The game sure looks pretty, but hopefully your tastes are refined enough to browse the menu a bit longer.

Zero Gravity sometimes feels like your racing skill doesn’t matter as much as your ability to spot new, cooler ways to get through the tracks; it’s still fun to do, but once you’ve mastered a track there’s little reason to go back to it.

An ambitious brawler that suffers from something of an identity crisis, Jump Force will nevertheless delight anime fans – especially those of a vintage who knows the more obscure characters included here.

While this could have been an awesome game to geek out on, its numerous technical problems kill the mood pretty quickly.

An unpolished mess with few redeeming qualities other than a nifty premise.

There are even occasional (very minor) glitches that'll have you scratching your batting helmet. But it is good for a laugh if you've got 20 minutes on your hands. If you're a number-crunching statistician, you'll be annoyed by the 27 hits per side, per game.

The biggest let-down? Easily the graphics, which are full of chunky shapes and primitive, basic textures and colors that wouldn’t look out of place on the original PlayStation.

The Elder Scrolls: Castles promises to put you in charge of your own castle and dynasty, and it certainly does, but managing your subjects, making rulings, crafting gear, and venturing outside to fight only to do all of the above again and again and again makes the new Elder Scrolls title lose its sheen sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, in a genre where players expect the newest games to completely blow them away (pun intended), Coded Arms: Contagion's run-of-the-mill FPS action just doesn't impress.

The game is about trying to get through the simple fights just a bit faster than the other guy. We like that the other guy is a warlord with an infinite supply of loyal soldiers willing to die for him, but repetitive gameplay is a bit too much for us to bear.

There’s a definite emphasis on quantity over quality in Warriors Orochi 2, and not just in the numbers of mindless soldiers you slice through. The amount of content is frankly overwhelming if you’re one of those completist-types, and the drive to level up every character may appeal to those who have a lot of time to kill while traveling.

The biggest problems with Vanguard lie within its controls, graphics and overall length. The Wii remote is inaccurate at hitting the head shots, and at times you’ll think you have Parkinson’s as you watch your steady real hand make the gun's on screen sights twitch and vibrate.

Surf’s Up is a bad Mario Kart clone (replete with cloned weaponry) with a dash of the barest of bones from SSX thrown in. As such, there’s no excuse that it’s made for young kids, because any kid would be way better off just playing Mario Kart DS, which uses almost the exact same basic formula, but offers depth and polish.

The sum of these flaws is a total disconnect between what's occurring on the TV screen and what's occurring on your dance pad.

Gyruss is still a bit of fun to pick up and play once in a while. But only those who have fond memories of the original game – not to mention extreme patience with extreme difficulty – will get any lasting value out of this Live Arcade offering.

The only major downside we can think of is that the game simply brings absolutely everything over from the original for better or for worse and then just slaps an HD paint job onto it.

If you can forgive the game its worst weaknesses and have the Japanese voice track turned on, Dragoneer's Aria can be a decent way to waste a few hours at a time as you slog through the hemorrhaging plot. But don't expect it to be easy even with the bland combat.

There's no other song list on the market like it, and the dance controls in the game are spot on, so it's a must buy for any Jackson fan. But if you really want the Michael Jackson "experience," you might want to pick up This Is It while you're at the mall, because this rushed-together Wii game doesn't exactly deliver on the Jackson-gasm scale.

But to finally give us a lightsaber game, even a crap one, and not enable us to take on the role of Luke Skywalker and battle Darth Vader? That’s just freaking cruel.

Audio and visuals are a bit below the Wii's already unimpressive average, but judging a party game by such standards is like watching R-rated skin flicks on late-night Cinemax for the acting. If you're a fan of Nintendo's familiar mini-game fare, or just want something simple for the whole family to enjoy, Carnival Games should keep your Wii-mote moving more than an out-of-control Tilt-A-Whirl.

Getting past the faulty controls will get you a decent story, but Iron Man has little to no replay value, no multiplayer, and is just another forgettable game-based-on-the-movie type.

This game should be, at most, a ten dollar download. It would feel even more appropriate at around the fifty cent mark, peddled by a trench-coated hobo in front of a sketchy movie theatre. At forty bucks, it's difficult to imagine any human being, living or dead, getting an appropriate amount of value out of it.

It’s nothing revolutionary or even particularly interesting or compelling, but it’s not broken either. Those bored and desperate for an RPG fix can give this title a shot.

Fans of the original should avoid this one - kids will enjoy it, but Party Animals doesn't have the heart or charm of its predecessor.

As an action game, it suffers from poor controls and awful fleet (read: wingman) commands that gum up the works. Still, wearing down the shields of those dastardly Romulan vessels and finishing them off with photon torpedoes can be satisfying, sometimes elevating Legacy ever-so-briefly above mediocrity.

Fires far too many blanks. Free is a tough price to turn down, but the city of San Paro is – at best – a vacation spot. We simply can't recommend an extended stay.

In the end, you get six great games, and six mediocre ones. Not bad for 2,000 pennies, really.

Teen Titans is a short and unspectacular diversion for an audience that might be too young for more mature fare, and the price is certainly right, but those more discerning with their beat 'em-up dollars should hunt super-villains elsewhere.

Transformers: The Game should be a sleek, cutting-edge sports car; instead, it's an old beater whose driver's seat has a spring sticking out in exactly the wrong place.

Young gamers, especially those who enjoy the Transformers Prime cartoon, will find a lot to like in this Wii U adaptation, but everyone else will be put off by its simple gameplay and lack of content.

A multiplayer co-op option would have been perfect for Avatar, but is sadly missing. Where the action becomes repetitive and tiresome, playing with friends would have at least added some opportunity to develop different strategies for larger melees and boss battles.

Because a large part of its charm is seeing all our favorite Pokemon in action, Pokemon Rumble Blast will only really appeal to Pokemon fans. It helps that it's pretty too, with or without the 3D turned on (the soundtrack is great too). The problem is that the gameplay itself is too simplistic for more sophisticated Pokemon players who love the series for its deep strategic gameplay. Younger, less discerning Pokemon fans will undoubtedly love it though.

Never has patience been a bigger virtue than in Tenchu Z. It succeeds as a game of stealth, but only as a game of stealth. Any deviation from hiding and throat slitting - say, katana-slinging your way right up main street like a samurai - won’t elicit much fun.

The Astro Boy coating is there so kids ask mommy and daddy to spend their holiday bonuses on it, but High Voltage Software felt nice enough to sneak in a fun game too. It’s like the whiskey Grandpa adds to the eggnog.

Bound by Flame doesn’t put too much weight on the important choices you think you’re making, but its rich customization options and smart combat system are sure to give you that power you're looking for.

Miami Law isn't horrible. But its fast-paced 24-style plot just doesn’t mesh with the slow and methodical gameplay found in point-and-click titles like these.

Despite hewing close to its predecessor, Ghost Recon Breakpoint feels like a step backward for the franchise, with mechanics that hew too close to its open-world cousins.

It’s also definitely worth mentioning that this is the weaker of the two Zenses titles by a mile. Rainforest has better puzzles and a stronger style.

ProStroke Golf could have been a contender. But its solid play mechanics aren't enough to overcome the near-complete lack of licensed courses and golfers, or the various other oversights and issues that plague it.

With its creaky, ancient-feeling game mechanics and ultimate lack of replayability, Reloaded feels like it would be much more at home on mobile platforms at a much smaller cost than its $20 release price tag.

Visually, the game is lacking, with muddy textures and graphics that hail from a long time ago. The Kinect controls are also unreliable at times (but also work brilliantly well most of the time). Overall, though, Kinect Star Wars fulfills most of the promise of a one-to-one lightsaber game, with enough variety (including that goofy dance mode) to make for a solid Star Wars experience.

A shame then, that marvelling at the cartoon tennis racquet pretending to be in your hand is immensely more enthralling than anything you'll actually do with it in the game.

What little mature fun was to be had, including the cutscenes and dress-up mode are now nowhere to be found and the motion controls utterly wreck what should just be mindless zombie-goring fun.

Monster Bomber provides a few different modes to enjoy the alien-popping action, but they all end up the same way - bursting aliens. It's precisely what you'd want out of such a game, but is so limited that anything more than a few plays stretched across several days might be too much.

When stacked against some of the PS3's other launch titles, Genji certainly looks impressive, but it almost feels more like a polished tech demo than a robust hack-and-slasher.

What you're left with is a basic game that follows in the horde of footsteps of the series that has come before it: it's serviceable but uninspired, and won't do much for you unless you're a big fan of either of the source materials. Predictable, right?

What works Super Monkey Ball 3D is just that: 3D and Super Monkey Ball. Unfortunately, that fun is pathetically short-lived, and everything else is a poorly executed afterthought that makes the $40 price tag borderline insulting.

Eco-Creatures has a good core theme, cute characters, an interesting level editor and an hour or two of fun in it. Otherwise, its muddled approach to real-time strategy and mixed messages make it a gimmicky game that doesn’t quite succeed the way it was intended.

Here’s hoping Watchmen’s problems, and its price, can be addressed for part two later this year.

While annoying, the lock-ups don't really do much to dampen how outlandishly fun the game is. If you like the Hulk and you enjoying destroying things, you'll enjoy your time with The Incredible Hulk, even if you have to reset the system from time to time.

It's the same solid game you've been playing since "Dynasty Warriors 2" came out back in 2000.

The game aims low and ends up typical and forgettable. It's even short, at maybe six hours if you stretch it. If this was a real turtle, it would be the one sitting on the side of the road watching cars whiz by, not the one lacing 'em up to take on the rabbit and the road and dare its way to immortality in the history books.

Sonic fans may fill their need for speed here, but everyone else, please walk on.

As potentially deep as it is, though, Shinobido 2 still feels weirdly antiquated next to the rest of the Vita's launch lineup – and while we didn't opt for much grinding, it only took us around seven hours to play it from start to finish.

Its pretty world and detailed monsters are slightly offset by a lack of variety, and its free flying segments feel kind of pointless when they don't let you do anything you otherwise couldn't on-rails. But its score-based, arcade core and digestible levels will keep you coming back for more until you're sittin' pretty on top of the leaderboards.

And though the characters are all chiseled hunks of manhood who pause to talk smack way too much, the graphics themselves couldn't outwrestle a 100-pound bank teller. But this is still a better game than you might expect, given its relative out-of-nowhere-ness.

The vehicles aren't nearly as customizable as in "Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition" or as destructive as in "Twisted Metal: Head-On," but, thanks mostly to the multiplayer and extra single-player modes, Rush provides several days of enjoyable arcade style racing.

Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory had the potential to improve tenfold upon the previous games, but squanders the opportunity for flashier transformations and hundreds of quests.

Those seeking the goofy humor and weird puzzles you wax nostalgic about, Insecticide could possibly scratch your adventuring itch. Just be prepared to split that 50/50 with ho-hum action sequences.

These miniscule improvements tacked onto a broken game are like repairing a wrecked car with duct tape.

Hardcore puzzle fans will be disappointed with Trioncube's lack of depth. But if all you're looking for is a quick, pick-up-and-play puzzle experience here and there, it's still worth the budget price.

They’ll likely stir some major nostalgia for a lot of older gamers out there that remember when arcade games were fixtures in bars and pool halls - back when the cabinets came complete with ashtrays and drink holders. But they haven’t stood the test of time as well as some other bona fide arcade classics.

Ultimately, Bomberman Land isn't bad, but there are certainly better minigame collections out there. Likewise, there are a myriad of alternative ways to play the classic Bomberman battle mode if that's what you desire.

The developers needed more time to stroke you tenderly. Now you’re forever condemned to being on the verge of boo-yah.

If you’ve skipped a few March Madness semesters and haven’t joined the PS3/360 generation, there’s plenty here to sink your teeth into.

There are gobs of customization options for each of your squad (and lord knows you'll need 'em), but there's not much variety to the goings on, and the whole Grand Prix affair won't take you much more than 8 hours or so. Multiplayer offers some extended usage, but not enough to keep it a long-term rotation.

Vets of the franchise will likely be taken aback by how brutal it is to achieve a victory in even the early skirmishes, while newcomers won’t have a clue how to do much of anything. Heck, even the tutorials are rough.

The game does draw nicely on the Galactica license, giving you a few different ships with varying stats to pilot through the different levels, as well as some online modes. But the base game play elements are so broken and boring that you'll have a hard time coming back to the game after a few missions.

Despite its familiar setting and cute puppets, it's tedious and boring, and misfires on multiple fronts. When a game fails to take risks and carve out its own identity, it undoubtedly shows. Fable Heroes aspires to get your bucks, but it's a game with very little "bang" going for it.

Most levels in Diner Dash: Sizzle and Serve last five minutes tops, which makes it a flexible on-the-go offering. We’re increasingly annoyed by publishers’ tendencies to toss a casual PC game onto portable consoles for a notably higher price than its PC version.

It's when you get into the tedium of every activity that you realize a game that only does a few things well holds more value than a game that does a dozen things poorly. Variety is supposed to be the spice of life, but let's be honest, everything has its limits.

Mario and Sonic 2014 certainly has its issues, but it’s definitely a step above previous titles in terms of event design and overall enjoyment. It’s a more complex and engaging than the usual minigame menagerie, and the distinct franchise twists in the Dream Events are a welcome bit of fanservice. It’s not a gold medal winner just yet, but Mario and Sonic 2014 is a stronger contender than it’s ever been before.

And that's really the story of Medal of Honor: Warfighter: It's a title that's merely decent while it attempts to compete with two of the most popular and well-executed shooter franchises in modern gaming.

Cheap-looking graphics, pros represented by poorly-drawn caricatures, jerky animations, dark and murky game rooms... visually, this game's a mess. You've seen better maps in any 8-bit RPG.

Alien Spidy's environmental aesthetic, cute characters, and charming music are alluring, but beneath those features is an unbalanced platforming adventure that can drive you mad. The controls are unreliable, and the difficulty spikes are incredibly harsh--especially when mixed the the game's environments, which can often become muddled as you try to discern interactive object with pretty set piece.

In style, class, and atmosphere, The War of the Worlds nails it. There are exciting setpieces where you run from gigantic walkers as buildings collapse and heat rays vaporize civilians around you, and strangely those sections usually aren't difficult or plagued with control and checkpoint problems. It's sad to say that those sections make up the minority of the game. The rest is composed of dying repeatedly due to poor controls, poor visibility, cheap enemy ambushes, and ambiguous clues as to where you can hide safely, and then randomly getting screwed by checkpoints.

It's disappointing: you'd think that a game about baking would know a little more about when it's necessary to substitute ingredients.

It's not worth one hour of your time. We couldn't even recommend this game to the most enthusiastic of JRPG fans. The story is a joke, the combat is uninspired, the quests are utterly banal and the characters are about as likeable as deep sea anglerfishes.

No, it’s not game of the year, but it’s a solid, playable title that manages to serve the license really well.

A game system without a compelling game. You've got to love the smooth, easy-to-play combat, and at least appreciate the modes of play and the attempt to replicate card game realities like buying booster packs and unique cards to build killer custom decks. But there just isn't enough depth or Warhammer personality here to hold your interest for long.

There was limitless potential here, but it's wasted. Transformers: The Game should be a sleek, cutting-edge sports car; instead, it's an old beater whose driver's seat has a spring sticking out in exactly the wrong place.

Ultimately Empires continues Koei’s long-standing "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it" credo when it comes to Warriors games. Which, when you've made the same game nine times in a row, has us adopting the philosophy "been there, done that."

While annoying, the lock-ups don't really do much to dampen how outlandishly fun the game is. If you like the Hulk and you enjoying destroying things, you'll enjoy your time with The Incredible Hulk, even if you have to reset the system from time to time.

The good part of all this is, the game is very rarely boring. What’s happening onscreen is always dumb, sometimes infuriating and often crap, but there’s always something happening.

Even without the perfect controls, Centipede and Millipede are as much fun today as they were back in the golden age of arcades. Shooting the multi-segmented, multi-legged creepy-crawlies trying to invade your space never seems to get old, and you never die in a way that feels cheap. It's always your fault, so you keep trying one more time.

If you've been complaining about the lack of PvP in your MMO, this is a non-stop, complex and compelling game that offers a deep, intricate and layered PvP play. If not, Fury isn't likely to convert you from Player versus Environment to PvP in one sitting - but it's still a hell of a good time.

The lack of any multiplayer at the time of release is a huge oversight. We felt it would have been nice to play a few matches against a similarly skilled human opponent in order to learn the game and ready ourselves for the campaign. We hope such functionality will be added in the future, as it would greatly enhance the overall experience.

An interesting change of pace for a first person shooter that has some nice ideas and mechanics, but can’t quite get everything to sing.

Moebius: Empire Rising is a strikingly mediocre point-and-click adventure game, adequately checking all the boxes of a traditional entry in the genre but excelling at none of them.

A solid platformer with some nice visuals and simple but enjoyable gameplay. It doesn't have any huge, glaring deficiencies to speak of, but at the same time, it's simply not cut from the sort of stock that makes a classic.

Knack doesn't really do anything exceptionally well, and squanders your willingness to like it by constantly working against you.

You know, there's a little thing called the multitap that allows four people to play the same PS2 game. For whatever reason, you PS2 owners only get to hook up with one other gamer, as two-player split-screen is the option you're given. You may not be fighting over who gets to play anyway, but the feature would have been nice.

It's too absurdly mechanical for those uninterested in the process, and too bare-bones and lackluster for those willing to engulf themselves in it.

Despite its lack of personality, variation or depth, Import Tuner Challenge isn't a terrible racer, and Japanse driving fanatics might get off on multiplayer duels and the realistically non-descript office buildings that pass for scenery.

Such a half-hearted attempt.

El Matador may be fine to play for a few hours but it's not worth a long-term or full-price commitment.

It's just too damn confusing to be welcoming to everyone.

If you appreciated the movie or are aching for more Silent Storm turn-based action, then this game could hit the mark provided you are very forgiving of the disappointing audio, turgid dialog and tired visuals.