This kart (and plane and hovercraft) racer has received the sort of imperceptible face-lift known as the "enhanced port" treatment. But not enhanced enough, when you could be playing Mario Kart DS instead.

Whether as a Raiden game or a general shoot-em-up, Raiden IV doesn't really take any steps forward. That's not so bad, though: it looks good (better than most other similar games on Xbox 360), plays good, and has a suitable amount of extras. For a shooter enthusiast, it's just about all you can ask for -- and at around $40, less than standard retail price. It's just nice to see Raiden again.

Despite offering some memorable moments, relatively unrestricted gameplay, and the occasionally satisfying play mechanic, Gangland should still be packaged with a bottle of Valium and a straightforward, "your brain has the potential of spontaneously bursting" warning, as it can be damn frustrating.

But here's where, at least for me, NBA 07 earns the "sports innovation" award at the PS3 launch: Every week, Sony will offer five downloadable scenarios from this year's real NBA season that you can try and re-create (hey, the rest of you sports developers, this is how you give your game some longevity, OK?).

It fails at presenting a compelling racing game, and more to the point, it fails at presenting a compelling Ridge Racer game, with backward graphics and bollixed controls.

KOF12 fails to seize the windfall in online matchmaking. It uses an archaic, even backwards, system that serves only to frustrate the player.

Gameplay aside, in a lighthearted adventure like this, the biggest crime is not being consistently funny...an offense of which Harvey Birdman is regrettably guilty.

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.

Somewhere deep within Fracture, far, far below its offensively derivative crust, lies a worthwhile, original game. It's very much a game with a gimmick -- terraforming terrain on the fly -- and while that gimmick works well (if a bit too predictably), Fracture is thoroughly unexciting.

I would've liked to have seen more pizzazz and personality from the actual gameplay and questions (instead of just the silly avatars), and the game flow could've been streamlined considerably (I don't need between-round updates on the betting tendencies of A.I. opponents), but Wits & Wagers is a loose and enjoyable experience that fills a necessary gap on Xbox Live Arcade without significant monetary -- or mental -- investment.

The predominant problem with Drakengard is that it's boring to look at. The level designs don't seem designed much at all.

The biggest drawback to Wings isn't the slightly gimmicky way in which Square Enix basically doubled the size of the game world overnight (by repurposing the existing world and making it older), but in how the retail game shipped with precious little game intact.

Broken World does offer everything an expansion should, after all: new game elements, new characters, tons of content, and fan-suggested tweaks. But, somehow, it still isn't all that much fun. The only conclusion to draw from this evidence is that the base game isn't very compelling in and of itself.

As an FPS, Dead Man's Hand is nothing special at all. As an experience, though, DMH is a blast.

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.

The game's buggy as hell, with severe slowdown, characters getting hung up in the level geometry, and stuttering audio.

The game does provide a few improvements, bringing revised flight controls and new cooperative mission modes, but For Answer lacks what a great series needs in order to stay relevant: progress.

The game suffers by comparison to stronger titles that are similar enough to make such a comparison unavoidable.

The passing system seems to have regressed a bit and takes us back in time to the days where tapping the pass button in FIFA was like showing your complete faith in the forces of chance.

Fans into beat-'em-ups will find there's not enough to captivate them, with way too much repetition even for that genre. Likewise, RPG nuts will grow too upset with the unending pattern-like progression and clunky management. And if you happen to like both, the combination just won't be enough to make you squeal with joy.

NFSW features a big open-world to explore, but it's largely just the cities from Most Wanted and Carbon slapped together.

The real failing here is the unfamiliarity and limited appeal of WWI and the lack of Live support, but if the yearn to pull-on the leather cap and goggles and throw the scarf around your neck strikes, by all means hop in and give her a whirl.

Unfortunately, a fatal flaw creeps up as the battles grow larger: unbearable slow down. It gums up the works when too many soldiers surround you, and makes the game almost unplayable.

Combining pinball, real-time strategy elements, and voice-recognition commands into a ball (pun unintended), Odama straddles the line between 'whack' and 'wacky.'

How do you get "Diablo" wrong? It's like screwing up tic-tac-toe or something. But that's just what Monte Cristo's done with Silverfall, an epically crummy action-RPG with gimpy controls and bugs that'd make a flophouse mattress blush.

Dog Days ultimately feels less like a typical crime shooter, and more like a player-directed version of the Crank movies.

That failure to compete isn't just in the options, either -- even the grapple system failed to hook me. It's a shame, too, because the developers boasted that they based their controls off of the Nintendo 64 wrestling classic "WWF No Mercy." Nice try, guys!

What it does, however, is offer fans of the cartoon series a reasonably fun diversion for the twenty-three and a half hours between episodes.