From the superb visual design to the enchanting audio soundtrack, this futuristic period piece is a delight to play and accomplishes a rare feat for a video game: It leaves you with plenty of weighty existential questions to think about.

If Bioshock has one notable flaw, it lies in the game's difficulty level, or lack thereof. On the normal difficulty level, it's just a bit too easy. It is still fun, but once you start getting a solid number of plasmids, you can tear through every Splicer in your way as if they were nothing.

Dragoneer's Aria played up too greatly on its strengths and didn't try to fix its flaws.

Boasting an incredible story, great presentation and fun, sensible puzzles, this is one game that fans of the genre and fans of the classic story have to play.

Indeed worth $20 for fans of classic top-down shooters. It's certainly frustrating and is a bit on the short side, but it does provide some fun moments and some shining points that make it worth noticing.

The changes are plentiful, but there's nothing ludicrously revolutionary here.

This title has a very strong appeal to anyone who is a seasoned player of Dungeons & Dragons and is interested in playing a tactical combat simulator that is faithful to the system with which it shares its name.

Persona 3 does the franchise proud. The only "problem" that might make someone think twice about jumping in is the focus on character interaction over combat, but if that isn't a problem for you, you'll enjoy Persona 3 a lot.

For an SNK fighting enthusiast and genre fanatic, this game is a must-have. The characters, fighting system and old-school graphics and sound really bring a person back to the genre's roots. For casual gamers, the incredible difficulty will quickly turn them off. Gamers looking for a challenge in their fighting games need look no further.

We've actually been waiting for this game for years, ever since people started coining the term, "next-gen." Thankfully, that time has finally come.

Madden NFL 08 again serves football gamers on both sides of that fan fence.

It is absolutely not worth playing in my opinion, not even as a bargain bin purchase. Its pacing is dreadfully slow, its "story" is so flimsy that no one (not even the children for which this game is supposedly intended) would be enthralled by it, it looks extremely dated, the audio doesn't really work and its abysmal lack of genuine humor thoroughly defeats the point of a title that banks on being comedic.

This game will leave you hoping to celebrate the next Anniversary with Miss Croft in another 10 years.

No matter how shiny the car's wheels, no matter how diligently you clean out the ashtray and how often you wash the exterior, it's just a big lump of metal unless you've got the engine running smoothly, and Crazy Taxi: Fare Wars fails in that regard.

Mega Man Star Force may not reinvent the Battle Network formula — or even make any large-scale changes to it — but at least these re-heated leftovers are pretty good.

With its pick-up-and-play controls, intense combat sequences and surprisingly nice visuals, Attack on Pearl Harbor achieves its goal of providing relatively simplistic and fun gameplay.

The inconsistent AI vacillates between being way too easy to soundly beating me — sometimes while playing the same board game!

A Marathon title on XBLA could have been a fantastic way for Halo fans to see their favorite developer's roots, but thanks to bad controls and an illness-inducing interface, the game struggles to even serve as a window into the past.

Brave Story: New Traveler isn't innovative; it doesn't bring anything new to the RPG genre, break graphical bounds, create a revolutionary new combat system, or last 80 hours. What it is, however, is fun. Battles are swift and enjoyable, the characters are charming and likable, the side-quests are interesting and rewarding enough to keep you searching every nook and cranny of the world, and the graphics are among the best on the PSP.

Drake and Josh: Talent Showdown is a huge waste of time and not worth trying even if you're a fan of the show.

It's got all of the classic gameplay of its predecessor, and most of the graphics are terrific. Couple this with some excellent music, and you definitely have a winner. Unfortunately, the incredibly high level of difficulty is going to turn off almost everyone except the most hardcore of gamers.

You'll most likely find that your level of interest in this game will be based more on your love for the Final Fantasy franchise than the quality of the product.

There's really nothing new here. It is truly just GH2 with a garish color scheme, some different character models, 30 new songs and nothing else. It feels incredibly bare, but as a song pack, it stands up surprisingly well.

If you're looking for nice graphics in a realistic racing environment on a next-generation platform, then perhaps this is right for you, but if you're looking for an exciting career mode, crazy pileups, or the ability to manage a team, then an older NASCAR title is what the doctor ordered.

Between all the wrinkles in the main gameplay, all the scenarios which completely change or add to it, and the fact that this comes with little to no system requirement increases or, well, anything that doesn't add to the gameplay, Beyond the Sword is little more than another stop on Sid Meier's traditional formula but is so much fun precisely because of this.

The story is forgettable, the dialog in the cut scenes is cheesy, the single-player campaign is short, and the AI leaves much to be desired — but the fighting is top notch, the battles are intense, the strategic options are myriad, and the immersion factor is so compelling I can give it a strong recommendation.

If you're new to the series or if you haven't played in a few years, go ahead and pick it up to give it a play-through — it's well worth it.

It's blatant fan service, and it doesn't try to be anything more; while the battle system is a lot of fun and the skits are entertaining, there simply isn't enough here to keep a casual gamer interested, especially once things devolve into the endless grind of fetch questing.