The problem is that everything is counterbalanced by a quest that quickly grows stale and repetitive after its first third. Even the final boss fight is just a minor twist on an encounter you’ll have done at least five times before.

It's damn hard to talk about video game tennis without bringing up Virtua Tennis, particularly when a game, like Grand Slam Tennis 2, hems so close to that original arcade formula. It's a facsimile that's executed well enough; there just aren't any good reasons to recommend Grand Slam Tennis 2 over the games that it cribs from.

Tomena Sanner is a silly little game. You'll burn out on it quickly, but it's cheap enough that you might be totally OK with that.

It often seems like Yakuza 4 is conspiring against itself, holding its own cool features back behind technology and game design. It's not that Yakuza 4 is a bad game, but rather that too many of the game's eccentricities don't work in its favor.

Ryse makes a good showpiece if you've bought into the Xbox One early, but at full price it feels a little thin.

It's damn hard to talk about video game tennis without bringing up Virtua Tennis, particularly when a game, like Grand Slam Tennis 2, hems so close to that original arcade formula. It's a facsimile that's executed well enough; there just aren't any good reasons to recommend Grand Slam Tennis 2 over the games that it cribs from.

The combat has enough depth and variety to keep you interested for the duration of the story and beyond, but in terms of what might have been, what should have been, Dragon's Dogma falls gut-wrenchingly short.

When you throw it all together, you're left with a game where the missions are designed to be repeatable, but all the missions are so repetitive that it's hard to get excited to see the same handful of environments again and again and again as you attempt to grind out faction reputation or hunt around for high-end weapons. It's a beautiful game, but a hollow experience.

Parts of this 50 Cent adventure are downright enjoyable, but I think the most enjoyment I got out of Blood on the Sand came ironically. The action is pretty generic, but it's functional enough to keep you moving from one bout of unintentional comedy to the next.

It's a cleverly ruinous game frequently ruined by its own cleverness.

Capcom built this huge place to run around in but didn't fill it with anything interesting. The saving grace: Capcom's expertise in building robust, customizable, and super fun combat systems pays off.

Makes for a good diversion. It doesn't last too long, tells a decent story, and offers enough multiplayer to give you something to mess around with when the single-player's done. It certainly isn't the most ambitious game in the world, but if you're looking for a competent western shooter, Juarez fits the bill just fine.

While some will definitely enjoy the sandbox nature of the game and the variety of units it provides, others might be put off by the arcadey gameplay and simplistic strategy. The game provides a decent amount of replayability through its multiplayer modes but it's hard to tell if there are enough gamers online as of this writing to make that a sure thing.

The first Puzzle Quest was a revelation; Galactrix is just a complication.

The fighting at the center of King of Fighters XII is totally fine, but with everything surrounding that action coming off so half-cocked, there are a lot of annoying little barriers to enjoying that fighting.

The Bourne Conspiracy is a short game that can be clumsy and repetitive at times, but it does it with enough style that I didn’t feel like it was a complete waste of time. For what you get, though, it’s still tough to justify the $60 price tag.

There are some neat aspects of Section 8 and some good ideas that keep the game from getting too straightforward. But it feels like half of a game.

It's certainly mechanically sound, but you should probably attempt to find it at a slight discount.

It makes an amazing first impression, and it has a consistently great sense of style. But once I started digging deeper, I hit bottom fast, and the spell was broken. If you're the type of person who can appreciate style-over-substance games, you'll probably love it. But once I figured out what was really going on in MadWorld, it felt pretty thin.

Saros is still a good game. I will never dislike a game that looks this good and plays this well. But the lessons that Housemarque learned from Returnal resulted in a game that is less than the sum of its parts.

Web of Shadows opens strong, but it seems like it runs out of interesting and varied ways to put them to use well before you get to the end, and it turns into a bit of a grind.

Me, I wish the game had better inventory control and an item storage system to allow you to really explore all of your weapon options. But it's the other stuff--the still messy survivor AI and poorly built boss battles--that really mars the Dead Rising 2 experience. It's not an impossible game to love, but as with the first game, you'll have to look past a lot of blemishes to find happiness.

While demand for this style of gaming and for Homestar-licensed products both peaked a while ago, it's an enjoyably goofy diversion.

A weak story, boring platforming, and dully recurrent gameplay ensure that Captain America doesn't step outside of Batman's long shadow. Super Soldier is a decent enough action-adventure game, but it's completely inessential.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't do enough to bring players together, resulting in an online game that feels empty, cold, and lifeless.

Me, I wish the game had better inventory control and an item storage system to allow you to really explore all of your weapon options. But it's the other stuff--the still messy survivor AI and poorly built boss battles--that really mars the Dead Rising 2 experience. It's not an impossible game to love, but as with the first game, you'll have to look past a lot of blemishes to find happiness.

A weak story, boring platforming, and dully recurrent gameplay ensure that Captain America doesn't step outside of Batman's long shadow. Super Soldier is a decent enough action-adventure game, but it's completely inessential.

Rivals feels like it's on the cusp of greatness. The pieces are all there--the handling is exciting, the soundtrack is solid, and the systems that surround the multiplayer help build meaningful battles between racer and cop. But with just six players driving around the entire world and no good way to pull those players together for some true multiplayer activities, those pieces go absolutely nowhere, leaving behind an empty world that might as well not even be online at all. It's a real shame.