One of the game's goofier oversights is not telling you where you are on the field. If it's fourth down, a menu will pop up that asks if you want to punt, kick a field goal, or go for it. Yet there's no indication if you're on your own 30-yard line or your opponent's. And no way to call a play, then a timeout, to find out. So bogus.

Worse than simply being tedious, though, is how jaw-grindingly frustrating Zombie Apocalypse becomes.

The vaunted cross-platform play works mostly as advertised (including Achievements associated with killing/resurrecting users from the alternate platform), but we still have to question whether it's worth the hassle and cost for PC users.

So whether you're an FFXI veteran or noob, rest assured that this story is far from over. Based on the evidence at hand, we're quite confident that it has only just begun.

It's actually funny and creative -- a rare combination.

Prey the Stars looks cute, but it isn't a cakewalk. Balancing the rhythm and the type of food you eat can be overwhelming, and with so many wild-card moments, frustration can trump fun. In multiplayer, though, Stars begins to shine as its complexity emerges in an engaging and extremely competitive game.

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.

If you like a strict challenge and don't mind fighting the camera, by all means have at Aeon Flux. Just remember that your good friends here at 1UP warned you.

The environments lack the rich visuals 360 owners have grown accustomed to since seeing Gears of War. Surfaces all appear to be flat, with muddy textures and stark lighting that only heighten the effect. By comparison to current standards, the thought that it could be an original Xbox game may even cross your mind.

How two quality ops managed to screw up Theatre of War is anyone's guess.

For video game vixens to look as hot as these do is almost disturbing.

Despite the minor flaws, I loved most every minute of Wolf of the Battlefield. This is a great game to pop in when you're sitting around with only a few minutes to spare, or when a couple of friends are looking for a quick way to kill some time.

The battle system reeks of incomplete, unfinished ideas.

Sure, it does have some taxing level-design problems, but its presentation and sheer wackiness and randomness saves it from being just another statistic.

Talk about the old sound and fury saw -- you'll finish Lost Planet too soon and won't go back for seconds. That's really the definition of why not to buy something, isn't it?

It looks pretty, there are quite a few game modes, and there's a very long campaign. However, for those of us who don't find enjoyment in watching paint dry, building a city in real time is too laborious to be fun.

If you're looking for just having some dumb fun driving in a big sprawling city, smashing and shooting every last thing in your way, then Wheelman is a great pick. However, it never even attempts to reinvent the wheel from any other free-roaming action-adventure.

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

Even with the flaws, The Bigs on the Wii is still fun thanks to the good implementation of the batting. The cocky presentation alone makes it hard to set down your Remote, and you simply can't swing -- really swing -- for the fences anywhere else. But the fielding and baserunning need some more work down in AAA before they're ready for the big show.

This game is funny, fun to play, and is a definite improvement on the claustrophobic linear levels of games past.

Dragging the game out with endless fetch quests and terrible combat makes getting to the end more of a chore than anything.

Like Mario Bros., the Famicom Mini version of Dr. Mario suffers from a single terrible flaw: it was completely obsolete long before it was ever released.

The level of depth and complexity in the gaming is substantial for a handheld title, and in some ways is a bit more forgiving than its console brethren, but casual gamers should be warned.

The only reason you'd buy Wanted is in a (possibly misguided) attempt to support The Adventure Company with your game-buying dollars. Which is fine, of course, but if any TAC game is skippable, this is definitely the one.

The Sims 2: Castaway doesn't accomplish anything particularly compelling in the long term (and sadly, it's got very few ways to torture your Sim when you inevitably tire of the mundane), but what is there is solid, and it's a decent way to fill any lingering gaps in your DS schedule (the younger you are, the better).

The most frustrating thing about Octomania isn't the awfully voiced rapping tree with a rainbow 'fro or having to play through the same few short story mode battles over and over in order to unlock new characters -- it's that winning not only takes a bit of patience and strategy (as you wait for enough colors to be available for large combos), but it also takes a heaping help of luck.

I still had a good time gunning down hordes of undead, but I can't emphasize enough how disappointing it is to get really close to the end of the game, only to be sent back to the beginning because you've run out of your allotted amount of continues.

Universe at War does what they said couldn't be done, and it makes a large-scale real-time strategy game -- of the sort thought to be exclusively a PC domain -- fun to play from the couch.