This game's brilliant A.I. on offense, the lightning-quick load times, the remarkably improved faces of Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki, the new dunk competition minigame, and the removal of 24/7 mode are a load of positives that far outweigh the hang-ups.

A worthy beginning for what will surely be a long line of expansion packs.

Painkiller focuses little on AI, puzzles, or plot, and instead sets its sights squarely on appeasing the raw twitch shooter in most of us. At this, the game excels marvelously.

It's fun, inventive, cute, often hilarious, and occasionally heart-pounding -- nearly everything you expect a Wario title to be. It's just not especially challenging nor lengthy.

While 2K6 is an excellent game, it's not much different from 2K5, and EA's NHL series is rapidly gaining ground.

Even without multiplayer, Torchlight makes for a remarkably entertaining 10 to 15 hours, with plenty more custom content to come thanks to the powerful game editor TorchED, which you can download free of charge.

These games are much too late to receive any real critical raves, but the fact remains that you get a lot of game in Growlanser Generations.

With the flood of racing titles hitting the PSP right now, it'd be easy to miss Race Driver 2006. But if you're craving variety and great control in portable form, this is the game for you.

In so many ways, on many levels, Renegade Ops is one of the most refreshingly enthusiastic action games of the year.

Sure, "GTA"'s story and sense of humor were pretty infantile most of the time, but it was still damn funny and did a bang-up job of satirizing American pop culture and consumerism. In Saints Row, however, it all feels obligatory. Like it was something they just had to do, and the result is pretty lifeless.

Puzzle mode feels overly familiar, and the new Mission mode isn't actually that different than the Puzzle mode. Still, the core single-player experience is as addictive and elegant as ever, and this UMD will stay locked in your PSP for weeks to come.

Gas Powered preaches to the choir: They've improved just about everything the faithful could have prayed for -- but they're not nabbing many converts.

Drill Dozer is every bit as good as any current-gen portable title you care to name and succinctly encapsulates why the 2D platformer was so popular to begin with.

Ratchet: Deadlocked doesn't push any boundaries; it doesn't break any ground. It's not haute cuisine. But sometimes you're just in the mood for peanut butter and for that, there's nothing better -- it's a little salty, a little sweet, and tremendously satisfying.

It's Nippon Ichi's best strategy RPG, which if you've played Disgaea and/or La Pucelle ought to be enough to send you off to the store immediately.

Like any good sequel, Lego Star Wars II improves on the original in almost every way. But most importantly, it's about the good episodes now. For that reason alone, Lego Star Wars II is one of the most enjoyable games of this fall.

Freedom Unite is a huge game, and, naturally, a little intimidating. But not only are you getting the best installment of the Monster Hunter franchise so far (though Monster Hunter 3 will no doubt be just as grand), you're getting an enormous action RPG that gives you a lot in return for putting a lot in. And it can potentially keep you attached to your PSP longer than you ever thought.

I can't imagine it becoming the massive breakout hit NIS seems to be aspiring to, but it's bound to satisfy not only the Disgaea faithful, but anyone pining for an inventive take on the Mystery Dungeon formula as well.

Saint's 2's main deficiency, however, isn't the graphics, gameplay, or anything technical -- it just doesn't hold a candle to GTA's signature style. Not one character in the entire cast stands out as anything other than generic. The city, too, is an uninspired, washed-out metropolis.

Unsurprisingly, playing through this Anniversary Collection is much like listening to a ten-album Grateful Dead box set: it's very good for what it is, and some of titles included are genuine masterpieces. But taken together, the monotony is almost overwhelming.

From the very first snap, you'll notice this game runs a whole lot faster and smoother than last year's edition, thanks to the necessary bump to 60 frames per second.

The collection's frontend is clean, simple and clever without being too involved, making navigating from title to title painless and quick.

It scores big points by offering the most strategic Xbox Live experience available. Patient players willing to take the time to continually tweak and test their arsenals of skills will find themselves with a new favorite game to play online.

Graphical foibles aside, The Witcher demonstrates the growing creative energy of European game designers, who continue to take chances with ever more innovative games, even as American developers obsess over the next "Halo."

Maybe it's just the nature of an episodic series like this, but I find myself less and less interested in the actual play mechanics with each new installment, as the sometimes inane puzzle solutions and trial-and-error approach to adventuring can be tiring.

Unless you're simply determined to pay $30 for a painfully hard version of a game you've probably played countless times before in its previous incarnation, you can live without this one.

And unlike previous baseball video games MLB 2K5 moves at a nice pace.

Compelling narrative and crippled combat make Jade Empire a case of form over function -- and depending on what you want from a single-player RPG, that might be totally OK. It's short (in the 20-hour neighborhood for first-timers) and sweet; just don't let the premise trick you into expecting gameplay that isn't altogether there.