The game's biggest hang-up is that it's simply too hard to tell what's going on half the time. Infantry dissolve into bombed-out backgrounds and balk at inexact selection, and enemy AT and artillery always crouch just out of sight and in perfectly staggered waves, reliably razing your shrewdest scouts.

Sam & Max follows a formula, sure, but sitcom predictability is proving to be this series' secret strength -- it's rare to see a game conjure up such strong narrative continuity and familiarity in such short a time span. In Telltale's hands, recycled assets take on the aspect of recurring joys.

The sense of purpose and accomplishment comes from making your creature grow -- to be king of the primordial soup. And while there are levels, enemies, power moves, et cetera, flOw is more of an entertaining diversion than what we're used to calling a "game."

The main problem with Maelstrom's design: Tons of options don't equal tons of useful options. You can rip off every successful RTS convention in the known universe (and developer KDV Games obviously tried), but the final product won't necessarily add up to the sum of those parts. That's not to say Maelstrom is a bad game - just one with a pie-full of flaws.

Metal Slug's simply impossible at times, and the brief joy of rescuing all of the POWs and reaping their particular rewards turns out to be short-lived; you'll rarely register the bonus that comes with rescuing them and then defeating the boss that stands between you and level's end.

The most glaring omission can be found in the musical department as the original tunes you know and love are nowhere to be found.

It succeeds based on the merits of its infinitely replayable, highly finessed fighting engine. While "noobs" might be content to knit the same canned combos over and over, veterans will relish the ability to improvise, discover, and master new moves, combos, and strategies, day after day after day.

Although Sega deserves praise for Secret Rings' innovative single-player adventure, the less said about the four-player party mode, the better. It's another low-budget "Mario Party" rip-off that stretches out a few weak gameplay concepts into multiple multiplayer contests.

If Crackdown were nothing more than a GTA-ish game with the fat trimmed away and some insane physical abilities, hell, that'd be something to be thrilled about. That it represents the best, if not the first, online multiplayer sandbox game on a console is just gravy.

Visuals aside, what makes or breaks a game like Street is the gameplay, and No. 4 in the series totally delivers.

If you're in the dark about Roguelikes but still want a taste of one, it's better to start with the more accessible Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Its difficulty is more gradual, it's got touch-screen controls, and it features more than one party member, which is easier to deal with than Izuna's solitary dungeon-crawling. But those who already love the genre -- or want to "graduate" from Pokémon -- will still find great enjoyment from Izuna.

If you think "Total Annihilation's" still the cat's pajamas, look no further than Supreme Commander. It's the "ID4" of videogames -- a little sleepy early on, occasionally a little baffling, but incontrovertibly epic...and you're here as much for the light show anyway, right?

Speaking of being taken seriously, the AFL needs more help in the future from EA. This could eventually become a great series, a mix between Madden and Blitz -- but right now it's just $30 you shouldn't spend.

The game itself is polished and, for a while, a lot of fun -- it's just that, unfortunately, there isn't that much game here.

Ultimately, it's a passable RPG for your PSP, thanks to its collection mentality and good dialogue. But the lack of an overworld and short game length that's due to the dialogue-to-game ratio keeps it from being anything special.

Gameplay nags aside, we do want to make it clear that Chulip is certainly worth a look for purveyors of all things Japanese and indie. We can bandy about synonyms for "charming" and "stylish" all damn day, but the game makes an effort to resist labels, really becoming something in and of itself.

Dark Avatar does what a good expansion pack should -- it makes it tough to imagine ever playing the base game without it. It makes a great game greater, even if its achievements are measured in pinky widths instead of leaps and bounds.

If you're looking for a game that matches the quality of the previous games in the Ratchet franchise...well, keep looking.

We found ourselves having some good beat-em-up fun, even if we found a way to exploit [its] game mechanics. But [the] storyline felt like it was thrown together in a few minutes, not really giving us much reason to want to go on. Maybe it would have been better being based on the movie, after all.

Overall, when stacked next to its PS2 counterpart, the PSP version of Ghost Rider is on very weak legs.

Impressive because The Warriors was such a good and complete game the first time around, with a lengthy story, fun brawling mechanics, and a host of that classic Rockstar optional stuff that we don't have to do but are compelled to anyway -- and it all works incredibly well on the PSP. But at the same time, The Warriors was never really designed to the strengths of a portable system, so unless you haven't played it already, there's no real need to play it again while in transit.

Play is made for people who don't really like games, and if you're someone who really does, that's a problem. Sure, most of these minigames are fun...for about 10 minutes. But hey, maybe your grandma will want to marry it.

Despite its control and camera issues and the general predictability of the game's structure (and laughable plot), it's a pleasant throwback to some of the better early 3D adventures.

With only a handful of business buildings for each class, neighborhoods became monotonous stretches of identical storefronts; CL:WE adds dozens of new buildings -- employers, leisure destinations, service structures, and 15 real-world landmarks -- and an accessible building editor for designing and adding even more.

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

Lunar Knights is easily one of the finest games to date for Nintendo DS. Like the bard said, it plays just as sweet by any other name.

When you compare Winning Eleven to "FIFA 07's" PS2 effort, it wins by a large margin -- particularly as it's the best-playing sports game on the system.

It's puzzling that the team behind MVP 07 chose to keep these significantly less active, albeit authentic, elements in its game. The result: This is a great game to check your e-mail to...The time waste pushes a nine-inning game into 45-minute territory, when a game could last no more 30 minutes if they scissored out the nonsense.