It’s a nice combination of horror and hysterics, a fresh take long overdue with this style of game.

Apart from some cramped environments, the immaculately reincarnated Unreal Tournament is a stone-cold killer.

Confused by the sometimes clunky camera angles? You can deliver your skull-smashing, thong-flashing high kicks in soothing slow motion.

The tight controls are a cinch for novices, but obsessive attention to detail will score with fanatics.

A history of hoops that lets you bring almost every star player (dating back to the 1950s) out of the mothballs.

Splintered wooden furniture doubles as vampire vaporizing shivs to expand on your already wide variety of exterminating capabilities.

Although it's dogged by Commodore 64–quality music and selective licensing agreements—Manchester United is simply Man Red—this new edition more than compensates with killer graphics, new tricks, and an improved dribbling system.

Fun as this game is to play, the best moments come when you just sit back and observe. Wonderfully acted, written, and directed motion-capture cut scenes play like the Snatch follow-up Guy Ritchie should have made, further evidence of the narrowing gap between video game and movie production values.

Told in fragments along the way, the story resolves differently, depending on whether you torture and kill other humans or help them survive. Either way, the eerie atmosphere will scare you straighter than an "Oz" box set.

What sets Battlefield apart is that you can pilot choppers and tanks to a cool ’60s soundtrack. And you can even cue up “Ride of the Valkyries” for that air cavalry attack. Sure smells like victory to us.

Instead of the usual push-button pugilism, throw punches using the analog stick-the direction and speed of the stick determine the swing; the trigger controls handle bobbing, weaving, and blocking.

The action is intense, and the super-strong vehicle lets you slam into walls and other racers without worry.

Should the lyrically challenged feel left out, you can create your own brawler outfitted in ice courtesy of celebrity bling supplier Jacob the Jeweler. Better to look good than to—ow—feel good.

Get really good and you challenge real women’s champ Jeanette “The Black Widow” Lee in her beach house—where losing your shirt wouldn’t be so bad.

Like the movie itself, the game's surprisingly good and full of decent action as you use Jedi skills in a barrage of lightsaber battles to win one for good or evil.

Freed from time constraints, you now accomplish level-specific goals—like outmaneuvering skater-busting cops—to advance while on the lookout for secret minigames.

It’s just too bad that one of [the missions] doesn’t demand that you seduce a curvy, green alien girl, James T. Kirk-style.

Executing gravity-defying jumps and mean combos in the well-rendered environments is a piece of cake, though a longer game would have iced it for us.

Show-offs can even stealthily duck behind cover and shoot at foes’ feet to make ’em jig like Michael Flatley sans Ritalin.

To hell with lame gunshot wounds and other gang violence. This game’s fatalities include creative beheadings and dismemberments that would make Hannibal green with envy.

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.

Both the solo and multiplayer options deliver the explosive goods, but for maximum entertainment value try betting with friends on the strategy-based Conquest mode. Loser has to sponge-bathe Jabba!

And even though the graphics look like anime, fans of the original will be relieved that the classic's side-scrolling game play has been left untouched.

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

Do the front lines give you the shakes? Then skip the "let's go boys!" bravado, settle into a more comfortable overhead viewpoint, and orchestrate 40 missions that include famous battles like D-Day and Operation Market Garden. [Aug 2004, p.90]

While most of Revenge’s game play involves turning bad guys into kebab, the game’s strict homage to the comic gives it more depth.

This is actually one of the best adventure games we’ve played in a long time—even if pseudo-Conan is killing beasts by the thousands with something from Toys “R” Us.

It may not appease the history buffs, but it will delight the trigger-happy.