It's a brisk, no-nonsense take on the monster-collecting style of role-playing game. Sure, it's also a bit heartless, but as corporate America has taught us, sometimes that's what it takes to be efficient.

It's not a game, and because you're never taught anything new, it's not really even "edutainment" -- Brain Age is a tool, one that sharpens your mind not just for playing real games, but living real life as well.

Really the only thing Ace Combat has to offer that its predecessors don't is a couple of new flight modes and real world locations. This would be enough to recommend the game to die-hard fans, but the camera cut aways make the game a worse experience than its predecessors. If you want a good Ace Combat experience, you should play an earlier game in the series.

It's balanced and has just the right loot curve, unlike games such as Champions of Norrath, which offer too many loot drops but nothing worth keeping. Come for the single-player appetizer, but stay for the multiplayer grandeur. Ring of Fates is a keeper.

To their credit, Atlus seems to acknowledge 3DDGH as the lightweight diversion it is, pricing the game well below the standard for a PlayStation 3 title and bundling a bunch of Japan's bonus DLC content onto the disc to boot.

There's not enough variety to keep you playing through everything EA's set up for you. You'll be addicted to the game for a short while when you go through with your first character, but after that, the novelty of building up medieval superheroes starts to wear extremely thin.

Even in the few sections of ITSP that ape the Metroid series more directly, it rarely falls flat simply because the formula is so solid. The game really excels when it changes things up with puzzles and boss fights.

Like its next-gen stablemate, Madden for the PS3 has a "maybe next year" outing this season, leaving the title of best Madden for the PlayStation to the PS2 version, which is $20 cheaper to boot.

Everything from the bickering banter between Starscream and Megatron, the cold calculated communiques from Soundwave, or the heavy-handed speeches from Optimus to rally his Autobots, it's all here. War for Cybertron is an entertaining game that's just as enjoyable as it is playable.

I want to like Flashpoint 2, but instead, I just feel like the game is telling me: "war is hell, sorry."

Delivers the most fully realized vision of Rowling's world that our medium has seen. TT Games has once again raised their own bar when it comes to splitscreen co-op. Fans of the books and movies will find immeasurable joy in exploring the iconic locales with their favorite characters that have become so ingrained in the pop-culture lexicon over the past 15 years.

Aside from the seemingly requisite handful of games that just plain suck -- including a particularly painful one that has you slamming shut doors (via a shake of the Nunchuk), which sounds simple, but is infuriating as you attempt to find the sweet spot or figure out why it just doesn't respond to your commands sometimes -- the game's biggest fault is its surprising shortage of full-on multiplayer games.

Control issues aside, Battlestations: Midway is a fun game if you're into strategy titles. Just throwing mad amounts of units at each new problem really doesn't work here, since you have finite resources and no unit is really impervious to attack from any other unit.

In the end, there's absolutely no reason to choose this one over these other versions: Xbox 360, PS3, PS2, Xbox, or even PSP. If you're a Madden beginner, just play an easy level on a different console.

Reasonably competent, but otherwise fairly unremarkable.

You don't have to already be a fan, though, to appreciate the game, and that's a big part of its appeal. It's pretty easy to jump in, grab a gun and start starring in your own WWII movie mowing down Nazis.

While the new characters and features unquestionably add new life to the game, Vol. 2 isn't really different enough from its predecessor to be sold as a stand-alone title -- it's much more an expansion pack than an independent product, and the $40 seems a bit excessive.

With a little more polish, Dokuro's take on puzzle platforming could be fantastic, but a few problems hold it back from true greatness. From its cheap (though stylish) Flash game appearance, it's clear that GungHo didn't give this project the highest of budgets, which leaves some of the more precise levels feeling incredibly rickety and awkward, with escapes coming thanks to luck rather than strategy. And, at times, the developers bite off a little more than they can chew; Dokuro's floaty jumps and touchy controls aren't exactly made for boss battles or Canabalt-style death runs, but well, there they are. If you're able to overlook these minor problems, though, Dokuro makes for a fine addition to your Vita library -- which, judging by the state of the system, is probably in dire need of something new. It's not a system-seller by any means, but small, digestible, and charming experiences like Dokuro are exactly what Sony's ailing portable needs to survive.

The fact that you can change the graphics instantly is just plain cool, and creates a real "how'd they do that?" feeling, but both the angled view and the 2D "arcade" camera -- where you view the game through a tiny arcade cabinet monitor -- are novelties.

Blue World is a great sequel: There's lots more to see and do, with refinements all around, from graphics to gameplay.

Admittedly, Half-Minute Hero does wear out its welcome towards the last handful of stages, and the extra modes generally feel like filler at best. But, for the most part, Marvelous' RPG parody is a unique and entertaining experience that finally has a chance to capture the hearts of an entirely new audience.

The multiplayer side of things, however, is excellent. The online play is smooth (depending on the server) and, truthfully, there's nothing quite like sneaking in to steal a control point right from under other players' noses.

Although Shadows of the Damned has fun and interesting moments, the end product turns out to be a decent to slightly above average shooter that, at times, feels a little bland.

It's telling that even when Silent Hill isn't at its best, it's still better than most of the competition, and both parts of that sentence are true about The Room.

And that's the main reason to buy it: to simulate the exhilarating competitive spirit found in the arcades and to play against different people from all parts of the world -- all without ever leaving the comfort of your own home.

While some people might complain about being fatigued by the seemingly endless stream of similar music games, when they're tied to each other like Band Hero is tied to GH5, I see that as a positive direction for Activision's franchise. It's one of the strongest points of the Rock Band series, and is a very smart move for Hero as well.

It's the Tetris factor -- the minimalist design and the addictive, score-chasing nature keep you mesmerized for what can stretch to hours at a time. It's when you reach hour no. three of a marathon session -- having entered a Zen-like state as you attempt to send your high score into seven-digit territory -- that you realize the simple truth at work here: In a world of interactive stories and photo-realism, Geometry Wars is just a really fun game.

The game avoids taking any necessary risks, focusing instead on presenting raucous concerts in the same carefully constructed way all of the Rock Band games have. But, honestly, both lapsed and longtime Green Day fans should enjoy this brief tour through the band's hits.

No matter how hard it tries, Downhill Jam for the DS isn't its console cousin. It's barely a Tony Hawk game. That's why it works best when it's simply comfortable with what it actually is: something new entirely.

The real stars of the show are the planes. Fans of the Discovery Wings channel will be thrilled by the loving detail that went into the sixty some odd planes that come with the game.

If you can get over a cast of characters talking and talking and talking but not really saying much of anything, you may find Solatorobo much more enjoyable than I did -- though the game's patronizing insistence on holding your hand through just about every challenge can be just as frustrating.

It's fine for gamers who don't mind waiting months between episodes, but if you want to get the real charm of the story and art, it's best to just read the comic book.

Because of the relatively short amount of time I've had with Aion, and, to be honest, a general apathy toward playing any further, I've not yet experienced the so-called "PvPvE" endgame that lies in the central Abyss zone.

But this much is certain: when you put the game in and start playing, you'll actually be able to play a game of baseball. That alone is a huge improvement over last year's title.

It's an acquired taste. And for die-hard pirate fans, it's the only MMO that offers eye patches and peg legs as rewards. What are you waiting for?

Worth a look for anyone who simply craves a quality RPG for the GBA.

An unfocused baseball game that neither excels as an arcade experience nor as a baseball game -- it's only an average player in the bigs.

Almost everything about this anthology speaks of class, care, and quality, and the ability to play several of the series' "missing" chapters should be more than enough for any American Gradius fan to take the plunge.

The problem is that Hell's Highway doesn't make me care about the characters as much as the other installments did.

Like other recent favorites Lumines and N+, Peggle hides a thoroughly entertaining and enduring payload behind its deceptively simplistic approach, taking over your platform of choice with its charming mix of wit and lucky bounces.

Here's the problem: both the action-packed style and the stealth style show promise, but neither is fully polished.

I want to like Flashpoint 2, but instead, I just feel like the game is telling me: "war is hell, sorry."

Kingdom shelves any cleverness, attaching training wheels to your creativity for the first two-thirds of the game. It's not until the last few islands that you're given an invitation to be creative.

Though Batman's got a well-developed mythos, he lacks enough specific, widely remembered scenes ripe for parody.

An interesting, entertaining adventure in its own right. Atlus' latest probably won't be to everyone's tastes, but anyone looking for a lengthy, engrossing and above all unique handheld quest this summer would be remiss in passing it up.

Still, like I mentioned, the game is not that long. Nor is it nearly as deep as the Contras it attempts to emulate.

All of the things EA did right with FIFA World Cup 2006 are overshadowed by the simple truth that what should be the most fun part of the game -- having exciting scoring chances -- is completely negated by shoddy game performance near the nets.

The quests are fun and quirky, and the animals all look adorable. With it's plodding pace, it's not going to try draw in a new audience, but if you love Harvest Moon games, Animal Parade delivers just what you want.

Quest for Booty's a fine addition to the Ratchet & Clank world, but what should've been a love letter to fans ends up serving better as a taste of what outsiders are missing -- and, as a fan, that makes me just a little bit sad.

Worth a tour if you really loved the movie, but maybe less so if you've already played the hell out of Vice City. We can't really blame Scarface for the familiarity of the setting, but the fact remains that we've been here before.

Think of it like this: the Wii-mote has already proven it can be a good FPS controller, so what's wrong in bringing a good FPS to Wii? Modern Warfare is still an excellent game, even when it's done "good enough" on weaker technology, and like it or not, Reflex fills a niche. Maybe there's a family that only owns a Wii, but with a dad who might enjoy something a little rougher than Mario Kart.

Dominator isn't so much a "sequel" as it is just "another Burnout," and the saddest thing of all is that it takes several steps back in the process.

And speaking of multiplayer, that's about all you'll want Multiwinia for. Repetitive maps, exploitable A.I., and a lack of any backstory or plot whatsoever hamper the single-player mode. That said, the game does have "multi" in its title, and for the price (about $20), you could do worse for an online time-waster.

The problem is that Hell's Highway doesn't make me care about the characters as much as the other installments did.

It's puzzling that the team behind MVP 07 chose to keep these significantly less active, albeit authentic, elements in its game. The result: This is a great game to check your e-mail to...The time waste pushes a nine-inning game into 45-minute territory, when a game could last no more 30 minutes if they scissored out the nonsense.

While Chessmaster Live isn't going to suddenly fatten up the ranks of wannabe grandmasters, it does offer nearly everything you'd want in a competitive simulator while including all the necessary tools for engrossing offline and online matches. It's also a great chess educator.

It's simply trying to be the best console WWII shooter ever created, and in this it almost certainly succeeds. The single-player game is short, yes, but it's incredibly epic (in the cinematic definition of the term), and multiplayer should keep you playing long after the main campaign is over.

Well, yeah. I think it's pretty darn fun.

There's a great deal of game here, which speaks to just how smart Sega is in iterating on a small collection of stages, rather than going the usual route of wasting valuable HD assets on a series of sprawling (and typically unplayable) levels for Sonic to get lost in.

The controls have also been improved over last year's game, with improved first-person aiming in particular, which works very well for battles where you have to fire off shots as quickly as possible.

Konga represents a somewhat hefty financial investment, especially if you want to round up enough peripherals to fill your GameCube's controller ports, but for sheer universal fun there's nothing else on the system that compares.

Some repetitive puzzle design and a half-baked multiplayer component still aren't enough to completely tarnish Singularity, however. Beneath its flawed exterior lies a fine shooter that experiments with time manipulation more aptly than any game since Braid.

No surprise, the A.I. rolls over on anything less than Hard, and getting units into tactically feasible formations can be like herding drunken snails.

At times like this, it's a wonder that adventure games ever went off the rails.

I can't recommend the weak single-player mode, but the multiplayer left me surprisingly satisfied.

Whether it's the story or the gameplay that carries you through the third Shadow Hearts, you won't be wowed by the presentation.

SideScroller is not a glorified minigame. It's shorter than the Shooter series the first time through, but that just means it's properly modeled after the old games that inspired it. In other words, it's a PixelJunk game, and that also means a well-executed visual style, smooth gameplay, and an impressive soundtrack.

The whole thing skates dangerously close to the "edutainment" realm by building its core mechanic around reading comprehension and deductive reasoning, but then again, DS gamers weaned on Brain Age will likely welcome the cerebral stimulation.

Kirby and company are just too damn cute and cheerful. If Smash Bros. piqued your interest, Ultra's your next step.

MAG is unlike anything else on PS3. In fact, it's unlike anything else on any console system.

The animation is amazingly smooth, something's always moving onscreen, and the visual style -- a mixture of Nazi architecture and '50s sci-fi cliché -- is something you'll never find duplicated anywhere else.

I just wish it had more material. To compete in a genre with games that offer so much more for so much less, SingStar needs to bulk up. It's possible, however, that Rock Band killed the karaoke star.

It's definitely a game for RPG fanatics who go in more for the challenge than the plotline, and no doubt casual players who pick it up for the oh-so-cute cover art will be rather surprised by how brutally it savages their dignity (although a generous learning curve should help ease them into their suffering). Still, it's a definite success, taken on its own terms.

The analog hitting is MVP 06's most significant addition, and it'll certainly be tough to go back to button-press swinging in the other upcoming baseball sims.

While certainly not the finest racing game ever made, credit must be given where it's due. Climax has squeezed an awful lot of game onto a UMD here. Not only is it vastly improved over last year's game, but you also get a lot of bang for your dirt-riding, dike-jumping, snowmobiling buck here.

Brave Story is a comfortingly familiar type of RPG that still feels fresh, thanks to the strength of its characterization, the attention to detail, the swift pace of battles and quests, and the technological proficiency of its load times.

Save for a tedious gimmick level in the Hundred-Acre Wood, each stage follows the same basic structure: work towards the first cutscene, which provides the key to the second cutscene, which provides the key to the boss. There are no puzzles or complex paths to work through -- once you've solved one, you've solved them all.

But if you stick with Ruse in spite of these things, and if you can talk some of your friends into playing from time to time, you're going to discover a thrilling new real time strategy game that belongs in the same category as EndWar, Brutal Legend, and Darwinia.

So yeah, this is a good time all around. The only thing better than killing the hell out of a few thousand undead is doing it with friends. Well, unless you can do it for dirt cheap. Which you can. Fancy that.

Avalanche Studios has broken the movie-game stigma for me by releasing the awesome Toy Story 3.

There isn't much depth to it all... But the formula itself is fun and the art and sound teams did an amazing job creating an immersive experience.

Where the developers really missed the boat was in multiplayer. The standard combat arenas are all well and good, but that's pretty much all there is.

City Life is the freshest take on the city-sim genre in memory, managing to be both as challengingly complex as its more gearheaded forebears and more accessible to casual or more philosophical players.

The up-close character portraits and overwrought voice acting is gone, but everything else is there -- the mazelike caverns, the glorious level-raising, the seemingly endless array of equipment.

The gameplay kept me coming back, making the barely-there story fade into the back of my thoughts. The change in combat options is a welcome addition, I just wish that the story had delivered on the comic legacy of one of Marvel's more enduring heroes.

An excellent game for the wrestling purists, and while it would actually have been nice to get a little more good ol' WWE brand tackiness, it's hard to decline what the game offers: beautiful bodies on beautiful display, doing beautiful violence.

The content itself is rock-solid, and offers an absolutely unique take (visually, as well) on years of carefully refined multiplayer notions. Undertow isn't quite a must-buy, but it's easily one of the more sensible ways to spend $10 online.

While some people might complain about being fatigued by the seemingly endless stream of similar music games, when they're tied to each other like Band Hero is tied to GH5, I see that as a positive direction for Activision's franchise. It's one of the strongest points of the Rock Band series, and is a very smart move for Hero as well.

The lack of variety is actually a good thing. In an area of game development where being overly ambitious can destroy you, developer Luxoflux has instead created a smart, focused, and (most importantly) polished effort that should delight young fans of the film.

Wario Ware is still Wario Ware, and whether you call it "Mega Microgames" or "Mega Party Games," you're still getting a GBA game at a GBA price. But it's one of the best GBA games available, and it works extremely well in a party atmosphere.

It provides a shockingly large amount of game time (with Separate Ways, expect to be playing this game in the 25-30 hour realm the first time through).

Like Nintendo's cult classic, it's a game with likable characters, a sharply-developed sense of humor, and somewhat perfunctory gameplay.

Lemmings on the PSP is basically the same game it was 15 years ago. But with new-and-improved eye candy and on-the-go play, Lemmings is worth a fresh look, because some of the new (and old) levels will no doubt challenge that gray, gooey mass that sits in your skull.

A sequel worthy of the other Hawk games I spent countless hours playing.

EA has succeeded in making a fun party game that's easy for players of all ages to pick up and enjoy thanks to its superior controls and fast pace.

The voice command system in EndWar is terrific, and hopefully, future games will take advantage of a similar control scheme. It just isn't enough by itself to raise the game beyond "mediocre RTS." It's definitely worth checking out to see voice command done right, but overall, it lacks the depth and substance to bring anyone over from superior PC alternatives.

OK, so maybe it is sorta piratey, after all. Either way, assuming you can find some friends to sail with, Booty's more fun than a barrel of grog with a wench on top.

The main game isn't terribly long, and the missions, though sometimes creative, are often frustrating because there's usually only one way to complete them, making them feel needlessly restrictive--something that stings a little more in a sandbox game such as this.