Wanton destruction is still a lot of fun -- I just hope that future installments innovate instead of sticking squarely to the foundations set by the original game. And please, next time around, give us multiplayer that feels like more than an afterthought.

With friends or smart online players, D-A-C can provide a couple hours of mindless fun, but it just doesn't provide any reason to keep playing beyond that.

Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 is what happens when you tinker too much with a perfect formula -- and not in the name of improvement. This is the Dead or Alive that, quite frankly, critics of Team Ninja have been hoping for -- a soulless, poorly executed title slathered in truly shameless fan service that not even those who would use it for dirty deeds could force themselves to sit through. It's as ridiculous as the individual breast physics that it entails.

Architecture pops up all over the place, warriors materialize out of thin air on a regular basis, and slowdown is frequent. And the dialogue and voice acting is often laughable. This series needs some serious polish.

No surprises. It's the puzzle game you know and (potentially) love on the Wii, and it's $40. Seems pricey, but at least you know what you're getting.

Those who have drained every last moment of enjoyment from the DS game might appreciate it as a way to eke a little more challenge from the experience. And really obsessive types might appreciate the fact that the announcer guy from the cartoon performs (highly repetitious) running commentary during in-game battles. Everyone else, though, will simply regard this as a waste of money.

It's the game part of this game that stinks, and the rest of it should have just been a DVD.

Unless you're hung up on the prospect of collecting the entire NES Classics/Famicom Mini sets, you're definitely better off with Namco's "Pac-Man Collection." Or better yet, the fantastic NGPC version of the game.

FaceBreaker is fine if you want to mindlessly mash buttons and beat the hell out of friends, but if you want a deep, balanced boxing game, look elsewhere.

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).

Appreciation goes out to Koei for attempting a new direction for the series, but they could have left out the dull repetition. Struggling with the motion controls in the first few stages, being forced to traverse on rails (and when the rails do come off, dealing with awkward movement), and facing wave after wave of repeated enemies just isn't all that fun.

So, is it all a disaster? Well, the A.I. problems are fixed to some degree by the robust multiplayer (if you can find friends willing to slog through the ugliest visuals since finger-painting class), and yes, the level of customization for both the world map and your alter-ego hero is nice -- but no number of small details can hope to salvage quality from this debacle of execution.

Bodycount feels like something a developer would hand to a publisher as a proof-of- concept, not an actual game that should be on store shelves. Its brief moments of fun are overshadowed by poor controls, laughable story, and limited environments.

Remarkably shallow and underwhelming.

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.

It seems to be perfectly suited for a casual audience who just wants to push buttons and watch things happen. But those looking for anything more had best look elsewhere.

The only real laugh in this game comes in the opening introduction (which you can watch in its almost-entirety here). The rest of the game is a plodding, boring mess that that forces you to play through the worst shooter genre clichés, and then asks you to laugh simply because the game's creators self-referentially point out how annoying those tropes are.

The one bit about Spy vs. Spy that really shines is the presentation. Each level looks radically different than the last, and comes complete with its own, unique challenges.

Except for true masochists who believe that hair-pulling frustration equals enjoyable realism, Hammer & Sickle offers nothing worth paying for -- except maybe time to catch up on your reading while waiting for your turn to load.

I couldn't bring myself to dislike this game, and even had more fun with it than certain other Xbox games of the recent past. And if I liked it, even a little bit, who knows if it won't be an even bigger hit with the people it was meant for?

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.

The developers executed that concept quite well. If the setup makes you chuckle, chances are the game will, too.

187 basically defines "average." While the graphics err on the nicer side and the story dips a bit below the equator, most of the game is competent but unspectacular. Every good feature seems to have a bad one that balances it out.

For Wii owners looking for a traditional action game in the vein of Castlevania or God of War, right now, this is still one of your best bets.

Just play the old NES game. We don't remember the Jaws movie where they had to collect seashells and bomb jellyfish with airplanes, but it was more fun than this.

The cel-shaded visual presentation is about the only element AM has going for it, so if you're really attracted to this particular aesthetic, then this is your game. On the other hand, if you're into racing games, chances are you already own something like "Need for Speed Underground," and AM really isn't even in the same ballpark.

A truly awful experience. Put simply, it's a portable piece of ugliness that lacks any humility or wit. It is singularly unpleasant in the way it handles its subject matter, and lacks the style or panache to carry its inadequacies with any dignity.

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.