The game's shallow simplicity, short length (well under 10 hours), and control issues detract from any appeal.

The campaign missions can be pretty intense at times--but the underlying action itself lacks the sort of visceral punch that shooters ought to have. It's not that big of an issue in the heavily scripted single-player levels, but Shadow Ops' clunky multiplayer gameplay significantly suffers for it.

For the most part, the game is your average military-themed third-person action adventure, complete with locked doors, navigation puzzles, and pattern-based boss battles against a variety of colorful foes. But Psi-Ops sets itself apart incredibly well with its series of well-implemented psychic abilities.

For the most part, the game is your average military-themed third-person action adventure, complete with locked doors, navigation puzzles, and pattern-based boss battles against a variety of colorful foes. But Psi-Ops sets itself apart incredibly well with its series of well-implemented psychic abilities.

Save the strange decision to remove multiplayer modes, Blitzkrieg: Burning Horizon is the ideal expansion pack. It amplifies the core concepts of the original game and ramps up both the AI and the difficulty without straying from the tactics-first philosophy that allows this series to stand apart from the RTS crowd.

FirePower is what Combat Flight Simulator 3 should have been in the first place, and it is a must-have expansion for current or potential owners of that sim.

It isn't the deepest game in the world, and some may find the gameplay repetitive over time, but the gameplay works well and the game's presentation is passable, too. If you're interested in some light puzzle-solving mixed with even lighter platforming, Sabre Wulf fits the bill.

Though a lot of players will find the less-forgiving-gameplay style of the game to be a bit of a turnoff, this is still a solid game of tennis, and it's the best one to have appeared on the PlayStation 2 in years.

Though The Suffering tends to rely more on startling you with visual effects and sudden attacks than on actually trying to scare you, it's still a pretty refreshing take on horror-themed games.

If you consider yourself a fan of the strategy-tactics RPG genre, you're not going to mind that the graphics are a little outdated or that the audio has some hissing and popping in it. Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon is just too good to pass up.

Sonic Advance 3 actually brings something new to the table--a tag-team play mechanic that ultimately enhances the overall product rather than mucking it up.

If you've been waiting for a truly compelling reason to invest in a GameCube-to-GBA link cable, this is probably it.

With its strong minigames and well-made platforming mechanics, Crash Bandicoot Purple is a good, solid choice for fans of the genre.

On its own, there really isn't enough to Spyro Orange to keep players interested for very long.

It provides absolutely nothing that hasn't been seen and done countless times before and done better at that. Unless you're absolutely rapt with morbid curiosity about how Malice ultimately turned out, your time and money are definitely best spent elsewhere.

Bogged down by lackluster artificial intelligence and poor pathfinding.

A by-the-numbers movie-licensed game that makes pretty good use of its source material without really doing anything too surprising. It's perfect for kids.

Xevious is certainly a classic game, but it's a classic <I>arcade</I> game, not a classic NES game.

A solid trip down memory lane for fans of the original NES game. But is that trip worth $20? Probably not. If Excitebike had been part of a larger compilation of NES classics, it would be much more welcome.

The classic platformer holds up pretty well after all this time, though some minor technical issues prevent this reissue from being as super as the original game.

Though the game is old and has been followed up by plenty of other, deeper games in the series, The Legend of Zelda still holds up quite well, making it one of the only games in Nintendo's Classic NES Series that is worth the $20 price tag.

But it's a classic <I>arcade</I> game, not a classic NES game. So this release does a decent job of duplicating the NES version of Pac-Man...but Pac-Man isn't famous for being an NES game, and this port of the arcade classic isn't terribly accurate or compelling.

It provides absolutely nothing that hasn't been seen and done countless times before and done better at that. Unless you're absolutely rapt with morbid curiosity about how Malice ultimately turned out, your time and money are definitely best spent elsewhere.

A by-the-numbers movie-licensed game that makes pretty good use of its source material without really doing anything too surprising. It's perfect for kids.

The game often ends up feeling like a string of puzzles whose solutions are pretty obvious. Nevertheless, Full Spectrum Warrior is very good overall, and 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.

It's so unbelievably good that it almost feels like it was brought back in time, because most all of today's action games (on the Xbox or otherwise) just aren't in the same league.

When taking it out of its native arcade environment and bringing it to a home console, SNK has made some specific choices that make this already challenging game difficult to a fault.

Features a memorable protagonist, a great setting, and some very interesting missions. It also happens to suffer from a variety of miscellaneous, minor flaws. These are unfortunate, since Thief: Deadly Shadows is great game, for the most part.