It's damn hard to talk about video game tennis without bringing up Virtua Tennis, particularly when a game, like Grand Slam Tennis 2, hems so close to that original arcade formula. It's a facsimile that's executed well enough; there just aren't any good reasons to recommend Grand Slam Tennis 2 over the games that it cribs from.

It's damn hard to talk about video game tennis without bringing up Virtua Tennis, particularly when a game, like Grand Slam Tennis 2, hems so close to that original arcade formula. It's a facsimile that's executed well enough; there just aren't any good reasons to recommend Grand Slam Tennis 2 over the games that it cribs from.

It's only at its peak when you're sitting next to another player, locally engaging in SFXT's brand of tag battles. Online, I found it to be a bit of a mess, and the game's attempts at meaningful character customization fall victim to layers and layers of slow-moving menus and a bundle of additional content that only serves to further confuse the issue.

It's only at its peak when you're sitting next to another player, locally engaging in SFXT's brand of tag battles. Online, I found it to be a bit of a mess, and the game's attempts at meaningful character customization fall victim to layers and layers of slow-moving menus and a bundle of additional content that only serves to further confuse the issue.

The game looks marvelous, and it's an impressive effort in this little-seen genre, but the gameplay is wrapped too rigidly around mechanics that feel a bit at odds with one another for me to feel good recommending it wholeheartedly.

Feels like some lost XBLA title from 2006, like it just wandered in from the cold after years adrift at sea, totally unaware of what's happened in the six years that transpired since. Its insubstantial puzzle mechanics and generally bare-bones presentation are the stuff of yesteryear, somehow transplanted into a time that's all but forgotten that games like it ever existed.

Its cooler moments are offset by a long list of missions that aren't engaging at all. You're a man with an ever-increasing list of insane powers, but the tasks you accomplish with those powers are usually pretty ho-hum. Add to all that a script that makes you want to turn the sound down and a dose of awkward control quirks and you've got a run-of-the-mill open-world game.

Its cooler moments are offset by a long list of missions that aren't engaging at all. You're a man with an ever-increasing list of insane powers, but the tasks you accomplish with those powers are usually pretty ho-hum. Add to all that a script that makes you want to turn the sound down and a dose of awkward control quirks and you've got a run-of-the-mill open-world game.

The combat has enough depth and variety to keep you interested for the duration of the story and beyond, but in terms of what might have been, what should have been, Dragon's Dogma falls gut-wrenchingly short.

Capcom built this huge place to run around in but didn't fill it with anything interesting. The saving grace: Capcom's expertise in building robust, customizable, and super fun combat systems pays off.

A third-person shooter that feels caught between doctrines--it's not tactical enough to feel like a deep, strategic experience yet it punishes run-and-gun tactics just enough to prevent fans of those sorts of games from having a great time, either.

The gravity-shifting gameplay offered might be complete enough for game-starved Vita owners on the hunt for something to do with their device. But do manage your expectations, lest you be disappointed by how hollow Gravity Rush is underneath its breathtaking shell. This is a game that does one thing very well. If you need more than that, then Gravity Rush isn't for you.

If the fundamentals were a little more refined or the new ideas a little more fully implemented, I'd feel better about recommending it wholeheartedly, but given the new elements in play here, you can at least take heart that Traveller's Tales isn't resting on its laurels.

The story in Spec Ops: The Line isn't amazing, but the way that it's told really stands out and, in many ways, saves the entire project from being a complete waste of time. But that doesn't make it easy to recommend.

A terrific idea that just doesn't pan out as well as it feels like it should. All the little tweaks and decisions, from level list to the soundtrack to the decisions about which moves to include or exclude eventually start to weigh on the overall experience in a meaningful way. It turns something that should have been a joyous update and revival of a tarnished franchise into something that simply misses the mark.

There aren't many action games in this particular mold to begin with these days, so those with fond memories of Deadlight's spiritual predecessors will likely have a reasonably fulfilling few hours here. Without an existing sense of nostalgia for the source material, though, you may find Deadlight's minor flaws collectively outweigh all the things it does right.

In an age where indie games are finally beginning to bloom as a way to experiment with narrative, Papo & Yo still feels like a brave step forward into uncharted territory. And as with all first steps, it's something of a clumsy one, perhaps unsure of itself and its own limitations.

A game that improves upon the developer's past work. But it's still a pretty lackluster shooter that doesn't perk up until the end, and it's only truly suited for people who are fiending for a Transformers game.

It has the right idea with character-specific abilities that help to make the individual Transformers feel different. But it doesn't go far enough in that direction to stand out, and it ultimately feels like it's being held back by its by-the-numbers shooting. There are some great ideas here, but you'll have to wade through a pretty thick set of drawbacks to enjoy them.

In spite of its misfires and glitches, Madden NFL 13 is a step forward for this franchise. It's a small, clumsy step, but considering how little forward progress this series has made in recent years, any kind of step is a cause for minor celebration. If you can forgive the technical problems and often cumbersome menus, there's a football game worth liking here.

The whole thing is just so gosh darn British, too, which I imagine is less of a selling point if you are British. That pervasive sprinkling of refined, humorous nonsense makes The Journey feel a little more like one worth taking, even when some of its nuts and bolts are less appealing.

The BFG Edition is the best you're going to do right now if you want to buy a new copy of a shooter that, for better or worse, ranks among the most hyped video game releases of all time.

Far from the loving tribute to an important milestone in modern games it could have been, BFG only adds a couple of esoteric technical features and a short, mediocre new campaign add-on to Doom 3, at the expense of some of the core graphics and gameplay features that defined the game's identity on its initial release.

It does all the things that sort of game is supposed to do, but not with the flair or invention that would make it possible to care again about playing something you remember having played so many times before.

Its protagonist is an intriguing one, and her mission frequently teases greatness. But it never quite arrives, due to the developers' inability to marry the "full-fledged" Assassin's Creed gameplay to the Vita's form and function.

Everything about New Super Mario Bros. U is pretty exciting, except the game itself. Is it possible that this is the best game in the "New" series to date--not to mention one of the best exclusive Wii U games on the market, by default--and at the same time kind of flatly uninteresting? Apparently so. The game is perfectly well made for what it is, and I had plenty of fun playing it in short bursts here and there, but at this point the series' by-the-numbers design philosophy is starting to lend the name "New Super Mario Bros." a degree of unintentional irony.

PlayStation All-Stars makes a couple of design decisions that make the whole thing feel a little more awkward than it should. Also, for a game that's supposed to bring together the greatest heroes of the PlayStation platforms, it's missing too many key figures.

Ooo is lovingly rendered here, and the character art and animation is really sharp. Unfortunately, visuals aren't everything, and the actual act of playing Hey Ice King! is something that cannot be ignored.

It's a sharp-looking game, the voice acting is largely on-point and funny (if occasionally obnoxiously repetitive), and there are at least a few solid hours worth of puzzle-solving to be had here. It's just that those hours don't really add up to a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, ultimately relegating The Cave to an interesting curiosity that sadly doesn't have much sticking power.

I'm still glad I saw the Dead Space trilogy through to the end--and if you're invested in the series it's absolutely worth playing--but it's too bad this respectable series, which felt so exciting and fresh when it debuted just a few years ago, had to go out on a middling note.

This final chapter in the trilogy certainly gives you your money's worth in necromorphs waiting to be dismembered, but the overall quality of the game just doesn't feel equal to the high standard set by its excellent predecessors.

It's serviceable and, again, it looks great on the PC, but was this trip really necessary? It's an average experience, overall, and in a genre that continues to be packed full of competition, you'd probably be better off finding a discounted copy of Crysis 2, or, if the open-world combat of the original Crysis really floats your boat, spend some time with Far Cry 3, instead.

The Xbox 360 version is grungy, by comparison [to the PC], with lower texture quality and a lower framerate. That's unsurprising, but when taken against the other games on the platform, the 360 version still looks OK. It's certainly playable, anyway, though a weird audio bug made one of the early open-area segments practically unplayable, since it's hard to know when to take cover and hide from incoming rockets if the audio isn't playing back at all.

This is a game with startling clarity of vision, but that vision often feels narrow and intractable. It knows precisely what it wants to be, and in most key ways, executes on those ideas with precision. But in setting that course, it all but dismisses the way in which many played SimCity sequel after sequel. And while I expect many will fall head-over-heels in love with this SimCity's cooperative design, at its best, the game feels more like a really thoughtfully designed multiplayer mode for a larger, single-player capable game that, sadly, doesn't exist.

There's just enough exposition there to keep things moving and just enough of a gameplay tweak to make you wish they had made these changes two games ago. It's a fun but feature-light shooter for people who already enjoy the basic style of Gears of War. Nothing more, nothing less.

Though it was announced just over two years ago, the end result plays like something that was slapped together and shipped after a year or so, rather than something that was painstakingly developed and refined.

Between the dreary action, the sluggish movement speed, and the seemingly tacked-on multiplayer, you’ll probably want to pass on the whole thing.

Between the dreary action, the sluggish movement speed, and the seemingly tacked-on multiplayer, you’ll probably want to pass on the whole thing.

The game itself isn’t much fun, regardless of the number of players. With its plodding, monotonous pace and scattered presentation, Rocketmen doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the seemingly infinite number of other dual joystick shooters available via Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network.

The game itself isn’t much fun, regardless of the number of players. With its plodding, monotonous pace and scattered presentation, Rocketmen doesn’t do enough to separate itself from the seemingly infinite number of other dual joystick shooters available via Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network.

While the game itself is technically proficient, nothing about the gameplay pushes it above and beyond that base level of proficiency. Its biggest problem comes from a clever premise with poor implementation. There's some replay value here in the multiplayer and the collection of data cells, which unlock the weapons from the campaign in a weapons testing area, but even those can get old very quickly. Once you get past the limited use of the terrain deformation you'll find yourself searching for anything new or exciting in Fracture's take on the sci-fi third-person shooter.

While the game itself is technically proficient, nothing about the gameplay pushes it above and beyond that base level of proficiency. Its biggest problem comes from a clever premise with poor implementation. There's some replay value here in the multiplayer and the collection of data cells, which unlock the weapons from the campaign in a weapons testing area, but even those can get old very quickly. Once you get past the limited use of the terrain deformation you'll find yourself searching for anything new or exciting in Fracture's take on the sci-fi third-person shooter.

Instead of making excuses for Lost: Via Domus, I would just recommend that everyone but the most die-hard of Lost fans take a pass on this one.

Chalk this one up to a valiant, but ultimately wasted effort.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One feels like a relic, like an old arcade game that’s been given a fresh coat of paint, but no additional gameplay depth. Like an old arcade game, it’s fun for awhile, but unless you have nostalgic feelings for, well, the other two Ballers games, you’ll probably get fed up fast.

NBA Ballers: Chosen One feels like a relic, like an old arcade game that’s been given a fresh coat of paint, but no additional gameplay depth. Like an old arcade game, it’s fun for awhile, but unless you have nostalgic feelings for, well, the other two Ballers games, you’ll probably get fed up fast.

Even if you are a hardcore Aerosmith fan, this game's short and spotty track list makes it hard to recommend.

It’s thoroughly unexciting and visually uninspired, but that’s more the fault of TiQal’s place in history. If it had been one of the first puzzle games on the service, it might stand out a bit more. But now, despite its passable gameplay, it’s hard to not just say “wow, they made another one of these?” and move on.

The entire game feels lifeless and old. The presentation fails to capture the excitement of the real thing. The gameplay doesn't match the product it's attempting to emulate. And the layers upon layers of plain-looking menus feel like they were ripped out of a PlayStation 2 launch game.

The entire game feels lifeless and old. The presentation fails to capture the excitement of the real thing. The gameplay doesn't match the product it's attempting to emulate. And the layers upon layers of plain-looking menus feel like they were ripped out of a PlayStation 2 launch game.

Unfortunately, Mr. Driller Online is plagued by a meager selection of gameplay modes and bug-ridden online play that keep it from being worth the $10 price tag.

A game with no originality and not much excitement, either.

As a Mario game, Mario Super Sluggers feels kind of cheap; as a baseball game, it fails to capture the finer points that make the sport interesting in the first place. Its accessibility is probably Mario Super Sluggers' most well-realized characteristic, but what you're getting access to simply isn't much fun.

Here in our dimension, though, Target: Terror came out to today’s arcades: empty, lifeless places full of the damned and people who just don’t know any better.

If Conquest is indicative of the level of quality and care the company is willing to invest in LOTR-themed games, maybe it's time for them to let someone else give it a try.

As with the original Skate, Skate It manages to feel authentic and it comes with some sharp ideas. But the game's presentation and control just don't pan out, and it seems like a game that'll frustrate players more often than not. If you're a Skate fan looking for what's next, do yourself a solid and wait for Skate 2.

There’s a real lack of enemy variety, as well.

There’s a real lack of enemy variety, as well.

If you're just comparing it to other action games released on the Wii, The Conduit does some interesting things with its control and with its multiplayer modes. But other aspects, like the poor story, bland design, and awful voice acting, would be just as bad on any platform. It's that stuff that drags The Conduit down into an area where it's tough to recommend without providing a boatload of caveats.

Soul Calibur gets the fighting right, but without online play or the single-player mission mode that made it fun to play alone, this XBLA re-release is a flimsy package.

I'll admit that my fondness for Need for Speed Most Wanted colored my expectations for Need for Speed Undercover, but this game's general failure as a racing game ends up being so significant that its inability to recapture the fun of Most Wanted in particular is kind of a moot point. There's no shortage of street racing games on the market right now, and there's simply no room for a game that can't nail down some of the basics.

Humor is entirely subjective, and maybe some of the stuff I found to be a little easy and dull will get you going. However, I'm a lot more certain about the quality of Matt Hazard's gameplay, which almost feels like it's going out of its way to be mediocre at best. Hey, maybe that's part of the joke!

Humor is entirely subjective, and maybe some of the stuff I found to be a little easy and dull will get you going. However, I'm a lot more certain about the quality of Matt Hazard's gameplay, which almost feels like it's going out of its way to be mediocre at best. Hey, maybe that's part of the joke!

You have to wonder how something like this makes its way onto shelves as a full-priced product. Though there's some sort of ironic fun to be had by cruising through the short campaign and listening to Mickey Rourke shout obscenities, it's practically impossible to wring $60 of excitement out of this disc.

You have to wonder how something like this makes its way onto shelves as a full-priced product. Though there's some sort of ironic fun to be had by cruising through the short campaign and listening to Mickey Rourke shout obscenities, it's practically impossible to wring $60 of excitement out of this disc.

The focus on occasionally tough boss fight patterns and cutscenes goes a long way in making Ninja Blade feel old.

With faster and more responsive controls, a better multiplayer framework, and a smoother character progression system, this one could have been surprisingly competitive in its category. But with so many problems holding it back, Lost Planet 2 is hard to recommend against all the other great shooters already out there.

In the end, it's the price that serves as Brain Age Express: Math's biggest enemy. At 800 points, this slice of Brain Age is nearly half of the retail price of Brain Age or Brain Age 2, both of which would be a more valuable purchase than this downloadable edition.

It's another bad top-down multiplayer shooter on a system that already has more than enough of the same.

You're left with the impression that the single-player was an afterthought and that multiplayer was the focus. But even the multiplayer is saddled with enough flaws to make this game missable.

Fancy whiz-bang 3D effects wouldn't do much to rescue the clunky, mundane action here anyway.

Re-Shelled is stuck in this weird in-between place where it does no nostalgic service to the original game but also fails to bring anything new whatsoever to this simplistic genre.

Though it has two campaigns and a healthy array of maps for skirmish and multiplayer, Command & Conquer 4 feels like it's missing about half-a-game's worth of content. There are some neat ideas in play, but the action itself isn't strong enough to make it all work, and the cutscenes aren't good enough to make you forget that the game isn't all that hot.

Imitation is an open invitation for comparison, and while it's mostly competent from a technical perspective, it's all very rote.

A boring dual-joystick shooter that lacks the speed and intensity that the best games in the genre all share. Throw in a generic zombie theme and you're left with something that feels like it'd be a neat free Left 4 Dead mod. As a standalone commercial product, though, it's lacking at every turn.

A boring dual-joystick shooter that lacks the speed and intensity that the best games in the genre all share. Throw in a generic zombie theme and you're left with something that feels like it'd be a neat free Left 4 Dead mod. As a standalone commercial product, though, it's lacking at every turn.

While it doesn't carry the weight of a Pac-Man or a Donkey Kong, the core gameplay works well enough that it's easy to see how it could be remade in a flashy new way that appeals to the digital download crowd. But QIX++ is a short, dull take on the Qix formula that won't rope in new players or satisfy aficionados.

Everything in the Underdome is a total hassle, and that gets old fast. That you don't gain any experience points or build up more weapon proficiency while in the arenas only makes a bad situation worse, and it makes the entire experience feel pretty pointless.

It's a clever idea, but the mechanics of this high-damage fighting game don't lead to a lot of interesting depth, making it all fall flat.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair has some neat ideas, but a lot of it's hidden behind a bevy of poorly explained menus and user-unfriendly mechanics. The expectation that you'll grind your way through the six chapters over and over again, only to do it all over again in hard mode is kind of ridiculous, and there just isn't enough of a reward there to make all of that grinding feel like anything other than, well, a grind.

It'd be a really cool game that would actually be pretty easy to recommend if there were a little more to it. While there are definitely aspects of the game that are very much worth seeing, the game's lack of content (and potentially severe Xbox 360 issue) make it tough to recommend as a full-priced purchase.

Warriors of Rock offers a minor facelift but ignores the sagging infrastructure, and it's not a direction that holds much of a future for Guitar Hero.

I enjoy playing around with all the different creation and storyline-focused options in these titles, but when I actually find myself presented with the concept of wrestling, my enjoyment disappears in a cloud of disappointment. There was a time when this gameplay design worked, and that time was years ago.

Nevermind these heightened expectations, though: even on its own merits, Epic Mickey is a platformer that feels about a generation behind, though one with just enough flashes of inspiration to keep you constantly aware of its wasted potential.

But it doesn't matter how slick a game like this looks if the action isn't on point. Housemarque has proven in the past it clearly has the chops to make great shooters, but it doesn't feel like that skill was fully brought to bear on this one.

The game's combat feels limp, the quest design is immediately monotonous, and the whole package manages to make being a superhero or villain feel like the most mundane thing in the world. Considering the game's "everyone's a hero/villain" plot, I suppose that makes perfect sense.

It's a fax-machine quality retread of such startling inanity that, at a point, you might actually find your fond memories of Mario sports games past overwritten by this blur of dispassionate mediocrity.

The structure of the game is decent, but it's brought down by issues both large and small. The largest one is a simple lack of content. With eight maps, a lackluster arsenal, and a campaign mode that is, by default, populated with terrible AI-controlled bots, Brink just doesn't have enough going for it to justify a full-price purchase.

If you're not willing to play a sloppy, cobbled together first-person shooter just because it has some kind of weird historical meaning, though, just forget this ever happened and move on. It's great, in some ways, that Duke Nukem Forever was released at all. But don't be confused into thinking that it's a great game.

If you're not willing to play a sloppy, cobbled together first-person shooter just because it has some kind of weird historical meaning, though, just forget this ever happened and move on. It's great, in some ways, that Duke Nukem Forever was released at all. But don't be confused into thinking that it's a great game.

If you're not willing to play a sloppy, cobbled together first-person shooter just because it has some kind of weird historical meaning, though, just forget this ever happened and move on. It's great, in some ways, that Duke Nukem Forever was released at all. But don't be confused into thinking that it's a great game.

Whether you preferred the original F.E.A.R. or its sequel, F.E.A.R. 3 plays to the strengths of neither, almost feeling like a multiplayer spin-off that was begrudgingly upgraded to full-on sequel. There's a categorical compulsion here to play it safe, a mistake that even F.E.A.R. might not be able to return from.

If I wanted to play the Mercenaries game mode, why would I pay $40 for this handheld version when I could ostensibly get both Resident Evil 4 and 5 for way less? The gameplay in Mercs 3D has been competently recreated on the handheld, but it's all to recreate an experience that is done (mostly) better and way cheaper on other platforms.

It's as if it was plucked from the earliest days of downloadable gaming, back when digital games often relied more on single-minded gimmicks than the fully fleshed-out concepts of late, and $10 seemed like such a great deal for any game you could play with buttons on a console. That era has long since passed us by, and we're better for it.

The fundamental flaw with Insect Armageddon is that is simply doesn't capture the sheer scale and explosive chaos that made its Japanese predecessor so memorable. Couple that with a shooter backbone that's too simple and too repetitive to rope in fans of the genre and you're left with Insect Armageddon, a game that will fail to entice either fans of the genre or the series.

The fundamental flaw with Insect Armageddon is that is simply doesn't capture the sheer scale and explosive chaos that made its Japanese predecessor so memorable. Couple that with a shooter backbone that's too simple and too repetitive to rope in fans of the genre and you're left with Insect Armageddon, a game that will fail to entice either fans of the genre or the series.

Catherine's limited character interaction, shallow characters, and monotonous puzzles combine to form a unique experience that feels frustratingly limited in every respect.

Catherine's limited character interaction, shallow characters, and monotonous puzzles combine to form a unique experience that feels frustratingly limited in every respect.

Given how loveably other classic arcade fighters have been treated recently, the problems and omissions make Arcade Kollection nothing but depressing. These games deserve better.

Given how loveably other classic arcade fighters have been treated recently, the problems and omissions make Arcade Kollection nothing but depressing. These games deserve better.

A twitchy, mindless experience filled with weak firearms, poor enemy behavior, bland environments, and multiplayer combat that you wouldn't find acceptable in a $15 downloadable shooter.

A twitchy, mindless experience filled with weak firearms, poor enemy behavior, bland environments, and multiplayer combat that you wouldn't find acceptable in a $15 downloadable shooter.

Top to bottom, this game feels rushed, a supposition backed up by Silicon Knights' history of protracted development cycles, from which X-Men: Destiny did not benefit. While politics of why that's the case, as well as speculation on the impact more time and money would've had on the game, are ultimately irrelevant to the game's failures as they are, it's not that hard to see how it could've been something great.

Save for some occasionally witty banter, this generally generic brawler is too concerned with the window-dressing of time-travel to capitalize on Spider-Man's character, abilities, or mythology.

The Just Dance series feels like it's headed in the right direction with Just Dance 3, but it still has a long way to go. If you were satisfied with the Just Dance experience on the Wii, and you find the soundtrack to Just Dance 3 appealing, you probably won't be disappointed. But you should know that you can do better.

It squanders its terrific concept by saddling it with poor handling, insanely inconsistent off-road and crash behaviors, and straightforward, race-only multiplayer that isn't good enough to keep you coming back. If you want to play this type of light, arcade-like driving game, stick to last year's Hot Pursuit.

It squanders its terrific concept by saddling it with poor handling, insanely inconsistent off-road and crash behaviors, and straightforward, race-only multiplayer that isn't good enough to keep you coming back. If you want to play this type of light, arcade-like driving game, stick to last year's Hot Pursuit.

THQ wants you to pay $7.00 for eight missions and a handful of mostly meaningless unlockables. That's just crazy.

No amount of perfunctory challenge maps can make up for a game design so functionally lazy, so utterly indifferent to your enjoyment, that it can't even be bothered to make its lone gimmick work even slightly well within its hacked-together world. If the developers in charge of NeverDead didn't care enough to make it a remotely enjoyable experience, why should you care enough to bother with it?

I Am Alive is extra disappointing because it has so much potential right up front, and then wastes no time squandering all of it. Its premise is exciting but its promise goes wholly unfulfilled, and at some point you've got to stop lauding a game's good ideas and think about how much you actually enjoyed playing it.

Killing the combat system that made this franchise so enticing, and robbing it of any modicum of challenge was so far beyond what was necessary that it leaves Ninja Gaiden 3 feeling like little more than a stripped-down husk of its former glory. If the previous Ninja Gaiden games were like carefully built, brutally fast hot rods, Ninja Gaiden 3 feels like it should be up on bricks on somebody's lawn.

It has a criminally low number of courses that have all appeared in previous Ridge Racer games, no interesting career structure whatsoever, a new car customizing feature that somehow manages to make the "machines" feel less unique, and a bunch of music that also appeared in the old games. You'd have to be extremely hard up for any form of ridge racing for this to add up to something worth purchasing.

There are a few glimmers of what could have been in here, but this is not the game that legitimizes Kinect as a game-playing device, nor does it do a single thing to restore any vibrancy or value to the Star Wars license. Fans of Star Wars, Kinect hopefuls, and little kids all deserve better.

It can't even craft a halfway competent action game out of the myriad things it stole from much better action games.

That's pretty much the whole of Game of Thrones. Sad dialogue, combat, sad dialogue, combat, sad dialogue, more sad dialogue, something outright horrifying happening, sad combat, and so on repeated in varying orders for a bit more than 20 hours.

This is most definitely a lazy, slapped together, overly expensive waste of time that nobody need bother play. And yet, for some bizarre reason, all I could think about while playing The Expendables 2 was that it didn't have to be this way.

I enjoyed it in spurts, but there's just too much wrong here to hold your attention for long. As amusing as it can be, it's really just a janky wrestling game with avatars stapled on for maximum stupidity.

Resident Evil 6 is a big-budget disaster on the order of the Star Wars prequels, a sprawling production that clearly required so many individual talents to bring it into being, you can't help but wonder how the end result could have turned out so bad.

The idea of an anthology-like tribute to Bond films of the past isn't a bad one, but 007 Legends wastes whatever potential for fun there might have been. Instead, all Bond fans are left with is a heavily rewritten, Cliff's Notes version of some great (and not-so-great) films with a bunch of forgettable shooting and stealth sequences shoved into the mix. Ultimately, nothing 007 Legends offers is worth the effort of trudging through it.

If I'd come out of Dead Island with a burning desire for more Dead Island, Riptide would go down a lot easier, but since that original game started out strong and just got weaker as it wore on, playing through another 15 hours of almost exactly the same thing, when the first one already felt like more than enough, instead just becomes a tiresome exercise.

There are glitches and other unfortunate quirks to talk about, but those problems barely register over the din of utter mediocrity that pervades so much of Star Trek: The Video Game's campaign. Outside of a horrid, poorly-explained turret sequence in which you (barely) pilot the Enterprise in battle, there is scarcely an acknowledgment anywhere in this game that Star Trek fans might want to do something other than just run around and shoot aliens. Such a concept ultimately belies the very point of Star Trek in practically all of its many incarnations.

Velvet Assassin has a neat premise, but I knew before the second mission was over that I never wanted to play it again. It's just too repetitive, frustrating, and archaically designed to make it recommendable even to diehard stealth fans. The genre has evolved, and Velvet Assassin didn't keep up.

It's slightly less offensive as a Fable II preorder bonus, but it comes nowhere near justifying its 800 point ($10) asking price.

Instead of trying to wrap my mind around this troubling cash grab, I'm going to move on and do my best to forget about Rock Revolution. I recommend you do the same.

Instead of trying to wrap my mind around this troubling cash grab, I'm going to move on and do my best to forget about Rock Revolution. I recommend you do the same.

It's unsurprising that developer TikGames is primarily known for cell-phone games and casual Flash-type stuff, because that's exactly what Interpol: The Trail of Dr. Chaos feels like. This is exactly the kind of simplistic, disposable, and completely charm-free junk that Microsoft shouldn't be clogging up Xbox Live Arcade with.

It's hard to complain too much about something that's only selling for two bucks, but Master of Illusion Express: Funny Face feels like the sort of thing that would normally be a free demo designed to entice people into picking up the full package.

The execution is such a miserable failure that it manages to splash even more mud on Tony Hawk's legacy. I'm left with a firm belief that whichever side of the Tony Hawk/Activision partnership has the out clause in the contract should just exercise it and part ways for good. Enough is enough.

The execution is such a miserable failure that it manages to splash even more mud on Tony Hawk's legacy. I'm left with a firm belief that whichever side of the Tony Hawk/Activision partnership has the out clause in the contract should just exercise it and part ways for good. Enough is enough.

Every little thing about it, from the bland presentation to the dead-simple gameplay, conspires to make the final product incredibly lame. It has the depth of a bad downloadable game with the price tag of a full-on retail release. It's the worst of both worlds. And now you know.

Every little thing about it, from the bland presentation to the dead-simple gameplay, conspires to make the final product incredibly lame. It has the depth of a bad downloadable game with the price tag of a full-on retail release. It's the worst of both worlds. And now you know.

After some serious consideration, I cannot come up with a single good reason why someone would buy PowerGig: Rise of the SixString. Even morbid curiosity is hard to justify.

What awaits you is not the heat of intense competition, but the icy, soulless embrace of computer opponents who bend and react with all the humanity of a game of electric football. How pathetic is this? The iPhone version, which is less than a quarter of the cost of the version found on this new-fangled device, has multiplayer capabilities. Chew on that one, and tell me it isn't a little salty.

I went and played Final Fight again, and was reassured that no, old beat-'em-ups are fine. It's just Lucha Fury that's miserable garbage.

All of this misery for $50 a pop. An hour and a half of busted-ass light gun shooting that barely masks the deplorable PR message underneath. In effect, buyers of Blackwater are paying for propaganda. They're handing over money to a shady group of alleged killers for the privilege of being told that these guys aren't shady or killers or anything to that effect.

I'm comfortable in saying that South Park: Tenorman's Revenge is a gigantic middle-finger extended in the direction of anyone who might actually want to enjoy a game featuring the myriad memorable characters and storylines of South Park in video game form. And because of all of that, I'm completely comfortable declaring that you should stay the hell away from South Park: Tenorman's Revenge.

It's designed in such a way that only pixel-perfect aiming and split-second responsiveness will get you through its missions unscathed, but your ability to react quickly and take in your surroundings is so severely compromised that you'll die, repeatedly, in each attempt.

A disjointed mess of meaningless missions played against a clock backed up with a multiplayer mode that occasionally approximates something that resembled proper Call of Duty combat. More often, though, the game feels too small to be entertaining, with maps so tiny that you'll literally spawn with an enemy in your crosshairs... or vice versa. This would be a questionable purchase at traditional downloadable pricing. But at $50? No way.

If you're the sort of person who doesn't inherently find the concepts of greased-up deaf people, Amish people commenting on their sex lives, older women grotesquely demanding group sex from frat boys, people in wheelchairs falling over, or "the gays" completely hilarious, do not get angry at Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse.

Both functionally broken and creatively bankrupt, Aliens: Colonial Marines is an extinction-level disaster.