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.

Under a slightly clumsy-looking graphical exterior lies a phenomenally deep fighting simulation.

Injects a good dose of originality and fun into what can often be an unoriginal genre.

If you're the type of player who just wants to play the nicest looking football game in history, buying Madden NFL 06 is a no-brainer.

More importantly, choice is another element that helps take the Black Ops 2 campaign off of the carbon-copy conveyor belt of typical Call of Duty shooting. It doesn't make the same whole-hearted dramatic franchise leap forward that Modern Warfare did, which is disappointing, but after five years of more of the same, it's a big step in the right direction.

After years of living up to the name of evolving the beautiful game, Konami's latest Pro Evolution Soccer effort is an embarrassment for a series that has served as the dominant title in the genre.

It does an admirable job of re-creating a complex console game on the PSP ... admirable but for the ridiculous load times. They truly put a damper on the rest of the game, turning what would have been a fantastic, console-like experience into a decent, console-like experience.

Despite a couple of minor hitches, Star Ocean: First Departure is one of the best remakes Square Enix has brought to portable consoles.

While the script is the best so far of any of the episodes, Episode 3's abbreviated length makes it less of a bargain than the earlier installments. That being said, the entire Sam & Max experiment is shaping up quite well.

Some mindless button-mashing fun here, but that's about it.

The ability to quickly save your progress and not have to deal with lengthy and cryptic passwords, though, is an immeasurable improvement over the first game.

With the opportunity to choose to "save" your mission replay to the Xbox's hard drive after every undertaking, combined with the absolute treat of watching this enhanced, multi-camera replay, Wreckless takes the concept of replay to a higher level.

The game is fun to play, has solid control, and plenty of tracks, but nothing about it screams out for attention.

My disappointment in this disc's shortcomings is tempered by the sheer amount of great, classic gaming on offer.

So much of Red Dead feels like it's caught between two camps -- arcade and more modern third-person action -- that it all feels compromised.

It does a good job of emulating 29 games, but a lot of these games are less than exciting inclusions. Meanwhile, some genuinely classic Taito games are left out.

It's a visual treat; it has extremely solid gameplay and an enjoyable story. While there's nothing new here, everything is crafted with care and the polish shines through.

If you're looking to get a few more hours of fun out of your aging black box, Need for Speed Carbon isn't a bad way to do it.

I really liked the game when I got over the controls' initial crazy learning curve, but after a while, my overall interest began to wane.

Despite all that's good with the game, NHL 2K8's innovations are a few years behind the times, making it feel like a cheap rehash of what's already available.

You'll have fun fighting in Defiance, and feel lucky, because it happens quite often. But if you've been following the series, you'll also know that it's quite heavily reliant on aimless wandering and boring box puzzles.

While its mechanics can become tiresome the further you progress, ACE Team's signature presentation and wry humor manage to pull it through. Just like Zeno Clash before it, Rock of Ages as a whole is unlike any other game I've played or seen before, and that's a rare thing to be able to say.

There's no mode, though, where adding human players makes the arcade action more compelling. Whether playing humans or CPU, Infected feels pretty much the same.

It has plenty of gameplay, and provides a very intriguing story line. The game redefines the RPG genre and is worthy of anyone's software collection.

A decent offering and an affordable way for a player to build skills and eventually enter the fray in "Warbirds" online.

A truly remarkable experience. And, while the game itself may not have broken any new ground, the world it introduces more than makes up for that. It will leave gamers hungry for more.

What makes Nemesis of the Roman Empire truly stand out, however, is the artificial intelligence. On the easy mode, it's a breeze and presents very little challenge. On the tougher levels, it's a real bear that is sure to give veteran real-time strategy gamers a tough test.

In terms of sheer strategic depth, there's not a city-builder out there that can match it.