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.