Nostalgia is determined to make its way in a crowded market on sweetness alone. It's charming and competent, but you can do much better on the DS. In this lousy economy, with so many quality alternatives, Nostalgia's attempt at repurposing fond memories isn't quite good enough.

In the end, I felt that Discovery was a smart representation of Assassin's Creed on the DS, but the game feels a little incomplete. Ezio, and you, has no real end goal other than to survive and get back to the main quest... in the console version of Assassin's Creed 2.

I fully expected EA to lay it on thick with the clichéd martial arts mumbo jumbo, but aside from oft-repeated comments from the sensei, the ninja theme is thankfully understated, and the clean visuals are more than adequate for the simplistic mechanics.

For its six-hour playthrough (you can extend that by unlocking alternate characters, but they're so unmemorable and non-gameplay changing, that they provide no incentive to play through again), Wanted: Weapons of Fate is at best a competent, fire-and-forget movie game -- not much more nor less.

Although Shadows of the Damned has fun and interesting moments, the end product turns out to be a decent to slightly above average shooter that, at times, feels a little bland.

Although Shadows of the Damned has fun and interesting moments, the end product turns out to be a decent to slightly above average shooter that, at times, feels a little bland.

Adults still captivated by the Lego formula will probably find more to like in the shinier console versions, but if you know a young Dark Knight-in-training, Lego Batman for DS offers enough competent (but largely unexciting) action and unlockables to keep 'em busy for some time.

GoldenEye's heyday is long gone, and Solace relies too much on nostalgia and imitation to be anything close to the next shooter milestone.

The game is filled with lots of good and well-executed ideas, but they all seem to exist independently of one another. It's a popcorn movie that clearly took a good deal of talent to pull together, but comes up short of creating the grand adventure that it seems to be trying for.

In the heat of this action, The Conduit comes closest to realizing its aspirations to become the first epic shooter for the Wii. By comparison, the best moments in single-player only highlight the missed potential for The Conduit to be more than the rather ordinary game it turned out to be.

As with so many boldly innovative games, Avalon proves that the main downside to new and untested ideas is that they've yet to be refined into something that works smoothly. There's a lot of quality content here for anyone with the patience to suffer through the clumsy implementation in which it's presented. Yet despite these incentives, Avalon ultimately feels like a promising prototype for a brilliant game that has yet to be created.

Coming back to the franchise after several years away has been frustrating for me, because it reminds me how good these Mega Man RPGs could be... and also how little Capcom has actually done to realize the concept's potential. There's the foundation here for something great, but the games continue to plod along in unambitious mediocrity.

I fully expected EA to lay it on thick with the clichéd martial arts mumbo jumbo, but aside from oft-repeated comments from the sensei, the ninja theme is thankfully understated, and the clean visuals are more than adequate for the simplistic mechanics.

Coming back to the franchise after several years away has been frustrating for me, because it reminds me how good these Mega Man RPGs could be... and also how little Capcom has actually done to realize the concept's potential. There's the foundation here for something great, but the games continue to plod along in unambitious mediocrity.

Shattered Memories gives you something to think about, even if you don't feel like you have direct control over how events transpire -- a result of the game's non-binary, open-ended decisions, both in how you play the game and in the "psychological profiles" you undergo.

If nothing else, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is an apt representation of what you'd expect from a Transformers movie: a disposable, explosion-laden piece of mindless entertainment featuring robots beating the crap out of each other.

It's perfect for people looking for a quick gaming fix, but lacking in long-term replayability.

I want to like Flashpoint 2, but instead, I just feel like the game is telling me: "war is hell, sorry."

It's just a damn shame that the nigh-amazing "The Rocketeer versus UFOs" premise crashes hard into "tepid Gears of Uncharted knock-off" ground.

At this point, three expansions and three years after the original game, the factions in Dawn of War feel like the various menu items at Taco Bell: The order in which you pile on the beans, cheese, or lettuce doesn't make that big a difference.

The game has one huge black eye: the forced commentary of "Jack Fouler." To call Fouler's "jokes" bland and corny is a compliment; the lazy, incompetent, and ultimately insulting writing is heard by the same audience that sees Pixar films, so why is it so far beyond lame?

If you love Dragon Ball Z -- like, love it to the point where tears run down your face as you stare at your Vegeta wall scroll -- then you'll love Burst Limit. Casual fans, like myself, will be impressed initially but ultimately let down by the fact that -- despite the new name -- this is still part of the Budokai family of fighters.

It's cheaper, it has all the bells and whistles of its counterparts, and it has extra playable characters that the 360 ver-sion will never see. But this comes at the expense of clearly crappier-than-360 visuals and controls.

XSeed's Fishing Resort, developed by Prope (Let's Tap) tries to spice things up by letting you do some things that aren't just fishing, and they do add a cute Japanese touch to an otherwise bland genre, but it still has trouble standing out.

At its heart, the game's mechanics have a lot of potential, and at their best remind me of puzzle-platforming greats like Klonoa. But in overestimating what the Wiimote can do, developer Ubisoft has made a game that eventually collapses under its own weight.

While there's gobs of visual polish, including a vast array of impressive generic player heads, 09's gameplay double dribbles in too many key spots, making this little more than a palatable No. 6 seed -- it's worth supporting if you're a rabid fan of the sport, but it's far from Final Four material.

Not exactly what fans would call "Super Saiyan," but certainly good enough.

Metro 2033's A.I. is terribly stupid and there's not enough variety in the weapons; yet despite all that it's still a compelling game to play.