Konga represents a somewhat hefty financial investment, especially if you want to round up enough peripherals to fill your GameCube's controller ports, but for sheer universal fun there's nothing else on the system that compares.

Some repetitive puzzle design and a half-baked multiplayer component still aren't enough to completely tarnish Singularity, however. Beneath its flawed exterior lies a fine shooter that experiments with time manipulation more aptly than any game since Braid.

No surprise, the A.I. rolls over on anything less than Hard, and getting units into tactically feasible formations can be like herding drunken snails.

At times like this, it's a wonder that adventure games ever went off the rails.

I can't recommend the weak single-player mode, but the multiplayer left me surprisingly satisfied.

Whether it's the story or the gameplay that carries you through the third Shadow Hearts, you won't be wowed by the presentation.

SideScroller is not a glorified minigame. It's shorter than the Shooter series the first time through, but that just means it's properly modeled after the old games that inspired it. In other words, it's a PixelJunk game, and that also means a well-executed visual style, smooth gameplay, and an impressive soundtrack.

The whole thing skates dangerously close to the "edutainment" realm by building its core mechanic around reading comprehension and deductive reasoning, but then again, DS gamers weaned on Brain Age will likely welcome the cerebral stimulation.

Kirby and company are just too damn cute and cheerful. If Smash Bros. piqued your interest, Ultra's your next step.

MAG is unlike anything else on PS3. In fact, it's unlike anything else on any console system.

The animation is amazingly smooth, something's always moving onscreen, and the visual style -- a mixture of Nazi architecture and '50s sci-fi cliché -- is something you'll never find duplicated anywhere else.

I just wish it had more material. To compete in a genre with games that offer so much more for so much less, SingStar needs to bulk up. It's possible, however, that Rock Band killed the karaoke star.

It's definitely a game for RPG fanatics who go in more for the challenge than the plotline, and no doubt casual players who pick it up for the oh-so-cute cover art will be rather surprised by how brutally it savages their dignity (although a generous learning curve should help ease them into their suffering). Still, it's a definite success, taken on its own terms.

The analog hitting is MVP 06's most significant addition, and it'll certainly be tough to go back to button-press swinging in the other upcoming baseball sims.

While certainly not the finest racing game ever made, credit must be given where it's due. Climax has squeezed an awful lot of game onto a UMD here. Not only is it vastly improved over last year's game, but you also get a lot of bang for your dirt-riding, dike-jumping, snowmobiling buck here.

Brave Story is a comfortingly familiar type of RPG that still feels fresh, thanks to the strength of its characterization, the attention to detail, the swift pace of battles and quests, and the technological proficiency of its load times.

Save for a tedious gimmick level in the Hundred-Acre Wood, each stage follows the same basic structure: work towards the first cutscene, which provides the key to the second cutscene, which provides the key to the boss. There are no puzzles or complex paths to work through -- once you've solved one, you've solved them all.

But if you stick with Ruse in spite of these things, and if you can talk some of your friends into playing from time to time, you're going to discover a thrilling new real time strategy game that belongs in the same category as EndWar, Brutal Legend, and Darwinia.

So yeah, this is a good time all around. The only thing better than killing the hell out of a few thousand undead is doing it with friends. Well, unless you can do it for dirt cheap. Which you can. Fancy that.

Avalanche Studios has broken the movie-game stigma for me by releasing the awesome Toy Story 3.

There isn't much depth to it all... But the formula itself is fun and the art and sound teams did an amazing job creating an immersive experience.

Where the developers really missed the boat was in multiplayer. The standard combat arenas are all well and good, but that's pretty much all there is.

City Life is the freshest take on the city-sim genre in memory, managing to be both as challengingly complex as its more gearheaded forebears and more accessible to casual or more philosophical players.

The up-close character portraits and overwrought voice acting is gone, but everything else is there -- the mazelike caverns, the glorious level-raising, the seemingly endless array of equipment.

The gameplay kept me coming back, making the barely-there story fade into the back of my thoughts. The change in combat options is a welcome addition, I just wish that the story had delivered on the comic legacy of one of Marvel's more enduring heroes.

An excellent game for the wrestling purists, and while it would actually have been nice to get a little more good ol' WWE brand tackiness, it's hard to decline what the game offers: beautiful bodies on beautiful display, doing beautiful violence.

The content itself is rock-solid, and offers an absolutely unique take (visually, as well) on years of carefully refined multiplayer notions. Undertow isn't quite a must-buy, but it's easily one of the more sensible ways to spend $10 online.

While some people might complain about being fatigued by the seemingly endless stream of similar music games, when they're tied to each other like Band Hero is tied to GH5, I see that as a positive direction for Activision's franchise. It's one of the strongest points of the Rock Band series, and is a very smart move for Hero as well.