IGN

NCAA Football 08 is easily improved over a weak effort that was delivered last season. It's on the edge of greatness as well, particularly thanks to a deeper Dynasty mode and inclusion of Campus Legend mode that helps add to the replayability of the title. However, the game still features a number of technical and balancing issues that keep it from being a truly great football game. However, football fans won't be let down by this game, and they should definitely check it out.

Though Overlord borrows a lot from Pikmin, it's still a fairly unique game in its own right. The evil, yet light-hearted, humor and richly detailed world combine for a game that is worth diving into. A few issues with AI and the game's oftentimes confusing linear structure can present a few frustrating and disappointing moments. As is often the case though, the good elements outweigh the bad.

This title is more of an arcade game, though, which could excuse its transparent mechanics to a degree. But for an arcade game to succeed, it really needs tight, fluid methods for moving around, something Lost Planet's often cantankerous controls, even though they're better on PC, can only daydream about.

DiRT is one of the coolest racing games I have ever laid my hands on. Though the framerate is sometimes suspect, there's never been a racing game with this much detail. When you can count every leaf on every piece of brush across a three mile track, that's a major graphical accomplishment ¿ just make sure you have a high-end PC to run DiRT.

Hour of Victory would have been a great Xbox game if released a few years back. But we're on the next generation of consoles now. That means we expect AI that is at least competent and textures that aren't just brown smudges. Hour of Victory is nothing more than a poor knock-off of Call of Duty. It's hardly worth your time. Though, if you don't mind the weak AI and boring level design, you can probably get a few moments of joy from Hour of Victory. Like when you return it to EB for store credit. That sure put a smile on my face.

Order of the Phoenix is a lot like Madden. If you dig football, you'll love Madden, but if pigskin isn't your thing, you might not see what the hoopla is all about. A non-Harry Potter fan is going to look at Order of the Phoenix and only see the flaws -- the music drowns out the dialogue, sometimes Harry has trouble opening doors, and there's a graphical glitch here and there -- but if you know what gillyweed does and you don't have one of the better console versions, you'll enjoy this game.

Though a took a while for it to get to the PlayStation 3, Rainbow Six: Vegas is a great shooter and should be picked up by anyone who's even remotely into tactical shooters. The series' strength has always been its online play, but Vegas manages to bring an engaging single-player experience to the table as well.

The Darkness is a wonderfully gruesome adventure. There are some truly dark and even shocking moments in the story. There's a twist at the end of the first chapter that shook me a bit. And though the story does lose its way and makes little sense towards the end, it's still a fun ride. It's too bad that the AI and gameplay mechanics couldn't be smoothed out a bit more to match the impressive visual presentation.

Thankfully, this only goes on for less than 10 hours, but there's only five levels to walk around and punch in -- that means you're going to be spending tons of time in the same monotonous environments with the same monotonous enemies and using the same monotonous attacks.

For gamers who haven't played Halo 2 yet, the recommendation is a bit more positive, but still somewhat conditional. The pacing and art design have held up well over the years as have the multiplayer offerings. Sadly, the graphics just aren't that impressive any more. Worse yet, the performance issues will keep it from running as well as games that quite frankly look better.