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

Perhaps worth a rental to R-Type junkies and those who love a solid 2D shooter, but nothing is really new here... and maybe that's the point.

In the end, Shrek 2 is going to appeal to a pretty limited market. Older gamers aren’t going to want to bother with it much, but young children who idolize their movie heroes (and why do you think "Finding Nemo" sold so well?) will probably eat it up despite its mediocrity.

Monster 4x4 is as wild as the trucks featured in the game; a real sense of control over your fate in the race is never established, since a wrong move can get you stuck thanks to some poor planning, and getting good turns and boosts seems more like luck than anything else.

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

Blade and Sword tries hard to be a classically-designed action RPG, but doesn’t seem to realize such a product comes years too late.

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.

Right now it’s average in quality, and what should be amusing feels like a chore. It’s hard to make dragons unexciting, but somehow Drakengard manages to do it.

Unfortunately, while brevity is the soul of wit, even at $29.99, it's hard to recommend a purchase of a game that can be beaten in a rental, and offers nothing beyond that in the way of replay value.

These treasures are glass jewels in tin settings.

Capcom may be good at 2D fighters, but when going to 3D, controls matter all the more.

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.

Graphically, both King of Fighters 2000 and 2001 are nearly pixel-perfect ports. Unfortunately, this is as much a liability as anything. The character sprites are low-resolution, as befits three-year-old Neo-Geo games, and the backgrounds are muddy and annoyingly aliased.

When you're trying to sell a game to a non-hardcore crowd, don't make it frustratingly hard for no reason.

Once you've customized your car to the max, there's nothing else to do except change its color; you can't even earn new cars to customize or anything, as you're stuck with only the one car.

Some very interesting ideas are buried under a tide of sloppy coding and bad game design.

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.

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.

It's got all the bad hair and pretty boys, but none of the fighting soul.

Even if the jumping weren't horribly floaty and disastrous, the gameplay would still be generic at best.

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.

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.

It's a sad world when "budget gaming" is synonymous with "poke your eye out with a dull stick."

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.

A soulless cash-in. Every aspect of the game seems hostile to anyone intending to actually play the game. The story is mediocre, the interface is obtuse, the combat is oversimplified and there's little to do or find.

Originality is what Full Metal Alchemist and the Broken Angel, in the end, is lacking. The transmutation is mildly creative, but it's not going to sustain a been-there-done-that story or utterly mindless, thoughtless brawling.

Of course, the real nail in the gameplay coffin arrives with something I’m sure every gamer fears: boredom. Zapper just isn’t interesting to play, and rarely makes attempts to make gamers smile.

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