Here's the first of our (hopefully) weekly roundup of some of the games that may have slipped under your radar – such as Hello Kitty & Friends, The First Templar and Esoterica America
Ape Escape … 
PS3 (Move Compatible); £24.99; cert 3+; Sony
The Ape Escape series is not without its charms. On previous PlayStations this cartoony catch-em-up was a minor joy, inviting players to hop around a 3D platform world apprehending simian lags with an oversized butterfly net. But this time the whole shebang has been revamped specially for PlayStation Move, meaning a switch to a first-person perspective for an on-rails shooting-gallery affair: you shoot at the apes with your slingshot, lightgun-style; the apes get angry; they run straight for you; you swing the controller to swing your net and catch them when they get close. If catching an ape felt brilliant and funny and satisfying every time – which to an extent it did in the old games – the game might have more lasting appeal, but since it's more or less whack-a-mole with no actual whacking, it all pales pretty quickly. Jolly enough for a quick blast, and a surprisingly stiff challenge in the later levels, but this is not the reboot Ape Escape deserves. Tom Hughes
Hello Kitty & Friends: Loving Life …
DS; £24.99; cert 3+; Rising Star;
You're probably not the target market for this game; it's most definitely aimed at the younger DS owner, with little that's likely to challenge anyone with more than a tiny amount of gaming experience. Like an extremely simplified version of Animal Crossing, it's a gentle exercise in collecting stuff – new clothes and accessories for Hello Kitty, new items and decorations for her "room" and different foods to feed her. "Money" to spend in the game's market is earned by completing one of a handful of simple mini-games, or by "helping out" at a food shop owned by one of Kitty's "friends", who are drawn from Sanrio's roster of cutesy characters. It's all very basic stuff, with a slightly distasteful emphasis on how great it is to buy stuff, but it's mostly harmless – and, for the Sanrio-obsessed pre-teen in your life, it's likely to be just the thing. Adam Boult
Esoterica America
Xbox LIVE Indie Games; 240 MS points; V7 Entertainment
Secret societies, occult philosophies and transcendental meditation: Esoterica America dips a toe into some pretty far-out waters even in video game terms, and though it's technically shaky, this unique little curio stands out in a lot of ways. Taking the form of a scaled-down RPG about a young man investigating his dead father's mysterious past, you wander round masonic lodges and temples -presented in beautifully stark, black-and-white isometric perspective – talking to various oddball individuals and periodically ascending to the astral plane (really) for a series of psychedelic mini-games in which you confront reptilian overlords, solve codex puzzles and fight off evil thoughts with weaponised Buddhist chants. Amid this grab-bag of new-age silliness, it strikes a nice tone between raised-eyebrow cynicism and starry-eyed credulity; plus, it's artistically quite gorgeous, and only costs a couple of quid. A genuine one-off. Tom Hughes
The First Templar …
Xbox 360/PC; £44.99; cert 16+; Kalypso Media
This is the gaming equivalent of one of those films with titles like Transmorphers or The DaVinci Treasure, designed to cash in on the success of a high-profile piece of work with a much cheaper lookalike. Borrowing Assassin's Creed's medieval window-dressing and the Templars themselves (although here they're the heroes), Kalypso is clearly hoping to attract AC fans – but those hoping for something similar to Ubisoft's hit series are bound to be disappointed. It's an extremely pedestrian third-person hack-and-slash affair with rudimentary graphics that wouldn't be anything special if this had been a PS2 title released a decade ago. It's not dreadful – there's some mildly diverting co-op play if you're that way inclined, there's decent story telling throughout, and it pootles along in it's own unambitious way without ever getting really boring. It'd possibly be worth picking up second-hand in a few years' time to while away a rainy Sunday, but it's generally undistinguished and unlikely to leave any lasting impression. Adam Boult
Patapon 3 …
PSP; £27;99; cert 7+; Sony
Patapon 3 takes everything you loved about the first two Patapon games – stylish graphics, high-pitched Japanese squeals, tapping buttons in rhythm and the thrill of dominating a primitive tribe with god-like capriciousness – and turns it into ... a role-playing game? If that sounds intriguing to you, let me assure you otherwise. Unlike in cinema, where sequels need not be more complicated and interesting than the original film (The Hangover 2 = The Hangover + nothing), video games feel the need to up the ante with every new instalment. Patapon 3 injects the simple, addictive rhythm game at its heart with a mind-scrambling concoction of new character classes, endless skills training and hundreds of weapons, each of which has multiple screens' worth of attributes, can themselves be upgraded to a baffling degree, and work better depending on which character class is using them and against which class of enemy they ... yeah. Patapon 3's delusions of grandeur ruin a game that was much cuter when it was, well, primitive. Chris Michael
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/jul/29/games-review-roundup
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