Destructoid

This is one of the worst games I've played in a long time. And it's not necessarily because of the clunky controls, vapid shooting, or myriad of other issues that are at play here. The Expendables 2 Videogame just isn't fun. It's a long and tedious slog through the mud and a thousand enemy corpses, where time is the only thing that separates you from the end credits.

Mario Tennis Open feels a bit lifeless at first, simply because it doesn't give any other incentive for playing than to keep unlocking things and to just play more tennis. Modes from past entries -- especially the RPG mode from the GameBoy Color Mario Tennis -- are sorely missed. With new minigames like "Super Mario Tennis" and many ways to play, Mario Tennis Open will keep players coming back who just want to play a quick few rounds of tennis, unlock new characters and stages, and buy new clothes for their Mii.

Had Deadlight been able to replicate the brilliance of its first third for the rest of its adventure, this would have been a very different review, one hailing the next best zombie game ever made. Unfortunately, a beautiful intro does not a great game make, and the full product is a disappointment to say the absolute least.

Orcs Must Die! 2 is less Half-Life 2 and more Doom 2 when it comes to sequels. Its level design isn’t quite as good as the first, it doesn’t take any bold strides in storytelling -- though the dialogue is consistently laugh-out-loud funny -- but it perfects the original’s formula while adding some welcome additions to the series.

Despite some annoying issues, NCAA 13’s biggest problem is that the core mechanics are simply dulled by the franchise’s repeat performances. Despite the supposed injection of new animations, holdovers from years past take so much of the thrill out of the sport. It’s more of the same. More minor fixes and more problems, both persistent and new.

While the storyline may be a bit hokey and the voice-acting a bit childish, the fun that can be had with the gameplay and smooth easy motion controls just can't be denied. It's the best kind of fun: simple to play, but hard to master. It's a casual motion controlled game that actually works well, and offers up real satisfaction when that control pays off it high scores and massive destruction.

Sorry, I’ll zip it and tuck my enthusiasm back in but I can’t help it. I love these games, which makes it so sad to see Activision and Robomodo tarnish Neversoft’s legacy. An HD upgrade should make a game look and feel as good as you remember it. Instead, Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD made me wonder why I ever liked this series.

The controls could do with a bit of work and I still think that vastly increased challenge either through puzzles or conflict would more appropriately match the tone of the game, but all of these are things I thought after I was done with it. None of them got in the way of the experience. With that said, I'm going to hunt down some whisky.

DiRT Showdown is not a broken game; it's just very slap-dash, seemingly thrown together from pieces of ideas but never made fully whole. Courses repeat over and over and the difficulty never gets too high where events become a challenge, thus leaving the player almost bored with the task of completing each event. It looks nice, but it's clearly a shell of its former self, with no real connections to the series that everyone knows past the name itself.

Oniken isn’t quite the magical pairing of nostalgia and great game design that Mega Man 9 was, but it comes close to scratching that same itch that few other games have done since. If you love 8-bit games and hate yourself, dying repeatedly within Oniken’s six merciless levels brings its own form of joy that is rare in games these days.