One look at the out-of-date rosters (frozen in time at the original release date) will show you how little attention was paid to the development of this game.

What could have been the modern equivalent to classic bizarre Japanese shooters like Parodius is instead a one-trick pony.

If you've played "Warship Gunner," you'll probably have seen it all before from a more interesting on-deck perspective.

This is the eighth Yu-Gi-Oh GBA release in a little over two years. Not much has changed, and not much will. If you're not already firmly on this bandwagon, turn around and walk away.

The game doesn't look bad, but it doesn't look good enough for an action game whose major draw is its audiovisual presentation.

Valhalla’s a well-meaning blend of old and new, but most of us have come to expect a little more from an RPG.

But the game runs clean and looks nice enough in action. For a budget price, you could do worse. Yeah, it’s not a ringing endorsement, nor is it meant to be.

With copious patience and enough time, a path through the bugs and design flaws might lead to an enjoyable experience for some persistent players of ToEE. However, digging through garbage to find a gem is still digging through garbage.

The novelty of the premise wears thin after about an hour. This is not good, especially for a game that takes about 25 hours to complete.

More like an expansion team than a Stanley Cup contender. With a sharper focus on either realism or arcade play combined with more standout graphics, next year's version could be bumped up to the first line.

There is a single-player dynamic campaign that you should stay far, far away from. The campaign appears to be an afterthought, as does the AI, which does a fantastic job killing itself.

In fact, this game serves as a great example of how wonderful the original games would be on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade service, at an even better price.

Larry's longevity will be directly proportionate to the amount of laughs you derive from bodily functions great and small.

Kimmunicator might be good for a few kicks for fans of the show, but it’s so short and unremarkable you shouldn't feel bad for missing it.

In a world where light-gun games need to change or die, Ninja Assault is an evolutionary dead-end for the genre.

It still plays too much like one of the old games to feel like a real online title, but the one thing that could have been done to make it better -- namely, a workable communication system for players -- was skimped on.

A sequel isn’t supposed to be softer, poorer, slower, weaker, but that sadly sums up FIFA Street 3's questionable content.

Fans of F1 racing may be able to put up with the game's lack of features and frustrating nature. This simply isn't a racing game, however, that will appeal to a mainstream audience or win any new fans for the sport.

Proves one thing--Sega needs to stop tinkering with its past and start respecting its illustrious history as much as its core fan base does.

The loading times are annoying, there’s a ridiculous maze of menus to wade through to get to the races, and, when you do hit the road, the controls are poor and the racing system is just bizarre.

The highs of the added features are sacked by the lows in basic gameplay.

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam isn't a sell out on par with hawking Bagel Bites but it's close.

Dragon battles break down to attack-block-repeat. Ships appear from nowhere. Boss fights are more “follow the leader” than actual epic battles. Lair is not a broken game, just one that overcompensates to hide all its flaws rather than fix them.

The lack of variety in the levels was a major factor. But even more so was the constant loading and unnatural, abrupt transitions.

Improvements to the solo adventure and the addition of some basic multiplayer modes elevate the game above its predecessors, but it can't turn the tide of battle in the franchise's favor.

The game borders on tedious.

But character-based fighting games using characters no one cares about is never a good idea, and Blade Warriors is nowhere near as fun or deep as its inspiration.

Eidos looks stupid for accepting the AO rating, yet covering up the genitals with fig leaves. And the IDSA has only succeeded in making its own rating system appear useless.

One thing NFL Tour is great for is padding your Xbox gamerscore. Otherwise, don’t bother with this one.

Only those gamers in it for the puzzles will get a kick out of this one--those who don’t get overwhelmed, that is.

A great concept for an EyeToy standalone title, but the quality and variety of minigames simply fail to do the theme justice.

Legend of Heroes needs more innovation in the areas that actually matter – scenario writing, game design, the tricky stuff like that – before it’ll spawn an installment worth playing.

Game Arts still knows how to draw neat-looking spaceships. When it comes to making them interact in a real 3D space, though, that’s where they still have a whole lot to learn.

And urgency is desperately what this game needs, but sadly doesn't have. Boredom is sure to set in during the very first level.

Clearly an experimental game that, through a combination of laziness and sometimes punishing difficulty, is actually capable of really pissing just about everyone off.

As a pure action game, it’s too slow (it often feels like Ed is moving against a strong wind) to satisfy those used to such titles as Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, or Prince of Persia. As a role-playing game, it’s too shallow and short to satisfy those expecting the next Final Fantasy.

The result of meddling with Joe's mechanics is pure mediocrity. Though lefties will scream in frustration, the action is never bad, merely bland.

If you absolutely need to have every single collection of mini-games for your Wii, at least the content in Ninja Reflex is entertaining. There just needs to be a lot more of it to justify the price.

Now, if "Rebirth Mode" was more than just the original game with some half-hearted minigames tacked on -- if it sported updated graphics and a more intuitive control scheme, things would be different.

There’s a multiplayer mode to be had, but it’s hard to recommend Juarez solely based on the fact that you can share the misery with friends.

The visuals hold up fairly well, and the controls are solid, if simplistic. What's here is the underlying base of a game. They just forgot to include meaningful gameplay or a storyline.

A decent party game with a great cast of cheesy giant monsters, but it’s just not scaly or radioactive enough to command much respect.

There's no sense of continuity since you have to keep stopping and starting. And where are the puzzles or something other to do besides shooting at hard-to-see robots?

Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects on PSP feels like it was made by a bunch of Madden jocks as a way to screw with comic nerds.

Maybe our blue buddy needs to take a breather for a little while, replace his outdated circuitry, and make another run in a few years' time.

Mind-numbing button mashing with unremarkable stages can only be used to help you forget about the six hundred dollars that you blew on a system to play a game no better than its PSP cousin.

It's just one gruesome kill after another until the violence loses its punch. Too bad that happens after the first couple missions. If you want a stealth game, there are better ones out there. If you want blood, do yourself a favor a buy a tube of red dye #5, instead.

First on the menu is Big Bumpin’, a bumper-car romp through four different game modes that totally sucks if you’re playing with yourself, but loads of fun if you’re playing with a few friends. So Big Bumpin’ is pretty much a metaphor for life in general.

If anything, Battle Nexus is a really uneven game. Some sections last two minutes, others last about 10 and culminate in a huge battle.

It takes a little effort, maybe, but you can make a game for kids that doesn’t bore a more experienced player.

It's a shame that the one good idea in this streetball title had to be overshadowed by bad execution and a mediocre presentation.

If the colors were more vibrant, the tilting felt more responsive, and some of the stages weren't such an outright pain in the saddle, this game would easily get the X-Play stamp of approval. Not this time.

Avoid this one; it's a hairball that's not worth coughing up the cash to play.

No amount of clever quips and Master Chief parody characters is worth slogging through a shooter that makes Dark Sector look like an inspired stroke of genius. By the end of the game, no amount of clever enemy character names or profanity-laced outbursts by Neil Patrick Harris can distract you from the fact that you’re simply not having much fun.

Astro Boy would've been better as a straightforward genre game; instead, it's neither a full-fledged actioner nor an exploratory adventure game. It feels like a pasted together hybrid that never jells.

The story could easily have been told in a third of the time, leaving room for more substantial narrative and perhaps even more inventive level and game design.

If you still own an Xbox or PlayStation 2, there's absolutely no reason to purchase this game. Especially since it'll cost you $10 more and offers about 25 percent of the content.

If anything The Shield: The Game is true to the spirit of its source material. Much of the game may be poorly designed, cruelly difficult and obnoxiously unfair, but none of these flaws are necessarily show-stopping.

Even the most hardcore DBZ fans will feel ripped off if they purchase Dragon Ball Z: Sagas, and non-rabid fans will be angry to the point of violence.

For the second time in under a year, EA fails to impress with a next-gen football game. 2006 FIFA World Cup comes off as a quick cash-in to make a fast buck before the big event in Germany this June.

A huge step backwards for the series.

The problem is that the level design is so unforgiving and linear that most players won’t bother to see all the graphic panache the game offers.

Blades of Time is a mediocre game, with an inventive combat system utilizing time manipulation. Dreadful writing and one of the most annoying protagonists in a dog's age dampen its charms, while the puzzles between combat show a dearth of creativity.

Suffers from a lack of replay value: Once you get the hang of its flawed controls, it is possible to get a gold medal in each event within an hour or so of play, leaving little reason to ever touch the game again.

There's not nearly enough depth or substance to the game to recommend it. SoE is a game full of sound and fury, signifying a rental at best.

A lackluster follow-up to the exceptional Generations, particularly because the enhancements here are non-existent.

For most gamers the only enjoyment you'll get out of the game will be mocking it with your friends.

In terms of visual presentation the game is a total letdown, with flawed 3D graphics that even at their best are not all that striking or impressive.

The tedium, bugs, and simplicity of the game itself outweigh much of the value the game offers in its size or even its faithful translation of the 3rd Edition rules, making this Pool of Radiance but a shallow reflection of the earlier classic.

A gorgeous boilerplate game with little innovation and many sections of tedious play.

Amazing Island is the sort of game that lies tantalizingly close to the edge of coolness, yet remains firmly on the side of mediocrity.

While Strike Force is not without its share of interesting features, they are lost in substandard visuals, controls, and level design.

Ratatouille doesn’t do anything to avoid the curse of licensed games, and the Xbox 360 version feels especially unfinished thanks to the horrible hit detection issues.

There’s a ton of unlockable mini-games, items, explosions, and levels. It’s hard to find shooters aimed at kids, so on that level, Bionicle is an ok choice. Older gamers, however, will want to pass this one by.

This is one of those games that will remind you that, many times, your imagination is the most powerful console.

The game gets points for presentation but falls short when it comes to gameplay.

Unfortunately, when the best part of a game is the absurdly vulgar audio, there's definitely a problem in the overall design.

Combine one part action, one part tactical strategy, and one part dodgy AI, add a pinch of RPG-style customization, wrap it up in a third-person perspective, and what have you got? Cold Zero has its good moments, but they are few and far between.

Warpath isn’t horrible, but it is incredibly uninspired. The design is, on every level, lackluster, as if the developers were so sick of the genre that they didn’t even try this time.

I was looking forward to it, but left very disappointed. It’s completely playable. Being about 7 hours long helps but I spent the entire game waiting for it to get good, to make sense, to make a case for all the incongruous elements of design, gameplay and story, and then it ended.

A prime example of a cellar dweller that should simply pack it in before it embarrasses itself. Like the Kansas City Royals, MLB is doomed before the season even begins.

It borrows or attempt to borrow conventions from several popular shoot-'em-'ups, but in the end it's just a confused mess that's not very fun and not very impressive.

Despite selling for a steal, Space Raiders barely justifies the price of admission. Hard-core audiences will scoff at the game's wasted potential.

The rather simple controls lack any sort of considerable depth that would keep the game interesting. In fact, most of the time, just hitting random buttons will pull off some pretty impressive punches, kicks, and flips.

Amusing enough for an Old West-themed shooter, but the so-called new features are either gimmicks, or, as in the case of the auto-aiming, outright annoying. The game is decent for the most part, but doesn't do the great subject matter justice.

Warpath isn't horrible, but it is incredibly uninspired. The design is, on every level, lackluster, as if the developers were so sick of the genre that they didn't even try this time.

When it comes down to it, The Darkest Faerie plays like a Zelda knockoff and looks like a Spyro ripoff. Save for the mote system, there really isn't anything interesting going on, which would be fine if the execution were better.

The game is also short. It shouldn't take you more than a day to complete the 13 levels. Though after tediously walking through gray room after gray room it could feel more like a year.

The game creators obviously didn’t consult Palahniuk. Maybe he would’ve sat them down, and explained the yet-released ninth rule: Don’t make a crap fighting game and call it Fight Club.

Dark Arena's graphics are average at best. Much of the architecture is plain-looking and the average enemy sports only a half-dozen character animations.

Middling level design along with an over-reliance on mobbing the player with nearly impossible situations make Hunt a disappointing release.

Lost Magic for the Nintendo DS combines all the fun of drawing letters, trying to remember arcane symbols, dying repeatedly, cursing like a sailor at having died repeatedly, and getting carpal tunnel syndrome repeatedly tapping a stylus against a touch screen in order to fast-forward through a series of conversations that manage to be simultaneously inane and overlong.

It seems like the slightly retarded love child of Meteos and Tetris DS – a clunky excuse to use the stylus more than a fun experience. Both of those games – despite their own flaws – are miles better than Pokemon Trozei!

But this brief, easy, and repetitive experience never comes close to the games it’s emulating.

The mix of mission and circuit racing along with the interesting ranking system are offset by the poor mechanics and sloppy design.

The painfully simplistic controls and short nature of the mini-games aren't going to satisfy most players, even those who routinely fire up the Wii to play with friends.

The textures are model, character models are laughable up-close, and the game has a toylike look that doesn't really pay homage to the historical backdrop.

Fix the navigation system, ease back on the creature auto-leveling, patch the game, and you’d be closer to something that rated three or even four stars than this unfortunate mess of a "Diablo" wannabe.