The way the game taxes your mind isn’t necessarily enjoyable, and many times you’ll find yourself falling back to simple tactics just to survive, instead of creating elaborate, elegant combos.

Unfortunately, once you remove the lovable Nintendo characters from the formula and replace them with soulless agents of advertising, you've lost most of the appeal. You're left with a slightly disturbing and shameful mockery of what was once a cherished wholesome media icon; sort of like Michael Jackson.

The drawback in executing these moves comes in the form of slow button response. It’s tough to pull off a counter if the buttons don’t register at the exact moment, and it’s hard to attack with a flurry of side-step combos when, in combination with a button press, the directional pad and analog stick just don’t react efficiently.

Another caveat is that while the game does run on an iPhone, I would not recommend that anyone with adult hands play it on anything but the iPad. There is too much going on, both visually and with the controls to cram it on to the iPhone's screen.

Deluxe has some decent ideas, but they're badly marred by unbalanced, frustrating gameplay. As far as retro revivals go, this is probably for fans only.

While I salute Flower, Sun and Rain for its innovation and uniqueness, its mind-boggling puzzles met with surreal gameplay makes for one hell of a trip in every sense of the word.

Only Stephen Hawking and a few select Nobel Prize winners will ever unlock the 100% Brain Usage Achievement. Load mechanical pencils in your pocket protector and tape those glasses because Brain Challenge lives up to its name.

Basically, Dream Trigger is a shooter that comes off like it was trying to reinvent shooters, but falls pretty flat. And that's probably not the kind of "trip" it was going for.

That we had to wait for the content for so long -- it suffered a delayed a couple weeks after its announced release date, and was subsequently pulled from Xbox Live when it did hit -- makes the quest taste even more bitter. Five dollars isn't a lot to drop on extra content, but when it's as bare as this it's hard to recommend to anyone who didn't shed a tear over Duncan's death.

They’ve succeeded on the crude humor front—but with a high frustration factor and graphical glitches, BMX XXX fails to completely satisfy.

Narnia is a cherished children's property that deserves a fully fleshed-out game, not a hasty cash-in. It's sad to see Prince Caspian's potential go to waste.

Can be tedious in one-player mode, but it's clearly intended for multiplayer fun. Although it's the only party game for Dreamcast, Sonic Shuffle deals a great hand for all to play.

So, is Watchmen worth your hard-earned cash? I'm going to have to give a resounding "yes" to this expertly crafted beat-em-up. Even with its' shortcomings Watchmen always feels fresh, and really stands apart as a downloadable title.

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.

Are the four player mini-games enough to interest those with zealous hedgehog love? Maybe, but it's really too bad that the combat is so annoying, because the game actually looks great, especially the storybook painting cut scenes. Ah well, better luck next time, Sonic.

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

Where March Madness really falters, however, is in its startling lack of gameplay modes.

Its bargain-basement visuals, vapid enemy A.I., and flaccid controls ensure that the game could stand accused of lameness in a court of law.

With 194 availalable chips to acquire, three modes of play (including a Game Link versus mode), and nine classes of compeittion, Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge is deep in gameplay, and it's a game truly worthy of the Mega Man name. [Feb 2004, p.94]

Repetitious missions and cumbersome controls pilot Reign of Fire headfirst in the dirt.

You could also research a serviceable AI aid that would organize units into groups and automate functions like repair. Teleportation was a significant travel mode for many of the units. But unfortunately, cool ideas don't sell games until they're implemented into cool games.

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

The people who will enjoy Frogger the most are the die-hard fans of the series looking to celebrate its 30th anniversary alongside Konami, and anyone with a 3DS looking for a worthwhile challenge.

Boogie Bunnies isn't so much bad as it is unimaginative, derivative, and just plain boring.

Rocketbowl is not a title to just brush off. It has a lot of features to it that are fun and exciting. Getting your friends online to have an online tournament and show off your skills you honed from the single player.

I can only see this game having use as a cheap and definitely non habit forming method of sleep aid with nightmares as a possible side effect. Or a coaster.

This is a quick game, and beating it feels like being dumped by someone you were just about to break up with: you tell yourself you'll just beat one more level and all of a sudden, it's over.

Very short. I'm deleting it from my iPhone as soon as I turn in this review.

BLSC's camera movement is an immediate hurl-inducing experience: the camera swoops around like a roller coaster gone mad.

The graphics are crisp and astonishingly smooth, but the game is terribly short—the mission mode is too easy and the auxiliary racing bits are uninteresting.

Explorers of the Sky proves one thing: Pokemon's a fantastic classic RPG, but it still doesn't work as a dungeon crawler.

Pros: In a nutshell, it's Diet "God of War." Cons: The diet version is never as good as the non-diet version.

The Fun Factor suffers because of repetitive gameplay and unbalanced weapons and power-ups.

Seems expressly designed to become an obscure B-game classic - it's unpolished and controls strangely, but it's too weird and drop-dead funny to ignore if you're a very special sort of gamer.

I could bash the game for having less than stellar graphics, repetitive sound or even the lack of plot, but I was just looking for a fun game that ended up feeling more like a task, than anything.

Naughty Bear is a great looking game by iPhone standards, but I found that the swipe controls used to direct the bear's movement are in most cases unresponsive and frustrating.

If the game had been as unique as the controls, and it didn't just try to directly map first-person action gameplay onto a less responsive format, Rise of Nightmares could have been something pretty special. This game may not be that great, but it shows that the Kinect itself has potential.

Perhaps one of the most boring games to ever grace a home console...The horrendous combat and boring mission objectives really don't take the game in any fun directions. Apparently the code is all about putting you to sleep.

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.

Despite the beautiful visuals and nuanced details, there's more tedium here than anything else. After a while, even die-hard RPG fans would be hard-pressed to enjoy the mindless sprints through the endless dungeons.

It would be wise to send ShootOut 2002 to the showers unless you simply must have updated player rosters and the questionable touch-shooting feature.

The 3D graphics give a crisp look to the fighters, but the actual battles are too short to fully enjoy—though it does move the game along briskly.

An unstable mix of ambitious ideas and poor execution makes Aidyn a case of too little, far too late.

Paying $60 to play through the movies story is just too high a price to pay for a mediocre adventure game.

Mediocre. It lacks in overall game play and its weak multiplayer offering and brief amount of game time will leave players wanting.

Just like Jeff Hardy, TNA Wrestling iMPACT hides a closet full of crippling inner flaws behind a flashy, colorful exterior.

Fans of the classic puzzle game should stay far, far away from this truly awful version of Tetris.

I expect many fans will be disappointed thanks to all of the hype that's built up around the game, but the inevitable complaints about the control scheme will be warranted. [Sep 2007, p.79]

For Fable fans only, games require more luck than skill.

Offering up what is essentially a diet version of Spider-Man 3 with motion sensing web slinging and combat is a weak showing, which is why I suggest you pass on this one and find a way to play the far better 360 or PS3 versions instead.

Poor graphics and animations, a tear-jerkingly simple fighting system, painful bonus rounds, and one of the worst end-boss encounters ever put to pixel.

It doesn’t deserve starter status because its competition has a bigger head start with their titles, but it’s definitely a big step in the right direction.

Like the PlayStation version, the game requires a specific tempo to your button presses, and it's very difficult to gauge correctly.

Rather than mixing speed and destruction Full Auto feels messy and made me wish I could turn my rocket launcher toward my head.

Thematically brain dead.

With clumsy and downright awkward controls, repetitive missions and mind boggling "who's doing what?!" multiplayer, I can't help but recommend the original Destroy All Humans over this game.

Although hardly original (it's "Jeremy McGrath" with a next-gen facelift), SX Superstar is a well-built arcade bike racer with pretty-enough graphics and the trademark dead-on Climax control.

D-A-C is a fun title that would have faired better at a lower price point due to the lack of content and overall mediocre feel.

Even with the odd original game in the mix, these still aren't the type of things you want to do everyday - especially with the lame scoring system.

If you're looking for some classic shooter action on your new GBA, Iridion 3D will fit the bill nicely without blowing you away.

As a simple diversion for kids twelve-and-under PlayStation Move Heroes is fine. The younger crowd will enjoy the challenges, motion controls, and maybe even the horrific, over-the-top announcer. But if you're a fan of the platforming/action-adventure roots of any of the game's heroes, you'll likely be disappointed.

It seems like half of the enemies can’t hurt you while the other half can kill you instantly, which means repeated saving and loading until you get used to the battle system.

The fact that there is so much misinformation potentially in play, and your own units can basically be turned against you without you knowing, is a great twist and could have made for a great strategy game if AGOT: Genesis either placed all its emphasis on those mechanics, or if it paired them with equally solid combat and controls. But that's not the case here. Instead, there are a couple potentially great ideas, surrounded by poorly-executed mediocrity.

The fact that Ubisoft was able to remaster one of the greatest chapters of the Splinter Cell on a portable platform with only minor downgrades is a small miracle. Splinter Cell 3DS is far greater than it has any right to be, given the drastic overhaul made to the control scheme and the newness of portable 3D gaming.

Revolution is polished graphically, and great at what it is. Unfortunately, it is nothing more than a turn-based battle game. If you're not a true Pokemon fan this really is one piece of cake easily left uneaten.

The RPG connection here is saliva thin, but if you’re thirsting for old-school controller-bruising action; you should sink your teeth into DA: VP.

Blade II has a lot of good raw materials, but the end product doesn’t congeal into a bloody good time.

I have to admit FaceBreaker does have a lot of potential. But as hard as I tried to like the game, I just couldn't get into it that much. [Oct 2008, p.96]

There's just nothing to hold your interest over the long haul and while roaming around with some friends helps, it just isn't entertaining enough for me to recommend it to anyone, not even those who love fairy tales and platform titles. [Jan 2010, p.82]

Strip away the camaraderie, competition, and character interaction of the online experience, and Ragnarok DS simply sticks you with all the hardcore monster-slaying and loot grinding of an MMO without the payoff of being able to crush other human opponents under your mighty battle-hardened boot.

Adventure's six party games and puzzle-based challenge mode are the best this game has to offer. With multiple players, Adventure flies in the face of its weak story mode and becomes a genuinely fun experience.

Thanks to some horribly generic gameplay and uninspired combat, it ends up continuing the disappointing trend of movie license video games.

You would have to be an insanely devoted fan of the action-figure line from which the characters originate and a fan of repetitive level exploration to gain any type of enjoyment from Cy Girls. [Apr 2004, p.74]

The action-heavy gameplay just gets hammered by illogically executed camerawork.

The visual and music portion of the game offer up little to no innovation, it all seems very plain and lacking, almost like a rejected Warner Bros. cartoon.

With some work on A.I., animations, and a deeper Franchise mode, Konami’s game has a shot at spoiling the establishment’s party next year.

With rough textures and flat prerendered backgrounds, Portal Runner looks like a late-generation PlayStation title rather than a second-generation PS2 effort. It plays even worse.

Lord of Arcana is one of those games where the amount of fun you're having is directly proportional to how many people you play with. But there's the catch: if you're playing by yourself, you'll have little to no fun at all, and the lack of online play makes getting a party together unnecessarily difficult. Online play should be standard for this kind of experience, and the game suffers immensely for it.

Overall the best thing, besides the fact this is free, is the fact that it has the easiest achievements to date, besides using your Avatar.

While it may be too unfocused and complex for some there's no doubt intrigued 4x fans will feel the pull of Elemental's premise, and those of you who do can likely find something here to love, faults and all.

Largely an awful shooter. And instead of trying to do everything and failing to deliver virtually anything worthwhile, Bodycount probably would have been much more successful if its design was simplified by focusing on one or two key features it could attempt to do differently. But it didn't, and the end result is not pretty.

When met with the game's linear nature and over-reliance on quick-time events, these technical issues tear away at what could have been the perfect tribute to the original film.

Matt Hazard is not a great game. It falls victim to a lot of the cliches that it pokes fun at and Matt Hazard doesn't have the star appeal of a Duke Nukem or a Marcus Fenix. It doesn't take the spoof thing far enough--they totally waste the voice over talents of the awesome Will Arnett--and the action needs three more coats of polish but it definitely has its moments. Despite its faults, I more or less enjoyed it.

Though this is one of the better Transformer games around, chances are you'll have more fun dressing up in a cardboard box and beat-boxing as you pretend to be Sound Wave.

Clever political ad parodies and LOL-worthy faux TV spots are more entertaining than actually playing the game itself.

Alpha Polaris may drive you mad, but not for the right reasons.

And let’s not forget the "What th-?!" reaction you'll have when you complete the fourth level and the game’s credits start rolling!

It's amazing that Mythos made it out at all, even more so considering how solid its core mechanics managed to be in the final product. Flagship's DNA comes through clearly even as you sift through the unnecessary crap. But with so many competent Diablo clones out there already, there's little reason to play through the piles of slapped-together content that Mythos offers.

A rockin' soundtrack along with quality sound effects and voice acting add to the production value, but can't improve the gameplay.

I can't in good faith recommend Rygar: The Battle of Argus--both fans of the original and newcomers should avoid it. [Feb 2009, p.77]

While it would have been nice to have more features, what Silver Star Chess offers is a mediocre chess game. With a $5 price tag, this title is justifiable if you’re a fan of chess and want a chess game for the Wii, but if you’re a beginner looking to learn the game, this certainly won’t get you to start playing.

Putting the entire flawed premise of Jaws aside, Jaws: Unleashed would be a decent title to play if the camera system, collision detection, and graphics were up to par. But unfortunately, Jaws garners lackluster scores in every one of those categories.

Gangs of London can be quite fun in spite of its bland story mode, but I'm filing it under the rent before you buy category.

The generic levels, poor audio, and sometimes downright confusing level objectives and bizarre CRT system become a little worse for wear.

Better yet, just avoid it altogether. [Feb 2008, p.74]

The main game alone will keep you busy for several hours. Constantly grinding your ants and hoarding food will give you plenty of time to become familiar with Ant Nation, but will also become tedious.

To put it bluntly, you'll lose all honor as a samurai if you attempt to swing this unsharpened sword that shamelessly uses the Seven Samurai name. [June 2004, p.71]

Perhaps one of the most boring games to ever grace a home console...The horrendous combat and boring mission objectives really don't take the game in any fun directions. Apparently the code is all about putting you to sleep.