The learning curve is steep, and the first half-dozen battles serve to show you the ropes. After this initiation, things pick up and Kingdom becomes quite compelling.

Tense gunfights, unnerving corridor crawls, a surprisingly engaging plot, fantastic sound work, and gameplay that provides an entertaining mix of old-school action and exploration all help make this a solid science fiction gaming experience.

A perfect example of why shooters have become such a niche genre. It's a good game that's well made. It's even got an interesting hook to keep the hard core happy. But the insane difficulty will keep most players from getting past the first level before giving up. And with the ultra-short playing time, even shooter fans might not find enough to like here.

Despite some frustrating and inconsistent controls and an overpowering serve/volley design, Smash Court Tennis 3 offers a deep and rewarding tennis experience.

Succeeds in the crucial areas where a strategic card game should. It’s got a solid set of rules and is fun to play. We would like to see more cards, though – 139 is just enough to keep things interesting. As a video game, it leaves a bit to be desired in terms of looks and innovation.

Race Pro is less Michael Schumacher and more Jacques Villeneuve. It does a few things well, a lot of things mediocre, and is kind of annoying when you have to deal with it for more than an hour at a time.

A solid foot soldier, meeting gamers' expectations and occasionally rising above and beyond the call of duty. But like a new recruit, it misses the mark more than once.

The questionable control layout makes actually enjoying the good points harder than it should be.

Easily the game's worst trait is its sound. The Formula One cars sound more like lawn mowers burning nitrous oxide than like the most responsive and powerful automobiles in existence.

The overhead camera feels constrained. We simply want an isometric view to get a better perspective.

If you can get past the graphics and immerse yourself in the gameplay, you might be disappointed at the lack of depth.

Basically, if looks aren’t important to you; if a great personality and big brain is your thing, this is the game for you.

The presence of only two playable sides, mission brevity, and overall simplicity will likely be a disappointment to some fans. However, it's a competently designed and well-packaged game that should appeal to casual gamers.

Over 20 truly bizarre and inspired characters, great backdrops, fantastic special moves, and plenty of game modes all add up to a solid, if faulty package.

The emphasis on huge battles and great action does manage to shine through, but this release still feels half-baked.

It has tons of potential and just begs to be liked. And we do like it. After all, this may be the first game that can play itself while you’re playing something else.

Our beef is more with the choice of porting it to the PSP and then skimping on multiplayer. Without easy multiplayer match-ups, the game just doesn’t have legs.

Ridiculously difficult.

There's good work here, on the graphics, the soundtrack, the interface, and even the combat system, for all that it doesn't work out in the long run.

Stuntman's most noticeable flaw is the load time before a level, which takes upward of a minute whether you are playing it for the first time or restarting it.

Since you play every role on your first time through the game there’s not much new to experience should you repeat the journey. Again, we have to lament the fact that you can’t draft a capable friend to help you on your quest. The absence of this feature is quite vexing indeed.

There’s something almost absurd about paying for a game that inundates you with a constant stream of ads.

Hardcore fans might balk at the scaled back customization, but new players should be able to get up and running quickly.

While over a thousand cards may look good in print, picking through cards that wouldn’t be fit for the spokes of your bike five years ago seems like a let down.

And what's with all the text? One thing that continually aggravated our group of casual gamer test subjects (relatives we roped into playing) was the inordinate amount of text you need to wade through while you're playing.

Players looking for another MegaTen may still be disappointed, of course – if you want more of those out-there visuals and dark fantasy themes, then go ahead and stick with Atlus’ own home-grown games. If a more grown-up Pokemon sounds like a good time, though, Jewel Summoner’s a great choice.

If you're going to hit your audience with meta-humor about wireframe graphics, you ought to follow up with gameplay that gives them just as much credit.

With graphics and a soundtrack that are identical to SBaM, and the eight returning characters unchanged by even a hair, this game is more like a re-release of SBaM than its own unique title.