Although the implementation is very limited and the series of five missions can be completed in an hour or less, I greatly enjoyed taking the Hammerhead for a spin—doubly so, since I felt that Mass Effect 2's removal of both Mako and planetary exploration was a huge error.

As a dungeon crawler, Strange Journey is abominable. As an SMT, it's unforgivable.

As it is, I can only recommend it to those who have the patience and tolerance to work through significant frustration for the reward of a satisfying story about interesting people.

Of course, all of these problems are present in other games where I have not minded them so much, but Metro 2033 is such a short, focused experience that the cumulative impact of its flaws is significant.

The strength of the game's opening sequences and some of the bosses really stuck with me, but some of the later levels just felt kind of...bleh. As far as being the show-stopper that blows the rest of the series away, it falls short.

Although the controls were solidly implemented, the graphics were some of the best I've seen on the Wii, and I do believe the developers' hearts were in the right place, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is a tedious, trying experience that didn't offer enough reason for me to carry on in spite of its downsides.

I think it's safe to say that the cliché expression is true—players that enjoyed Origins will enjoy this as well, and future returns to Thedas will definitely be welcome. However, when it's all said and done I couldn't help but feel that the immersion was a little thin due to the relatively small amount of content.

Unfortunately, Resonance of Fate gets almost everything wrong and even screws up what it got right.

It's Mega Man, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'll keep playing them as long as they keep making them, but that doesn't mean that this new iteration isn't vulnerable to the same stagnation that the original series was.

While it's not quite the final word on JRPGs, Final Fantasy XIII represents the felicitous first steps on the path to a destination well worth reaching.

Always challenging but never impossible, Echoshift goes out of its way to cater to the player in ways that very few titles do, making it an easy game to love

The controls and interaction with the game world are suspect at best and downright awful at worst. And even looking past that I still come away disappointed. The script is weak, the characters' interactions/motivations are often left unexplained, and the voice acting is mediocre in some places and bad in others. The only thing Heavy Rain really has going for it is the composition of some of the individual scenes, and that's not nearly enough to carry the whole game on its own. So in the end we don't have much of anything except the spectre of what might have been.

For players who've never had the chance to partake of Metal Slug's particular brand of madness or for those hopelessly devoted to the series, Metal Slug XX will certainly be worth the time invested. For those (like myself) who may still have feelings for the Slugs but can't deny having been there and done that, there's not much reason to sign up for another tour of duty.

The fact that this game could transform me from a stony-faced, veteran gamer into someone's over-enthusiastic, flailing uncle who doesn't understand how controllers work is itself proof of how Sumo Digital's synthesis of sight, sound and play has resulted in a uniquely intense and compulsively playable experience.

I could go on, but over the course of this review I've already described a litany of qualities that should win over players who appreciate mature RPG experiences with quality commensurate to the amount of time spent in them. However, there's no getting around the fact that first impressions will likely turn a lot of potential adventurers off.

A larger budget might have saved the driving physics and improved the experience of the town, but no amount of money could repair the terrible writing and wrong-headed design that really sink Deadly Premonition.

Ragnarok DS's problem is that decisions that are forgivable in a free MMO are really grating in a single-player game that costs money.

In the culmination of this story BioShock 2 outdoes the original and establishes its own worth, with a closing sequence that hits every note perfectly.

Regardless of the things that I found unsatisfactory, I'm quite glad that Atlus took a big risk in bringing Shiren the Wanderer to our shores.

For once gamers can honestly believe the hype. Dante's Inferno lives down to expectations in spectacular fashion

Thankfully, with their powers combined, the sister modes of the game conspire to lift it above its shortcomings and transform it into a worthwhile, if scatterbrained, experience.

Players who can look past the lack of drive, annoying decisions, and a general stripped-down, dumbed-down feeling can (thankfully) still look forward to some truly spectacular moments and unforgettable action before credits roll.

Here we have a game that has streamlined itself, stripped away every inconvenient impediment to mass appeal, and in that cleansing has lost something vital

It's not a terrible bargain and certainly not the outright robbery that some DLC can be at times, but Return to Ostagar can't compare with the quality of The Stone Prisoner or Warden's Keep DLC missions.

For Wii owners jonesing for something besides the usual batches of brightly-colored shovelware and tired flagship franchises, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces fresh take on dog-fighting along with a healthy dose of anime-inspired storytelling is just what the doctor ordered.

For adventurous players willing to remain undeterred by warts and wrong turns, Divinity II is something quite special—an RPG with a flavor all its own, and one not to be missed.

Take away some of its flaws, and the bar would've been raised higher than most games could ever hope to surpass. In lieu of that, we have Kamiya's latest, a breakneck, top-tier example of the 3-D action brawler.

PixelJunk Shooter is one of those instantly-intuitive games that only takes a minute before completely clicking with the player—once the controller is in hand, everything makes sense and flows effortlessly.