The kiddie treatment here is both disturbing and annoying, and the games themselves aren’t all that fun.

Digital déjà vu. Your brain knows that it’s a brand-new game…but you never quite shake the feeling that you’ve played it all before.

Other baseball games might have a more unique feature or two, and several absolutely have better graphics, but only High Heat delivers such consistently riveting gameplay.

The controls are surprisingly cumbersome for a twitch game in which precision is crucial. Steering and aiming is a nightmare, and certain weapons border on unusable.

A very, very, very old-school platformer that doesn’t have enough standout new features to keep it fresh in this day and age.

It’s kinda clever, but once you get the basic formula its not very challenging.

The ambient music and low hum of your engine perfectly invoke the feeling of being out on your own in space, while radio chatter around the various planets and bases only enhance the realism.

Although the PS2 game comes some three months after the Xbox release, this version is the better of the two—mostly because of its superior controls.

You'll play through the same environments in each campaign, and despite multiple enemy layouts, that lack of level variety lessens the replay value.

Overall, the fielding controls are just good enough for the “Bigs.” As with earlier ASBs, timing buttonpresses for defensive moves like diving to stop grounders or sliding to snare low line drivers to the outfield is more adventurous than it has to be.

A masterpiece of cinematic, anime-inspired, science-fiction storytelling, but only if you have the patience (and time) to endure cinemas that can last upwards of 45 minutes.

The de-emphasis on micromanagement is welcome, but the feeling that the game is doing too much for you might kill it for intergalactic armchair generals.

As always with the McRae series, the sublime handling of your car is what makes this game so appealing.

Despite its impressive depth, this game is no masterpiece... But if you find yourself intrigued by its premise, there’s enough quality adventuring here that it can almost become an obsession.

With its martial arts action, Kung Fu Chaos is a bit like "Mario Party" with a mean streak.

The combat is especially well executed, although the amount of punishment opponents can take is a tad unrealistic.

2004 is the best ASB yet, and fans of the series won’t go wrong with any version. The game’s tunable to all tastes and skill levels; it’s baseball at its almost finest.

In terms of the batting cursor interface, the GameCube version offers the tightest joystick control in the batter’s box with the Xbox version being a little too stiff and the PS2 version a little too loose.

Other baseball games might have a more unique feature or two, and several absolutely have better graphics, but only High Heat delivers such consistently riveting gameplay.

Visually, the game is just beautiful—the eye-popping lighting in particular is remarkable. The audio also shines.

An addictive and undeniably daring game that feels more urgent and less epic than most RPGs, and the battle system is masterful. But it’s nothing like previous Breath of Fire games, and the forced repetition might kill it for you.

Most importantly—and this will make Dark Cloud fans very happy—Level-5 has fixed nearly everything wrong with the first game.

If it wasn’t for unbalanced controls, Apex could have taken top honors in the Xbox racing category.

Probably best appreciated by newcomers to the Yu-Gi-Oh game who want to learn how to play.

The best way to describe Disaster Report is "Silent Hill without the monsters."

The sound is purely 8-bit NES quality; in short, the music needs to die. The control interface, however, is quite inspired.

Pride FC’s gameplay style is exactly the same as all of the "UFC" titles, which shows that THQ put little thought into making this game.

There’s nothing really new here, save for some neat time-based puzzles, [but] the game is far more engaging than you’d figure from first glance.