The film came out a year ago and we’ve already endured one tragic game offering. This one is far better than that mess (which admittedly isn’t saying very much) and despite its fundamental flaws, the game delivers some decent fun.

Lots of gamers will probably want more time to arrange their towers perfectly or even help a few citizens out in side quests. As Dillon's objectives multiply, it can knock the delicate balance you've got between attacking and defending out of whack. Reigning it back in, fending off a difficult wave, and deftly manipulating the stylus feels rewarding. Even the stoically grim-faced Dillon would crack a smile at his own game's best moments.

Like a luxury car with a rusted engine or a fudge sundae made with frozen yogurt, Advent Rising is a study in untapped potential. Although the core gameplay and concepts are really good, the package is marred by execution errors left and right.

If you've ever played and enjoyed an Armored Core game before, you have to buy V now. No questions asked. It's the best the series has ever seen and the online mode is balanced and deep, providing legs it desperately needs to contain a community. Even if you've never played an AC game before, now is the time to try. We're entering the golden age of mechs trying to blow each other up.

Flock! is an interesting, inventive, and mostly enjoyable puzzler, with its own style and challenge.

Touchmaster 3 is probably going to sit on a shelf somewhere. Only pick up Touchmaster 3 if you want a "chaser" or something to let off a bit of steam.

The lack of modes and overly complex control could be forgiven. Hell, I could even overlook the lack of voices (characters <I>and</I> announcers), but no save feature? WWF Raw really feels half-finished.

The fact that so little has changed combined with the weak GC-ism either suggests that Capcom thinks GC owners are mental invalids, or that Capcom doesn't think much about GC owners at all.

A watered-down RPG with a few flaws that take some of the fun out of it. My first inclination was to compare the dilemmas in this game to those of the Scarecrow: No brain. But this game has maybe too much brain. It's very logical and Xseed definitely put a lot of thought into making it very playable. The problem with TWOBYBR, though, is more like the Tin Man's: No heart.

While the fights from the show transfer well to the game’s arena, there’s just not much depth. If you’re looking for an entry point into the My Hero phenomena, steer clear of this game. It does no favors for newcomers since it requires some initial knowledge.

It's hard not to appreciate the artistry behind The Rub Rabbits, but it's quite easy to write off its boring, repetitive gameplay.

I also have to wonder what part of the world Uncle Sam dug up my own squad mates. They could often be seen running in circles and constantly blocking my line of fire. At least they were resilient; one of the guys was turned into Swiss cheese by an enemy bayonet and shrugged it off like nothing happened. Tough guys&#133;tough guys.

Vanishing Point suffers from fatal conceptual flaws. Complete reliance on unlockable features, limited choices of starting vehicles and tracks, and staggered opponent start times have taken what could have been a good game and ruined it.

Its style and abundance of butt-kicking goodness provide enough fun for the whole ninja clan, though it's a little light on depth for the more hardcore fighters.

Like attendants at a holy temple, developers like this keep the torches lit for any wandering players looking for a gateway into a bygone era. And those willing to track down this temple will likely feel right at home.

It’s not to say that Port Royale 4 is a bad game. It’s just unambitious. It fails to distinguish itself in any way. It’s a good distraction for a few hours, but not a title many will find themselves returning to in the long run.

But if you’re someone who’s been out of school for a while and wants to remember what it’s like to feel the sting and confusion of a mysterious grading system, or if you’re someone who desperately needs a summertime grading fix while school’s out, then by all means, check this out.

Though it isn’t the freshest rhythm game in the world, Beatmania hits the stage rocking thanks to a pretty large list of tunes, a groovy controller and tons of modes and options.

From a value perspective, you're dealing with a feature-film's worth of content for fifty bucks. Independently wealthy, rabid fanboys might want to check it out, otherwise we'd leave this fox to the dogs.

A heaping bowl of mediocrity that quickly turns soggy in drenched pints of blood.

It's just not hard enough. I beat the Grand Prix mode in about an hour and a half on my first try. I completed Champion's Revolution in the same time without losing one fight. I beat 21 straight opponents in my first shot at the Ironman endurance mode.

The decidedly fragile environments and variety of units give players a sense of having something to fight for in both campaign and multiplayer beyond the unchanging battlefields of the typical turn-based strategy game. More depth and better delivery would have made this war far more civil.

Instead of the in-your-face outright scare without substance, Maiden of Black Water goes for a sense of dread paired with an insatiable curiosity to know what happened next. It's a welcome re-introduction to the franchise in the West, a hit for the Wii U, which is still trying to prove it can appeal to "Mature" gamers.

Even though it isn't a long game, Fancy Pants Adventures oozes with charm.

There’s so much about it to like—the wonderful visuals, easy-to-understand battle system, sensible leveling system and just enough personality to make a call to arms charming. If it didn’t make me also consider punching either myself or my system, this could be one of my favorite games.

I really wanted to like Forced Showdown. Maybe there’s something about it that just didn’t *click* with me. Too many half-baked ideas does not a casserole make, my mother always said. If they had taken the time to expand on what makes each of the genres compelling, this could have been a whole different review. Instead, it’s a hot mess on your keyboard.

A fun but ultimately forgettable RTS. It&#146;s a guided, open-topped bus tour of Middle Earth where you only stop at a the tourist places, buy a snow globe with a miniature Lothlorien inside, eat some Frodo-Fries, and never get to see any of the real place.

I can't shake the feeling that Star Wars: Bounty Hunter started off as a grand and ambitious project that got pushed out into space before it was ready.

As it stands, though, Teenage Zombies is a mediocre game at best, offering less and less incentive and getting increasingly repetitive the more you play.

From the half-hearted RPG elements that either needed to be expanded upon or removed to the frustrating story layout, there are too many issues that get in the way of enjoying creating a bristling magical city.

Sniper Elite V2 certainly includes much more sniping techniques than your normal action shooter, which makes it different and fun to play, but it needs more of a storyline and varied missions to emphasize those features. Despite its sub-par and repetitive gameplay, there is still much to do after the SP campaign is completed, making this game worthy enough to at least try it out and see if you have steady aim.

The troublesome touch controls result in a lesser experience, but at its core Broken Sword 5 is still a solid adventure game.

Taken as a whole, there's a lot of content in SOCOM 4.

Overall, Nier has its ups and downs. There are brief moments where you can see the influence from more brilliant games, such as Zelda and Bayonetta, shining through, but the overall experience is lukewarm at its best moments.

Surely, if it weren't for the awful, unnecessarily nihilistic item management, I could easily recommend The UnderGarden to just about anyone.

The moment-to-moment activity of open-world Spider-Man is finally clean, smooth, and fun.

In the end, Wreckateer has all the hassle of the Kinect, all the smoke-up-your-ass style of Peggle, all the gameplay of Angry Birds, and a little Shrek-style humor for good measure.

The solid firefights make for fun action sequences and the laugh-out-loud NPC dialogue really helps the progression of an otherwise uninspired storyline.

A solid single-player experience… and if you happen to have three History Channel-watching friends who have also purchased this particular odd-bird World War II strategy title, you’re set for what passes for a wild war gamer’s Samstag Nacht.

Astonishingly, this series is showing progress. If you owned the first Rocky, there is not much new here beyond playing as other characters, though newcomers will undoubtedly appreciate the way the game pays homage to the films.

However, this content pack falls prey to the same problem as the Battle of Forli does - its content belonged in the original game in the first place.

It's a whole lot of “blah” in a tiny piece of plastic.

It’s not a phenomenal killer app that will keep you playing for hours, but it will certainly make a bus ride feel a little bit shorter as you kick people in the face to the dulcet tones of Papa Roach.

It's an enjoyable, cheap that tastes great, but doesn’t fill the stomach for very long and leaves you longing for more substantial fare.

If you're hankering for some highly difficult, ninja-dismemberment action that prizes precision play, it's a pretty good buy. If high difficulty annoys you or you prefer to play as a damage-tank who can soak a lot of hits, avoid at all costs.

It was nice revisiting the Dojo (Kick, Punch, It's all in the mind!), getting driving lessons, and selling junk at the flea market. It was like having old friends come to visit for a spell. But these old friends are all quirky and weird now, and they smell funny. The technical shortcomings give the game very low replay value, much different than the original.

Shadowrun’s impressive array of skills and magic gives standard first-person shooters a run for their money, but its lack of game modes or rewards or even a rewarding feeling slows this game to a walk.

The Gamecube version of Prisoner of Azkaban features a few mini-games that can be played as bonus activities as well as the ability to hook up a GBA and take care of a pet owl, which is not very fun. Compared to the PS2's EyeToy games, the extras here are pretty thin.

In another timeline, this would have been a wholly linear experience, tightly paced with a fun narrative that focused entirely on Ms. Marvel’s growth as she sought out the different Avengers in exciting locations, both on Earth and off-world. This could have been complemented with an entirely separate co-op experience.

Aside from some nice graphics and levels design, it simply fails to offer much more than a subpar swing through the city.

The selection of modes is weak. In the 360 game, you can only play through the dynasty mode or a single game or tournament. There is no single-season option or practice options. No mini-games either.

An average game built on a lot of great, borrowed ideas. The playability is good and there are plenty of tricks to be tried, but folks with more active imaginations and sensitive fingers might want to stay away from this C-class jump-fest.

MLB Power Pros 2008 sits and stares you down from the television like a catcher who gives his pitcher bad signals.

Combine equal parts Super Mario 64, Japanese soap opera, Telly Tubbies, and LSD freakout. Shake (don't stir). And pour into your Nintendo. This will approximate the effect of Mystical Ninja, the most incomprehensible of incomprehensible anime games I have ever seen. Confusing, obtuse, ridiculous and very, very mediocre.

The idea of an open-ended, multi-squad, strategic, cooperative shooter is incredible, and during those short bursts when Red River comes together-especially when playing with friends-there are few games like it. But there are so many issues, both large and small, that you'll have to overlook a lot of flaws in order to enjoy it.

It's worth some time to play through if you enjoy a more tactical battle system than you're likely to find in a more well-known franchise, but unless that's enough to hold your attention, methinks you're going to be disappointed with this latest Growlanser.

Adventure Time's main fault is its length. It's a short game, which feels a bit like a downloadable title for console in size. It does have a New Game Plus mode with harder enemies, but starting the game with all the existing upgrades did not seem to be that much more challenging, even with an increased difficulty level.

In short, this game is entirely underwhelming. The storyline tries to be interesting, but just appears a muddled mess of stereotypes; the characters themselves look alright, but set pieces are empty and boring and littered with invisible walls pointing in only a few directions for exploration; and the battle system isn’t much for “battling” at all, even against the “tough” boss characters.

If the actual tennis wasn’t tedious and mundane, you wouldn’t have to ask whether Sega Superstars Tennis was just used to justify a reunion of Sega characters, or the other way around.

I played on the PS4, which most definitely added to my frustration. The beginning is especially overwhelming as the menu options are so dull and dense. There's just too much text to read on my HDTV. (On a PC, I assume with the screen up close, it's not a big deal.) RTSs are often not suited for consoles, and this is sadly one such example.

Yes, it feels extremely stiff and archaic at spots, but it's still playable and totally worth diving into.

This game features bland, unmemorable beats and lyrics. You don't get anything close to the kick ass reggae dub of the flea market scene in the original or Chop Chop Master Onion's awesome intro.

An average game. It's got a lot of good ideas that we've seen before, but isn't able to pull it all together. Still, it's got a decent story and extras that will continue to challenge after Racing Life is done.

Despite its flaws, Innocent Life is an interesting and fun take on a familiar game. With a few tweaks to the pacing and goal structure, ArtePiazza could have made a strong entry into this strange farming sim.

This particular revisit gave me a newfound respect for Yu Suzuki and his singular vision for what Shenmue is.

There simultaneously needed to be a lot more of Rage 2 and lot less; a lot more depth in its driving, story, and missions and a lot less repeated content and long stretches of empty landscape. With all of the fluff in between frenetic firefights, most of Rage 2‘s incredible moments are bookended by elements that are underbaked by comparison. But id’s knack for making impeccable first-person shooting mechanics makes Rage 2 succeed despite having faults that would doom a lesser shooter.

The plot is weird enough that some collectors and video game novelty-seekers might find it worth their money, but ultimately, nothing can save Haunting Ground from its own tedious gameplay. Run and hide, indeed.

Although CivCity: Rome is just as good a game as it was fifteen years ago, it’s still an almost direct port of Caesar II with 3D graphics and the sly marketing gimmick of sharing a name with one of the all-time greats. We recommend sacking another town.

If you’re willing to play a decent brawler that’s regularly interrupted by junky D-grade platforming to get to the madness, you’ll get a lot out of it. If you’re looking for a gameplay tour-de-force instead of a weird trip, you should probably look elsewhere.

Compared to the PS2's EyeToy games and the Gamecube's GBA connectivity option, the Xbox version got shafted for extras.

Let's be straight here: Harmony of Despair is a frustrating game. What should have been a step forward into new territory seems to have landed in some sticky bat guano.

Standards for fighting games have risen dramatically since the first game in the series was released. The bizarre implementation of the story mode and the lack of other things to spend your time doing really hurts the game. Also, it lacks quite a few characters that the previous title had and just isn't the evolution for the series I think Square and Team Ninja were going for.

Simply a subpar port of a pretty good PC strategy game. The difficult controls coupled with the difficult gameplay lead to a game that's just too difficult for most console gamers, and not in a good way.

However, this content pack falls prey to the same problem as the Battle of Forli does - its content belonged in the original game in the first place.

Blowing stuff up in Demolition is definitely fun in all its Star Wars glory, but the more you play, the more you'll notice the imbalance in gameplay.

Double Cross is an up and down ride, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s another dimension out there.

If you’re a One Piece fan through and through, and if you don’t mind the slow grind of finding items as long as the action is fast and furious, then this is booty in your video game treasure trove. But as much as there is enough swashbuckling to make you a badass pirate, there is just as much to make you a grubby landlubber.

If CounterSpy doesn’t look like the kind of game you’d want to play, don’t. Even for indie fanatics it’s missable, though I doubt you’d want to give up the visuals or the procedurally generated levels.

If you're a Resident Evil fan already, you've probably already pre-ordered the game and will enjoy the co-op gameplay sections and the continuation of the story-as fragmented as it is-from previous entries. If you're not, and are looking for an exemplary title in the series to try out, I suggest the 3DS-exclusive Resident Evil: Revelations, or if you're limited to the consoles, Resident Evil 4, instead.

But the most surprising aspect is how polished the game is - not just in its approach to storytelling, but in general gameplay and its mechanics.

In an industry where it seems like just about everything has been tried before, Miitopia's willingness to try something new is commendable, albeit uninteresting in execution. It's a simple game with a couple great ideas that are often let down by a story that is too timid to step outside its comfort zone.

There are scattered elements throughout the game that come across as shockingly unfinished, or at least dismayingly unpolished.

The multitude of enemies, unique implementation of the SPR4 and a few nicely done weather effects make for a solid experience, though this is ultimately undermined by the twitchy control, awful camera and lack of free movement.

With a little effort, they really could have done a lot more with Pirate Hunter, like adding some personal stats and experience to you character, skills like swordfighting or cannon-laying or allowing you to hire specific crew members with different skills.

An average game. It's got a lot of good ideas that we've seen before, but isn't able to pull it all together. Still, it's got a decent story and extras that will continue to challenge after Racing Life is done.

Oddworld: Soulstorm took Oddworld Inhabitants over two decades to fully realize so it’s disappointing that it came out in the state that it did. Numerous bugs are just one part of the problem as its lack of a quicksave and unwieldy controls cause a lot of easily avoidable irritation. Solving its one-of-a-kind sneaky puzzles can be fairly gratifying at times and its impeccably animated cutscenes are nothing short of amazing, but this is a mixed batch of Soulstorm brew that deserved more time in the production factory.

D4 is a game that knows what it is. It’s quirky and odd with an outrageous story and over-the-top characters, and that may not sit well with some people, but that’s the kind of game Swery is known to make.

Ultimately, the dated feel, dumb enemies and repetitive gameplay leave you wanting more. The blood is decent and Osamu Tezuka tells a great story, but the will to play just isn't there.

While Tecmo Bowl Throwback definitely scratches your nostalgia itch (if you have one), it's just plain and not very fun in the long run in this day and age.

The dream of a Sega-filled game that actually lives up to the legacy of Sega remains to be fulfilled.

Order of the Pheonix is all about homework and chores, and feels harder to take in than a whole book - those are poor marks for a video game.

What the Vita lacks in software, it makes up for in opportunity. UI tweaks, perfectly mapped controls, and a beautiful translation to the Vita's portable screen make it perfect for anyone traveling for the summer, sitting on the toilet in need of PS2 greatness, or even people like me who just missed Jak & Daxter's adventures the first time around.

The solid story, decent backgrounds and cool gadgets just aren't enough to offset the lame animation, awful control and bland action.

Unfortunately, they have opted for color over realism. This is not a good thing, as it gives the game a cartoony look and can make it difficult to tell the difference between a dirt road and, say, that mud embankment up ahead.

Not recommended for those who crave speed. Remember folks, you won't be driving a Skyline, NSX, or even a Gremlin. You will be at the helm of a big diesel monstrosity. Head down a straightaway, give your 500hp vehicle some juice and your will notice an 80 mph top speed.

The idea of an open-ended, multi-squad, strategic, cooperative shooter is incredible, and during those short bursts when Red River comes together-especially when playing with friends-there are few games like it. But there are so many issues, both large and small, that you'll have to overlook a lot of flaws in order to enjoy it.

Franchise and online options have been left out, the batting system is mindless and the graphics are really choppy. In a way, this game’s poor performance actually benefits you, the consumer, because you should know without any doubt that this is not the baseball game you want for your PSP.

While Evolution is largely based on the original, can be a bit repetitive with puzzles that aren’t all that compelling, and has run-and-gun gameplay that might be a bit too basic, it is still highly entertaining. I recommend this to gamers who enjoy a tongue-in-cheek, cinematic platformer that oozes bloody cartoon carnage by the bucket load.