The engine is unusual, but it doesn’t look especially good. The storyline is intriguing, but it’s a lot darker and more gruesome than you’d expect from a Sherlock Holmes tale.

A fantastic first entry for the series on the Wii. EA has done a lights-out job, and for SSX fans, this is a great sign of awesome things to come. The game is flat-out hard, and again, it will take you quite some time to master. When you do, though, it is just plain fun.

I’m willing to let the outstanding plot carry the somewhat lesser though still enjoyable combat engine and the thinness of the RPG elements of Jade Empire.

The sound in Homecourt is spectacular. From the excellent narration of the players’ tales to the on-the-court trash talk, the sound is awesome.

Supreme Commander is still mountains of fun; it's just that the gratification is delayed, instead of instant. I think this should be commended.

It's refreshing to play a title that is both old school in its gameplay, but new school in its storytelling.

I was a little annoyed when the ancient mysteries ended up revolving around the Knights Templar and the Ark of the Covenant. Haven’t those two things been involved in enough ancient mysteries without trotting them out for yet another?

Easily the best game I’ve played so far this year. Its highly-stylish graphics, mostly-smooth gameplay, incredible music, and fantastic voice acting combined to create an experience that I won’t forget, and one that I hope is enjoyed by anyone with a love for RPGs.

If you are a big-time college hoops aficionado, I believe you’ll be able to look past the flaws of this game and appreciate the college atmosphere and intensity it brings. EA is definitely on the right track.

Lost Planet brings to the table an awkward shooter with no story to speak of and whose general gameplay mechanics are somewhat flawed or incomplete. However, there are players out there who may just want to shoot some bugs out in the cold.

I hate to pound on a game that at least tries to be different, but Vigil needs a bunch more polish and a bunch more content before I’d even consider it to be a full game, let alone something worth buying, and so you should be wary of it, even at the $10 bargain price it has now.

A mess by almost any comparison. These aren’t tears of rapturous joy running down my cheeks – they are instead the expression of my realization that the Star Trek gaming curse has yet again resulted in a horrific shambling zombie monster of a Star Trek game.

The presentation is fine, and RoboBlitz's sheer challenge factor will probably attract serious platformer fans. It's frustrating, though, and all the moreso when a seemingly simple task just refuses to work for no good reason.

The sound effects are adequate and the music does its job, but it would have been nice to see some of these characters talk or emote a little bit, even if just for laughs.

The production values of the game are just fine. The train looks authentic, the voice acting is believable, and there are several quality cinematic sequences sprinkled throughout the investigation. But what you do in the adventure isn’t all that fun or exciting, and so I’m not exactly sure who would enjoy it.

Rainbow Six Vegas represents a return to glory for the franchise, with a renewed emphasis on tactics, a brilliant cover system, new high-tech gadgets, challenging missions and a multiplayer component that’ll keep you coming back for more.

The controls are new and innovative, but to a large percentage of racing fans they won’t seem to fit.

I think it’s important that the developers allow players to drop the original vocal from the track. Not only does it make it difficult to hear yourself during playback, but it also counteracts the essence of the Freestyle Mode.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz is one of the most fun Wii titles out there, and makes the best use of the controls.

If you are a fan of mini-games, then Rayman Raving Rabbids is easy to recommend. Though some games are repeated in different forms, and some controls problems are present, there is certainly plenty of fun to be had.

It can be a great service to fans of Fantasy Battles and medieval warfare in general; the issue is that it demands a perfect storm of circumstances to fully enjoy it.

The depth of the diplomacy, the many well-balanced factions, the intelligent layout of the interface, that all indicates to me a game design crew that really had its stuff together. While I don’t think as a game reviewer it would be appropriate for me to penalize a game for being too involved, I do think the pace of this game, the amount of plotting and planning versus the amount of payoff, is a little out of whack.

The graphic design seems a bit smoother than you might remember it from back in the day, no doubt due to whatever tweaks Konami has done to it for the Xbox 360.

It's short, at about 8 hours in length, and the last level and a half seems abrupt. I still feel like there’s a rail sequence missing when the squad tears away from the mansion in the APC... It also doesn't necessarily take the third-person shooter to new heights. What it does, however, is present one of the best looking and sounding games whose gameplay is as polished as it gets, with intense shootouts, exciting boss battles, and sleep-depriving online play.

In the end, I still feel as though Call of Duty 2 offered a superior singleplayer experience to Call of Duty 3. The later relies too much on the numbers game, particularly with the use of German respawns, and while the result is a more action-packed experience, the battles simply aren’t as memorable.

An anecdote: I was in the grocery store this past weekend when I heard a song playing over the P.A. I don’t remember the name of it, just that it was an old 80s rock tune. As I stood there in the dairy section, all I could think of at that moment was how cool it would be to play that song in Guitar Hero II. That’s the kind of infectious effect this game has, you’ll never listen to another rock song the same way again.

It's an MMORPG without the second M or the O, and while it's not perfect by a damn sight, it's better than the last few FF games have been.

The adventure is rich and detailed, the D&D freak can go positively orgasmic with statistics, and the user community is undoubtedly going to create nearly limitless modules for the less-initiated among us to explore and experience.