As the game based off the newest "best movie ever," Wall-E has no real need to be good - kids are going to eat this up no matter what. And if they're lucky, their love of that admittedly fantastic film will overcome the fact that the game itself - a super-kiddie sort of "get from point A to point B" puzzle game - is a rusty bucket of broken-down ideas bolted together.

You work your way through a level by throwing boxes at switches, ...

What’s this? No sooner have we given Hulk a shoeing than another film-based game arrives. Kung Fu Panda seems to have escaped complete badness, probably in spite of itself. The premise is much the same as any of these recent Dreamworks animation fests: lazy talking beast overcomes obstacles to become reluctant but an ultimately charming  hero. Here he’s a dumpy panda – and guess what he’s good at? The ...

Although we're big fans of point-and-tap whodunit games like the Phoenix Wright series, we can't quite get behind private detective Jake Hunter. Detective Chronicles has a ton of potential, but ham-handed presentation and "so simple a baby could do it" hand-holding make this gumshoe seem more like a goofball.

There are three cases for you to play through, all of which involve you going to a crime scene, talking to everyone until you ...

Guitar Hero has been so massively successful for one reason - it's an excellent guitar-playing simulator with classic video game trappings. Guitar Hero: On Tour can't possibly ship with a fake guitar, so it can only simulate Guitar Hero gameplay, not the just-real-enough rock experience. In the transition to DS, it's lost the party game vibe, the friendly humiliation of poorly playing a song you love, even the quasi-pride you get when five ...

Chugging through The Incredible Hulk’s 30 side-scrolling levels is like running through a maze where all the walls are transparent: It looks like you can go anywhere, but really you’re being cordoned down a very specific path. Because while the 360 and PS3 versions of this movie tie-in set you in a city that’s yours to explore and destroy, the DS iteration only creates the illusion of freedom.

The levels are large and ...

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift, the long awaited follow up to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, is nearly everything we hoped it would be. Everything we loved from Tactics Advance is intact, with lots of little improvements sprinkled throughout. The grid-based battles are as addicting as ever, with an even wider range of jobs, races and abilities to sink hours into exploring. Like its predecessor, A2 presents a kinder, gentler tactical ...

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Laagard is a very tough game to review simply because it's one of those "love it or hate it" game types: An old school dungeon crawler. There's only a rudimentary story (you're exploring a single, gigantic tree dungeon trying to find the way into a magic, floating castle), there's no character development beyond gaining levels and choosing skills, and its turn-based battles are ...

See if you've played this one: it's a role-playing game with real-time battles and a top-down, slightly angled view (isometric is the big word for it). You're slogging around one dungeon after another, alternately hacking baddies into little bits with handheld weapons or just pummeling them with elemental magic like fire, ice, and the like. Of course it sounds familiar. On the surface, Summon Night: Twin Age is a lot like dozens of ...

It’s a sad fact that puzzle games don’t sell magazines, spawn action figures or have blockbuster movies made about them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though. Without the chance of a hype-tastic viral marketing campaign to boost sales, puzzlers have to work with what they’ve got. They’ve got to play like a dream. Soul Bubbles does just that, but it looks and sounds like a dream, too - a very colourful, ...

The original Space Invaders arcade game is the videogame version of a 78 RPM phonograph record - it's a sacred totem of nostalgia for the veteran generation, but it's so primitive and clunky to youngsters that they feel actual pity for the old guys. That's why it's so great that this reinvention, Space Invaders Extreme, blends old and new into a colorful, hyperactive, deeper than you'd guess shootathon that ...