Rough around the edges, it's thematically incoherent, and it's a victim of feature creep, but along with fast-paced action, it has some interesting twists that give it a little depth.

The execution of many of Gangland's different elements falls short of its lofty promise, thus leaving a game that has a lot of good ideas but is sometimes convoluted and often frustrating.

Fans of squad-level tactical strategy and small-arms battles who are looking for a serious challenge--and can forgive the game's appearance--will find that Wildfire offers as much depth and excitement as Jagged Alliance 2.

Though newcomers may well find it enjoyable, anyone who's wheeled into the Ratbag paddock before will undoubtedly feel a less-than-ecstatic sense of déjà vu all over again.

You musn't let the budget price tag fool you into thinking the game is in any way lackluster. Colin McRae Rally 04 is every bit as good as its most recent predecessor, and in many ways, it's quite a bit better.

A great game that won't disappoint Mega Man fans with its engaging quest and fun combat. The game manages to offer an alternative experience to the traditional Battle Network games.

In spite of a few noteworthy twists and the ability to play online, the game's execution leaves a lot to be desired.

MTX Mototrax may be the only game in town if you're dead-set on online play, but THQ's recent release, "MX Unleashed," is still a better game across the board.

An ambitious undertaking, so the developer certainly deserves credit for trying something different. However, the experience is undermined by unreliable technology and some poor game design.

The core action that dominates the gameplay is highly repetitive and not particularly interesting, but Drakengard is still worth a look from those intrigued by the game's strange theme.

Parents whose kids have Scooby-Doo hot on the brain from the movie can safely rent this one, or not, without worry of missing much.

There's so little to it, and what it does offer is dull.

This list of minor flaws could go on and on, but its total length is minuscule compared to the massive number of excellent additions this expansion serves up.

One of the best, most challenging action adventure games ever made. Not only does Ninja Gaiden feature bleeding-edge graphics and sound, it boasts simply the best pure action ever seen in such a game.

Nostalgic adults might be able to get some campy fun out of the cheesy plot elements and canned laugh track, though if they do, it's purely coincidental. Mystery Mayhem is aimed squarely at the kids.

MTX Mototrax may be the only game in town if you're dead-set on online play, but THQ's recent release, "MX Unleashed," is still a better game across the board.

The deciding factor should be whether or not you appreciate the Phantasy Star Online aesthetic and would be interested in playing a card battling game alongside and against other players in that universe. If so, then PSO will have plenty to offer you.

Parents whose kids have Scooby-Doo hot on the brain from the movie can safely rent this one, or not, without worry of missing much.

Geared exclusively for fans of the original who want to take the experience online, and they'll likely have some fun playing the game with other players like them.

Romance IX manages to make a few improvements to the interface and systems from the previous games while still retaining the core of what made them good. Ultimately, it's more of what you already love.

If you've been waiting for a game that lets you race watercraft online, Carve definitely delivers. So if you can forgive the generally unremarkable production, it can be worth at least a rental for this feature alone.

It doesn't break any manner of new ground. However, this is not to say the game isn't fun on its own merits, and all told, The Lost Expedition still makes for a pretty enjoyable platforming experience all around.

Minigame tasks and plot scenes crop up frequently, and the character animation is so smooth--not to mention hilarious--that most players will come away genuinely entertained when all is said and done.

Sure, it probably won't please any hardcore Pitfall! purists, but if you're just on the lookout for a solid platformer for a weekend rental, then Pitfall: The Lost Expedition is right up your alley.

If you're on the lookout for a solid platformer for a weekend rental, then Pitfall: The Lost Expedition is right up your alley.

A third-person action game that blends shooting, driving, and other types of action together in a seamless fashion, delivering an awesome experience that puts you in 007's shoes better than any game to come before it.

Another very good entry in a solid series of motocross games. It plays well, and it has great control and a lot of tracks and objectives.

May have the flashy action and storytelling that you'd expect from a martial arts flick, but unfortunately, the gameplay doesn't hold up its end of the bargain.

The fact that KCET has managed to improve upon that game at all is a real testament to the development team's devotion, and the fact that Winning Eleven 7 International is so much better than its predecessor is a remarkable achievement.

A third-person action game that blends shooting, driving, and other types of action together in a seamless fashion, delivering an awesome experience that puts you in 007's shoes better than any game to come before it.

Another very good entry in a solid series of motocross games. It plays well, and it has great control and a lot of tracks and objectives.

A third-person action game that blends shooting, driving, and other types of action together in a seamless fashion, delivering an awesome experience that puts you in 007's shoes better than any game to come before it.

There's really not very much to praise about Lupin the Third, due in no small part to some rather badly implemented enemy artificial intelligence, an equally unfortunate control scheme, and some generally lacking production values.

It may have a familiar-seeming premise, and it may have a few noticeable shortcomings, but SpellForce's unique combination of role-playing and strategy elements makes it worth a look for fans of either kind of game.

Not ideal on every level, but it's good enough on all of them so that it should provide an entertaining experience and a decent amount of replay value for those who enjoy equal parts methodical strategy and button-mashing mayhem.

The core components that make up the game experience--the graphics, the sound, the actual gameplay--all come together to create an experience that is, across the board, better than the original "Dark Alliance" and better than any of Champions' current rivals.

Those who like their games nice and easy shouldn't bother with Nightshade. As for the rest of us, we can heartily appreciate it for its monumental challenge and tight, responsive controls.

The relatively limited scope, clunky build interface, and lackluster AI mean this isn't a game for veteran strategy gamers looking for a challenge.

But with so many major flaws, any of the game's strengths are hard to find and appreciate for any length of time.

It has all of the characters and story events--and a majority of the essential gameplay elements--that made the Baldur's Gate series so addictive in the first place, but now they're all on a highly portable GBA cartridge.

Touts a few appreciable improvements over the last Yu-Gi-Oh! card battle game for the GBA, which will probably be enough to win the favor of hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, but casual card battlers who already have one of the other Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card games for the GBA can safely skip this one without missing too much.

The game's not ideal on every level, but it's good enough on all of them so that it should provide an entertaining experience and a decent amount of replay value for those who enjoy equal parts methodical strategy and button-mashing mayhem.

The versions of the Silent Scope games included in this package are all faithful enough to the originals, but the problem is that even with all four games included in a single package, there's just not a lot of value here.

Xbox owners will be underwhelmed with this version of Unreal II because it plays and feels like a watered-down port.

It's definitely a much better-looking game than either of the "Pokémon Stadium" titles, and the new story-driven adventure definitely gives you more context to the fighting (in addition to providing more stuff to do), but otherwise, the game isn't very different from its predecessors.

Across every category, Alien Blast defines itself as the very epitome of boredom. The action is dull, repetitive, and in some cases, a bit broken. The game's graphics are pretty much a sad, underdeveloped joke.

Many of the problems that marred the original game rear their ugly heads again, and new ones also pop up, making it hard to enjoy Wind Warriors' strengths.

A disappointingly short-lived experience. That's partly because the game is so captivating for as long as it lasts that you may be compelled to blast your way through in just one or two sittings.

It's not for everyone--but, in the end, Crystal Chronicles can be a tremendously entertaining multiplayer game for those willing to work together to overcome some obstacles both in the game itself and in its design.

Though we wanted to like Joan of Arc, we found it burdened by a number of rookie mistakes, including a bad camera, poor pathfinding, and lackluster artificial intelligence.

Sadly, like the war it's based on, WWI: The Great War is an exercise in madness, frustration, helplessness, and human folly. This is a mess of a real-time strategy game.

Despite featuring an arcade-style mode, Dangerous Hunts is more of a slow-paced sim. Whether you find it intense or terribly tedious will probably depend on your hunting knowledge and patience.

An unplayable mess of a game; it feels like a really bad amateur mod that was released before it was finished.

It's a real shame Apache Longbow Assault doesn't offer a deeper campaign and more game modes. It otherwise has some good things to offer: sharp graphics, solid audio, and lots of fast airborne action. This is a game that doesn't do too much, but what it does, it does well.

On paper, this game features some neat ideas, but control problems, micromanagement, and other flaws often make Riot Police a lot less fun than it could have been.

Much like its predecessor, "Battlecruiser Millennium," this wildly ambitious simulation is torpedoed by an almost incomprehensible interface, the absence of a tutorial both in-game and in the poorly organized manual, numerous bugs, and many fit and finish issues, including dated production values.

Offers more of the intense and suspenseful single-player and multiplayer action that made Vietcong the respectable game that it is.

But if R-Type must end, at least it's going out on a high note--rest assured that Final lives up to the classic R-Type name in every way.

The AirForce Delta series has always been of middling quality and has never really been able to live up to its contemporaries, such as "Ace Combat" and "Lethal Skies," and Strike does little to buck that trend.

The developers spent a lot of time creating a really engaging story, but they hardly put any substantial gameplay into the game.

Because the PS2 version of Mafia unavoidably compromises the PC version's graphical presentation--while also introducing longer loading times and injecting more interruptions into the gameplay--it comes off like a mere shadow of the original.

Sonic Team almost seems to be daring you to try and have fun with the PlayStation 2 version by making it significantly uglier, slower, and generally just rougher around the edges than the other two versions.

Regardless of which online game type you decide to compete in, any game that you play will be stricken by a pretty severe amount of lag.

Though it still exhibits many of the camera and control issues that vexed Sonic's previous forays into 3D, it's truer to its 2D roots than any other 3D Sonic game before it.

The lack of any strategy to the gameplay, a generally poor design, and an endless number of stability problems turn Monster Garage into a real monster, all right.

Though the ending is a little unsatisfying, and the actual adventure is a little short, the game offers plenty of replay value with five appreciably different character classes and a really satisfying cooperative mode.

If you can grit your teeth and get past the daunting frustration factor, you'll find in Army of Zin a surprisingly deep and involved hack-and-slash platformer with a quirky, endearing style and a lot of heart.

Team Sabre may not be realistic, but it's packed with explosions, wild gunfights, and quite a bit of fun--though it's also extremely frustrating at times, due to a limited save system coupled with some excruciatingly difficult gameplay.

Features a surprisingly impressive presentation, complete with realistic physics and some of the most destructible environments ever seen in a game, which lead to some very exciting unscripted moments.

Though the ending is a little unsatisfying, and the actual adventure is a little short, the game offers plenty of replay value with five appreciably different character classes and a really satisfying cooperative mode.

It has a lot of things going for it, including beautiful graphics, oodles of detail, and lots of depth. Sadly, it's a game that doesn't quite hit the million-dollar jackpot due to some cumbersome gameplay, an unusually and often frustratingly high level of difficulty, and interface issues.

It's basically a simple, mildly entertaining, and somewhat uneven pseudofuturistic dungeon crawl for one or two players.

Bandai's decision to pad one good game's worth of content with about 60 to 80 hours' worth of filler, and to split that game into four full-priced products spread out over a year, remains disappointing.

The action is repetitive and straightforward, but the game features a lot of cool weapons and tons of stuff to hack or shoot at, plus it's got some of the charm that helped make Fallout a genuine classic.

This concept itself obviously isn't a terribly original one, and Shattered Universe's gameplay mechanics are equally pedestrian in design, hopelessly trying to mirror bigger, better space combat games.

This concept itself obviously isn't a terribly original one, and Shattered Universe's gameplay mechanics are equally pedestrian in design, hopelessly trying to mirror bigger, better space combat games.

It's unfortunate that some elements of "NBA Street's" sense of style were lost in the translation between basketball and football, and the lack of a consistently enjoyable single-player mode is a problem for sure, but the game's excellent multiplayer component and its great level of graphical polish ultimately make NFL Street a game well worth playing for any fan of the arcade football genre.

It's unfortunate that some elements of "NBA Street's" sense of style was lost in the translation between basketball and football, and the lack of a consistently enjoyable single-player mode is a problem for sure, but the game's excellent multiplayer component and its great level of graphical polish ultimately make NFL Street a game well worth playing for any fan of the arcade football genre.

Some elements of NBA Street's sense of style was lost in the translation between basketball and football, and the lack of a consistently enjoyable single-player mode is a problem for sure, but the game's excellent multiplayer component and its great level of graphical polish ultimately make NFL Street a game well worth playing for any fan of the arcade football genre.

For Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, the meager options make it less attractive than one of Konami's dozen or so other, more fully featured Yu-Gi-Oh! games, and to players who don't already have an investment in the series, it has about as much to offer as a game of solitaire.

Attempts to combine zany locales with tried-and-true bowling mechanics, but the game lacks substance and ultimately won't please bowling fans, be they hardcore or casual.

Despite the game's derivative nature, lack of multiplayer, and slightly dated technology, there's a fairly entertaining experience to be had here.

Conflict: Desert Storm II isn't without problems, but it's not the worst squad-based game you'll ever play, and it's decidedly improved over the original game.

A good substitute for "Super Smash Bros," and while you may find it lacking in certain areas, the fast-paced design and raucous battle mode more than compensate for the majority of the game's wholly subjective shortcomings.

Though it still exhibits many of the camera and control issues that vexed Sonic's previous forays into 3D, it's truer to its 2D roots than any other 3D Sonic game before it.

Like many other character-based shoot-'em-ups, the main problems with CT Special Forces are that it's repetitive and that it's over too quickly.

Condition Zero is a product that will appeal most to those players who haven't tried CS yet (and how many of them are there?), those who don't want to deal with the hassles of playing the game online, and those who just want to have some offline practice.

If you don't have any hang-ups with wandering around in dark places, and you're looking for a deep and involving role-playing game, then you'd be doing yourself a favor by checking out Arx Fatalis. This is a game you can really lose yourself in.

A poor translation, very repetitive gameplay, and a lack of any multiplayer features mar what otherwise could have been an excellent take on this type of game.

The game would have been better if the robots had back attacks or other, better options to prevent enemies from getting behind them. Regardless, there certainly isn't anything else out there that's quite like it, so fans of other fighting games should give it a look.

The appeal of portraying a rookie with big-league dreams and the solid stat-generation of the OOTP engine make the experience captivating for a few virtual seasons.

The new XMP mode isn't all that original, but it offers a solid gameplay experience.

If the problems with getting the game to run weren't enough reason to keep you away from Chaos Legion, then the boring gameplay and graphical shortcomings should be reason enough.

Has an outstanding premise, but it's ultimately a disappointment.

The result isn't going to convince anyone who took Postal 2 the wrong way to give it a second chance, but it's a better game now than before, and those looking for some seriously lowbrow humor in first-person shooter form would likely get a kick out of it.

Warts and all, Need for Speed Underground is a good racing game--not because it's pretty, but because it's actually engaging and fun to play.

You can't help but feel that a much better job could have been done if more time had been spent making sure that everything worked correctly.

Past these cutting-edge visuals, however, there's nothing left but a simple run-and-jump platformer--and it's a bad one at that.