The game's fighting mechanic was a little thin to begin with, and without an online version to lend it some legs, it gets old real fast. Playing with the GameCube controller isn't too hot, either.

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.

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.

Even at $30, NHL 07 on the PC is overpriced. It's a budget title, plain and simple, almost exactly like last year's game with a minimal effort to include the new Skill Stick.

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.

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.

In the end, my trip to Miniopolis seemed pretty uneventful. There hasn't been a lot of improvement since "Bustin' Out," and it's painfully clear.

Most companies believe slapping a license is work enough, and while the Goblet of Fire isn't a terrible adventure, it's not nearly as compelling from a visual or gameplay standpoint than what you could pick up for your GameCube.

The experience of playing this game can be roughly compared to swimming through a pile of sewage to get to a diamond ring. There's a great game buried in the coded-up wreckage that comes out of the X3: Reunion box; it's probably not worth the effort to dig for it, though.

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.

A second-rate adventure title with some good puzzles tacked on to a poor story.

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.

Even Ocho Cinco might have trouble keeping up the trash-talking intensity after prolonged exposure to the same old Street feel.

Killer 7 is going to start a lot of arguments -- it's definitely a love it or hate it type of game. I'm more in the "hate it" camp, but I do have to give it some props for being so radically different. Just be aware that it's a pretty severe case of style over substance.

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.

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.

A cheery-looking game world but lousy, sleep-inducing gameplay.

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.

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

A turbulent ride between decent action, half-baked graphics and camera, and occasionally clunky, but undeniably authentic presentation.

And a note: there's no reason to pay an extra $5 for the DS version when the GBA version's only lacking repetitive mini-games.

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.

A disappointment of near-epic proportions. Sega ripped out the very heart of PSO's legendary addictiveness, replacing it with a repetitive, tedious grind that shows no signs of ending.

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.

All In seems like Crave's attempt to bet the farm on nothing more than a high card. The few improvements the game makes over last year's entry pale in comparison to its shortcomings.

While the abilities are beautifully balanced and the right team can be a near-amazing gameplay experience, the price, the stinginess of the content, and the amateurish lack of polish gives us pause. Maybe a lower price point that doesn't make Shadowrun as much of a ripoff as it is could help down the line. But until then, despite how much I want to like Shadowrun, the good times are not nearly worth all the money, frustration and hassle.

The typical stigma of a launch game includes bugs, glitches, unpolished visuals, short and hurried gameplay, and a general lack of depth. Sadly, Spider-Man 2 fits the bill.

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.

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

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

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."

A failure. Despite the excellent art, and even ignoring the frustrating puzzles, the biggest problem here lies in a group of obnoxiously stereotypical characters working their way through bad dialogue and a poorly plotted and paced script, topped off with three horrifying words: "To Be Continued..."

Fans of shooters will find, quickly enough, that the absolute reliance on purchased abilities over skill makes this a poor Counterstrike-style title. RPG fans will, likewise, find that there aren't enough RPG elements to make a whole game out of. And both sides should have the common sense to realize that when a company sneaks out a test game disguised as a full retail product, you don't reward it by buying it.

Unless you're desperate for a baseball game on your 'Cube, MLB 2K6 is probably worth passing up.

A textbook case of the gameplay taking a backseat to the graphics... Auto Modellista's biggest problem is still the poor control.

Although MechAssault: Phantom War isn't necessarily the worst game to ever pop up on the DS, it's pretty close to the bottom of the pile. The poor controls and bland graphics are a far cry from everything that made the original MechAssault game on the Xbox such a success.

1) It's not flashy; 2) It's not easy; 3) There's not much of a reward waiting for you at the end. So as long as you're okay with Myst throwbacks in all their staid, obtuse non-glory, you won't be disappointed.

A severely flawed game that could have been far better had it undergone further testing. The freeze bug is absolutely crippling and has even caused retailers like EBGames and GameStop to reduce the amount of money they'll offer for the game in trade-in value.

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.

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.

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.

Not only is it not equal to NHL 2004; on nearly every level, it's a step backwards. In the end, there's no reason whatsoever to "upgrade" to this new version, and that's the most damming thing you can say about a sports franchise.

If you're over six years old, you have no reason to check out this game, but it would make a good gift for a daughter or younger sister.

Gearheads who lust after things like a shiny new HKS Turbo will probably have fun tinkering with their fleet. Anyone else will fast become furious over dropping fifty bucks on this game.

Maybe in the next generation of consoles, I'll be able to immerse myself in the pretty graphics and forget I'm playing the same damn game yet again, but not this time.

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.

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.

A great concept marred by exceptionally bad implementation. A game that is impossible to recommend to anyone, for any reason.

From the shoddy AI, to the animation and controls that make it seem like you're always playing on mud, U.S. Open fails on an amazing number of levels.

It's exactly what diehard gamers feared that the casual gaming revolution was going to inflict on the industry: shallow, gimmicky software whose main selling point is that no one is too young, old or uncoordinated to be able to play it. Buy a real videogame or buy a board game, but don't be a dummy and let Smarty Pants walk away with your 50 bucks.

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.

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.

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.

It has no bite, no personality, none of the visionary creative energy that have brought Timegate's other games to life. It's as clunky and flat as an outdated history book.

It takes a few stabs at innovating, but alas, it's turned out to be worse than mediocre: it's lousy.

If you're a dedicated Gundam fan that doesn't mind the rudimentary gameplay elements, you'll probably enjoy yourself. Otherwise, with so many other superior RPGs available for the PS2, it's hard to recommend MS Saga.

No care was taken to immerse players into the world they've lived with since Lewis' tale was first published. And that's a shame.

The most mediocre JRPG you can imagine from Enchanted Arms and no more.

[It] would make a fine purchase for masochists and parents looking to punish their kids. Other than that, gamers could play "Crazy Taxi," and then watch an episode of the TV show to end up ten times more satisfied than this game will make them.

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.

It's such a shame that Cold War is subject to crashes and often won't even load; otherwise, it would be worth a much stronger recommendation.

All in all, WPT is not a bad title, but $20 can get you into a couple of real tournaments online. Tournaments where you could actually make money.

Of the three versions, the GameCube release of X-Men: Next Dimension is the best -- strictly in a relative sense, of course.

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.

The play mechanics are literally all wrong. Depth in character building doesn't matter when you wish your character would just take a wrong turn and fall off a cliff and land on some very sharp rocks.

It's a broken, buggy game, and if the statement about learning curves were true, it would still take far too long to gain wings before the average gamer would grow disenfranchised. The game feels completely rushed to retail in time for the launch.

The basic design of the game is quite sound and if Piranha Bytes could clean the game up, it might end up becoming a classic. As it stands now, my nightmarish trip through the world of Gothic 3 made me want to send my disc on a one-way trip into an incinerator.

The few good puzzles contained within aren't worth the time and risk that you might not even be able to complete it.

Its sloppy controls and poor presentation will likely turn off even some of the most diehard fans of the ATV Offroad franchise.

Everything about Raw Danger gets old quick, and that's not the mark of a quality gaming experience.

Bottom line: this is a bad basketball game. The last Sony-published hoops title, NBA ShootOut 2004, was extremely solid, so these massive leaps backwards befuddle me to no end.

We really wanted to like Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm, but the series is stagnating in gameplay that was obtusely old-fashioned ten years ago. It's unfortunate, but the magic is long-gone.

After playing the three excellent console versions of Midway Arcade Treasures, it was a major disappointment to see just how half-assed Extended Play ended up being.

Online, it was worse. There were times when we really felt like there was a 2-second delay between button push and the resulting action.

Beyond the graphics and design foibles, the difficulty ramps up in an unsettling way, with races going from child's play to infernal bloodsport in the span of a single race.

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

The game's abysmal controls and moronic A.I. fail to deliver.

It's an amusing homage to the '90s, and too likeable to hate, but it's impossible to recommend to anyone but die-hard SimTower fans.

This racer needs a serious adrenaline injection to truly compete.

The kiddies will enjoy seeing more Robinsons goofiness, and you won't mind picking up the controller to help them through the occasional tough part. Just try not to get too frustrated with those darn Wii Remote controls.

Aedis Eclipse: Generations of Chaos shows a lot of potential, but buried so deep that it's just about not worth digging for.

The game's more successful at being "Virtua Barbie" for the urbanite than playing a mean game of basketball.

It's really a bummer to see 24: The Game fail so miserably at being a competent title. It seems that the main focus of the game was on making it look cool and impressing fans of the show when they looked at it.

The game's abysmal controls and moronic A.I. fail to deliver.

Gretzky '06 piles up some new features, does a better job of tracking franchise info, and has the AHL license for minor-league teams. It does not, however, come close to equaling the on-ice fun of "NHL 2k6" or "NHL '06."

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.

Unless you're a hardcore fan of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, there's not much to hold your interest here.

Simply put, it has no hook. It offers nothing of interest to an even semi-seasoned gamer. It's as dull a foray into platforming as you'll find on your local store's shelves, and another unfortunate example of this license being diluted.

Hockey fans want to see their favorite players gliding effortlessly across the ice, not spastically jerking from end to end. The Great One was one of the smoothest players of all time, but his game is in dire need of a few visits from the zamboni to smooth out the bumps.

Somewhere inside Nexagon: Deathmatch, there's an interesting concept trying to get out, but the arena combat, base building, and futuristic sports theme never gel. The lack of clear instruction, the fun-killing load times, frequently lame combat, and some bugs and pathfinding problems don't do the game any favors.

Just a first-person shooter with all the markings of mediocrity. It's got linear levels, an unimpressive arsenal, and simplistic shooter gameplay for both the single-player and multiplayer games.

It's clear that Boiling Point has some neat ideas and the potential for fun, but as tantalizing as the game can be, it can also feel more like slow torture than entertainment.

We haven't been huge fans of Need for Speed: ProStreet on other consoles, but the Wii version is by far the absolute worst one. It's not even so much the muddy, washed-out graphics (though they are quite awful, even by Wii standards) as it is that a significant number of features seem to have been stripped right out of the game and replaced with a control scheme that is agonizingly frustrating.

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.

In still frames this game looks good, really good. In motion it has the grace of a beached humpback whale, and even then the whale might have the advantage.

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

It feels like Hudson got about halfway through developing it, got tired, and decided to call it quits.