You know you're in for a hair-raising experience as soon as the race starts. Unfortunately, the hair that's rising will be on the back of your neck as you realize just how horrid the controls are.

Why not make a game starring Sonic and only Sonic, where he's running around on his own two legs, without any weapons besides his own body, in an action/platformer? Crazy? Yes, but it just might work.

The lack of competitive or cooperative multiplayer modes, decent AI, and sense of fair play will keep you away like everyone kept away from Ice-man in the movie.

Ultimately, Divided Ground is brought down by broken campaigns, a wealth of bugs, poor play balancing, lackluster AI and lack of a decent, printed manual.

Like many games of this style, there is some vague, half-guilty pleasure in the mechanical repetitiveness of the game's combat. But ultimately, X-Men is in the time-honored tradition of licensed games -- rushed, derivative, and well worth avoiding.

Even the parodic nature that was attempted here falls flat after a couple plays, leaving you with a husk of a game that could have been great.

The overall effect is of the track moving around and past your horizontally-locked vehicle, much like that seen in archaic arcade games like "Pole Position."

The hell of the game is that the environmental puzzle setups look pretty good -- climb the wall, lash onto the nearest outcropping, swing to clamber chainlink fences, etc. It's just a shame the game actively fights your ability to navigate them.

The swordfights, which seem to promise the ability to jump around and swing your Wiimote like a living room ninja, are a profound disappointment.

A slapdash and deeply disappointing GBA makeover that will do nothing to win over new Mortal Kombat fans and will enrage hardened aficionados hoping for handheld heaven.

Like many games of this style, there is some vague, half-guilty pleasure in the mechanical repetitiveness of the game's combat. But ultimately, X-Men is in the time-honored tradition of licensed games -- rushed, derivative, and well worth avoiding.

With the bugs fixed and the gameplay tweaked and polished, Superpower could be pretty decent. At the moment, it's disappointing.

When these sorts of loaded odds are all you get in lieu of a competitive computer player, the whole thing feels like you're being cheated rather than challenged.

Control is also woefully imprecise, to the point where combos can seem time-delayed a second or more.

Our expectations have been comprehensively destroyed by what is a truly mediocre title. Save the world from a race of parasitic aliens? We'd rather have a nice cup of tea, thanks all the same.

Why not make a game starring Sonic and only Sonic, where he's running around on his own two legs, without any weapons besides his own body, in an action/platformer? Crazy? Yes, but it just might work.

Were the character control tighter, level designs a bit more varied and the sound a bit less repetitive it could have been a great way to waste some time with old favorites.

The hell of the game is that the environmental puzzle setups look pretty good -- climb the wall, lash onto the nearest outcropping, swing to clamber chainlink fences, etc. It's just a shame the game actively fights your ability to navigate them.

The ridiculous frustration in the early levels will deplete most gamers' patience.

Despite its relative good looks, Dead to Rights: Reckoning is more an exercise in frustration than an enjoyable diversion. Not even the four player WiFi deathmatch mode is enough to save this one from the bowels of the budget bargain bin.

You can be quietly gnashing your teeth for almost a minute on occasion for all the loading to be completed.

Even if you're absolutely infatuated with the Cars premise, this is no way to show the love.

For every imaginative, interesting and appealing puzzle, there's one long, drawn out, dull key hunt. For every awe-inspiring graphical vista, there's a boring, black, featureless tunnel. For every sparsely spread save point, there's a (or rather, many) long plummets to unexpected insta-death.

It's another throwaway shooter with bad AI, forgettable single player levels, and glib unremarkable multiplayer options. Here lies Rainbow Six. Rest in peace, while we go reinstall "Raven Shield."

This type of game and this type of game system go together like oil and water.

Worlds' unappealing characters, boring gameplay and woeful presentation make it one that probably even the hardcore should skip.

The most frustrating aspect of the game is the annoyance of not being able to save it until the end of each level.

Vampire Rain fails at almost everything it tries. Despite the undeniably appealing setting, there's nothing here that justifies even a reserved recommendation. Depressing, derivative, and controller-throwingly frustrating, here's one occasion when you should let the rain stop you from playing.

The most glaring problem is that all the tracks are inside the confines of generic stadiums instead of the open road.

A game about nothing...a dungeon crawl so formulaic as to be forgettable.

Multiplayer is better, but it'd be the scurvy dog indeed that talked his friends into buying this cash-in.

Only the Sabotage online mode, where teams attempt to interrogate rivals for parts of a six-number code, stands out as unique. One mode won't win the war, much less our gaming money for the month.

A game which is wholly unsatisfying and verging on unplayable.

A dull game. Even if you've always wanted to know what managing a casino might be like, Casino Tycoon will likely fail to keep you occupied for more than a couple of days, even counting the game's challenge mode.

A game with no surprises and a superficial combat model, but giant robot fetishists and long-time series fans at least have one less reason to complain.

A passing diversion, totally bereft of the addictive zeal of the original. In this case that's a step forward, if only a very tiny one.

Ultima may have been King of the RPGs once, but it has been standing still for too long in a world that moves at a million miles an hour.

It's a schizophrenic game that tests poorly as both a brawler and a fighter. 80 percent of the game is too easy, and the balance is cheap and simply not fun.

Typically, poor graphic performance is just a sideline to how a game performs, but here the lousy shadows and contrasty scenes detract from the action just as much as the dreadful AI and thin premise. As a result, Bullet Witch should be completely avoided.

This is only a bad computer game, after all, even if it is one that is broken in almost every fundamental way and is an uncanny combination of tedium and insane frustration.

Just too much fluff and not enough fun.

For the price you'll pay for both these games -- which is what you'll need to do if you want a half-decent selection of activities -- you could buy the far superior "Brain Age." Or, for that matter, you could buy just about any of the other genuinely good games on the DS, and pass over this cash-in altogether.

For the price you'll pay for both these games -- which is what you'll need to do if you want a half-decent selection of activities -- you could buy the far superior "Brain Age." Or, for that matter, you could buy just about any of the other genuinely good games on the DS, and pass over this cash-in altogether.

Does one thing and one thing only: it adds one more RPG to the Xbox line-up, and whether or not that's a good thing depends on how desperate you are for a dungeon crawl.

The storyline features such ridiculous contrivances as diving to find the ingredients to make aspirin for someone's grandmother, who has back pain. Ugh.

The general lack of thought and polish is obvious in almost every aspect.

The Xbox Music Mixer's laundry list of features are so poorly implemented that it simply isn't worth buying.

A poor excuse for a Tenchu-style fighter, thinly veiled as a story-driven stealth action game a la Metal Gear that's so laughably bad it actually makes "Batman: Vengeance" look like the best superhero action game ever created.

The general lack of thought and polish is obvious in almost every aspect.

There's no motivation for the player to keep going, no tension that builds, no interest in the new weapons, no in-depth strategies, in fact it's just a generally vacuous experience.

Even in the face of the irritating gameplay and lack of functionality, it's the liberties the game takes with its source that hurt the most.

Abysmal in every way. The only possible reason there could be for purchasing it is to give as a present to a particularly hated relative - but that might be considered a little harsh.

One of the buggiest games ever released for the GBA, if not one of the buggiest games ever released, period. One flaw even makes it impossible to complete the game.

Vintage 1994 graphics and laughable gameplay make this one the first games of 2002 to snatch a deserved one-star rating.

Delving more than an hour or two into the game becomes painful.

Playing this game is as tedious and as painful as your morning workout on the stairmaster, without the pain-for-gain benefit of developing six-pack abs.

For starters, it's boring...You generally just button mash as quickly as possible and hope that the cops fall down before you do.

Creature Labs has decided to create a Pac-Man game that not only bears no resemblance to the original but is an absolute travesty of a title that certainly wouldn't have got a release without the Pac-Man licence.

It takes about five minutes with the game to realize it's a nightmare for everyone else, with ugly visuals, sloppy controls, a horrible camera and some of the most foolish storytelling we've seen. This one's a mess, folks.

A mess of a game. It's not even a game, more like a slow, rotting death. No matter how great your love for George Romero, no matter how overpowering your curiosity, there is no reason to look twice at Land of the Dead. Do not walk away. Run.

Flops in every possible way.

Painfully thin.

There's only one or two releases per year which manage to get just nearly every element in a game completely and utterly wrong.

While Super Duper Sumos might be aimed at kids, that's no excuse for this kind of uninspired and dull gameplay. The length, frankly, was one of the better things about it, as the end came as quite a relief.

More like somebody's high-school programming project than an actual commercial game. And even then, it's only worth a D.

It's almost as if they settled on the simplest, most derivative game design possible instead of trying to do the show some justice.

It's an ugly, boring and vastly unoriginal RTS.

Although there are some enjoyable aspects here, there are too many disappointments weighing down the whole endeavour.

Bad taste and bad execution that ranks up there with the worst racing games and the most unfunny Benny Hill sketches make it a truly awful experience in every way.