Older and more seasoned players, however (along with PETA members), can safely abstain from this simple critter-caging diversion.

From a game design standpoint, Extreme Challenge isn't bad, it just feels lazy; it's a collection of shallow minigames of variable quality that grow progressively more repetitive with time. Namco Bandai takes players on a monotonous minigame excursion that has some bright points but is simply attempting to to cash-in on the casual Wii demographic.

Intermittently, flashbacks are thrown into the game's progression by heavily blurring the screen and overlaying some audible forgotten memories. This style isn't very effective -- the blurring gets old and it's a forced narrative that gets old fast.

Ultimately, this is a missed opportunity through and through. I would have expected better from a Codemasters published game.

This just doesn't feel like basketball: there's no drama, you'll go full quarters without bothering to glance at the scoreboard, and even the swish of the basket on a long 3-pointer feels off. Live 07 tries to bridge the gap between itself and its rival by adding features, but it doesn't come close to this year's clear basketball champion: "NBA 2K7."

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a standard licensed game -- it's got just enough content to make a virtual reenactment of the Human/Goblin war worthwhile for fans of the franchise.

Click-click, kill-kill, click-click, kill-kill. You'll maybe get a naval battle or an occasional siege on the side. But once you've done this a few times, Rise & Fall has pretty much exhausted its novelty, leaving you with a bland and clunky RTS.

Well, now, this is disappointing. I wasn't expecting a full-fledged GRAW experience on PSP, to be sure, but Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 comes off feeling like a slightly more high-tech knockoff of SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo...only without teammates, online play, a reliable lock-on system, solid level design, or online play.

This expansion pack is not for every fan of the series, and therein is Uprising's biggest flaw.

Ratatouille is otherwise a very charming game...when you're not playing it. Its biggest failings are, in the end, the built-in limitations of the hardware, and the genre that most developers keep trying to superimpose -- sloppily -- on top of it.

While the uninspiring movie didn't help matters, it's the lethargic gameplay that winds up making King Arthur an equally disappointing game. Repetitive and frustrating, it fails to live up to the potential of its cinematic presentation.

While the gameplay does have its high points (again, mostly surrounding Nightcrawler), it's also quite often littered with monotony thanks to seemingly nonexistent enemy A.I., confusion (poor level design), and frustration (glitches, a sometimes lack of checkpoints, and uneven challenges).

Another major issue is the game's tragically stupid A.I.

Fuzion Frenzy 2 isn't terrible, so if you're desperate for a simple, safe party game, it fits the bill. Unfortunately, it fits the bill in so lackluster a manner, it's hard to see why they bothered.

A somewhat archaic, unpolished platformer belied by a novel premise and seemingly interesting world to explore. I enjoyed it enough as an introduction to a very cool, deliberate aesthetic, but it's tough not to desire a Mushroom Men game that executes its ideas more skillfully -- never mind one that takes more than five hours to finish.

A decent buy for those of us who desire a competent, if not great, karting simulator. The fact that there's so little in the way of options and series to run can be forgiven considering the low price tag.

While the experience is definitely fun, blazing through the game's six levels (plus four bonus games) only takes about an hour. So, unless you're absolutely hungering for a short, cooperative experience, just wait for the real game to release in January.

Unfortunately, it also features some questionable design decisions, an A.I. that can't play the game Firaxis has designed, and the need for a couple of patches.

Decidedly average and forgettable. While you can extract some fun from taking down large swaths of enemies with a friend, the repetitive combat can't sustain the 20-plus hour campaign.

What we didn't expect is a game asking for $50 and giving you nothing new.

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

If you're like most gamers, however, it may be too much like a post-graduate MBA sim of life running a distribution center of some sort.

There's a certain obsessive-compulsive appeal to unlocking goals, and the surprisingly good text guarantees that there's always something interesting to read. But these positive traits seem wasted on a dumbed-down, ill-conceived butchery of a perfectly respectable franchise.

A little Crysis here, a little Half-Life 2 there, TimeShift's patchwork construction definitely shows. What you wind up with is a standard shooter where you blast away until things go sideways, and then it's time to mash the "easy" button.

Total Destruction also offers a multiplayer mode, with the GameCube version allowing four players at once, while the PS2 version offers only two players. This clearly makes the GameCube version one of the best choices in frustrating entertainment.

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.

One half of the time, Frontlines won't work. The copy I downloaded from Steam crashes to the desktop soon after I click start. The retail box, running on Vista and branded Games for Windows, craps out three-fourths of the time I try to join an online game. No joke.

Vandal Hearts may be competent at what it does, but its derivative throwback nature doesn't do much for a genre that's in desperate need of innovation.