Dense, methodical, and maybe even a little bit unfriendly, but there's nothing else quite like it on Game Boy today.

The game offers entertaining car combat with enough car, weapon, and track variations to keep players from getting bored.

If we assume that videogames are partly about realizing control-fantasies, Nintendogs is about the absolute opposite. Coping with the stubborn and playfully anarchic mindset of a puppy can teach gamers an important lesson: learn to let go.

If we assume that videogames are partly about realizing control-fantasies, Nintendogs is about the absolute opposite. Coping with the stubborn and playfully anarchic mindset of a puppy can teach gamers an important lesson: learn to let go.

If we assume that videogames are partly about realizing control-fantasies, Nintendogs is about the absolute opposite. Coping with the stubborn and playfully anarchic mindset of a puppy can teach gamers an important lesson: learn to let go.

For anyone but die-hard fans of the franchise or genre, these two games just aren't worth the price of one.

This could have been a great original title, but instead it's a waste of shelf space with just one redeeming feature: it only takes around five hours to beat.

A whole lot of hot air and buzz with nothing to back it up.

Obviously an effort that the developers poured their heart and soul into, and it shows. Everything about it is high quality and imbued with skill and care.

This could have been a great original title, but instead it's a waste of shelf space with just one redeeming feature: it only takes around five hours to beat.

If there's one thing that the Sonic Gems Collection taught me, it's that Sega is out of Sonic games to repackage. None of the titles here are particularly famous, nor was there any particular fan outcry for their release.

The potential of a ghostly character capable of leaping from soldier to soldier, causing chaos in the middle of a firefight has barely been scratched, not to mention the poltergeist scenarios that could be crafted around possessing exploding lightbulbs, flying bedsheets, rattling pots and pans, or any number of other things that could be employed for the purpose of haunting.

While the Rainbow Six series has disappointly compromised the realistic approach that was once its calling card, the Ghost Recon series remains planted firmly in its one-hit-kill, tactical-action roots and, with Summit Strike, reaffirms its place at the top of the tactical shooter hill.

It's sublimely complex and bursting with potential on one hand, unbelievably limited and shortsighted on the other.

It's a shame that Makai Kingdom has gone largely unnoticed, but as long as Nippon Ichi keeps turning on games of this quality, I'm going to keep on supporting them.

An almost completely successful swordfighting simulation. It does a better job with its setting than any game I've seen, and even though it's a little limited in scope, it's satisfying and effective at what it tries to accomplish.

Nanostray's controls may have fixed something that wasn't broken, but even so, it still managed to provide a pleasing, fast-paced jaunt through the cosmos.

It's unfortunate, then, that such a beguiling front-end is offset by the ruthlessness of the game's ill-fitting emphasis on progression and unlocking new areas.

Indeed, Fullmetal Alchemist 2 has proven to me that its parent anime is a good show. But I've yet to be convinced that Fullmetal Alchemist 2 is a good game.

When a game is as derivative and uninspired as this one, a rotten camera is just another nail in its coffin. Unfortunately, the film franchise graveyard won't let these monsters die.

The story had enough twists to keep me enthralled to the end, which didn't require an epic forty-hour time commitment. There were elements of strategy in the shooting, but it wasn't a first-person frag-fest. I would say that the emperor wears its bloodstained new clothes quite well.

The kinetic running and gunning is there and it has the right style, but Coded Arms in its present form seems more like the first few pieces of something larger, rather than a complete product.

And despite the very real possibility of some people being put off by the huge amount of text to get through, I strongly feel that Riviera has quite a bit to offer-not only to people still hanging on to their GBAs, but to fans of RPG's in general.

Fantastic Four didn't rock my world, but it easily avoided auto-sucking and turned out to be a pretty decent day's work.

Despite these issues, Psychonauts is a wonderfully strange platformer. The idea of perception being a reality in itself is the kind of thing I'd like to see future games explore further.

A technically accomplished, but thoroughly unpleasant gaming experience. I'm sure there's a market for this; I'm just not part of it.

Technically sound but leaving me feeling hollow and unsatisfied, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones reminds me quite a bit of the series I mentioned earlier, "Advance Wars." Both games hooked me immediately and sucked me in the first time around, and both sequels left me hungry by staying too close to the original formula and coming off like add-ons or extended missions instead of being true sequels.

Those who shirk from buying Twisted! because of its quirky production values, one-track design and, crucially, its short core lifespan are those whose preoccupation with value for money and dependable purchases is slowly sapping game design of its freedom and gaming of its ability to showcase the broadest and most experientially distinct body of work of any popular medium.