The designers put all of their eggs in the city-design basket and forgot about actual mission design.

Atari's Alone in the Dark is so busy being experimental -- giving players the tools and rules to solve problems on their own -- that it neglects the alluring experientialism of earlier titles in the series, which set a tone and pace that sparked the survival-horror genre off years before "Resident Evil" hit the scene.

Clash of Ninja Revolution 3 is a step up from Clash of Ninja Revolution 2, but nagging problems keep the game from reaching its full potential.

Unlimited Codes is a competent 2.5D fighter that's bound to raise interest in the fighting game community, for better or worse. Newcomers will enjoy the game's simplified inputs, but may grow tired and frustrated when learning strategies for high-level play and advanced combos.

Possibly due to the lack of any real danger/reward progression, or perhaps because of the inherent visual cacophony -- which hits even harder in the perfectly playable, yet crazily hectic, two-player multiplayer co-op game -- Galaxy eventually feels more than a bit repetitious.

The lack of variety is actually a good thing. In an area of game development where being overly ambitious can destroy you, developer Luxoflux has instead created a smart, focused, and (most importantly) polished effort that should delight young fans of the film.

Space Marine isn't a disappointing game, it's just an uneventful one. As such, fans of the series may find more to salvage here than the average gamer...If the pacing problems could be addressed, the addition of a campaign co-op mode, and more multiplayer maps leave a healthy amount of room for improvement for the future of this series.

With nothing in the encyclopedic manual or pithy tutorial that actually explains how to game this highfalutin data cube, Supreme Ruler 2020 tends to play like smashing into a wall: break something, fall back wincing, and repeat.

Space Marine isn't a disappointing game, it's just an uneventful one. As such, fans of the series may find more to salvage here than the average gamer...If the pacing problems could be addressed, the addition of a campaign co-op mode, and more multiplayer maps leave a healthy amount of room for improvement for the future of this series.

As soon as you hit the city, the game's pace drops off, and the sub-par graphics and poor controls steadily bog down an otherwise terrific idea.

While this won't replace MLB 08: The Show -- the best portable hardcore baseball game out there -- it's tailored for tots and casual seamheads on the go.

For barebones-but-respectably-polised arcade fun (and all those terrible voice clips), the Gunblade and L.A. Machineguns pack isn't a bad pick-up.

On a theoretical level it achieves a significant design accomplishment in pulling everything together into a cohesive package. As the person holding the controller, though, it stumbles too often on its inability to turn its potential into a consistently fun game.

It's just a shame that, due to Sega's mismanagement of its properties over the last decade or so, Superstars Tennis comes too late to fully resonate with today's gaming audience.

The lack of variety is actually a good thing. In an area of game development where being overly ambitious can destroy you, developer Luxoflux has instead created a smart, focused, and (most importantly) polished effort that should delight young fans of the film.

Crosswords is simply a game about word puzzles made for people who love word puzzles -- and that's OK with me.

FFIV is great! But it's also well-trodden territory at this point, presented in a technologically unambitious and aesthetically questionable package. The problem with this collection isn't that it lacks anything new, but rather that the new content feels like a pale imitation of the masterpiece it follows.

If nothing else, this is the best game ever to carry the title Castlevania: The Adventure. And that alone is worth the asking price.

It might not hold a candle to a certain classic contender once Fall rolls around, HoopWorld is still good, arcade-y fun that particularly shines when you play with a friend.

There's no question that Crackdown 2 is a mere shadow of the first game, which stands as an absolute classic. The sequel feels more like an ambitious user mod than a true follow-up.

EA's tennis game is far from perfect, and the control inconsistencies will be too much to overcome for any but the most dedicated tennis fans, but it's a good early attempt; hopefully as developers become more comfortable with the add-on, they'll create more precise (and easier to learn) controls.

TiQal falls squarely on the casual side of the puzzle spectrum, but it's an interesting change of pace for hardened veterans looking for a more relaxing puzzle experience, and a solid primer for block-dropping novices.

As a casual rhythm game, Battle of the Bands gets big points for charm and humor, and the intended audience is sure to appreciate the ability to actually play this without too much difficulty. Guitar heroes looking for their next challenging digital wankery, however, are advised to move along. This one's just for laughs.

Once you grow accustomed to the game's quirks, you soon find yourself in a rhythm where gamer instincts overcome sloppy game mechanics. Eventually, the thrill of starting a level -- unarmed -- and slowly but surely making your way over rooftops and underwater and over rafters becomes a guilty thrill.

To their credit, Atlus seems to acknowledge 3DDGH as the lightweight diversion it is, pricing the game well below the standard for a PlayStation 3 title and bundling a bunch of Japan's bonus DLC content onto the disc to boot.

Fighting games and fancy graphics have passed Soul Calibur, but if you've got any nostalgia for this one, it's a golden oldie that just might be worth the steepest price of all: having to play a fighting game on the 360 controller's awful D-pad. If you're willing to put up with that, the 10 bucks is trivial.

No, it's not going to go head-to-head with the onslaught of great FPSes we saw at the end of last year (though its slick, well-designed, robust multiplayer should give it some legs). But the unusual premise, solid writing, and nicely varied play make it worth a look for shooter fans looking for that next fix.

Unfortunately, the end result is a little more Rambo, a lot less Rocky. It's going to take a rethinking to pull the 3D brawler out of its "me too" phase, and Streetwise certainly isn't helping.