It was already forgettable on consoles, but Capcom completely drops the ball with this malfunctioning PC port.

There is only one game where I've ever skipped areas I wanted to explore due to not wanting to deal with the camera. This is it.

An insult to the men and women protecting our country.

This moral ambiguity is one of NARC's biggest selling points, but it's also one of the game's biggest flaws. No matter how far you cross the line, you're never beyond redemption.

Lack of inspiration and sloppiness are the hallmarks of Shade: Wrath of Angels. Clunky controls, tedious combat, frustrating difficulty, a forgettable hero, a lame story, silly dialogue, monotonous levels, typos, and bugs all add up to a big mess.

A mess of a game. Buggy, incomplete and all together boring, it's a huge disappointment for fans that are starving for a fun role-playing game on the PC that doesn't require a fast Internet connection.

Compared to Commandos and even knockoffs like Desperados and Prisoners, it's primitive and feeble, like an old Mafia boss that's out of touch and can't see the G-men bearing in on him.

Bereft of any sort of challenging AI and sporting a handful of weapons that all seem to have been dredged from some imaginary WWII shooter from the eighties, this game is the kind of thing you can expect to get for Christmas from a grandma that knows nothing about video games and relies on a shifty game store employee looking to move the non-sellers.

While all of this good on paper, the game fails miserably when it comes to execution. Simply put, Evil Prophecy just isn't any fun.

25 to Life is almost like a dirty joke -- You're laughing at how bad it is and feeling guilty at the same time. Don't waste your time or money on this game, it'll make your think-bone hurt.

A partially lacerated corpse of a game with great chunks of fun missing.

The few good puzzles contained within aren't worth the time and risk that you might not even be able to complete it.

Avoid it like the plague, and hope that if we're all in for a trilogy, the next episode sees the heroes-in-a-half-shell pursuing an adventure that's not nearly as half-baked.

This is one game that should have never been let out of a holding cell.

Not only is it not equal to NHL 2004; on nearly every level, it's a step backwards. In the end, there's no reason whatsoever to "upgrade" to this new version, and that's the most damming thing you can say about a sports franchise.

Alexander isn't a matter of taste; it's a matter of functional incapacity. If you're looking to get your fix in this historical period, there are plenty better and recent arrivals.

Unfortunately, the story and pretty pictures aren't enough to wade through the random guessing that makes up the game itself. Selecting phrases until you pick the "right" one doesn't make for a good game.

It's mostly tedious, sloppy, and stale, with bugs and crashes adding insult to injury. You could find a better shooter blindfolded.

A game so resoundingly mediocre or downright awful that only the most hardcore helicopter enthusiasts would ever want to play it.

As a whole, NBA is about as generic as its name. It includes the spectrum of teams, players, logos, and all that jazz, but fails to capture any of the flair or excitement of a real game.

Hockey fans want to see their favorite players gliding effortlessly across the ice, not spastically jerking from end to end. The Great One was one of the smoothest players of all time, but his game is in dire need of a few visits from the zamboni to smooth out the bumps.

You want 50's music? Buy a CD. Grab a DVD if you want to see the guy move. But if you want to pretend to be Curtis Jackson, take your fifty bucks out to a paintball range and let someone drill you nine times. It'll be a better experience than this.

The game's abysmal controls and moronic A.I. fail to deliver.

A lot of chaos, sloppy gameplay and few laughs. To quote an adage that turns out to be especially apt for videogames: dying is easy; comedy is hard.

The experience of playing this game can be roughly compared to swimming through a pile of sewage to get to a diamond ring. There's a great game buried in the coded-up wreckage that comes out of the X3: Reunion box; it's probably not worth the effort to dig for it, though.

The final nail in Mage Knight's coffin is the camera system. It's the most bizarre use of a third-person camera of any game in recent memory.

While Final Fight: Streetwise isn't broken to the point of being completely unplayable, it is absolutely not worth your time.

A poorly implemented, poorly translated adventure game about an uninteresting character doing uninteresting things. Nearly the only things going for it are that it doesn't crash and should be playable on a wide variety of systems.

After playing the three excellent console versions of Midway Arcade Treasures, it was a major disappointment to see just how half-assed Extended Play ended up being.

The muddy controls alone are enough to sink this game. Add to that the slow, insomnia-curing pacing of the gameplay, and it's easy to see that this ship is taking on water fast.

Perhaps with a more DS-specific control scheme, this game could have been far better, but as it stands, it's the weakest of the bunch and entertaining only in short spurts.

There's no real story to hold any of this together, so in the end, Cars for the DS amounts to nothing more than some disjointed mini-games that are either too drab or too long to warrant unnecessary replays.

Sonic doesn't crash and it doesn't look horrific, and that's about all that recommends it. Maybe the 20th anniversary will be better.

Act Zero isn't a bad core game, fundamentally. But the overhaul is terrible, the gameplay is dated, the features are few and you can't play against people you're sitting next to. This makes every other version of Bomberman better than this one, and Act Zero a candidate for worst Xbox 360 game ever.

Playing Brooktown High, you can't really ever lose, but with so little content to explore and so little reward, you can't really win either.

The presentation is passable, but the gameplay itself is an exercise in pure tedium. The pervasive sense of overwhelming boredom is what really kills it, since a competitive, group-oriented game should ideally be the exact opposite of digital Ambien.

Scant fun portions aside, if Far Cry: Vengeance cost the same as a soft-shell taco, I'd suggest you run for the border. I know Uwe Boll got one of his tentacles on the Far Cry movie license; I'm wondering if he directed this game as a warmup.

The worst flaw, however, is the game-crashing bug that occurs when you talk to a certain character later in the game. How SNK Playmore let this game ship with such a glaring flaw is beyond me.

Everything on offer is either not worth checking out or is better experienced in its original form. As a result, EA Replay fails to justify its existence, much less its $20 price tag.

Although MechAssault: Phantom War isn't necessarily the worst game to ever pop up on the DS, it's pretty close to the bottom of the pile. The poor controls and bland graphics are a far cry from everything that made the original MechAssault game on the Xbox such a success.

The basic design of the game is quite sound and if Piranha Bytes could clean the game up, it might end up becoming a classic. As it stands now, my nightmarish trip through the world of Gothic 3 made me want to send my disc on a one-way trip into an incinerator.

Manages to capture the clunky inapproachability of the d20 rules while keeping none of their underlying elegance, making it tough to recommend it to anyone.

It certainly sounds like an awesome game, but the execution is so terminally flawed in almost every way that a game can be flawed that it isn't worth anyone's time.

If you're that desperate for some new Transformers action, you'd be better off sticking to the console versions. Or better yet, track down a copy of Atari's old PS2 game based on Transformers Armada (sure, the cartoon kinda sucked, but the game was aces). In the meantime, this game should be the first thing to jettison when Astrotrain starts requesting that we lighten our burden.

With the limited variation in modes and the lackluster multiplayer, I simply couldn't justify spending an entire $30 on Tetris Evolution. Especially not when I can get a superior version for my Nintendo DS.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

The Golden Compass isn't the worst game based on a movie, but it's close. It's a combination of uninspired platforming, poorly implemented mini-games and slow and broken storytelling.

It also runs poorly, replete with graphical glitches and technical hiccups that make the game feel shoddy and unfinished. At a moment when so many excellent shooters are on the market and thriving in the multiplayer scene, there's very little incentive to endure something like this.

It also runs poorly, replete with graphical glitches and technical hiccups that make the game feel shoddy and unfinished. At a moment when so many excellent shooters are on the market and thriving in the multiplayer scene, there's very little incentive to endure something like this.

Its uninspired game design feels completely mired in an era that we'd sooner be done with. There's simply no reason to waste your time with it.

If At World's End had standard combat controls, it wouldn't be a great game, but it'd be solidly mediocre. As it is, it's just no fun to play. Even the biggest Pirates fan will quickly grow tired and toss in their "Dead Man's Chest" DVD to watch while they place an ice pack on their shoulder.

A tedious, repetitive brawler with atrocious production.

Despite the enjoyable spell casting, the DS version of Order of the Phoenix simply isn't much fun. It's made even less enjoyable due to the poorly handled control and camera angles.

The graphics are distinctly last-gen, with bland, repetitive environments that feel as slapped together as every other part of this lackluster brawler.

The graphics are distinctly last-gen, with bland, repetitive environments that feel as slapped together as every other part of this lackluster brawler.

We haven't been huge fans of Need for Speed: ProStreet on other consoles, but the Wii version is by far the absolute worst one. It's not even so much the muddy, washed-out graphics (though they are quite awful, even by Wii standards) as it is that a significant number of features seem to have been stripped right out of the game and replaced with a control scheme that is agonizingly frustrating.

The staggering lack of quality apparent in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Elements has left us incredibly disappointed.

More tedious than scary and more frustrating than shocking.

If you're a parent buying this for your kids so that you can save yourself thirty dollars, we can't really blame you. But if you're out of middle-school and decide that this is worth your money you have no one to blame but yourself.

A tragically missed opportunity.

A thoroughly uninspired piece of hack work that gives you plenty of reasons not to buy it. Pick any one you like and save yourself the sixty bucks.

A thoroughly uninspired piece of hack work that gives you plenty of reasons not to buy it. Pick any one you like and save yourself the sixty bucks.

Do yourself a favor and pick up New York Times Crosswords for the DS instead.

Castlevania fanatics will hate the unnecessary liberties taken with their favorite characters, fighting game enthusiasts will abhor the crippling lack of character balance, and everyone should just cross their fingers that the next game to bear this franchise's once vaunted name is put together with a lot more care.

The long and short of this one: Salvation is headed -- like so many hastily churned-out movie tie-ins before it -- to the dustbin of gaming history. Stay away.

Salvation is headed -- like so many hastily churned-out movie tie-ins before it -- to the dustbin of gaming history. Stay away.

KoF12's online play is (to put it mildly) atrocious.

KoF12's online play is (to put it mildly) atrocious.

A pointed lesson to other designers that including co-op, especially local co-op, is a great value-add to even an otherwise totally worthless game.

A pointed lesson to other designers that including co-op, especially local co-op, is a great value-add to even an otherwise totally worthless game.

Since the controls are so clunky, you'll be wobbling to align properly with the criminal in question; so while he's nailing you with bullets, your sole concern is landing one shot.

A clunky, junky licensing disaster.

The in-game fighters are ugly, poorly animated, 3D-rendered sprites that make them look as though all your favorite characters have been replaced by rubber dolls -- and not the good kind.

The play mechanics are literally all wrong. Depth in character building doesn't matter when you wish your character would just take a wrong turn and fall off a cliff and land on some very sharp rocks.

At the least, however, players shouldn't be scolded for anticipating games that are not rushed, boring, and feature broken gameplay that lasts less than the time it takes to watch the film's they're based upon.

Borderline unplayable.

Although the game looks pretty good, it's not enough to hide the title's repetitive gameplay mechanics.

Something that only a true fan could appreciate. If this isn't an indicator to KOEI to let this series move on to greener pastures, I don't know what is.

Having unlocked doors relock themselves if you move too far off-screen is kind of lame, and having a platoon of laser-firing stormtroopers materialize out of thin air around your character is really lame.

To celebrate his fifteenth anniversary with such a lackluster product is upsetting to say the least. For shame, Sega. This doddering version of Sonic the Hedgehog has an appointment with the glue factory for sure.

Compared to most wrestling games, the movesets here have been whittled down to almost nothing. The basic attacks are almost all simple strikes that quickly become half-hearted combinations (punch, punch ... kick!) for button mashers.

This moral ambiguity is one of NARC's biggest selling points, but it's also one of the game's biggest flaws. No matter how far you cross the line, you're never beyond redemption.

So much presentation and bulked up features, with nothing of substance underneath.

At its best moments, mediocre. At its worst, it's redundant, unforgiving, and glaringly ugly. You simply have no time to be messing around with this sort of game.

Instead of picking this up for your next party, I suggest snagging a few good CDs or maybe "Trivial Pursuit"... hell, even pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey is more fun.

There is only one game where I've ever skipped areas I wanted to explore due to not wanting to deal with the camera. This is it.

The camera is manually controlled, which means it's completely out of control when you're moving vertically, near buildings, or want to actually attack a foe.

25 to Life is almost like a dirty joke -- You're laughing at how bad it is and feeling guilty at the same time. Don't waste your time or money on this game, it'll make your think-bone hurt.

Avoid it like the plague, and hope that if we're all in for a trilogy, the next episode sees the heroes-in-a-half-shell pursuing an adventure that's not nearly as half-baked.

The game's abysmal controls and moronic A.I. fail to deliver.

While the multiplayer options are moderately enjoyable, only the youngest of gamers will find themselves with any longevity.

While Final Fight: Streetwise isn't broken to the point of being completely unplayable, it is absolutely not worth your time.

You want 50's music? Buy a CD. Grab a DVD if you want to see the guy move. But if you want to pretend to be Curtis Jackson, take your fifty bucks out to a paintball range and let someone drill you nine times. It'll be a better experience than this.

Overall, it's just a confusing, poorly conceived product that should set off a consumer's "money grab" senses.

The presentation is passable, but the gameplay itself is an exercise in pure tedium. The pervasive sense of overwhelming boredom is what really kills it, since a competitive, group-oriented game should ideally be the exact opposite of digital Ambien.

This isn't really a fun toy, either, but more like one of those Fisher-Price "busy boxes" for young kids: Hit a button and it makes a noise; turn this knob and listen to the Pikachu say its name, etc.

While a fleshed out narrative for each character would be a bit far reaching, what the Adventure mode amounts to is little more than a series of mini-games that are repeated ad nauseam for under an hour per character.

Daggerdale comes across as a careless and sloppily executed venture. Even if such problems are eventually addressed, this rigid and uninspired quest is little more than an adequate adventure, legendary namesake be damned.

I could go on with this litany of problems: random peasants that incessantly block the placement of structures, a ridiculously shallow tutorial, stability problems – but there's no need. Stronghold 3 is a very bad game that simply feels like it was hurriedly cobbled together and released with a minimum of testing.

Sure, it's a bargain-priced gore fest and I guess that means we're not supposed to expect a lot -- but Hell's Reach will underwhelm even the most jaded gamers. It just isn't very much fun.

The Doctor Who Cloned Me does at least include four new maps for the generally entertaining multiplayer modes, but no one seems to be playing them online, so they're pretty lonely -- and that situation isn't going to get any better when people hear what a waste of $10 this DLC is.

With apologies to The Little Mermaid, perhaps third-person shooters aren't one of those things that's "much better, down where it's wetter, under the sea."

More than most other genres, if an adventure's core narrative foundations aren't solid enough to carry the rest of game, everything else is meaningless -- and Yesterday's is a story built on matchsticks and marbles. To play it is to see it come crashing down.

It's out and it costs money, despite being far from ready for prime time. Even as a quirky indie release with a budget price, Orion asks for too big a leap of faith that it'll eventually work out.

I occasionally caught glimpses of a competent simulation underneath the bugs, poor instruction, and rage-inducing interface, but not even the best of today's strategy games would be tolerable to play if subject to the malfunctioning saves, crashes, and sloppy presentation of Port Royale 3.

It feels painfully slow on the PC, and the controls are better-suited for a mobile touchscreen than a mouse and keyboard combo. It even manages to lose a feature in the translation, which is stunning given how much more powerful the PC is than, say, the iPad. Throw in the fact that it has little to nothing to do with the series proper, and it becomes impossible to recommend this spinoff, even to the most dedicated Total War fans.

While it's still easing you into the pain to come during the first couple of hours, you can catch a glimpse of the good game this should be in the absence of draconian micromanagement and unfulling base building. It's especially apparent in the multiplayer mode (provided you can finish without a crash), where you might even have fun battling it out in Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag (er, dragon) in the shared dungeon that smartly keeps each player's base inviolate.

This port is shameful!

Everything you never wanted in an RPG -- an awkward and tedious mess.

The 400+ hours of gameplay is a disability if anything, for if you desire to play more than a couple dozen hours you have a stronger constitution than I do or are a glutton for punishment.

Unfortunately, it's a mostly uninspired affair, trying to blend several easy-listening game styles, but ultimately never quite hitting the right notes.

If I didn't know any better I would say the developer purposely sabotaged this one in order to make the Xbox look bad.

Then there's dreadful and horrific messes (but cheap!) rubbish like Operation Blockade an "action" title that fails pennypinching gamers in so many ways it throttles the mind.

Apologies go out to all the perverts out there, you're going to be disappointed too...an adventure game that's woefully short on the adventure based on a pornographic comic book character that doesn't get pornographic.

Buggy, broken, and nigh unplayable. All the mistakes committed by earlier games in the category are present in Dirt, but they're magnified exponentially by the game's technical flaws.

As a game, though, Celebrity Deathmatch dies a faltering and unfunny death.

A bunch of pointless hand-waving in a half-hearted attempt to pawn off a ponderous spreadsheet as a game.

"But it's a great drunken party game!" some will scream. I'm sorry, but it's far too complicated and asinine for intoxicated people to grasp. It took me forever to reach unobstructed FMV toplessness, and I was sober.

Unless you absolutely must look at a cartoon character while you chat, there's no reason to buy Ping Pals. Otherwise, just stick with "PictoChat."

Restricted Area could have nicely filled the underused niche of the sci-fi action-RPG, but the bugs, boring level design, and tedious pathfinding combine to make the game a miserable chore.

Conquest is frustrating because a true update to the original series with modern design elements and sharp graphics would be a welcome sight for any real-time strategy fan. To drop this game on the public is a low blow to anyone who remembers the old game.

So let's see - we've got a poor driving engine, broken crash mechanics, stripped down modes (due to a lack of cars), bugs and some below average audio. Sound like a winner? No. If you want to see a quality portable racer, check this title out on the PSP.

Luckily, after spending some time with Street Supremacy it's easy to see the loser: anybody who buys this game.

As congenial as it is, there's absolutely nothing to enjoy in Torino 2006. The events are short and dull, the in-game commentary is dreadful and broken, and the atmosphere possesses the exhilaration of a Yanni concert.

If you've played a weapon-based racer before, you've already played something worth going back to before wandering into the budget-priced land of Pocket Racers.

Hour of Victory does stage a mini-assualt on the typical genre formula by offering three different characters. That coup, unfortunately, is put down by the sheer force of mistakes found in every other aspect of the game. Dulled-down graphics, poor framerate issues, and undesirable online play nuke this one.

In stark contrast to my experiences with the console and PC versions of TMNT (not to mention the shockingly awesome GBA version), the DS version managed to disappoint at every opportunity. It wasn't fun for a second and I would strongly caution any gamer tempted to even rent this one.

It's rare that a game releases that is so shockingly incompetent. Online options don't make it any better; they're simply a chance to play a terrible game with other people, in a few innovative modes like "Team Deathmatch." When something this just plain malign comes out, it's cause for a sort of celebration, because every other game will seem better by comparison.

This brain-dead combat is perhaps the worst part of Double Smash. Slowly plodding through the stale levels, fighting the same enemies, and using the same techniques to win grows old almost immediately.

It wasn't fun for a second and I would strongly caution any gamer tempted to even rent this one. The shoddy and confusing storyline will make this game repugnant even to diehard Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans.

There is a special level of Video Game Hell reserved for ROTSS. Simply by existing, it has made the world that much less fun. It's the videogame equivalent of watching your dog being run over, with worse production values.

There is a special level of Video Game Hell reserved for ROTSS. Simply by existing, it has made the world that much less fun. It's the videogame equivalent of watching your dog being run over, with worse production values.

Level design is bland, weapons are bland, control is a novelty at best and irritating at worst. As a free Wii launch pack-in meant to familiarize people with Remote/nunchuk controls, this game might have gotten a pass. Right now the only thing it gets is a big thumbs-down.

It's an offensively bad use of a cherished license, and it's an offensively simple and thoughtless strategy game.

It's an offensively bad use of a cherished license, and it's an offensively simple and thoughtless strategy game.

The gameplay is completely unfulfilling, and the game just doesn't justify it by being funny. The television show's humor was always crass, but the game somehow seems grim and dull.

"But it's a great drunken party game!" some will scream. I'm sorry, but it's far too complicated and asinine for intoxicated people to grasp. It took me forever to reach unobstructed FMV toplessness, and I was sober.

The haphazard implementation of the few good ideas in here, combined with ugly production values, makes looking for any diamonds in this rough a worthless endeavor.

As congenial as it is, there's absolutely nothing to enjoy in Torino 2006. The events are short and dull, the in-game commentary is dreadful and broken, and the atmosphere possesses the exhilaration of a Yanni concert.

Not surprising. There isn't much to play or buy here. Between its obsolete visuals, dead vehicle dynamics, atrocious AI, and deserted multiplayer lobbies, Flatout 3 is a decided waste of time and space.

It's frankly incredible to think that Running with Scissors made fans wait eight years for this. Is the trademark Postal "humor" still there? Postal Dude's frequent remarks about hoping to "kill women and minorities first" say hello. But a lack of freedom, unforgivable glitchiness, and generally terrible design make this a hard sell even for fans of the series.

Really, being boring is Confrontation's greatest flaw. Sure, there's a slew of frustrations, both technical and design, but those are oddly welcome after the tedium of everything else.

It's hard to say how much patches can fix this wreck, because right now its technical issues eclipse everything, to the point where it's barely even a game. But what is there, in the brief moments you can play it before it crashes, does not tie together into a coherent strategy game.

If you like The Simpsons and love skateboarding, you'll still hate this awful game... One of the worst games of 2002.

Shockingly inept... It is, quite literally, the poorest excuse for a video game I've ever had the "honor" of completing.

A horrendous combination of bad gameplay, graphics, character design, and a complete lack of charm. This is an affront to gaming.

So atrocious that it's an insult to the art of game design, not to mention the people who mistakenly purchase it.

How a respected strategy developer like Paradox could've produced a game so broken, cryptic, and unfaithful to the franchise is a mystery. And why Hasbro, who owns the Avalon Hill properties, approved it is beyond explanation.

There's no reason for you to ever play this waste of plastic. Avoid it at all costs.

In condemning this game, I can't help but feel like an opportunistic hunter pouncing on the most pathetic zebra in the herd. But Rogue Warrior is a hobbled, wheezing creature stumbling around so far away from its peers that not going for the jugular could be seen as an act of cruelty.

In condemning this game, I can't help but feel like an opportunistic hunter pouncing on the most pathetic zebra in the herd. But Rogue Warrior is a hobbled, wheezing creature stumbling around so far away from its peers that not going for the jugular could be seen as an act of cruelty.