You'll double-tap to roll him under things, tap along walls to jump, draw a slash mark in the middle of objects to slice them and so on. While novel, it makes precision jumps nearly impossible. This results in a lot of trial and error, and if you beat the game, there's little reason to play it again.

The game is easy, and I really enjoyed the graphics and story line. The only things that really bothered me were that when you repeated any missions, there was Alfred saying the same things over and over and over again. That got annoying.

Contra deserves more than one play-through, but the bugs make it one of Xbox Live Arcade's black sheep. Hopefully, Konami will pull out all the stops for a version of "Super Contra."

The bland story mode, despite whisking you away to numerous locations, features lame brain artificial intelligence, a boring narrative, corny characters and the same point A to point B objectives, making it worth just a few hours of play.

It's nice to see a return of simple-yet-gratifying combat, but these issues prevent Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy from hitting the heights of the genre's heyday.

It's not bad, although the game is plagued by severe balancing issues. Some boxers are more talented than others, and online match-ups are unfair, resulting in a Facebreaker finisher and a quick end to the match.

Now that it has moved to the Wii, however, Tomb Raider: Anniversary's magic has been lost due to crappy waggle controls. Although some of the Wii exclusive puzzles are mildly enjoyable, aiming and shaking the nunchuck leads to imprecise movements and lots of headaches.

Hideous dialogue, repetitive gameplay.

This bland online shooter (no single player element exists) offers only a handful of maps and no map editor. While the game's is based upon an entrenched role-playing game, not a single role-playing element exists.

The whole collection theme grows tiring, with players having to repeat races to find items to proceed. The DS-exclusive enhancements don't help either, and end up being pointless.

Prince Caspian isn't an awful game, but considering the DS' premier adventures (The World Ends with You and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass), it'll never be king.

The game provides a decent alternative to average hack'n-slash role-playing games, but it doesn't take long before it becomes tiresome and boring.

So while G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra provides momentary thrills, it's little more than an overpriced and shallow romp through drab looking levels full of idiotic bad guys.

Midway didn't update its roster (Jason Kidd plays for Dallas, not New Jersey), the story mode (what there is of it) makes no sense and the artificial intelligence is quite boneheaded.

Viking's a decent game, thanks to over the top combat moves and a sprawling fantasy world, but its lack of drama and a few design issues make it inferior to Sony's exquisite "God of War" franchise.

Unless you're a fan, this average RPG has little to offer.

Spider-Man 3 on Xbox 360 stands out as the best version, thanks to slightly improved graphics and numerous achievements to unlock. Unfortunately, the awful camera, frustrating combat, bad character models and cheesy voice acting make it less than stellar.

If you dig the swinging and master the controls, you might find this sequel worthy of its legendary name. Other players, however, will discover a linear game banking on a gimmick.

As it stands, Modern Warfare Reflex is merely average. The multiplayer is addictive and the control options are varied, but the watered-down graphics and relentless frame rate problems keep it from being a power player. This game has seen better days, two years ago, in fact.

The sloppy presentation, lack of online multiplayer and way-too-easy controls make this more like a bronze contender than a gold medal champion. Oh well, there's always 2012.

Not only is the game too complex, requiring you to utilize all of the SIXAXIS' buttons, but the developers force you to slog through an annoying tutorial in order to unlock single and multiplayer modes. That in itself, is PAINful.

The game plays well, but hasn't changed that much from last year's edition, outside of some ridiculous diving moves and artificial intelligence that's too attentive for its own good. The graphics still appear several notches below current-gen standards and the online play constantly slows down.

Alien Shooter may be a one-trick pony, but its mindlessly addictive game play makes it oddly compelling.

The stories for both are absolute garbage, but the smooth 3D engine is pretty impressive on the tiny hand held.

It has its moments, but this clumsy conglomeration suffers from an identity crisis and is best left as a rental.

Get ready to live the glamorous life of a military security agent, with great benefits, adventure, l33t hacking and rote levels and enemies that leave you stumbling around with a profound sense of deja vu.

Even worse, the game's not much fun to play. Each of the six episodes have a series of chapters full of unclear mission objectives; most times, Capcom doesn't give you hints on what to do next, so instead of making progress, you fumble around repeatedly blasting the same monster and/or revisiting the same old areas hoping for some clue, anything, to stand out.

Somewhere within SimCity Creator is an ambitious idea, befuddled by a lacking control scheme and irritating features.