There are some nice additions that increase the competitive side, which is good, but it doesn’t seem like a separate $60 bundle as much as it should have been a $30 or $40 expansion pack.

Bakugan: Battle Brawlers is an interesting mix of card games, marbles, and minigames that generally comes together well but still lacks in variety.

For those who don’t care about the game’s look, but simply want to play with a remote friend or not have to bother with the rules/dealing minutia, Duels of the Planeswalkers will probably be a great buy.

Cute, but not very original. If you really must pay to play a game that would otherwise be available for free on newgrounds.com, go ahead.

It’s a unique experience, in both single and multiplayer, and Double Fine nails the concept perfectly, making it challenging for experienced gamers, yet not overwhelming for the newbies who just came here for the metal.

It’ll take more of a giant leap, rather than a few baby steps, to truly catapult the JRPG into a league alongside its Western counterparts.

The game is easy enough for the casual player to jump right into, difficult enough to keep the gaming vets interest, and stylish enough to have both glued to their sets.

The actual game behind South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! is actually good, and that’s not something you’ve probably ever been able to say about a South Park game before.

Having the mission editor that the PC version does would have made a huge difference. The developers said it was impossible to include due to technology and disk space, but Far Cry 2 did it with a very robust engine.

This one’s lack of polish and annoying gameplay will likely have you ejecting it from your X360 and reaching for your copy of LEGO Star Wars.

That single playthrough is an entertaining one to say the least, which is more than can be said for most movie adaptations. Despite the game’s failed combat system, the overall experience is one that’s faithful to the franchise and well worth playing to any fan of the movies.

NBA Live 10 shows continued improvement for the series. But in classic EA fashion, this feels incredibly iterative. The improvements of this latest iteration are impressive nonetheless, but it feels like a long road to one truly great basketball game to grace our consoles, a revolutionary and defining game of its genre.

NBA 2K10 matches up well to Live when it comes to presentation and the standard expectations of features. But when it comes to basic on-court mechanics, NBA 2K10 wins this one in a laugher.

Despite its less-than-thrilling presentation, it doesn’t change the fact that the Bass Pro Shops: The Strike bundle with the controller is actually the best fishing experience you’ll find on the X360.

But if you’re like me and want a good old dose of nostalgia, you’ll get it in Bust-a-Move Live…with a side of newness, too.

It seems as if the developers have done everything they can to make the experience authentic for nostalgia-starved fans of the original. The rest of us just see a dated game, with dated graphics, providing us with a solid, yet un-evolved take on the turn-based strategy genre. It does what it does great. The question is, is that what you want to do?

So, if you can get past its many flaws—or you just enjoy repeatedly having your ass handed to you—there’s quite a bit to do here for 800 Microsoft Points (about $10).

It’s a unique game, both visually and in terms of gameplay, which is impressive considering how derivative it seems at first glance.

Its arcadey action, solid visuals and addictive co-op play make it one hell of a slaughter fest for just 800 Microsoft Points (or about $10).

A fantastic game that reminds us of why Halo was so great in the first place.

The tables are near perfect re-creations of the Williams originals—not only in look and feel, but in how they play. I was stunned at the quality and entertainment value.

If battling with (or against) attack dolphins and scantily clad lady snipers wasn’t already your thing, you’ll want to steer clear of Commander’s Challenge. However, if you’ve been a supporter of this silly-meets-strategy series in the past, then, well, we probably had you at “psychic Japanese school girls.”

Just when you thought the third-person action/shooter genre was running thin on style, Wet has come along and shaken things up for the better.

Need for Speed: Shift is excellent in concept and flawless in execution. It’s nothing less that the next great racing simulator to grace the Xbox 360.

NHL 10 has a ton of gameplay modes, and the action is slick. Not perfect, but it does have a good flow and it’s fairly comprehensive in covering the sport.

I can put aside the historical inaccuracies, the tie-fighter-style flight modeling and all the other things that make Heroes Over Europe inferior. And maybe if I hadn’t just played and greatly enjoyed IL-2 Sturmovik, I might be feeling a bit more generous. But unfortunately Heroes Over Europe comes across as not much more than a budget title.

Things like the Zamboni Races are fun, but it’d be better for 2K to concentrate on its core components before spending its resources on fringe offerings.

If you’ve played any of the myriad action/RPG/brawlers starring superheroes culled from the Marvel universe, such as the X-Men Legends games or the original Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, then you’ve played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.

While the story had potential for creating a cool juncture between history and science fiction, there’s very little flexing of those muscles in the actual product.

Harmonix did a great job in crafting a fitting tribute to the Beatles, clearly one of the most significant bands in rock history—but, perhaps more importantly, dramatically raised the bar in the music-game genre.

There’s lots to do and that includes side missions that you can skip if you’re immersed in the main story path. And it’s fun in a basic way.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey, viewed generally as a piece of software, is finely crafted in every way, and it shows a great carefulness on the part of its developers to do right by the subject matter.

Don’t be deterred by the subject matter if you think you don’t like racing games. Dirt 2 is charming, fun and exciting all rolled up into one big ball.

The pinnacle of design for tower-defense games, and not just because of its fancy Gamebryo-powered 3D graphics. It’s challenging and complex without breaking the same simple rules that all tower-defense games follow, even the most unsophisticated ones. Taking a simple yet classic game design, then adding depth and polish to it, is probably the purest way to make a great game.

There’s no question that Activision and Neversoft aren’t content to sit back and just release new songs—or release new major titles in the GH franchise that have trivial or negligible feature offerings.

An entertaining game, but one without a ton of variety.

The idea behind NBA 2K10: Draft Combine and the way it complements NBA 2K10 is a great one, and I hope to see more sports games do things like it. I’m looking at you, Madden.

Between the Story Mode, Challenge Rooms and myriad hidden items (that are more compelling than in most games), there’s a lot of entertainment in Arkham Asylum.

What’s ultimately important for Shadow Complex, is that it is completely unimportant how people got the game. It could be download, it could be retail, who gives a you know what. What matters is that it is great, truly great even. One of the best new games you’re going to play on your Xbox 360 this year, hands down.

Had the visuals been taken up a notch, and if B.J. would have been a bit more of a bystander in the Veil portions, Wolfenstein could have been one of the elites. But as it sits, Wolfenstein is a solid shooter that fans of its predecessors will enjoy.

Madden 10 eclipses last-year’s effort in content, realism and value. Gameplay? Well, that’s more of a wash when compared to last year, and gameplay holds a lot of weight.

What’s most interesting is that there’s little in Trials HD that hasn’t been done before in other games, but RedLynx made this one just so darn tight with its physics and humorous crashes and thoroughly engaging challenges that you can’t put it down.

One of the best XBLA hack-and-slash classics ever to grace Xbox Live Arcade.

Some might say that bashing this game is like beating up a paraplegic: just unfair. But I shudder to think that people will waste their money on this thinking they’re going to get a cute kids’ title that’s safe for the younguns to play. It’s not.

In the end, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is like vanilla ice cream. It is fine for what it offers, but is plain and blah compared to what you could be having. Even for someone who didn’t get into the G.I. Joe fad, I didn’t expect to find a plain vanilla G.I. Joe.

Solid, and worth a look by both the experienced fighting game fan as well as those brawling neophytes.

It’s $60 hors d’ouvres passed off as a main course.

’Splosion Man is not for the weak, or the uncalloused of thumb. But if you do have the druthers to give it a whirl, you’re going to find yourself playing one of the most addictive and challenging games to come out on XBLA so far. To put it simply, it’s a blast.

What it seems to do, though, is do a decent job at portraying the movie to which it’s connected, which also is pretty rare in this industry. It’ll keep you engaged for hours (especially if you seek to get all of the achievements), though with a few bouts of overdesigned gameplay challenge to break it up, it’s not perfect.

This seems like an oasis of sparkling water to somebody who’s had to crawl through a desert of rock music. You can get some enjoyment out of the thought that your thirst will be quenched, but when you finally get there, it’s mostly a mirage.

For long-time fans, it’s a chance to relive a part of our childhood; for newcomers, it’s a chance to experience what so many of us haven’t stopped talking about for nearly 20 years.

At its very least, a very entertaining game with a tenuously attached license that few people probably care about. But at its best, it's an old-school type of shooter that rewards players hungry for beating their own high scores and those willing to try some very innovative multiplayer design.

NCAA 10 is the most complete and competent football game ever to be loaded into a Microsoft console.

Battlefield 1943 is truly a blast. Its stripped-down nature (though definitely not a no-frills release) means its easy to get into, and the high potential player count should have the servers filled with players for quite some time.

From the excellent blend of both arcade and pro-accurate MLB components, to the strength of the audio and graphics, The Bigs 2 is a player.

Worms 2: Armageddon is the complete XBLA answer to the franchise that fans have been waiting for. Worms 2 is also good enough for me to recommend it to new fans of the series; even more so than the free PC demos floating about in cyberspace.

KoFUM is still worthy of a solid score, due to the fact that it’s still one of the better pure fighters ever made, but it will be hard for casual brawler fans to realize its allure.

It has some really nice features, but for every nice one, there are an equal number of strange design choices or flaws.

The game is one of the better Westerns we’ve seen on a video game console, and while that’s not saying a whole hell of a lot when you put it into context, it should be taken as faint praise.

While its visuals are astounding and the fighting action nearly as impressive, Blazblue is special because it feels complete. Aside from its paltry online functionality, Calamity Trigger will constantly remind you that a smart investment was made in a title sporting a high degree of luster. In other words, you’ll get the sense that you got your money’s worth…even if you just got your butt kicked.

The dictionary defines “infernal” as “hellish, fiendish, diabolical,” as it should be, but it also has a definition of “extremely troublesome, annoying.” Unfortunately, Infernal lives up to both of those definitions all too well.

Even though Garou—Mark of the Wolves looks amazing (when taking into consideration the era in which it was released) and plays even better than it looks, there’ll be this feeling that you didn’t get that much value for your 800 Microsoft Point investment (or about $10).

Yes, Droplitz is an easy game that’s not all that easy.

An awesome, visceral experience, especially when enjoyed against a human opponent. It remains one of my personal favorites of the EA Sports lineup. I just hope that in the next iteration they can figure out where the magic went and infuse it back into the series.

A massive upgrade over the previous movie-based game in the series. So much so that it’s unfair to really even compare them. Despite some feelings of repetitiveness and a lack of polish in a lot of places, I feel like it’s my duty to commend Luxoflux for what it’s done: make a pretty good game that treats the license with the respect it deserves.

It’s very Diablo-like in its playability, in that it often throws a lot of opposition at you, but with a full complement of minions and a powerful weapon, you’ll usually cut through them nicely.

For fans of the Warriors series, DW6:E falls right in line with giving the hardcore followers of Omega Force exactly what they want. For general action/strategy fans, DW6:E marks a solid step forward in creating a more consumable form of the Warriors universe.

It’s just plain fun, with the presentation adding to the entertainment.

Despite its retrograde interface and game design, Sam & Max Save the World still manages to please the old school gamers in us who have loved this wacky duo for years now.

For whatever Ghostbusters: The Video Game is lacking purely as a game – and really, it’s not that much – it more than makes up for it in the production. We should hold it up as a model not just for movie into video game translations, but as an example of how you treat a beloved institution right when making a video game about it.

It plays well, but it feels like Activision is going overboard by not marketing it as DLC instead of a new retail-box release. Also, developer Beenox did a good job, but didn’t add anything of note to the gameplay components to spark interest.

A schizophrenic experience for me. I really liked the story evolution, though on occasion it did drag a bit, but I was severely put off by how the developers chose to challenge players and, I guess, keep then engaged (meaning not finishing the game as quickly).

The best golf game that an MS console has ever seen. Could still use a few engine tweak, however.

The world of video games seems to have moved beyond games like this a while ago, making this futuristic shooter seem somehow unforgivably antique.

Blowing stuff up is one of the cornerstones of this game, and it’s made especially more enjoyable by the advanced physics engine Volition uses. You’ve read about it in every single preview of the game to date, but in actual practice, the Geo-mod engine is quite impressive.

While it’s clear that Asobo spent ample time in perfecting the tech that’s needed to enable a speedy racing game to run smoothly for hundreds of (no-load) miles on end, more attention needed to be paid to the fleshing out the Career objectives and tightening up the overall presentation package.

The issue becomes whether you’ll try to fight through the hurdles (natural and unnatural) to milk some fun out of it. It’s in there, but it doesn’t seem as if it’ll sustain you for very long.

It feels a lot like what the Wallace & Gromit short films do: compact movies that make up for in quality what they lack in run time.

It had the potential, but anything that showed flair was quickly buried by more clumsy dialogue or stilted character movement.

Our main gripe is that Blazing Birds is just so…flat.

Once you realize what the game is and a bit on how it’s best played, the gameplay really picks up. Gel does have a fairly steep learning curve, but it’s one that becomes more rewarding quickly once you understand how to best play it and formulate a strategy of how to optimize your scoring. Some of the challenges will push you to the edge of endurance and puzzle solving.

While it’s easy to find other fighting games that do a portion of their action better than Undisputed, not many games are as technically solid across the board, while still delivering some type of feeling or visceral dynamic. Hmmm…sounds like a UFC contender to me: Strong in many disciplines, weak in few areas and filled with a burning desire to be the best.

A less-than-premium price would have nearly made everything better. This is a fun movie game that simply doesn’t have the legs that it ought to for 60 dollars.

Did GRIN do the original game justice? Definitely. GRIN has put Bionic Commando back on the map—with both of its titles, actually. Now let’s hope that Capcom keeps the cyborgs a-comin’. Two decades is too long to wait for a follow-up from such a compelling franchise.

As an avid poker player, it was fun to see a twist on the game offered on XBLA. And while Texas Cheat ’Em isn’t going to be a blockbuster hit because of its niche-like following and gameplay redundancy, it’s a fun contest for those who are familiar with poker or would like to mess around with a poker variant that has a devious side.

Even with some flaky ship-control dynamics, Star Trek D-A-C is pretty enough to make for a decent XBLA purchase.

Battlestations: Pacific speaks to the ten-year-old in me who pored over illustrated coffee-table books about WWII weaponry and watched “Victory at Sea” instead of “Sesame Street.” For a military-porn aficionado like myself, Battlestations: Pacific is like heaven, despite some of its rather glaring flaws.

I think there was the potential for greatness, and clearly a lot of time was poured into making it what it is, but the end product is ultimately diminished by its shortcomings.

Very primitive, with few options for making it look better.

Four player co-op is the proper way to attack Zombie Wranglers, giving it that Gauntlet feel of adventurism. Even the competitive multiplayer action, which is a race to out-zombie goo your friends, is more enjoyable than running through Wranglers as a solo, mini Dr. Venkman.

While it’s abundantly-clear that SIE is an ode to the original, it’s also thankfully apparent that its creators did their homework on what makes a successful modern video game, too.

In addition to the welcome multiplayer action featured in Arkanoid Live!, Taito also included a rule set different than original coin-op version.

I was surprised at how much I liked this game. Hand it to Raven Software for building a movie-based game as a game first and then worrying about the tie-in later.

The problem I had was with the game’s radical inconsistency.

Banjo-Tooie is a no-frills ROM port that is a slam dunk for those looking to relive some of gaming’s past glory without having to pull out past consoles.

The various battlegrounds of Virtual On are just as well modeled as the Virtuaroids and are pretty expansive for a mid-’90s video game.

I think the old-school gameplay shines through in its new packaging. And for about a quarter of the price of a regular retail release, it’s still a good deal in a trying economy.

True fans of the Gundam universe will surely get their money’s worth out of Gundam 2, as will longtime followers of Omega’s Dynasty lineup. The rest of you will be better off with a rental at first, as the novelty of controlling a mech in large-scale, strategy-oriented skirmishes wears off quicker than one might imagine.