Aliens: Colonial Marines didn't leave me catatonic, but it did leave me scratching my head and wondering how a game that's been in development for roughly seven years at the same studio that gave us Borderlands 2 could be released in such an uninspired, unpolished state. Strangely, and perhaps fittingly, it's all wrapped up on a frustrating note that sets up some sort of Aliens tell-all continuation of the story without giving any actual answers.

Dungeonland could have done with a good couple more months in the oven.

All I can say is that The War Z is a bad game that deserves all the controversy it's drawn, and that you should avoid it like the undead.

Ace of Spades is also missing a level editor, which is really surprising in a game built from blocks, but that goes hand in hand with the locked-down server, I'd imagine. Those poor decisions have left it in the remarkable position of being fun to play, and completely unplayable at the same time. It's capable of some amazing moments, but Jagex haven't built the potential blockbuster (har har) that it could be.

In a way, Cortex Command seems like it's asking for a lot of concessions because, for the most part, it still feels like an unfinished game.

It's frustrating, because I can see how much more fun this could be with the ability to play against more human players, and until there is I can't recommend Miner Wars Arena. There's the inkling of a good game in here, but you shouldn't have to pay $10 to go digging for it.

It feels painfully slow on the PC, and the controls are better-suited for a mobile touchscreen than a mouse and keyboard combo. It even manages to lose a feature in the translation, which is stunning given how much more powerful the PC is than, say, the iPad. Throw in the fact that it has little to nothing to do with the series proper, and it becomes impossible to recommend this spinoff, even to the most dedicated Total War fans.

As a concept, Starvoid is pleasantly surprising; as a multiplayer game, the lack of community is disastrous, which makes Starvoid both quite easy and annoyingly difficult to recommend.

It's hard to say how much patches can fix this wreck, because right now its technical issues eclipse everything, to the point where it's barely even a game. But what is there, in the brief moments you can play it before it crashes, does not tie together into a coherent strategy game.

You can randomize population (electoral votes), wealth, issue importance, and demographics, but all this does is divorce Political Machine 2012 from context even more. There are historical and social reasons for red state/blue state divides, reasons that Republicans tend to be more successful in rural, poorer states, reasons that certain issues may be more important to California and New York than they are in Georgia and Tennessee. But Political Machine 2012 is only interested in the game of presidential politics -- and unfortunately, it doesn't even do a good job with that game.

Krater is a game with many problems, most all the more irritating for being specifically added to the formula instead of simply messing it up.

DiRT: Showdown delivers bargain-basement entertainment value for the high, high price of $50. With its neutered physics, limited driving venues, clunky multiplayer, and diminished off-road racing options, discerning arcade racing fans should just write this one off as an unanticipated pothole in Codemaster's trailblazing DiRT series.

Gratuitous Tank Battles may do a brilliant job of catering to some idiosyncratic gaming tastes, but I don't think it has much to offer the tower-defender or the strategist.

Again, Nexuiz is by no means a bad game. It does, however, seem like a superfluous one.

Really, being boring is Confrontation's greatest flaw. Sure, there's a slew of frustrations, both technical and design, but those are oddly welcome after the tedium of everything else.

I occasionally caught glimpses of a competent simulation underneath the bugs, poor instruction, and rage-inducing interface, but not even the best of today's strategy games would be tolerable to play if subject to the malfunctioning saves, crashes, and sloppy presentation of Port Royale 3.

It's out and it costs money, despite being far from ready for prime time. Even as a quirky indie release with a budget price, Orion asks for too big a leap of faith that it'll eventually work out.

Binary Domain looks and plays the third-person, cover-based shooter part, but it's really just a soulless imitation. And I'd love nothing more than to bash its robot brains in.

More than most other genres, if an adventure's core narrative foundations aren't solid enough to carry the rest of game, everything else is meaningless -- and Yesterday's is a story built on matchsticks and marbles. To play it is to see it come crashing down.

With apologies to The Little Mermaid, perhaps third-person shooters aren't one of those things that's "much better, down where it's wetter, under the sea."

The upside is that all of these problems are presumably fixable via a patch -- this isn't the first PC game in history to ship with something busted. And I sincerely hope the team at 2K Sports can get around to addressing the issues I've encountered, because MLB 2K12 is is a lot of fun to play in single-player, and should be just as fun online. But right now it's in dire need of some Tommy John surgery if it has any hope of reviving its career.

I can't say I had no fun at all playing Jagged Alliance: Back in Action -- in fact, I'm having an entertaining time replaying the early missions with an all-melee hit squad and doing better than my first time around -- but I can say that of the 50 hours of my life it took to put a bullet in the queen, I want about half of them back. Even hardcore strategy players are going to have a hell of a time liberating Arulco without it turning into a frustrating quagmire.

It's easy to see the potential for King Arthur 2 to have been a good game rather than "not bad." But it never gets there, mostly because it's doing a half-dozen unrelated things at once, and none of them very well.

Gotham City Impostors isn't a free-to-play shooter, but it sure feels like one. Even as a $15 purchase, it's a game that's as eager to get you into its cash shop as its paltry five maps, with one of the slowest character customization systems ever to be unlocked by DLC, and matchmaking so poor that getting into a full 6v6 game actually feels like an achievement.

The Steam blurb for Oil Rush says it "combines strategic challenge of classic RTS with sheer fun of Tower Defense." But as far as I can tell there's nothing more Tower Defenseish about Oil Rush than any other RTS in which you build defensive towers -- which is pretty much all of them. I'm not sure Unigine knows what Tower Defense is.

It's encouraging, though, that in just the week since SOL's been out the developers at Seamless have done a great job patching issues, with three released so far. It's a damn shame there are so many issues that are likely beyond the power of mere patches, because the space shooter genre badly needs a new classic to really get it going again.

Even if it does look really cool with its robots, aliens, and model spaceships, Unstoppable Gorg is just an unbalanced mess of a tower defense game. It seems to spend more time setting the player up to fail, than to offer a compelling reason to keep playing.

It's frankly incredible to think that Running with Scissors made fans wait eight years for this. Is the trademark Postal "humor" still there? Postal Dude's frequent remarks about hoping to "kill women and minorities first" say hello. But a lack of freedom, unforgivable glitchiness, and generally terrible design make this a hard sell even for fans of the series.

Not surprising. There isn't much to play or buy here. Between its obsolete visuals, dead vehicle dynamics, atrocious AI, and deserted multiplayer lobbies, Flatout 3 is a decided waste of time and space.

The Doctor Who Cloned Me does at least include four new maps for the generally entertaining multiplayer modes, but no one seems to be playing them online, so they're pretty lonely -- and that situation isn't going to get any better when people hear what a waste of $10 this DLC is.

Sure, it's a bargain-priced gore fest and I guess that means we're not supposed to expect a lot -- but Hell's Reach will underwhelm even the most jaded gamers. It just isn't very much fun.

I could go on with this litany of problems: random peasants that incessantly block the placement of structures, a ridiculously shallow tutorial, stability problems – but there's no need. Stronghold 3 is a very bad game that simply feels like it was hurriedly cobbled together and released with a minimum of testing.

Much of Genesis' desert dry tedium would evaporate if it was just a turn-based title. You wouldn't have to spend what feels like an eternity manually sending units to check on every little thing. As is, though, this Game of Thrones feels more like a game of musical chairs set to elevator music: slow, devoid of charm, and utterly lacking in payoff.

Gods & Heroes might have made a passable showing in 2005 in its current state, but in this age of Rift and the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, Heatwave's new release might as well be a Pompeian graffito in a Rembrandt exhibition.

Daggerdale comes across as a careless and sloppily executed venture. Even if such problems are eventually addressed, this rigid and uninspired quest is little more than an adequate adventure, legendary namesake be damned.

Strong concept, weak execution. Add in the dated look of the game, and numerous bugs and glitches new and old, and Honest Hearts isn't worth the $10.

But the problem with Homefront isn't just that it sucks, which it certainly does. The problem is that it reveals just how badly many first-person shooters are starting to suck. It's a game that magnifies the preexisting trend of developing to the lowest common denominator.

But the problem with Homefront isn't just that it sucks, which it certainly does. The problem is that it reveals just how badly many first-person shooters are starting to suck. It's a game that magnifies the preexisting trend of developing to the lowest common denominator.

The problem with Homefront isn't just that it sucks, which it certainly does. The problem is that it reveals just how badly many first-person shooters are starting to suck. It's a game that magnifies the preexisting trend of developing to the lowest common denominator.

SOE tried, and failed, to straddle the line between action game and MMO. Think Crackdown -- but with all of the concessions, limitations, and annoyances of a mediocre massively multiplayer game.

Extended stretches of confused incredulity, punctuated now and then by bursts of intense anger. And yeah -- I just equated FFXIV with a filthy bathroom.

While the strategic level is an admirable attempt at something halfway between the elegance of Civilization and the historical specificity of Europa Universalis, it doesn't have the benefit of letting a human player take over. Here, once again, the game falls apart when it breaks out of the strict scripting of the story-based missions.

Trek fans are meant to salivate at the sights and sounds of their favorite universe made manifest, like a dog hearing the chime of a chow bell. And publisher Atari is banking on the hope that -- like Pavlov's pups -- consumers will be content with the same ol' kibble day after day. The result is a shallow, poorly paced, and repetitive game that, divorced from its storied source material, wouldn't warrant a second look.

In condemning this game, I can't help but feel like an opportunistic hunter pouncing on the most pathetic zebra in the herd. But Rogue Warrior is a hobbled, wheezing creature stumbling around so far away from its peers that not going for the jugular could be seen as an act of cruelty.

In condemning this game, I can't help but feel like an opportunistic hunter pouncing on the most pathetic zebra in the herd. But Rogue Warrior is a hobbled, wheezing creature stumbling around so far away from its peers that not going for the jugular could be seen as an act of cruelty.

The basic gameplay of Avatar is so fundamentally flawed that even those few bright spots would only set you up for disappointment. Because, despite the guiding hand of Cameron, Avatar is ultimately just another big-name movie game that doesn't fulfill its early promise.

The basic gameplay of Avatar is so fundamentally flawed that even those few bright spots would only set you up for disappointment. Because, despite the guiding hand of Cameron, Avatar is ultimately just another big-name movie game that doesn't fulfill its early promise.

Nothing's truly new or captivating here. It feels like a half-hearted cash-in designed to prey on our nostalgia, not unlike Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled. It's nothing but a curiosity, fun for the few minutes prior to the realization of just how badly Excitebike has aged.

It's just a crappy movie tie-in, pushed out just in time for the upcoming film.

It's just a crappy movie tie-in, pushed out just in time for the upcoming film.

Champions Online too often feels like a professionally assembled Second Life module, where character creation is king and the thrill of being superhuman wears thin once you realize that everything else just feels off. Whether or not future patches can set some of the more glaring flaws right is anybody's guess.

A pointed lesson to other designers that including co-op, especially local co-op, is a great value-add to even an otherwise totally worthless game.

A pointed lesson to other designers that including co-op, especially local co-op, is a great value-add to even an otherwise totally worthless game.

A sloppy port of a game I found to be fairly mediocre.

KoF12's online play is (to put it mildly) atrocious.

KoF12's online play is (to put it mildly) atrocious.

Between the occasionally spotty controls, the linear quest, and the highly repetitive mini-games, only the most dedicated Potter fans need enroll this term. Oh, and it was very disappointing to find out that the final boss battle doesn't have you playing as Professor Snape. Very disappointing.

The long and short of this one: Salvation is headed -- like so many hastily churned-out movie tie-ins before it -- to the dustbin of gaming history. Stay away.

Salvation is headed -- like so many hastily churned-out movie tie-ins before it -- to the dustbin of gaming history. Stay away.

Brilliant concepts ham-handedly executed. All I could think of after finishing the game was poor Fredo standing in the house in Nevada whining, "I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!" Respect has to be earned, and The Godfather II doesn't even come close.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the game in concept, and done properly, it would easily have established it as a classic on par with the film on which it's based. Instead we get brilliant concepts ham-handedly executed.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the game in concept, and done properly, it would easily have established it as a classic on par with the film on which it's based. Instead we get brilliant concepts ham-handedly executed.

Afro Samurai is a mess of a game. It's such a shame to see such a beautifully rendered and stylish world ground into the dust by such staggering gameplay foibles and technical glitches.

Afro Samurai is a mess of a game. It's such a shame to see such a beautifully rendered and stylish world ground into the dust by such staggering gameplay foibles and technical glitches.

If there's a sequel, maybe the developers will spend as much time fleshing out the game as they did their concept art.

Castlevania fanatics will hate the unnecessary liberties taken with their favorite characters, fighting game enthusiasts will abhor the crippling lack of character balance, and everyone should just cross their fingers that the next game to bear this franchise's once vaunted name is put together with a lot more care.

What it misses is the nuance, the charm and the challenge that marked both the original games and the best of the Diablo clones (such as Titan Quest). In short, Sacred 2 is a game that's easy to miss without really missing out.

The admittedly cool storyline is wasted on infrequent text windows with motionless character portraits.

A tragically missed opportunity.

That lackluster combat is a lot to get past in order to enjoy the tiny morsels of classic Hellboy wit, and the lingering bugs that cause Hellboy to snag and hang on bits of the environment don't help either.

A pile of uninspired, by-the-numbers gameplay and missed opportunities.

A pile of uninspired, by-the-numbers gameplay and missed opportunities.

A pile of uninspired, by-the-numbers gameplay and missed opportunities.

The simple fighting engine allows for some easy to get into action that will satisfy Naruto fans' desire to see their favorite characters pulling off their signature moves. If you want anything deeper than that, however, you're out of luck.

Alone in the Dark seems to hold open contempt for its players...You've seen survival horror done scarier and better elsewhere. Don't get burned by this one.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to this game's rendition of New York that hasn't been done better in other games.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to this game's rendition of New York that hasn't been done better in other games.

The Incredible Hulk isn't the worst movie tie-in game ever made, but the initial charm of mass destruction dissipates rather quickly. This leaves it a rather buggy and joyless experience that, like a gumball, loses its flavor all too fast.

It's clear from the bare-bones multiplayer, glitchy graphics and incredibly short storyline that Haze is a game interrupted.

Do yourself a favor and pick up New York Times Crosswords for the DS instead.

More tedious than scary and more frustrating than shocking.

We don't doubt that Ninja Reflex will improve your reflexes and bring you some small level of coordination. On the other hand, you could probably achieve the same effect with a fighting game or shooter, and have twice the fun.

While the gameplay remains solid and the features are there in full force, the technical issues and sub-par graphics make it absolutely impossible to recommend over Sony's "MLB 08: The Show."

One gets the feeling that the show's creators are trying to wash their hands of Via Domus, awkwardly placed as it is in the series' now-sprawling legendarium. But above and beyond that, fans should approach it as a lark; it's not very accomplished as a game.

It also runs poorly, replete with graphical glitches and technical hiccups that make the game feel shoddy and unfinished. At a moment when so many excellent shooters are on the market and thriving in the multiplayer scene, there's very little incentive to endure something like this.

It also runs poorly, replete with graphical glitches and technical hiccups that make the game feel shoddy and unfinished. At a moment when so many excellent shooters are on the market and thriving in the multiplayer scene, there's very little incentive to endure something like this.

Its uninspired game design feels completely mired in an era that we'd sooner be done with. There's simply no reason to waste your time with it.

One gets the feeling that the show's creators are trying to wash their hands of Via Domus, awkwardly placed as it is in the series' now-sprawling legendarium. But above and beyond that, fans should approach it as a lark; it's not very accomplished as a game.

One gets the feeling that the show's creators are trying to wash their hands of Via Domus, awkwardly placed as it is in the series' now-sprawling legendarium. But above and beyond that, fans should approach it as a lark; it's not very accomplished as a game.

Big Willy Unleashed isn't a bad game; it just feels extremely watered-down. Perhaps it's because all the real effort is being put into Crypto's upcoming PS3 debut, but this feels like a pale imitation of the other DAH titles.

The staggering lack of quality apparent in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Elements has left us incredibly disappointed.

If you're a parent buying this for your kids so that you can save yourself thirty dollars, we can't really blame you. But if you're out of middle-school and decide that this is worth your money you have no one to blame but yourself.

There have been worse football games out there, but not a lot. If you've got young gamers in your household, sit down with them and break down a Madden playbook instead of forcing NFL Tour on them. Unlike its spiritual predecessor NFL Street, there are no Gamebreakers here. Instead, the game itself is broken.

Sure, the online functions decently, but it's merely allowing thousands of gamers with buyer's remorse to play a mediocre game.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

This brain-dead combat is perhaps the worst part of Double Smash. Slowly plodding through the stale levels, fighting the same enemies, and using the same techniques to win grows old almost immediately.