Aside from the junky control scheme and bizarre naming conventions, Steambot is a vast RPG title. [Jun 2006, p.86]

As a shooter fan and someone who watched all eight films that make up the Alien, Predator, and Aliens vs. Predator series, I had high hopes for the title, but it fails to do both the genre and the franchise justice.

Then there's the slowdown: yes, in this age of high-powered processors and graphics hardware, Infinite Undiscovery suffers from slowdown. The game itself is gorgeous, with detailed character models to neat-o combat animations, but the action tends to slow to a crawl when too many enemies clutter the screen.

The best thing you can say about The Godfather is at least the developers didn't just slap the console version into a handheld and call it day.

At the end of the day, playing Lost Planet is like dating a supermodel with personality problems: it's great looking and has the potential for good times, but ultimately, it's just not worth the trouble. [Feb. 2007, p.64]

If you're a diehard Ghostbusters fan who sleeps in a Ghostbusters bed, takes your food to school/work in a Ghostbusters lunchbox, and can recite every line from both Ghostbusters flicks, chances are you'll get your money's worth out of Sanctum of Slime. Everyone else will find a pedestrian shooter that doesn't live up to the Ghostbuster name.

Bleach: Soul Resurreccion would benefit hugely from multiplayer, especially co-op or a versus mode, but no such addition exists. Even if you're a Bleach fan, just rent it and have a fun afternoon releasing your Bankai.

The story is laughably bad, and McKane has to be one of the most unlikable protagonists ever. Even worse, the racing gameplay just isn’t that exciting, largely due to lackluster handling and A.I. competition.

Started as a cool idea, but its flashes of quality are too short to sustain long term interest.

In the end, Order of War is a typical World War II RTS through and through. It does what its supposed to do, namely provide two campaigns and some skirmish play, but that's about it.

The gameplay isn't nearly as deep, the graphics aren't anywhere near as good, and some of the sounds are just plain awful by today's standards, but hey who cares when you're saving the universe once again?

Continually trying to properly center the cam, however, frequently places you in harm's way. Until you put some serious time into the game, you'll be blown away more often than you like from unseen foes off-screen.

If you have no online hookup, though, don't bother.

Despite cute graphics and an adorable aesthetic, the brutal difficulty and overly-simplistic design won't keep Super Stack Attack on your iDevice for long.

Quotation forthcoming.

Astonishingly average. Tsugunai scores for hosting some original ideas…but then compensates with truly boring presentation.

The uneven controls are a handful, especially during combat sequences. [Oct 2004, p.83]

Shoot'em up purists won't be deterred by these issues as "Joint Strike" does have something to offer, especially when playing with a partner. But for most gamers, who after buying the game have already put their 40 quarters on the arcade cabinet glass, some continues should have been included.

In this case, I think simpler would have been better. Stripping out some of the needless camera angles and the slow-mo would make it to focus on Kill Team's strengths, like the fact that it's impressively fun to annihilate a horde of Orks with a rocket launcher. As it is, Kill Team is a reasonably fun promotional vehicle for Space Marine, but a sloppy one.

The biggest crime, though, is that there's simply nothing at the core you haven't seen a zillion times before.

Ninja Reflex is a fun rental. But if you decide to shell out full price for a collection of repetitive mini-games, you need a lesson in spending, my son.

If you can suffer the controls or have GameCube controllers lying around, it's not a bad kickback-n-relax option for some speedy cartoon laps. [Apr 2008, p.81]

Steal Princess is a game that has decent, challenging puzzles, but may leave you falling flat into a bottomless pit as a 3D platformer. [Apr 2009, p.80]

Roads to Victory achieved an impressive feat in translating virtually every aspect of the Call of Duty series to a UMD except the one that arguably matters most: control.

Unfortunately, the stealth elements fall tragically short of well conceived—it’s more along the lines of comically maddening.

Rise of the Argonauts had mythic origins-it's based on Jason's legendary quest for the fabled Golden Fleece-but the only thing epic about it is the amount of failure it produces. Solid action and a cool skill system isn't enough to save a game marred by a poor presentation and dull design.

Mindless, twitchy, quick-shot FPS fun...but it’s so hyper-generic it seems like a clone of a "Doom" clone.

The outcome: a lesson in how not to use the touch screen in games. You'll immediately feel like you're in a round of bumper cars as you automatically swerve from side to side. You literally have no control in this manner.

The retooled pitcher/batter interface has some cool options, yet the defensive controls—this year’s big addition—are infuriatingly hit-and-miss.

There are flashes of genius to be found in Korea: Hidden Conflict, but a lack of polish results in a strategy game that leaves much to be desired.

With vector graphics and line-drawing mechanics, A.I.R Defense has just enough to distinguish itself from other tower defense games. But its brutal difficulty and limited depth may turn some players away.

Although each car handles differently, the off-road speedsters are extremely loose, which makes for perfecting turns a frustrating task.

It's really too bad that The Last Remnant is so uneven. For every one thing it does right, there is a glaring fault that ruins the fun.

The game takes a long time to play. Since you can't look at your tiles when its another players turn, it takes longer than normal to think up new words. But what most people will miss most is the feel of Scrabble. Its a tactile game, something you just can't get from playing it on your TV.

It's an action/RPG, and a pretty boring one at that - a repetitive dungeon attack that feels like an unexciting "Diablo."

Fun at first, but soon becomes repetitive-both in terms of the Punisher's actions and the criminals' voice responses. Add to that weak graphics and animation, as well as not enough opportunities to "enjoy" Punisher's originality, and you end up with an adventure that turns a bit stale too quickly.

It's a thoroughly middle-of-the-road entry that drips with potential but fails thanks to some deepseeded faults.

The problem with Treasure World is once you find items and add them to your garden, that's about all there is to this game.

If you can play Unreal II on the PC, do. Otherwise, rent this for the Xbox only while you wait for the other first-person heavyweights to show up later in the year.

It's not quite as good of a time as "GameDay."

Tenkaichi succeeds in all the areas that DBZ fans love: brilliant, innovative graphics, a gajillion (more than 60, actually) playable characters from the beloved anime series, and (everyone together) Saiyans!

Unfortunately, Dead to Rights II maintains its predecessor's graphics and camera glitchiness.

Enough options to keep off-road enthusiasts tearing up the dirt for quite some time, and the physics and damage modeling is a nice surprise. However, Insane, never really makes you say "Wow!" It's a solid, but not exceptional racing game that won't lock you up in an asylum (as the title suggests).

But playing this game live on the console systems lacks the finesse and speed to which you're accustomed. Lag is apparent everywhere, from watching other players float across the ground to empting an entire magazine into a foe at close range with no effect.

Ultimately, Freakyforms is a game of two halves. Playing mad scientist in the creature creator is fun and it's a great reward seeing your monsters come to life. The problem comes from what to do next. I know that when I was a boy, I envisioned my legion of monsters doing a lot more than gathering knick knacks.

But as a whole, while The 40th Day has its moments, it just isn't consistent enough to keep my attention.

While Drakan II handles the tomb-raiding controls better than "Tomb Raider," what you’ll find in the game’s horrendously monotonous dungeons rivals watching paint dry in terms of excitement.

Overall, Neopets Puzzle Adventure is a good game for its target demographic -- children who will use the game's many unlockable codes to access various digital goodies on the Neopets website.

No multiplayer, boring sound and graphical design, lack of variety.

Ghost Recon’s visuals took a deadly hit, too. Characters don’t move in a realistic manner and there’s less detail on both the soldiers and the environments.

I liked Adventures to Go, though its flaws are hard to ignore. It's a good game to play when you've got a bit of time to kill or when you need a brief break from a more demanding title. AtG doesn't demand extensive commitment to have fun, but it also won't provide much for players looking for a meatier role-playing epic.

Ultimately, Empire at War isn't just RTS-lite--it's RTS extremely lite. Hardcore RTS fans will rapidly grow bored, and even fans of the franchise are better served with Battlefront for its galactic conquest games, or Galactic Battlegrounds for a Star Wars RTS experience that's actually an RTS.

For a goofy little action game Evil Dead isn't terrible. The juxtaposition of the art style and the gore (which you have to wipe off the screen with your finger) is fun, though once you're done with story mode, there's not much else to do. Some additional game modes might go a long way in making this a more rounded-out experience.

If either half of Wrath Unleashed had been more fully formed, the game would have been easy to recommend, but as it stands, half a fighting game and half a strategy game does not make a whole game. [Mar 2004, p.64]

If you're willing to look past the game's numerous flaws and use it as a nostalgia engine for a good time with a pack of friends, it's absolutely worth the money. But if you want a skillful, fun beat-em-up to play seriously for high scores and brag-worthy single credit completion, then you'll want to look elsewhere.

The control scheme is hellish, as the goofy camera angles and slippery controls make it tough to track the frantic action.

Sure, the gritty atmosphere and balls out gunplay offers up some thrills, and yes the multiplayer options hold some potential but the hard-boiled noir tone and interesting amalgam of varied ideas never truly comes together to form the cohesive action thriller that the game aspires to be. [Dec 2007, p.121]

A game that tries exceedingly hard to avoid any attempt at innovation, or for that matter, any pretense of being fun.

As a Fist of the North Star game, Ken's Rage is disappointingly generic in its execution.

The fact is that there are games on both the PS2 and GameCube that easily outclass this one in everything it sets out to do.

If you ignored Dark Sector on consoles, have a reasonable PC, and are itching for a solid action game during a slow release month like April, that meager price tag will not steer you wrong. However, if you've already experienced Dark Sector once, there's really no reason for you to bother with this port.

Poor A.I., stiff controls, and rough game flow may make you turn back around again.

The real appeal of Etrian Odyssey is the renaissance of the classic RPG. Instead of a world that conforms to your level and rewards you with HP every time you level up, you have to strategize about which characters will enter the Labyrinth, how best to allot skill points among your characters, who charges the front line and who stays in back, and how much money you have to spend on reviving dead characters.

The inability of this series to learn from its mistakes is baffling. You'll often find yourself fighting enemies you can't see because some decorative element in the foreground entirely blocks your view, and you've zero control over the camera.

But the bottom line is that buying Retribution is just paying for a new faction and not much else. It's a great faction, to be sure, but beyond that, it's a damn shame that Relic squanders their energy on frippery like the silly campaign when important issues like the AI remain unresolved.

While it's insane stunts and action-packed firefights ooze their own brand of explosive charm, Just Cause 2 falls victim to an unwieldy mission structure and unfortunate lack of variety.

Almost a mirror image of the first game, which is both good and bad. While it has a great story, it also suffers from some of the cardinal sins of action gaming. You'd think that by adding a kick-ass dragon in to the mix that you'd be dealing with a winning formula. It's just too bad, however, that this doesn't end up being the case.

Red Dog may look and sound strong, but with poor controls, its bite is far from threatening. A huge complement of multiplayer games helps bring up the score.

Combine the dull career mode, spin-out crazy physics, and average graphics, and you get a ride evoking the same emotions as when DX Civics buzz down the street with coffee can mufflers late at night. [July 2005, p.78]]

Best administered in small doses, don't expect to spend a lot of quality time with Zombie Panic in one sitting.

It doesn't measure up to "Rainbow Six" for gameplay, and the controls are complex, but Hidden and Dangerous can give you a fun run for the money.

While Potter fans will enjoy seeing Gilderoy Lockhart on their GBAs, uncompelling gameplay makes him just another pretty face.

It's a decent enough game but it isn't the grand strategy RPG experience that we've all been waiting for. [Sep 2007, p.84]

Things get frantic quickly, so it'll be challenging to last for more than a few minutes for most players.

This unconventional handheld port of Capcom's flagship fighting franchise works surprisingly well with the iPhone and iPod Touch's control schemes, but suffers largely due to a lack of online wi-fi.

In the end, it's important to note that this game will likely only appeal to hardcore series fans and masochists. But for those gamers looking for an incredible challenge and yearning for a title that feels like it comes from a bygone era of gaming, these flightless birds could be just the thing for you.

Newcomers to the series will find this a fun and delightful title to play around with. But veterans won’t find anything new here and should stick with the 360 version of the game.

If you absolutely loved Umbrella Chronicles and know the Resident Evil series by heart, you might extract enough fun out of Darkside to make it worth your while. but otherwise, you can safely pass this one by.

While replaying completed levels to raise scores and collect more lums will unlock secret areas, the core simplicity of the gameplay may not tempt many players to romp again where they have romped before.

A mix of intense head-bashing against smart A.I. and an occasional crate-smashing balance out to some solid gameplay.

It's just difficult for the game to be fun enough to surmount the great, big, monstrous control problem the concept inherently carries.

The commentator's unfunny one-liners quickly grate on the nerves, and characters occasionally freeze-up and don't behave the way they should during a game, which is particularly annoying when facing the overly skilled A.I.

While Runespell: Overture is a solid first attempt from developer Mystic Box, it ultimately feels more like an appetizer than a main course.

24 isn't the ambitious action opus it should've been, but its engaging quirks and variety of gaming experiences still raise it above the cash-in gutter.

If you want a battle simulator with support roles and a grand tactical battlefield, play MAG. If you want an old-school test of reflexes and headshot-ing skill, SOCOM 4 is just what the grenade spamming sniper doctor ordered.

The Wii-specific controls are fun for while, but quickly degenerate from thrilling to gimmicky.

A friendly but flawed rehash of "Metal Gear Solid" fused with several interesting (but poorly developed) concepts that intend to give the game a unique flavor but end up tasting stale. [Nov 2004, p.112]

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is a fair bit more interesting than EA's most recent film adaptation, but I would've rather seen the developers tackle the project with the same level of creativity as a precocious kid with a pile of LEGOs, rather than squeeze the Potter universe into an existing and well-worn template.

Darkspore probably won't replace your favorite dungeon crawler anytime soon. The satisfying controls and mountains of loot really only serve as a baseline in terms of this genre's gameplay. It would've been great if Maxis could have added some variety in the game's missions, but as it stands, Darkspore is a fairly redundant game with a slightly interesting character editor.

A great start for this sequel to FFIV. The bad part is that while 800 and 300 points sound small you’re going to be spending roughly 3700 points ($40) to get the full experience. That’s a big chunk of change for a DLC title, so being a fan of Final Fantasy is a must.

The game drags under the weight of too much walking and item gathering - mostly while looking down at the ground - and not enough engaging action.

Solid controls aside, this is still the same game you've been playing since the first Medal of Honor. It's a solid shooter with the standard cinematic presentation, but I'd probably be much more excited about it if the 800 other titles in this genre didn't exist.

If you liked what you saw at the theater and need a way to blow off a few hours then it's a perfect weekend rental. But it doesn't live up to the epic nature the classic poem and it certainly isn't going to make you forget about God of War III either.

The poor gameplay sadly ruins the entire experience. [Nov 2004, p.112]

Trinity Universe's pleasantly creative silliness doesn't extend through all areas of its design, and that's its biggest fault.

Though the single-player mode is a drag, Starsky & Hutch features a great two-player mode that fuses aspects of Driver with Time Crisis by having one player ("You be Starsky!") drive using a steering wheel peripheral and the other player ("I'll be Hutch!") shoot with a light-gun. It makes for great co-op gameplay.

But with so many better looking and better playing b-ball games available, it's tough to recommend NBA Ballers: Phenom for anything beyond a kitschy weekend rental or a late night study break.

Redemption gives some luster back to the Terminator name but not much. [Nov 2004, p.102]