Moments of blissfully smooth combat are followed by awkward bouts of running away. Just when you start to get bored by doing the same "go slurp us that scientist" mission for the fifth time, it throws you a curve ball. Which means that anyone who thought the original fell short, or was dull, or got trumped by inFamous, Hulk, or any number of Spider-Man games, is not going to be swayed by this. But for those who enjoyed the original, this sequel does not disappoint.

Binary Domain is a decent third person cover shooter with great set piece fights and a few fun boss battles trapped inside a gimmicky command structure and a story that disintegrates near the end and turns what should have been a surprisingly good shooter into one that is tough to fully recommend.

As an Undead Nightmare-like DLC pack for Yakuza 4, Dead Souls makes sense. As a full retail package, the combination of the zombie theme and the recycling feels desperate and ill-advised.

This is a game for people who feel "regular" soccer is too slow and methodical. It's like watching those old And One basketball tapes or going to a Globetrotters game. It's technically soccer but it's faster, looser, not terribly realistic and ideal to play against a buddy when there's 30 minutes to kill and you want to get in a handful of matches and talk a little smack in the process.

While the game's story alone probably wouldn't make for a tremendously successful anime series, and the competent but repetitive gameplay might not suffice without the narrative absurdity, the two elements combine with terrific production values to produce an experience that's definitely worth a look. There aren't many games quite like Asura's Wrath and there aren't a lot of heroes quite like Asura. He may have anger management issues, but it's still worth getting to know him.

It's difficult to shake the feeling that Tekken 3D Prime Edition is a lazy, perfunctory product with little to offer longtime fans other than a terrible movie, 3D graphics, and mobility.

But the reality of a game in this class is that gamers may leave the whole thing to die, waiting for price drops or getting their fill of it over the course of a weekend rental.

It's a $10 download with a decent amount of content so that's hardly a liability, but it's impossible to shake the feeling that it's a very minor title with a short shelf life. It's perfect for a rainy day but most players will likely warp out shortly after the credits roll.

The game is set up almost on a freemium monetization model, but it's a $15 download. And at that price, it does feel a little thin on content- particularly when you're practically asked for your credit card if you want to put a cape on your guy or to buy one of those notorious XP-doubling pills. Granted, most of what you can buy with real money is nothing that any sane adult would care anything about- video game clothes, in-game "mascots", and so forth- but the concept points the way to a future where we'll be paying for FPS games by the bullet.

Had Amalur been stripped down to its bare essentials it would be a much easier game to recommend. This would make for an excellent 12-15 hour action game with its cool combat and fun player progression and a main story that's certainly no worse than most other videogame fare. However, as an especially long RPG masquerading as an open world design it simply overstays its welcome, it feels soulless, and tries to juggle too many balls at once.

All I wanted from King Arthur II was more of the great lore mixed with a degree of difficulty that was challenging but not sadistic and better tactical battles. I got the great lore.

Nano Assault is shallow, pretty, kind of fun but repetitive. It's the kind of game that I tend to play intensely for a couple of days and then put away, never to touch it again.

It is a fun game, and by jingo when it's at its best it's totally the updated Choplifter that I wanted to play.

It does a fabulous job of translating the Harry Potter universe into the LEGO vernacular, with all the frolicsome fun that implies; however, by implementing too many kinds of interactive prompt and by failing to provide enough player feedback, it sets the stage for an interactive experience that's equal parts fun and befuddlement.

For kids with a serious dinosaur affectation, playing Fossil Fighters: Champions will feel like discovering a buried treasure, and there's something to be said for a monster fighting RPG that doesn't require the same time commitment as the Pokemon games. For everyone else though, there are better monster battling RPGs out there, published by the same company, and once you've played them it's hard to see imitators, even ones with dinosaurs, in the same light.

All things considered, there is a place for Greed: fans of the point-and-click "Diablo" style of gameplay will find quite a lot to enjoy here, and for all of its quirks, it still does offer a pretty immersive universe to delve into and all for 20 bucks.

It may not stray from the original, and it may not do anything to convert those not already enamored with gem matching, but when the original is so good, there's no reason to change anything.

Need for Speed: The Run is a true black sheep trying desperately to fit in with its siblings, but simultaneously getting so much so very wrong.

It's still an important and hugely influential game and it should probably be played by anyone interested in first-person shooters. But unless you're part of the generation of gamers that are now in their 20s and you're looking to recapture your Halo heydays, this is definitely most gamers can skip even at its budget $40 retail price.

Overall, the entertainment is there, but usability is lacking.

Once you're finished, something that should only take about five hours, you can unlock the super hard Ragnorak mode, and maybe then your thirst for challenge will be sated, but at that point, why bother? There may be more moves to unlock and different costumes to flit about in, but by then you've seen all there is to see and honestly, hitting a giant with a hammer is only so interesting, regardless of how many different ways you can swing it.

After communicating with the development team, they seem very attentive and are actively patching the game. So maybe in the near future the above-mentioned problems won't be an issue. Until that time, I can't recommend picking this one up. If the news of the HD release has got you itching for MDK2 again, think about hunting down a copy of the original.

If Sega had spent some more time creating content for the game or giving its mechanics an overhaul, there'd be something here for new players to sink their teeth into. As it is, this is one of those titles that will likely only be appeal to folks looking for a quick drive down Nostalgia Lane.

It's simply been done before and done better -- and will probably be revisited again in the future via Kinect or Move.

Sideway comes across feeling more like one of the me-too Mario clones of the NES era despite its unique, singular look and perspective-shifting style. The platforming is nowhere near as tight or as taxing as in Super Meat Boy and it lacks the dynamism and genre synthesis of Outland. It's not even as compelling or innovative as IOS examples such as Mos Speedrun or League of Evil

Rotastic is a good game that through a couple of poor choices limited its own potential. Its premise is simple but engaging and developer Dancing Dots builds effectively upon that premise throughout the first half of the game. Unfortunately, past that point, unforgiving level design combined with unwieldy controls make for a gaming experience that's ultimately So-So-tastic.

It's a mediocre survival horror game that demonstrates a lot of ambition on the part of Sega, but it clearly needed some more time in development.

So many months, so many thousands of man hours of work, so many millions of dollars, such an extravagant marketing campaign, and this is what Epic has produced? The shooter equivalent of a roster update in a sports game?