Even if some parts are lackluster there's not much that's truly awful about it, and its unique elements are more than enough to make up for things like the handful of missions spoiled by suicidal Allies.

If you're up to it, this is certainly the best Spider-Man game that's graced a PC yet, even if it's also one of the toughest.

The minimal presentation, weak interface and comparatively paltry selection of titles hardly seems worthy of a golden anniversary. These games may be classics, but Namco's really pushing its luck here.

Once its player-versus-player elements are fully implemented, Lineage II could become the tense, harsh, and Darwinian experience it's supposed to be. At this point, it's basically an occasionally chaotic, and aesthetically attractive level-grind.

Gameplay aside, in a lighthearted adventure like this, the biggest crime is not being consistently funny...an offense of which Harvey Birdman is regrettably guilty.

Speaking of being taken seriously, the AFL needs more help in the future from EA. This could eventually become a great series, a mix between Madden and Blitz -- but right now it's just $30 you shouldn't spend.

Even if some parts are lackluster there's not much that's truly awful about it, and its unique elements are more than enough to make up for things like the handful of missions spoiled by suicidal Allies.

Without the story, all your venturing through the game would be for naught. It's the redeeming quality that makes the back-and-forth, to-and-fro quests, the battles every five feet, and the unaltered appearance worth wading through. It's just something that you'll really have to want to do.

Blitz II may be well ahead of its most recent competition -- EA's NFL Tour fiasco -- but after the initial wave of gross-out injuries, you'll see this for what it is: an anti-NFL dare reliant on limp shock value and a subpar football game.

If it had been afforded a little more finesse (especially regarding the Challenges) and a little more authentic Godzilla flavor, it'd be even sweeter.

As a creative tool Unbound is great, but as a game it feels a little sparse. Despite its seemingly casual nature, the technical side of Unbound shouldn't be underestimated -- it quickly frustrates players looking for a light challenge while rewarding the more dedicated who are willing to invest the time.

King of Fighters: Neowave has so much potential just waiting to be tapped, with new powerful hardware, a fighting engine based on a winning formula, and a dream collection of 43 fighters, but the things that it didn't do would fill up an entire stadium.

Divinity II genuinely surprised me; loathe as I am to admit it, I may have entertained the slightest of preconceived notions about the quality of the game, but Divinity II totally shattered them. It may not be ready to take on BioWare's finest, but if you're feeling an RPG (or dragon-riding) jones, you could come up with helluva worse ways to spend your coin.

Even more painful is being forced to say bad things about a game that, for all intents and purposes, you happen to be rather fond of.

Heatseeker manages to nail the whole "pointing the Wii Remote at the screen" thing, rather than introducing flight-combat gameplay, and as such fails to grasp the idea that you're in a damn fighter jet.

I don't dislike this game. Aside from a few minor graphical bugs and hiccups, BlackSite is unquestionably competent at what it does. It's just that what it does isn't particularly notable, or innovative, or memorable -- in either a good or a bad way. It's not even memorably mediocre. It's just...diverting, for 10 hours or so. You could say worse things about a game.

The marriage of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe with strategy-based combat is an addictive one, making this game one that even the curious fan should check out.

Multiplayer is certainly better than single-player (the more people, the better), but it suffers from the same pileups and limited variety. Considering how impractical it is to set up a full multiplayer game offline, it's ridiculous that the game's only online feature is comparing scores and leaderboards.

World Kitchen tries hard to spice up the already tasty Cooking Mama recipe with new characters, slapstick rescue minigames, and cheesy-in-a-bad-way voiceovers, but the results leave behind a funny aftertaste. It'll do in a pinch, but I prefer Cook Off's well-balanced helpings.

One of the most standard, bland, monotonous, poorly done, and "easy money on paper" titles I've seen in quite some time.

Many new buildings (and new gameplay modes) are already available in free patches, so if you're not interested in Destinations' vacationing layer (which, to be fair, adds another honest-to-goodness challenge to the game), you don't really need to drop another 30 bucks -- unless you really, really missed that monster-attack disaster.

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

It's hardly the deepest game around, but its combo system, barrage of enemies, and difficulty all dovetail with the endless brutal carnage to recall, in some ways, the Ninja Gaiden remake: If you're good and quick enough, you'll avoid getting hit, but when you get cornered, you'll be walloped.

If you've loved the Warriors games in the past, then I wholeheartedly recommend Warriors Orochi. It has all the hack-n-slash action that fans of the series want, with the add convenience of portability.

I realize that they're going for a snow and ice motif, but the color is really just a lifeless, ashy grey. Given how colorless the rest of the experience is though, perhaps it's appropriate.

Somewhere deep within Fracture, far, far below its offensively derivative crust, lies a worthwhile, original game. It's very much a game with a gimmick -- terraforming terrain on the fly -- and while that gimmick works well (if a bit too predictably), Fracture is thoroughly unexciting.

Namco Bandai wisely placed heavy emphasis on the sensory overload graphics, and the reason is clear: if you aren't laughing at the craziness, the game itself might actually drive you mad.

Even with its numerous imperfections, Blood Stone easily ranks as 007's strongest showing in a videogame since the original GoldenEye. Just try to keep some aspirin handy for the inevitable cellphone-induced headaches.

Half-way through most boss battles, the game presents the option of executing a 'finishing move' that will remove the rest of the enemy's health in one fell swoop. Deceptively, this maneuver is initiated by pressing a single button -- except it doesn't work most of the time.

It looks great on paper, but in execution it just isn't enough.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a standard licensed game -- it's got just enough content to make a virtual reenactment of the Human/Goblin war worthwhile for fans of the franchise.

The PSP version is the purest taste of Gunpey you're likely to receive anywhere. The skin collecting is addictive, and as long as you don't mind the brutal, linear, hours-long grind needed to collect them all, then this is probably the version most older gamers will go for.

In short, it's your typical platformer -- with all the good and bad connotations that term holds...It's just not very engaging, no matter how familiar you are with the source material.

If you have little cousins who don't care what kind of games you buy them, but just enjoy getting new games for their PlayStation 2, this is what you can get them. If you got it for yourself, you'd probably forget you owned it in about a week.

At the same cost as a single map-pack for Modern Warfare 2, Blacklight makes a pretty strong case for itself based on price alone. Just know that this is one instance where you get exactly what you pay for.

Ultimately Cook Off's combination of improved variety, a better interface and multiplayer gameplay were an easy decision over the DS's stylus controls, solo-only play and limited palette -- and palate.

Well, now, this is disappointing. I wasn't expecting a full-fledged GRAW experience on PSP, to be sure, but Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 comes off feeling like a slightly more high-tech knockoff of SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo...only without teammates, online play, a reliable lock-on system, solid level design, or online play.

What keeps me coming back to War in the North is the fact that the game does a remarkable job of divvying out loot. Enemy drops, breakable items, and eager shopkeepers are all there to make sure that you always have a consistent IV drip of high-fantasy swag at your disposal.

If you still haven't given the series a try by now and want the best version of the best installment, a rental is a good choice. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself overwhelmed with familiarity this time next year.

While it has few specific flaws, I can only recommend Loki to lovers of endless reward-based level grinding to the exclusion of all other play...and that market just ain't what it used to be.

Skate taps into a state of mind. Shaun White is just a succession of awkward obstacles posing as challenges in a game with bad controls and clunky animation.

It's more than just "Dynasty Warriors for the Xbox 360" and becomes more entertaining the further you make your way into it, but some irritating design decisions, combined with horrible voice acting and the generally repetitious nature of the action, results in a game with limited appeal for a mass audience.

The best part of Reshef of Destruciton is the three free trading cards that come with the game.

While the uninspiring movie didn't help matters, it's the lethargic gameplay that winds up making King Arthur an equally disappointing game. Repetitive and frustrating, it fails to live up to the potential of its cinematic presentation.

Skate taps into a state of mind. Shaun White is just a succession of awkward obstacles posing as challenges in a game with bad controls and clunky animation.

The first improvement is that everything is smoother.

My issues are that this game is so damn generic, shallow, and content with being nothing special, it surprises me that it asks you to pay full price at the door.

It doesn't help that The Guild 2 ships with technical issues: characters that disappear into walls, visual artifacts that take a restart to clear, buttons that don't work at all, and drop-sync issues with multiplayer games.

Sadly, Gretzky NHL doesn't move at the smooth clip of other more impressive PSP games. Shots don't fly off the blade of your stick at the precise moments, and you find yourself doing circles like a figure skater trying to collect loose pucks.

In short, it's your typical platformer -- with all the good and bad connotations that term holds...It's just not very engaging.

The extremely limited multiplayer system, the frustrating and ill-conceived "follow the blue dots" gameplay, and the hackneyed control scheme make playing through From Russia With Love like going toe-to-toe with a giant blond boxer as your country's fate is on the line -- stressful, with a likelihood of receiving brain damage.

For its six-hour playthrough (you can extend that by unlocking alternate characters, but they're so unmemorable and non-gameplay changing, that they provide no incentive to play through again), Wanted: Weapons of Fate is at best a competent, fire-and-forget movie game -- not much more nor less.

If you like frenetically blowing stuff up with old-school flair, you'll dig Aqua -- if you're looking for a gaming experience that stays with you long after the disc leaves the drive, you're gonna need to spend more than 800 Microsoft points.

The repetition waters down the game until you're left with the ridiculously overdone story -- which, admittedly, is all the die-hard fans really want and probably good enough for the financial bottom line. So to say "fans will love it" is not a lazy end to a review -- in this case, it's the plain truth.

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.

Pteredon manages to nail a few things fairly well, but it's not enough to light up the entire game, and all you're left with in the end is awesome female Vietnamese voice acting.

Oftentimes the game will thrust you into difficult, unexpected situations with little warning; try-and-die when you only have a few attempts before starting the fairly lengthy levels all over again, is frustrating.

For a game with so many features, its greatest accomplishment may be using them to be so mundane. Even for fans of the stealth genre anxious for something new, this piece of Spy Fiction makes only an amusing diversion at best.

Should veteran Dead Risers bother with this admirable, but limited port of the original? Not really. But should newcomers to the series give it a spin? Given the scarcity of genuine, old-school arcade content on the Wii (soon to be remedied by MadWorld), I'd say yes.

A title that isn't all that great and doesn't make a hell of lot of sense.

The amount of recycling involved in the level design here is abominable -- some areas repeat the same pair of linked rooms as many as three times in rapid succession, and the problem gets distinctly worse as the game progresses into its later levels.

If nothing else, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an apt representation of what you'd expect from a Transformers movie: a disposable, explosion-laden piece of mindless entertainment featuring robots beating the crap out of each other.

It's a disappointment that a franchise so (ostensibly) devoted to endless creativity could produce a game so limited in its meaningfully creative options. In the end, Spore Hero never becomes anything more than a lighthearted but uninspired platformer -- and a waste of the brand's creative potential.

The minimal presentation, weak interface and comparatively paltry selection of titles hardly seems worthy of a golden anniversary.

The story progression, variety of missions and locations, appropriate alternate costumes and great controls make it easy to buy into this world.

Again, those with a mind for puzzles and pestilence may be able to stick with Theresia, but discerning adventure fans -- who at least like their games to move faster than a snail's pace -- can skip it with little shame.

A game that tries so hard to prove that the series is progressing, but ignores fixing the issues that have plagued it for years: poor defense, sloppy animations, and catering to the home run mar any greatness this game was hoping to achieve.

What's more annoying than anything else, though, are the bizarre messages that pop up during multiplayer battles. You don't really need the server to remind you the maximum number of allowed players have joined a battle every time someone drops out and then refills the quota.

It shows off what the hardware is capable of, it's free (technically), and most importantly, it's actually a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it also highlights some of Kinect's weaknesses, namely the lag and occasional calibration issues.

Avatar's not a bad-looking or playing game -- it's just very average. You may have the whole planet to explore, but your primary objectives boil down to "go to a point, push a button and or kill some guys, then go back to the start." The framework's in place -- a wide array of weapons, big enemies to take down -- but Avatar just doesn't put them in an interesting setting.

So it's not going to win any awards. And the lack of multiplayer plus the linear gameplay means minimal replay value. But Infernal is just clever enough to warrant a mild recommendation to shooter fans looking for a fix. Just don't expect any miracles.

Worse than simply being tedious, though, is how jaw-grindingly frustrating Zombie Apocalypse becomes.

An enjoyable Star Wars experience that any fan can appreciate on the go. Not only will you get the same story found on the console versions, but you'll also get it packaged with some creative combat and fun minigames.

An unintuitive mess. Never mind the fact that gamers are instinctively prepared to press a button to accelerate, but charging your boost by braking is an impractical affair that can also get you into trouble when you're stuck at the bottom of a hill and need a boost to get up.

Yeah, it's not for everybody (Gran Turismo fans may find themselves frustrated), but Baja gives you something a little off the beaten track -- and that's more than most racing games can say.

It's not an entirely new idea, but it executes it well and definitely crawls its way into your waking consciousness after a few too many rounds (surely you've had lucid "Tetris" dreams?).

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. It's not gimmicky nor is it comprehensive, instead going for some kind of arbitrary blend of the two.

Arkanoid is, at best, mindless -- as is any variation of Breakout -- but that also makes it one of the better time-wasters out there.

Worst of all, Ninja Destiny doesn't offer infrastructure play for online battles. All of this, combined with the hollow mechanics and lackluster design, makes it hard for even the most hardcore Naruto fan to appreciate Naruto: Ninja Destiny.

The game feels too labored and doesn't have enough thrills to lock us in. When it comes to handheld baseball, 2K7 isn't even a wild card compared to the champ, "MLB 07: The Show."

PictoImage is a game of simple, approachable thrills, and that bodes extremely well for pulling your significant other, siblings, or parents into its addictive grasp.

Superhero games should make you feel what it's like to step into the shoes of someone special. They should let you experience what it's like to wear the cape, strap on the belt, and feel power flowing through your veins. In short, the best superhero games make us feel extraordinary...Captain America: Super Soldier is anything but.

The lack of a versus mode is a gross oversight that makes versus battles an uncomfortable chore (the winner can't switch characters without resetting the entire game -- just like in the arcades!).

So if you don't mind a little bit of slow-paced memorization, there's a solid game here that will provide a lot of fun. It's just a shame that some of the levels don't leave more wiggle room to accomplish objectives in even slightly different ways.

If you're hoping for something with the depth and substance of a true sequel to the likes of Ape Escape, the discovery that you're getting a party game is a bit of a letdown. It's like working up an appetite for a deluxe pizza and being given a plateful of "Bagel Bites" instead.

Objectively, this first Watchmen episode is just an average brawler that looks fantastic at times, and has some good voice acting to boot.

A very standard beat 'em up/third-person shooter that has many of the elements you'd expect (minor upgrades between levels, slow-motion special power) and none that you wouldn't.

Yoshi's latest adventure simply proves that it really doesn't matter which way you look at a mediocre game -- it's boring from every angle, and no amount of spin can prove otherwise.

I can certainly think of worse ways to spend your time, but that list would pale in comparison to the staggeringly long catalogue of better ways.

While preserving what it can of the spirit of the show -- the goofy patients, the romances, the cliques, and such -- It manages a mesh of genres that makes it hard to classify, but keeps it entertaining, if not addictive. Plus, for the core target audience, who's likely a casual gamer at most, it's surprisingly accessible.

Not only is the camera annoying, but baiting the enemies into your trap becomes a mundane routine that's based on a few simple tactics -- most of the enemies are too stupid to realize they're being set up for a trap.

The minimal presentation, weak interface and comparatively paltry selection of titles hardly seems worthy of a golden anniversary.

Combine that frustration with the almost insultingly shallow combat and it's hard to get too excited about jumping back into the game more than once or twice.

Even with its frustrating controls, if you found yourself hooked on Cooking, you'll feel the same about Mama's adventures in Gardening -- with the same sense of accomplishment when you ace her assignments, and the same swearing and stylus throwing when things go horribly wrong.

While Ratatouille has its enjoyable moments, the main missions leave you feeling a bit hungry for something meatier, while the tasks like slides or races spoil your appetite.

Sonic Rivals 2 is a technically complete game, but in the altogether more important areas of inspiration and design, it's sorely lacking.

It does provide a few satisfying hours of gameplay before the backtracking sets in, and it has plenty of content to keep you busy for a while if you're a completist. But if you're looking for something new other than jokes, you won't find it here.

The game looked promising, as it employs the Assassin's Creed engine and offers an expansive world to explore. But the intimidating controls and lack of direction will scare away anyone hoping for some quick and easy fun, and sports-game enthusiasts looking for the next SSX or a snow-themed Skate won't find it here.