If you're a fan of adventure games, staying away from Syberia II is like refusing to drink water in the scorching desert because it's not cold enough.

The game does present a lot of action and is sure to entertain gamers for at least a week or two, but in the long term, the game will unlikely enter the classic status of vanilla ice cream.

No matter if gamers are a fan of casual PC/Mac poker of just looking for an easy way to score some Team Fortress 2 item upgrades, Poker Night at the Inventory is a great bargain that also happens to be a very good poker game with a most unusual collection of card competitors.

Like I wrote when reviewing "Mario Party 4," "As a single-player experience MP4 lacks in excitement and any kind of addictive fun factor."

Though Aftershock might edge Afterlight for combat and UFO: Extraterrestrials might be a better X-COM clone for purists, Afterlight feels like the most thoughtfully designed and fun of the UFO titles to date.

The Amazing Spider-Man tries very hard to emulate Batman Arkham City, but despite solid controls, especially the well-designed Web Rush, and a good amount of single-player gameplay, the open-world concept doesn't offer much else in the form of any kind of really challenging gameplay and engaging side-mission variety as its obvious inspiration, the award-winning Batman Arkham City.

To push an untested franchise out the door, when the game is full of problems, during the season when we get the most games, in a year where we'll be seeing a system launch, well, that's just silly.

Aside from the camera, the conventions have been nailed, unfortunately, most gamers want a bit more than that.

Billy Hatcher may never catch on as a marquee Sega character, but his debut is a somewhat fun game on the cartoony side of weird.

I thought the game fell apart in the final moments, which is unfortunate only because it clouds my memory of the opening where the vibe and horror clung to me like a wet Hawaiian shirt.

Though Star Wars Galaxies does have the potential of becoming a better MMORPG, the current version of the game is dull and lacks in quality.

Demon Stone’s gameplay cannot match the quality of the game’s presentation.

Red Faction Armageddon isn't the best third person shooter game, but if you enjoy blowing things up, then this is the game for you.

The extremely high level of difficulty will leave some gamers a whimpering heap in the corner... But if you don’t mind a challenge, expect an extremely fun, rewarding experience.

For the more casual player, Smash Hits is a good opportunity to breakout the instruments from On Tour and have some summer fun.

With so many options available and constant re-evaluations about the situation I didn't feel the creep of boredom even if most of the enemies are pushovers.

At its worst, Future Soldier is an uneven experience with some unchecked boxes as they pertain to PC ports (e.g. no option to invert the controls on a gamepad) and an unrecognizable story, but at its best it's a good shooter with a little more thought required than many other 3rd person shooters available right now.

It is simply a purity of attempt to re-create the D&D experience that they share, a purity I ultimately appreciated despite the rushed-out-the-door feel of parts of the game.

C&C: The First Decade will have all C&C aficionados waxing nostalgic for the good old days of GDI versus Nod, Kane and Yuri, and of course, Tanya, the sexiest female gaming character next to Lady Croft.

EA redeems itself and the James Bond video-game line nicely with 007: Agent Under Fire, a good FPS game, notably in the extraordinary multi-player mode, that finally makes up for the mediocre-at-best duo of "007 Racing" and "TWINE."

A solid basketball title that has the general mechanics down pat, but everything else still needs work.

Good, clean clobberin’ fun. It’s got its problems, mostly with the Banner sections, but it’s fun. And sometimes that's all I want.

The overwhelming amount of on-screen activity reduces greatly the overall resolution of the game to a saucy mess at times and the many independent characters running around all seem to have the collective I.Q of a Pringle.

It's geared toward younger gamers specifically because the level of difficulty and simplicity alleviates boredom.

Although I really liked Breakdown for its story and first-person implementation and grew to love the combat, some will think it’s a “niche” title with too many idiosyncrasies for a wider audience.

You really, really have to like old-school dungeon crawler RPGs to derive any enjoyment out of playing Arx Fatalis. Ugly graphics, poor controls due to unwisely incorporated first-person perspective gameplay, and long stretches of boring dungeon exploration create a mediocre game that is at least five years too late to merit consideration.

While Guitar Hero: On Tour is a very solid port of the franchise to the DS and the technology to get it working is brilliant - why don't more developers make use of the GBA cartridge port for DS games?

Every once in a while a game comes along that takes every opportunity to slap the player in the face. In a nutshell, that's Naruto Powerful Shippuden, a game that constantly hits below the belt with utterly arbitrary challenges that encourage hair-pulling frustration and grinding levels to earn experience points (XP) to upgrade skills and unlock more skills.