D3

No laughing matter

HIGH The Cloud Sephiroh fight.

LOW The rest of the game.

WTF Doing a William Shatner impression does not count as a "joke".

Zombies, bikinis and swords, oh my!

 HIGH Going into "Rampage" mode and unleashing a serious can of whoop-ass on a horde of zombies while watching their blood and limbs splatter across the screen.

LOW Wasting too much time trying to execute a "Cool" 12-hit combo before realizing it's insanely impossible for gamers without super-human timing skills.

WTF Where does Aya find the time to wax between all the zombie slaying?

Calling something ‘hardcore' doesn't prevent it from sucking

HIGH Having a robot for a main character is always a perk.

LOW Everything else.

WTF The utter lack of a difficulty curve: it's all just this side of infuriating.

Game Description: In this DS remake of the classic Bangai-O, you take the roles of Riki and Mami and strap into the powerful Bangai-O suit to undertake the task of catching criminals red-handed. Bangai-O Spirits provides gamers with shooter gameplay and punishing supermoves, along with strategic and tactical elements. The game also offers co-op, competitive multiplayerfor 1-4 players via local wireless, and a powerful level editor tool which allows players to edit in-game levels or create new ones from scratch.

Game Description: Dark Sector is a third-person Action/Shooter that thrusts players into a sci-fi flavored nightmare scenario set in the post Cold War era. Playing in the role of Hayden Tenno, an unscrupulous covert operative sent on an assassination mission into Lasria – a fictional Eastern European city on the brink of ruin and rumored to be contaminated by a mysterious and frightening plague, Hayden takes out his mark, but before he can escape is attacked by an unknown enemy. Not killed outright as expected, he is instead infected with the virus that is causing the plague.

Having worked with Dan here at GameCritics for so long, sometimes it feels as though we think with the same brain. More often than not, we champion the same underdogs and see value in titles that others don't. However, there are rare occasions reminding me that as often as we agree, it's still a fact of life that we will occasionally take entirely different positions on things. Case in point: Dark Sector.

Dark Sector is a prime example of great execution elevating a tired premise. A cursory look at the plot: Special Forces Guy vs. Mutants might lead the average gamer to think they've played it before, and they probably have—it just wasn't this great before.