There is no shortcut to boss doors, nor an opportunity to save outside them--you must traverse the preceding dungeon in its entirety again, which begins to disrupt and destroy the decent dungeon-crawling. As a result, despite the fact Snack World is initially most exciting when you're exploring the depths of its dungeons, that excitement is soon painfully wrenched into tedium. This phenomenon seems to permeate Snack World in its entirety: although it's exciting and captivating early on, each of its constituents become tedious before long, and all of its strengths are weathered away by repetition and a sense of feeling incomplete.

On the whole, I've enjoyed my time with Marvel's Avengers, and if Crystal Dynamics can deal with the technical issues plaguing the game, I'm looking forward to spending time mastering the combat styles of all the characters and exploring the expansions of its story the live game has set up. At times, Marvel's Avengers struggles to unify a thoughtful story focus with a more momentum-based, action-heavy live game system--but both have their good qualities. As with Bruce Banner and the Hulk, it'll be worth sticking with Marvel's Avengers to see how it might reconcile the two halves of its personality in the future to make something even better.

Despite the game's utter lack of originality, Banjo Pilot can often be good old-fashioned simplistic fun in the vein of some of the great kart racing classics like "Super Mario Kart" for the SNES.

Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree is a simple collection of brain teasers that are different enough from the other minigame collections on the Wii to make it worth playing.

The lack of light gun support drags down Operation Wolf, but with games like Elevator Action and Bubble Bobble on board, Taito Legends offers good classic arcade action at a budget price.

This return to a beloved series is brutal enough, but it doesn't pack the punch of its forebears.

Lead and Gold's straight-shooting multiplayer action is good fun, despite a few drawbacks that tarnish its appeal.

Serious Sam 4 is a successful synthesis of the series' disparate identities, with humor to spare and jaw-dropping large-scale battles. But technical issues, tired tropes and a lack of gameplay variety make it just a solid foundation rather than a new pinnacle for Croteam.

Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis on the Wii feels like some kind of parable for developers porting existing games to the Wii. Even if your game seems tailor-made for the platform and the genre in question has seen previous success there, as was the case with Table Tennis, it's never a sure thing.

The best that can be said about the game is that its sci-fi atmosphere and smart artificial intelligence make it a somewhat acceptable way for the desperate to whittle away a couple of dozen hours waiting for someone to finally do a proper remake of "X-COM."

Some fun songs and unique gameplay help get Samba going, but imprecise controls and unreasonable difficulty bungle the beat.

BioShock Infinite's floating city of Columbia was both a monument to manifest destiny and a tombstone marking the human empathy that perished when the city was born. Burial at Sea uncomfortably merges the two worlds, and diminishes Rapture's enduring legacy in doing so.

Fable isn't quite timeless, but its genial mood is infectious, and I'm happy that Fable Anniversary kept my fond memories intact.

Though it has few real role-playing elements to speak of and though some aspects of its gameplay aren't well implemented, ToD does succeed in offering plenty of good-looking combat sequences, which are repetitive but interesting nevertheless.

I am left puzzled by The Charnel House Trilogy, not because I don't understand it, but because its mishmash of themes and tones can't find a way to coexist.

And that's just what Labo is at the moment: a great tool for creation, rather than for playing.

A good grasp of tactics along with smart, challenging missions outshine Galactic Assault's impenetrable storyline and elementary design.

Avencast balances the action-oriented and traditional RPG genres better than you might expect.

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

Eliminates some of the annoyances of its predecessor. However, while that's all well and good, X8 can still often be an intensely frustrating game, and still isn't especially fun.

Fortune Street is a decent strategy board game, but the slow pace siphons away much of the fun.

Finicky controls taint the exciting combat in BloodRayne: Betrayal, creating an uneven and frustrating adventure.

Jett: The Far Shore is at its best when you're speeding through the air and provided with the agency to figure out how to reach your destination, not slowly hovering around a space and having someone hold your hand through every step of a puzzle. Regular occurrences of the latter drag down the whole experience, and the overall narrative--though intriguingly set-up--ultimately ends in an unfulfilling way, with protagonist Mei feeling too detached from the story and the themes it's trying to explore.

An oddball attitude, some decent variety, and a dip into the surreal spice up Rango's otherwise tame action.

Pesky controls and irritating slowdown curtail the fun you'll have in this zombie shooter.

Go Go Break Steady 's mixture of two gameplay styles sounds interesting, but it doesn't work out as well as you'd hope.

What's really impressive in Battlefield 2042 is the variety that's on offer. It lets you play a bunch of different kinds of FPS experiences--in different game modes, in different Portal rule sets, and even in the same match as you switch between characters. Portal lets you relive the Battlefield games of the past, but on the 2042 side, DICE has cherry-picked from popular trends like hero shooters and battle royales. The best part is that, mostly, it has done a really effective job of curating those additions so that they bring more to what players already like about Battlefield, rather than change what already works.

In the end, BV succeeds at what it set out to do--it puts you into the role of Batman. Every major aspect of the character is presented in some way in the game...it is one of those incredibly rare birds known as a good licensed game.

Thanks to its great graphics, just watching your soldiers as they storm across the battlefield killing bugs is actually pretty fun - for a while, at least.

Though it's certainly not a bad game, Line of Sight: Vietnam isn't as ambitious as "Deadly Dozen: Pacific Theater," and its environments aren't as interesting.

Variety and slick presentation go a long way toward making you forget about the lack of originality and the quest's brief length.

A solid, complete baseball game, even if many of you have seen it before.

The real fun of Driven is that it is so easy to play and yet so strategic in execution.

The game basically controls well and looks good, but it's difficult to the point of excess, and it has no lasting appeal once you get through its nine tough missions.

As a stand-alone game, NBA Jam is definitely fun to play, but it lacks the gameplay depth of pretty much every other major basketball title on the market, arcade or otherwise.

A decent first effort at simulating the chosen sport of wizards, it falls short of its promise primarily because of sluggish controls and shallow gameplay.

This budget-priced "Arkanoid" clone has its moments of creativity, but mostly it's just a serviceable puzzler that offers little outside of well-worn territory.

The gameplay might not be anything special, but The Simpsons Game delivers more than enough laughs to make it worth a look.

MotoGP 08 is meat-and-potatoes racing with enough challenge to keep two-wheeled gearheads busy for a long time.

There were so many aspects of Japanese Drift Master that I desperately wanted to love, especially given that so few racing games hone in on drifting as a mechanic anymore like it attempts to. But in focusing so heavily on getting drifts to feel great (as they often do), all its other parts have been left to the wayside. The scale of its ambition is clear, but in trying to cater for a variety of event types, it undermines its most compelling mechanic, and continually reminds you how inadequate it is at supporting racing styles outside of that narrow focus. It's a racer that, more often than not, doesn't bring about the joy of tearing through the streets in a blazing-fast car, wasting its otherwise captivating setting with roads that don't support that fantasy. JDM: Japanese Drift Master can look good in small snippets, but it's sorely lacking as a complete package.

It's a familiar formula, but Justice League Heroes offers something interesting by blending dungeon-crawling convention with comic book heroics.

An extensive cast of DC characters can't help Scribblenauts Unmasked overcome the dangers posed by its own flawed internal logic.

Treachery in Beatdown City uses humor skillfully as a tool to deal with contemporary issues with the gig economy, insidious tech company ploys, and obnoxious bigots. It has some lulls and a bit of an abrupt conclusion, but that’s overshadowed by how especially fun the conversations and combat are. The mechanics stand out and push against the standards of the brawler genre, injecting a strong tactics twist that lets you make some freestyle combos in the blink of an eye. In the end it was a short, satisfying playthrough that maintained its action movie aura the entire time. Treachery in Beatdown City is all about fighting, but it shines because at its core it’s about fighting back.

Of course, it seems churlish to complain too much about a game I'm enjoying enough to willingly replaying it again and again to explore every facet of its story.

Digimon fans will find the multiplayer worthwhile, but the dull story mode is basically just a rehashing of the previous Digimon World.

Despite a few hiccups and disappointing aspects of The Cosmic Shake design, at its core it achieves its goals. Playing it felt the way I remember Battle for Bikini Bottom playing and all of the jokes and references felt aimed at older SpongeBob fans, pulling straight from the classic episodes. There are tons of small jokes and references in the levels that will make you smile and SpongeBob and Patrick will have you at least chuckling more often than not. It's not a revolutionary platformer, but it is good enough to keep you engaged throughout the entire game's length. If you have no reverence or appreciation for SpongeBob, whether it be the old games or the cartoon, The Cosmic Shake likely won't appeal to you. But for those of us who love SpongeBob, the Cosmic Shake is a great time with some old friends.

LostMagic is a role-playing game that starts well and gets deeper and better as you spend more time with it.

Smash Court Tennis 3 is a decent game that plays it safe and doesn't bring much new to table.

Minor frustrations and inconsistency compound a game that's not very good in the first place, making it one of the least appealing platformer choices currently on the market.

Magnetica is a good, solid rendition of its chosen formula, but there isn't necessarily enough to the package to pull you away from your current addiction to any of the DS's other, better puzzle games.

Minor frustrations and inconsistency compound a game that's not very good in the first place, making it one of the least appealing platformer choices currently on the market.

This high-definition edition of the classic real-time strategy game adds little more than bugs.

Deadlight draws you in with its rich, pervasive atmosphere, but doesn't give you much to do once you're there.

The game gets in its own way, stumbling when it seeks to siphon strategy mechanics into a formula that doesn't support them. The Bureau wants to rocket you into outer space, but it can't escape the gravity of the games that spawned it.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon has lots of explosions and destruction, but not quite enough variety to keep things moving.

Its flaws are too numerous, and its strengths seldom manage to work in concert. The end result is more disappointing than it is entertaining, which is a real pity if it means another 25-year delay before someone takes the next crack at doing the concept justice.

It comes to a halt too frequently, but when it's speeding along, Need for Speed: The Run makes cross-country racing a joy.

Fun combat and crafty puzzles make this a good companion to the blockbuster movie.

Spider-Man 3 isn't anything special, but it's a solid 2D action game that lets you cut loose with Spidey's abilities.

Infinite Undiscovery feeds your need for narrative, but it's ultimately a shallow, flawed experience.

Death Jr. II is almost a good game, but substandard controls and repetitive combat make it difficult to enjoy.

It's just disappointing to see such an uninspired sequel that simply goes through the motions of being an action game rather than taking advantage of concepts introduced in its predecessor.

It's bigger and more ambitious than any of its predecessors, but XGRA is hindered by a few unfortunate technical and design issues.

It plays fine, but other than some updated rosters, there's almost nothing new in NBA Live 08.

Ice Age may be kid-friendly, funny, and faithful to the movie, but it's also repetitive and over too quickly.

If you're the sort of person who tends to dive right into economy-based sims, there's a good deal to like about Jaleco's Sea Trader.

Another dose of the prehistoric shooter action that we've seen in previous installments. It's formulaic but done well enough.

A clichéd shooter with little to no replay value.

It simply exists in an inoffensive and unexciting realm of commonplaceness that makes it incapable of standing out among the pack of infinitely better racers available for any of its chosen platforms.

There's not much enthusiasm in Untold Legends. This leaves a game that, while hitting most of the necessary bullet points, is just going through the motions.

Blast Factor has some exciting moments and offers a unique twist on a familiar formula, but it still ends up feeling generic and forgettable.

Championship Manager 2008 ultimately fails because it doesn't seem to know who it's aiming at.

If you spend the full $20, you get a mighty fine, if overpriced, single-player game. Since the majority of the gameplay is only available when you buy the downloadable content, Get Even feels like a demo with a price tag on it.

This little platformer isn't engaging, charming, or clever enough to even be worth its low asking price.

To make a long story short, Madden NFL 07 for the GBA is simply the 06 game with updated rosters and five extra minigames.

If the game had made better use of its assets and given us a reason to care about more than the fleeting pleasures of customization and combat, it might be worth enduring the currency grind. As it is, like its strongest mechs, it runs out of power far too fast.

If you're interested in action, without too many adventure strings attached, Wayward is worth taking a look at, but it's also a short enough game that you could easily get by with a rental instead.

Fatal Fury Special is the cornerstone of this collection. If that means anything to you, Fatal Fury Battle Archives Volume 1 might be worth a look.

Manages to serve up a nice variety of ways to shoot the hell out of a lot of cyborgs as well as to keep things fresh and interesting throughout its relatively short, but still enjoyable 14 missions.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD Ver. competently provides the bare minimum of content.

Oninaki is a game that frequently sabotages itself. Its beautiful environments and mood are dampened by annoying hordes of samey enemies. Its amazing concept and world design are wasted on a story that's poorly paced and doesn't give you an adequate reason to care. Its varied and interesting combat styles get dragged down by the need to grind Daemons and uneven difficulty overall. There's certainly some beauty to be found in Oninaki's tragic world, but these flaws make this a circle of life that you can skip over.

The Experiment overcomes its clichéd beginnings with original gameplay.

This is a game that was clearly inspired by any number of 16-bit classics, but Sigma Star Saga doesn't quite measure up to them. But for what it's worth, for a while it sure comes close.

The presentation is a technical nightmare, the story is poorly told, and the modicum of uniqueness the gameplay has to offer is almost completely murdered by sloppy mechanics and a myriad of bugs.

Gunpowder brings more tactical options to the fun and interesting Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword.

The frequent frustrations of Puddle mean that only the most patient of players will have what it takes to reach the end. That's a shame, because it presents a fascinating journey through forests and foundries, into outer space and inner space.

Armored Core V can field some fierce firefights, but the combat is encumbered by repetitious missions, simplistic objectives, and dull visual design.

The single-player won't entertain for long, but the simple premise, clean visuals, and fiendish challenge deliver hours of multiplayer fun.

Corralling livestock is a fun new way to solve puzzles, but some agitating quirks will push the impatient away.

Every aspect of Mafia III's writing--from the dialogue to the mission descriptions--is excellent. The obvious care and craftsmanship that went into its narrative elements should serve as a model for all other triple-A titles. The gameplay, however, just can't live up, and repetitive missions and technical problems drag the experience down further, turning a game that could have been truly great into one that has to settle for "fair."

Caring for a zoo full of your own miniature animals has its own charm, and despite its visual flaws and less-than-spectacular sound, Zoo Tycoon conveys this charm well.

There's not much plot development, and more importantly, the gameplay has numerous shortcomings.

A classic example of how to make a real-time strategy game and then completely undermine it with a bad user interface.

An engaging, realistic tactical wargame, but it also doesn't stray far from the Close Combat formula. While there's nothing wrong with that, there is a definite sense that we've played this game before.

It's rare that a game's bonus features are more compelling than its main play mode, but that's definitely the case with the GBA version of Tron 2.0: Killer App.

The overall lack of supplementary features isn't a major drawback, however, since what's important to a modern wrestling game, aside from the graphics, is solid multiplayer action and challenging CPU AI. Disappointingly, these areas don't fare much better.

Just doesn't feel like much of a step forward in the series. Instead it feels more like a big step sideways.

A solid fighting game, filled with many likable characters. Unfortunately, the GameCube's controller just wasn't designed to work well with a game like this, and it cripples your ability to play and enjoy it.