Day One: After four hours of waiting in queue the first time around, my internet connection dropped and I got kicked out. Then I tried to use the connection at work, got through the queue, only to realize that the file was 9GBs and wouldn't fit on my flash drive.

Day Two: Coughed up $6 for a Fileplanet membership to skip the queues. Six hours later, the file had downloaded completely, minus a few KB, resulting in an unusable file. Presently halfway through my fourth attempt with a few indeterminable hours to go. Guess I'll go get some coffee and work on some other reviews. It's not like I'll be playing Warhammer Online anytime soon.

Dinosaurs don’t need help to be scary. They’re stronger, faster, more resilient, and better hunters than you’ll ever be. That leaves one, powerful weapon that many FPSs frequently ignore – wits.

What makes the invasion of the U.S. different from that of France? Who would fight back, and who would manipulate the situation for personal gain? Instead of seizing the opportunity to dissect the American experience, Spark slapped some fedoras and Brooklyn accents on the scene and called it a day.

How are you supposed to know that a ladder has no bottom end, or that a passage will suddenly collapse upon your skull? You do it, say hello to the reaper, and try again until you get it right.

I would like to know why giant robots roam the streets of 1939, why the rebellious Occupants are battling the empire of Dr. Krone, and most of all, why those rebels trust me without so much as a “hello.” If a stranger popped into my house, the last thing I would do is give him a gun and turn my back.

I wasn’t prepared for such a devastating trip through the portable chop-shop. I only managed to squeeze about four minutes of reckless fun before Untamed and its constricted tracks morphed into an exercise in repetition. There’s a fine line where a game stops being challenging and starts feeling like work.

Like the hard pavement of reality, skate. can be mercilessly unforgiving. My first 30 minutes of bailed grinds incited a vocal rampage that would have made the halls of Def Jam blush. Where some might have seen all the joy of self-flagellation, I saw the second coming of skating games.

Plasma cannons were so utterly devastating to an area that I didn’t have to bother hitting the target. Walls and barricades became momentary nuisances as my squad razed the battlefield. With the plasma cannon’s range I avoided Overwatch and stomped through mission after mission with barely a scuff on my armor.

COD4 is epic in scope and short on time, but brevity can be a powerful tool in capable hands. Over the course of two days, I stormed terrorist bunkers, marched a tank through city streets, and held an entire militia at bay. I was exhausted, and yet, so moved by the climax that I immediately began the battle again.

I was a little scared by the box’s blatant abuse of the word “gnarly,” but let all be forgiven by the image of one woman – Martha Quinn. If you grew up with cable TV, you shouldn’t need an introduction to this illustrious VJ.

Sit back, let the timer run out, and you will still end up with a perfectly presentable dish and one of 68 new recipes for your lack of effort. Doing well gets a good score, but I’m not really the kind of guy who calls up friends to brag about my delightfully moist, and let’s not forget virtual, chocolate cake.

The best way to keep the score rising is to keep your jet-boots burning. As you charge through columns of pads, avoiding a circle of mines, the walls vibrate with a cacophony of multiplier-inducing explosions. You ignore the searing flames that wrap around your hurtling body. You might disintegrate at any second, but you push it to the brink for that next line of pads.

After a scant 15 minutes, Dementium: The Ward withered like an elderly man with erectile dysfunction. What began as a hardcore 1st-person shooter regressed into an atmospheric jaunt through a continual series of empty rooms and hallways.

After 23 years of technological and gameplay advancements, it seems like we finally got a three-dimensional version of Punch-Out! Then again, you can always charge in like a schoolyard runt trying to fend off the bully with a torrent of girlish slaps. That seems to work half of the time.

The mysterious villain of Friend or Foe is harvesting symbiote-tainted meteors, the same type of alien symbiote that created Venom, and housing them inside an army of holographic enemies. Laws of physics be damned, you get to fight holograms.

Without a doubt, Red Faction II is one of the PS2’s most prized first-person shooters, and the plot is only one piece of a memorable experience. The pursuit of the fleeing Sopot will take Alias through government high-rises, into the streets, fortified military bases, and face to face with hundreds of the Commonwealth’s forces.

You might think that tossing 23 playable heroes, dozens of villains, and countless recognizable characters into the same game would be fan-service enough, but some people don’t know when to quit.

With a forebodingly somber score and intricately detailed, pre-rendered backgrounds, Abe’s Oddysee is a sensual luxury, but the gameplay is straight from Out of This World, and just as hard.

Lifeline’s notorious gimmick is the near-complete neglect of the controller. Instead, it relies upon voice recognition through the PS2 headset. Since you are stuck in the monitor room and Rio has the analytical mentality of a first-grader, you have to guide her every move through the space station via vocal commands.

Zombies have had quite the resurgence in popularity lately. And why not? You can beat them mercilessly, chop off their limbs, set them on fire, and generally vent all your frustrations about humanity without feeling a shred of guilt.

Winning and losing should be based on skill and strategy, not a roll of the dice. Although it’s their first venture into the RPG genre, 1st Playable Productions found an intriguing way around this problem, through puzzles and a rich character building system.