GameCube

There is one thing that all would likely agree on: Capcom has produced a game that may seem like a throwback to halcyon days of yore, when adventurers pointed and clicked their way to the end of a game, but it drips modern style and gun action along with rivers of blood.

On the subject of Echoes, however, Andrew and I couldn't have more diverging opinions. Where he has appreciation and tolerance, I have nothing but impatience and scorn. Simply put, Metroid Prime: Echoes was far and away the most tedious and inspiration-free game that I actually bothered to finish in 2005.

Star Fox: Assault's story is shoot-em-up simple: interstellar cockroaches called aparoids are taking over the universe, and the Star Fox team must take them out. Together with old friends Slippy, Falco and Peppy—and his sometime-girlfriend Krystal—Fox exterminates the aparoid menace, one planet at a time. It's not exactly Final Fantasy, but so what?

According to the ESRB, this game contains: Fantasy Violence

Game Description: Star Fox Assault brings back the classic space-combat action with an all-new adventure! After saving the Dinosaur Planet in their last adventure, the Star Fox team is sent to face a new menace. But when a standard combat mission takes a strange turn, the team finds themselves fighting on land and on foot, for the first time ever. Help Star Fox survive this new adventure! Incredible graphics make you feel like you're really there, battling for an alien planet.

I'll have to admit that I approached Warrior Within with a great degree of hesitancy. I was absolutely head-over-heels in love with the first game, and I still view it as one of the greatest revivals of the current (and soon-to-be-over) era.

Okay, in my defense, I didn't realize that it was a children's game. I can't say whether it's a testament to Lego's enduring popularity as the world's greatest toy, or my own fundamental lack of maturity, but when I first looked at the box on the videogame store shelf, it didn't occur to me that Lego Star Wars could have possibly been made for anyone other than me specifically.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Violence

That little has changed in two years is a testament to how excellent the core ingredients of Prime were in the first place. The map is still flawless, as is the first-person platforming, as are the camera transitions, etc.