A trip down memory lane for anyone pining for the original, but without strategic and gameplay enhancements, it's just a poor game by 2003 standards.

Most levels feel more like a carnival duck shoot than a gritty peek into London police work. Enemies stand still no matter how close Mitch is to them and it's often child's play to dive-roll under a gun barrel to slap on the cuffs. This isn't merely unrealistic AI -- it's bad.

Extras like a free, waypoint-based track editor add charm. The same thing goes for online car-swapping features. But between a Super Nintendo-era audio-library, limp-wristed vehicular duels, and snooze-inducing stages, it's too little, too late.

The series' simplified gameplay takes a step backwards with Total Destruction, and the overall experience is decidedly mediocre. But sometimes, after a hard day of work, you just want to knock over a skyscraper.

Not that simple-minded action isn't worth some time, but Spawn just feels like it's mired in the past, with simple platforming, basic attack combos and a few collectibles to string you along. After a while, with eyes blurry from too much same-y destruction, Spawn just felt like "Bad Dudes" dragged kicking and screaming into 3D.

Is SpyHunter a fun, playable game? Definitely. Is it an improvement over the last one? Sure, but it's still too "samey" overall, and it's certainly a better success on the single-player front.

There's a very limited, repetitive number of enemy types (whose quickly depleted voiceovers get annoying), and the core combat is solid, but uninspired (circle-strafe, reload, repeat).

Is SpyHunter a fun, playable game? Definitely. Is it an improvement over the last one? Sure, but it's still too "samey" overall, and it's certainly a better success on the single-player front.

The gene-stealing and blood-drinking theme makes for an interesting concept with great gameplay implications. But the bottom line is that as a game, Genesis Rising sucks, both literally and figuratively.

The real fun should have been doing bad things to other people while rising to power.

Looks like a tremendous mistake.

There are moments of controller-throwing frustration, but also many flashes of true craftsmanship and design excellence.

The enemy AI seems to be a mixture of wunderbar and dumkopf - they frequently rumble you when you're convinced you're well concealed, yet sometimes you can swing a punch at them from one foot away and they totally ignore you.

The idea is good; a sort of modern weapons-based update to the old-school brawler genre, but the implementation is poor, riddled with camera and control issues, resulting in a less than enjoyable game.

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."

A rather uninspired tome, which is bogged down by obscure puzzles, slow story development, and even slower and unvaried gameplay.

Dawn of Mana looks the part, but fails in most other aspects. If you're hankering for some role-playing on your aging PlayStation 2, pick up "Odin Sphere" -- which released the same day. It's even more beautiful, captures the essence of old-school, and you'll be having too much fun to feel the need to convince yourself that you're having fun.

The idea of a pirate RPG with naval combat and basic economic functions is such a good one, but here it's largely obscured by the awkward interface, strange design decisions, and poor attention to detail.

It ends up below the quality of "Dark Cloud 2," and right around the level of Sega's "Blood Will Tell." Whether that's enough to get you to hop on this train is up to you.

Not that simple-minded action isn't worth some time, but Spawn just feels like it's mired in the past, with simple platforming, basic attack combos and a few collectibles to string you along. After a while, with eyes blurry from too much same-y destruction, Spawn just felt like "Bad Dudes" dragged kicking and screaming into 3D.

As a single-player quest to gather robots and unlock secrets, Gotcha Force can get a little tedious. As a game to make you scream at your friends, however, it's perfect.

Dance Factory is a clever concept, though it doesn't quite hit the bullseye. Its feature set would really do better on a machine with a built-in hard drive, so you could burn tracks to it instead of endlessly swapping out CDs. That said, it's still impressive what the game does with the PS2's memory and technology -- poor graphics notwithstanding.

There's a very limited, repetitive number of enemy types (whose quickly depleted voiceovers get annoying), and the core combat is solid, but uninspired (circle-strafe, reload, repeat).

Sorry, RF Online: Life's too short to play a mediocre MMOG.

There are moments of controller-throwing frustration, but also many flashes of true craftsmanship and design excellence. DRIV3R is a game for those who love the feel of the wheel, but only for those with the patience to slog through the rough patches.

Despite its long, long list of lazy omissions it's still a game that Trek fans will enjoy -- if only for the voices, fire-photon-torpedoes ambiance, and graphical effects. They'll just have to grit their teeth while they do it.

Without a more dynamic AI and combat model, each event seems like a pale recreation of the last. Eventually, it's tough to remember why you're still fighting.

Gameplay just hasn't changed enough. You feel like you're playing a throwback, or a golden oldie, not a new release.