Nexus plays like a great game that misses the mark almost every step of the way. It’s slick, complex, and ambitious. But the potential here is never realized.

Feels like a great game that wasn't finished. It's not that the game's too short; it's that it's too sparse. More enemy types, weapons, and spells could have really fleshed this out into a hack-and-slash classic. As is, it feels like a demo stretched into a full length game -- and a short one at that.

There’s something oddly compelling about the game. When you’re not online, you’re constantly worried about what’s going on. Once you meet up with other players, that worry becomes dread.

The online mode and audio commentary show that the series holds promise, but even hard-core college football fans will feel frustrated by this game.

Next to Silkworm and Ninja Gaiden, these efforts are just warm-up practice for the real thing. Even at a budget price, spend accordingly.

A good game design need to fire in all cylinders. Mage Knight Apocalypse stumbles on so many levels, it’s a wonder they ever got it out the door.

But there's nothing in the game that you haven't already heard blabbed around the water cooler. Besides, if you play the modest mess that is Lost: Via Domus you'll never again wonder if the TV series has jumped the shark. It can't possibly get this muddled.

The greatest crime depicted in the game isn't Syndrome's machinations, but the speed with which the lame design renders dull action out of such cool characters.

It's the kind of game that pads itself out with random fights. And, worst of all, it's type of game that tries to pass tired techno-babble off as story. This crime is all the more heinous considering the fact that Mega Man Star Force 2 is aimed squarely at young gamers.

It has plenty of significant flaws mixed with some excellently done gameplay elements.

The concepts are solid, the story is excellent, and the characters sustain. Aesthetically it is a beautiful piece of work. It's just not all that much fun to play, especially when bugs have left parts of the game incomplete.

While the presentation is PSP-worthy, the gameplay isn’t. The default “nub” control makes it hard to guide players where you want them too, especially when trying to land a check or two on defense.

The game isn’t fun at all (including the pathetically limited multiplayer options which aren’t worth going into)...It’s just frustrating that Dark Sector, with all the trappings of a good game, could squander nearly every single one of them with bad level design, poor logic, repetitive combat, and no attention to what made its inspiration so…inspiring.

A Bond game without Bond just doesn't make sense, especially when the bad-guy gimmick fails miserably.

The concept behind the battle system is solid but dragging it through uninspired dungeons and a tired story can make putting in that second disk a chore.

TMNT's uninspired brand of ninjitsu-fueled platforming won't be blowing any minds.

The characters and the trials they face simply aren’t cut out for the game they inhabit, and the game feels shallow and incomplete as a result.

The vast world with bandits and weapon-packed vehicles is an interesting idea, but being forced to meander back and forth across it just to earn a few scraps of cash makes the whole thing boring.

Lag is a constant problem, with characters and enemies often freezing in their tracks for a few moments before warping ahead to make up for time lost. The in-game visuals don’t impress at all.

There's just not enough to juggle in this low impact virtual theme park to keep sim junkies mesmerized. Roller coaster crafting is way too dumbed down to make the process feel like creation.

Somewhere buried beneath the game's bird-brained plot and overly-complicated controls are a pile of flying missions that are reasonably engaging. There's just a whole lot of unnecessary junk to wade through.

Throne of Destiny suffers from the same affliction every long-running online RPG suffers from--feature bloat. In catering to its paying customers, the game has become too confusing, too intimidating, and too hostile to new players.

If effort counts, then Red Orchestra is not a bad game, and it might even be a very good one. But playing games is about having experiences, and the experience of playing Red Orchestra will leave 95% of the gaming community out in the cold. That other 5% will have the time of their lives though.

Emergency 3 isn’t so much a bad game as it is a disappointing one. It’s a title that has lots of promise and potential, but steadfastly refuses to deliver. You’d think by the third game, they’d get it right.

Factor in a very mushy and imprecise hit detection system, and Nick's life can drain frighteningly quickly without you even realizing he's being hit.

Between the dull kill-and-rob action, dopey wanna-be movie plot and the sheer fact that this game is recycled from a game that pretty much everybody hates there's not much to recommend this game – apart from the price tag.

When the most challenging part of a game is remembering to wash your hands, and when the most compelling part is collecting chocolate bars, there’s very little incentive to play.

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows’ biggest issue, however, is its short length. Each of the game’s 16 levels can be completed within 10 minutes--10 extremely repetitive minutes--and there is no incentive to revisit past stages due to the lack of hidden features or bonuses.

What starts out as a fantastic concept -- even though you have to slog through endless diaries to figure out what the heck is going on – never gathers steam.

Hampered by average gameplay and lacking any exceptionally cool features, the end result is a game that fails to hold your interest past the first few races.

The greatest crime depicted in the game isn't Syndrome's machinations, but the speed with which the lame design renders dull action out of such cool characters.

The problem with Marvel Trading Card Game isn’t the gameplay. Once you’ve figured everything out, it does a decent job mimicking the real thing. But it requires a lot of patience to get comfortable with the game and you’ll be fighting the interface every step of the way.

Warriors Orochi is really only for the hardcore fans of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises. We freely admit that we’re not one of those. You either like it or you don’t. You either care about the story or you don’t. Put Average Joe Gamer and this reviewer down in the “don’t” column.

Playable (if you're lucky enough to avoid the movement bug), and it hits all the marks expected of a scrolling shooter. It's hard to applaud a game for being merely adequate, however, and Blowout's plainness will make it of little interest to the majority of gamers.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending upon how you view these things), quite a few of the game's levels can be beaten simply by running like heck through them and avoiding all conflict.

But anyone looking for a good brawler on the GBA needs to look somewhere other than Dragon Ball GT: Transformation.

The concept of this game is quite interesting and it’ll be enough to make some gamers more tolerant than they should be about this game’s faults. But, the execution here is unfortunately too poor to forgive.

Despite being a good pool game, the fact that you have to live with the horribly conceived setting and sloppy controls makes The Hustle: Detroit Streets a play out like a missed opportunity.

A Bond game without Bond just doesn't make sense, especially when the bad-guy gimmick fails miserably.

The biggest shame is that the engrossing dynasty and career modes are wasted by the actual gameplay.

The "outlaw" elements in Outlaw Tennis are devoid of entertainment value. They aren't even integrated into the game all that well.

Even the bosses are cliché. They’re all pattern-based, take three hits to defeat, and are unlikely to pose a challenge for anyone but the younger set who will find some of the platform action too hard.

The video game equivalent to a straight-to-video B-movie: it can be entertaining in spots, even though you know the whole is painfully lame.

The game itself is average. The controls don’t do enough to make the game stand out. The extras and bonus features are pointless.

The lack of character customization is another issue, with fixed classes and no input allowed on individual skills, attributes, or spells other than purchasing armor, weapons, and accessories each time you visit town.

FPS fanatics looking for a fix before the big guns are released might try Chaser, but all other gamers beware. You'll probably want a chaser of a different kind to wash down this title.

Either way, Jaws Unleashed is best thrown to the sharks. Having your actual torso bitten off by an actual great white might actually be preferable to this.

Without a sound tactical game, Desperados 2 is only fun so long as you enjoy trying to guess what the hell the developers were thinking.

Console-style role-playing badly needs to move forward, and games like this are just keeping it stuck in the last century.

For some, Shellshock may represent the true horrors of war; for us, it simply embodies the terror of a bad game.

Warriors Orochi is really only for the hardcore fans of the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises. We freely admit that we’re not one of those. You either like it or you don’t. You either care about the story or you don’t. Put Average Joe Gamer and this reviewer down in the “don’t” column.

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.

The real problem is the bland graphics, micromanagement, and repetitive gameplay. Good RTS games know that and tend to create missions you can complete in a variety of ways. Not so here.

Feels like a generic platformer with Looney Tunes characters pasted on top of it. All of the irreverent one-liners in the world can't save it, and neither can half-hearted appearances by supporting characters.

The team-building aspect and gambling mechanics are great, and give the game a bit of a role-play feel, which serves to nearly offset the horrible load times and mediocre fighting action—but not quite.

Everything about the game feels clumsy. The graphics are mediocre, the gameplay is middling and repetitive, and the completely shallow glorification of drug use is either appalling or just plain stupid.

We can't stress how much fun we had with Super Off Road. It truly is one of the more timeless arcade racing games.

More than once we snapped back from a gaming haze, wondering why we were still playing.

While the counter-attacks and the beasts add something to the lacklustre gameplay, everything else from cameras to enemies makes it a chore to slog through one end of a level to another.

Light on substance and heavy on style. If you're a One Piece madman who simply has to have everything to do with the series, it's not a horrible game. It's just not exceptional. As a multiplayer party game, it's good for a quick fix every once in a while.

The whole thing feels exactly like what it is: tacked-on product placement.

While it's definitely the safest route for publishers looking to make a buck on the hottest movie of the month, it sure doesn't make for engaging gameplay.

Even factoring in the many heart-pounding battles with gangs of bloodthirsty zombies, there's no denying that most of the game is spent walking around hallways trying to find a key or some other random object.

A middling action/adventure, The DaVinci Code has some interesting elements and puzzles, but tries too hard to be a jack of all trades. The presentation is mediocre, the combat extraneous and out of place, and the levels uninspired. The puzzles and teamwork elements are the high point, but overall, this is yet another forgettable attempt to cash in on a popular franchise.

If you ever run into one of the erstwhile developers of Stainless Stell Studios, you should probably buy him or her a beer and let them cry on your shoulder; it’s gotta hurt to see a game you made that obviously started out with a lot of potential get released in such an unfinished state.

Yet another DS title that feels like it should have been part of a larger overall game, rather than the entire focus of the product.

The ability to make your own dance patterns is not a dumb idea per se. Dance Factory would be an interesting gimmick if it was attached to an otherwise good DDR clone.

Arena Football may be an engaging sport to watch in real life, with the excitement of packed arenas and the promise of frenzied action on the shortened field, but the developers did a poor job in conveying that sense of atmosphere in the game.

The rest of the Grand Theft Auto series is dirt cheap now, and offers better gameplay in a far more massive world, with vastly superior graphics. So, unless you have absolutely maxed out on all things GTA, it’s unlikely that Liberty City Stories will be anything but a minor curiosity.

The tiny, blocky graphics do little to immerse you into the park, and the unwieldy controls make relatively simple actions needlessly difficult.

The other issue introduced into the game thanks to the PSP hardware is a downright horrible camera.

The same players who found relentless, party-balancing corridor fighting ultimately frustrating in a cute, cartoony game like "Evolution Worlds" won't find it any more refreshing here just because it's wearing a darker, spookier "Aliens" costume.

Squarely intent on holding the middle ground in every sense of the phrase, this isn't a terrible game, but it isn't especially good, either.

It's novel for sure, and most won't regret playing it at all. It's just that, when it gets frustrating, it gets incredibly frustrating. If you have a high tolerance for frustration, and want to check out something completely out of left field, give this one a rental.

But mostly, the game is so lacking in charisma and character that the miles sort of tick away, leaving less impact than a skid mark and the smell of burnt rubber.

The addition of character development is a nice touch, but was handled poorly, and the visuals are almost depressing.

While it does have generally high production values, nobody would give this title a second glance if it didn't have the Dragon Ball Z license attached to it.

With a competent two-player mode, there’s certainly a degree of fun to be had. But Flipnic’s promise of Ultimate Pinball is marred by table design straight out of the '40s.

Various goodies you can unlock and a multiplayer option save the game from being a total washout, but this title is otherwise an uninspired take on a sport that ought to be played at the extreme.

Tenchu just hasn't changed a whole lot since its inception six years ago, and that was hardly acceptable when "Wrath of Heaven" originally came out, last year. It's even less so now.

It feels like every single car in the game is driving around on bald tires. No matter what you do, you'll be sliding off the road.

You’ll have to dig through hours of babying and layers of silliness, strangeness, and awkward dialogue to get to the good stuff.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is easily one of the most original games to come along in a while. It has tons of style, a unique vision and all the makings of a wildly entertaining little franchise. Sadly, its first effort on the Wii isn't disappointing thanks to sloppy platforming, poor camera controls, and lack of any real innovation in terms of gameplay.

Armored Core V is what people have come to expect of mech-combat games: it's fun, pretty, and provides overall smooth gameplay; however it's nothing groundbreaking and is so impossibly confusing that only hardcore fans will truly enjoy it.

Check Six Studios has clearly designed this installment of the Spyro franchise for very young gamers, and with that demographic, the title works well. Unfortunately, this limited scope will bore anyone familiar with other platforming titles.

The game’s haphazard strokes fail to paint a complete picture, and you’ll suffer frequent pauses as you shoot and solve your way to the end.

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

But all of this good stuff is marred by the technical issues. This is especially true concerning the AI, which doesn’t offer up a convincing challenge.

Compared to the numerous improvements and mini-games in the incredibly playable "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4," Evolution Skateboarding feels as if it were already on the brink of extinction.

Clunky controls and one-hit kills, along with a strangely absent option to either quit to the main menu during a game, or have a second player join any time are all annoying. More annoying, however, is that the game just doesn’t feel like a retro revamp of a true classic.

But there's nothing in the game that you haven't already heard blabbed around the water cooler. Besides, if you play the modest mess that is Lost: Via Domus you'll never again wonder if the TV series has jumped the shark. It can't possibly get this muddled.

While an online mode does help alleviate some of the issues found in the single-player game, the severe lack of content makes it really hard to justify a purchase.

The stop-and-go gameplay here seems catered to those with Ritalin prescriptions than those yearning for Mario Kart-style action.

Gamers looking for a long involving experience will be disappointed that the story is not nearly as voluptuous as the female characters; at around 20 hours some will consider it too thin a quest.

Street racing is a scene based on flash and presentation, and Top Gear RPM Tuning simply doesn't have the goods.

At best, Obscure is worth a rental solely for co-op play with a friend. The voice acting, dialogue, and silly looking enemies are surely good for some laughs on a weekend when there's nothing better to do.

The game feels like it was made a few years ago, took few risks, and was just now released. Now it feels dated.

Tenchu’s been chugging along as a slightly-above-average series for quite a while now. And it’s disappointing that such a great concept has once again fallen victim to poor game design and crappy presentation. Even if the online co-op mode ran better, it doesn’t help the product feel any more fun.