Fans of the system should have no reservations about picking up a copy; it was put together under the supervision of several of the console's original programmers, and their love for Intellivision shines through in the detail and polish of the package.

This is a solid game overall -- and without a doubt, All-Pro Football should continue building on this foundation. But if you were expecting 2K euphoria after two years on the sidelines, you'll be disappointed, as this one's got rust in many of the wrong places.

More strategy could have been applied, and moving that strategy into the multiplayer game would have added a lot. Otherwise, what you have is the same DW4 with a slightly more tactical story mode.

While Live 08 is definitely looking better in every respect (gameplay, graphics, and online), the series still needs more time in the gym.

Full Auto 2's like an arcade game -- fun in short spurts. And the tough secondary objectives in career mode (finish without dying, destroy certain crates, outscore your foe, and so on) help in keeping me coming back in order to unlock the secret cars and weapons.

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

It's nice to have a different feel applied to the Prince of Persia gameplay, but after the novelty wears off we side with the simpler GameCube controls.

Namco Bandai says downloadable planes, maps, and levels are to come, but unless they can fix the frustrating mission structure -- the game's largest problem -- I'm only mildly interested.

It's clogged up with new features and ideas that simply seem gratuitous. The emphasis on driving skill seems to have been diminished, and in its place the Tiburon team appears to have spent the last year asking "what more can we do to add something new to this thing?"

If the worldwide aspect of RYL has you intrigued, check it out. Or, if you like hack-n-slash gameplay with no end in sight, this could well be your game.

It's a short quest, but while it lasts it's a genuine challenge that promises to kick you in the pants and make you like it.

The problem is, there just isn't that much game there, and you'll either grow sick of it in short order or finish it in even shorter order.

The game's premise is ingratiating and deliciously creative, and so is the delivery.

Not a long game. The whole thing can be finished in just a couple of sittings. However, fans of the film, both young and old, would do well to give it a shot, as it's an entertaining platformer that complements the movie quite well.

I've got a tremendous amount of respect for the men behind Blue Dragon...but at the same time, I can't overlook its massive warts just because three developers I grew up idolizing created the game.

Whereas "Call of Duty 2" did an incredible job creating the illusion of an open environment, it's just the reverse here. You feel hemmed in and herded along at every turn, and the pacing also reflects that. Unless you rush forward, progress in the game grinds to a halt -- no considered approaches or tactical positioning, just advance and keep firing.

Ultimately, it's a passable RPG for your PSP, thanks to its collection mentality and good dialogue. But the lack of an overworld and short game length that's due to the dialogue-to-game ratio keeps it from being anything special.

Adventure of Link might be more for completists than its predecessor was, but you can certainly find plenty here to keep you busy for some time.

When the (catchy) electronic music is pounding and you're in tune with the game, it's an exciting, transcendent few seconds; it just never lasts, as you're brought back to earth by the sheer inanity of what you're involved in.

If you've played this before in its previous incarnations and had your fill, or if the concept never really appealed to you in the first place, there's really nothing new enough here to bring you back.

The mere existence of this game means that there are people out there with their hearts in the right place...which makes the end results all the more heartbreaking.

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

While it's apparent that Studio Gigante toiled away long nights to perfect character realism, it's equally obvious that perfecting the remaining chunk of the game didn't keep them quite as occupied.

Solo players won't find themselves with much depth, while multiplayer fans without a heap of DS-wielding friends will scoff at the poor level design and inability to have much fun without at least three players.

My chief concern is TR's longevity. At present, the game offers maybe three or four months of content. With little in the way of engaging PVP, useful item crafting, or other distractions for veterans who've hit the level cap and cleared out all their quests, the game could easily fade away.

Not a bad game by any stretch, but simply feels half-baked-somewhat of a throwback to "NBA Shootout 2000" on my PlayStation, when I was expecting something a bit more contemporary.

The whole thing can be finished in just a couple of sittings. However, fans of the film, both young and old, would do well to give it a shot, as it's an entertaining platformer that complements the movie quite well.

An irresistible little charmer. It's short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome, clever enough to be engaging, full of enough action to be consistently fun. Fans of the film series will, of course, want to grab it, but action gamers looking for a dose of sarcasm, zombie guts, and light puzzles will find themselves amused as well.

With combat that is just easy enough to engage the younger crowd, borrowed elements that keep the game from being boring, and a storyline that the kids already love, Eragon on the DS makes for an adequate movie-licensed RPG-lite for adventuring tweens everywhere.

While it's true that things have improved, that doesn't mean it's suddenly a great game. While the downplaying of the storyline does help streamline the game, it also makes your goals seem a little disconnected and random.

The real failing here is the unfamiliarity and limited appeal of WWI and the lack of Live support, but if the yearn to pull-on the leather cap and goggles and throw the scarf around your neck strikes, by all means hop in and give her a whirl.

A couple of minigames and slight modifications to the stage design is hardly a new experience. Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution may claim it's bringing the fighting revolution to the Wii, but we've already been there. Twice, in fact.

If nostalgia for the original arcade light-gun game, or fascination with the myth of the Mid-West has you by the cockles, then this game may give you a day or two's worth of good times. But anyone with a stricter criteria than that would be hard-pressed to find real satisfaction in what's offered here.

Wii Degree is, at the very least, a decent, briefly satisfying experience for gamers starved for new stuff to play on their Wiis. It just won't keep them happy for long.

Justice League Heroes' kryptonite is its laughably lame story. Wait a second, wasn't this game written by an actual comic writer? That's why it's sad that the story is frickin' terrible.

If you were expecting Sword of Mana to be the classic RPG that "FF Adventure" was, though, you may want to lower your expectations slightly. If you don't, you may be surprised -- in both good and bad ways.

The stealth fails, however, in at least two significant ways. The first is a near-total lack of choice: there's almost always one prescribed way to navigate a given situation, and player improvisations are promptly curtailed by unsustainable gunfire.

A solid hack-n-slash game that will appeal to fans of the genre, though it'll wear thin quickly. To everyone else, it'll be a pretty game that more or less proves why the hack-n-slash genre has been dead for so long.

By hiring a live events team of twenty or so digital actors and writers to plan events and step into the shoes of the familiar main characters they've been providing opportunities for player involvment in unique plot developments on a surprisingly regular basis, with interesting things happening every few days.

Although the touch screen controls are irritating at times, you may just find yourself enjoying Shrek in spite of them.

there are too many blown buckets because the shot stick seems a bit inconsistent, especially right around the hoop where players should be more willing to roll in a layup or go for a dunk.

There are too many blown buckets because the shot stick seems a bit inconsistent, especially right around the hoop where players should be more willing to roll in a layup or go for a dunk.

All of this is handled well enough, but there's nothing special to it.

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.

Ambitious? You bet. Worthy of your money? Maybe, if you can accept that racing is just one part -- and an inconsistent one at that -- of a very big picture.

It comes on the heels of Capcom's own "Resident Evil 4." After you've played a game as breathtakingly beautiful and exhilarating as that, it's hard to take a step back and play something that just feels dated by comparison.

Its real failing, though, is that it is difficult to a fault, and again, in solo play, a lot of victories or losses will be chalked up to chance. If you put a lot of stock into multiplayer, though, you could do a whole lot worse than boogying with these bunnies.

A sequel should use the foundation laid down by the games that came before it in order to leap forward. MMZ4, if anything, is a step backward.

It's solid, but its subtle gameplay stutters make us hesitate to recommend it too strongly -- and all the more impatient for Winning Eleven's next iteration.

The game's an okay platformer with colorful visuals, decent (if generic) music, and control that gets the job done. It's just that there's nothing at all special here.

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.

Since aiming and movement is too difficult to track enemies as they appear, a typical mission will have you die on the first enemy, learn his location and kill him before he can strike back, only to be felled by a second enemy, and so on.

Evolution's problem is that each of the characters is distinct, but there aren't nearly enough of them for the game to stand on that concept alone.

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.

The costumes are a nice step in the right direction of adding new gameplay, but what a hypothetical fourth game really needs is an entirely new set of gadgets to play with.

After combining the "meh" story with the 2D sprites, the passably amateurish voice acting, and the melodramatic localization, Ar tonelico feels like a pretty forgettable RPG. But it does do one thing that needs elaboration, one thing that pushes up a bit higher than "meh" on the RPG scale: It has a freakin' dating sim as a major gameplay component.

Please God, afford Egosoft the time needed to rework the game via some sort of expansion, patch or Gold Edition so that I may finally be content with existence. As is, this bizarre flip-flop of "Freelancer" that features no interface or enjoyable action but a ton of diversity and extended appeal just isn't any better than all right.

Less avant-garde than "Indigo Prophecy," far less self-important than "Myst V," Trace Memory is the very definition of a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the-road experience.

The stealth fails, however, in at least two significant ways. The first is a near-total lack of choice: there's almost always one prescribed way to navigate a given situation, and player improvisations are promptly curtailed by unsustainable gunfire.

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

Need For Speed: ProStreet is definitely not without wrinkles. That said, good drivers will be able to find ways around the quirks, both on the track and off. It all depends on whether you're looking for a quickie thrill or a more involving challenge.

The hyper-speed of this game makes it feel like more of an arcade experience than a real hockey simulator. It's still a huge step in the right direction, though.

As it stands, Race Driver 3 suffers from too much variety and not enough substance.

Lunar DS isn't really up to the thrilling and dramatic heights the series was synonymous. Worse, the changes and tweaks the developers made, trying to bring Lunar into the 21st century, are irrelevant at best and annoying at worst. That said, this is a better-than-average handheld RPG with a likable cast, a charming story, and appealing graphics.

Once you've been through the process a few times, however, it gradually becomes a snooze fest.

The only real challenges served on this 12 hour adventure are tasks that are more annoying than hard, such as having to negotiate ocean currents in an attempt to reach a beach.

Fans of the system should have no reservations about picking up a copy; it was put together under the supervision of several of the console's original programmers, and their love for Intellivision shines through in the detail and polish of the package.

Notably absent from the multiplayer options is a mode that allows you to play a multiplayer game with a single copy of the game. It's not often that you're going to get eight PSPs and eight copies of the game into the same place at once, so it's kind of odd that there's no provision for a good old-fashioned session of "pass the PSP." Shame.

Despite the unique abilities of each party member, and the odd sections where you need to take advantage of said abilities in order to advance the level, most of your time playing Demon Stone will be spent jamming on one attack button over and over again.

While there's lots for baseball junkies to manage in their hunt for Steinbrenner-like control, errors littered around the game weaken the experience. But if you're more concerned with how a player hits against a right-handed pitcher over 5'10" at dusk with a full moon, this one's for you.

The humor involved here is remarkably fresh in its non-edgy, non-focus-tested crassness.

The game's well-polished; it would have been hailed as revolutionary a few years ago, but now it's just another decent, 10-hour-long hop-n-bop to add to the pile.

Me, I'll dish out a just 6.5 and demand that the next time a scant offering of maps and modes are going to be released, they'd better cost exactly $5 or exactly nothing.

It's half the price of the stellar new-gen version of NBA 2K8 -- and pretty much half the game.

Bigger, longer, more complex levels and more challenging opponents (not just easily-destroyed peons and the occasional complex boss) are what could make this more than eye-candy -- the character system is already where it needs to be, and in fact it sometimes feels too detailed in comparison to the challenges on offer.

Of the 11 included games, every version of Asteroids is awful; Centipede and Millipede are physically uncomfortable; Pong is neat -- in one game mode, anyway -- but like Super Breakout, the controls have been lost in translation; Missile Command and Lunar Lander are good games revamped to somehow look worse than the originals; and Tempest, Battlezone, and Warlords just might be worth buying.

Unfortunately, the end result is a little more Rambo, a lot less Rocky. It's going to take a rethinking to pull the 3D brawler out of its "me too" phase, and Streetwise certainly isn't helping.

Gameplay nags aside, we do want to make it clear that Chulip is certainly worth a look for purveyors of all things Japanese and indie. We can bandy about synonyms for "charming" and "stylish" all damn day, but the game makes an effort to resist labels, really becoming something in and of itself.

While it's true that things have improved, that doesn't mean it's suddenly a great game. While the downplaying of the storyline does help streamline the game, it also makes your goals seem a little disconnected and random.

As this is pretty much "March Madness 06" with a new cover athlete -- which we liked fine a year ago (it scored a 7.5) -- we don't see any reason to choose this over the better and cheaper "College Hoops 2K7."

Dedicated SimCity fans will definitely appreciate the effort, but otherwise, consider this a reminder that just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

All of this is handled well enough, but there's nothing special to it.

It's like a faster, more fluid "King's Field," all the way down to the ugly, 3DO-quality graphics -- not everyone's cup of mead, to be certain, but still a satisfying first-person hack-n-slash for those who prefer to take their treasure-hunting on the go.

The decidedly traditional approach that permeates every part of the game makes the decision to develop this as a "new-gen" game all the more odd, to say the very least.

A good -- if not great -- game. Learn to deal with the artificial intelligence on particular tracks, and the experience in an enjoyable one. Just as long as you're not looking for a very deep -- or even all that logical -- career mode.

In the end, the sharp graphics trump the competition (2K Sports' "Top Spin 2"), but the oversights in gameplay and the pros-only career mode hold Virtua Tennis back from being a must-play. For a quick knock-around with friends, this can't be beat, but for a deeper, more authentic tennis experience, go with "Top Spin 2."

The game begins much too slowly to really captivate. Which is a shame because a lot of gamers who might really appreciate Innocent Life's vibe could very likely put the game down before it's ever really begun.

It's a distant No. 2 to this year's unquestionably better "College Hoops 2K7."

I'd have to consider this the version of last resort: If you have the chance to check out the game on any of the other platforms, I'd recommend doing just that.

It's a solid if uninspiring little game with a definite nostalgic appeal for fans of old action-RPGs such as "Crystalis" or "SoulBlazer." Or "Ys", for that matter.

While the game does look great in still shots, when it's in motion, it never maintains a steady framerate throughout an entire scene.

Sorrows nails the controls, making the repetitive hack-n-slash action enjoyable in a Dynasty Warriors kinda way, and multiplayer is mostly successful. Unfortunately, the graphics fail to impress, the story isn't anything memorable, banging buttons is as effective as making use of the combos, and what should have been an epic quest can be completed by a novice gamer in around eight hours, with not much reason for replay.

With improvements to the A.I. and presentation, Bethesda could be onto something with this simplified "squad-based" style to starship combat.

If you're into the unintentional hilarity of films like Turkish Star Wars, Paraworld is the game you've been waiting for all your life. On the other hand, as with most B-movies, the majority of folks will probably go through a lot less buyer's remorse if they just rent this one to knock out a few chuckles.

The all-new telemetry system and be-the-receiver feature are interesting additions that enhance the fun derived from Arena Football, but they are not enough to push the game over the top.

I guess I can see where some people might enjoy this existence, but it's not for me. I need some sort of concrete goal in my life. Not to mention variety.

The graphics are pretty, the visual design is solid and the music is excellent. But the gameplay would have been unacceptable five years ago on PlayStation; portability doesn't make its shortcomings any more tolerable today.

Battle of the Gods is about standard as an expansion can get. With new units and lands it adds about a third as much content as the original game, as well as some much needed additional depth of strategy.