A decent game; it's just not the best out there.

A blandly mediocre game.

A thoroughly uninspired piece of hack work that gives you plenty of reasons not to buy it. Pick any one you like and save yourself the sixty bucks.

It's playable, mostly, but so uninteresting and bland that it's nearly impossible to think of a reason to.

You want 50's music? Buy a CD. Grab a DVD if you want to see the guy move. But if you want to pretend to be Curtis Jackson, take your fifty bucks out to a paintball range and let someone drill you nine times. It'll be a better experience than this.

While the controls on the PS2 are easily the best out of any of the other console incarnations, they still can't save this game from succumbing to it own horribly boring repetition.

There are problems with the game's length and with the iffy AI, but a lot of that is offset by how well the game's many elements are balanced and by its nifty graphics.

A simplistic beat-'em-up that turns out to be little more than a generic brawler at best.

The extra unlockable characters don't make replaying races a worthy use of time, and the credits roll long before you expect them to, even for a GBA racer. It's too bad, since it could have been a cute family-friendly title, but thirty bucks it's a complete waste of money for an hour's worth of gameplay.

Perhaps the worst offense of all would have to be Wolverine. Not only has Z-Axis managed to take everyone's favorite adamantium-infused Canadian wildman and turn him into possibly the most boring hero ever, they've pinned a sizable majority of the action upon playing as him. Boring, you say? Yes.

This game is a good children's title and is aimed at ages eight and up, though I dare say any kid who could reach the keyboard and mouse could play.

Has a bit of style but not much new gameplay behind it. It looks good and it's a serviceable shooter (you do get to shoot things, after all), but the game play just isn't that exciting, especially when you consider that it has no multiplayer and the single-player is so linear.

Playing against a pal or three isn't truly any less repetitive and tiresome than the endless sequence of door breaches and fire-and-forget gun battles that define the single-player experience, but it's at least different enough to add some middling interest to a game with little in reserve.

A thoroughly uninspired piece of hack work that gives you plenty of reasons not to buy it. Pick any one you like and save yourself the sixty bucks.

Compared to most wrestling games, the movesets here have been whittled down to almost nothing. The basic attacks are almost all simple strikes that quickly become half-hearted combinations (punch, punch ... kick!) for button mashers.

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

The Disney name and the cel-shading are good, but the repetitive gameplay, lack of many goals, and the poor enemy AI drag it down.

This one stinks of yesterday's diapers.

Instead of picking this up for your next party, I suggest snagging a few good CDs or maybe "Trivial Pursuit"... hell, even pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey is more fun.

A mess that 36-plus months of development time couldn't flesh out.

Then there's dreadful and horrific messes (but cheap!) rubbish like Operation Blockade an "action" title that fails pennypinching gamers in so many ways it throttles the mind.

The lack of speed is a real problem here.

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.

Feels rushed and slapped-together as a low-budget attempt to cash in on the holiday film release and make a quick buck from the fans before word gets out that it's not worth half its retail price.

Infinite lives can't make up for gameplay that rivals NES games for cheap deaths, many of which are caused by shoddy controls. RTX Red Rock is an experience in pain.

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.

If only the mini-games that you have to constantly play were more alluring.

Unless you're a fan of the series, or desperately needing something to play until Square and company bestow some gaming goodness on us, this probably shouldn't be a permanent addition to your library.

With all the focus developers put into the presentation of the story, it seems like they forgot to tighten up the actual gameplay element. The end result is a great game for Dukes fans, but nothing more than a mediocre racing title for the rest of us.

Hardcore and casual gamers alike, however, will tire of it very quickly.

Simply doesn't have much to offer.

Sure the graphics are fabulous, but the gameplay, sound effects, replay value, level design, and camera system are so poor that few people will find this game fun.

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.

The idea is a good one; it's just too bad it was applied to what is essentially a mediocre clone of an aging product.

What it does, it does quite well, adding 17 new scenarios and over 250 new elements to the game. Unfortunately, that's all that gamers can expect in this expansion, there are no tweaks, adjustments, or fixes to the game at all.

Ghost Rider isn't the best action game on PlayStation Portable, but it's slightly ahead of the comic- and movie-license curve.

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.

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.

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.

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's an offensively bad use of a cherished license, and it's an offensively simple and thoughtless strategy game.

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

A ghost-white imitation of SSX, and possibly one of the worst games in Konami's 30-year history.

More problematic is the game's land-based combat. While I understand the difficulty in creating a decent sword-fighting system, the, Tortuga is button-mashing at its worst -- and not even multiple buttons!

Un-inspiring characters fighting un-inspired battles to get to un-inspired cutscenes just makes for a boring, tedious disc. If you hate RPGs there will be nothing in this game to change your mind.

It's competent, and weird, and will be infamous in a couple years. That's gotta count for something, right? Even Young Lady With Full of Troubles could appreciate that.

Although the game looks pretty good, it's not enough to hide the title's repetitive gameplay mechanics.

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.

The lack of manageable control and the nearly on-rails gameplay are just two of the sorest sore thumbs that stick out, which if fixed could have made the game at least halfway enjoyable.

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.

Winback 2 is essentially the closest we've come to a three-dimensional maze hunt, complete with action elements that attempt to distract you from an overly simplified gameplay structure. This may have worked at the tail end of the Nintendo 64's lifespan, but at the tail end of this console cycle it just doesn't cut it.

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."

There's a severe lack of engagement on the part of the player.

If you're willing to endure the bad dialogue, limited carrying capacity, and annoyances inherent with a fully turn-based game, you'll probably find a lot to like about Paradise Cracked. It has an interesting story, plenty of gear to find and sell, and unique characters.

Feels rushed and slapped-together as a low-budget attempt to cash in on the holiday film release and make a quick buck from the fans before word gets out that it's not worth half its retail price.

A chunky mess of a game that bears some resemblance to the Crazy Taxi I know and love, but one which is lacking most of its fun.

The worst flaw, however, is the game-crashing bug that occurs when you talk to a certain character later in the game. How SNK Playmore let this game ship with such a glaring flaw is beyond me.

"But it's a great drunken party game!" some will scream. I'm sorry, but it's far too complicated and asinine for intoxicated people to grasp. It took me forever to reach unobstructed FMV toplessness, and I was sober.

You'll likely spend more time laboriously and tediously pumping out units and then frantically chasing after them than doing anything rewarding or intelligent...Real War plays like a tired, third-rate RTS copycat.

"Defender II." It's hard to imagine why that one is omitted, since it should use the same graphics as the included "Defender."

Unfortunately, the story and pretty pictures aren't enough to wade through the random guessing that makes up the game itself. Selecting phrases until you pick the "right" one doesn't make for a good game.

And for the beat-'em-up fans who want something new, just playing Beat Down feels enough like getting kicked down the stairs that you won't return to the genre any time soon.

Avoid it like the plague, and hope that if we're all in for a trilogy, the next episode sees the heroes-in-a-half-shell pursuing an adventure that's not nearly as half-baked.

Maybe one day Frogger will get his chance to recapture his '80s video-game glory, but if Ancient Shadow is any indication, you can probably expect a new hit single from the Bee Gees first.

The graphics are distinctly last-gen, with bland, repetitive environments that feel as slapped together as every other part of this lackluster brawler.

"But it's a great drunken party game!" some will scream. I'm sorry, but it's far too complicated and asinine for intoxicated people to grasp. It took me forever to reach unobstructed FMV toplessness, and I was sober.

If there was actually a sense that Smashing Drive modeled the rubber meeting the road, it might have been interesting.

Fails to deliver in almost every category. Nicely rendered monster trucks and official licenses hardly mask the disastrous elements that ravenously eat away at this game's soul.

Rebels is just competent enough to be a satisfactory exercise for fans of the Commandos-style puzzle play, but its technical advances fail to distinguish it, and its performance and some questionable design issues knock it down to mediocre at best.

Mildly entertaining for as long as it will take you to win it, and you will win it, because unlimited lives and forgiving checkpoints make this something you can do all on a Sunday afternoon.

The final nail in Mage Knight's coffin is the camera system. It's the most bizarre use of a third-person camera of any game in recent memory.

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.

A partially lacerated corpse of a game with great chunks of fun missing.

Most of the missions are dull and repetitive, involving menial tasks like delivering cargo or flying around and popping balloons. The environments try hard to look nice and give off a "come explore me" vibe, but they're just too darned bland to generate any real interest.

If you don't mind the repetitive enemies with bad AI, the poor save-game options, and a lack of weapon variety, then the Warhammer flavor might be enough to warrant a look. For most people, however, Fire Warrior is simply a mediocre shooter at best.

There is only one game where I've ever skipped areas I wanted to explore due to not wanting to deal with the camera. This is it.

Avoid it like the plague, and hope that if we're all in for a trilogy, the next episode sees the heroes-in-a-half-shell pursuing an adventure that's not nearly as half-baked.

If only the mini-games that you have to constantly play were more alluring.

You want 50's music? Buy a CD. Grab a DVD if you want to see the guy move. But if you want to pretend to be Curtis Jackson, take your fifty bucks out to a paintball range and let someone drill you nine times. It'll be a better experience than this.

Isometric platformers are just not the way to go; the tasks are monotonous; the level design is pathetic; and Bugs Bunny without jokes is like Arnold Schwarzenegger without the accent.

Strategy titles are already known for their deliberate pace, which may mean that strategy gamers, with their large reserves of patience, will be better equipped to deal with the load-time interruptions, but the effect is very disruptive to gameplay.

If you think you can weather the barrage of glitches and occasionally having to quit and restart stages, then you'll probably have some fun with LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Of course, by buying it, you're also telling LucasArts that it's okay for it to release games that are clearly unfinished.

If you're that desperate for some new Transformers action, you'd be better off sticking to the console versions. Or better yet, track down a copy of Atari's old PS2 game based on Transformers Armada (sure, the cartoon kinda sucked, but the game was aces). In the meantime, this game should be the first thing to jettison when Astrotrain starts requesting that we lighten our burden.

It's the worst kind of tie-in, combining a feeble license with feeble game design, and expecting gamers to pay $50 for the privilege of suffering through the collective ineptitude.

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.

There is only one game where I've ever skipped areas I wanted to explore due to not wanting to deal with the camera. This is it.

Gimmicky titles like this may be cute diversions, but they're no substitute for the real deal. The kiddies may have a fun time with Dash for a while, but anyone over the age of six will tire of it after the first race.

At least the audio captures a bit of the enjoyably cornball feel of the film. The bugs and guns don't make much of an impression, but troops utter intentionally cheesy lines like, "I'm so bad I scare myself!"

A terrible value, a terrible production, and most of all, a terrible game... The worst party game to date.

Even with its various faults, the collection offers up more than enough to remind us why we started playing video games in the first place.

The execution leaves a lot to be desired, though, and all-too-often feels more like work than play.

As expected, Tony Hawk Ride is an experiment -- an interesting and ambitious experiment, but one that doesn't come together as a fully functional experience.

It seems like the game is not just merely unpolished or unfinished, but almost completely absent.

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.

The camera is manually controlled, which means it's completely out of control when you're moving vertically, near buildings, or want to actually attack a foe.

The elements were in place for a solid platforming title with a little hand-to-hand combat thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, a painfully annoying camera and some downright boring combat kept that from coming to fruition.

It's not a triple-A title by any stretch -- with its gameplay quirks and audio that sounds recorded in a bus-station bathroom -- but it captures the sense of simple fun that Nintendo was shooting for with this new-fangled console.

Underwhelming.