Tomb Raider: Legend (PC)
Despite her legacy being sullied by some questionable installments of the series that brought her into being, Lara Croft is certainly a legendary gaming icon. As such, it's a good thing that the appropriately titled Tomb Raider: Legend turned out as it did. Things have changed a lot since the series was birthed in 1996, and what the original developers at Core seemed unable (or unwilling) to realize in the more recent Tomb Raider installments, Crystal Dynamics has delivered with aplomb. Tomb Raider: Legend represents Lara Croft's first solid foray into modern gaming, and has made the series relevant again.
X-Men: The Official Game
If this is Mutantkind's "Last Stand" then Homo Superior has nothing on General Custer.
May 18, 2006 - "I hope the movie is better than this..." was one of the few key phrases that kept cycling through my head as I played along with Activision's terribly under-realized plot bridge, X-Men: The Official Game. It's the epitome of wasted potential and had me wondering aloud such other popular axioms as, "Man, this game is easy! Is that really the only thing my guy can do?" and "What's up with this dummy AI?"
Half-Life 2
Valve delivers its grim science-fiction masterpiece with a first-rate conversion on Xbox.
November 11, 2005 - There are very few times in life when one is able to sit down with a videogame and, over the course of 16 hours, feel waves of wonder, delight, and pure unfettered joy. Valve's Half-Life 2 on PC, and now on Xbox, is such a game.
Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers (DS)
Unlike previous Guilty Gear games, Dust Strikers is a multi-character beat-em-up in the same vein as Jump Super Stars and Bleach DS. The game features four characters on the screen at one time, each of them looking to beat the snot out of each other. Fights are spread out on a four-tier playing field spanning both screens. The setup is very different compared to the aforementioned DS titles, though. Vertically the field is in full view, with two tiers on the bottom and two on the top, but horizontally there wasn't enough space, so there's some scrolling involved when you move laterally.
New Super Mario Bros. (DS)
The release of New Super Mario Bros. is a fairly important one in the history of videogames. Consider this: since the release of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins for the Game Boy in 1992, there has not been a new 2D platform game, the genre that the original Super Mario Bros. helped define, starring Nintendo's beloved plumber.