MTV Star Factory

If years of The X Factor have taught us anything, it's that the likes of Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis aren't the show's real winners - that particular honour has to go to svengali Simon Cowell.

Yeah, it's the people behind the stars who get super-rich from their success, however short lived.

It's perhaps not surprising then, that MTV – the channel Cowell's fluff ends up prancing around on – is the brand around which this game is wrapped.

MTV Star Factory charges you with the task of becoming a music mogul, putting together bands and solo artists with the aim of catapulting them to the top of the charts.

As is the case in real life, doing so is a question of spinning many different plates at the same time. Your initial priority is to get your act known by the public. Gigs up your fame and requires Quick Time Event-style play, with quick taps of the D-pad at the appropriate time enough to get you through.

Of course, it's the songs themselves that are the most important element, and penning these occurs in an odd little mini game where swimming around a pool Spore style and picking up matching symbols is the order of the day.

Essentially then, MTV Star Factory is about switching between such mini-games, none of which have any real link to the art of managing a line of musical acts. But all are fairly simple to grasp and equally engaging.

The game is also smartly built so that you never focus wholly on one mini-game.

Success, which is ultimately monitored by a series of Achievement-like benchmarks, relies on you dipping into one after the other, dotting back and forth, each return upping the difficulty level a notch.

None of the games would serve well solo, and even combined MTV Star Factory hardly pushes any boundaries.

Regardless though, the game retains an undeniable charm, its inoffensive melody unlikely to take it to the top of the charts, but ensuring a run in the top ten.