You'd have more fun watching both movies than playing this game.

This admittedly impressive-looking title ultimately proves to be less than run-of-the-mill, in terms of the actual gameplay and battle dynamics.

Something of an introduction to the world of game making. In other words, it presents some of the fun as well as most of the painstaking and sometimes tedious work that is involved.

Stay far away from this street ball disaster.

Obi-Wan might have been a good game on the last generation of consoles, but it's too confused, rough hewn, and repetitive to stand up against Xbox games like "Halo" or even "Azurik."

We have to admit to being a bit disappointed at how similar Star Force is to the Battle Network games. We were hoping that Capcom would take this opportunity to reboot the series into something fresh. Instead, we have more of a sidestep than a step forward.

A competent port of an iffy game in a good series, and the only game in that series available for Xbox. If you absolutely want some SamSho action and don't have a better alternative, then it's probably worth a purchase.

For most people, that's exactly what Lost in Blue 2 will be: a complete waste of time. But for a small audience of those that enjoy insurmountable challenges and crushing defeat, Lost in Blue 2 will fit the bill nicely.

Even Sam's biggest fans will disappointed by this mediocre title, especially those that are expecting the same type of experience they've gotten used to on the consoles.

The game feels a bit rushed, as if it could have used a few months more in developments, particularly when it comes to balancing some of the combat.

Fans of the film may enjoy the idea of building their own criminal empire, but those expecting a fast-paced action experience are in for a rude awakening.

One of the ugliest games of this generation, and the majority of Dreamcast games would put it to shame. The textures are cloudy and the player models are cheesy.

Even with its shortcomings, this version is still the best. If EA decides to continue moving forward with the franchise, it should definitely incorporate some of the features from the portable version into future console releases.

Wasn't great in 1995, and it's even less impressive in 2002.

Once again the problem is one of controls, perspective, and a complete lack of freedom.

It might as well have been published by AT&T, because this is the most phoned-in sequel this side of a football game.

How a respected strategy developer like Paradox could've produced a game so broken, cryptic, and unfaithful to the franchise is a mystery. And why Hasbro, who owns the Avalon Hill properties, approved it is beyond explanation.

Once you get a few levels into the game, you start to see the purpose and role of each weapon, and Constantine encourages you to think strategically about how to take down enemies.

An utterly middle-of-the-road shooter on its way to obscurity.

With its unique two-player mode and very reasonable MSRP, Starsky & Hutch is a no-brainer of a purchase for light-gunners, penny-pinchers, and people with friends. This is one of the best budget releases I've ever played.

Not much better than last year's unimpressive console games. However, the smooth control, portability, and uniqueness of the experience -- this is the only FPS for the DS at the moment -- help differentiate it enough that some folks might enjoy it.

It keeps everything that fans love about the series and adds more to the experience. Although gamers looking for a deep experience may find the game lacking in some respects, casual gamers looking for a refreshing adventure won't be disappointed.

It's the non-descript gameplay between [the cut scenes] that bogs Futurama down. The unbalanced and tedious action will try your patience.

On one hand it's very simple and addictive for non-gamers, but on the other hand it's more of a novelty for core gamers. The price is high, although the "free" controller makes it more than worthwhile if you're looking for a second controller and a cheap set of mini-games that are fun for a few hours.

By and large it's a boring, scattershot attempt to bring MMX into the new millennium. The original "Mega Man X" is one of my favorite games ever -- and the flaccid 2D sections in this game aren't half as good as any of the levels in the original game. The 3D bits are more compelling, but still substandard.

Although Marvel Nemesis is far from being a perfect game, it's still an exceptionally strong outing for EA. Comic fans should be suitably impressed with EA's use of the Marvel license, and fighting fans will likely find more than enough substance to keep themselves entertained.

For a mech combat game, Journey to Jaburo isn't terrible, but it is lacking good control and the graphics are pretty sad overall.

There's nothing sadder than watching something that used to be great take that long, painful slide into irrelevance and oblivion.

The few puzzles in the game are quite easy, and most experienced gamers will barely even be aware of them.

If you look past the movie license when playing the game, there's just no way to avoid feeling like this is the same basic platform game you've played time and time and time again.

The excellent camera will thrill those whose stomachs are still churning from the dizzying "nausea cam" in "Mat Hoffman."

It's not so much that the enemies are hard to kill, or that the simplistic level design inflicts any brain-bending puzzles, but more that the inherent trial-and-error style progression through the levels gets tedious to the point of removing all the fun from playing.

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

It's lacking in originality and refinement, but Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII ends up as a playable and occasionally interesting experiment with traditional action gameplay packed with cutscenes, story and fan-pleasing cameos.

Considering the unpolished feel of SSC and with alternatives like "Gran Turismo 3" providing a much more fulfilling experience, there are very few people I could recommend this game to.

Despite having more bells and whistles than CS, it simply fails to become addictive.

It has most of the gameplay options and technical competence you'd expect from an A-list publisher, but it never once engages you on an emotional level.

While the basic gameplay engine is solid enough, TMNT forgets that less is sometimes more, and does a fine job of boring the player as a result.

As a whole, NBA is about as generic as its name. It includes the spectrum of teams, players, logos, and all that jazz, but fails to capture any of the flair or excitement of a real game.

Another victim of the quickie DS action blues. The star isn't very likeable, it's not much fun to play, and it's as ugly as a Jack-o-Lantern on January 9th.

Not only can you learn how to play it in ten minutes, you can pretty much master the strategy of it in the same amount of time as well.

Hardcore gamers will be put off by the lack of depth in the arcade sequences, and casual gamers will be put off by the degree of challenge in the strategy sequence.

Anyone who has experience with other RPGs will probably become bored with this game after an hour or two. Although the quest is relatively long, the gameplay offers little in the way of innovation, insuring that the only people who will see it through are the most diehard of Naruto fans.

Whether you see it as a fantasy-slanted Gears homage or a punched-up and streamlined dungeon-crawler, the end result is roughly the same: Hunted is an adequate diversion for co-op aficionados, but little more.

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.

It's good to have a better Rayman Raving Rabbids installment on DS than the one released last year, but we have a feeling that Ubisoft could have done much more on a handheld system that offers many great examples of mini-game collections.

Unfortunately, where World Tour improved on its predecessor in every way, Total Destruction fails to recapture any of the fun of its arcade ancestors.

Maybe in Dark Void 2, in which a brash, headstrong pilot gets a hold of a jetpack created by an aging engineer and uses it to fight zombies, we'll see the full-fledged realization of this game's genuinely interesting designs. Until then, however, jetpack fans will have to settle for half-baked.

Indeed, the problem of "generic civilizations" is particularly acute in The Art of Supremacy.

Graphically, it's the best that NASCAR has ever looked, but once you get past the pretty picture, you're left with a racer with plenty of holes.

The gameplay is uglier than Paul Bearer in the nude.

It could've been called "EndCrisis" or "TimeGame," but there's still enough of a difference to warrant interest from light-gun gamers.

With shallow gameplay and minimal longevity, King of Route 66 is a coin-op in PS2 clothing.

While you can drive almost every Corvette made, the game doesn't feel realistic enough to give the impression that you're behind the wheel of one.

The biggest problem is the lack of difficulty and subsequent lack of replayability, but while it lasts Boogie offers a pleasant distraction from the usual crop of rhythm and action games on the market.

It has a simplistic hand-to-hand fighting system, a jerky, broken camera, crappy, jarring level designs, and horrifically frustrating platforming elements. It pretty much just fails at emulating the combat-heavy action games that have inspired it, and you'll constantly remind yourself of this as you play.

While the improved handling and graphics are a treat, Spy Hunter 2 feels like it's moving away from the original's inspiration, instead of towards it.

Fans of the series will no doubt like the ability to test the relative strengths and weaknesses of, say, the GAT-X103 versus the GAT-X207, but gamers unfamiliar with mobile suit mythology won't get that same buzz.

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.

We were hoping for more from The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, and we're disappointed that the game didn't do more with such a powerful license. Star Wars: Battlefront hasn't aged very well, and to get essentially the same game with a different theme left us wanting more.

It will captivate you temporarily with its novel look and gameplay, but when the story starts to get interesting, the clunky controls and molasses-like pace of the thing will leave you frustrated. The game runs far too slow to be enjoyable.

Drome Racers' controls are frustratingly floaty, just as they were in Rollcage, and the cars themselves are even floatier, hovering several inches off the ground instead of maintaining contact with "terra droma."

While the improved handling and graphics are a treat, Spy Hunter 2 feels like it's moving away from the original's inspiration, instead of towards it.

There's an embarrassment of riches in the genre on Xbox, so why embarrass yourself with this?

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.

Genesis Rising is by no means a total loss and there's certainly some fun to be had, but its lofty potential is squandered due to some poor decisions and a rigid design that will only appeal to a select number of players.

Merchant Prince II literally is "Merchant Prince" circa 1993 with a few new game options, slightly updated visuals, and programmed with Windows rather than DOS in mind.

It's unplayable out of the box and incomplete even when patched. But if it can survive, there're signs that WWII Online could be a winner.

The PS2 version of the game looks and sounds much better than its Xbox counterpart. And the game's multiplayer implementation is some of the best yet on the PS2.

It's got its love/hate bits like every other entry in the franchise, but the bite-sized level maps, bulk of content, and portability of this version make it a decent purchase choice.

Piling on an unfortunate number of bugs and glitches, Blazing Angels on the Wii is undoubtedly the most disappointing version of this game to date. The lack of online multiplayer also detracts from the replayability.

Running away from dinosaurs may keep you alive, but it just isn't very much fun.

The whole thing is very goofy, funny, weird, and cute... If you're looking for a fast-paced, simple fighter with appealing graphics and an unusual sense of humor, Zatch Bell! is definitely worth your time.

For regular gamers, this is more of the same with a few slight twists. Unfortunately, none of the twists happen in gameplay, where they're desperately needed.

If you are going to make combat the central focus of a game, that combat better be, at the bare minimum, on par with other real-time strategy games, and Legends fails miserably in that regard.

a paradox. Buried deep beneath the myriad of technical and gameplay issues is a real gem of a game that is worth playing.

If you can tolerate its quirks and incredibly strict gameplay parameters, The Nightmare of Druaga is actually quite enjoyable and satisfying. Just don't ever, ever die.

Poor sound effects, sometimes misused, uninteresting music, bad voice acting, merely decent graphics, the same enemies over and over again, only seven and a half hours of gameplay, and the game still manages to be fun.

Basically a step down from the original console games ... which weren't all that great to start with.

GameDay will never be mistaken for "Madden," or even a very good game. However, there is that old saying "love is blind." The mere fact that this is the only college game available for either the PS2 or the Dreamcast at this point may be enough.

Not half as fun as the full console versions.

For a game that's humble and not especially innovative, Deep Labyrinth is a title that, strangely, really feels like it belongs on the Nintendo DS. It's a little different and takes a few risks that don't pay off, but it ends up being a successful game in its genre.

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.

The multiplayer aspect is particularly entertaining, with a variety of missions available ... and more to come thanks to the downloadable content option.

Is it a deep role-playing game with a plot-twisting storyline ... or is it a Diablo hack-and-slash clone? Ultimately, it tries to be both, but doesn't succeed at being either.

A barely passable "Diablo" mod with all the weaknesses of the original game and few of the strengths.

Far superior to the PS2 version, Thunder on the Xbox is definitely one of the coolest racing titles on the system. Though the gameplay is shallow, it's playable, fast, and has a ton of things to unlock.

The additions are nice, yet it's obvious that Sega didn't even try addressing the well-known shortcomings of the Dreamcast game.

The game is tolerable if you're really into its style, which is decidedly Japanese (both the art direction and the gameplay). If you are new to the Mana series, this is probably a bad introduction.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground does a surprisingly good job of bringing the Hawk experience to the Wii.

This is the sort of game you can enjoy well enough while you're playing it, but once you exit the program, you'll be in no great hurry to play it again.

What action there is proves solid and enjoyable, even despite the tossed-off nature of the single-player campaign. But the four-player limit severely hobbles the scope of the matches, and the lack of Internet play completely sabotages the game's multiplayer ambitions.

A game that's really repetitive, but fans of the Hulk should get a kick out of it.

Ultimately, though, its charms are outweighed by gameplay that lacks the tactics of the sweet science in real life. With better examples of video boxing on the market, Don King Presents: Prizefighter is a very tough sell.

Ninja Council 3 comes across as a game that was quickly slapped together just to get something Naruto-related on the DS.

Players with the patience to slug through the interface and the slow parts of the game will discover an overarching story, allowing them to reunite with lost family members and even conquer the whole of the Caribbean under one flag.

A cool license doesn't save an otherwise bland game with nearly average everything.

An interesting concept for an action/adventure game with a deep storyline that evolves gradually, but it suffers from the scope of its technical glitches.