Pummelling bullets into flesh while splashing blood against walls in generous quantities is, most gamers will admit with a cringe, a fairly common part of our pastime. But before you meekly accept your desensitisation to brutal violence, consider this scene from midway through Clive Barker’s Jericho, Codemasters’ latest take on the horror genre, and try to convince yourself it isn’t remotely shocking.

Your foe, a demented leader from Roman times, has grown obese through his insatiable taste for human flesh, and is an unforgivable pervert. When you meet him face to face, he is happily hanging above from chains, which are attached to him via large hooks that dig deep into his repulsive, wobbling body. You’d think he would make for an easy target in his current condition, but, aside from his 40-foot gladiatorial guardian, he also has a more biological weapon.

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Harry Potter seems to be loved by everyone and it’s easy to see why. The story of a young wizard in training who takes on enemies well above his status, only to get in trouble over and over again is something kids can relate to and parents can read/sit through without too much pain. You’d think video games of Harry would be a no brainer then. Boy with magic takes on evil doers with the help of his friends - sounds simple enough.

The problem with the Potter games is that they come paired with the movies, with this year’s game based on the forthcoming Order of the Phoenix. Movies pack everything into a few hours, whereas games need to last a lot longer. This means that all the boring stuff that didn’t make it into the movie is what you’ll be doing in the game. So, in Harry’s latest you spend most of your time at Hogwarts, recruiting school mates for Dumbledore’s army (D.A. Members).

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Rallying is a motorsport that seems tailor-made for video games, yet its thrilling high speed racing around the most perilous of courses doesn’t seem to get as much attention as the Gran Turismos and Ridge Racers of this world. Colin McRae: Dirt combines the precision and concentration of the most hardcore sims, but also the thrills and immediacy of the best arcade racers, with a stunning next-gen engine to boot. Has rallying finally made its move into the mainstream, ready to achieve worldwide success?

Straight away you’ll be taken aback by Dirt’s exemplary presentation. The menus are fully 3D and as slick as anything you’re likely to see, with a crisp rectangle for every game mode and challenge. Their simple design but classy elegance puts the menus in other games to shame and makes you wonder why more modern titles haven’t made the most of this often overlooked area of a game. Even the loading screens look wonderful, with user stats being delivered as you wait. It’s highly polished and gives the perfect first impression.

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If anyone remembers Zombies Ate My Neighbours for the SNES and Megadrive back in 1994, they should know exactly what to expect with Monster Madness. Commercially, the two games are unrelated, but spiritually they have the same undead heart. One, however, is a good deal better than the other.

Each sees you assume the role of an unwitting teenage protagonist, lumbered with the responsibility of protecting their suburban neighbourhood from a scourge of rampaging zombie fiends.

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Michael Bay’s upcoming Transformers movie is earning rave early reviews and looks set to be one of the year’s biggest movies, but what of the video game? Due out on just about every format going, the Traveller’s Tales developed action title is expected to do big business. Activision stopped by to demo the Xbox 360 version and it looks like fans of the movie aren’t going to be disappointed.

Being a movie licensed title the game follows the story of the film, but also adds plenty of new content to flesh out the story. Each level is based in a free-roaming area, with the players free to go where they like, but an entire free-roaming world simply wasn’t possible due to the worldwide spread of locations in which the film is set. Although I was only able to play an early level with Bumblebee, set in a typical US town, later levels vary substantially.

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Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare are both veterans of the video game industry. They’ve worked together on numerous titles, including the cult classic Deus Ex and its sequel Invisible War. The one thing they haven’t done is create a rollercoaster, thrill a second, heart pumping, adrenaline filled action title. This is what the pair claim Blacksite will be. It’s the game they’ve wanted to make for some time, and early impressions suggest they’re well on the road to achieving their goal.

By now there’s a good chance Xbox 360 owners will have sampled the game thanks to the tasty little Xbox Live Marketplace demo. The game has come some way since then, with the demo based on a build that dates back to December 2006. I got hands-on time with three new levels and things are certainly looking action packed.

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PC gamers can be a hardcore bunch at times. Years of upgrading, tweaking, more upgrading, reinstalls, more upgrading and general maintenance has meant they are rather picky when it comes to games. Ask any veteran PC gamer about console games and you’ll probably be met with something about the lack of keyboard and mouse, and how consoles become outdated too quickly. Ports over from consoles often insult these guys, unhappy by the treatment their beloved gaming platform has received. So when Ghost Recon became a console franchise, the news wasn’t met with much love.

But PC gamers needn’t have worried too much. While Xbox 360 owners got a tactical but still fairly arcadey third-person shooter, Ubisoft and Grin Software developed the PC version separately, building it to the strengths of the platform. GRAW on the PC is an altogether more hardcore experience, where the difficulty is punishing, the view is first-person and that arcade feel is nowhere to be seen. Fans are in luck, as Grin has gone it alone once again with GRAW 2 for PC.

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Another ‘historically accurate’ WWII shooter is always going to meet groans from the video game press, backed up by accusations that it can offer nothing new to a genre already bled dry by identikit games.

Most gamers have even grown tired of dubious claims of originality by publishers desperate to convince people their product has something new to offer the military-based FPS. Recently we’ve had ‘alternate WWII realities’ and interchangeable characters with mixed abilities, but nothing has really done much in the genre’s favour.

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If any of the forthcoming Ubisoft games has the potential to generate hype anywhere near as readily as Halo 3, it is Assassin’s Creed, the medieval action game from Jade Raymond, a producer with a wealth of experience, and her team at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio.

The title’s trailer, featuring plenty of in-game footage that competes with much of the pre-rendered clips seen in other games, is undoubtedly fantastic, but the media frenzy surrounding the game is a little questionable based on what has been shown so far.

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Free Radical, the eccentric British development studio that broke away from Rare to create the brilliant Timesplitters games, is back with a new FPS, and though it means another entry in one of the busiest of gaming genres, a new release from such an irresistibly off-key dev team has to be worth a look.

Set in 2048, Haze depicts a corporate and highly privatised world both Tony Blair and Maggie Thatcher would have been delighted to have conceived. One huge company, Mantel, not only produces almost everything from the clothes you wear to the satellites orbiting earth, but also owns and runs hospitals, schools, and most importantly, their own private army, that effectively replaces bodies like the UN.

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Heist is an easy game to be sceptical about. From the moment you see the first screens and character art from Codemasters’ new bank robbery romp it’s all too tempting to dismiss it as another Grand Theft Auto clone. And it’s not just that Heist concentrates its energies on providing a huge, free-roaming cityscape filled with criminals, back alleys and a heavily armed police force.

There’s also the posters and promotional art, presented in a style we’ve all seen before in too many Guy Ritchie films. There’s the characters that reek of cliché, the 60s themed soundtrack and the general feel of a violent game designed to get Daily Mail readers sharpening their pencils.

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Every new WWII themed first-person-shooter desperately tries to construct some gameplay mechanic to make it stand out on shelves awash with Nazi-bashing titles. Most are admirable attempts, but few go as far as Turning Point, which uses a little out of the box thinking to great effect.

Rather than introducing new methods of stealth or intricate team-play systems, the team behind Turning Point have opted instead to invent a small but significant moment in history that affects plot, atmosphere, style, and hopefully gameplay.

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The basic premise of racing games is an easy one for the new generation of consoles to handle. Driving a relatively simple shape around a track has been within the capabilities of game machines for years, meaning there has been plenty of time for developers to dedicate to more surplus concerns, such as insanely accurate handling physics and near photorealistic vehicle renders.

Any new driving game in this market has always had to offer something pioneering and modestly revolutionary to stand out in the overcrowded genre. SEGA Rally did it in arcades in 1995 with groundbreaking graphics and immediate playability, and it has returned over 15 years later with the same aims. The classic driving game attracted queues in its heyday, and is still SEGA’s most successful arcade game to date.

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If you’re only a casual observer of online PC gaming, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Battlefield series is all war fans have to choose from. So big is EA’s franchise that every game which attempts something similar is instantly labelled as a copycat. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is such a game, but comes from Splash Damage, the studio behind the hugely popular (and free) Enemy Territory: Return to Castle Wolfenstein. With a strong pedigree and id Software as a partner, there’s every chance that Battlefield will finally have some stiff competition.

Storylines are largely irrelevant when it comes to online shooters, but in Quake Wars the maps you play on are part of an overall story, acting as a prequel to id’s Quake II. The game takes place on Earth in the year 2065 and charts the initial invasion of the Strogg. This alien race hasn’t landed on Earth to make friends, so Quake Wars pits the Global Defence Force (the humans) against the Strogg in a battle to the death.

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TMNT, the game based on the recently released Ninja Turtles movie, falls strictly under the ‘made for under 10s’ heading. While some of us twenty-somethings have fond memories of the Turtles, the new movie wasn’t made for us and neither was the game. Judged alongside great action platformers like Prince of Persia, TMNT comes up short, but as a game made strictly for kids, it’s not a bad effort.

The game follows the four shelled ninjas as they battle through various locations, with the actual story being told as a recap, with each turtle taking a turn to tell his own story. It’s all rather confusing, especially considering Raphael has become some kind of disguised solo superhero and the turtles rarely seem to fight together - they’re never all together on screen at once.

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