A game rife with control problems and uninspired gameplay.

Ouch.

The game isn't deep enough to offer anything else more complex than a block-and-return-punch style of combat.

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

To top it all off, not only is AOD almost unplayable when it's working, it's also plagued by a host of glitches that will make you glad that you can save the game at any point... An early contender for "Worst Game of the Year."

It's poorly designed, poorly executed, and downright frustrating to play.

A bad adventure game based on far better books. Go read them.

A disgrace. The only thing 3D6 Games has succeeded in (besides going out of business) is creating the worst Shinobi game ever, one which will turn away potential new fans and make old ones weep.

While the boys on the screen take their fair share of lumps, ultimately it's the gamer that ends up absorbing the most punishment.

A mere shadow of its Xbox counterpart.

So much presentation and bulked up features, with nothing of substance underneath.

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.

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.

25 to Life is almost like a dirty joke -- You're laughing at how bad it is and feeling guilty at the same time. Don't waste your time or money on this game, it'll make your think-bone hurt.

It was already forgettable on consoles, but Capcom completely drops the ball with this malfunctioning PC port.

While Final Fight: Streetwise isn't broken to the point of being completely unplayable, it is absolutely not worth your time.

A lot of chaos, sloppy gameplay and few laughs. To quote an adage that turns out to be especially apt for videogames: dying is easy; comedy is hard.

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.

It certainly sounds like an awesome game, but the execution is so terminally flawed in almost every way that a game can be flawed that it isn't worth anyone's time.

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.

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.

While all of this good on paper, the game fails miserably when it comes to execution. Simply put, Evil Prophecy just isn't any fun.

If you're dying to play a business sim in which customers regularly toss their cookies, you'll have more fun with the "Rollercoaster Tycoon" series than this mess of a game.

A tragically missed opportunity.

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.

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

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.

While it's still easing you into the pain to come during the first couple of hours, you can catch a glimpse of the good game this should be in the absence of draconian micromanagement and unfulling base building. It's especially apparent in the multiplayer mode (provided you can finish without a crash), where you might even have fun battling it out in Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag (er, dragon) in the shared dungeon that smartly keeps each player's base inviolate.

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.

A poorly implemented, poorly translated adventure game about an uninteresting character doing uninteresting things. Nearly the only things going for it are that it doesn't crash and should be playable on a wide variety of systems.

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.

Everything on offer is either not worth checking out or is better experienced in its original form. As a result, EA Replay fails to justify its existence, much less its $20 price tag.

If At World's End had standard combat controls, it wouldn't be a great game, but it'd be solidly mediocre. As it is, it's just no fun to play. Even the biggest Pirates fan will quickly grow tired and toss in their "Dead Man's Chest" DVD to watch while they place an ice pack on their shoulder.

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.

To celebrate his fifteenth anniversary with such a lackluster product is upsetting to say the least. For shame, Sega. This doddering version of Sonic the Hedgehog has an appointment with the glue factory for sure.

Compared to Commandos and even knockoffs like Desperados and Prisoners, it's primitive and feeble, like an old Mafia boss that's out of touch and can't see the G-men bearing in on him.

I've played my share of games, and none have made my fingers ache like Lowrider. I like games of timed button-presses, but this feels too imprecise and button-mashy.

Overall, it's just a confusing, poorly conceived product that should set off a consumer's "money grab" senses.

While the multiplayer options are moderately enjoyable, only the youngest of gamers will find themselves with any longevity.

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

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.

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.

Perhaps with a more DS-specific control scheme, this game could have been far better, but as it stands, it's the weakest of the bunch and entertaining only in short spurts.

Since the controls are so clunky, you'll be wobbling to align properly with the criminal in question; so while he's nailing you with bullets, your sole concern is landing one shot.

Manages to capture the clunky inapproachability of the d20 rules while keeping none of their underlying elegance, making it tough to recommend it to anyone.

This moral ambiguity is one of NARC's biggest selling points, but it's also one of the game's biggest flaws. No matter how far you cross the line, you're never beyond redemption.

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.

A mess of a game. Buggy, incomplete and all together boring, it's a huge disappointment for fans that are starving for a fun role-playing game on the PC that doesn't require a fast Internet connection.

So much presentation and bulked up features, with nothing of substance underneath.

Sadly, this control system is less than ideal for directing a character who is both hard of hearing and retarded, two traits which I suspect a simple battery of standardized tests would reveal in our heroine.

After playing through this excruciatingly awful game, it is a safer bet that you're better off loading up an old game like "Stronghold" or the aforementioned "Age of Kings" instead, because even with its bargain basement price, Crusades offers no value.

This is one game that should have never been let out of a holding cell.

More tedious than scary and more frustrating than shocking.

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

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 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.

A tedious, repetitive brawler with atrocious production.

A clunky, junky licensing disaster.

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

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.

Act Zero isn't a bad core game, fundamentally. But the overhaul is terrible, the gameplay is dated, the features are few and you can't play against people you're sitting next to. This makes every other version of Bomberman better than this one, and Act Zero a candidate for worst Xbox 360 game ever.

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

Borderline unplayable.

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.

The presentation is passable, but the gameplay itself is an exercise in pure tedium. The pervasive sense of overwhelming boredom is what really kills it, since a competitive, group-oriented game should ideally be the exact opposite of digital Ambien.

25 to Life is almost like a dirty joke -- You're laughing at how bad it is and feeling guilty at the same time. Don't waste your time or money on this game, it'll make your think-bone hurt.

This moral ambiguity is one of NARC's biggest selling points, but it's also one of the game's biggest flaws. No matter how far you cross the line, you're never beyond redemption.

A game that combines the micromanagement of "Civilization" with the intrigue and politics of "Diplomacy," adds in a "Railroad Tycoon 3"-style dynamic economic and resources model, uses a layered interface ... and then somehow expects you to manage it all in real-time.

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.

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.

When a game plays this poorly, authenticity doesn't save it. Rugby 2004 stinks of repackaged horror from the dawn of 3D gaming.

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.

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.

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.

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.

At its best moments, mediocre. At its worst, it's redundant, unforgiving, and glaringly ugly. You simply have no time to be messing around with this sort of game.

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.

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.

Playing Brooktown High, you can't really ever lose, but with so little content to explore and so little reward, you can't really win either.

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 are some brief fun moments, but they are far outweighed by the frustration of bugs, the lack of a compelling story and some convoluted puzzles.

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.

Having unlocked doors relock themselves if you move too far off-screen is kind of lame, and having a platoon of laser-firing stormtroopers materialize out of thin air around your character is really lame.

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.

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.

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

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

The in-game fighters are ugly, poorly animated, 3D-rendered sprites that make them look as though all your favorite characters have been replaced by rubber dolls -- and not the good kind.

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.

Sonic doesn't crash and it doesn't look horrific, and that's about all that recommends it. Maybe the 20th anniversary will be better.

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.

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

The presentation is passable, but the gameplay itself is an exercise in pure tedium. The pervasive sense of overwhelming boredom is what really kills it, since a competitive, group-oriented game should ideally be the exact opposite of digital Ambien.

With the limited variation in modes and the lackluster multiplayer, I simply couldn't justify spending an entire $30 on Tetris Evolution. Especially not when I can get a superior version for my Nintendo DS.

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.

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.

Alexander isn't a matter of taste; it's a matter of functional incapacity. If you're looking to get your fix in this historical period, there are plenty better and recent arrivals.

Scant fun portions aside, if Far Cry: Vengeance cost the same as a soft-shell taco, I'd suggest you run for the border. I know Uwe Boll got one of his tentacles on the Far Cry movie license; I'm wondering if he directed this game as a warmup.