A game that desperately needed another six months of beta-testing.

The load times ruin this game. Just going into the pregame menus will buy you several seconds of delay as the system freezes up. Restarting a course will only take a few seconds, but the initial track load will usually clock between one and three minutes. That's right, sports fans, we said three minutes.

How can you really appreciate the glossy perfection of a "10" if you never play the intermittently brilliant/frustrating games like Rise of the Kasai?

In the end, it's fun to play, and will keep you engaged. But the muddy visuals, lack of Wi-Fi, and undersold Gamebreakers will throw you for a loop.

The controls are surprisingly solid. Once you adapt to the small venue, the mechanics flow pretty well.

It's difficult to dismiss the overlying cuteness and simple-but-solid gameplay, which continues to put the series on the top tier of portable RPGs.

Lost Planet's sophomore effort attempts to improve on past faults while shifting direction into an entirely new territory, but the overall feeling is muted. The game can be an enjoyable, fun adventure, but only if you're willing to share the experience with friends (or strangers).

I expect Symphonia veterans to be split on whether the decision to remove the field map (replaced here by a simple menu) was wise -- while it cuts down on the number of battles, it makes for an even more linear, less exploratory experience.

The game's run-and-bop antics unfold in the charming SpongeBob universe, but the portrayal of the characters falls flat and feels like a joke that never reaches the punch line.

You can't help but feel like Artoon underachieved with Blinx 2 (especially with the boring, offline-only multiplayer mode), but you'll forgive them long enough to play through the game once.

When the (catchy) electronic music is pounding and you're in tune with the game, it's an exciting, transcendent few seconds; it just never lasts, as you're brought back to earth by the sheer inanity of what you're involved in.

A "solid" game: It works great on a technical level, and presents enough challenge to engage veteran players, but also enough on-screen direction and help to make it accessible to the game's younger audience -- it's just too long.

The experiment is a success and testament to the fact that EA really has been spending more time crafting these games as the movies and books become more ambitious. If "Half-Blood Prince" produces the same leap in concept as we've seen here, Potter fans will really be in for something.

Lost Planet's sophomore effort attempts to improve on past faults while shifting direction into an entirely new territory, but the overall feeling is muted. The game can be an enjoyable, fun adventure, but only if you're willing to share the experience with friends (or strangers).

Deadly Premonition is by no means a great game, at least in the traditional sense, but I'll be damned if I didn't enjoy every minute of my nearly 42 hours playing it. The setting and story might have a little too much in common with the early 1990s television series Twin Peaks, but the homage is done with love and admiration.

It just doesn't have enough substance to stand out on it's own.

An irresistible little charmer. It's short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome, clever enough to be engaging, full of enough action to be consistently fun. Fans of the film series will, of course, want to grab it, but action gamers looking for a dose of sarcasm, zombie guts, and light puzzles will find themselves amused as well.

No, the Punisher believes in planning ahead and has come prepared with an infinite supply of ammo—his clips might run out, but you never need to find more.

It's all a bit dull, gameplay-wise, until you can trudge through at least one season of shutouts. The good news is that presentation-wise, Quidditch World Cup sparkles.

There are some really cool ideas here that belong in a better game: the tech tree, the random encounters, command ratings, and the shipbuilding, for instance.

If you're looking to get in on some air combat without a huge wait, you may be disappointed. More hardcore flight fans, however, will eventually find an enjoyable experience somewhere beneath the fluff.

Viking: Battle for Asgard falls far short of its potential.

While it's nowhere near as addictive as the regular color-coded Pokémon games, Almia's still a decent diversion -- I just wish the story offered something a little deeper.

It's very much the baseline definition of a Japanese console RPG -- with all the bad and good that entails.

Is NASCAR 07 a game, or a simulation? Well, yet again it's neither, and EA Tiburon has failed for the second year running to strike the glorious balance that it achieved with "NASCAR 05." It's certainly not "bad," but it's hardly the definitive game of the genre.

The biggest problem is that we've seen everything Juiced has to offer before.

Much like Wii Play before it, Wii Party has about a night's worth of uneven entertainment in it before it's ready to take up a life of farming dust on your shelf.

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.