This is one really short game. With a little effort, you can beat it in 10-12 hours.

The once elegant and powerful weapon of the Jedi has been reduced to a crude chopping device that will kill a given enemy in five or six hits.

With near-perfect control, a great new hip-hop soundtrack, several new characters that weren't in "Double Impact" (including perennial favorite Chun Li) and the best 2D animation we've ever seen in a fighting game, this game is certainly the business.

Although it's a short experience, Frogger 2 was nearly all fun.

We see poop in the palm....The 3D third-person shooter offers a visceral thrill that's part unprotected skin in operating blender and part tongue in the gears of life's cruel machinery, a series of unforgivable blemishes damns this beast straight to hell.

This expansion provides loads of new rides, themes and fun.

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

The magical animal that provides us with pork, ham, bacon and sausage now gives us a goodly bit of amusement.

Dino Crisis 2 serves up two playable heroes in the form of military agents Regina and Dylan and, unfortunately, they're both rather stock and devoid of personality.

It has improved graphics, better controls, smarter AI and a new momentum meter that adds to the drama.

Combining an informational resource with a full expansion pack would have been a better idea than this greedy effort.

It's just a great tactical exercise for strategy gamers of any rank.

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.

Players scroll through the alphabet using the controller arrows, then hit X to enter each letter. It's excruciatingly slow.

Don't buy this game for your children at Christmas! Instead, try buying something that is at once more fun and educational than Lightspeed Rescue, like a piece of driftwood or a bucket of small nails.

Its lack of originality only adds to its charm.

It's not for everyone, but those who spend their afternoons daydreaming of driving at 200MPH in an oval will not be disappointed.

Sadly, the horrid control scheme from the original is left untouched, leaving the player to cry in agony.

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

A fast and fun hockey game that gives you all the options, modes and action you could want from a hockey game.

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

TXR 2 delivers enough improvements and additions on the original formula to keep the fans happy and give the first-timers a racing experience that lives up to today's tough standards.

The control is a travesty that could've been resolved with either proper joystick implementation or configurable controls. Shame on Konami.

In this confusing and muddled 3D platformer, Buzz just can't run straight, and that makes him one annoyed lead character in a crippled game that's really hard to like despite its eminently likable star.

Although this game does have a couple of decent aspects, such as the eerie music and the story, these two major problems create so much frustration that players will probably quit after only a half-hour of play.

If you're one of those hardcore "PC Only!" types that don't own a console, you'll definitely want to shell out the 35 smackers for this baby in order to find out just what the hell everyone was talking about two years ago.

A great experience. It's as close to a perfect rendition of the D&D universe as we've ever seen.

For the devoted, F355 Challenge is the closest videogames have ever come to reproducing the experience of driving a single car.

Midtown Madness 2 is as close to arcade racing bliss as we've seen.

Even provides an excellent FPS experience for those who may not wear their pointy rubber ears to bed at night like we do.

A staggering achievement in video gaming -- not only building on its stunning predecessor, but actually eclipsing it.

A vile mess of the highest order, Army Men should be avoided by all but the most hardy of gaming masochists.

Not good to look at, or to listen to. But more importantly, it's not fun to play. DUD.

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.

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

Do yourself a favor -- buy a multitap, rent some friends (we find that beer works for this) and spend a night bombing the hell out of each other. Just, please, don't ride the animals.

Innovation, game play and design are blended in near-perfect measures, resulting in a game that's such a delight to play that I'm already begun working our way through it for the second time.

With plenty of features, accessible yet challenging gameplay and a solid soundtrack, Freestyle BMX is just the thing to alleviate any prolonged skateboard withdrawal.

The new shine keeps this old bird from looking too much like the geriatric (but nonetheless golden) goose it is.

More of the same, only more better.

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.

May feel like last year's version, but it still offers exciting football for one and all.

A poor excuse for a videogame and an even poorer excuse for pornography.

We recommend Cataclysm for "Homeworld" fans, but if you've not played "Homeworld" yet, grab it first and play that -- it's a better game.

I'd like to know who decided to make a realtime strategy game, where some of the missions could last a solid 45 minutes to an hour, without the option to save the game.

This is the type of game that mothers hate.

So vastly improved over its predecessor that it easily wrests away the title of "Best Football Videogame of All Time" and easily scores a direct hit.

The control is so bad that it's impossible to predict how high, how fast or how far the characters are going to jump or if they're actually going to jump at all.

Easily the most straightforward and action-packed Turok yet, "Shadow of Oblivion" corrects the mistakes of previous games, making for a fun-filled and exciting journey through places not seen before in the series.

A fast and beautiful arcade racer that's thin on the single-player experience but thick with multiplayer fun.

An outstanding title that can do it all.

Everything about the game is fun and everything about the production value says quality.

Potential buyers should already know that it will involve incessant button mashing, and newcomers should be warned that, without a joystick, there's not a lot of fun to be had here.

With great gameplay comes a great game.

Of little interest to any gamer -- hardcore, half-dead or otherwise.

Despite its obvious deficiencies, from the unnecessarily irritating save system to the repetitiously moronic combat system, "Valkyrie Profile" remains an intriguing, often breathtaking roleplaying experience.

It's fair to say that the interface stands out as one of the best we've seen in years. Shame we can't say the same about the game.

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.

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

Easily the most realistic, and definitely one of the most fun, fighting games to ever come along.

Sega GT is a nearly perfect racing simulation that offers hundreds of cars, dozens of options and weeks of deep gameplay.

With stellar graphics that really push the aging PlayStation's limits, Invasion is a feast for the eyes and a test for the thumbs.

While its direct competition is the Dreamcast's "Virtua Tennis," those who pass up this one because of cutesy characters and backgrounds will miss out on one of the best games for the system, hands down.

Madden 2001 passes the competition to become the best gridiron title on the N64.

After all, at the end of the day, what better accomplishment could a Sim have than to own a robot, have a vibrating bed full of cute neighbors and be the leader of their very own cult?

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

The problem is the gameplay. It's repetitive, it gets old quickly, it's redundant, it drones on and on, it's monotonous, it's unvaried and it's iterative.

It's as if Michaelangelo came down, picked up an already beautiful painting and made it a masterpiece.

Those who just want to play 18 holes without having to wake up at 6:30am will get their $20 worth.

An attempt shagged to the left that lands just inside the uprights.

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.

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

Power Stone 2 may well be remembered as the most confusing fighting game ever created. And a whole lot of fun.

It's Number One, baby! Hi, Mom!

The track editor is what really sets the title apart, though, allowing players to easily make a variety of tracks and race on them immediately.

A thrilling gaming experience with its cinematic excellence, beautiful scenery and solid "survival horror RPG" gameplay.

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

Dull and uninteresting to play.

The gameplay itself is too complicated for casual gamers and the sound, while better than GameDay's, is still irritating.

Great graphics and animation, plenty of nifty features and delightfully freeform racing make for a solid package.

While paling in comparison to its celebrated predecessor, "Chrono Cross's" great character design and intriguing combat system ensure that the game is anything but the misfire it could so easily have been.

The AI even seems capable of adapting to a gamer's tendencies; a play that worked great in one situation may not work so well if used in the same situation a second time.

With only a few camera issues to stomach and a raised eyebrow given to the level of difficulty (especially in later stages), Ecco's 25+ stages of fluid, gorgeous gameplay show it has the brawn to back up its beauty.

Those seeking an action-oriented experience need not apply either; most of the "game" involves waiting, tending Seaman's tank, waiting, chatting, and waiting some more.

A poor graphics engine with bad animation ruins any realism that might have been conveyed by the motion-capturing of professional riders.

There are a few weaknesses with the collision detection, but on the whole "Tenchu 2" is gripping, sleek and cool.

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

Finally allowing the player to focus on the strategy element of the realtime strategy, the computer assistant is "Submarine Titan's" big achievement and pulls what otherwise is a forgettable genre performer into an interesting title for RTS gamers.

With so many motocross games out there, there's just no reason to pay any attention to Jeremy McGrath.

A great solo experience that'll leave patient gamers with nothing to show for it but sore thumbs and the satisfaction of being truly, totally radical.

Not the Dreamcast wrestling sim we've been waiting for, but still a great deal of fun.

Giant robots Good, lame story Bad, stealing sechnology Good, weak level design Bad, nothing innovative... that's bad Homer.

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.

Another excellent addition to the series, a great example of pure pinball simulation.

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

The addition of passable graphics, surprisingly good production values and quirky, fun gameplay make picking up this $9.99 title a pretty easy decision.

Our suggestion: turn off the lights, crank your speakers, get some Jolt! Cola and a couple of Lik-A-Stiks and settle in for a few hours of happy-go-lucky brain and teeth rot.