Beyond the control issues, Alien Resurrection is gruelingly hard.

For those who want a bit of depth to their fighting, it may be too limited.

The presentation is solid, the gameplay inviting, and the visuals stellar.

Violett is quiet and unassuming, but it steadily weaves a tale about childhood fears and desires with which we are all too familiar. Despite its surreal setting, it has a very personal touch that grounds it.

A terrible campaign structure and other problems make Ferrari Racing Legends an exercise in frustration.

Despite its impressive visuals and contemporary trappings, Payback's pick-up-and-play driving model harkens back to Need for Speed Underground and its Fast and the Furious-inspired street racing. Yet, unlike the series' heyday, Payback's arcade sensibilities aren't enough to save the game surrounding it from wallowing in mundanity.

This brief two-hour romp is just another in a long line of mediocre action games churned out to cash in on a big-budget motion picture.

ProStreet is a solid racing game, but it's missing most of what made the previous games in the series interesting.

MLB 2K9 is a deeply flawed funhouse-mirror distortion of baseball.

Black Hawk Down's dated gameplay design and presentation just don't measure up compared to other modern combat shooters. Though the multiplayer can be fun for a while, the weapon balancing is out of whack, and the implementation of vehicles is contrived to the point of absurdity.

This motion-based minigame collection is inconsistent, but it gives you a good excuse to start leaping and scrambling around with your new Kinect.

It's not a bad game, and portions of it are competent, if not quite remarkable. But Avatar wears thin quickly, and the story is too fragile to compensate for the deficiencies.

This side-scrolling shooter has its moments, but it never rises above being a quickie port of a handheld game.

Need for Speed Payback's banal racing is only magnified by this focus on grinding. The simple, almost retro, handling model provides occasional bouts of fun, but it's never enough to escape Payback's flaws, with an unwillingness to let you partake in its most hair-raising moments, and a general drabness that seeps into every layer of the game. Fast and Furious, this is not; and that's a disappointing outcome.

This generic shoot-'em-up fails to breathe any life into its competent action.

Morrigan's return is a disappointment in this vapid downloadable add-on.

Evoland goes through the motions of imitating some great games, but never evolves into a good game itself.

Infernal embraces style over substance, resulting in a dull and repetitive shooting experience.

It's not going to replace or even come close to your fighting game of choice.

For three decades pop culture has ingrained the voices of these central characters into our lives and to have them not sounding like expected is a disappointment.

The game has a laundry list of problems, from being too short to suffering from horrific slowdown, that prevent it from being as interesting as its source material.

Floaty physics and an underwhelming sense of speed add up to a decent, but not great, sci-fi racing game.

The opening portions of Winward have you falling asleep at your computer; later areas have you cursing angrily as every small victory you win is erased by the overzealous enemy AI (aided by utterly complacent allies content to watch town after town fall to pirates). The promise of exploring Windward's world as you see fit is a false one, and Windward never earns its sea legs.

This undead-themed dual-stick shooter is good, dumb, retro fun.

The Force feels quite leashed in the DS version of this Star Wars action game.

Driver: Parallel Lines looks seriously outdated on the PC. Its dull story and gameplay prevent it from being recommendable.

Cute critters fail to keep this medical-themed puzzler from flatlining.

The overly simplified gameplay really holds it back, and overall, it's a game that really can't be recommended to anyone, young or old.

Sadly, the good game you can imagine is stuck lurking in the shadows of the game it became.

While the narrative is disappointing, Hellboy: Web of Wyrd's recreation of Mike Mignola's signature art style is mightily impressive, while its twist on the usual roguelite structure establishes a potent sense of progression that drives the journey forward. Its punchy and calculated combat is forced to carry the load of what is otherwise a fairly barebones experience, and it falters here at times, too, with a dodgy camera and lack of variation outside of its multitude of enemy types. Yet it's also the challenging toe-to-toe action that makes Web of Wyrd worth playing. Donning the crown (of the apocalypse) as the best Hellboy game ever made might not sound like an extraordinary achievement, but this is a character that has been starved of games, let alone good ones. Web of Wyrd is exactly that, which is maybe enough.

Despite the bacchanalian context, this Sims-style strategy game comes off as cold and mechanical, capturing none of the devil-may-care attitude you'd expect and casting Hef's idyllic lifestyle as a hollow grind established purely for the sake of selling more magazines.

The age of the engine is apparent, and the presentation and gameplay simply aren't up to par with those of more modern surfing games.

Considering how much processing oomph it seems to need, Sword Coast Legends looks muddy and unremarkable. The world is easily forgotten. Sewers, woods, tumbledown buildings, castles and keeps--perhaps the game’s beauty is limited by the necessity to stick to reusable tilesets, or perhaps the lack of clarity is down to that 3D style.

This off-road racing game does a lot of things well, but the PS3 version looks so bad that it's tough to recommend.

This collection of parlor games primarily includes odds-based games like roulette and keno, which aren't all that involving.

A realistic war-zone atmosphere and rewarding stealth action make this an intense look at World War II, despite some problems.

With a simple concept and some stylish design, Honeycomb Beat is a nice game to look at that ultimately doesn't go anywhere.

A unique concept only goes so far in this frequently frustrating game that combines puzzle and action elements with uneven results.

The game is clearly best suited for hardcore fans of Capcom's fighting games, who might enjoy exploring some of the nuances here but probably won't find much reason to keep coming back.

Arkanoid is as much fun today as it was 20 years ago, and the DS version is arguably the best yet.

The lightsaber dueling is ultimately too repetitive and easily exploited to be very fun for long, and each of the 16 missions (and subsequent bonus missions) don't take more than 10 to 20 minutes apiece to complete.

Its good premise is almost enough to outweigh its frustrating design flaws.

A decent adaptation of the arcade series, and offers a sometimes enjoyable but extremely brief experience.

Considering how rich your upgrade options actually are, it's disappointing that the combat itself falls a bit flat. This is a straightforward hack-and-slash that is saddled with an unnecessary partner system and masses of foes that can be easily killed.

A better game than a Skittles-licensed game has any business being.

Fable: The Journey makes excellent use of the Kinect.

Just like its predecessor, Zeno Clash II is a mediocre first-person brawler memorable mainly for its psychedelic storytelling and art.

Developer Nilo Studios says it wants this to be the start of a series of experiences reminiscent of the X-Files or the Twilight Zone. Unfortunately, there’s so little pay off in Asemblance that it’s difficult to muster much excitement for its future.

It's not too much to ask for a game to deliver both fan service and solid gameplay. It's just more than this particular game can manage.

I love that the game portrays its female characters as assertive beings that desire and need sex on their own terms, instead of as sexual material doled out in-game as "rewards" for player performance.

Super Contra's blistering level of difficulty makes it best suited for those looking for an exceptionally punishing arcade run-and-gun experience.

This Naruto-inspired 3D fighting game is little more than a shadow clone.

It's only an incremental improvement over last year's game, but MLB 2K7 is packed with content and solid gameplay.

Another pop-culture museum piece gets the time-warp treatment, this time the apparently ageless Impossible Mission.

Control issues taint the overall experience of the otherwise enjoyable World Gone Sour.

Captain America bashes enemies with style, but a dull story and bland visuals keep Super Soldier from being a star-spangled success.

If the goal was to create a game that's both alive and dead at the same time--mission accomplished.

The trademark Wario weirdness is still there, but Game & Wario is too uneven and frustrating to wholly recommend.

Marvel TCG isn't too bad as far as digital trading-card games go, but it's unlikely to convert anyone not already invested in TCGs.

Yet while Spider-Man 2 sure looks great, it suffers from extremely frustrating level design (and it doesn't really take advantage of the dual-screen layout of Nintendo's new portable, either). Some of these levels can be so annoyingly difficult that they'll make you want to wreck your brand-new Nintendo DS.

Samurai Warriors Chronicles does a fine job of bringing the shallowness and tedium of the series to the 3DS.

While the game isn't very long (somewhere around 10 hours) and doesn't offer much replay value thanks to its essentially linear progression, it's a fine example of old-school adventure gaming with a modern presentation.

It's ultimately too simplistic, too short, and far too prone to bumper-car madness and pinball-like ricochets.

It's repetitive and confusing in some areas, and too simple in others. And the interface, though easier to understand, is still problematic.

The game's blurry graphics, sparse sound, and unimaginative puzzles probably won't impress anyone, though true-blue adventure-game fans will at least appreciate the fact that Mystery of the Mummy is a fairly lengthy game that sells for a budget price of just $20 at retail.

A bread-and-butter console shooter that will let you blast enemies to your heart's content, but not a whole lot else. If that's good enough for you, then go for it.

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.

Pumped & Primed's minigames are all quite simplistic, and the single-player portion of the game can be completed in five or six hours. However, with a multitap and the right group of friends, there's no reason you shouldn't have some fun with it.

The dull, repetitive combat and uninspired mission structure prevent At World's End from being much fun.

The End Is Nigh serves up light beat-'em-up fare with a Watchmen flavor. Those hungry for anything substantial will be disappointed.

While the story sequences are beautiful and the overall design is true to the character's abilities, those things don't add up into the kind of game that most players are looking for.

Regardless of the game's inspiration, Armageddon is a mediocre action game that is carried only by its license.

Happy Wars suffers from serious technical issues that undermine an otherwise quality core experience.

The joke is in the premise, in the title, and it won't stop winking and snickering with you for hours on end. But all it takes is one moment of clarity, one second-guess "why was I laughing" for the whole thing to fall apart. And in this game's case, all it has to do is remind you of how irksome it can be and often is to go from being a goofy joke to a serious headache in a flash.

What's left is all that combat, which seems to go on interminably with too little to break it up.

Kinect Sports Rivals is an inconsistent collection that will get you up off the couch and moving around for a bit of mild fun, but that's about the best you can say for it.

It's not a bad game by any means; it's just a repetitive and disappointingly short one.

Greater variety and depth don't save this second round of motion minigames from the bargain bin.

Despite various minor improvements, Mega Man Star Force isn't significantly different than the GBA Battle Network games.

Hunted: The Demon's Forge buries its rock-solid ideas under a mound of execution blunders.

If you can stomach its repetitive combat and odd cinematics, Moon Diver provides a moderately satisfying button-mashing experience.

A fun experience that's unfortunately spoiled by a terrible frame rate that all but breaks the game. It can be entertaining to experiment with different traps, but after a few hours the game starts to feel repetitive, and it doesn't offer enough of a challenge to keep you coming back for more.

Ghost in the Sheet may be more traditional than it first appears, but this spooky adventure still offers challenging puzzles amid a creepy atmosphere.

Namco's back catalog deserves better than this slapped-together cash-in.

Ultimately a decent effort, but only because of its online play. The offline component of the game is simply too pointless and spotty to hold anyone's attention.

This role-playing board game takes delight in letting you mess with your friends, and it's fun for as long as you can tolerate its slow pace.

Le Mans has awkward control, horridly clumsy interfaces, and several annoying console game conventions.

A capable shooter in its own right.

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

Hunted: The Demon's Forge buries its rock-solid ideas under a mound of execution blunders.

There's a great role-playing game here, but it's hiding behind a terrible interface and clunky combat.

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam takes the worst elements of both franchises, and smashes them together into a dismally vapid action game.

Luxor: The Wrath of Set's uninteresting gameplay and lackluster presentation don't do anything to set it apart from other, better puzzle games available for the PSP.

Mama's minigames bloom nicely in their new garden thanks to improved game design.

Ratatouille is a sufficient, if unfulfilling, platformer.

The fundamental problem with Drag X Drive: It's not very fun to play, because the controls are alternatively exhausting, imprecise, or both. Even pulling off the trick shots that give the game its personality and nuance requires getting up to top speed, which means navigating finicky tiring controls and avoiding bumping into other players. This is a great game for showing off what the Switch 2 can do conceptually, but it doesn't make a good case for why you'd actually want to do it for very long.

This short flight of fancy has its charms, but it gets stale fast.