If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the guys who made Grand Theft Auto must struggle to get through doors these days. What they got for creating the 'urban mayhem' gaming genre was a string of imitators. Saint's Row is Volition's contribution for the Xbox 360, and while there's nothing screamingly original about it, it's a solid gaming experience.

You begin the game by joining one of the four main gangs in Stilwater, an open-ended environment where you can do everything you'd expect in a GTA-rip-off. There's lots of driving, shooting, driving and shooting, adult content and a whole pile of cussin'. Saint's Row does offer a little extra in the way of plot and dialogue, something that's apparent when you hear the voices of David Carradine and Keith David. There are still a few lines that fall flat and jokes that don't work, but at least someone felt there should be a script.

You access main-plotline missions by earning 'respect', the currency of Stilwater's gangland. While this is a pretty obvious device to make you spend time on side-missions and minigames to earn respect, that's okay. It's fun. Particularly fun is Insurance Fraud, where you throw yourself in front of cars. You get extra points for witnesses, rebound, making other cars crash - all the cool stuff. It makes for a nice break if you get bored with driving and shooting people.

Like its obvious predecessors, the gameplay in Saint's Row is completely, gleefully, over the top. Stilwater might look like the real world and be completely interactive, but there are no real consequences to actions. You can stand on the hood of a cop car and mow down pedestrians to your heart's content. Obviously, if driving prostitutes and guarding pimps isn't really your cup of tea, or you find offensive language actually offensive, this is not the game for you. There's a good variety of cars and weapons to play with, all of which have tangible differences. You can pick up your own gang of 'homies' too: they'll jump in your car at the press of a button. Should they heroically die in combat, they can be revived by administering a surgical 40oz beer. Always drink responsibly, etc.

The game is generally very forgiving. You can take a lot of damage, you heal quickly as long as you avoid getting damaged further, and should the 'worst' happen, you can either start over, or endure a quick trip to hospital - where, surprisingly, no-one administers a surgical 40oz beer. It's also really helpful. Your minimap doesn't just show you where your mission objective is, it also points out the easiest way to get there. Any driving around aimlessly will be entirely down to you.

That said, Saint's Row does have a few glitches. Getting AI-controlled characters in your car when you want them and not when you don't can be problematic. 'Tire tracks up the back' sort of problematic. The 'enemy' AI is just as dumb. Rival gang members will often stand out in the open and shoot until they empty a clip, making them ridiculously easy pickings. Cars can pop into existence on the horizon, or just vanish.

The graphics bugs are worse with the multiplayer game. Textures pop in and out, and the frame rate can get choppy when the screen gets busy. Despite that, online play is still a bunch of fun. When you've finished shooting people for kicks in the game lobby, you can choose between four modes of play, which actually play differently: Big Ass Chains, Gangsta Brawl, Protect the Pimp, and Blinged-Out Ride. And unlike some Xbox 360 games, Saint's Row lets you put together your own gang.

Nobody should ever try to take this kind of gang warfare 'down in the 'hood with my homies' type game seriously, and Volition hasn't tried. More credit to them.

Some heinous things have been done to the Star Wars franchise in the last decade or so. The Phantom Menace, for instance. The original Lego Star Wars game from Traveller's Tales was a huge surprise. They'd remembered what it had seemed so easy to forget: Star Wars was supposed to be about fun. With Lego Star Wars II being based on the 'second' three movies, there's even more potential for laughs, especially for thirty-something nostalgia junkies.

The combination of Star Wars and Lego is inherently funny anyway. Hitting things with your lightsaber and watching them disintegrate into their component Lego bricks should make anyone smile. This time you get what we wanted since we saw the first game. Lego Han Solo Lego-swaggering about with a cocky smirk on his little yellow face. Lego Princess Leia in the gold bikini.

The basic game-play is much the same as the first game. Fighting, running, a little puzzle-solving, some platform work. There's really no learning curve: this is a game that's ostensibly for kids, after all. Traveller's Tales have made a few minor tweaks, though, and they're all for the better. Combat is still ridiculously easy, but the game isn't so dominated by the Jedi characters. Leia and Han's long-range blaster attack is really useful, and they'll also auto-dodge incoming fire. Several characters have unique special attacks, and they're hilarious. Leia has what appears to be the Bitch-Slap of Doom, and Chewie does what Wookies do best: ripping the arms off Stormtroopers.

Building isn't just restricted to Jedi characters in the sequel either: it's for everyone but droids, who lack the necessary thumbs. Smashing some things up and building other things out of debris is an essential part of the puzzle-solving, and you can pretty much see fiendish game designers giggling as they decided what completely stupid thing to do with it next. That sense of fun pervades the game and effectively disguises the slightly repetitive nature of the gameplay.

The source material provides several vehicle sequences (most notably blowing up Death Stars and the speeders in the forest sequence from Return of the Jedi). These have been opened up from the first game and taken off the rails. They're a bunch of fun, but do occasionally highlight problems with the game's unresponsive camera.

You start off in the Cantina, of course, from which you can access Episode IV. Once you've finished that, you unlock both Empire and Jedi. When you've finished a level in story mode, you can go back and do it again in free play, which is your opportunity to find the enormous amount of secret content. The game itself is relatively short, but it's full of extras and unlockable levels. You can create your own characters, too, by swapping body parts about. There is no head that isn't funny on Princess Leia in the gold bikini's body.

The drop-in style of the co-operative play in the Lego Star Wars games is brilliant, ideal for families and casual gamers. You're swapping back and forth between a cast of characters anyway: the second player just takes over one of them, for as long as they feel like. Still, it seems odd that the multiplayer is limited to both two players, and local play: there's no online component at all.

This is a cross-platform game that's available for the original Xbox, so it doesn't stretch the 360's capabilities, or even make much use of them. There's a slightly better quality to explosions and reflections, but even the 360 version occasionally suffers from stutters in the frame-rate. It's odd considering the game's style makes it not exactly demanding.

Lego Star Wars II is a brilliantly fun game with a wicked sense of humor, full of amusement value for both adults who grew up with the movies, and their kids. It's not a deep experience and the gameplay is maybe overly simple, but it is deceptively addictive.