The U.S. version uses some over-the-top acting that borders on being agitating.

One of the most addictive, amazing, and even hilarious games I’ve seen come out on this quarter of the year. Bullfrog might be dead, and Dungeon Keeper might be dead, but the creative concepts they inspired clearly are not.

A very deep, very rich game intended for those who truly appreciate historical accuracy in strategy games. The strategy is deep, rich and fulfilling, without the need for action or adrenaline.

A novel and refreshing experience that any fan of the series will definitely want to pick up – but if you hate the series, then this probably won’t help much unless your only complaint involves the awkward controls Armored Core is infamous for, as the new control scheme in AC: Nexus really kicks ass and finally makes the game playable for those of us without immensely twitchy fingers.

Overall SVC Chaos feels almost crude by today's standards. If the online mode weren't in it, which in itself is no great shakes, I would swear this was a NeoGeo game from the mid-'90s.

When Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat! releases next year, we'll see how good the DK Bongos really are ... or not.

If you want a game that has a good deal of action, has a rather in-depth story line, and one of the more feisty main characters in a while, then Headhunter: Redemption could be what you are looking for.

A fun experience that feels like a light RPG snack rather than an epic role-playing game. If you dig action more than actual role-playing and can deal with all the hassles then Monster Hunter might be for you.

Fans of the X series may not be prepared to deal with the turn-based nature of the combat in the game, or the unsettling number of encounters they'll have to endure before the game comes to a climax.

One thing to keep in mind though is that this is indeed an RPG. Although it may not seem like one, it is and the games length reveals that very well. You will need to stick with the game for some time until you start to see the real fun start to shine through.

While the story may be from a fever dream, the graphics are straight out of a ’60s acid trip. The colors are bright and vivid. The art style is something between a Monty Python short and The Beetles’ "Yellow Submarine."

The interface is very efficient for maneuvering the pieces around the board, for creating a unit, for performing research and for performing political actions. But when it comes to deploying troops, grouping units and selecting specific units, the interface fails pretty miserably.

The length of Second Sight is enough to satisfy the casual gamer looking for a great story to indulge themselves in, but after it is beaten once, it really has no reply value at all other than having fun tossing around enemies.

Sadly, an impressive graphical presentation and some surprisingly fun offline gameplay (I would've preferred a more storyline-oriented campaign, but the skirmish-styled gameplay is still quite entertaining) just aren't enough to make Star Wars: Battlefront anything more than an above-average title.

While it may not be the greatest GBA game ever, F-Zero GP Legend is a solid and often fun driving game that fans of the franchise will gladly embrace.

I just wish there were a melee attack so I could finally bludgeon an Ewok to death with the butt of my blaster.

You're going to give your controller a real workout as wave upon wave of enemies rush you and you send them straight to Hell. On the other hand this is a pretty mediocre looking game and it is a bit of a one-trick pony.

About the only things that keep the game from scoring higher is the lack of any meaningful innovation in the gameplay and the fact that the game only has seven stages to play.

It fails in my eyes as an innovative title that people will find themselves wanting to pick up in the face of "Doom 3" and the impending "Half-Life 2."

Sly 2 has set the bar almost impossibly high for any platformer that comes after it.

United Offensive would easily be an unquestionably excellent action pack if it weren’t so short in the singleplayer department and didn’t suffer from a few annoying quirks.

It is actually short and easy enough that a two-day rental will probably be all you’ll need to blow through it.

It has some small flaws and is not quite the open, never-ending quest that the game's hype would have had us believe, but a play through is well worth the gamer's time. And perhaps at least two times through: once as the ultimate do-gooder and once as a tyrant that would make Hitler blush.

While it all works well and survival/horror fans won’t be at all disappointed if they go out and get this game, Silent Hill feels an awful lot like previous Silent Hill games.

Don’t buy this one and you’re probably passing up the most fun you’re going to have on your PS2 this season.

Damn these Pokémon! I was doing fine just thinking they were silly kid stuff. I now know I was wrong. Pokémon Leaf Green is a fun and addictive game that I'll want to take with me everywhere just to sneak in a few quick battles and further train my Pokémon.

It is great to see at least one respectable Terminator game. It is not the best game out there, but it is the best Terminator game the fans of the franchise have ever seen.

A decent game with a lot of twitch style role-playing action that button masher fans are going to love –and a lot of hidden baubles and activities (like a versus fighting mode for two players) that role-playing fans can sink their teeth into.

Street Racing Syndicate might have been received as a pretty good game a year or so ago, but now it does not stack up to the competition – even with the racing cuties.

A more forgiving countering and less button mashing intensive game engine would have been preferable, but what's there is pretty solid.

So, while Test Drive: Eve Of Destruction has an almost absurd number of car crashing event variations and lots of vehicles to use, it is not going to be a cross-over hit with players that are not already predisposed to liking demolition derby driving games.

Wonderfully animated backdrops, inventive enemies, and difficult boss battles set Viewtiful Joe apart from the pack as a truly incredible game and a must have.

I’ll be shaking my head and wondering what went wrong to create this seriously flawed game from a great development team working with a strong license.

It is one of the great GBA action games for 2004 and shows that handhelds have games equal to, and sometimes superior to, their big brothers.

It delivers a coherent experience that mixes horror and humor very effectively, and does so with some beautiful environments.

For the golf aficionado, the play mechanics are going to feel a little dated and the experience is probably going to be less than satisfying. So, for PS2 owners that have had a case of "Mario Golf" envy, this is the game for you.

From muddy graphics to the weak mechanics, this simply is not a title with any lasting appeal, even to Gundam Seed fans.

The game is definitely not perfect, but with production values this high and a scare / immersion factor that goes through the roof, even after the 50,000th imp leaps out of a closet to claw at your face, Doom 3 is a game that any player would be stupid not to own in his collection.

The only thing that saves this game from a [20] score is the fact that Global Software did recognize they had a weak title and priced it accordingly.

The graphics are bright and clear, even a little cutesy, and the mechanics for the minigames are, for the most part, simple and well thought out. If you like track and field games don't let the name on the box turn you off.

The camera causes a bit of frustration and takes away a lot of the strategy elements that could have been in this game if it had allowed the player to see the entire room as it was entered, but overall the game is fun and should be given a serious look by fans of science-fiction themed action RPGs.

The combat part of the game is pretty nice (but not perfect), and as we mentioned earlier, many of the game's key components are weak or just plain bad. In the end Sudeki feels like an incomplete RPG experience that needed a lot more development time.

Some people won't enjoy the combat system where the greatest strategy is just to keep on grinding your level up. However, if you look past the flaws, there's really an amusing experience laying in wait.

With the direct control system, insane level of detail and physics modeling, exciting and interesting missions, modding support, and incredibly fun gameplay, the game is hardly stale and makes it easy to recommend to players who are sick of playing "Command & Conquer" clones.

The storyline is very difficult to understand and just won’t make sense to newcomers at first, the gameplay is hard to stomach until players start to comprehend all the little “undocumented features” that the game’s brief tutorial utterly and completely fails to explain, the mission objectives get repetitive, frustrating, and even boring as the campaign moves on, and the game engine definitely demands a kick-ass system to ensure an experience that is at least somewhat smooth.

Aura is puzzle intensive. It's a difficult game even for hardcore adventure gamers and gamers that hate puzzles won't want to touch this title with a ten foot pole.

Put simply, the games are beginning to wear thin. If you’d don’t have any of the previous editions of Mega Man Battle Network, this is a good one to buy and enjoy. For returning players, hold off purchasing and demand that Capcom do a little bit more next time.

Fortunately taking on the smaller bad guys is pretty fun too. It does feel as though you’ve done it all before after a while though.

The game uses non-game elements without becoming overbearing to the point of irritation and the game's various multimedia flavors is spread out in such a fashion as to offer a steady stream of variety.

As someone who wanted a true sequel to the original Ground Control that continued to break away from the generic mold things like the "Command & Conquer" series has become, I was ultimately disappointed.

While it is not absolutely perfect, it comes awfully close.

The action when you are walking is sub par at best in the best of scenarios and even with the heavy firepower you can acquire such as, m16's, Uzi's and even grenade launchers, it doesn't make it all that much better.

PlayStation 2 owners that would rather pluck out their eyes than own an Xbox will want to get this game.

The game is worth a shot for anybody getting sick of the same old grind. Just be prepared for a real challenge, as staying alive can sometimes be just as hard as killing somebody else, if not harder.

I found few things more immensely satisfying about Front Mission 4 than witnessing a perfectly executed chain of attacks occur all from moving one Wanzer into position and issuing an attack order. Thumbs up for an interesting new way to pump a little fresh spice into the standard turn-based strategy formula.

It is offensively stupid, combining muddy graphics, horrible character design, sluggish controls, and miserable game play into a morass of anti-fun.

The game is so hopelessly generic, even with what little is does get right, it just can't rise above what it is... another "me-too" game.

It has been a while since I've had so much pure joy while playing a game.

Both a unique and amusing game, but not everyone is up for the amount of time it takes to actually complete a game.

The combination of the terrifically-executed side-scrolling action game that became the killer app for the Genesis, along with the replay-enhancing tag-actions feature, makes Sonic Advance 3 a winner.

The real genius in Four Swords Adventure is that it creates the perfect blend of teamwork, competition, and sadism.

It's not going to set the world on fire for its originality of presentation and gameplay, but for a younger gamer, this a charming and solidly-built platform action/adventure game that should give them some real entertainment with fair value added by the trading card and multiplayer aspects of the cartridge.

Where the game shines is in its siege warfare tactics and deformable terrain. These elements add enough flavor to the gameplay that fans will find the game an enjoyable romp both online and offline.

No Doubt is MIA, the art is occasionally freakish and definitely not up to Xbox standards, and while "fun" is always a subjective call, the gameplay offers nothing new and contains a ton of repetition. Malice ends up being a small package that just doesn't offer enough.

Delivers on the promise of offering a modern day tactical game that is totally different from the average title, yet is incredibly easy to pick up and play. My grievances focus around the slightly linear mission design, occasionally idiotic AI (both enemy and friendly, though more so the former), and a short campaign, but everything else the game offers left me with an excellent experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Although Riddick may not be the longest game on the market and the replay value is pretty much non-existent with only Live Aware and no multiplayer to be had, for doubters and non-believers alike, Chronicles of Riddick is absolutely one of the best Xbox games ever released.

Talk about your pick-up-and-play games, Metal Slug 3 is the best. The left stick to move, one button to shoot, one button to jump/leap in and out of vehicles, and a button to chuck explosives.

Despite all of these somewhat questionable design issues, the title does deliver a rather enjoyable hop n’ bop experience that can easily burn a few hours without demanding too much investment of cerebral activity.

There's no denying that the title was one of those classics that lived on far beyond its intended marketability. In this respect, a port to the GBA was a sort of inescapable eventuality, and the final result is one that's as faithful to the original as one could hope.

Playing multiplayer against other players that could transform into vehicles would have been something that could be expanded on quite considerably but unfortunately there is nothing at all.

There just isn’t enough punch in this game to make it last in today’s hardcore gaming market.

The best part of Custom Robo, and the only reason to play through single player, is the level of customization you get with your miniaturized death machine.

All in all, if you are looking to play a mindless shoot ‘em up in a typical and depthless game that has no multiplayer and a rather short single player campaign, than Van Helsing may be what the doctor ordered.

It has no huge deficiencies that make it a bad game, but it was clearly built with online play in mind and the solitary gamer may feel a bit cheated in the difficulty of the single-player mode. I know I did.

A quality title pitched to something of a niche audience, and a very successful sequel.

Graphically, the title is definitely clocking in at “adequate”, with sometimes lumpy characters and stiff animations.

Graphically, the title is definitely clocking in at “adequate”, with sometimes lumpy characters and stiff animations. There’s a slight floating in the movement of characters, and the terrain can seem a bit bland and repetitive at times, but hey, it’s a desert setting.

The reason I like the Sidekick feature is that you can never be ‘left behind’ by your friends and teammates.

Sure the expansion could have been used to fix a few minor bugs, but Big Huge Games obviously focused on new features and campaigns, rather than building a "patch you have to pay for."

My vote for funkiest feature included in a collectors edition has to go to the 3D paper figure included with Lineage II. It stands at just about 22 inches tall, includes 32 sheets of paper and 128 pieces. [DVD Review]

Walks a very fine line between addictive gameplay and pure frustration.

More of the same? Absolutely, but whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your enjoyment of the previous games in the series.

More of the same? Absolutely, but whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your enjoyment of the previous games in the series.

If you like to dance and want a great game for a party with people who don’t mind looking a little silly, EyeToy Groove is probably just up your alley.

Like a creepy, surly teenager on his first day of high school, this game simply tries too hard to be cool and achieves very little of what it sets out to accomplish.

More of the same? Absolutely, but whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your enjoyment of the previous games in the series.

Like a creepy, surly teenager on his first day of high school, this game simply tries too hard to be cool and achieves very little of what it sets out to accomplish.

The enemies are varied enough and can be deadly, but they are animated poorly and just look bad.

Ideally suited to hard core strategy gamers who relish the pure strategic elements of player-versus-player conflict and don't mind the occasionally tedious hotspot in combat.

The multiplayer is adequate but uninspiring and the cutscenes are best skipped, but the single-player game brings home the bacon.

In fact, what it really reminds me of is the pure, unadulterated, simplistic fun of "Tanarus." And if you know what "Tanarus" is, you’ll know exactly what I mean, and if you don’t go back to watching "Spongebob."

From the annoying sidekick lizard’s sex jokes, to the whiplash you get from the fast and furious cut-scenes, to the lousy solution guide which is both required reading and written in a horribly obnoxious tone, there’s nothing in Forever Worlds that would appeal to anyone.

There simply aren’t any redeeming aspects to Breed, and perhaps it’s best just to leave it at that.

I for one found the game rather intriguing even with its faults. Perhaps in the next product iteration Capcom will add a little more inter-player communication to the game and really push it over the top.

Everything that worked in the "Smash Bros" formula-- a huge cast of very different characters, big cartoony action with lots of goodies, and a lighthearted sense of fun-- is missing here.

Coupling that with inconsistent plot coherency and questionable physics, it seems important to stress that while this is a very shiny game demonstrating a very robust engine, there is more beauty than guts here, and many players may find the colorful candy shell does not deliver as delicious a gaming experience.

The game play will be familiar to veterans of the series and is easy enough for newcomers to pick up in a hurry.

User-friendly controls combined with you-are-there graphics and sound – and a bunch of cool modes and extras – makes this one of the best baseball games you’re likely to play.