IGN

The open world design of Burnout Paradise has its advantages and disadvantages. While you're afforded a welcome degree of freedom when it comes to completing challenges and roaming around, some of the more structured content can become repetitive after extended play sessions, and there's a definite learning curve associated with getting to know how the world's various avenues lock together. If you're willing to put in the time, there's plenty of content here to enjoy, including getting a handle on how all the various car models control and boost.

On face value, Savage Moon looks like it would be an incredible tower defense game: a large space battle where you're fighting against bugs with powerful turrets &#A;rray; how could it go wrong? Well, with strategy that can be easily exploited, turrets that don't track your enemies perfectly, and other issues, Savage Moon starts to quickly fall apart. While the inclusion of Vengeance mode adds a level of replayability, you'll have to fight your way through a lot of strategy problems to enjoy it. It's still a decent game, but expect a lot of frustrating flaws along the way.

Killzone 2 is a landmark achievement. Guerrilla has pushed the boundaries of what we've seen on PlayStation 3 by creating an all-action shooter that's far closer to the original E3 teaser trailer than we could ever have imagined. It's not perfect, sure, but it's arguably the best FPS on PlayStation 3 and one that is, in this reviewer's opinion at least, superior to Resistance 2.

Killzone 2 is only a short month away from hitting shelves, but the game will definitely be worth the wait. The single-player experience is a truly enjoyable campaign across the Helghast home world that will test your skills, particularly on the higher difficulty levels, and the game simply looks phenomenal for a console shooter. But perhaps the strongest segment of the game is the extremely deep multiplayer, which gives seven basic classes with which you can create your own customized super-soldier after performing your class-specific duties.

Perfect World is a beautiful, well made MMO with a few of the seemingly inevitable flaws of the genre. While it offers all the mechanics MMO players have come to expect and allows you to see and do some spectacular things, it suffers from an inconsistent, buggy and obscure UI, an imbalanced leveling system and frequent bouts of quest-induced tedium.

I love the GM aspects of sports games. In fact, I spend more time building the league's best team than playing the actual games. So something like MLB Front Office is exactly the kind of game that appeals to me.

It sucks that Afro Samurai isn't awesome. If you take the plunge and buy this game, there will be times when you'll be playing, having a blast, and think that I'm full of crap. Falling through the air while brawling with Afro Droid while rocking out to some fat beats is an amazing experience, but when you couple that with a piss-poor camera, terrible platforming sections, and cheap/mentally challenged bosses, the end product suffers.

It's a really fun game that allows you to play it the way you want with a control scheme that is second-to-none at the moment. However, it's far from perfect. The story presentation has issues, the on-foot controls suck and it can feel a little too similar to the first game on the whole. Again though, for all its issues, Skate 2 is still a hell of a lot of fun and anyone into skateboarding titles should look no further for the best thing on the market right now.

In the end, then, Conquest offers much sound and fury but little substance. In terms of presentation and design, it does a pretty good job of evoking the rich universe of Middle Earth, as imagined by Peter Jackson.

There's a distinctive flow and rhythm to DICE's Mirror's Edge, letting you bound across obstacle courses with seemingly inhuman strength and agility. Though the disarm system isn't as immediately accessible as the platform-hopping mechanics, with some practice you'll eventually find you can slide, dash and smash for long, continuous stretches, a thrill reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog's early days.