For anyone who has already played CS, it’s quite annoying having to suddenly unlock maps, especially since every one included here has been playable in CS forever. Additionally, many of the level requirements are counter-intuitive.

This is essentially the same game they’ve been making for years with a couple new characters and updated graphics.

The Game Gear titles are a welcome bonus, but having to play through the broken game just to get them is a hassle.

Despite its solid delivery and the admittedly groovy prospect of controlling Sauron and Saruman in Moria, the notable gameplay and pacing problems bring the whole adventure down in a hail of arrows.

If the main Dragon Quest series is the main course, then Dragon Quests Swords is a frothy aperitif - not enough to fill you up completely, but appetizing enough to get you interested in the next meal.

That's the basic problem with this title; it is built on an outdated 3-D fighting engine. This leads to frustrating control issues and limited types of attacks you can perform.

Comparing World Poker Tour to "World Series of Poker" is like asking if you'd rather be short & fat or ugly & stupid. The generally competent A.I. and career mode make this one the better choice, but your best bet is to leave both flops on the table and find a new game altogether.

A fundamentally flawed game. It's a skateboarding game that's trying to be a snowboarding game, instead of trying even harder to be a good snowboarding game.

A lackadaisical, recycled romp that tries to emulate the Splinter Cell experience. But without the good graphics, A.I. or multiplay, all it does is put the “Why?!” in spy.

As bad as this game is, young scooter fans will eat it up. After all, it's got a monopoly on the scooter game market and is really simple to understand.

The whole package is so bland, boring, and unremarkable (and tedious - moving those guys around so you feel like you have a team that can win!) that it's similar to PB&J on white bread. Bad analogy? Well, it's just as imaginative as Blue Dragon Plus, so it fits.

Given how much repetition is in the game, one would think it was much longer than its six to eight hour length. The lack of any kind of multiplayer hurts it further. And the final stake to the heart is the appallingly abrupt and inconclusive ending.

Really, with the Wii controller and nunchuck the game becomes even more tedious.

Despite the hype, Legend of Dragoon is a soulless creature, a subpar game held aloft by deceptive marketing. Don't trust it.

Its moments of thrilling gameplay and competition-rich multiplayer are sideswiped by bad performance, the poor implementation of Slam, and frequent glitches. The series might have once had potential to be revived, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 makes sure that all signs of life have been squeezed out of it.

Sadly, we instead have a game that is largely built around wasting the player’s time, with half-baked RPG mechanics doing little to enhance the experience, ultimately hindering the better parts and drawing attention to the lost potential.

The bottom line is that I play games to have fun. While I found the handling and tracks fun, I have no desire to play a game whose difficulty curve turns it into a second job because it demands near-perfection from the outset. Chances are, if this game is for you, you've already bought it.

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.

This concept behind Storm does have potential, but until it feels more controlled and less like an irritating crapshoot, I'm going to have to pass. The presentation is all well and good, but only when there's a game that's wrapped in that little blanket am I interested. Storm looks like a comfy blanket… until them damn wildfires start up and slowly spread across my controller.

Add new ships, new weapons, new maps, new enemies and a few more colors, and this thing goes from less than ho-hum to slightly above average. As it stands now, Pulstar is not a game I can easily recommend.

I wish I could feel like Boss! meant something other than a cheap throwaway downloadable, but sometimes video games we love become the story all on their own. I couldn’t find that in Boss! though you may have an excuse to download a handful of PSN games this holiday season.

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

Unless you're an aquatic dinosaur fanatic who has a thing for submarines and listening to facts about dinosaurs, you're probably not going to enjoy this. Your time would be better spent at a local museum; at least they have the cool dinosaurs there and not just the underwater ones. [Tested both Vive and Rift]

When I started Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable, I was looking forward to a charming, if uninspired, shooter for on-the-go action. What I found was just the uninspired part. Fans of the series will certainly find a lot to love, but the uninitiated should steer clear. As playable games go, Sandlot and D3 have packed plenty of gameplay in, but the charm quickly fades and all your left with is more invading ants.

Not even the basic shooting of Moss Destruction can hang, even in the best case scenario. And when the core is a bit rotten, that’s not a good sign.

Knack may be built on the blocks of charm and difficulty, but by the fourth level, those blocks topple over into a pile of excess tedium.

Rather than spend time with this frustrating game, do yourself a favor and just import Gundam Breaker 3.

If you're a racing fanatic, I probably can't save you from spending your money on this one, but anyone with a sense of the value inherent in $30 needs to direct their attention to one of the many other PlayStation Vita launch titles priced at the same level.