Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine

Previously consigned to PC and Mac, the award-winning but disappointing Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine finally comes to Xbox Live. For this gamer, it's the biggest disappointment since Nando's. A 2D, top-down game, it follows a gang of thieves in a series of heists. Each crook is an archetype, identified by speciality (locksmith, pickpocket, look- out, mole etc). You can play co-operatively with up to four players (local or online) and the missions are all stealth-based as you time your route to avoid guards, alarms and civilians. Monoco isn't much to look at, with the functional, blocky appearance of a 1980s ZX Spectrum game. That wouldn't matter if the graphics didn't hinder the gameplay (in a game that would be challenging even if it looked pristine). When you finally get used to its super- low-fi aesthetic, it's still frequently difficult and unforgiving: Disguises randomly stop working; some objects make better cover than others; and entrances and exits are maddeningly hard to spot.