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.

Since the combat already feels almost exactly like the standard Onimusha fighting style with the addition of jumping, it seems like it would fit right into a more robust game's engine.

If you play Counter-Strike, you'll find little more than a small assortment of some new laid atop a whole lot of old.

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.

Godfather II suffers from a lack of design foresight. Instead of delivering a movie-quality narrative, it presents a frustrating, accidentally comic world.

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

Adding to the repetitive mayhem is the insane decision to have "This Is Halloween" from the soundtrack play whenever Jack enters combat. No, not every once in a while or during a boss battle, but every single freakin' time you encounter an enemy, that familiar tune kicks in.

The best news, though, is that for all its departures from "conventional" racing titles, Baja gives you just as many customization and tweaking options as those games do.

It skews a bit young with its cartoonish characters, but the storyline is surprisingly dark, and the experience is more challenging than you might think. It's a perfect game to play through with your kid or younger sibling, and it's meaty enough for full-grown platforming fans to enjoy on their own.

We rarely see scenarios and story structure this good in a game, and that makes it easier to forgive some of the more hardcore technical game-design issues. It's definitely more of a popcorn game for the action-movie crowd than a hardcore shooter, but there's nothing wrong with that.

As an RPG, it's pretty standard, yet it manages to be just plain comforting thanks to its quirky looks and sounds -- and even its easy one-handed control option.

The venerability of these selections combined with the substandard interface (exiting out of a given game is performed inconsistently and tends to be very confusing) and paltry selection of titles makes this one you can skip over without losing any sleep.

As a stand-alone release, Puzzle World basically consists of one very good (though very dated) puzzler and a handful of boring filler material.

Even when the least exciting elements of the game eat up half of my playtime, I still find an excuse to fire up Darkspore every single day.

The effects are also the biggest difference between this WiiWare version and the Flash original, which shared most of the game mechanics but lacked the visual appeal.

But like its contemporary cousin Guitar Hero, it creates a beautiful illusion from physical interactivity, well-chosen music, and pop-cultural style. Despite the pronounced lack of innovation, DDR Universe 2 shows us that getting lost in a stream of arrows to rump-shaking club tunes is still captivating.

AC4 feels like a house that's been added onto so often that it's a maze of twisting passages, oddly shaped rooms, and doors that go nowhere. There may be something worthwhile hidden within, but it's not worth the effort to find it. Time to tear it all down and start over.

When it comes to bringing the full complement of instruments to the DS, Band Hero represents a very rocky start. If it weren't for the game's shortsighted and unintuitive peripherals, there might actually be something worthwhile here -- assuming you dig the soundtrack, anyhow.

Aside from the dynamic object interaction and music, the graphics and gameplay made me feel like I was back in high school, playing Resident Evil 2 after doing my homework. But that was then, and this is now, and Obscure just doesn't make the grade.

A kinder control and save system would've been nice, but as is, Gladiator will test the limits of your gaming patience.

The first improvement is that everything is smoother.

Ultimately, Afro falls into the same pitfalls as almost every other game based on a movie/television license: It presents an edited down version of a story that's familiar to fans but indecipherable to newcomers, wrapped up in a generic game housing. It looks great. It sounds great. But, otherwise, it's a mashup of characters and situations that makes little sense.

I suppose that some gamers out there are willing -- nay, perhaps even eager -- to play a long game of uninspired levels strung together with an inconsequential character-creation system. But then, some people also like to watch "Friends." In reruns.

My advice: If you want to play multiplayer, buy this game with friends; otherwise, you'll just get bored waiting around in a cold, lonely, empty server -- not exactly the best front in which to wage war.

Even with its numerous imperfections, Blood Stone easily ranks as 007's strongest showing in a videogame since the original GoldenEye. Just try to keep some aspirin handy for the inevitable cellphone-induced headaches.

It's a game of trade-offs and cautious play -- a challenge meant for hardcore RPG fanatics but amusing enough that newcomers might find it worthwhile, too.

In the end, did Eternal Poison frustrate me countless times? Absolutely. Does it include inexcusable, easily fixable design flaws? Certainly. But its haunting style and twisted atmosphere also inspired emotions that'll stick with me for a long time to come -- and that's precisely why we play games, isn't it?

An uneven effort, MotoGP '08 is a decent game that should please most newbies and occasional riders but proves that Milestone has a ways to go before it fully grasps the handlebars.