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]

As a free Flash game, Bliss Island would be mildly entertaining, but in light of Live Arcade's more engaging offerings, it just doesn't cut it here. [June 2008, p.81]

Condemned 2 was designed to mess with your head, and boy, does it succeed. We’re glad we got the chance to return to Metro City, but the old town has changed — in some ways for the better, but a little for the worse.

This year's PES is a step backward, and letting players fake injury to draw fouls is the least of the offenses. [June 2008, p.81]

The game was expressly designed for co-op play, but that makes the enemy A.I., poor vehicle mechanics, and the inability to save on command hard to accept, considering it costs you and a friend a combined $120 to play the game “as intended” over Xbox Live.

Four-player online co-op also takes the sting out of the dumb A.I., and it showcases how this $10 game should be played. [Holiday 2007, p.70]

This game isn’t one you stick with for its story. A bully’s quest to end bullying among cliques by relentlessly bullying everyone does not make a good yarn. But it does make an impressively wide-open world full of tons of gameplay types and nuggets of surprise. Your inner game explorer won’t be able to resist.

The entire experience, however, is tarnished by a framerate that bogs down any time a ball is put in play. A simple 5-3 putout turns into a noticeable slideshow as the camera pans across the diamond — which is a shame, as fielders sport some great animations this year.

Triggerheart Exelica is the kind of brutally difficult bullet orgy that shooter otaku love. [May 2008, p.76]

But ultimately, the choppy multiplayer options and ultra-disbelief-suspending campaign deliver an uneven "What If" history lesson. [Apr 2008, p.74]

But it’s not the mythology that brings Via Domus down — it’s the boring and uninspired gameplay, which consists of a bevy of puzzles using fuse panels, a few rudimentary action sequences, and some weak games of hide-and-seek.

The tasks themselves are familiar — secure blueprints and ammo dumps, defend towns from takeover, detonate collateral — but your freedom of movement creates an exciting illusion of tactical authority, even if you can’t order around your disposable steroid-brigade buddies.

What makes N+ really new and fresh though is its customizability. [Jan 2008, p.66]

If you can overlook the lack of any narrative cohesion, The Club looks great, controls well, and offers you tons of options for giving your trigger finger a good workout. [Mar 2008, p.90]

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

The FIFA Street series has enough interesting ideas to sustain a fully realized, sports remix, but after three lackluster entries, it desperately needs to work on its finishing technique. [Mar 2008, p.92]

Old arcade pros will miss the coin-op's grippy spinner knob, but the right analog stick approximates it well; finesse players can still win games with superior targeting skill. [July 2007, p.79]

Flag-wavers for hexagonal turn-based strategy games, take note: Commanders' less flexible squares won't offer up the daunting depth of a full-priced title. [Apr 2008, p.76]

But still, the unexceptional, shooter-by-numbers gameplay isn't compelling enough to demand your attention--either solo or in tandem. [Apr 2008, p.76]

This mediocre trudge is definitely one you'll regret. [Apr 2008, p.79]

It's painfully repetitive, and though you play as anti-hero Griffin, the added backstory just isn't that interesting. [May 2008, p.72]

But though the grandiose soundtrack may fool you at first into mistaking this for an epic Square-esque RPG, it’s not. It’s slightly smaller-scale, and the somewhat odd (and kinda bland) character designs never really reach the iconic eye-candy levels of more accomplished J-RPGs like Final Fantasy.

Unless you absolutely loathe poker or puzzlers, buy this game. [Feb 2008, p.75]

A hardcore, old-school shooter. In many ways, it feels like the "Ninja Gaiden" of shooters, so if that sounds appealing to you, you'll probably love it more than we did. But if you're looking for a more modern experience, something from the current crop of shooter stars like "BioShock" and "Call of Duty 4," the frustrating bosses and save system will seem positively prehistoric. [Feb 2008, p.46]

If you love surprises yielded by the collision of inventive card abilities, you'll get a respectable kick from Culdcept Saga. [Feb 2008, p.78]

There's a tragic amount of recycling here. You spend too much time in levels with not much to do; too much time slicing thorugh obvious padding to teach a climax that we can promise won't satisfy you. [Mar 2008, p.86]

If its presentation wasn't so poor(wooden voiceovers, bland graphics, annoying music), it's be a much better game, but at least it nudges the genre in the right direction. [May 2008, p.72]

Encore is a decent party game but it sure lacks the depth and gotta-play-it power of "Rock Band". [May 2008, p.72]