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".