Cool options such as friend/foe identification and threat readings, plus the best graphics ever on an N64 game.

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.

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.

It looks so realistic that you’d swear that you’re watching a television broadcast—fake-breasted cheerleaders and all.

Be afraid. The intelligent, fast-moving fiends who stalk special agent Leon Kennedy will almost make you yearn for the embrace of old-fashioned brain-hungry cadavers.

Most of the story is conveyed through masterful animation and acute facial expressions.

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.

So good that it even drew Axl Rose out of hiding (he’s the DJ on the classic rock station, one of 11 listening formats), San Andreas cranks out even more action than "Vice City" as you engage in those wacky gang-related adventures you've grown to love in disconcertingly authentic versions of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.

You’ll be sold the second you get into a gang bang with the song “Beat It” playing in the background. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Halo 2 completely lives up to the hype. An improvement in every way over the original, particularly in terms of playability and graphics.

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.

They loaded this year’s ultrarealistic game up with a slew of new features that include online play, a huge arcade-style training camp, and a nifty play creator that’s so versatile that you can have receivers run pass routes that spell your name.

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

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

No longer is there just one way to solve a treacherous night mission before the enemy picks up your audio signature: stealth will pay off just as well as good old-fashioned ultraviolence.

Easy controls help you play chicken with oncoming traffic at speeds so real, you can practically feel the G-forces pinning your jowls against your ears.

And when you tire of solving puzzles using human sacrifices and petrifying foes with Medusa’s severed head, button-mashing mini-games let you unwind by propping Hydra’s jaws open or massacring the Minotaur.

This real-time, 3-D role-player neatly fuses the usual stat-crunching with plenty of chaotic firefights, ensuring there's at least something in here for the nongeeks (or at least not too geeky) among us.

It's a game that combines gut-churning speed and beyond-recognition wreckage to make road kill out of all others in the driving genre.

This isn’t only one of the best looking and most intense PlayStation 2 games, it’s also hands down the loudest.

Sega added online play, a deeper Franchise Mode, and may have made the biggest acquisition of the off-season by reeling in ESPN to punch up their pigskin.

But don't take our word for it, because Prince won Best Action-Adventure Game at this year's E3 expo. So it's got that going for it…which is nice.

This up-and-coming franchise has been breathing down Madden’s hairy back for years, and now it might finally have the ammo to leapfrog him.

But don’t take our word for it, because Prince won Best Action-Adventure Game at this year’s E3 expo. So it’s got that going for it…which is nice.

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.

Now if we ever come across a “deity wanted” ad in the Sunday classifieds, we’re ready.

Microsoft Game Studio's answer to Sony's automotive masterpiece is simple-add online play and program cars that take realistic damage.

No longer is there just one way to solve a treacherous night mission before the enemy picks up your audio signature: stealth will pay off just as well as good old-fashioned ultraviolence.