This is a fantastic game, but only if you desperately crave the second half of the Assassin's Creed 2 experience. If you hated the original game, there's nothing here to sway you and the story certainly doesn't welcome newcomers. The multiplayer adds a nice diversion.

From start to finish, Blood Stone is a satisfying action game with enough "wow" moments to please even the jaded Bond fan-slash-gamer crowd.

If you only play games on consoles - or if you're looking for a Sims experience you can share with your friends - it's worth a rental at the very least. If you're familiar with the series on PC, knock the below score down a star - the controls are going to drive you nuts.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 is much better to play on the pitch itself than its chief competitor, while the lack of important football licenses and a unimpressive menu interface keep it from being a full package.

The best Fable yet. It's mature and thought provoking, with a final act that will genuinely surprise and confound you. It could've been a masterpiece, but its many technical problems bring it down.

One of those games that you'll play simply because it makes you feel so good. It's also challenging and clever, with well done co-operative play and even a great soundtrack. There's no downside to this game.

EA's take on the modern shooter is good but not great. The combat is genuinely thrilling, but the heavy scripting and predictable plot points leave little room for surprises. Multiplayer is fun but not different from what we're already playing.

Professor Layton and the Unwound Future is a brain-twisting delight. Show up for the clever puzzles, stick around for the gorgeous visuals and quirky minigames.

NBA fans will appreciate the accurate nuances and historical details of 2K11 while those less hardcore might be put off by the difficulty. Those people should play it with the Move.

Enslaved rises above its flaws to deliver a grand adventure. Neither the platforming nor the combat are particularly inspired, but it doesn't really matter - you'll keep playing because you care about its characters.

It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that.

This game preserves the original and imaginative core of the original Scribblenauts while simultaneously fixing almost all of the problems that made the first game such a chore. It controls better, it has more sorely-needed structure, and it's just more satisfying to pick up and play. It just isn't as mind-blowing a concept anymore.

While it takes some time to find its own identity, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is a solid Gothic action game that is competent in all areas - but never outstanding in any of them.

Dead Rising 2 is at its best when you're goofing off, finding new combo weapons and exploring the Fortune City Strip - and that works so well that you're almost inclined to forgive it its faults, like irritating boss battles and a cumbersome save system.

FIFA 11 is a well-made soccer game, but it doesn't make any huge leaps in game design or feel. The added features like more sensitive passing and the famous stars' individuality are great on paper, but don't add a lot of value.

My favorite Civilization to date. Hex tiles and no stacking makes combat fun and more tactical. The new systems work incredibly well without altering what makes the game Civilization. Civ V is an excellent game.

Aside from some minor technical hurdles like occasional slowdown, it looks great, and plays like the best parts of all four Halo games up until now. If you were worrying that Bungie would phone it in for their swan song, worry no more. And that's not even getting into the multiplayer

Ultimately Sonic Adventure for XBLA offers absolutely nothing but an opportunity for nostalgia.

If you've never played Plants vs. Zombies before, then this is - wait for it - a no-brainer. The game is an amazing gigglefest of unbridled fun, overflowing with game modes and replayability.

Creative set-pieces and an awesome concept can only hide a repetitious game structure for so long - and the stealth sections that mix it up are just frustrating.

It would be easy to write Metroid Other M off on the basis of the few things it gets wrong but the combat and exploration elements are strong enough to overcome these limitations. The combat is intense, if a bit uneven in terms of the overall challenge, and the exploration elements are enjoyable.

This is The Catcher in the Rye, of videogames. Buy it. Even if you don't ever play it, having it on your shelf will someday get you laid.

Occasionally frustrating moments and hugely disappointing boss fights aside, Shank is a treat for anyone who likes chainsawing bad guys in the face. Repeatedly.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is sensational, offering both fully realized single player and co-op experiences. It's gorgeous, clever, and a brilliant new vision for the franchise.

Kane & Lynch 2 is a decent game, with some fun cover mechanics and tactical complexity, but the visual realism kind of shoots itself in the foot with unrealistic situations and tedious level design.

I went into this game as a skeptic. Madden NFL 11 made me a believer.

If you enjoy Castlevania, if you don't mind time limits, if you don't mind having to replay levels numerous times, and if you can deal with minor irritants like not being able to share teammate-resurrecting Water of Life items (in fairness, the game does let you keep playing as a skeleton even if you've croaked), then you'll probably have some fun hacking and slashing your way through Harmony of Despair - but that's a lot of "if"s.

StarCraft II is a wonderful game, both as a story-telling experience and a strategically deep and tactically challenging game. The single-player campaign is deeply satisfying to complete.

Though there aren't that many new characters, they're a worthy addition to the lineup. Many of the new ideas and modes outside of the core gameplay fall flat - Tutorial is a great idea with some presentation issues - but the refinements to the combat ensure that BlazBlue is the slickest hyper-kinetic 2D fighter this side of Marvel vs. Capcom 3. And yes, the music is still awesome.

As it is, the repetitive missions and poor pacing are ultimately too distracting for the game's few virtues to shine through.

Limbo is genius. Freaky, weird genius. Disturbing, uncomfortable genius.

Frequent out-of-game loading times and occasionally (but not often) repeated announcer commentary are the drawbacks, but everything else is as solid and refined as you expect from a major EA Sports title.

With plenty of missions, new enemies, new weapons, minor enhancements and lost of things that go boom, Crackdown 2 offers hours of satisfying, brainless fun for those who enjoy that sort of thing. Newcomers to the series and die-hard fans alike will find plenty to obsess over.

Puzzle Quest 2 isn't a huge departure from its predecessor, but brings some welcome freshness in the form of weaponry, new spells, and new minigames.

It's not particularly original, occasionally gets repetitive, and the main storyline is fairly short, but it's a solid and entertaining effort that you'll probably enjoy more than you think you will.

Ninety-Nine Nights II has the fast combat, loads of enemies and fantasy setting that you expect from this genre, but it just misses the mark in terms of fun. The fighting is tedious and the enemies are either unchallenging peons or hulking monsters who can crush you the instant you make a mistake.

It's fun, light-hearted, great to play with a pal, and based on a wonderfully rich and vibrant fictional world.

Despite quite competently capturing the feel of a slasher flick and possessing a solid sense of humor, Naughty Bear is repetitious and clunky, and constantly feels like it's working to keep you separated from the parts of the game that are genuinely fun - that is, the hunting down and murder of adorable stuffed animals.

Solid strategic gameplay, clever, well-written characters and cutscenes, and a loyalty to the board game we played when we were kids all make Risk: Factions a great game.

What could have been a generic third-person shooter is bolstered by solid gameplay and an awesome transformation mechanic that makes battles fast-paced and very mobile. The visuals and combat set pieces begin to get repetitious by the end, and the AI feels buggy, but the multiplayer is terrific fun - for the most part, it simply works well together.

Great controls, nicely varied (and genuinely challenging) goals, a good sense of humor and cartoonish physics make Joe Danger a real treat to play.

A whimsical, imaginative take on World War I that has you fighting for freedom and for fun. The missions get repetitive, and there are only three types of planes with different skins, but the combat itself is entertaining, the weapons are cool, the multiplayer is a ton of fun - and it's jam-packed with lovable charm.

A fresh, action-packed take on football that makes you feel like one of the players pounding the gridiron. A fantastic team creation mode, intense, urgent action and great-looking tackles are dragged down by a shallow single-player mode, sloppy interpretation of football rules, and characters that all look the same.

The RPG elements work well and are loads of fun to explore, but they only add up to half a game. What's left over is a brainless, broken mess.

A standard, competent kart racer hampered by frequent loading times and irritating writing, but bolstered by an intuitive and powerful editor that lets gamers make their karts, racetracks, and characters their own - or at least lets them make their characters into Spider-Man.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 doesn't tinker with the established formula very much, but we didn't really want it to. It's huge, brilliant, and gorgeous. It's why you started playing videogames in the first place.

A brilliantly told story, excellent voice acting, and an atmosphere so unnerving you'll sleep with the lights on for a month. If only it came with a bottle of instant amnesia so that you could play it for the first time more than once.

The Western genre has been won. Fans of the Western genre will feel as if they've died and gone to heaven and open-world gamers will be treated to an experience unlike any they've had before.

It's a kinder, gentler Trauma Team, and that's a good thing. It's also got the most variety, offering both twitch surgery and medical puzzles.

The guns and bugs make for some spectacular fireworks, but, after the sparks settle, you are left wishing you had played something a little more substantial.

Fans of the series will find more to love in the third installment. For newcomers, this is the most accessible and fun skateboarding game there is.

It's a funny and charming little game, but it plays the retro card a little bit too much. A lot of the gameplay feels very dated in a modern game, and you can't make the same allowances for age that you can with an actual retro title.

Competent. Functional. Other than the presence of your canine sidekick, there is absolutely nothing in Dead to Rights: Retribution that hasn't been done before (and probably better) in other games.

Nier delivers all of the facets that make up a successful action role-playing game: fun combat, diverse characters, good voice-acting, and addictive quest mechanics. It just doesn't do any of them excellently.

It's Street Fighter IV, but better. With the additional characters new and old alike, it's a glorious celebration of the classic fighting franchise - and even if it hasn't changed much, it's changed enough to be clearly head and shoulders above its predecessor.

For some reason, there is something uniquely satisfying about felling a great beast and wearing his skin in triumph.

You fight lots of pallet-swapped enemies over and over again, rinse and repeat. Fun to play with a friend and a huge nostalgia rush, but not much to hold your interest for long.

You fight lots of pallet-swapped enemies over and over again, rinse and repeat. Fun to play with a friend and a huge nostalgia rush, but not much to hold your interest for long.

Conviction is the best installment in the series. The developers took some major risks in design and presentation that paid off, resulting in a game that's at once approachable and complex, and arguably the current last word in stealth adventure.

Open letter to the designers of Just Cause 2: Thank you for making me drive 2 kilometers each time I die. It really makes me appreciate your big open world.

Over three years after the Wii hit store shelves, Red Steel 2 finally delivers the motion-controlled swordplay we expected from the original Red Steel, and it more than makes up for any niggling flaws in the level design.

Unless you're absolutely sick of Shin Megami Tensei's core mechanics or can't push past a few tutorial-heavy opening hours, Strange Journey's a fantastic RPG - portable or not.

Cave Story is fairly short, but provides a unique, somewhat emotional, action-based experience totally worth $15.

The missions are decent, but the multiplayer is the real reason to play this game.

Metro 2033 has a ton of really great ideas, but not only do they not fit together well, they actually compete with each other, sucking all the enjoyment out of the experience.

On a purely technical level, it's one of the most impressive games the PS3 has to offer: It shifts perspectives effortlessly across a number of highly detailed environments without so much as a hiccup and with almost nonexistent load times to interrupt the experience. But in a broader sense, God of War III serves as an example of how to deliver astonishingly varied gameplay in a cohesive package.

It admirably accomplishes what an expansion is supposed to do, and doesn't in any way diminish what made the great one of the best RPGs ever made.

The gameplay is refined and polished to a mirror shine, and traipsing through the lovingly rendered regions of Johto and Kanto brings with it a fond nostalgia that few other games manage to evoke.

The gameplay is refined and polished to a mirror shine, and traipsing through the lovingly rendered regions of Johto and Kanto brings with it a fond nostalgia that few other games manage to evoke.

Once the characters grow up and band together, the plot finds its Focus, and the gameplay takes the training wheels off to let gamers make the most of the stellar combat system, it's an excellent JRPG, just one with severe pacing issues.

In a field where developers are increasingly regulating every aspect of gamers' experiences, Bad Company 2 lets players tell more of the story. It's not always for the best.

Lunar: Silver Star Harmony's core mechanics may be more than a decade old, but thanks to redone graphics, voice acting, and dialogue, this one still has plenty of spring in its step. And while frequent load times and some pacing issues mar the overall experience, it's still an enjoyable RPG that never takes itself too seriously.