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.