All around good stuff, worth putting on those worn out virtual combat boots for again.

50+ hours to complete, need I say more?

The original The Darkness was a great experience; The Darkness II improves on the formula in every way.

The additions are conceptually great, but only True Aiming offers much innovation. Still the best version out there, though, if you don't mind a reduced number of courses.

Let's say this again: Tedious gameplay kills the coolness of the "wow" moments and brings it all down to an average level.

The game is chess, and at chess Fritz is good. It’s most everything else that I wasn’t happy about.

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is off to a good start, but it's unfinished. Also, there's no way we can recommend spending $40 for a demo. This score reflects the game content itself, not the overall value.

The roller-skate movement and shooting are poor, but the adventures and melee fighting are lots of fun.

Unfortunately, the lack of any real depth to the gameplay, random game crashes and the poorly implemented Xbox Live features make it too hard to suggest as a purchase.

The game hits its stride late, but when it does, it hits it big. There’s a lot of fun here for the patient gamer.

COD3 packs more impressive features than any previous installment: gorgeous graphics and audio, an intense single-player campaign and a wealth of multiplayer options. Even if it isn't the most original WWII game, it's certainly one of the finest.

The need to calibrate is annoying, but the scaled-down aspects are moot with Wii owners, and the multiplayer aspects are perfectly suited for the Wii in general.

The back-and-forth structure is tedious, and the narrative needed to be much more fleshed-out. Too bad great loading-screen treatments can't make up for overall shortcomings.

A few questionable issues with AI and replay aside, it’s a good purchase for stealth-action fans who want to see some action in with their stealth.

Enjoyable arcade-style baseball that is just deep enough to keep you interested and not overwhelmed in the minutia of management.

A fast-paced adrenaline filled game. The HotSwap feature adds flexibility and variety to the missions, while the challenges and online play extend the replay value.

Wii owners may want to play the once only-on-Xbox-360 franchise, but a combination of horrible controls and hard-to-follow multiplayer options manages to kill any fun that might otherwise be had.

If sales are the determining factor to a game's success, then Wii Fit and the Balance Board will be one of the most successful "videogames" released this year -- much to the chagrin of true "gamers."

The PlayStation 3 finally gets its LEGO Star Wars fix, and in spite of its Sixaxis control snafus and camera issues, it still turns out to be the best such outing yet.

A wonderfully fun romp appropriate for all ages. If only it had a few more levels to experiment with all the elemental warriors.

The thing of it is, though, all but the most hardcore RTS junkies will play only one-fourth of the game (only the Empire half, and within that half, only the space battles). That doesn't mean the other three-fourths of the game is wasted content, but if LucasArts had balanced things out a bit more, there's little that could've stopped this game from being a must-buy.

The BIGS is a triumphant return to arcade baseball on next-gen consoles, with multiple addictive modes. The gameplay still needs tuning, something we hope to see in next year's version.

The controls are revolutionary and the game looks great, but there's still room for improvement on the puck physics and pacing. A few more features would be nice, too.

The single-player game is short, plodding and has a poor story, but the online options keep you coming back for more.

Still a very good football game, but a step down from what we'd normally expect.

Good for fans, but action-RPG gamers probably already have a better game in hand.

Its difficulty and niche sensibilities prevent me from recommending it to casual gamers, but those hardcore tacticians with at least 30 hours on their hands will not be able to get enough of it.

Still, Hollywood likes things that go boom and look good doing so, much like Michael Bay's Transformers movies. The game industry operates much the same way, but the best games within it also introduce a fresh experience, something Transformers: Fall of Cybertron fails to do. Yes, Grimlock and the Combaticons are new, but for all practical purposes they're just multimedia window dressing on an otherwise evolutionary, not revolutionary, title.