there are too many blown buckets because the shot stick seems a bit inconsistent, especially right around the hoop where players should be more willing to roll in a layup or go for a dunk.

There are too many blown buckets because the shot stick seems a bit inconsistent, especially right around the hoop where players should be more willing to roll in a layup or go for a dunk.

All of this is handled well enough, but there's nothing special to it.

The main game isn't terribly long, and the missions, though sometimes creative, are often frustrating because there's usually only one way to complete them, making them feel needlessly restrictive--something that stings a little more in a sandbox game such as this.

Ambitious? You bet. Worthy of your money? Maybe, if you can accept that racing is just one part -- and an inconsistent one at that -- of a very big picture.

It comes on the heels of Capcom's own "Resident Evil 4." After you've played a game as breathtakingly beautiful and exhilarating as that, it's hard to take a step back and play something that just feels dated by comparison.

Its real failing, though, is that it is difficult to a fault, and again, in solo play, a lot of victories or losses will be chalked up to chance. If you put a lot of stock into multiplayer, though, you could do a whole lot worse than boogying with these bunnies.

A sequel should use the foundation laid down by the games that came before it in order to leap forward. MMZ4, if anything, is a step backward.

It's solid, but its subtle gameplay stutters make us hesitate to recommend it too strongly -- and all the more impatient for Winning Eleven's next iteration.

The game's an okay platformer with colorful visuals, decent (if generic) music, and control that gets the job done. It's just that there's nothing at all special here.

It's puzzling that the team behind MVP 07 chose to keep these significantly less active, albeit authentic, elements in its game. The result: This is a great game to check your e-mail to...The time waste pushes a nine-inning game into 45-minute territory, when a game could last no more 30 minutes if they scissored out the nonsense.

Since aiming and movement is too difficult to track enemies as they appear, a typical mission will have you die on the first enemy, learn his location and kill him before he can strike back, only to be felled by a second enemy, and so on.

Evolution's problem is that each of the characters is distinct, but there aren't nearly enough of them for the game to stand on that concept alone.

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.

The costumes are a nice step in the right direction of adding new gameplay, but what a hypothetical fourth game really needs is an entirely new set of gadgets to play with.

After combining the "meh" story with the 2D sprites, the passably amateurish voice acting, and the melodramatic localization, Ar tonelico feels like a pretty forgettable RPG. But it does do one thing that needs elaboration, one thing that pushes up a bit higher than "meh" on the RPG scale: It has a freakin' dating sim as a major gameplay component.

Please God, afford Egosoft the time needed to rework the game via some sort of expansion, patch or Gold Edition so that I may finally be content with existence. As is, this bizarre flip-flop of "Freelancer" that features no interface or enjoyable action but a ton of diversity and extended appeal just isn't any better than all right.

Less avant-garde than "Indigo Prophecy," far less self-important than "Myst V," Trace Memory is the very definition of a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the-road experience.

The stealth fails, however, in at least two significant ways. The first is a near-total lack of choice: there's almost always one prescribed way to navigate a given situation, and player improvisations are promptly curtailed by unsustainable gunfire.

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

Need For Speed: ProStreet is definitely not without wrinkles. That said, good drivers will be able to find ways around the quirks, both on the track and off. It all depends on whether you're looking for a quickie thrill or a more involving challenge.

The hyper-speed of this game makes it feel like more of an arcade experience than a real hockey simulator. It's still a huge step in the right direction, though.

As it stands, Race Driver 3 suffers from too much variety and not enough substance.

Lunar DS isn't really up to the thrilling and dramatic heights the series was synonymous. Worse, the changes and tweaks the developers made, trying to bring Lunar into the 21st century, are irrelevant at best and annoying at worst. That said, this is a better-than-average handheld RPG with a likable cast, a charming story, and appealing graphics.

Once you've been through the process a few times, however, it gradually becomes a snooze fest.

The only real challenges served on this 12 hour adventure are tasks that are more annoying than hard, such as having to negotiate ocean currents in an attempt to reach a beach.

Fans of the system should have no reservations about picking up a copy; it was put together under the supervision of several of the console's original programmers, and their love for Intellivision shines through in the detail and polish of the package.

Notably absent from the multiplayer options is a mode that allows you to play a multiplayer game with a single copy of the game. It's not often that you're going to get eight PSPs and eight copies of the game into the same place at once, so it's kind of odd that there's no provision for a good old-fashioned session of "pass the PSP." Shame.