I have no idea why I seem to be loving games more than everyone else right now, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a damn fine beat-em-up, and it's a perfect, mindless, meaty bit of action that the genre sorely needed.

If you are looking for portable RPG goodness, both your time and money are well-invested if you choose Crimson Gem Saga.

Though it may not feel like the American Idol license was ham-fisted into the existing gameplay, the two aren't married so perfectly yet that they feel like they've always been there. With a little more work on the judges, from modeling to animation to textures, and just a little more work to make it seem like you're actually playing to a crowd in faithfully replicated venues from the show, this could be a killer app.

This is about as good as an arcade port gets without straying too far away from the original. Shadows of Mystara is a rare gem in the quarter-munching world and they added layers of PSN integration are implemented really well.

Nope, it's nothing so revolutionary as to woo haters, but for fans, it's a welcome return of the best of the offshoots.

What are you waiting for, grab yourself a stamp, a pen (and if you don’t have one, a network adaptor) and get to mailing!

While by no means a bad game, Dead Space 3 fails to capture the same tension and atmosphere of the previous games. A woefully broken checkpoint system hurts cooperative play, which is a shame given how many modes there are to explore with a friend.

A strange beast, this: funny and addictive and crass in equal measure. Seen as a sequel it can feel a little like a lazy cash-in, but seen as the latest episode in the life of DeathSpank it's well worth picking up.

It's certainly solid enough, and easily the better of EA's sports offerings at launch, but again, the polarizing nature of the controls will directly influence how you feel about the game as a whole.

In all, Guitar Hero III serves as a nice little high water mark for Neversoft. It's hardly all that high, but proves that, yes, they can actually make a Guitar Hero game without trashing the series in one fell swoop and, as evidenced by the stuff seen in the Aerosmith expansion, they can clearly learn from their mistakes.

While they're certainly not bad games by any means, familiarity breeds contempt, and I'm just starting to get irked by the lack of freshness.

So long as you go into things understanding that this isn't really a console-level basketball experience and that it's uniquely designed for shorter, more portable games, you end up with a shockingly good basketball entry. If they end up adding in some of the fluff from the console versions next year, it's going to make things near irresistible.

The graphics are not jaw dropping, but as is the case with most strategy games, this really doesn't matter. In the end, it's the quality of the gameplay that counts.

Perhaps it’s the flaky difficulty or weak story plot, but something is definitely holding Devil May Cry 2 back from upping the ante of the series’ first comer. In the end, DMC2 boils down to a simple result: a solid sequel, but a failed attempt in revolutionizing action gaming.

Madness Returns is by no means a terrible game, as in fact quite the opposite is the case. But its enormous potential combined with its stubborn unwillingness to take much, if any creative risks, keep this one from achieving its fullest potential.

The combat system is leaps and bounds above the first game’s, but things like pausing for spell animations and disjointed, eye-watering lighting and texture palettes keep the interest level down.

Ghostbusters is the game we’ve waited for, and given a little more time, this ambitious title would be an instant classic.

If this is the sort of thing that's going to come out of Sony consolidating their worldwide development studios, we're in for some seriously kick-ass looking games -- and sooner than most probably think.

There's not much here to fuel the kind of nostalgia the promise of reliving the days of yore, huddled around an arcade cabinet, fighting over what quarter resting on the glass was yours, and generally just reminiscing about a simpler time can provide.

This is portable Katamari, and it's fun in small spurts. Under the surface, though, there's an inescapable feeling that the series is losing some of its magic.

The improvements and additions make it a far more enjoyable prospect to newcomers than the PSP version was, and it may even be enough for those that gave up on the original to at least give the game a rental to see how things have improved.

Good, but is targeted at a very, very specific type of gamer, and you could be left wanting more if you don’t fall into that niche.

It's the exact kind of game -- if not the presentation of it -- that the PSP is hurting for so much right now, and in all honesty, once you're a few hours in to the game, it's fairly easy to overlook the loading screens and lose yourself in the action.

If you aren't already a fan of this franchise Disgaea D2 won't draw you in to its weird world. Series fans will find the familiar here and NIS went out of their way to provide plenty of jokes just for the real fans.

The tables might not live up to some of the past ones, but that doesn't mean these aren't still fun. All four tables bring something different to the... ahem... table, and the collection bolsters the already impressive value of Marvel Pinball

This title falls flat because it could have been something better. There's really no reason for a prequel... or a sequel for that matter. Square Enix should have taken this concept and went in a new direciton. Not the Final Fantasy direction.

As much as the other categories sound good - the story really brought the game down.

Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny is a great technical achievement for the PSP and yet it feels like a few interesting single player focused additions would have made it an instant hit.