A disastrous start to the post-PES era. The only consolation? It surely can’t get any worse from here.

Remove the generic Matrix-inspired graphics and story, and it's online Bomberman with a new camera angle and less depth. We'd rather play ports of the original on TI-89 calculators.

Though largely inoffensive in its sloppiness, Alvin and the Chipmunks amounts to a forgettable budget title priced like a premium release this holiday season - as if you needed another reason to abstain from it.

Ultimately, it's difficult not to come out of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum with a sour taste in the mouth. You can see glimmers of Deadalic's intent to create a different kind of Lord of the Rings game throughout, particularly in the ways it manifests its unlikely hero's unique psychological state, but those bright spots are quickly lost amidst all the other ways Gollum stumbles in its execution. Perhaps there is a Gollum game that could work at both a narrative and mechanical level, one that reframes our relationship with the iconic character to the point where people think twice before doing their terrible impressions of him at parties. Alas, The Lord of Rings: Gollum is not that game. I'm sorry to say it, but those terrible impressions are here to stay for now.

The single-player feels like a series of demos strapped together, and the terrible AI only piles on more mediocrity, leading to an absolutely incomplete experience. The adequate multiplayer offering does give die-hard Call of Duty fans something to be excited about, but even that portion of the game feels slapdash and rushed.

All of their energy seems to have been directed at making fantastic-looking robots that do interesting things, while everything else feels almost like an afterthought.

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is too slow-paced, too easy, and too childish for teen or adult Sonic fans, and its control and design issues make it difficult to recommend even for its target audience.

While the puzzles are usually entertaining, the fact that the same question can pop up over and over again regardless of a right or wrong answer previously is somewhat annoying, especially when we kept getting it wrong, with no help as to what was the right answer.

If Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 were a budget game, I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone. At full retail price, it's a disgrace. Labeling this as the fifth entry in the series has effectively backfired: it's a constant reminder of how much greater the originals were, and how much you'd rather be playing them instead.

We can definitely see aspirations of greatness here, so it's too bad Toy Shop is so unpolished overall.

Maybe it's a good thing that there's no online play - it's best to keep these ugly player models, awkward animations and irritatingly short sound loops away from the internet, where they might breed and multiply.

There is nothing inside Fighters Uncaged that makes it worthy of your money or your time. The only other plus to playing this title is the extreme exercise you receive due to over-compensating for the game's inaccuracy.

Though largely inoffensive in its sloppiness, Alvin and the Chipmunks amounts to a forgettable budget title priced like a premium release this holiday season - as if you needed another reason to abstain from it.

Even if you’re a tremendous fan of Marcinko and love his books, rent this one before you spend your hard-earned cash. The season is too full of top-notch games and excellent DLC for you to spend your cash on this stinker.

All signs point to Jumper: Griffin's Story being a by-the-numbers, quickly assembled cash-in, but selecting poor, early-gen original Xbox brawlers as the template was a grave mistake. Those games at least made us chuckle; Jumper only makes us wince.

If you're looking for some mindless monster mashing stick with the versus fight-focused PS2 or Wii versions or, better yet, revisit the arcade classic Rampage.

Even if you’re a tremendous fan of Marcinko and love his books, rent this one before you spend your hard-earned cash. The season is too full of top-notch games and excellent DLC for you to spend your cash on this stinker.

A boring, unrefined, too-short brawler that you'll forget the second you eject the disc. We've already gone blank; what were we talking about?

Any fun you may have teaching Rover to pluck wounded waterfowl out of the water and onto the grill will end fast once you’ve mastered duck calls, shooting, and retrieving. And that won’t take long at all.

We really wanted Bad Day L.A. to live up to its potential, which makes its suckitude feel even more than just bad; it's like a betrayal.

That feeling of cheap, lazy design resonates throughout Dragonball: Evolution, a game that ultimately seems more concerned with how often it displays the faces of the film's cast rather than creating legitimate use for them.

A poorly executed Bomberman clone that is technically broken in almost every respect, Basement Crawl is shambling husk of an online multiplayer game. Avoid as if your life depended on it.

Even if you’re a tremendous fan of Marcinko and love his books, rent this one before you spend your hard-earned cash. The season is too full of top-notch games and excellent DLC for you to spend your cash on this stinker.

Creatively and conceptually bankrupt.

Basically, they're hoping Wii owners will pay full price for the same poorly contrived mash-up of driving and minigames that's been collecting dust in the PS2, PSP, and Xbox 360 bargain bins for a while now.

The very concept of Jenga tilts towards mediocrity, but this game sends it collapsing into utter awfulness.

With an eye toward putting on some beer goggles to make the game better, we turned to the bottle. Ping Cup has the potential to be a decent drinking game but, again, the controls were mixed.

The main offender here is easily the gameplay, which alternates between frustrating and boring. The controls are clumsy and unresponsive, which in a different setting wouldn't be as aggravating, but when paired with lethal foes and unforgiving environmental "puzzles" leads to constant misery.