Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is incredibly accessible with nearly flawless controls and difficulty, or lack thereof in the normal difficulty setting.

It's one of those rare family games that doesn't fall into the genres of minigame collection or rhythm title, and your seven-year-old kid will have as much fun as you do.

Quite possibly the ugliest game I've ever played--literally. I tip my hat to the developers at Monolith Productions for crafting a consistently dark, dirty, dilapidated, and decayed (and a host of other "d" words) world for both Condemned titles.

The ingredients here--spooky creatures, fantasy worlds, exploration of death--all have a familiar ring to them. This looks like the kind of game that Neil Gaiman (a contemporary fantasy writer) would make if he created games.

If anything, the extra challenge is definitely a reason to play through the game a second (or third time) just to see if your skills can hold up. However, the addition of leaderboards, which rank players based on their overall score and scores for individual levels, will be the real reason to revisit the game.

It’s refreshing to have a story in a videogame that I can actually take seriously. Ninja Theory’s commitment to storytelling shines through when you play it.

Dirt is an excellent counterpoint to the shallower, more arcade-y MotorStorm, offering serious racing fans a full-bodied game replete with HD-gen graphics, physics, sound, and a great depth of off-road racing types.

Whether it’s making notes on the map screen using the stylus and yelling into the mic to expose the weakness of a sound-sensitive enemy or drawing symbols on doors, the Phantom Hourglass is a great way to show the kinds of things that the DS can do.

That's where the Wii Fit balance board comes in. Just like the Wii itself, it just looks like something you'd like to try out. But once you take that first step onto it, you might find yourself on the way to becoming more fit.

While all the added content is damn good, ironically, the greatest gameplay addition to this PC port is also responsible for one of the bigger annoyances: the interface.

A beautiful-looking and great-playing game with a bright future ahead of it. This first effort is a worthy effort for any skating fans, though a little more design compression, some smarter level design, and a little more direction would have been nice.

While it may seem like Capcom's diving back into the well of a successful franchise, Apollo Justice is the first Ace Attorney game built from the ground up for the DS, and it succeeds in delivering just enough legal shenanigans that are serious enough--and silly enough--to entice both fans and rookies alike.

Dirt is an excellent counterpoint to the shallower, more arcade-y MotorStorm, offering serious racing fans a full-bodied game replete with HD-gen graphics, physics, sound, and a great depth of off-road racing types.

There’s almost nothing about Super Swing that causes it to be mistaken for, say, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf, but its strength is its nicely tuned swing mechanic that frankly puts Tiger’s woods and irons to the test.

To some gamers, there will be no there there. Guild Wars will be the Oakland of MMOs.

Ultimately, however, the uniqueness and enjoyment of being able to create so much of the world yourself makes this one worth playing, even if the gameplay isn't as original and entertaining as the artistic parts.

This is a pretty well-constructed expansion; it adds a fair amount of new stuff at the right price point. It won't make you a C&C convert if you preferred other RTS games, but for fans of the old-school, superfast, almost action-y pace of C&C3, this is a welcome addition.

Post play is not only a viable option this year, it's my preferred way to score, and I really can't remember the last time that was true in a basketball game.

A testament to the uniqueness and coolness of the new civilizations is that I can't pick a favorite side.

The camera issues can hurt, but not enough to ruin the entire experience. It would be cool if normal difficulty felt more like a true mid-range challenge, but easy difficulty is still hard enough that you feel like you accomplished something by the end of the playthrough.

A beautiful-looking and great-playing game with a bright future ahead of it. This first effort is a worthy effort for any skating fans, though a little more design compression, some smarter level design, and a little more direction would have been nice.

Players are forced to think, pass, move, and shoot more like pro soccer players than ever before--giving long-time Winning Eleven fans pause for thought.

Everything gels when I approach Battalion Wars 2 the way it’s meant to be played--slowly and methodically, like a real-time strategy game.

Even though Rome is still plenty intimidating to anyone who has never experienced an EU game before, refinements to the interface and core gameplay make it surprisingly easy to sit down and start playing.

Anniversary continues what 2006’s Tomb Raider Legend started--cleansing the palate from the sour taste left by some of her prior outings.

Everything that made Woo’s films remotely interesting make absolute sense in a videogame universe. If you’re still clinging to the notion that the silliness of Woo films couldn’t possibly be appreciated, not even in videogame form, loosen up. It’s not that bad. Actually, it’s pretty good.

Post play is not only a viable option this year, it's my preferred way to score, and I really can't remember the last time that was true in a basketball game.

The moment-to-moment, deep tactical gameplay is just that good. While games like Team Fortress 2 or Halo 3 are fantastic jump-in-and-play multiplayer experiences, Quake Wars is now the new king of tactical online multiplayer (apologies to Battlefield 2).