A solid gaming experience. Platformers may be an overdone genre of games, but The Simpsons Game does a decent job of providing a good game, while not necessarily an innovative one.

Swarm's bizarre take on platforming is a great, addictive challenge, but this strange journey is over too quickly. Here's hoping for some DLC.

What we have here is an incredibly long, incredibly flawed, and yet paradoxically engaging experience.

No deathmatch? What? Super old gameplay tenets and painful repetitiousness reign supreme here, which is what ultimately tanks the fun.

It's hard to recommend a game when there is a clearly superior alternative on the market that does everything so wonderfully. NHL 2K10 isn't bad and it is poised to make a run at the EA franchise sooner rather than later. But for this year, unless you are completely adverse to anything other than a quick arcade hockey fix, NHL 10 is the game to get.

Overall, Order of War asks consumers to forgive quite a few major gameplay errors in favor of a $10 price cut from the PC standard MSRP. This is a game that will be a tough sell for anybody who is a veteran of real-time strategy games, but it's not entirely bad. The right type of gamer (RTS newcomer/casual tactician) will be able to have some fun with it.

Here’s my guarantee to you. Rent this game first and play the hell out of it over the weekend. If you don’t find that it’s totally derivative of "Hoops 2K6," then go back to the store and buy it. That way nobody gets hurt.

I found myself struggling to “get” it, worried I was some degree of incompetent or something. But the more I thought about it, the more I feel like The Crew 2 doesn’t get itself, either. It wants so desperately to be an open world experience that can seamlessly become race-like events in a games as service-like multiplayer setting. But we just aren’t there yet, so the races exist in pocket universes where you and some friends can battle the computer or you can go it alone. Either way, you’re just grinding for the sake of it.

I'm not going to pretend that Need for Speed: Nitro can live up to the grandiosity of Shift. However, for an arcade-style racer, Nitro is a ton of fun. As a racer for the Wii, Nitro is phenomenal.

While the visuals are amazing, the game just doesn't deliver as well in the fighting as it should.

The linear nature of the gameplay ensures that you will be forced into the various scenes as the director and developer intended. The puzzles and mini-games are fun but they are like eating candy floss; there's not much nourishment.

High score fiends might like replaying this game, but the lack of ability to go back to earlier levels at will limits the play value.

Very few games are stuffed with this much personality. If you like humorous video games at all (and especially if you like Borderlands and Portal), you really need to play this. It actually makes you feel like you’re sitting in a room and hanging out with some of gaming’s favorite stars, and that’s an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up unless you simply hate video games.

The gameplay can become a bit a redundant and you won't find much for replay value but Ghosthunter is certainly one of the best rental choices of the year.

The After Years is an unusual experiment for the Final Fantasy franchise, but it’s one that’s already working its powerful magic on us. The story is smartly structured to tease you along, intermittently revealing important and interesting tidbits, before leaving you hanging.

If it's fast-paced racing you crave, and you don't care about adjusting every nut and bolt on your car, then Shift is an excellent game that exceeds expectations in all areas.

If you've played another Lips game, then you know exactly what you are getting here: a regular singing mode, the freestyle mode, and the MyLips social tool. There's nothing new in this title, which is disheartening considering this is the third iteration of the franchise.

While there is a decent amount of content to keep players occupied, Forsaken World tends to feel stale faster than it should.

The only real complaint I have-besides the non-scrolling map mentioned earlier-is that the game has no multiplayer mode.

BA is best played online, but the single player mode can be fun for awhile; it may not capture everyones attention span for the entire 20 missions.

The dialog is well acted and quite humorous. The music is perfect for this game and maintains a consistently light and upbeat mood. It’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re in Thrillville.

The addition of dinos to this often generic genre of gaming is refreshing. And whether you're blasting them to bits, planting arrows in their eyes or slitting their scaly throats, you'll never tire of your next man-versus-beast brawl.

For every minor flaw though, Conan redeems itself with cool little touches; we love pulling health-draining arrows from our chests and torching village huts to reveal orb-filled treasure chests.

Gamers who are looking for an experience thick with atmosphere and who don't mind this linear approach will probably enjoy I Am Alive, but the rest of us might want to wait and see if there's a more interesting survival experience provided by the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot.

A Matrix game that FINALLY got it right. You're able to pull off all the cool moves and abilities that Neo possesses, including fighting off hundreds of Smiths at once, pole and all. With great graphics and great controls, this title will definitely impress with the first and second play through.

Most likely, players will find themselves having a love-hate relationship with the title, but ultimately they will be delighted by its varied charms.

Not all of the missions are more difficult than subsequent ones, but in general the game's level of difficulty does increase exponentially when amortized over the 30-plus missions.

Alice's second trip into madness isn't quite as satisfying or fresh as her first. Everything feels dated and there's an unfinished, even hurried quality to the game that's more than a little disappointing. That doesn't mean there's a shortage of great moments or fantastic ideas, because Madness Returns has both in spades.