It earns disdain on its own merits. The videogame of the movie of the book -- it's not a surprise that this ended badly, it's just disappointing.

This might make a good present for your nephew's upcoming birthday, but for those looking for a good Naruto game worth sinking your teeth into, you're better off plunking down for one of the Ultimate Ninja games.

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).

Chief among Time Ace's tripping points: an autoengaging autopilot with a knack for tossing you into buildings if you wander too far from the preset flight path. Add spotty hit detection into the mix, and you end up dying more from crashing into obstacles than from taking enemy fire.

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.

Of all the painful aspects of Dark Messiah, the bulk of the problems lie with the controls. It feels like you're moving through a bowl of thick, hearty pea soup; simply walking through the game is exhausting.

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).

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).

If only half of the verve present in the swooping camera zooms and snazzy editing of the cut-scenes had managed to jump to the five hours or so of actual playtime, this might have been a pretty cool game.

While hardcore adventure-game fans might find enough here to warrant a purchase, this game's meant for PC, and it simply works (and looks) far better on its intended platform.

NeverDead is a game, and it can be completed. In my opinion, those are the two truths that cushion the space between a D- and an F. Remove those two facts, and you're left with an amateur effort that redefines the boundary between bad game and flat-out punishment.

Rent it to scoff at the absurdities, and play through it with a friend for some fun co-op.

The muddy controls make it difficult to judge where your creature is standing in proportion to the buildings.

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.

Jack's narrative is amusing, and pirates are just deliciously cult and cool. But the game walks the plank when you realize that it's a bland, buccaneer version of God of War.

Like the "real" Matt Hazard, Eat Lead is best left to fade into obscurity.

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

What's most impressive is the way a lot of humor is injected into the actual gameplay.

A punishingly difficult action game.

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.

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.

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.

Its eminently forgettable title notwithstanding, the significant flaws lie in core mechanics and not the story framework.

The true strength of Nowhere to Run is built into its pick-up-and-play nature. It gets straight to the action, wasting no time indulging in slow-motion cinematic cut-scenes during battle sequences.

If throwing cubes of trash at buttons is up your alley, then we've got just the thing: Heavy Iron's game-itization of Pixar's WALL-E is an offal-chucking aficionado's dream come true. What it isn't, though, is much fun at all.

Locking on to a specific enemy is a crapshoot. The character faces are bad enough that we were actually shocked to find that they had the rights to use the actors' likenesses. We could write a book about everything wrong with Superman Returns.

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.

What seemed really cool back when Namco first announced the original Dead to Rights -- the sweet disarming animations -- just aren't enough to carry another repetitive action game for more than a few levels.