Naruto: Ninja Council 2 isn't an awful game, but it doesn't do anything particularly well, either. It's strictly for the most die-hard fans of the show, and even they may find themselves growing bored with the game after a while.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to this game's rendition of New York that hasn't been done better in other games.

It's a broken, buggy game, and if the statement about learning curves were true, it would still take far too long to gain wings before the average gamer would grow disenfranchised. The game feels completely rushed to retail in time for the launch.

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.

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

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.

It's the lack of spectacular leaps, jumps, and tomfoolery made famous by the series that makes this knock-off all the more embarrassing, sure to sicken fans of the original game.

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

My biggest objection to this game, however, is just that it's not the "spiritual sequel" to "Transport Tycoon" -- it IS "Transport Tycoon." It's not even "Transport Tycoon Deluxe," the enhanced version of the game that fans have been playing all these years.

Unless you're a hardcore fan of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, there's not much to hold your interest here.

PC strategy gamers have a lot to choose from on store shelves these days, and bugs, muddled combat, or weak AI aren't things that strategy fans have to live with. It pains us to admit it as fans of the franchise, but this Empire is definitely in decline.

Even though the difficulty ramps up dramatically halfway through Career mode, dedicated gamers will be able to complete the whole thing in a day, if they don't get tired of fighting the poorly designed controls before then.

Again, Nexuiz is by no means a bad game. It does, however, seem like a superfluous one.

If there's a sequel, maybe the developers will spend as much time fleshing out the game as they did their concept art.

DiRT: Showdown delivers bargain-basement entertainment value for the high, high price of $50. With its neutered physics, limited driving venues, clunky multiplayer, and diminished off-road racing options, discerning arcade racing fans should just write this one off as an unanticipated pothole in Codemaster's trailblazing DiRT series.

Afro Samurai is a mess of a game. It's such a shame to see such a beautifully rendered and stylish world ground into the dust by such staggering gameplay foibles and technical glitches.

That lackluster combat is a lot to get past in order to enjoy the tiny morsels of classic Hellboy wit, and the lingering bugs that cause Hellboy to snag and hang on bits of the environment don't help either.

Just don't be surprised if you quickly become frustrated by the copious battles and find yourself merely slogging though the adventure out of loyalty to the franchise.

The admittedly cool storyline is wasted on infrequent text windows with motionless character portraits.

It's exactly what diehard gamers feared that the casual gaming revolution was going to inflict on the industry: shallow, gimmicky software whose main selling point is that no one is too young, old or uncoordinated to be able to play it. Buy a real videogame or buy a board game, but don't be a dummy and let Smarty Pants walk away with your 50 bucks.

Think about building up the biggest, most elaborate base you can imagine in an Age of Empires game. Now imagine it takes four times as long as any other RTS game on the market. Then imagine that all this elaborate building leads up to a strategy portion that would have seemed primitive and simple back in 1997 when "Age of Empires" first came out.

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

Trek fans are meant to salivate at the sights and sounds of their favorite universe made manifest, like a dog hearing the chime of a chow bell. And publisher Atari is banking on the hope that -- like Pavlov's pups -- consumers will be content with the same ol' kibble day after day. The result is a shallow, poorly paced, and repetitive game that, divorced from its storied source material, wouldn't warrant a second look.

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.

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 most disappointing aspect of the game, however, is the lack of attention to detail. The loading times are atrocious simply to go from one menu to another, you cannot improve your fighter's abilities between fights in the Title Belt mode, and there's no Training mode.

Unfortunately, for my rapidly dwindling sanity, the PC version not only retains the basic gameplay, erratic camera, and simplistic level design of the original, it tops off that witch's brew of gaming mediocrity with a whole passel of problems unique to the PC version.

And although you can probably get twenty bucks' worth of fun out of it with a little effort, why wouldn't you just drop the cash on a game that did it better two years ago?