IGN

Perhaps that’s what makes Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games on the 3DS so frustrating. While it has some great mini-games, it forcefully limits itself and discards many of the ideas that made its predecessors so good. There are some good elements here though. Acquiring medals, ranking your best scores globally and earning medals can be very addicting. But only half of these games are worth playing. Most are simply shallow attempts at their counterparts, which is more or less what this version of the London Olympic Games ends up being.

It’s impressive that Namco-Bandai has managed to port a full-sized, voice-acted Japanese RPG to the 3DS without sacrificing any of the content from the PlayStation 2 version. But it’s also a six-year-old game that hasn’t aged well in all respects, and if you’re a North American Tales fan, it’s likely to be one you’ve played before. Like all the Tales games, this is a charmer, but it probably won’t be long before it’s outdone by a game that’s actually been made for the platform.

Asphalt Injection is a fun racing game, but it lacks depth, precision, and doesn’t push the Playstation Vita to anything resembling its true potential. Asphalt 6 costs 99 cents in the App Store while Asphalt Injection sports a price tag of $29.99. At its current tier, that’s a steep price for a simplistic racing game that only benefits from tighter controls and more processing power without really washing off the sense it’s a really polished iPhone game.

Army Corps of Hell has a great premise, some intense boss fights, and a fantastic soundtrack. Unfortunately, the repetitious gameplay bogs the experience down, making this a trip to hell that you're not going to want to keep returning to.

Dungeon Hunter: Alliance isn’t as polished as Diablo and lacks the charm of Torchlight. Battling through its varied levels and sorting through mountains of loot is fun, when glitches don’t get in the way. Unfortunately, when it costs $28 more to hack and slash through the adventure on Vita than on Playstation 3, one must question the value of the package. The added Vita elements and the glitches just don’t go far enough.

Like its predecessor from more than 15 years ago, Twisted Metal celebrates an eccentric kind of action that shoves fun down the collective throat of the gaming masses. It includes an enjoyable, challenging single-player campaign and incredible multiplayer support for both on and offline. Twisted Metal only falters when it comes to its storytelling and an occasionally stubborn lock-on system.

I don't mean to sound like I'm being hypercritical of Uncharted: Golden Abyss. The game is great and an impressive launch title for the PlayStation Vita. It's just that the Uncharted series has been known for being a story-driven experience, and Golden Abyss goes in another direction.

Load times could be a bit shorter and I wouldn't mind seeing the price come down, but Lumines: Electronic Symphony is amazing. It's the simple puzzle game we've known for a while coupled with new mechanics like the shuffle block and the Vita's connectivity. It's a fun, addictive title that I won't stop playing anytime soon.

It’s not to say that Little Deviants is a poor game, because it isn’t. It’s a decent piece of (admittedly overpriced) software. And its pretty, vivid graphics and surprisingly catchy old-school inspired soundtrack certainly please aesthetically. But a strong hook doesn’t exist. To earn gold medals in any activity, you have to be virtually flawless in your execution, something that’s frustrating to accomplish on any motion-based control scheme, nonetheless ones that don’t work as well as others.

I love the racing here and I love the variety and detail of each track, but when we look back at ModNation Racers: Road Trip, I think it's going to be clear we were dealing with a launch title. The menus bury the coolest stuff, the touch controls are peculiarly particular, and even though the Vita is a connected device, I feel alone when I play this. If you're looking for a bright and colorful kart racer with good mechanics, ModNation Racers: Road Trip fits the bill, but it doesn't excel anywhere else.