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

We dare you to find a game package that gives you more bang for your buck—both literally and figuratively.

Electronic Arts is keying on the sport's blocking, defensive strategy, and teamwork with NASCAR 06—the closest to "Madden" car racing can get.

Once on the court, you discover it's easy to master the fast break and hard to hit a jumpshot, though play moves smoothly enough you won't mind as the bricks pile up.

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.

Stealing the best gadgets and characters from the movies, NightFire lets you decide how to topple the requisite megalomanical villain: Use stealth and gizmos (like Eurobabe-revealing x-ray specs—thanks, Q!) or go in guns blazing.

Warning: Tenchu 2 requires a lot of patience and exploration, so if you’re looking for a mindless contest, maybe you should turn on a Presidential debate instead.

The creators get points for keeping the combos, juggles, air attacks, and instant-kill fatalities, not to mention the chopsocky feel and cameos from familiar faces like Baraka and Reptile.

The shooting control takes some getting used to, but stick with it and you’ll advance through a solid plot laced with a meaty hip-hop soundtrack, celebrity voices, and…drumroll…a playable Snoop Dogg! You’ll never need MapQuest in L.A. again.

Adding live online support and a fantasy-league “Mogul” mode that lets you trade players, track stats, and haggle over TV rights? OK, we’re really psyched.

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.

Ignore the nonsensical story-centered on Mordoc, the vampire king, and his Onyx Tower of Eldritch-and stay on course with your barbarian, dwarf, cleric, or elf, traversing time and eerie environments.

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.

The shooting control takes some getting used to, but stick with it and you’ll advance through a solid plot laced with a meaty hip-hop soundtrack, celebrity voices, and…drumroll…a playable Snoop Dogg! You’ll never need MapQuest in L.A. again.

The moves are so disappointing and ineffective, you’re down for the count before the festivities begin. On the list of failed comebacks, file this one below ALF.

Improvements in puck physics means that hard shots can bruise your opponents, while last year's overly aggressive defense has been scaled back to realistic levels.

The shooting control takes some getting used to, but stick with it and you’ll advance through a solid plot laced with a meaty hip-hop soundtrack, celebrity voices, and...drumroll...a playable Snoop Dogg! You’ll never need MapQuest in L.A. again.

Over 100 hours of game play through 50 levels of sword-swinging, spell-casting combat, thousands of new weapons and equipment, and two new characters (the fighting furry Vah Shir and the lizardman Iksar) will keep you huffing at trucker speed through the wee hours.

Incredibly atmospheric (it makes great use of flickering lights, icy landscapes, and foreboding corridors) without skimping on the screams, The Thing is a terrifying battle to the finish.

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.

Adding live online support and a fantasy-league “Mogul” mode that lets you trade players, track stats, and haggle over TV rights? OK, we’re really psyched.

True, storming enemy positions is an option, but with environments this wide-open, you’ll just get your ass handed to you by a heavily armed battalion of baddies (or asshole buddies) if you do.

Crave a purer form of pigskin, where painkillers and cheap shots aren’t just overlooked but encouraged? Then give this ballsy baller a try.

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

While it would be impossible for the game to mimic the raw emotion and chaos that defined this mission-turned-disaster in real life, the graphics are the best we’ve seen on a battlefield.

The bizarre levels and challenging puzzles remain engrossing even when you start asking the never-answered question, "What's the point?"

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.

Sure, the action is pretty basic-it's still kill or be killed-but with more open spaces to run around and new foes to fight, Ties is like a weekend with Russell Crowe: disturbing, bloody, and a damn good time.