The ho-hum game play won’t wow you.

[Its] shortcomings make it hard to recommend if you’ve bought a previous edition in the past, but it’s just so damn fun to play and watch that it might be worth picking up anyway.

Your all-terrain vehicles come equipped with oil slicks, smoke screens, and acid bombs that are so fun to use that it's hard to tell if it's more fun to use contraband or smuggle it.

Now we don’t mean to be football snobs here, but there’s just something wrong when a downfield bomb takes longer to drop than the Goodyear blimp. Just ask the unconscious wide receiver that got clocked by a safety waiting for it to come down.

As an engrossing adventure, Kri doesn’t cut very deep, but where quick, visceral payoffs are concerned, it goes straight for the jugular.

An addictive romp.

While the graphics are different from previous Taxi incarnations, the goal of this romp is the same.

Its fast and realistic action should make any joystick jock forget how badly his team is doing in real life, and the endless Dynasty mode will make classes optional for months.

Its fast and realistic action should make any joystick jock forget how badly his team is doing in real life, and the endless Dynasty mode will make classes optional for months.

The sleaziness of recruiting players to build a powerhouse program is almost worth the price of admission alone, but it’s a damn shame that you can’t bribe them when push comes to shove.

Pathetically boring.

Completely reinvented in glorious 3-D, WCIII spruces up the age-old premise—organize armies and send them into battle against opposing forces—with much-improved graphics and a new pyrotechnic spell-casting system.

The only thing more painful than watching a rehashed movie sequel is, well, playing a videogame based on a rehashed sequel.

Though some of the button-smashing combos are tricky to execute, the multiplayer action is solid, and the quest mode stirs in puzzle solving for antisocial savages who prefer going solo.

If you think the best parts of movies involve explosions, car chases, and death-defying leaps (is there anything else?), then this homage to Hollywood’s unsung lunatics is just the thing for you.

Pathetically boring.

Extreme games keep getting extremer, but it would be tough to top this hellish twist on motocross racing.

Taking hairpin turns and navigating loop-the-loops at 500 mph is Wipeout’s equivalent of a boring straightaway.

It’s not the deepest game you’ll find, but its oddly satisfying.

They’ve ditched realistic racing for a straight-forward adrenaline rush where amazing vehicular explosions are your reward spectacularly bad driving.

Sure, most of the game is from left field, but there’s actually enough realistic action to satisfy golf cart owners.

Sometimes it’s tedious work, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that playing sky taxi isn’t rewarding.

Amusing.

An addictive romp.

The only thing that’s out of place is Shaggy’s voice.

A mindless version of "Simon Says" to the masterful beats of "Oops, I Did It Again."

With better effects (the lighting and environments are better than some movies-like, say, the Resident Evil movie) and slicker motion-capture animation, the new, improved Resident Evil regains the throne as horror-action video game king.

Nothing jazzes up a sport better than flagrant infractions.

It does have...a kung-fu penguin! And what's cooler than that?

The Force is strong with this polished first-person shooter.

The crappy graphics and gameplay aren’t worth stomaching, especially for a PG-rated peep show.

Most of the game consists of endless management, such as babysitting your kids, managing your dough, and constantly mailing postcards to your friends so they don’t resent your ignoring them.

Like the comic books that inspired it, Freedom Force features slick animation and plenty of boffo, whiz-bang special effects.

Thankfully, the ability to upgrade your jet pack adds a much-needed modicum of depth, while the control scheme makes it easy to move in one direction while blowing stuff up in the opposite. Titanium-breasted robozons, a-w-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-y!

This game is easier to play than a sorority co-ed. In fact, the gameplay is so basic you can handle it easily while half in the bag.

Every hard knock is rewarded in the form of a nasty bruise on your opponent’s face.

Our only regret is that George Foreman isn't in the game. Apparently he's too busy hocking his new grill to bother bringing his fat ass into the game for a good ol' fashioned digital butt-whuppin'.

Like most outings with the little lady, this one gets tired, but ample eye candy—and violence—ensure that Eve is one traditional kiss good night that occasionally slips you the tongue.

While this Xbox sequel is even quirkier, it’s just as insanely addictive...[and] plays like one big ghetto-fabulous party. Word.

Namco has bastardized one of our favorite timewasters into a ho-hum jump-a-thon with the occasional maze thrown in.

CM earns laurels for putting players in simultaneous control of a driver and a passenger who can use a whip or a sword to turn opponents into Caesar salad.

Even if a pirate tale doesn’t shiver your timbers, the Lara Croft–like design of Kat will surely raise your mast.

Though the tired scenarios prevent this from being a gourmet experience, on the action-starved Xbox it makes for a satisfying lunch special.

Such virtual destruction may once have seemed innocent, but these days the whole thing hits a little close to home.

Not everyone’s cup of vino, but a true toga party for fans of the franchise.

To say you need quick reflexes to survive this would be an understatement—it’s almost like you need to use a mystical, ambivalent power to help guide you through it. Sort of like the movie.

If you can keep yourself from blinking, you might be able to help the little furry freak collect his golden rings, like some sort of crank-addicted Hobbit.

This multi-event crapfest manages to combine all the fun of a pipe-fitting seminar with the pain of slamming your hand in a car door.

This game is more than your average links simulation—it’s a lifestyle.

The hail of artillery shells on the Omaha Beach assault level will make you crap your shorts, as they blow away your eardrums and half of your platoon’s limbs.

If the game were any more detailed, they would have to include a “Record Shitty Rap Album” mode.

After delivering the best beer-guzzling entertainment to dorm rooms last year, this half-assed sequel plays worse than Dick Vitale’s toupee.

George Clooney would crap A Perfect Storm if he had to endure the watery challenges in this stomach-churning thrill ride.

This game doesn’t actually let you cut anything into lunchmeat except clunky Battle Droids. What fun is that?

The idea of battling enemies shaped like gelatin desserts and exploring environments resembling the paintings in your dentist’s office may sound like a bad acid flashback (or H.R. Pufnstuf rerun), yet it makes for an entertaining role-playing game.

This reckless, Crazy Taxi–like romp around town is like a high-speed dream tour for fans of the series. Almost every Simpsons character in the game is either a driver or a passenger.

Luckily, the Cinemax-quality female brawls make up for the vaguely homoerotic aspects, since nobody should be exposed to that much man-on-man action.

More than a Jedi mind trick to make you buy Nintendo's new whiz-bang console, this is the closest a video game has come to recreating a Star Wars movie.

This staggeringly polished first-person shooter (which also includes a Quake-style multiplayer option) will have even the most passive players sweating, er, bullets as they take control of an eight-foot-tall cyborg and greet intergalactic invaders with open arms-or open fire.

Though the one-player mode can get a bit stale, it's saner than picking fights at the local Teamsters hall.

At last you’ll infiltrate the secret lair, where you’ll discover…you’ve been playing a very standard-issue game.

Practice makes perfect, and EA/Maxis have cooked up a godly tool that’ll get your feet wet in the dating pool without getting your face slapped.

War is hell…unless you’re in the cockpit of the F-15 that’s dropping bombs on cavemen.

You’ll be more impressed that you can make Snake stare lecherously at a centerfold poster one minute, only to have him pop out and choke someone to death the next.

This confrontation between Crash and his massively noggined nemesis, Dr. Cortex, is the most innovative yet.

It'll take as much brains as brawn: The block-moving puzzles of the previous game have been burned at the stake in favor of some logically sound mindbenders.

Smuggling drugs isn’t much fun when it involves swallowing condoms to sneak cocaine across the border, but it’s a blast when you drive all-terrain vehicles full of contraband right through police barricades.

It's lacking any social conscience but loaded with replay value, so it'd be very disrespectful to leave this one out of your collection.

New costumes, new environments, new villains—and it’s all just as addictive as you remember.

You don’t just kill creatures, you make them into abstract art by slicing, dicing, or machine gunning ’em to bits.

It’s the perfect game for men who like speed and men who like thongs (and you know who you are). We can only imagine that Kinetica 2 will feature racing car women who secrete beer.

Even though it feels more like babysitting than crime fighting, it’s still an NRA member’s dream come true.

If the grainy, David Lynch ambiance doesn’t make your nads retract in terror, the four-legged headless guys in combat boots and leather thongs certainly will.

All of the carnage is quite satisfying (you get all the old favorites, like oil slick, smoke screen, and missles, not to mention a beefed-up “Peter Gunn” theme).

Odd adventure.

The action is so intense and over-the-top that you have to wonder if Mario Lemieux would have reconsidered unretirement if he played this game a year earlier.

The perfect alternative to those wussy slow skateboarding games, where wrecks only break your bones in two places instead of four.

It’s the perfect cross-breeding of "Super Mario Brothers" and "Hooters!"

You get the pick of the litter of the best real-life SUVs, 4x4s, and Hummers to take into territory more rugged than Edward James Olmos’ cheek.

These intense, roller coaster–like tracks will twist and turn until you swallow your tongue and beg for mercy.

The gore is gorier, the booms are boomier, and the guns are gunnier—RE:CVX takes an already near-flawless game and makes it even better.

This build-your-own-robot game gives grease monkeys a 20-story garage, hundreds of parts, and plenty of time to tinker with and create the ultimate 40-ton rig.

Since they opt for realism at the expense of fun, you just can’t pull off those sick, death-defying feats you can in other games.

A thousand yards beyond any other college football game.

Instead of marching towards you as you rip them apart with machine gun fire, these nasties scuttle and run like…real bugs. It’s enough to give you the willies.

You’ll finally answer some of life’s most burning questions, like how your Suburu Impreza station wagon would fare against a 2002 Dodge Viper on a racetrack.

Awesome.

Final bonus: Unlike most games of this sort, Bloody Roar 3 allows you to knock your opponent through walls instead of just into them.

If you’re keen on tasteless, tongue-in-cheek jokes, smooth sailing lies ahead.

NASCAR Heat is more than a grueling simulation, it’s a grease monkey’s wet dream come true.

We suggest using the seven foot Wolfman, he’s great at blocking shots.

Can’t be beat for fun, mindless destruction.

Stevie Wonder could breeze through this first-person shooter in under five hours.

We have to admit that most first-person games nauseate us, but Faction’s smooth graphics and easy gameplay make it hard to put down.

Sharp graphics, explosive action, and an Internet multiplayer mode earn a big ten four.

If you do a good job, you might even get a free donut or two.

We don’t like how the pesky pedestrians always manage to dodge your cab, but the graphics of the San Francisco–like city are amazingly detailed.

Despite a trick roster with some troubling names (anyone care to attempt a “Rocket Queen”?), this is as down and dirty as they come. Detergent not included.