Hollywood creature designer Stan Winston lends his psychotic imagination to all of the monstrosities that pop up in the game. Instead of coming from obvious spawning points, creatures emerge from nearly any surface. The technique effectively adds dread to normally benign environments we haven’t experienced since our days in the Boy Scouts.

Support for both PS2 Online and Xbox Live 3.0 and a deep franchise mode extend the shelf life of the game well beyond the Home Run Derby and Quickplay options.

Buy. But be warned that if you're not already a Star Wars Galaxies player, it will be a long time before you're able to afford a decent ship.

The crass, lowbrow, and gloriously juvenile Blitz proves that you don't need those fancy NFL-licensed pants to make a quality f'ball sim... Never taking itself too seriously, this shallow Madden instead chooses to revel in the seedy, sex-drugs-rock-and-roll dark side of the pigskin. Which is the side we've always desperately wanted to revel in.

EA spruced up this year's installment with off-load tackling, aka, you can now pass as you're being driven into the mud.

Sure, you can choose BMX bikes instead of traditional boards, and the soundtrack of punk covers is the best freaking Tony Hawk soundtrack yet, bar none, but whether or not you'll love this game completely depends on how full your Hawk tank already is.

The large number of cut scenes seems a little distracting at first, but once you get used to them, they add a lot of depth to the game.

There is never a break in the action, and even with the obvious emphasis on ESP, the bullets never stop flying.

Everything from the official team rosters to the detailed fields and even to the smoke bombs set off in the grandstands at Wembley Stadium keep your head in the game.

Playing the game is like watching an episode of "Oz" while a priest performs an exorcism on your liver. And if you like your gore served up hot and fresh, you've come to the right place.

The game is all about firepower. Rescuing tied-up hostages will get you power-up weapons like flamethrowers, heavy machine guns and a ground-hugging Iron Lizard missile.

The baseball action, even sans the MLB license (it belongs to 2K Sports, now), is still the best in the business.

The spicy, tangy combination of third-person action and real-time strategy is unlike anything we've played before.

The large number of cut scenes seems a little distracting at first, but once you get used to them, they add a lot of depth to the game.

Everything from the official team rosters to the detailed fields and even to the smoke bombs set off in the grandstands at Wembley Stadium keep your head in the game.

A vibrant, eye-popping superhero disc that has more style, wit and compelling gameplay in its first 10 minutes than most games have in their entirety.

The addictive, just-one-more-race feel works perfectly with our normal just-one-more-can-of-cheap-beer schedule.

It gets off to a promising enough start, but then it stumbles, then trips over its own feet, then chokes on its own vomit, then dies a slow, miserable death.

There is never a break in the action, and even with the obvious emphasis on ESP, the bullets never stop flying.

Playing the game is like watching an episode of "Oz" while a priest performs an exorcism on your liver. And if you like your gore served up hot and fresh, you've come to the right place.

The baseball action, even sans the MLB license (it belongs to 2K Sports, now), is still the best in the business.

If you own the original, not buying the extra levels would make you a sinner. Now, stop treating your body like a carnival ride.

Sure, we've played this sort of game before - Burnout, Twisted Metal, Full Auto, etc. - but could you actually leap from car to car in slow-motion in those games? Answer: No, you couldn't.

While some of the mini-games are curiously compelling—one had us actually blowing into the NDS microphone to snuff out a series of marching candles that were about to set a group of people on fire—there's no reason to ever play it again once the LSD wears off.

The upgrades seem to number in the hundreds and require you to navigate multitudes of menus. Whether you look at this as challenging or soul-crushing should give you an idea of whether you should buy the game.

The game's nutty narrative would baffle Roger Corman, but the six-shootin' gameplay would make even Yosemite Sam giddy.

From the lush environments down to the rust on Optimus Prime’s fender, the graphics in Transformers are outstanding.

Cleaning in a video game is even less fun than cleaning in real life. Only a masochist would find this charming. And recharging little Chibi every five fucking minutes sucks harder than our Dirt Devil.