What's worse is that even if game design and locations fail to excite, then a good combat system could salvage the whole package. But again, Dirge fails to capitalize.

The selection of missions is a little sparse, and the game demands a near-perfect performance to unlock extra content, but that's far less of a problem compared to a control scheme that just isn't any fun.

If your fetish for black gold is such that none of these problems dissuade you from getting one of the few games ever made on the oil business, you'll find a decent selection of scenarios, a free play mode, and even multiplayer. The rest of us should simply avoid the title and use the savings for gas money.

The majority of the environments are quite sparse, with few buildings yet plenty of fog to help hide the fact that the draw distance here isn't that spectacular. The lack of vision also doesn't help when you're traversing the grassy plains and trying to get a read on your enemy's position.

The majority of the environments are quite sparse, with few buildings yet plenty of fog to help hide the fact that the draw distance here isn't that spectacular. The lack of vision also doesn't help when you're traversing the grassy plains and trying to get a read on your enemy's position.

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.

Just skip the whole thing. It has a few fun moments, but for the most part Winback 2 is an utterly unremarkable game, except perhaps in that despite all the gunplay, it's completely bloodless.

AC4 feels like a house that's been added onto so often that it's a maze of twisting passages, oddly shaped rooms, and doors that go nowhere. There may be something worthwhile hidden within, but it's not worth the effort to find it. Time to tear it all down and start over.

As a budget release, Renegade Paintball is a bit more robust than you would imagine, but the buggy gameplay, along with several more oddities will be quick to remind you that yes, this is yet another half-baked budgetware title to forget about.

There are some really cool ideas here that belong in a better game: the tech tree, the random encounters, command ratings, and the shipbuilding, for instance.

It's a messy button-masher that makes you really wish it had been able to realize its potential. Don't write it off completely, though...let's talk again in about six months.

Other than the exclusive ArchLord gimmick, we're left with a dated-looking game with limited classes and a lot of grind, and a miniscule chance of something cool at the end if you really throw yourself into it. Not exactly our cup of mead.

It's technically playable and, despite its best efforts, probably won't plunge the industry into a period of navel-gazing and political sanction. Everything else about it is largely forgettable.

How two quality ops managed to screw up Theatre of War is anyone's guess.

The flight-sim world craves a good Vietnam-era helicopter sim, but Whirlwind Over Vietnam's anemic content would've been more suitable for a good demo than a full game.

Underneath the frustrating instability, behind the graceless chat window, and beyond the procession of NPC dialog boxes, you tickled that deep primordial need to gather more stuff and get stronger. Loot and leveling are the essence of any RPG, and you're equipped to satisfy that jones.

The back of the box declares that it's "fast action fun!" Believe us, and believe our young friend Ethan -- Pokemon Dash is not.

Paradise in a word? Dull. Paradise in two words? Paradise lost. Paradise in a sentence? Paradise is comparatively like anywhere you aren't when playing this game. For old-school pointy-clicky-adventure fanatics only.

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.

The venerability of these selections combined with the substandard interface (exiting out of a given game is performed inconsistently and tends to be very confusing) and paltry selection of titles makes this one you can skip over without losing any sleep.

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.

The derivative nature of the plot goes hand-in-hand with the completely unimaginative gameplay. Nothing here is original -- the RPG-in-a-computer gimmick is straight up .hack, and the action feels like martial arts-oriented Mega Man Legends.

Nintendo's portable system is the popular girl in school these days, which makes Cookie & Cream an embarrassing photo from back in junior high. Back when she had acne, braces and Coke-bottle glasses and hung out with the kids who weren't cool enough to be on the chess team. Let's put those dark days behind us, shall we?

No matter how much you improve your weapons with alchemy, you probably won't have to do much other than buy the next best sword, then hack-n-slash your way to victory.

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.

The problem with Mario Party is this: the downtime is completely ridiculous. In a game where the sole purpose is to entertain you in a party-like environment, sitting out for periods of up to 10 minutes at a time, waiting for everyone to roll the dice, run around, shop for items, use said items, compete in stale, single-player mini-games, pointless microphone games and other random events drives one to tears of boredom.

Disappointing, unpolished, and disjointed, the game is thankfully short enough that the minigames and Pan's animal powers don't grow overly tiresome. That sentiment applies for the entire game though -- the simplistic gameplay is tedious, but there's little of it so it never manages to provoke high levels of vitriol.

Edited down to a tight package this could probably make a pretty good machinima feature (or Sci-Fi original motion picture for that matter). But as a game, it fails.

Only a revisit after about six months will reveal whether or not Sword of the New World manages to reach its potential...if anyone's willing to wait that long.

It's technically playable and, despite its best efforts, probably won't plunge the industry into a period of navel-gazing and political sanction. Everything else about it is largely forgettable.

Like the show itself, Jackass: The Game is something best experienced when extremely drunk, extremely bored, or, ideally, both. But don't go getting the idea that you'll enjoy it with friends.

The derivative nature of the plot goes hand-in-hand with the completely unimaginative gameplay. Nothing here is original -- the RPG-in-a-computer gimmick is straight up .hack, and the action feels like martial arts-oriented Mega Man Legends.

The real problem with Brooktown, though, is that your progress seems totally scripted, requiring no actual effort or skill.

A triumph of botched execution, with almost every element it introduces to the game serving to undercut it.

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.

It's quickly clear that Dark Messiah is a "Half-Life 2"-style rail ride, but with "Deus Ex"-style character development.

Most importantly, though (especially for fans of the PC Fallout), you've got an RPG without any sort of enticing story.

It might be a worthwhile purchase to someone who needs an object lesson in how not to take advantage of the platform, but for anyone else this is just a more expensive version of a game that's been cluttering bargain bins for a while now.

While the uninspiring adventure mode is excusable, the camera and the framerate problems are not; those two factors break the game.

Ubisoft's work here leaves Astonishia as little more than another could-have-been, doomed to mere mediocrity. PSP fans have been waiting a year for a great RPG...sorry, guys, this ain't it.

Perfect for those who want nothing but a straightforward, hack-and-slash game. It won't offer you substance, style, or even repeat gaming, but at least you won't need any illicit drugs to make your mind numb.

The real tragedy here is that a simple attempt to emulate Atari's 2004 Transformers game would have made this movie tie-in an order of magnitude better. As is, those looking for a Transformers fix should scour the bargain bins for that classic, and leave this one on the shelf.

A tired, sluggish, and uninspired action adventure that would have barely cut the mustard six years ago on PS1.

Unfortunately, all these mild enjoyments delineated above are ruined by the bugs that crawl throughout this game. One bug wipes out all the cargo on your ship every time you set sail. Another prevents merchants from buying or selling anything. A third cuts off a minor side quest.

Impressive a feat as creating a 3D shooter with cinematic aspirations for the DS may be, it doesn't mean much when it's not fundamentally fun to play.

There's a thin line between awful and pointless, and Night Watch manages to wobble like a poorly spun top right in the middle, sporadically teetering too far into awful before righting itself, then drifting over to pointless territory. Again and again and again.

It's a shame, because the Wi-Fi play is arguably the best part of Nitrobike. While the technical issues persist, the smaller field and lag-free experience benefits from the knowledge that your online competitors are putting up with the same glitches that you are.

Lockdown got rid of everything that made its predecessors stand out and kept the bad A.I. and even worse backstories. Even without the burden of living up to its predecessors, Lockdown is -- at best -- a generic shooter with pretensions at realism.

The venerability of these selections combined with the substandard interface (exiting out of a given game is performed inconsistently and tends to be very confusing) and paltry selection of titles makes this one you can skip over without losing any sleep.

As a budget release, Renegade Paintball is a bit more robust than you would imagine, but the buggy gameplay, along with several more oddities will be quick to remind you that yes, this is yet another half-baked budgetware title to forget about.

This could have been the best Virtual-On ever, and instead it's easily the worst.

It has a few fun moments, but for the most part Winback 2 is an utterly unremarkable game, except perhaps in that despite all the gunplay, it's completely bloodless.

Unleashed isn't completely without merit -- it just falls far below any reasonable standard for fighting, wrestling, or monster games.

The GameCube version, on the other hand, slows down horribly with too many cars on the screen (at the start of a four-car race, for instance) or in certain areas of town with a lot of background architecture. It's bad enough that the absence of online multiplayer is just a little extra salt in the wound.

Sadly, "younger players" are exactly the audience that will get the most frustrated, and with the overabundance of minigame driven experiences on the Wii, there are plenty of more enjoyable options.

Plain attacks with repetitive animations undermine any hope for the finesse that four unique characters could have afforded.

The real tragedy here is that a simple attempt to emulate Atari's 2004 Transformers game would have made this movie tie-in an order of magnitude better. As is, those looking for a Transformers fix should scour the bargain bins for that classic, and leave this one on the shelf.

Shot Online's execution is just poor.

From looking at it you'd probably never guess it was an Unreal Engine game. It lacks any real distinguishing features, struggles to run smoothly in places, and, aside from a few nice special effects, never remotely approaches the expected visual impact.

The obvious rush has resulted a very boring and lifeless Manhattan. We all know the Wii isn't exactly a powerhouse when it comes to graphics, but when it looks like an early port of the PSP game, you're better off looking elsewhere (PS3/Xbox 360) for your Spidey fix -- this isn't even worthy of being called a "guilty pleasure."

Sure, running around the dungeons and slashing through enemies is enjoyable enough -- and, dare I say it, even fun at times. But as soon as you attempt to play through Valhalla Knights like its an actual game, it completely falls apart.

It's a bad game, but it's a bad game with aspirations, and every so often it manages to entertain in spite of its gaping, hideous flaws.

Given a choice between these broken versions of classics or simply not having these games on DS at all, I think in the end I'd rather have not had them. At least then there'd have been hope that someone could have done them justice, someday.

The Shield is too little, too late; what would've been a merely mediocre license tie-in is now, due to its very late birth, simply a bad game.

Never does Alien Syndrome become fun -- and unlike the Wii version, the PSP iteration doesn't even control well enough to become quietly engaging in its own methodical, repetitive way.

Time Crisis 4 isn't broken, and the GunCon3 generally works as advertised; it's just appallingly unentertaining after ten minutes, insultingly expensive for what it offers, and has absolutely no place in the PS3 library of anyone but the most desperate gun nuts and Time Crisis devotees.

The constant switching between three types of gameplay just means you'll never really get into any of them, and the hilariously crazy Rabbid characters of the console versions are sparse and disappointingly tame when they do pop up.

If you have any sort of good taste in games whatsoever, please do not buy this game -- instead, have someone else buy it, laugh at him, and then make fun of the title together over a Sunday afternoon. It's a short game, besides.

It's a bad game, but it's a bad game with aspirations, and every so often it manages to entertain in spite of its gaping, hideous flaws.

It's hard to imagine that there is much of a market for a $30 sprite-based RTS for the PC today, much less one that's unstable and lacks any innovation.

In the end, this one poses as a tennis game for beginners, but even tykes will only be mildly amused.

Even the most die-hard Naruto fan would be ill-served by this game, especially when the DS library is filled with dozens of far superior, less-contrived options.

While the multiplayer may be passable, the rest of VBR is so flawed that it tests your patience more than your boxing skills. If you've been waiting for a Wii boxing game, you should just keep waiting and go back to Wii Sports for now -- at least that was free with your Wii.

With its slick visual polish and ample bone-crunching sound-effects, Urban Reign could have come out on tip. But thanks to an endless series of increasingly maddening and increasingly boring stages, you'll find yourself saying "No thanks," and turning off your PS2 and bringing this game back to the store. Xbox owners, be thankful you were spared this agony.

It's not an awful game. It's just utterly inferior to Lumines and costs just as much. What's the point?

Customizable background themes, icons, and skins are offered to spice up the aesthetic, but they're not the least bit pleasant to look at and offer about as much artistry as clip art.

But when the game's core mechanics are middling at best, dragging other players into it is just asking for a reputation downgrade. When the world has so many better games to offer, you have to ask yourself "Why play this?"

The game's mash-up of a story never amounts to anything meaningful or groundbreaking, and the single player campaign is pretty short -- clocking in around five hours or less.

It would be easy to pinpoint the games faults solely on the new, unresponsive control scheme, but Ride's gameplay lacks several established principles of the skateboarding genre. Concepts as simple as session markers and on-foot travel are nonexistent, and the ability to restart a challenge mid-run (a longtime staple of the Pro Skater series) is simply not there.

An absolute mess that isn't worth your time.

An absolute mess that isn't worth your time.

We've come to expect a missing coat of polish on film tie-ins, but Iron Man seems to lack even a level of care, resulting in a drab adaptation that sinks well beyond simple mediocrity.

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

The Rise of Cobra's biggest problems aren't in the way it uses the license -- the problems are that, on anything but the lowest difficulty setting, the game is unnecessarily unforgiving and uses a completely counter-intuitive health regeneration system.

It still ends up as one of the prettier 3D offerings on Xbox Live Arcade, despite some framerate annoyances. It's too bad that everything else about the game -- from the mechs and environments to the play modes -- seems so generic and quickly cobbled together.

It would be easy to pinpoint the games faults solely on the new, unresponsive control scheme, but Ride's gameplay lacks several established principles of the skateboarding genre. Concepts as simple as session markers and on-foot travel are nonexistent, and the ability to restart a challenge mid-run (a longtime staple of the Pro Skater series) is simply not there.

After finishing the disappointingly anticlimactic game, I felt like I just read through a graphic novel side-story, but one that doesn't reveal anything new or interesting. From a technical standpoint, the game is passing, but its narrative, structure, and inattention to detail reveal this game for what it is: Yet another lazy cash-in on a "blockbuster" film.

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

We've come to expect a missing coat of polish on film tie-ins, but Iron Man seems to lack even a level of care, resulting in a drab adaptation that sinks well beyond simple mediocrity.

If Capcom spices up the battle system a bit and hires some new writers, they may be able to create another Mega Man game worth playing...but until then, I'm keeping Star Force off the air.

Gather a few friends around the TV and Deadliest Warrior can provide about an hour of brainless laughs, but I don't see much appeal beyond that.

If Capcom spices up the battle system a bit and hires some new writers, they may be able to create another Mega Man game worth playing...but until then, I'm keeping Star Force off the air.

As much as it pains me to say it, Tron: Evolution proves that it takes a lot more than nostalgia and shiny graphics to make an enjoyable videogame.

Unless you're one of those die-hard fanatics that simultaneously weep and scream at the sight of MJ, it's unclear who would be interested in dancing to 26, largely questionable, songs.

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.

Bust-A-Move Universe stops just shy of being an irredeemably terrible game, but it's certainly not good.

As much as it pains me to say it, Tron: Evolution proves that it takes a lot more than nostalgia and shiny graphics to make an enjoyable videogame.

A by-the-numbers affair unlikely to rouse most action fans. Maybe you won't toss your controller in a fit of rage (unlike the frustrating PS3/360 games), but with gameplay and presentation this uninteresting, do you even need pick it up to begin with?