This game should have been as good and as much of a departure as the upcoming Splinter Cell is; instead, its gameplay piddles around with everything the series has already established.

Instead of making improvements, the development team made a game to appeal to a different crowd than their original audience, and I honestly don’t think the decision was a good one.

Although the terraforming can become a bit tedious at times, the campaign missions are engaging and challenging.

It simply has no place in the current sea of PlayStation 2 shooters; it is far too flawed, far too easy, and lacks far too much of the intensity that gamers pick up tactical shooters for in the first place.

As stated before, Wizards of Waverly Place is an above-average game for the recent crop of Disney Channel games to come out on the Nintendo DS.

It has a pretty steep learning curve, but in the end, it's worth it.

Wanted: Dead is certainly an experience. It's a weird game with occasional flashes of something great. It's difficult to recommend it solely based on that. It's disjointed, repetitive, and feels more like a collection of ideas stitched together into the rough shape of a game rather than anything cohesive. For a certain kind of gamer, this is going to be catnip, but for the average person, it's probably going to be too weird to work, and unfortunately, the gameplay isn't strong enough on its own merit to overcome that.

If not for the weak animation, I would say that Constantine looks surprisingly good. Instead, its static appearance cheapens the overall look of the game.

Flyhunter Origins could have been a decent way for young players to spend an afternoon. The stages may not be expertly designed, and the enemies are way too easy, but the game is short enough to feel fulfilling without dragging on and the mechanics are solid enough.

By itself, Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings game is fine. The aesthetic is accurate, and the emphasis on cooking makes it feel very different from many other games of this type. However, the game feels like it is lacking in other areas that are seen as genre staples, making the game feel rather light at first glance. This is before you start to compare the game to other licensed cozy life sims and see that those games have much more to offer before the amount of stuff to do starts to dry up. Again, this game is fine, but there are better examples of the genre.

Shows an incredible amount of promise, but the final product is ultimately flawed in too many ways to get a hearty recommendation.

What we have here is a game that tries to hit all of the bases and instead misses every last one. It doesn't measure up as a Monster Rancher game, it doesn't measure up as a standalone RPG, and it doesn't measure up as a worthwhile PlayStation 2 title so far into the system's run.

Touhou: Scarlet Curiosity isn't that bad. The campaign is a decent length, and despite the limited combat system, the fighting can be enjoyable if you play in short bursts. The enemy monotony does drag down the experience if you want to play for extended sessions, and the presentation could certainly be much better, fan-made game or not. While it's not the best action RPG on the system, it's worth a shot if you've already exhausted the others.

Reynatis breaks the cardinal rule of not reminding players about better games. Everything from the concept to the gameplay feels like a less engaging version of The World Ends with You, and the fact there's an in-game crossover between the two makes it not feel like a coincidence. There's very little that makes Reynatis stand out, and there are quite a few baffling game design choices. I can see players gleaning some fun from it, but only if they've already experienced its better inspirations.

If your kids are looking for a game based on a familiar television show, I'd recommend Avatar: The Last Airbender on any of its available platforms. There are bigger, better, and far more entertaining games out there than this.

The whole station is one excruciating maze! Figuring out how to move from one position to the next is such an arduous task. Even though you may have the map, it doesn't reveal the secret passages that you need to "blowout" before you can move on.

There really is not much to TiQal. If you play the demo for five minutes, you've pretty much mastered all there is to the game.

Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion is a decent fighting game.

The super-simplified combat soon trounces those expectations, however, as you realize that many characters' moves are gussied-up versions of web attacks and fireballs.

Some people are going to hate it on sight, but I believe that like SaGa Frontier before it, Romancing SaGa has a welcome place in the gaming library of anyone who appreciates a completely free-roaming experience and isn't above being patient with the quirks of gameplay it holds.

It comes to be what the public expects from the Adventure Company. The quality is there from the previous titles, but so are the flaws.

I enjoyed this game completely and appreciated all of its little nuances, but I believe that the lack of replay value is detrimental and turns it into "another shooter game."

Bard's Gold is decent. The gameplay is good enough, but many will be driven away by the high level of difficulty in the opening stages, especially with a few unfair elements at play.

Creepy Road ends up being more frustrating than fun.

It really is sad to see a game like King of Fighters XII turn out this way. It has a solid fighting mechanic and great graphics, but the surrounding features are so meager that they kill everything good about the game.

Naruto Shippuden: Kizuna Drive is at its best when enjoyed with multiple people. Playing missions with a team that's totally in sync makes for some fun gameplay, and this is only helped by a combat system that feels faster than most Monster Hunter clones. However, as a solo game, the free missions are painful, as the CPU AI never feels intelligent enough to do anything unless you're babysitting it every step of the way. As with the rest of the games in the series, fans will have already purchased the title, but non-fans who crave a simpler game in this vein should try renting Kizuna Drive.

Neither fantastic nor terrible, instead landing somewhere in between. Final Fantasy fans might find the addition of an action game to their favorite series to be odd, while shooter aficionados will wonder why it's so easy.

Vast amounts of patience are required for some of the more peculiar puzzles, and this may turn off many gamers. There are better options available, but adventure fans may still want to give U:OW a whirl.