You just can't help but feel that the project was too ambitious for its own good. Much of Bloodlines works just as well as it did with the original Assassin's Creed, but a number of strange design choices certainly hinder the game as a whole.

Rogue Trooper tries to be a competant third-person action game with attitude, but it ultimately fails. [June 2006, p.74]

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.

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.

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.

I had a great time dismembering members of the Empire for four hours, and what little story exists has some great potential, but the hugely missed marks and brutal technical problems really bring The Force Unleashed 2 to its knees. It's tough to recommend this to even the most devout Star Wars fan, since they'll feel the sting of disappointment worse than those who'd simply dislike it as a mediocre action game.

If nothing else, The First Templar is an interesting look at what happens when an established developer moves beyond its comfort zone. Unsurprisingly, the results are mixed: a few glimmering moments of innovation diluted by hours of decade-old design.

A game full of lousy gameplay and poor visual effects that will only make you ask, “Why?!” ... Clearly belongs in the bin of horrendous movie-to-game translations.

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 controls fall into the same annoying trap as other touch-control FPS games in that you're always resetting your thumb to look around.

It's like playing Simon Says with a Simon that never attempts to fool you and is really into teeny-bop pop; if the graphics were a person, her ugliness would prevent her from making the squad; controls aren't precise enough.

Character animation is fine, but some questionable collision detection and generic explosions rob it of whatever flash it could have had. X2: Wolverine’s Revenge simply doesn’t feel polished—or even complete.

Really, I don't blame WayForward or Sega for such a boring game -- both companies have had their share of excellent games. But it's like being given a painter's canvas and three crayons -- you can create all you want, but the material you're given isn't the best to work with. But when I think of all the other things I've could've done on my Saturday -- went for a walk, strolled by the beach, gone to see a movie -- I can only gaze up at the heavens and curse Thor's name.

All in all, Wanted: Weapons of Fate isn't so much a game for fans of the shooter genre, but it's a game for fans of Wanted.

NHL Arcade falls short in too many areas to be highly recommended. Unless you're a diehard hockey fanatic you can pass up this title. It's a shame too, we needed a good hockey arcade title for PSN/XBLA, but we haven't gotten it yet.

The mechs are highly customizable--a franchise hallmark--but the environments are sparse and the gameplay experience itself feels ultimately soulless.

While Xbox 360 and PS3 owners get a slick upgrade over Madden '07, Wii owners get a mediocre and lackluster version. Diehard fans and series n00bs alike should avoid the Wii version, as it's inferior in just about every single way.

If you own any wrestling game from the last five years, I can almost guarantee it'll have more match types, story lines, and custom moves than this one.

It’s the execution that lacks. Laboriously slow gameplay leaves little to get excited about—there’s no real sense of speed.

Because the PSP buttons (including the shoulder buttons) are in such close proximity to each other, your fingers are constantly tumbling over each other to pull off the right stunt.

It hopelessly mires itself in technical problems: frame rates drop and stutter precipitously and unpredictably; characters move through, and get stuck in, solid objects; there's often tangible lag between moving the joystick and seeing the result; collision detection and vehicle physics are spotty at best; and heck, the game even freezes entirely on occasion.

If you spent time jamming quarters into Samurai Shodown 2 in an arcade somewhere back in the day, this game is worth a look. But if you're looking for a classic, fun 2D fighter on XBLA, you could do better.

A lot of folks are looking for a slice of Japanese otaku life as a video game, or just some anime fan-service, and if that's you, you won't be disappointed.

And with all this fixing, adding, and rearranging, you get the sense that Dark Energy Digital desperately wants you to like their game, going as far as including an in-game "Dev Feedback" menu, letting players vote various aspects of the game up or down, as well as citing the reasons for those votes. But it reveals Dark Energy's focus on fixing the individual components of a fundamentally broken game, and while Prophecy's improvements make for a better experience, they only serve to make a bad experience into just another disappointment.



You may have a modicum of fun with Slam Bolt, but with its short length and unbalanced mechanics, you're mostly in for a bland experience.

By dumbing it down with WWF-style presentation and mindless gameplay, 3DO has created a PS2 update of the BattleTanx series that turns what was a fun mission-based adventure into a silly tournament-style game show.

Graphics are decent, but the sound is obnoxious.

While the overall control scheme works well enough, kicking long range field goals through the notoriously tight uprights is far too simple. The limited playbook also gives the game a stale feeling and the half baked telemetry system fails to save the gameplay with largely unimportant statistical minutia delivered in eye-straining small fonts and obnoxious menus.