Smurfs Dance Party is a shameless movie tie-in aimed squarely at younger children. There's a perfunctory story mode consisting of a series of songs from the film, linked by Papa Smurf narrating an incomprehensibly truncated version of its plot. The Dance mode is slightly easier on the ear, as it includes covers of classic tracks with vital lyrics replaced with the word "Smurf". However, a warning to parents: there's a non-stop shuffle mode, for days when you'd like your eardrums to bleed. The Smurfs Dance Party is surprisingly difficult – detailed instructions for repeated moves are displayed only once, and the scoring seems entirely arbitrary. Since there are no real penalties for failure, this only becomes a problem in multi-player mode, where it's easier to win by luck than by effort or skill. Young children may well have difficulty following the on-screen instructions, but if all they really want is to jump up and down in time to the Smurfs' latest musical output, this is the perfect way to do so.
Mary Hamilton
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Xbox Live; cert 7+; 1200 MS points; Shadow Planet Productions
That's a hat-trick: after the excellent Bastion and From Dust, Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade – Microsoft's annual off-season push for downloadable games – now delivers this terrific 2D puzzler/shooter, which cherry-picks a generous variety of established gaming tropes and adds a few new ones, too. Guiding a classically 1950s-style UFO through a series of side-scrolling caverns, you must explore every nook and cranny, dispatching the beasties within and regularly acquiring new tools (missiles, mechanical arms, rotating saws etc) that help you forge deeper into the map, "Metroidvania"-style. The spooky, cartoony art style is charming enough, but it's the ingenious, tactile puzzles that set off little fireworks of delight in your brain, somehow made all the more satisfying by an almost complete lack of text, instructional or narrative: figure it out yourself, it's more fun that way. Perhaps it could have been longer, but it packs a ton of ideas in while it lasts, many executed brilliantly.
Tom Hughes
Touch 'n' Play Collection …
DS; £19.99; cert 12+; O-Games
Remember those board game compendiums that we all had as kids? You know the ones – they collected together games such as chess, checkers, Ludo and more into one handy box. Well, now someone has assembled 50 such games onto one handy DS cartridge. The games are broken up into four categories – Classic, Puzzle, Arcade and Cards, with titles including Breakout, solitaire, snakes and ladders, blackjack, mahjong, dominoes and more. Well, 43 more, including variations on Tetris, Simon, Space Invaders, Yahtzee and Galaga. Some of the games work well on the small screen; many don't – such as mahjong, dominoes, and most of the card games. On the plus side, most of the games have a multi-player option; on the minus side, there's the odd glitch here and there. But at less than 20 quid for 50 games, this is pretty decent value – there are bound to be a few here that you'll enjoy over and over. Stuart O'Connor
Captain America: Super Soldier…
Xbox 360/PS3/3DS; £49.99; cert 16+; Sega
For those who saw in Captain America: The First Avenger a gentle ribbing of the American military's overseas expeditions, the video game adaptation is out to set you straight. No sly mockery of US propaganda here: in fact, the plot is essentially non-existent. You take the role of unironically heroic Captain America as he plummets from a plane into various Nazi-infested sets from the film. Using your shield in a variety of special moves, all of which are lifted straight from the action montages in the movie proper, you roam around beating up electrified Hydra employees, gymnastically swooping around poles and collecting, um, ceramic eggs? The hand-to-hand fighting is elaborate and very addictive: you can dodge, disarm, vault, block bullets with your shield (and ricochet them back) and let loose slow-motion critical blows. And it's really refreshing not to have a gun. In the pursuit of being "well-rounded", however, the game loses some momentum. You end up spending literally half the time looking behind crates to pick up dossiers. Blame Red Dead Redemption – more kung-fu next time, please. Chris Michael
inFAMOUS 2 …
PS3; £49.99; cert 16+; Sony
A contemporary take on the classic superhero origin story, inFAMOUS 2 picks up where its predecessor left off with Cole MacGraith, bitten by a radioactive spider in the first game ... no wait, sorry, hit by a mysterious electrical explosion in the first game, navigating his way through a series of sandbox environments to develop new zappy powers and, ultimately, defeat a big scary boss. The game's offbeat sense of humour will draw you in, but its the sense of freedom that really impresses – with heaps of side missions, fun diversions, and moral choices affecting how the plot develops at every turn. Fans of the original will delight in the new range of powers on offer – including the ability to summon lightning storms and giant electrical twisters – while the simple fun of tossing cars around or grinding along telephone wires mean newcomers won't take long to find their feet. An occasionally iffy camera and some control issues means this might not be a must for all gamers, but developer Sucker Punch has somehow mixed the best bits of Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Arkham Asylum and Tony Hawks to create something interesting, different – and above all, fun. Jack Arnott
