Eighty-four hyper-detailed players are represented, or you can create your own baller and go rags-to-riches, racking up pimp-wear and "Scarface"-worthy real estate.

Vexx is a curiously grim exercise featuring gargantuan free-form levels fraught with danger and a surprisingly combat-heavy fighting system of combos, uppercuts, and vicious slashes.

From the sadist to the social scientist, The Sims 2 gives you an infinite sandbox to play in.

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

Before you get your first set of prints back, you’ll find clues in maps and diaries—even encounter the phantasmagoric—to unravel a plot with more slimy twists than a barrel of Udon noodles.

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.

We could have done without the ads for Toyota (what is this, a movie preview?), but the slamming soundtrack and retro touches-the 1995 version of EA's game is included-should help bring the league one step closer to atoning for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Choose from over 179 field layouts across 19 tournaments to test out the game's hair-trigger controls in surprisingly fun online seven-on-seven team showdowns.

Though it all adds up to, essentially, a tuned-up version of the last game, there's enough variation to keep your rebel skater spirit from getting too (sorry)…board.

The console and portable SOCOMs may look the same, but like the Olsen twins, they're different enough that you won't be satisfied with just one.

The game play has been streamlined for less fussy PS2 players. Plus there’s a single-player mode, where AI teammates respond to 160 voice commands. And the online levels—with up to 16 players barking through headsets simultaneously—is enough to make you postpone your pee break for hours.

Two guns up.

And with the engaging story, plus the graphic-novel presentation (boxes of action and text are constantly popping up on-screen), this truth is worth uncovering.

The game takes hits for its often crappy camera angles. Still, it'll satisfy your raging blood lust.

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.

Set up like Grand Theft Alien, there are tons of missions to complete, though you can also just roam around, killing filthy humans and destroying their stuff.

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

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

Gamers not only get tons of extra movie action but also get to run, kick, and shoot in a fully realized Matrix universe.

Batman Begins isn't just a good game, it's two great games that play great together. When you're the caped crusader, it's an action game in the mold of "Splinter Cell"... Then, when you're driving the Batmobile, the game morphs into "Burnout," with you knocking cars off the road as you careen through traffic.

Eighty-four hyper-detailed players are represented, or you can create your own baller and go rags-to-riches, racking up pimp-wear and "Scarface"-worthy real estate.

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

Vexx is a curiously grim exercise featuring gargantuan free-form levels fraught with danger and a surprisingly combat-heavy fighting system of combos, uppercuts, and vicious slashes.

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.

If that's not enough carnage, you can also engage in 32-player (50 on Xbox Live) online deathmatch missions, which is technically twice the bloody chaos of "Halo 2."

The single-player adventure is every bit as time-devouring as the first Metroid Prime... But the multiplayer split-screen mode, while fun, is straight out of 1997. Plus, there are no online and no 16-player matches.

Batman Begins isn't just a good game, it's two great games that play great together. When you’re the caped crusader, it's an action game in the mold of "Splinter Cell"... Then, when you’re driving the Batmobile, the game morphs into "Burnout," with you knocking cars off the road as you careen through traffic.

Truly spooky graphics and nut-shriveling sounds.