Easily the best title in the series and it’s most likely the result of having to cram content in to the final episode.

My uneasy feelings on Madden as a premiere example of videogame-as-renewable-commodity aside, the series continues its slow and steady march of progress.

If the fatigue bug had been fixed the way EA promised it would be, and the game had the same options that other versions had, I’d give the game the same score I gave last year's version: a 7. As it stands, with the lack of features, the lack of innovation with the game play and the higher price tag; I don’t feel comfortable giving this game anything higher than a 5.

It's over too soon, but that speaks more to Clyde's addictiveness than to the brevity of the game.

Even if Prey’s story didn’t leave me breathless from the masterful blend of sight and sound, I at least remained damned entertained. Sometimes that’s all you can really ask for.

True fans of the AND 1 Mixtape Tour may be able to look beyond the many flaws of the actual basketball in this game because the presentation offers a dream come true.

PureSim is a game I want desperately to love, even to the point of staying up 'til 2 a.m. because it's a fix for my baseball addiction, even if it's still a clumsy fix. PureSim is also a game that infuriates me at times, and maybe that's a note in its favor. An atrocious game I wouldn't waste time getting angry with (well, in most cases. A TRULY atrocious game might be another story). I'd simply put it down and move on. WIth PureSim, that's easier said than done.

Essentially, it's new levels for a pretty decent game, without really bringing anything new to the table for your $19.95.

Legend actually has a coherent plot that makes sense, even as fantastical things arise, which is more than I can say for the previous Tomb Raider titles, which seemed to be little more than glorified excuses to eyeball Lara's sweater puppies (nostalgists beware: they ain't what they used to be).

But if you have played it, or if you still own it, then there’s no gripping reason to reinvest the time—and most importantly, the money—into the Xbox 360 edition.

With smooth visuals, a gripping plot (when not relegated to Disney-land), and a mostly-captivating soundtrack, Kingdom Hearts II is a title any adventure/RPG/fun-loving gamer will desire to add to their collection, despite not shining as well as the original.

It's an awkward position to be in for a game that's not bad - just not as good as it could have been.

Let me be honest here. I am currently watching an infomercial for Jack Lalame's juicer, which features his 80+ year old companion demonstrating that you can get juice from an unpeeled cantaloupe wedge. I am also feeling approximately the same level of excitement as when I played 4x4. This is just a boring game.

A truly wonderful and immersive experience.

Fans of the genre will easily get over 40 hours of play. Multi-player fanatics may double or triple that time frame. Simply put, if you are a fan of FPS games, you MUST add this game to your collection.

If you can look past these flaws, you'll discover what I would call one of the best PlayStation 2 games so far this year. As an impressive technical demo it rivals even the next-gen stuff we're seeing on the market now, and the gameplay fills a gap in the genre that has long been craved. If you enjoy FPS games, then I can easily recommend Black for rent or purchase, and anxiously await a potential next-gen sequel.

When blood effects are one of the chief highlights of a game, you know there may be something wrong. Not even the multiplayer, which suffers from the same issues of control and additional problems of slowdown, can save this sinking ship.

I had an enjoyable time when all was said and done, but the length and general quality of the experience left me wanting more--perhaps the polish only a sequel can deliver.

The thing is, though, there’s no multiplayer mode in PQ, so you can’t see who can complete a given puzzle faster (other than by playing single-player and uploading your score afterward), but that also means no opportunity for increasing challenge factors.

The game is a solid career sim.

By tying the graphics in so closely with the gameplay, King Kong actually makes strong visuals an integral part of the cinematic experience, and naturally the Xbox 360 port gets the edge over the other platforms.

12 hours ain't bad for a single-player campaign, but I hope that's not going to become the standard for solo action on 360, especially wth that 20% markup in game prices for third-party titles.

It will give you a ton of value as a single player game. It's also a great first effort for the genre on the next gen system.

Everything seems like it was created four years ago, shelved and brought out on a rainy day when a semi-popular license could be bended around it.

Gotham also sounds great. although I generally keep the soundtrack muted in the background in favor of Live chatter (when applicable) and the sounds of the race, which are as spectacular as ever.

On its own merits, it is hard to justify paying $60 to buy Gun. It is a solid game, but when you can have essentially the same experience on Xbox for less money, I do not see the point in buying it for the Xbox 360.

There aren't enough courses - six feels more like an appetizer than a gourmet feast - and no obvious expectation of future additions via Xbox Live.

I cannot say enough about this game. It is hands down the best basketball game I've ever played on any system.

Because it’s not a terrible game, especially on a currently under-served platform, there are no really strong arguments I can give to avoid the game.

This is an enjoyable game of football that’s great to watch and play. On the other hand the countless omissions EA left out of this game are maddening.

Raises the bar from what to expect from Media Vision, and leaves a lot for Wild Arms: the 4th Detonator to live up to.

It all boils down to the extremely high quality and production values of this title. The gameplay IS a bit old-school and the story isn’t extremely intricate, but that’s part of the magic to behold. Don’t let anything turn you away from trying out Square Enix’s latest blockbuster.

Mario Kart DS takes the best of all of the Mario Kart games and puts them together in a game people will still be playing when the next generation of Gameboy comes out.

While running the studio does boil down too quickly into lather-rinse-repeat patterns of tycoon-style management, the moviemaking part of the game gives you an almost endless supply of replayability.

There are a lot of good things in this game and I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed to see Neversoft revisit this franchise again, hopefully polishing the rough edges.

But I still would have to advocate passing, particularly since The Matrix: Path of Neo still hovers at a full MSRP price point for what is essentially Enter the Matrix with a facelift.

Even a little sprucing up on the presentation front doesn’t change the insurmountable gameplay problems that make their NBA 06 particularly sour.

Sometimes the graphics were actually surprisingly good, such as the detail on the planes as I gunned them down, or the rust on the vehicles. But other times, like when all the glass windows burst the same, or every office in the game has the same desk, chair and bookshelf, Call of Duty 2 begins to show its age.

A better word for the new story might be laughable. I understand the rationale behind the change, but the ending is ridiculous. Thankfully the book’s ending is included, so you can see what really should have happened.

I would have liked to see a little more variety in the level design, and just a bit more of the “over the top” craziness of the original, but I still enjoyed the single player missions enough to rate the game highly.

If you're a Ratchet fan, Deadlocked is still worth picking up, but rather than being a meaty new adventure in the series, it will probably serve mostly to deepen your nostalgia for its predecessors...not that that's a bad thing. That co-op play sure is nifty, though.

Highly enjoyable and infinitely replayable. It is easily the best game that I’ve played this year.

The true value of Battlefield 2 is in how nicely it panders to a crowd that may never have cared for the military shooter genre before.

While I would have liked to try the multiplayer, the sparsely populated servers listed didn’t give me much incentive to try a five-disk installation for a third time.

This is not intentioned as damning with faint praise but the fact that the mini-games are the most fun part of the gameplay does say something.

If you've played the PC version and are looking for something new, you are likely to be disappointed as some of the newer and richer features have been stripped away to fit it onto the console.

A nice update to the series. But especially with the way other historical RTS games have advanced the genre, I was expecting more innovation from the game (and developer) that started it all.

Another fantastic script with more one liners and jokes than should be allowed.

If you keep in mind that this is aimed at a younger audience, even an older gamer, particularly a parent sharing the experience with a child, can find a lot to enjoy.

More importantly, they also nailed all the aspects that made the film so great, and the much larger adventure their tinkering yielded is certainly appreciated.

F.E.A.R. is just polished, period. If you have the system to handle the game, it is a must have for all gamers.

Quake 4 is a fun game to play. The action is beautiful and fast paced, and Raven did a great job creating a foreboding atmosphere. However, it does not belong in the current FPS upper echelon.

A pretty straightforward arcade street racing game that could have been much more with a bit more attention to customization and the inclusion online multiplayer.

I really wanted to like Oogie’s Revenge more than I did. The Soul Robber was fun to use, and the game did a great job of recreating Tim Burton’s vision. However, the constant backtracking, poor camera, and repetition make it hard to justify anything more than a rental.

I wish more games had the voice acting and overall audio quality displayed in Earned in Blood.

It's a hockey sim - a pretty darned good one, warts and all - and having a hockey sim in which I can lose myself has been a dream of mine ever since I first spent a weekend with Front Office Football.

When I finished playing Resurrection of Evil, the one question I had was why a bunch of stupid demons are able to consistently own humans on Mars when they are outwitted by a sidestep.

Even with some warts, Black & White 2 is still pretty good. Heck, no god is perfect, right?

With the tremendous gameplay that is the franchise's hallmark, beautiful graphics and animation, a fantastic soundtrack, and the kind of replay value that makes the phrase "bang for your buck" even more cliche than it already is, it's not even a stretch to consider it one of, if not the best game overall for the Nintendo DS.

The fighter missions get repetitive; everything else is too varied for its own good.

While some of the missions are almost tooth-gratingly hard, the consistency and balance throughout makes these missions seem like a decent challenge rather than something that'll make you want to eat your controller.

While some players may be disgruntled by the lack of action and lack of length, fans of the point and click adventure genre will be thrilled with this artistically-inclined entry from Nintendo.

Lockdown has a steep learning curve and an unfair difficulty level for all players not intimately familiar with the Rainbow Six setup.

While the game play is certainly more varied than other titles available, and polished to an extent above that to which many games go, the short single player campaign may be all some players will be interested in.

Enjoy swinging around New York to your heart’s content, but stick to a rental for this title.

Ultimate Spider-Man is best enjoyed when viewed as a separate path for the franchise, one whose bright graphics and teenybopper storyline add a refreshing parallel to the realist movie versions.

What so frustrates me about Genji: Dawn of the Samurai is how the game seems to desire this average result from the onset; there is nothing in the game that looks remotely ambitious.

If you have multiple gaming consoles, I’d strongly recommend picking the game up on either the GameCube or Xbox, both of which support four-player mayhem without something as impractical as a MultiTap.

There are certainly the trappings of an epic fantasy game here, but lack of attention to latecomers to the series and horrid pacing and voice acting drag this game down to something that's fun to play if you can get the story out of the way and can get a solid grasp on the control scheme.

Where it falls flat is in the delivery of the long-anticipated online play that should be the game's biggest selling point. If you've got enough buddies on Live or PS2 Online that you can get together a reliable carnage crew, go for it. You won't regret it.

The thing is, the hooks just don't sink that deeply. It's a nice time waster, when I have time that needs wasting, and it's certainly worth packing along for those transoceanic plane flights or interminable car trips through, say, rural Kansas, but Frantix ain't making the trip to a desert island, if you catch my drift.

The lighting and reflective effects are truly impressive, sometimes on par with "Gran Turismo" or "Project Gotham Racing," while the courses have impressive texture work and detailed architecture all by themselves.

If you’ve played the console versions of "Burnout," you’ve played Legends.

I like that causing enough of a mess will give you the opportunity to collect multiple Crashbreakers within the same run, but at the same time, I'm really not fond of the manic button presses needed to secure and enact each Crashbreaker.

A game caught between markets. Gamers who want a pure FPS shooter have much better options to look into. Gamers who want tactical, squad based shooters will consider this a watered down, arcade version of the genre.

If the game focused more on the highway racing, and improved the track selection, everybody would be better off. However, as it stands now Ride or Die is a game that provides more lasting enjoyment as a scratching simulator than as a racing game.

The vestiges of goodwill created by 187: Ride or Die's gameplay initially might have the game growing on you... but the terribly forced gangsta dialogue of the game fixes that nagging issue extremely quickly.

More of the same for the franchise - a solid game, with an inspired (if a bit overdone) presentation.

"Disgaea" is still the game for which I would re-purchase my PlayStation 2 all over again, but if I get to have two games, Makai Kingdom isn’t bad company.

To award a 10 on this well-crafted but by no means revolutionary game would be a disservice to titles that are out there really trying to rewrite our preconceived notions of videogames, but to go for a 9 also seems like lowballing a title that should be a must-own for so many.

Easily one of the most ingenious games ever designed. Not only is it one of the most fun games you can play, it's one of the most innovative releases of this - or any - generation of games.

Definitely buy this if you have buddies with whom to play it. Even if you don't, you just might have enough fun with it to make it worth the $40.

"Best DS Game" seems a little weak, given the competition, so let me just say this: This much fun (plus multiplayer!) for $29.99 seems like highway robbery perpetrated against Atlus.

Forza is kinda like Danica Patrick: an attractive, rising star that isn't quite ready for victory lane...yet.

It's a very crippled and undesirable game, but not so bad as to make it completely without merit. In fact, my friends still enjoy playing it even after we've suffered through all its slings and arrows.

Hopefully if Climax releases another PSP version, they work the kinks out, because this one needs some polish.

An excellent baseball experience, and it's a full $10 less than "MVP Baseball" from EA Sports. Hard to go wrong here.

It won't have the longevity of "KOTOR," and the difficulty factor basically reduces to an enemy health multiplier, but Jade Empire is still an enjoyable romp.

While the majority of gamers kick around inside Gran Turismo 4, I know where my racing allegiance lies. This game even manages to destroy the hallowed Burnout series to easily claim the arcade racing crown, and that’s no small feat. Grab your wallets and, uh, race to the store.

Just a poor shadow of what Myst really is, so most users would be better off skipping it and grabbing the PC/Mac version.

I just be hating on certain aspects of Splinter Cell’s gameplay formula, and I think it’s about time someone threw a contrary opinion into the ring.

God of War isn't just violent; it's gratuitously violent, and the sex, while certainly a part of the era depicted, just serves to reinforce the notion that this is an "M"-rated title for very good reason.

An enjoyable, if heavily formulaic, RPG to get the PSP life cycle kicked off.

It isn't, you understand, that WipEout Pure is terribly revolutionary. No, the appeal of this game is that it returns to the roots of the franchise, and puts it in the palm of your hand with startling clarity.

A good game... but just barely.

Comparable to the PS2 version, except with much longer loading times.

A game that, while it can’t compete with the hockey titles available for the PSP’s big brother, still has a solid look and feel to it, despite the gaping hole left by the lack of commentary.

While this game makes "RedCard 2003" look like... I can't even think of a non-offensive comparison... it still hasn't gone quite far enough.