Though there is a certain roughness to the action, Wet is still a raucously entertaining adventure.

Saving cute little fish in Downstream Panic! is a fun though, occasionally, frustrating endeavor.

Skulls of the Shogun is a light entertainment that remains enjoyable for just about every minute of its six- or seven-hour life span.

It seems old-fashioned at first, but Mana Khemia takes a surprisingly fresh look at old role-playing conventions.

Dead or Alive: Dimensions is a fun version of an arcade classic that offers some of the fastest fighting on the 3DS.

It focuses on something far more interesting than buildings: people. This makes for an enthralling combination of city building and role-playing, with enough personality, activity, and variety to do justice to both genres.

It would have been nice to have seen some more variety in the environments, and the instances of backtracking through areas you've already visited are disappointing. But the game's exciting, free-form combat makes up for those deficiencies.

World Championship Poker 2's offline play is the best you'll find amid this year's competition, and the online play is still pretty engaging.

Thanks to significantly improved gameplay, NBA Live 08 is a good, solid basketball game.

Spreading out your map, setting up your PlayStation Eye, and getting your cards ready is a cool addition to the usual card-battle preparations, and in that context, the game is a real winner.

IL-2 Sturmovik's dogfights and bombing runs are exciting enough to satisfy anyone with an interest in air combat. It successfully caters to both novices and veterans, and it's good to see such a faithful sim appear on a console.

Ty's difficulty is tuned for younger or casual gamers, but it also attempts to appeal to older players, who should still be able to appreciate the quality of the game even if it's a little on the easy side.

Buckets of whimsy and oodles of puzzles make this a satisfying adventure, despite the sometimes steep difficulty.

If you're up for a little bit of trivia with a dirty sense of humor and you have three like-minded friends, The Guy Game won't let you down.

What it lacks in variety and narrative, Darkspore makes up for with fun cooperative combat and character customization that deepens the more you play.

A great sense of humor and challenging gameplay make Let's Go Tower Defense Play! easily the best South Park game to date.

Despite being made mostly of recycled parts, Emerald proves that the Pokémon formula still works.

Another year brings another assortment of subtle improvements to the latest edition of Out of the Park Baseball.

Piyotama is a good little puzzle game that's available at the right price.

While this might leave Street Fighter fans scratching their heads, any package with Forgotten Worlds, Commando, Gun.Smoke, and Final Fight in it is easily worth the price of admission.

SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 successfully returns to the fundamentals of realistic WWE action and easy-to-use creation tools.

Help save the human race from evil robots in this funny and satisfying strategy game for the DS.

Quantum Conundrum's nutty interdimensional experiments don't go off without a hitch, but this inventive first-person puzzler still produces some enjoyable results.

If the heavy focus on trial and error doesn't rattle you, Stuntman: Ignition can be some explosive fun.

Gnarly deaths and cute aliens make for a fun combo in this challenging action game.

The rewarding sense of experimentation and problem-solving that dominates this quest makes putting up with its foibles worthwhile, and the twisting, puzzling halls of Quadwrangle Manor are substantial enough to justify the 1200-point ($15) price of admission.

With new online modes and increased options for tuning and customizing your bike, MotoGP 07 certainly plays to the strengths of the series.

It's more of a good thing, but a second-rate campaign and an underwhelming new gameplay mode keep this expansion from soaring.

Gnarly deaths and cute aliens make for a fun combo in this challenging action game.

NBA Live 09's gameplay has again seen some improvement, but there are still a few rough edges.

Prey's campaign won't take too long, and it's rarely difficult, which makes it a solid choice if you're looking for an easy weekend romp. But much of the game's potential for unique thrills feels wasted by its straightforward level design, and the multiplayer doesn't add much to the package.

MLB 2K10 marks the 10th anniversary of the baseball franchise with a greatly improved game that's the best in the history of the series.

It's not about outmatching cunning opponents or solving complex puzzles. It's a game that scratches an itch that is so base and so primal that you can't help but smile as you eviscerate your saccharine enemies only to gorge yourself on their bloody entrails.

The technology behind Sega Rally Revo is undeniably impressive and the driving is a good bit of arcade fun, but the game's staying power is highly questionable.

Beautiful Katamari includes few surprises, but it does offer up more of the enchanting gameplay and charming atmosphere the series is known for.

The Asian Dynasties is a solid expansion that offers unique Asian civs and some other gameplay tweaks to Age of Empires III.

If you are looking for a realistic football experience, then the versions of FIFA for other platforms are still the way to go, but FIFA 11 for the Wii is a very good package that is well suited to Nintendo's console.

Like the movie it's based on, Wall-E is accessible enough for kids to enjoy but offers enough depth for an older audience.

The minigames are shallow and repetitive, but Kinectimals is too lovable to stay mad at for long.

While it abandons the the long-running story that defines the franchise, Suikoden Tierkreis offers a brisk, beautiful role-playing experience.

Section 8: Prejudice explores well-worn territory, but a smart campaign and volatile competitive mode make this shooter rise above its generic aesthetic.

As long as you're satisfied with the core gameplay of Europa Universalis III, this add-on won't disappoint.

Good overall, and it deserves credit for being something other than just another military-themed shooter or strategy game. It's just too bad that it isn't more involving.

The pure joy of commanding a small army of malicious minions more than makes up for Overlord's minor shortcomings.

Mega Man ZX Advent walks a thin line between challenging and infuriatingly difficult, while bringing along a number of new tricks and improvements for the journey.

Despite certain underdeveloped elements, this is the most ambitious and accessible Naruto game yet.

This online role-playing game lives up to its namesake as far as the quality of its action-packed quests is concerned, but it doesn't have all the features you'd probably want.

Exit 2 doesn't add much refinement, but it does offer a formidable new serving of challenging, engaging puzzle play.

What could have been an action-packed, combat-intensive game gets muddled down by mechanics that make it frustrating more often than satisfying.

It's not quite the smooth, finely tuned speed machine it could have been, but Need for Speed: Most Wanted is still an exciting racer.

FlatOut: Head On follows the same basic formula as the rest of the series, but the PlayStation Portable version is the current definitive package.

This game brings Bomberman to the PSP with plenty of enjoyable, challenging single-player levels, as well as the fun and frantic multiplayer battles the series is known for.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted isn't quite a return to the racing paradise of some earlier Criterion games, but it's a mostly exciting ride nonetheless.

This derivative action game is a bunch of silly, stylish fun.

2K football returns with solid gameplay and a new focus on classic players, though the roster isn't the only aspect of the game that feels old.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker feeds that compulsive need to customize as many monsters as you can and is great if you don't mind a little level grinding.

The game spends too much time in drab drains and boring science facilities, where its best assets are sidelined in favor of easy combat scenarios. But when developer Beenox gives Spidey room to soar, you get caught up in the pure elation of swinging through a spirited city, where helicopters hover overhead and well-wishers call out to you in the streets.

Gatling Gears is a fun shooter that reminds you how much of a blast destruction can be.

The presentation is top-notch, and the community features are neat, despite the hit-and-miss quality of the submissions. The amount of premium downloadable content available thus far is impressive as well.

Though WrestleMania XIX is a definite improvement over its predecessor, the game's few graphical hang-ups and detrimentally bad story mode ultimately mar what could have been a really great game.

When developer Beenox gives Spidey room to soar, you get caught up in the pure elation of swinging through a spirited city, where helicopters hover overhead and well-wishers call out to you in the streets. And that elation is the best reason to don the suit once more and remind yourself that with great power comes good fun.

Dynamic DNA seasons are a great addition to the franchise, but NBA Live is not quite a championship contender.

This 3D fighting game can be enjoyed by newcomers to the DBZ universe and Super Saiyan wannabes alike.

The Star Fox fighter squadron returns in this solid flight combat game, which distinguishes itself with its strategic elements and well-designed touch-screen controls.

It would have been nice to have seen some more variety in the environments, and the instances of backtracking through areas you've already visited are disappointing. But the game's exciting, free-form combat makes up for those deficiencies.

If the heavy focus on trial and error doesn't rattle you, Stuntman: Ignition can be some explosive fun.

A bare-bones rendition of "Gran Turismo 3" or "Sega GT 2002," albeit without the preponderance of cars and special effects.

If you've got the patience it takes to play through seven initially boring levels and acclimate yourself to the game's confining camera work, the final 24 levels represent some of the finest gaming that money can buy. It's pretty, it's funny, and it's pretty funny - the way a Disney game should be.

When the game caters to its strengths, it soars; when it deviates, it flounders. Regardless, it's still a more than worthy entry in a long line of licensed Star Wars games, and a good action game in its own right.

World Championship Poker 2's offline play is the best you'll find amid this year's competition, and the online play is still pretty engaging.

NBA Ballers Rebound for the PSP is like that veteran free agent your team just signed--it gets the job done but you've seen all these moves before.

Though the standard gunplay isn't very exciting, stealthly skill shots and diverse combat scenarios provide a lot of entertaining and satisfying moments.

Skate's analog trick system is revolutionary for the genre, but the game surrounding those mechanics isn't quite as good.

This elegantly presented, shadow-shifting puzzler puts the Move controller to ingenious good use.

Sure, there are a lot of levels, but most of them are very easy. The result is a great game you'll be done with in about two days.

Theatrhythm is not only an endearing nostalgia trip with a killer soundtrack, but a fine rhythm game to boot.

The older console versions of Madden 08 offer a few control upgrades and a couple of bizarre new modes, but otherwise, this might as well be last year's game.

This is the best version of one of the best gonzo shooters ever made, although it doesn't stray too far from its seven-year-old inspiration.

It's got some flaws and it's not very long or replayable--you'll probably finish it in 12 to 15 hours, without much incentive to go back to the beginning--but it's fun while it lasts.

There is nothing like Deadly Creatures. The stars of this game are completely vile, and there is nothing done to make them the slightest bit endearing. However, despite presenting an unsettling world, this well-made game provides plenty of hair-raising moments and memorable duels.

Issues aside, this inventive, supernatural mash-up is absolutely worth possessing--demonically or otherwise.

A new planet and engaging romantic opportunities are among the features that make Rise of the Hutt Cartel so inviting.

It's understandable that Sony wants to link the two versions of the game every year, but more acknowledgement that these are two different games for two different platforms and even two somewhat different audiences would make the Vita version stand on its own much better.

Big bosses, crazy weapons, and exciting scripted firefights are the focal point of this nutty tale. It's also an ample one if you take on all the side missions and scour environments for intelligence, hidden tomes, and secret money stashes. Yet while it's pleasingly old-fashioned, the unimpressive AI, aging technology, and general lack of refinement make this sequel feel like a missed opportunity.

As a simple, yet effective translation of the German board game, Carcassonne proves an oddly addictive experience.

Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia improves upon its predecessor just enough to make it a fun, solid addition to the spin-off series.

Dark Sector lacks the compelling storyline that it alludes to early on, but offers plenty of enjoyable combat nonetheless.

Unless you can't get enough of GT-style racing, there's really no pressing reason to add Total Immersion Racing to your collection.

Defend your Grannie from mutant hordes in the tough but satisfying Mutant Mudds.

Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack mixes puzzles, platforming, and charm to provide a slimy good time.

The intriguing world of Binary Domain rises above its conventional appearance, thanks to the satisfaction of shooting robots to pieces.

The presentation is slick, the controls are great, and at times you really do feel like you're skateboarding. It’s unfortunate that things get dragged down by the occasionally frustrating and buggy challenges; that walking on foot isn’t handled better; and that the game’s physics and artificial intelligence aren’t consistent and sometimes get in the way of the gameplay; because Skate 2 has so much to offer.

Whether you're big or small, there's a lot to like about these little ninjas and their lengthy journey.

With numerous traps, weapons, and an endless supply of one-liners, Orcs Must Die! dispenses death with satisfying variety.

The intriguing world of Binary Domain rises above its conventional appearance, thanks to the satisfaction of shooting robots to pieces.

As a simplistic hybrid of a shooter and hide-and-go-seek, Elebits works best as a demonstration for what the Wii's motion sensing technology is capable of--though it's not a half bad game, either.

The developer might not have created the most technically sound action-oriented horror game out there, but it has provided outstanding thrills and chills.

Though a bit square, this puzzle game fits nicely into any lazy day.