I don't spend nearly enough time with beat-em-ups and I'm probably a worse person for it, but even I love Final Fight. Then again, everybody loves Final Fight. It's just one of those ideas that's perfect, even on paper. You and a friend choose ripped city mayor Haggar, ninja Guy, or generic white dude Cody and take to the streets, smashing your way through the population of a small nation. What's not to love? What more could you need?

I'll admit it. I was skeptical when I heard of Spy Hunter, developers had been butchering arcade classics since back in the PS1 days. Frogger? Tedious platformer with atrocious controls. Contra: Legacy of War? Dull action game with awkward controls. Galaga: Destination Earth? Contender for the title of most monotonous shooter ever, and I payed for Shienryu with fucking money. I'm not sure why I even bought the game, really. I guess I was young, dumb, and stupid. But it worked out for me in the e...

Not to make excuses, but I somehow doubt that any of the issues I've mentioned—the sometimes less than brilliant story, the shift away from gameplay toward the end, the lack of challange—will be a surprise or an issue to any long-time fan. And those long-time fans were clearly Kojima Productions' target audience for this one.

Talk of Devil May Cry being a Resident Evil sequel may seem less ridiculous in light of the fairly slick RE4, but even then it's a bit of a stretch. It's tough to imagine that the game was originally set to be a slow trek through cramped corridors, or that its arsenal of shotguns, pistols, and grenade launchers would have limited and carefully rationed ammo, or that its sword-toting antihero Dante might have been caught wielding a puny knife. More than anything, I can't picture him obeying those...

Twilight Princess' design is often so well thought-out that I have to wonder why Nintendo gave it much of a story at all. Link is transformed into a wolf the very first time he pokes his head into Hyrule Castle, and it's a fantastic moment simply for how wrong everything is. Prison guards are noticably absent from the jails, and would seem absent from the sewers as well were it not for the beast's heightened senses--instead, their spirits can be overheard fearing for their lives due to demons th...

It may not be your cup of tea if you're a fan of manic action games like Devil May Cry, but if you don't mind the idea of leisurely capping people from afar then it's definitely worth a shot.

There are big alienss, and there are big guns; I wouldn't have it any other way.

Muscular, axe-chucking barbarians twice the height of poor Sam... zombified businessmen with shotguns... football-outfitted dinosaurs that sport manly tackles and downright explosive passes... and they'll all be attacking you by the dozen!

I love Guilty Gear as much as the next guy, but there's just something more viscerally thrilling about actually flying across the room and knocking some poor sap in the gut rather than just watching your fighter of choice do it from the side.

The rest of it rules, save possibly the atrocious vocals in the background music (TO TAKE ME DOWN YOU MUST FIGHT LIKE A MAN!), but the lacking opposition is a flaw that can't possibly be understated. Most every battle in the original was refreshing thanks to the constantly-changing yet consistently-excellent lineup of monsters; in stark contrast, I was almost bored with many of this one's fights by the time I'd worked my way through a few hours of "guy with scythe".

Fortunately, the gameplay takes itself about as seriously, featuring diverse wackiness ranging from haddocks that flop about inside of your doom sphere to innocent bystanders that run away screaming as if they'd just seen Godzilla. Who knows, maybe they did... you just never know what's inside your katamari!

A wooden puppet master whose chamber is lined with several iron maidens for you to be trapped in and a clawed wall-hopper eerily reminiscent of Street Fighter 2's Vega are two of the many highlights within Dawn's impressive bestiary.

Even thinking about the genre-defining Thunder Force IV was more exciting than playing this, the most forgettably average vertical shooter ever created.

I can't copy-paste on Dreamcast so no excerpt for you. Just click the review out of pity spawned by the fact that I am, in fact, typing this review on a Dreamcast.

Halo can match the scale of its battles, and Doom 3 can copy as many of the tricks as it wants, but no game since Doom II has struck a perfect balance and I doubt that any other game ever will.

Metal Slug 5 is certainly worth playing through a couple times for the splendid sightseeing, and once again after that for the stupendous boss battles; as a fraction of a larger compilation, it'd be great. As the saving grace of a $40 "collection" containing only it and the prosaic Metal Slug 4, however, it comes up a bit short.

With the exception of a crate here and a computer there, not a single aspect of the original's outdated design has been altered; you can execute far more complex maneuvers now than you could during MGS1 Snake's hide-and-seek antics, but does it matter?

From your very first encounter with a narrow warship to the nondescript battle station that kicks off your last hurrah, there's a distinct lack of anything noteworthy, let alone inspired.

It's easy to lose yourself in the game's enormity, frustrated at your inability to find the deviously hidden final tags or even simply at the fact that you have to backtrack halfway through all creation to reach them.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Perfect Dark's wicked multiplayer mode, one packed with enough depth and nuance to make bland crapfests like Timesplitters 2's (admit it, you only liked playing as the monkey) squirm. The design is rad; levels such as the glass-intensive Grid, which features two large rooms connected by an elevator and some tight corridors, never fail to amuse, and the weapons fit just as neatly into this as they do the solo campaign.