I found myself eager for Hotline Miami to end before it did (after about eight hours) and had little desire to return to improve my scores.

As much as we enjoyed playing Katana, we really can't recommend it to most gamers. While the Wii Remote sword combat is the best we've seen yet, there are other games on the horizon that will likely do it better ("Dragon Quest: Swords" or "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" perhaps?).

I can't imagine anyone but diehard fans going to these lengths. Everyone else should stick to Atari's game that's based on Transformers Armada -- it's still the best way to wage a battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.

There's just not enough new content to justify this expansion.

The level design and longevity just isn't there to make this more than a rental or a bargain-big pick-up -- especially with God of War II's release closing fast. This rider is anything but the leader of the pack.

But New Blood's single-player experience has all of the frustration of the original without the promise of eventual success. It's all stick and no carrot.

Those who have always looked at the Neverwinter Nights series as a glorious toy they can tear apart and reconstruct into their own D&D fantasies are going to be very happy with what comes in this installment. If you've come to uncover the mystery of the "Storm of Zehir," you might want to stay indoors until the shower passes.

Hopefully Bond's next foray into the gaming world will deliver an authentic and compelling Bond experience, not just a decent but too-short shooter with some fancy window dressing.

Even playing on the easiest setting, the difficulty regularly spikes to bowel-clenching impossibility. This wouldn't be so bad if the checkpoints flowed a little more freely, as most of the difficulty spikes tend to arrive after a protracted battle has already left you tattered and bleeding.

Unfortunately, desktop crashes, the need for money and carrots, some annoying sound effects, and a few frustrating puzzles mar what could have been one of the better adventure games to come out in years.

The WW2 shooter has been done to death, and this game doesn't do anything at all to breathe life into the genre.

This is one of those games that at the end of the day are totally and completely…mediocre. It isn't terrible, it isn't great. You might have a good time, you might hate it.

The multiplayer has too many hiccups to be worth your time. The single-player mode is so unbalanced that when I put the game on my bookshelf, it tipped over.

A lackluster package of average single-player and slightly better multiplayer. Unless you're a huge and/or irrational Bond nut, it offers nothing that competing games don't do better.

After such an uneven effort, there can be no other assessment made: the game gods must be displeased.

At worst, though, it embodies one of the more unfortunate trends our industry is prone to follow: putting style and presentation over substantive interactive experience.

Darkspore's just a mediocre game. If you're dying to run around and smack enemies on the head with your left mouse button, it might be worth a few bones -- but you're better off waiting until it heads to the inevitable discount on Steam before you commit.

Slogging through the beginning of the game -- before you can allocate points to the good skills or fulfill the quest requirements for companions -- can take its toll on you.

If you just want more stuff, you'll probably be satisfied with it, but if you were hoping for a strong animal-themed expansion pack, Wild! is more gelding than stallion.

Every facet of the core gameplay is plain, making Barnyard for the GBA the most forgettable kind of throwaway entertainment. It's too bad, because it had the potential to be more than the usual mediocre film tie-in.

It's impossible to recommend a multiplayer shooter that no one plays. If no one's playing now, just after release, rest assured no one will be in a month.

Even value-priced at $20, 7 Wonders feels incomplete, aping the basic aspects of Bejeweled and bringing nothing more of substance to the party.

And that, as insane as it sounds, is the crux of the matter: Duke Nukem Forever feels like it was rushed out the door. So many of the design decisions are poor, so much of the maps are unbalanced (going from uneventful to extremely difficult in a flash), and the graphics are so shoddy, that an experienced gamer can come to no other conclusion.

Or how about the single-player in general? It's boring, consisting mainly of shooting hundreds of uninteresting thugs. The baddies are supposed to be endowed with "Evil AI," but heck if I could tell. They just seemed dumb.

It's certainly as competent in execution as the original and the developers did toss in a few nice console-only goodies, but as a whole, this expansion is quite forgettable.

And that, as insane as it sounds, is the crux of the matter: Duke Nukem Forever feels like it was rushed out the door. So many of the design decisions are poor, so much of the maps are unbalanced (going from uneventful to extremely difficult in a flash), and the graphics are so shoddy, that an experienced gamer can come to no other conclusion.

It would be nice to see Capcom do something a little more radical with this series, but we've probably got another three or four indistinguishable sequels to get through before there's even a chance of that happening. It's still a fine enough game, but the played-out presentation and quest full of repetitive backtracking and fetch quests fail to excite.

The artificial intelligence is improved and ball physics are much more realistic than in the first game, but while FIFA Street 2 makes a good first impression, it gets bogged down by unresponsive player controls and repetitive action.

With its weak story, dull combat, and host of annoyances, Children of Mana just isn't very much fun to play. Multiplayer can be enjoyable, but most of the time players will be going solo, and will be quite bored doing so. The game as a whole just feels pointless.

A game that shouldn't have been made. It's a hardcore product with next to nothing new to offer to the hardcore. Meanwhile, more casual people will be turned off by the confusing learning curve and the utterly awful aesthetics.

As nightmares go, this one ranks right up there with the one about entering the schoolyard pantsless, and perhaps even on fire. The turtles deserve better, and its unfortunate this game extends their bad luck streak.

In the end, one of the many cluttered rooms serves as a metaphor for the whole experience: sure, all the stuff in there works, and it serves a purpose, but a little more elegance could have made the whole remarkable.

We have immense respect for what Lost Odyssey tries to do: be a back-to-basics JRPG with modern technological trimmings on the 360. Unfortunately, it's less a celebration of what made older RPGs great and more a crude relic of their past.

Though the presentation is worth checking out, the rest of the experience makes it difficult to hang with, considering its laughable AI, dodgy controls and ho-hum storylines.

Fans will like this game and dilettantes would do well to stay away, though really there's not enough here for anyone other than the hardest of the hardcore, dying to get their knife-to-the-jugular fix after blowing through Assassin's Creed II.

Those of you who haven't experienced Dynasty Warriors before are better off picking up a cheaper, older version for your introduction. Trust me: you won't be missing much.

There will be inevitable comparisons to Neversoft's GUN, but CoJ feels much more a next-gen version of the lackluster Dead Man's Hand than anything else. And it's about as worthwhile a purchase.

For those willing to endure the poorly-translated control scheme, the career mode is rather well done, as are the Rival Challenges, which really lend themselves to the short burst gameplay that's crucial to handheld.

Given how much potential this character and his weapons have for 2D gameplay, it's a little depressing just how lame the final game's turned out.

Even with the support of the upcoming feature film (which supposedly donated art assets), it still manages to oscillate between looking positively stunning to heinously ugly.

After six nearly identical Mega Man Battle Network games and one followup that was presumed to reboot the series (but didn't, really), is it any surprise that Mega Man Star Force 2 is pretty much the same game that Capcom has been churning out for the past seven years?

I wish that I could say that the PS3 version of Tony Hawk's Project 8 felt like a next-gen game, but it doesn't even have online gameplay, an element that was crucial to solidifying Neversoft's current-gen games as a blockbuster franchise. Combine that with the flaws already plaguing the game, and it's very difficult to recommend.

Though it doesn't hit the graphical highs of the upcoming "Metal Gear Solid 3," the visual style is one of the few ways that Spy Fiction distinguishes itself from its parent series in a positive way.

We can't help but think how much more enjoyable this game could have been with some better jokes, a few more interesting mini-games, and the ability to explore without loading screens every 15 seconds.

But nobody is going to fall in love with the game, unless they're in love with the sound of Jamie Little's big mouth.

While the voice command feature is interesting, games like World in Conflict, Empire: Total War, and Company of Heroes offer far more depth and are ultimately easier to recommend.

Stay far away from this street ball disaster.

A decent enough shooter that just doesn't do enough to stand out in the Xbox's crowded FPS market.

It's a curiosity worth a rental -- before the Xbox Live population drops to zero, as it quickly does for so many second-tier games. You just might be able to overlook its flaws and find the button-mashing fun.

It would be a lot easier to recommend if it were half that price. As it is, you're paying $40 for lackluster collection of old arcade games, a port of a good DS game, and a handful of varying quality remixes that all feel like expanded mini-games.

I understand the need to change the identity of the murderer in order to create suspense for those who have already read the book. Unfortunately, the new ending feels tacked on and incredibly contrived.

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.

As dense and nihilistic as the source material, but not nearly as thrilling.

There's no doubt that the arenas look amazing, and the presentation is great. Unfortunately, this is a game and not a tech demo, and the gameplay and modes are severely lacking.

Unfortunately, playing it with the flighty Wii Remote controls can sometimes make it more frustrating than fun, and the much ballyhooed eight-player mode (just look at those excited folks on the back of the box) is a (wait for it) bust.

It's not quite as engrossing a turn-based strategy experience as Final Fantasy Tactics, but its unique setting kept my interest long enough for me to discover the fun that lay beneath the unpleasant exterior.

Complete with more bugs than month-old flypaper sitting outside a slaughterhouse, True Crime: New York City is utterly mediocre.

If you've never played an RPG before, then perhaps this'll make for a memorable adventure. It's certainly competent. However, those who are well-versed in the ways of herbs and leather armor would do well to save their money for a more invigorating, less blatantly soporific quest.

Instead of delivering a total experience, Kong feels more like the developers decided to throw together two half-finished games and hope for the best. The end result is an average experience.

But it's impossible to ignore the unfinished feel of the "final" product and even though it received a patch almost immediately after release, a lot more support is needed to make this a game worth investing a lot of time in. It's simply not finished yet.

While Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War has some great concepts behind it and a few enjoyable moments, it's not really worth the gas it takes to drive it home from the software store.

It needs more games, more multiplayer games, and a single-system multiplayer mode to make it truly worthwhile. Otherwise, as mentioned before, simply buying a deck of cards and finding a few friends is a much more entertaining experience.

Don't get us wrong, we understand that Tenchu sucks, but some of us happen to like it regardless of its faults and it is those die-hard fans that will find Tenchu Z to be the most rewarding of the entire series.

If you have a choice, between getting the GameCube and PS2 version of the game, go for the GameCube. The semi-frequent load times are significantly shorter on Nintendo's system, and the graphics look slightly better.

Season 2 will help satisfy series or genre fans' lust for collecting things by virtually golfing, but by failing to add a satisfying online experience to the game -- the first game's real weak spot -- 2 is more expansion pack than true sequel.

Atari, for some reason, decided to employ the touch screen for ALL the games on its compilation. For some games, it works; for others -- it's a clunky, useless interface that will have you cursing your DS hardware in no time.

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 just isn't as relaxing, with its frustrating mini-games and flawed core game mechanics. There's still plenty of eye-candy to be had, but if you're looking for anything more, you may want to pass.

The graphics, which look perfectly fine on the PSP, look decidedly low budget blown up on a TV. This is compounded by the fact that AS has been released as a full price title. This would be less of a problem if the game was $30, but for $50? You'd be better off saving $20 and picking up a copy of "Resident Evil 4."

Our sights weren't set especially high for Beowulf, so at least it didn't disappoint. Even with the support of the upcoming feature film (which supposedly donated art assets), it still manages to oscillate between looking positively stunning to heinously ugly.

The temptation is to make sure that the environments and models match the movies as closely as possible, but doing so takes more time and resources with each technical leap forward, and there are only so many months in the development cycle.

Aside from the horribly awkward controls, Dino Stalker suffers from what can best be described as a lack of inspiration.

Without using the camera it can be frustrating and repetitive, but its mediocre porting is not enough to convince anyone to spend an additional $50 to enjoy it.

The problem with Advanced Warfighter isn't that it's a lesser beast than the 360 release; that's to be expected. It's that the game fails to stack up against the better recent Xbox shooters like "Far Cry" and "Black."

Online play is the best aspect of Arena Football, particularly if you've been turned off by the rampant use of cheats in Madden.

Yeah, it's still fun when you've got three other friends involved, but when you get down to it it's an antiquated game that doesn't have the pizzazz that people expect out of a downloadable remakes these days. Honestly, I'd have been happy with a cheap, no-frills port of the original arcade version (something that this remake doesn't even include, incidentally).

The racing action can be a kick, but it just doesn't compare to other racers -- gameplay or presentation-wise -- available for the system. The accent on racing also takes away from the story-driven RPG elements that made Road Trip so unique.

D1 fans will be able to look past the game's numerous flaws and appreciate the fact that there's a game tailored to their specific tastes. The average gamer, on the other hand, will have a hard time getting the hang of the controls and will be a lot less forgiving of the game's flaws.

While it's hard to fault the good intentions that underlie the creation of Advent Rising, a game of this quality does more than just eventually stink up some EB bargain bin; it misses a huge opportunity to put the medium forward. Advent Rising has fallen -- it's time for us to move on.

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 biggest problem with Miami Vice is that it's composed of too many parts, and too few individual parts really do anything well. The closest that the game comes to being rather fun is in the Drug Wars-inspired segments, but they're not enough to carry the game alone.

Die-hard fans of the genre might be able to find some value, but those same fans would be better served by the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 on the DS, which not only features superior gameplay, but is also about $30 cheaper.

It's the only real four-player, easy-to-learn game in the 360's library. If that's what you're looking for -- or you're a seven-year-old whose parents won't buy you Gears of War so you can use potty-mouth online -- then by all means rent Fuzion Frenzy 2.

Gets the job done in an absolutely no-frills way, with generic story, visuals, and gameplay leading to a business-as-usual experience -- but one that fits in your hands, this time.

A victim of its own mediocrity.

The silver lining in all of this is that the game is kept compact, and To the Moon can be finished in a sitting or two, before it really wears out its welcome.

Hardcore simulation fans really need not apply due to the broken rebounding model. But if you want a lot of high-flying sizzle in your hoops game and you don't care about the other minutiae, then by all means pick it up.

Deprived of a decent storyline, innovative mechanics, and limited variation in either enemies or environments, Too Human is barely worthy of a weekend rental.

When compared to "Sim Golf," this game isn't as refined, isn't as addictive, and simply isn't as much fun.

Unless you're a huge and/or irrational Bond nut, it offers nothing that competing games don't do better. That's a shame, because the premise is grand.

PSP owners will be able to gloat that their version of the game looks better than the Wii edition.

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

It's important to note that there are some very solid fundamental designs at work here, and an entertaining game can be found if you have the patience to stomach the painful technical issues and the small user base that currently plagues Fury. In a best-case scenario, Fury's population would quadruple in the next six months, and with a larger community, some of the player-matching issues would clear up.

The release, which tries to port too many visual features of its more powerful cousin, is just a pixelated, sluggish mess.

With a lame story and boring gameplay, I got tired of Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex in a hurry. There's also a noticeable lack of polish, with things like maps and clear objective descriptors being absent.

It hurts me to give this game a low score, because it really is a good concept that just failed in execution.

An excellent hex-map turn-based strategy title. The disappointment hits when you realize that a really fun strategy core is riddled with bugs and is wrapped in a simply awful presentation.

As nightmares go, this one ranks right up there with the one about entering the schoolyard pantsless, and perhaps even on fire. The turtles deserve better, and its unfortunate this game extends their bad luck streak.

Given the lack of single-player modes and the simple fighting engine, it's hard to recommend Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes to anyone who isn't currently wearing a Naruto headband.