While the gameplay does have its high points (again, mostly surrounding Nightcrawler), it's also quite often littered with monotony thanks to seemingly nonexistent enemy A.I., confusion (poor level design), and frustration (glitches, a sometimes lack of checkpoints, and uneven challenges).

An absolute mess that isn't worth your time.

Soldier of Fortune doesn't cross the line of being a bad game, but it hardly ever breaks the surface of mediocrity either. The visuals and sound show lots of polish, but the generic story, horrible voice acting, and cut-scenes, along with the kamikaze A.I. and boring level design, simply don't.

Reservoir Dogs won't appeal to hardcore aficionados of the film; the almost-total omission of the original cast and likenesses will probably cause fans to attempt a bullet festival of their own.

The concept is quite good, but the problem is that...well, that's it. Once you've mastered the tricks, the monotony of routine sets in. Your Sim barely requires any care.

"Ultimate Destruction" was on the PS2 as well, but it still had a beautifully rendered, detailed city that was fully visible from any rooftop -- and a blast to wreak havoc on. Instead of building on that better game, though, Incredible Hulk is a weak attempt at mimicking it.

It quickly degenerates into as absurd a mess as four turtles that are supposed to be ninjas with a rat for a sensei sounds like on paper. As Michelangelo might say, "cowabunga dudes, this is one gnarly game wreck."

Right now, playing FFXIV is like playing with a toy stuck in a plastic bag: it can be fun for a while and you can get the general idea, but you can't appreciate the full experience. Future updates will no doubt open the bag, but for now, it's sealed frustratingly tight.

All that really matters here is if you like the idea of a very simple, kid-oriented brawler featuring cute versions of Marvel characters. The rest of the game falls in line adequately.

I don't know what it would take to make a game of Spore's scope on the DS, but I know it requires an entirely different approach than the lamentably simplistic Spore Hero Arena.

OK, so there you have it. Buy this game to learn the how the rules of the different Texas Hold'em games differ (essential if you're going to Vegas soon)...don't buy it to get better at poker... My suggestion? Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.

For those looking to relive some of the fun of the movie, avoid this mediocre flight combat game; you'd be a thousand times better off sitting around with your co-workers and seeing who can recite the most lines, or figuring out who can chomp their front teeth the loudest.

I was initially excited about the prospect of a top-down shooter to play on the go, but my excitement quickly turned to disappointment and frustration. EA tries to stuff too many peripheral gameplay components into The 40th Day, which loses focus of the point of the shoot-em-up genre. Coupled with the extremely poor AI, there just really isn't much to recommend about this game.

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.

I fully expected EA to lay it on thick with the clichéd martial arts mumbo jumbo, but aside from oft-repeated comments from the sensei, the ninja theme is thankfully understated, and the clean visuals are more than adequate for the simplistic mechanics.

It's kind of a cakewalk. You won't feel pressed to utilize just the right combos for a given situation, and health boosts are generously doled out. Even the highest difficulty is pretty forgiving.

A not particularly attractive game that provides neither the twitch-based thrills of an arcadey flight game nor the intricate controls and challenge of flying a realistic virtual aircraft.

Missing modes -- no online, no Campus Legend, no create-a-player, and no minigames (which is a must for the target audience) -- further illustrate the game's shoved-out-the-door nature.

The car never really feels grounded, but rather appears to float at a high rate of speed. It doesn't take much more than too much gas and too sharp a turn to start spinning, adding unnecessary aggravation to some of the longer missions.

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

As a fighter, Castlevania Judgment employs too many design ideas that are neither well planned nor well executed. It's a strange misstep for the beloved series, one that Konami hopefully learns from.

Overall, when stacked next to its PS2 counterpart, the PSP version of Ghost Rider is on very weak legs.

Budget buyers, beware: This half-assed rebranding and rethinking of the NFL Street series is one of the limpest sports experiences I've played in years. NFL Tour is shockingly inorganic, severely underdeveloped, and thoroughly limited.

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.

Fuzion Frenzy 2 isn't terrible, so if you're desperate for a simple, safe party game, it fits the bill. Unfortunately, it fits the bill in so lackluster a manner, it's hard to see why they bothered.

It's not obvious they knew just how monumentally moronic the game they created is. That's the key difference between the two titles: Bulletstorm is the funny guy at the party who has a bit too much to drink. DNF is the guy who gets plastered, runs around naked with a lampshade on his head and doesn't understand that everyone is laughing at him, not with him.

If you spend large chunks of free time debating the relative merits of Captain Picard and Captain Kirk, there's probably a teensy bit of enjoyment to wring out of this bare-bones game. Just do yourself a favor and pick up the cheaper PS2 version (or really, just rent it).

While there could be some more old school songs for the mix, the songlist as a whole is an excellent cross spectrum. You have to start somewhere, and these are already some of the most fun to learn rap songs out there. Holler!

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

The game offers painfully little in the way of options. Most annoying is the complete lack of straight-up deathmatch -- Predator-vs.-Predator -- or an option to play as an alien. Instead, you choose from a handful of environments where two Predators compete to kill the most aliens under a time limit. Yawn.

Domino Master's a bit like going to Baskin-Robbins and noticing the employees refilling the containers with generic grocery-store-brand ice cream.

The only challenge comes from the occasionally imprecise controls.

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.

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.

Malice is so generic and mediocre that its release only serves to spoil what little status it had as the punchline of a joke.

While the graphics and sound won't be winning any awards, their strong, primary colors and simple but clean approach come across with a Hello Kitty feel that wraps everything up perfectly for the style.

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.

What little tactical challenge commanding these brain-dead battles presents still manages to overwhelm the game's signature whip select system.

The game itself offers several technical improvements over its predecessor, but the overall package just feels like it's just... not... quite there. Breasts can only solve so many problems.

Never does it become particularly fun, though it's quietly engaging in its own methodical, repetitive way. It's not a full-price purchase by any means, and it's nowhere close to the high action-RPG bar set by Champions of Norrath on the PS2 three and a half years ago.

It's kind of a cakewalk. You won't feel pressed to utilize just the right combos for a given situation, and health boosts are generously doled out. Even the highest difficulty is pretty forgiving.

The hi-tech gadgets are there - yet you don't need them. The massive levels are there - yet most of them are plain boring. The place is full of security cameras and guards - yet you can easily deal with them once you've familiarized yourself with the gameplay mechanics.

No, the problem here is that getting to the naked women is a painstaking chore, and the few seconds of a girl going wild does not make up for the five minutes of inane videos leading up to it.

There's a great idea lurking around in Rock Of The Dead's dumb-fun concept, but instead the game winds up being dumb even when it isn't trying to be.

A slapdash title like this shouldn't take anyone's time or money.

Its basic design philosophy is one of laziness and glossing over problems rather than really putting out the effort to make a decent game. That's a bitter pill to swallow for a kid who just shelled out 50 bucks of lunch money.

It's a simple puzzle game, along the lines of something you would find pre-installed on a computer. But nicer looking, and with a lot more style.

But given the quality of the game, the title could also denote a certain level of unpleasant surprise. (Example: "Please avoid this horrible wreck of a game that Ubisoft has Sprung upon unsuspecting DS owners.")

A game that is certainly violent, absolutely profane, but also acceptably playable and filled with enough replay value and customization to warrant a purchase as opposed to a rental. But in terms of sheer polish and finesse, "Def Jam Fight for New York" is still the standard bearer against which these sorts of games should be judged.

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

Feels like that blatantly annoying contemporary relative -- a sort of unironic Ali G.

Despite an entire review's worth of problems, Fantastic Four isn't a complete loss. It has some nice-looking effects ("flaming on," specifically), a decent joke or two, and some nice extras to unlock (old Fantastic Four comic covers, alternate costumes, etc.), but it's just not compelling in any of the basic areas it needs to be.

No, the problem here is that getting to the naked women is a painstaking chore, and the few seconds of a girl going wild does not make up for the five minutes of inane videos leading up to it.

By the time I'd defeated my 10th werewolf, I was already tired of needing to cut or shoot its head off so it didn't regenerate. By the time I defeated my 200th, I just wanted to turn the game off.

The problem with this control innovation is that the game often requires you to perform very particular movements (such as jump in the air, and grab a pole with your whip) with imprecise controls forcing you to playing the puzzles over and over until you are ready to rip your fur out.

Science of Evil is ultimately a God of War rip-off, but that's not the problem. Rather, very basic game-design flaws keep it from moving ahead of the licensed-game pack. Interesting characters, excellent animation and art direction, and all of the Ron Perlman in the world can't save this one from mediocrity.

Everything in the game (art, dialogue, characters, etc.) is barely bargain-bin passable.

I hesitate to say that Iron Man is dumbed down for the Wii, PlayStation 2, and PSP, since hardware limitations likely necessitated such a distinct iteration, but the resulting experience is a by-the-numbers affair unlikely to rouse most action fans.

Wing Island's missions -- set on serene-but-sterile-looking islands -- are often as boring as they are bizarre. Dumping water on fires? Eh, kinda fun. Delivering fruit crates to hard-to-hit drop zones? Sure. I'll try that. Bombing blah-looking rock formations? Uh, someone wake me up when we land.

A disaster in far too many ways to count.

I cannot forgive the miserable checkpoint system; no matter how long and difficult a particular room is, get hit at the end, and it's back to the very beginning for you.

It quickly degenerates into as absurd a mess as four turtles that are supposed to be ninjas with a rat for a sensei sounds like on paper. As Michelangelo might say, "cowabunga dudes, this is one gnarly game wreck."

Its biggest flaw is feeling old hat in an already overcrowded marketplace, and it is unlikely to pull any FPS devotees from their game of choice. No Mercy -- despite being a competent shooter set at a value price -- simply doesn't stand out like its title character.

Unless you're obsessed with all things Sonic, or you simply must own every Kinect title, stay away from Sonic Free Riders.

A system this young doesn't need any more titles like this potentially damaging its rep. The only thing keeping the game from absolute worthlessness is the fact that a competent SRPG can still be found within.

An absolute mess that isn't worth your time.

The Transformers formula was meant for videogames. Giant robots destroying cities as the forces of good and evil struggle for supremacy. It's too bad the PSP developers weren't able to parlay that into a semidecent game.

You never quite reach the same pumped-up heights you get while playing similar games, like "NBA Ballers" or "NBA Street" -- and despite the tricks, online play, and generally responsive controls, it would take a serious interest in the AND 1 legacy to maintain any level of interest in this game.

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

A stiff, by-the-numbers experience that mixes a few good ideas with generally middling execution.

Now what are you waiting for, a medal? You'll only get that if you survive, marauder -- if you can survive the tedium of never-ending waves of bugs and repetitive missions.

Those coming in clean to the series will wonder what the fuss is about, though -- and should probably wait for the next installment in the series instead.

It's also a travesty that the original arcade games aren't included in this collection (though, perhaps Sega felt those would invalidate these new installments -- especially in the case of Golden Axe, which just plain sucks).

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.

As neat as the touch-screen controls are, they don't take attention away from the rest of Freedom Wings' faults. The whole thing feels like a 1990's shareware PC game; it loves to dole out its action in small chunks.

As a basic XBLA port at half the price, RayStorm might have made for a fun novelty. But it's frankly bewildering that Taito is charging $15 for an extremely marginal upgrade to a game that we played some 13 years ago.

"Ultimate Destruction" was on the PS2 as well, but it still had a beautifully rendered, detailed city that was fully visible from any rooftop -- and a blast to wreak havoc on. Instead of building on that better game, though, Incredible Hulk is a weak attempt at mimicking it.

The game could have been so much more bearable if they had simply changed the camera operation. The camera is not in your usual third-person perspective, and it quite often faces her, making gameplay very difficult if not impossible at times.

Rampage: Total Destruction is broken and a perfect example of how not to port a game to the Wii. (And then charge extra for it.)

As a stand-alone download, it's a short rendition of the Watchmen brawler experience that features more low points than high points -- but with an admittedly awesome moment of Rorschach punching a fat pervert.

Casual players will have a hard time jumping in and having some quick fun due to the game's rigid combo system, unforgiving CPU, and lackluster training mode, and the competitive fighting community has expressed no interest in this game at all.

If "Need for Speed Underground" had an inbred cousin (possibly by "Bust-a-Groove"), and that cousin was mutated by exposure to radiation, I'm forced to conclude that Lowrider would be the result.

So while Operation Darkness could've lit up strategy nuts, the completely awful camera and primitive PlayStation 2-quality graphics drain the life out of it. Even online co-op, the one unique feature that actually justifies Darkness' place on the 360, is about as fun as waiting to get your blood drawn.

If only the developers had focused on delivering a simple, fun experience rather than trying to create something far beyond their reach.

In plenty of cases, the system has done a great job at reducing the barrier of the controller, making it easier to interact with games thanks to simple motion controls. In a game like Barrel Blast, however, it's added a whole lot of complexity -- not to mention physical exhaustion -- to what would otherwise be simple steering controls.

In the end, it turns out Dungeon Lords wasn't so much released before its time, as it was given up on in an admission that time had already long since passed it by.

But sadly, the strength of the game's characters doesn't lead to a positive, or memorable, gaming experience.

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.

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.

The difficulty ramps up so much by the game's finale that I'm not convinced it's even possible for a solo player to finish this thing. And even if you could, I'm not sure why you'd want to; Sanctum of Slime has little to offer the die-hard Ghostbusters fan, and even less for the twin-stick shooter crowd.

Budget buyers, beware: This half-assed rebranding and rethinking of the NFL Street series is one of the limpest sports experiences I've played in years. NFL Tour is shockingly inorganic, severely underdeveloped, and thoroughly limited.

Interpol doesn't do enough to create or maintain interest or excitement. If you're already into the idea of finding hidden items, Interpol will keep you busy for a few hours (including bonus "spot the difference" puzzles, ala QuickSpot on DS), but if not, the bland interface and narrative are unlikely to win you over.

There's a great idea lurking around in Rock Of The Dead's dumb-fun concept, but instead the game winds up being dumb even when it isn't trying to be.

Other than the fact that you can wage 10,000-unit battles, don't expect much difference between Stronghold Crusader Extreme and the regular, nonextreme Stronghold Crusader.

With the exclusion of co-op -- what people really want to play -- and the constant hint that a sequel's already on the way, Beast Rider feels like a difficult, drawn-out, $60 tutorial. Why bother?

Axing every bit of multiplayer content -- not just the online modes -- from the original games is a baffling move on the part of the developers, considering that other Wii shooters have included both local and online multiplayer options.

Decidedly average and forgettable. While you can extract some fun from taking down large swaths of enemies with a friend, the repetitive combat can't sustain the 20-plus hour campaign.

The core problem with Napoleon Dynamite: The Game is that it totally disregards the humor of the film (and, as such, of the audience it's attempting to reach). The whole joke of Napoleon Dynamite was that Jon Heder's titular character constantly claims to have more skill than he actually possesses. In the game, you have all that skill and more.