It was apparently made on a low-end budget and pushed out long before it was ready.

The issue remains that the game as a whole seems unfinished, with combat that can only be described as woeful and a variety of small issues that add up rather quickly against the overall enjoyment of the title.

The game needs a little more spit and polish before it can assume its proper place in the Pantheon.

If BioShock ends up being yet another critically acclaimed game that the general public ignores then we’re all wasting our time writing reviews in the first place. Folks, this is just about as good as it gets.

It's a tale of moral imperative, the nature of man, tragedy, betrayal, right, wrong, and the gray that lives in-between. And if you're not interested in the depth its story line explores, it's also an immaculate action game, with enough ways to bludgeon, maim, and blow stuff up to hold you over until "Halo 3" arrives.

Jeanne D'Arc manages to deliver on all fronts, from the presentation to the fast paced and streamlined open-ended battles and skill binding mechanics. Everything in this game is polished, pretty, highly functional and fun. At the end of the day it's hard for me to complain about anything in this game.

It’s not a good practice to ding a game on what’s not included, however in the case of Brunswick Pro Bowling, there’s so much missing that could make the game better that it’s hard to not think of what could have been.

Those new to the series or new to gaming in general may be better served by the easier puzzles in the original; however those up to the challenge or those who have exhausted the previous version’s offerings will find more of the same great puzzle madness. It’s never been so fun to feel so stupid.

It's just a shame that the developers couldn't balance implementing authentic rules with playability.

Persona 3’s unusual take on the RPG formula takes some getting used to, but it’s well worth the small amount of effort it requires to become acclimated. If you’re tired of the same old RPG shtick, but still want a compelling story and addictive gameplay, look no further.

A surprisingly deep RTS experience in a portable format, with easy to learn controls and lovely visuals. I can’t help wishing it had been turned-based, though.

It’s unlikely that Rune Factory is going to make converts out of anyone who doesn’t already enjoy the series but it will certainly please longtime fans, especially those who felt like the series was growing stale.

A game that while still fun, is nowhere near the level that it should be. A game this popular and that is this much of a money making machine should not have some of the problems that crop up every single year.

The new “player weapons” feature is just a gimmick.

The adventure and RPG mode could have been creative and fun. Instead it is very tedious.

It’s a shame that Boogie’s gameplay falls so flat because there’s a tremendous amount of potential here.

It's too simple, too short, and becomes boring far too quickly to recommend.

“Easy to pick up but hard to put down” has become a trite phrase but it fits Picross DS perfectly. It’s hard to believe that such a fun and puzzle packed game only costs 20 bucks, especially when many “next gen” games clock in at three times the price with barely as much content.

As a single player game, it provides quite a bit of arcade action and the power ups make it a challenge and if you love to play online, this will keep you busy for quite some time.

At the end of the day, I have no problems recommending this for kids ages 7 and up, but for oldster Peanuts fans like myself, this game is about as thrilling as watching Pig Pen's dust cloud.

Gamers should do their best not to contract this syndrome.

For better or worse, random battles pop up on the screen at a pretty high rate. While this will help in the quest to get stats and skills boosted, it becomes pretty tedious after awhile.

More of a stopgap for GH junkies. Don't expect it to hold you over for long.

The game lacks the depth and flexibility available in other racing titles, but it captures the NASCAR experience expertly.

One of the most ambitious game add-ons you're likely to find and the vast majority of these changes are welcome ones that add significantly to the experience.

Knowing the Xbox 360 version looks (and plays) so much better, it’s tough to get excited about this game on a $500 console.

Playing in a multi-player Dynasty is A Grade fun despite the flaws, Campus Legend is certainly worth investigating and online play remains a bright spot. So even though the game is peppered with major and minor annoyances, there is definitely fun to be had. It just all depends on your perspective.

Hot Shots Tennis, as you'd expect, looks like a kid’s game, sounds like a kid’s game, has the depth of a kid’s game, but plays a very mature and fun game of tennis. Unfortunately, it's just not challenging enough and it doesn't have enough longevity for experienced sports gamers.

Even with some missing features that longtime sport gamers have become accustomed to and some notable flaws in the gameplay balance on the field, nothing stops the pure fun factor of playing All Pro Football 2K8 from shining through. Here’s hoping we see the continuation of this series.

If this were a mid-level priced game, say $29.99, it would be a bargain, but to charge full price for a game that has so little in the way of off the field content is a tough pill to swallow.

Smash Court Tennis 3 isn’t an awful game – there’s just not a whole lot here to keep your attention. There is a lot of depth in the game but will you keep coming back to play it?

Project Sylpheed is trying to do a bit more than it is capable of – not only due to the occasional graphical slowdown, but also because the gameplay is a bit repetitive and parts of the campaign feel a little rushed or misplaced.

The critical flaw made by the developers however was in not paying close enough attention to their community, and realizing that in order to create a worthwhile sequel, they’d have to do more than just update the graphics and add a couple of features, which ultimately means that there’s little point to picking up Enemy Engaged 2 unless you’re new to the series.

It plays fast, has good AI and best of all there is no clean up.

At the end of the day Transformers The Game on the PlayStation 3 does offer some interesting open-ended gameplay in between the loose driving and fighting missions, and that's the only thing saving it from being a complete wash.

To add to the frustration, many obstacles in your way seem to weigh three pounds or less, as civilian cars fly through the air after colliding with you, but trees and other seemingly destructible objects are as solid as a mountain.

The clumsiness of the controls makes combat a somewhat uneven experience.

The port job itself is incomplete at best with the Xbox 360-centric prompts and sluggish performance, and if they are fixed in a future patch, which Capcom says is coming soon, the title is easily recommendable.

Despite the game generally being the same as it was the last few times I played it, the PSP version pulled me right back in as if it were a completely new experience, and I didn’t want to let go.

GrimGrimoire brings real-time strategy, magic and anime together to create an interesting and cool game experience worth checking out. The game is obviously not for everyone, but those that can "get" what the game is trying to accomplish certainly will enjoy it.

AGEod brings a unique aesthetic to their wargames, fusing the colors of old atlases with the functionality of intuitive design.

The Darkness is, quite simply, an excellent game and deserves its place as one of the finest shooters and finest examples of video game storytelling in recent memory.

Hour of Victory has so many problems that it is mind boggling. I could write another two-hundred words about how badly this game was put together but what's the point? The bottom line is that everything about this game feels unfinished.

Just don’t expect anything revolutionary…and make sure you play it with the sound turned down; the music sounds like it was whipped up on a circa-1988 Casio keyboard.

Thankfully, the game isn’t terribly long so only a limited supply of caffeine is needed to get through it, but at $60, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is overpriced and only recommended for the ten year old Harry Potter fan that may not need gratifying gameplay when simply walking around Hogwarts as Harry Potter is enough.

The PS3 version also offers SIXAXIS support, but like many other games that support it, it doesn't add all that much to the overall experience.

The way the Wii version handles spell casting is a bit more complicated and a bit more entertaining.

Though Brothers in Arms DS is admittedly short and has only a 'barely-there' multiplayer component the single-player gameplay is involving and the engine shows off what the DS is capable of doing.

DiRT is a great game to show off your Xbox 360’s graphical capabilities and is a fun and addictive racing game with a high amount of replay value.

The best video game adaptation to date of the live action Transformers movie. The bad news is that it’s still not saying much.

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 is simply the best version that can be purchased on any platform. While other ports of the title have had their own share of nuances that made them not quite equal to the quality of the original, on the Wii the game simply works on a level that can easily make a newcomer think that it was always meant for that platform.

The best video game adaptation to date of the live action Transformers movie. The bad news is that it’s still not saying much.

Ultimate Ninja 2 is more of the same but with a fresh coat of paint. In my opinion it's got enough meat on its bones to recommend to fans of the original and beat 'em up fans in general. But while the action is pretty easy to get into, the game's victory conditions might prove frustrating to some.

An average game experience with a number of small problems that result in mediocrity. On the plus side the gameplay is a lot of fun if you can forgive the AI's obvious deficiencies.

The shortness of the campaign, coupled with the lack of any incentive to replay missions makes it hard to call this game a good value, even with the 20 dollar price tag. Ironically enough, what Time Ace needs more of…is time.

A big disappointment. While the game does try to bring over the fun of the DS title and the controls aren’t bad, no one should be forced to pay full price for such a very small number of games with little or no replay value.

There’s just not a lot of “wow” here and it feels like a Vectrex game: it’s the same gameplay as any other on-rails FPS, but you’ve just changed the overlay on the screen to a Western.

A flavorless mash where not even the explosions are cool.

This might be due to a simple lack of competition for the moment, but Sword of the Stars just plains ‘works’ and is one of the best epic space strategy games you can buy.

Ultimately, if you've had your fill of Halo 2 on the Xbox then there's not a lot to lure you to buy the game again for the PC.

Regardless of your level of familiarity with the nuts and bolts of real world racing, this is a game that not only captures the competitive spirit of wheel to wheel racing but does so in a way that is genuinely fun and somehow skirts the mundane feeling that plagues other games in the genre. Forza Motorsport 2 has officially set the bar.

At the end of the day Shadowrun can be fun if you ignore the poor use of the brand on which it is based and the intermittent connectivity problems.

The lack of Windows XP support shuts out a legion of potential PC customers, the connection issues are more than a bit annoying, and the single-player bot play is at best uninspired.

Grand Phantasm delivers exactly what Atelier Iris series fans are looking for. For the rest looking for something that deviates from the series' trademark formula, it might best to look elsewhere.

There’s a lot of game here for the money, and as long as you haven’t already played it, it’s definitely worth picking up.

The story is unoriginal and uninspired, the characters are dull and lifeless, and while some of the puzzles are genuinely fun, any entertainment derived from them is more than cancelled out by the aggravation of actually getting to them.

Dawn of Mana is an interesting action role-playing game that suffers from the same problems that Square Enix's Brave Fencer Musashi for the PS2 had - an unruly camera that is counter-productive to what the player is trying to accomplish.

With better pacing, some deeper activities to partake in and a more finely tuned interaction system Brooktown High could have been a lot of fun.

In closing, Death Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom is a game that had a lot of good ideas, most of which ended up being abysmal when actually implemented.

Those looking at this game as a way to jump into the trading card genre, or just looking for a new way to make their’s Marvel, will be better suited with heading down to the Game Shop and entering the tutelage of the resident ten year old experts.

While some players may ultimately find the combat and inventory limitations to be more than they can bear, Odin Sphere deserves much credit for its artfully elegant approach to a genre that is too frequently weighed down by yawn-inducing cases of déjà vu.

A fun romp mimicking the action of the movies; it looks good and captures the essence of the films – but it's just too easy for seasoned gamers and the lack of co-op multiplayer is a real bummer.

Yes, the graphics are bland. Yes, the controls are limiting. Yes, the action is slow-paced. Yes, there’s a bit of price-gouging with the “bills” system, especially if you want to get to the higher levels in the game. However, for fans of pick-up basketball, there's no denying that Freestyle Street Basketball is a fun outlet--and that’s the whole point, right?

Right now the baseball game to beat on the PS3 is Konami’s "Professional Baseball Spirits 4," and even with the language barrier, it’s still a more enjoyable game.

Etrian Odyssey requires patience and resolve to unlock the mysteries of the Labyrinth, with not enough reward in return. This is a game only for the hardcore. All others need not apply.

It's not that the PC edition of Resident Evil 4 is a bad game. It’s just dated and sloppily ported.

If I was forced to choose a version out of these three I'd go with the Xbox 360 version simply because it looks better and nearly matches the level of visual quality found in the film.

If I was forced to choose a version out of these three I'd go with the Xbox 360 version simply because it looks better and nearly matches the level of visual quality found in the film.

If I was forced to choose a version out of these three I'd go with the Xbox 360 version simply because it looks better and nearly matches the level of visual quality found in the film.

All things being equal if you have a PC that is capable of playing its version of the C&C 3 you are probably better off doing so, as the Xbox 360 does have significant flaws in its graphics handling and to some extent its control scheme.

At the end of this game within a game, Reminisce isn't bad at all - its biggest problems are that it is just too familiar to .hack players and many of The World's areas feel a little too recycled.

But the real deal breaker for Winx Club Join the Club is a very familiar problem for PSP owners: load times. Players will spend more time watching the game load than they will actually playing the game. And these load times are ridiculously long.

As fun as UFO is at times you can’t help but ask yourself – what’s the point? Haven’t we already played this game before? It’s one thing to ask for a clone of a 14 year old game – it’s another thing to actually get it.

If nothing else, Armed Assault can be considered just short of being a “flawed masterpiece”, desperately in need of the proper time and development to shine the way it truly should.

A buggy, frustrating, and unpolished game that only at times feels like the wind-rush you expect from an open-ended 360 Spider-Man experience. Toss in the hideous camera, the button mashing fight sequences and sadistic Boss fights and you have a videogame companion that is fits well with the third movie – both are sadly unfulfilling.

Throw in some nice bells and whistles such as calling up die roll results charts and reference screens and Catan really gives you everything you need to play.

Heatseeker claims to be an arcade fighting game -- which it is, so in that regard...mission accomplished; however it is also very easy with a low presentation value and limited gameplay options. There’s just not a lot here to get excited about.

Sam & Max Episode Six: Bright Side Of The Moon isn't the best game in the series, but it's a great ending to a season filled to the brim with fun moments and hilarious dialog.

The character models themselves are largely devoid of character. There’s not a ton of detail to faces and the models themselves often come off rigid and too similar to each other.

It’s impossible to review the PS3 version without looking over at the PC and 360 editions, which are both clearly superior games. Why pay that kind of money for a PS3 game with poor controls and graphics when the same game can be had for a better price on other platforms?

A game with a different and effective spin on an old idea.

The good news for fans of this anime series about futuristic air boarding and mech combat is that there is actually a decent story being told this time around. The bad news for the rest of us is that the gameplay is simply average and not very compelling in the grand scheme of things.

Theatre of War ultimately ends up being a “nice try”. There is too little feedback and too little variety for its size to recommend it to hardcore wargamers and it’s too frustrating on too many levels to recommend to the neophyte.

The game has lots of extras like "catch cards" and “recipes” to make new items, so it definitely has a high replayability factor.

A pretty clear example of why budget titles can be just as worthwhile if not more so than standard retail games. At its core the game is an entertaining fast food simulation, while at the same time the peppy, joyful theme and strange mini-games are a welcome change of pace from the norm.

It’s like playing air guitar, rocking out to your favorite music, but actually having a guitar.

Final Fantasy fans that can live without actual RPG elements and can enjoy a myriad of mini-games and light card battles should also giving this game a look.

But with over 200 hundred puzzles to solve, two gameplay modes and some nifty unlockables this cool little puzzler is worth it.