Housewives, students, grandparents everywhere, be warned: Bejeweled 3 is coming to snatch away your afternoons.

There's no real creative risk being taken, and while that might be just fine for sales figures, it doesn't bode well for Call of Duty: Black Ops' ability to stand out artistically in the immensely flooded FPS market.

Of course, And Yet It Moves only scratches the surface of possibility, but it is a journey absolutely worth taking.

Despite these minor miscues, Ys Seven proves that you can tweak a classic game series without ruining it in the process.

My highest possible praise goes out to Shinji Mikami and Platinum Games, and my sympathies go out to every third-person shooter that comes after Vanquish-it's an impossible act to follow

Rather than representing a revitalization of the Sonic brand, Sonic 4 is a failed, desperate grasp at recapturing its former glory.

Shattered Dimension was an interesting experiment, but on the whole I'd have rather just played Spider-Man Noir.

It's a beautiful title with many nice moments, and I want to extend my congratulations to the team for such a noticeable step up. That said, neither the gameplay nor the plot and characters were strong enough to put it over the top.

While it may feel painful, grueling, and even outright sadistic at times, there's no denying the skill and craftsmanship that went into Super Meat Boy.

After playing through both The Signal and The Writer, the biggest impression I'm left with is that these two chunks of game (hateful combat aside) are better than anything that came on Alan Wake's retail disc. They illustrate Alan as a character, they immerse him in a world of his own internal madness, and they play to the strength of the premise in a way that actually makes sense. I can honestly say that if these levels had been included in the main campaign, my overall evaluation would've been significantly higher.

Like any scientific breakthrough or new invention, Hydrophobia does represent a significant achievement in its own right. We're just going to have to wait until someone does anything worthwhile with it.

Aside from the misstep of the stunted co-op mode, every other aspect of Etrian Odyssey III has been vetted and manicured to ensure that the game provides the highest quality dungeon-crawling conceivable.

In a game absolutely packed with embarrassing relics of the first Halo-silly Covenant vehicle design, the Spartans' ridiculous looking low-G jump existing alongside a modern physics engine, the return to one gun at a time-Bungie chose to fix only a multiplayer game mode.

I came into Recettear expecting a simple sim game with some spoofy self-aware humor, but it's so much more than that. The sheer amount of depth is staggering, and the game is extremely good at throwing the player something new every now and then to keep things feeling fresh.

Any way you slice it, Plants vs. Zombies is a win.

Shadow Broker is the best Mass Effect 2 DLC by an interstellar mile.

Annoyances aside, Batman: The Brave and the Bold is a fun romp through corners of the DC Universe, in terms of both characters and characterization, that have been underutilized.

For such a short game, there's quite a bit of fun to be had in Dead Rising: Case Zero. This is a definite improvement over the first title (plus you can actually read the font on a standard definition TV this time around) and has me completely excited for Dead Rising 2.

The innovations are few, and the unskippable story is outright destructive of the series' heritage.

In rudely flipping Gunblade NY & L.A. Machineguns onto store shelves for some quick cash, Sega has shown that they can't be bothered. If that's true, then why should anyone else?

Mafia II is every bit as soulless and dull as its bland sociopathic protagonist

While Ivy the Kiwi? is an incredibly cute character and makes a valiant attempt to bring back a style of game that few developers have attempted in recent years, the core concept never quite finds happy coexistence with the player interface. For project as simple and straightforward as this one, that particular barrier proves too great to overcome.

While many players won't initially be able to experience the game the way it was intended, once the online patch becomes available, I would recommend it without reservation to anyone who's got at least one game-playing friend.

There isn't much else to say about the four-hour experience. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days would probably feel like a better game if many other games never happened, including its own prequel.

Monday Night Combat may not come with as many of the bells and whistles of a bigger game, but the sweet, bacon-filled core is tasty enough on its own-even if it is a bit lean.

StarCraft II is not ground-breaking. It will not have the same lasting impact on gaming that its predecessor did. There's no way it ever could. It will, however, be remembered as a worthy sequel to one of the all-time greats.

After playing through both The Signal and The Writer, the biggest impression I'm left with is that these two chunks of game (hateful combat aside) are better than anything that came on Alan Wake's retail disc. They illustrate Alan as a character, they immerse him in a world of his own internal madness, and they play to the strength of the premise in a way that actually makes sense. I can honestly say that if these levels had been included in the main campaign, my overall evaluation would've been significantly higher.

Limbo is without question a visceral, virtuoso performance of the kind that grips a person from start to finish.