This level is fairly fun and is one aspect of the game that keeps Andy MacDonald from being a huge, steaming pile of crap, instead making it passable into the realms of midsized steaming pile of crap.

Is EX3 the worst fighter we've ever played? Absolutely not -- however, its mediocre fighting engine and uninspired visuals are yet another example of a once noble series gone sour.

As the Whatsit says, " @!#?@!"

All we can tell you is that the game has mediocre graphics, poor sound, stability problems, an awkward premise and a whole lot of standing around. It may be utterly realistic, although the lack of any falling damage and the fact that wooly rhinos can magically sprint up sheer cliff walls make us doubt it.

Pressing alternating buttons as quickly as possible is only challenging (and fun) for so long, but with the exception of a few events, that's all this game is.

A poor ending to a bad journey.

An improved version of last year's disaster is still not worth the having.

As it stands on Sega's magic box, there's only the junk of civilization's decay to be found -- and it smells like someone's stinky afterthought that's been left to stew in the sun.

As a pinball game, the tables are too barren and as an action/platform-like game, the pinball control is out of place.

Marred by technical difficulties, ultimately simplistic design and a painfully complex interface, RPG Maker is less a dream come true than a nightmare that never seems to end.

Plain, cold and uninspired, ESPN NBA 2Night has all the grit and soul of an Egg McMuffin.

A thin game that is sometimes fun, but mostly routine, and with less depth and imagination than the great games it is copying.

A waste of an excellent license and a great opportunity.

Problematic gameplay and terrible control mar an essentially goofy and slightly fun offering.

With so many interesting alternatives to real life available on so many systems, why stick with one of our most repetitious and grueling sports?

There are too many nagging problems, from the stuttering animation to the strange, stooped-over look of most of the players, as if they couldn't stand up straight.

Misses the mark by just a tad, but that shouldn't halt the admiring throngs.

With its myriad bugs and lack of real multiplayer component, Jet Fighter IV is the sort of game that should have spent a few more months in the hangar.

A mostly retrograde move -- less impressive in almost every aspect than the gems that inspired it. It's by no means the worst game we've played, but only the most rabid of Star Wars fans (of which there are plenty) should take this one for a spin... hover... whatever.

The music isn't quite as good (as its predecessor), and the gameplay has been simplified so much that it fast becomes mindless and quite repetitive.

An ugly, hollow mess that disgraces its storied predecessors in every way.

Is Gunman Chronicles a good total conversion? For the most part, yes. Is Sierra trying to milk the Gordon Freeman cow one too many times? Absolutely.

While it's an improvement over the original, Team Arena is essentially a decent mod but it's nothing that can't be found for free.

Its personality, attractive graphics and RPG elements could've spawned a fun and frantic 3D RTS, but the game ends up feeling like an incomplete action game that's a little "ruff" around the edges.

The stories, on the other hand, are so boring and unconnected that they must have been based on historical facts that have long since been forgotten, except in some German children's textbook.

It's not a terrible game, and if someone were trapped on a long flight with nothing but this game and a PSOne, they could do a lot worse.

If there is such a thing as a low end to a Miss score, this game would be there, precipitously hanging with its arms spinning in comical circles directly over the ledge that drops into Dudville.

There were a few fun moments while playing this, particularly in the Capture the Flag mode. Unfortunately, the cosmic physics combined with the hit-and-miss controls ripped the huge potential out of its heart.

Gamers will probably derive more fun simply from reading this paragraph than they will from actually playing Deep Fighter.

The batting and pitching interfaces are as good as we remember them from the stellar N64 games, but the fielding transitions are terrible and there are graphical bugs that are unforgivable. The game looks okay, with nice character models but lifeless environments and stadiums -- but it's just not what you'd expect from a PS2 sports game.

Finally and least forgivable, important terrain features and items pop into existence only when the Grinch comes close, and disappear again if he moves away. This is endlessly irritating.

It could have been an interesting game with a little more imagination, but it's flatter than month-old soda.

Uninspired graphics, technical flaws and a clunky interface leave it floundering in the channel.

Featuring partially-fully-destructible environments, a nifty corral of over-the-top tanks and attitude to spare, Thunder Tanks shoots for the moon, but ultimately lacks the firepower to entice gamers into coming along for the ride.

From the moment this underwhelming title stumbles into action, gamers will be hard-pressed not to notice its painful mediocrity --CB2001 makes the annual SCEA father-son hackeysack tournament look like a paragon of x-tremity.

Once the game starts up, another problem becomes apparent; the game was rushed out the door before it was finished. From random lockups when loading to a litany of missing features too numerous to list completely, it's obvious that Age of Sail II was released in a beta state.

Twitchy controls, dull track layouts and boring gameplay guarantee this title a place right at the back of the starting grid.

A must for shooting enthusiasts and fans of the disappearing light-gun genre, but is almost the perfect definition of a rental title to the rest of the gaming community.

Overall, Stupid Invaders is an adventure title that just isn't as much fun as it should be. But it's plenty stupid.

Unfortunately, this isn't the sort of game we want to play online or off.

Sure, it's got Mario Lemieux in it, but while Super Mario may be able to save the Pens, he can't save this one.

Decided it didn't want an in-game save function and forgot to add multiplayer, a skirmish mode or the ability to change the level of difficulty.

With its limited gameplay, repetitive modes and lackluster multiplayer, we can't recommend it to anyone other than flight sim enthusiasts.

The tanks are cool and feature gritty design and nice detailing -- but their animation sets are pretty limited and the sensation of piloting an actual, steely titan is somewhat lacking.

The puzzles are utterly simple, the gameplay is too linear, and we finished it in about 10 hours.

In the end, though, the lackluster graphics, frustrating gameplay and repetitive actions make it a slightly entertaining romp through a scary theme park, but not fun enough for us to recommend as one of the DC's best.

It's simplistic and mechanical, and just doesn't deliver the feel of a smoky pool hall where skill rules out over luck.

The difference is purely in level design, which is creative and interesting in the first game ("Strider") and pure crap in the second.

Now imagine the whole game, from start to finish, lasting about 15 minutes -- even with limited continues. Oh dear.

Contains fleeting moments of fun, but the weak control of the game makes playing it more of a chore than anything.

With one part uninspired gameplay, a liberal dash of visuals scraped straight from the bottom of the barrel and a grossly unpolished finish, developer SandBox has crafted a monster of a game, and it's barely got teeth, much less hind legs, to stand on.

The problem is that its main competition, EA Sports' Madden series, has most of the same features, plays a much better game of football and looks a lot better doing it.

Controlling everything with the DC controller, especially over the often lengthy missions, will lead to cramped, achy hands, and the necessity for quick command issuing just doesn't fit well onto a gamepad.

It's not a horrible game, but the one other pool game available at launch, "Q-Ball: Billiards Master," is just a tad bit better.

It's fine for players looking for basic off-road action, but those looking for hardcore realism or arcade action should look elsewhere.

With medical miracles and the highest average lifespan known in our short existence on this planet, we have to think that we've evolved beyond hitting each other over the head with frying pans and retractable boxing gloves.

Everything that's done right here is on a prom date with wrong, and the wrongs manage to dance all over the rights' feet a little too often.

Those who enjoy lackluster game values, cliched dialog and a motley collection of sophomoric characters will find this a competently produced title that won't be hard to get through.

A decent game that could have been great if it had been released three years ago.

The sort of videogame that needs to have the epilepsy warning printed in 72-point Helvetica bold. This game is so colorful, fast and disorienting that we came close to passing out a couple of times and poking ourselves on the "Seaman" microphone.

The golf ball "rolls" like a ping-pong ball on an air-hockey table...TW2001 slices into the rough when it comes to actually playing the game, and that's a shame, as nearly everything else is top-notch.

Though occasionally enjoyable, endless game crashing bugs, bouts of tedium and a few badly designed elements make it a miss.

A pretty weak entry from Ripcord, Spec Ops II won't overly offend or overly excite anyone.

Unfortunately, it also has crippling flaws that suck fun out of gameplay like a starving Nosferatu gnawing on a rat.

As it comes out of the box, the awkward controls, ordinary story and mediocre multiplayer prevent us from recommending this marginally fun game.

It is an utterly routine shooter with a handful of different ships to fly, awkward controls, and robotic enemies that on their worst day aren't so much dangerous as they are sort of "pesky."

Unfortunately, there's some yellow snow on this mountain.

It's such a banal misuse of a popular franchise that its mediocrity really shines through.

It's a gun game without a gun, and there's really no way to get past that one glaring omission.

Unfortunately the grappling in the PSOne version of UFC is quite a bit less complex than the Dreamcast version's, with only one button combination used for most throws and one for counters. This makes successfully grappling an opponent much harder.

Crave's "Sno Cross" is a far better game and is five bucks cheaper at $9.99.

What was cute and fun, if a little simplistic, on the PlayStation is unimpressive and difficult on Dreamcast.

Plenty of flash, spectacle and new features... but so little meat to carve a proper meal from.

A passable shooter that will please Nintendo-owning fans of the genre, but it won't win any awards for originality, ingenuity or design.

Though "PGA" plays the simulation angle well, the easy putting, occasional quirks in control and lackluster graphics that actually affect the gameplay adversely all leave this title mired in mediocrity.

It certainly does not have the basketball depth of "NBA Live 2001," and we'd only recommend it to die-hard college hoops fans who simply have to play as a Division I team.

It contains an interesting and cleverly told story and takes great pains to build an atmosphere, then smashes the whole house of cards to the ground, violently, with a cheap cop-out ending.

In short, this interactive bit of testosterone-laden tomfoolery is just like the movie.

With bland graphics, poor gameplay balancing and -- worst of all -- terrible controls, so much of the game is so much of a drag that it falls short of the anemically rising levels that set the 3D action/adventure standard.

The graphics are fine, the options plentiful and the details lovingly polished, but the core gameplay -- the part where you're in a car racing against other cars -- doesn't do much to advance the genre at all.

Alas, KISS Psycho Circus just plain sucks.

The game looked promising and campy, but ultimately left us unimpressed.

Neither excellent nor miserable, it's a fairly good racer, but it's not changed much since our last look at the game, and since then a lot of handsome titles have hit the shelves.

Ugly visuals and a much uglier framerate fail to bolster a lackluster stunt system that's neither visceral nor deep.

Poor graphics and boring gameplay kill a fighter that could have been a contender.

Lacking in gameplay and visual splendor, Evergrace doesn't do enough to provide a quality next-generation RPG experience.

Failing to pull through with what could have been a very interesting premise, however, EA has given us the keys to Bond's wheels but included with them jagged visuals, uninteresting level designs and some of the least polish we've seen in a while, making this game something of a clunker.

A pretty vast improvement over the PSOne version, but numerous technical and gameplay problems that were apparent then return to mar the experience, making a mighty big mess of what's still a promising idea.

The graphics reside on the bottom side of ordinary, Quinn Buckner's commentary soon grows repetitive and there just aren't enough bells and whistles to impress us. Add that to the occasionally frustrating gameplay and spotty AI, and you have a team built for boring, sub-.500 play.

X Squad was to be the first squad-based game on PS2, but its AI is so bad that it really becomes a basic third-person action title with only some nice effects and a huge weapons cache to show for it.

In a move that perfectly mirrors our own high-school careers, it seems as if Ubi Soft went to every length imaginable to make sure that every aspect of this game is dead average, and no more.

Melodramatic dialogues precede and follow each fight, and they're handled with the same mildly illiterate aplomb as most anime translations -- meaning that they're longwinded, heavyhanded and occasionally unintelligible to all but the most diehard of fans, which is just how we like 'em.

Whether standing on its own or against the legion of fine racing alternatives out there (from "Gran Turismo" to "Wipeout"), this is one racer we'll probably leave in the games garage.

When you consider the Army Men franchise's extraordinary commitment to ordinariness, then it shouldn't be a surprise that the game is so utterly banal.

While it graphically looks fairly good, its simulation of the sport places the emphasis squarely on offense, and that's just not how baseball is played.

A tired genre makes its first zombie steps onto the PS2. It's time for a rethink.

Erratic control and graphical limitations on top of too many niggling requirements make this game experience less than enjoyable.

The gameplay is as expected -- slow, with a lot of exploration and some tough and sometimes frustrating enemies and puzzles.