The story extends Daniel's tale, but Hell & Damnation's 14 levels are merely somewhat revamped versions of environments from the original Painkiller and its Battle Out of Hell expansion. [May 2013, p.77]

Big Bumpin' is a no frills, arcade-style gaming at its purest. Bumpin' is identical on Xbox and Xbox 360, but the 360 version looks dramatically better and offers online play. [Holiday 2006, p.78]

It's a by-the-numbers adaptation with more than 1000 built-in multiple choice questions, which should sate trivia buffs for a while, though the sluggish pace and the host's incredibly repetitive quips turn grating after only a few rounds.

We'd still rather play the first game than this weaker follow-up.

Even the hardest bosses are just plain dull, and even fully upgraded weapons lack modernized visual punch. [Aug 2010, p.77]

Instead, the game is a simple shooter with a small variety of extinct species--raptors, pterodactyls that animate like paper kites, and boring T-Rex bosses. [Jan 2010, p.75]

A rental at best. [July 2009, p.81]

Boring combat lacks variety. [Mar 2010, p.84]

As the game reaches its midpoint, repetitive missions and aggravating boss encounters begin to sap the seat-of-your-pants fun.

Repetitious platforming may have cut the mustard back in the NES days, but today’s tech-savvy, multi-tasking kids won’t stand for it.

A glorified mini-game. [Oct 2008, p.85]

It’s certainly a fresh take on the franchise, but sadly, it isn’t a particularly captivating one.

A slick yet largely routine exercise in jumping, balancing, and fast-twitch hand-eye coordination. [Sept 2007, p.76]

If you're morbidly curious or looking for a weekend rental, Urban Chaos is nowhere near as crummy as its first impression would lead you to believe. [July 2006, p.85]

Just fun (and wickedly funny) enough to make it worth a rental. [Jan 2006, p.71]

We must say, though, using Kinect to spin the big wheel is a treat. [Feb 2012, p.74]

With gameplay that doesn't really change(you use the same A-button sequence every...single...time), AMF is inoffensive but repetitious. [Oct. 2006, p.81]

It's not so much broken as an unnecessary addition to your gaming library. [Feb 2012, p.78]

It grows repetitive far too fast, and a few uninspired multiplayer modes do little to extend the fun. [Holiday 2008, p.74]

The real threat to Warfighter's longevity is how its multiplayer maps feel like patchworks of arbitrary buildings and debris instead of bona fide real-world strongholds. Without a palpable sense of place, these battlegrounds never give you enough reason to choose this particular universe of gunmetal and grit over any other.

Texas Hold 'em has plenty of flaws that will justifiably tick off poker junkies, and hardcore players are better off with "Stacked" or one of the original xbox's other poker games. [Nov. 2006, p.77]

Unfortunately, it mostly feels like you're being charged $40 for something that offers little beyond what you've seen in previous games' GM and Owner modes. [Feb 2009, p.84]

Think of Karaoke as a backup for a night at the pub with rowdy pals; serious singers won't find much satisfaction here.

It's fun, it's wacky, and it's quintessentially Saints Row - but it's also crazy-short. Each of these four new main missions unlocks a similar activity on the world map where you'll earn new crew, respect, money, and vehicles, but that's it - and eight new scenarios aren't worth $7, we say.

Body-slammed by slipshod control, uninspired storytelling, and AI that flips between hyper-brutality and empty-headed idiocy. [Dec 2003, p.106]

At best, Disney Sing It is a gateway game to Rock Band or SingStar for Disney Channel devotees. [Dec 2008, p.92]

The fast pace, aged artifacts, and new online multiplayer functionality might make Sensible worth a peek for the curious, but only the truly devoted will even consider purchasing it. [Feb 2008, p.80]

Unless you're plagued with a kimono fetish, you're just better off creeping around elsewhere. [Aug 2007, p.82]

It's an interesting piece of Sega history, but not one that's aged particularly well.

The only reason to try TNT Racers is its four-player online stampedes across nine courses, each with a reverse variant. [May 2011, p.77]

After last year's abysmal MLB 2K13, a new contender seemed like a breath of fresh air, but R.B.I. Baseball 14 is a poor alternative. [July 2014, p.82]

If Mayhem 3D emphasized convincing handling and powerful impacts over graphic-novel gimmickry, we might've spent less time grinding gears and more time high on adrenaline. [May 2011, p.75]

Retribution's grim, obscenity-packed narrative fails to hit any high notes. [July 2010, p.83]

Torino's 2006's lack of ambition and polish keeps it in the corner to be quietly steamrolled by college hoops and MLB spring training. [Mar 2006, p.78]

Dead Rising led by unrepentant killer could be perfect, but Chaos Rising sinks like a stone. [May 2014, p.71]

The ride is short and bittersweet. [June 2002, p.77]

Unfortunately, the lack of intuitive physics is the real killer.

Blood Knights is too easy to ever become actively irritating, but its deficit of danger makes it too darn dull to hold even a devoted horror nut’s attention for long. Perhaps it’s a blessing, then, that the whole ho-hum campaign clocks in at just four hours.

But unless you're an absolute aficionado of international soccer, you'll be lost. [Holiday 2009, p.85]

Far Cry Classic exhibits many of the ideas that came to define the series, but this decade-old shooter doesn't hold up very well thanks to antiquated design and a spotty porting job. [May 2014, p.82]

But most of the time, you're simply playing furniture inspector in an environment that's about as spooky as an episode of Scooby-Doo. [Nov 2010, p.71]

The world's first bona fide videogame mascot deserved better than to have five failures trotted out alongside four dirt-simple classics, and the inflated price of admission doesn't do his flawed exhibition any favors. [May 2014, p.83]

If you're looking for quiz show entertainment, you're bound to be disappointed. [Jan 2010, p.69]

But the expansion pack-sized experience--we completed it in just a single day--also retails for 50 whole dollars. [Jan 2008, p.69]

It's an ambitious approach to a hunting shooter, but its execution misses the mark. [Nov 2010, p.79]

Really, it’s the same old story — if you like all things Warriors, buy this with confidence. If you don’t, then don’t. Easy.

Online play undercut by crummy design choices. [Mar 2010, p.83]

But as the last of Dragon Age's downloadable expansions, Witch Hunt closes out the story with more of a whimper than a bang. [Nov 2010, p.81]

Swaying your arms and sliding down an ice tube is lightly amusing, but it doesn't add up to much - you can clear all of Crashed Ice's events in an hour, leaving you with little to do but chase leaderboard rivals.

What'll positively set your teeth on edge, though, is how any sense of breakneck speed comes as the result of a ridiculous eye-torturing wide-angle camera (not shown in screens at right). It's like racing while staring through a hotel-room peephole. Spare yourself the headache.

Even players with an insatiable lust for fiery explosions will be disappointed when they find that the whole affair’s easily finished in under four hours. Thunder Wolves is mindless fun if you're in the right mood, but it's just too flawed and fleeting to be a good value.

Sure, it's got a few unique nuances, but in the end, a half-assed game deserves a half-assed score. [Feb 2005, p.84]

Local co-op play requires constant communication and generates some small excitement, but isn't enough to make Shrek-n-Roll more than an overpriced novelty. [Jan 2008, p.69]

Our advice: just save your money and pop in your old copy of "Unleashed". [Jan 2008, p.64]

Crazy Machines Elements might turn your crank for a day or two, but only if your enthusiasm for Rube Goldberg-style mechanical oddities knows no bounds. [Dec 2011, p.71]

There's a strange charm to Bound By Flame that helps paper over the performance issues. There's a well-acted but profoundly bewildering script, a baroque crafting system, and drawn-out boss battles. It's not great, but it's fairly... interesting.

Smash Court Tennis 3 straddles the line between Virtua Tennis’s arcade style and the technical aspects of Top Spin, but ultimately it comes off only as a sluggish imitator of both.

Fleeting moments of decency can't make up for the overall trudge, though. With such better Sonic outings in recent years, this old speedbump is best avoided.

Shallow and dull, but it's also inoffensive and marginally enjoyable. [Oct 2009, p.73]

Playing solo is incredibly difficult and very little fun, and once people stop playing on Live, God Mode’s as good as dead.

It's not a classic coin-op; it's a jurassic coin-op, and not much fun for 360 gamers. [Aug 2007, p.83]

A mighty bleak way to spend quality time with the future's most loveable cast of screw-ups. [Oct 2003, p.84]

On paper, the mission design seems suitably varied, but before long it grows deeply repetitive. It doesn’t help that outdated design decisions, such as artificially sped-up vehicles during chase sequences, rear their ugly heads.

Synetic's World Racing 2 presents a compelling argument why middle-of-the-road arcade racers shouldn't reproduce. [Nov. 2006, p.81]

Unless you dream of defending the president, there are better sacrificies. [Jan 2009, p.76]

The driving itself is fun and the controls are pretty tight, but the whiz-bang cutscene crashes get tiresome after awhile. . [Holiday 2005, p.68]

More a dreary exercise in solving the developer's puzzles, and less about the thrill of being Batman. [Sept 2005, p.82]

But unless you have fond memories of Warlords' primitive arcade past, its gameplay is just too simplistic to offer more than a weak dose of transient wistfulness. [Sept 2008, p.77]

Where Voltron completely falls apart is in its ridiculously poor boss battles.

Cabela's Survival is sold solo or bundled with the Top Shot Elite rifle controller, which offers more exacting aim during hunting sequences. But unless you expect to play (and replay) the bonus shooting galleries - railed shooters that have you blast furred and feathered wildlife in House of the Dead fashion - then a standard controller is preferred. Otherwise, the game can easily be finished in an afternoon, leaving hunting fans wondering why they wasted it playing a lackluster action-adventure game.

As much as Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends looks the p;art--with 50-plus vehicles sporting fantastic detail inside and out--its humdrum and overly difficult career disappoints, while spotty handling and physics keep this simulation strictly for diehards. [Aug 2012, p.80]

Leave your superhero cape at home; Dream Chronicles instead begs for a mouse and keyboard--but this is a 360 game, and there's no such pairing in sight. [Jan 2011, p.76]

Rough visuals and a lack of polish hurt, but Pro Hunts offers adequate hunting action without too much artificial bombast. [June 2014, p.80]

It all grows wearisome in record time. [Sept 2006, p.79]

Fiddy moves so slowly that you want to reach into the TV to pull up his pants so he can break into a run once in a while. [Feb 2006, p.80]

Its predictable, "Save As from the last version" gameplay left us sad and disappointed. [Mar 2008, p.93]

However you play, the button-mashing combat proves crushingly simplistic and repetitive, and moving around the stages is awkward and disorienting, with a dizzying camera that makes Battle of Z a pretty ideal motion-sickness simulator.

If you can grab a buddy, you can pass some time in it, but don't expect too much. [Jan 2011, p.78]

Real Steal's fisticuffs are a half step above the usual movie-based dreck, but the constant rattle of a beggar's tin cup in your face only grows more distasteful over time.

Offering a serviceable but somewhat bland alternative for core card-battlers wanting to play with friends(but unable to organize an in-person match), Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium Duels is a bit of a slog for all but super-fans. [June 2014, p.80]

At 800 points, Battlestar is cheap, but in a sky already patrolled by the superior "Wing Commander Arena", these toasters don't stand a chance. [Holiday 2007, p.81]

Battle: Los Angeles is a slapped-together shooter that'll take you less time to finish than it does to watch the movie it is based on--and it'll cost you almost the same amount of money. [June 2011, p.81]

Despite a few neat ideas, it's as though Blacklight doesn't want to be played. After a couple of hours, you'll be happy to oblige. [Oct 2010, p.85]

The game features split-screen and online multiplayer, but two people flailing their arms next to each other is a disaster waiting to happen. The real killer, though, is that Phelps isn't a good pick-up-and-play game. It's initially confusing, and ultimately, it's not nearly as fun as it should be.

Quest for Cool Stuff is short and simple: an adequate diversion for tykes, but lacking particular creativity or excitement. In an era of great, affordable downloadable games, $40 for a routine, bite-sized licensed game seems like a stretch.

While BandFuse evolves the music game genre by allowing you to use real instruments, with so many oversights and foibles, sadly the progression stops there. [Jan 2014, p.69]

Ultimately, despite its few hours of gory entertainment, Ryder White's an underwhelming add-on that we'd recommend only to fervent Dead Island fans.

It's a shame Harry Potter for Kinect doesn't quite pay proper homage to the series: the game has plenty of moments that would've been enjoyable if they weren't fettered by uneven difficulty and broken combat. As a game not matched up with a movie release, it should've been held back until it felt more magical.

We pined for more varied gameplay sequences, like the chase segment that forced us to teleport ahead of obstacles to avoid a giant monster bearing down on us, but they're too few and far between. [June 201188]

So while the elder console looks like it's stuck with the 360's scraps, the series' next-gen evolution isn't complete either. Project 8 is a strong start and one worth playing, but it definitely feels immature--it's merely a beginning. [Jan. 2007, p.78]

Forget pushing game design forward--Sonic Riders doesn't attempt to do anything particularly new or inventive on the mascot-racing circuit and offers up only short-lived fun tailored strictly for Sonic's most diehard fans; [Apr 2006, p.85]

Despite simple visuals, the game curiously looks much crisper on Xbox One; the other next-gen advantage comes from a biweekly Challenge objective to tackle. But on either platform, Angry Birds Star Wars should have been a $10 download, and paying much more might make you feel like you've been taken for a ride — and we're not talking about the Millennium Falcon.

Without any new features, this year's installation is just as good as the rest, and that doesn't say much. [Holiday 2009, p.85]

It slowly dawned on us that that's all there is to the game. [Oct 2009, p.82]

"Quotation Forthcoming"

You could pursue worse habits than giving your noodle a mild workout, but Brain Challenge provides little incentive to keep the appointment. [May 2008, p.76]

The game falls prey to the traps that eventually led to the degradation of the side-scrolling beat-'em-up: There's nothing more to do. [Dec 2003, p.144]

The price is also particularly cringe-inducing: $15 for a product with precisely one game mode(quick play)? Yikes! [Jan 2010, p.69]