Out of the many computers that fought for control of the market in the 1980's, only two survived.  One was Apple's Macintosh.  The other was an office machine that found new life as a home computer.  Technicians often call it the...   X86 PC

Realizing that video games were a lucrative market, Microsoft finally abandoned its notion that computers would replace game consoles and made one of its own.  This system, based on X86 hardware, became known as the...   XBOX

	GAMES YOU'LL WANT HALO: A stylistic art design not involving giant boobs (a rarity among American first person shooters as of late), characters and a story you'll care about, the best controls ever for a console FPS, and the insane ability to destroy the game's physics engine makes it a must buy for anybody. DEATHROW: A great Speedball clone with lots of swearing and a wealth of gameplay options. One of the biggest surprises on Xbox so far. O-TO-GI: Arguably the best game for the system right now (which will be out here in September thanks to Sega). It's an epic, beautiful mix of Devil May Cry, Onimusha, and Gun Valkyrie's play mechanics. AMPED: Super amazing snowboading game. I'm not kidding. It’s a snowboarding game in the fashion of the overlooked Sega Saturn classic, Steep Slope Sliders. JET SET RADIO FUTURE: Smilebit thankfully simplifies some of Jet Grind Radio's play mechanics (specifically the graffiti) and delivers a faster paced, bigger experience that still stands as the most Japanese experience on Xbox. The following XBox lists were written by Phil Estes, a regular contributor to The Gameroom Blitz. GAMES YOU WON'T WRECKLESS: It looks grand, but Bunkasha's Super Runabout clone is atrocious to play and a total headache. Pray to the video game gods that Maximum Chase comes out here (it's much better). GUN METAL: It's Circus Peanut bad. A lousy robot/jet transforming game with poor mission design and terrible graphics. STAKE: Hysterically bad. If you have $30 to burn I'd almost recommend getting this extremely lousy blend of Power Stone and deathmatch garbage (it plays like a fighting game but records "frags" and features respawns). This is, easily, the worst game on Xbox. CRAZY TAXI 3: Hitmaker's latest is extremely lazy: the game sports insanely hard crazy box games, poor level design, and awful Dreamcast quality graphics. PULSE RACER: So bad it makes baby Jesus, Buddha, and L. Ron Hubbard cry. A futuristic cart racing game whose hook is that your driver gets a heart attack... IF HE DRIVES TOO FAST. Lord. NIGHTCASTER 2: EQUINOX: Nightcaster is bad, but NightCaster 2 is worse. It's ugly, it has dumb techno music, and it’s the sequel to a game that never needed a sequel, let alone be made in the first place. REVIEWS 50 CENT: BULLETPROOF VIVENDI-UNIVERSAL (GENUINE GAMES) ACTION    Sometimes, you can't know how truly wretched a game is until you experience the trauma of playing it firsthand.  Such is the case with 50 Cent: Bulletproof, the wrongheaded third-person shooter starring cow-eyed, pudgy-faced rapper Curtis Jackson.  You can read reviews of Bulletproof for the rest of your life and it still won't prepare you for the horror of playing it! The nightmare begins with the storyline, a paranoid fantasy with 50 Cent and his partners in thuggery getting swarmed by every jack-booted thug in the state of New York.  If this is some kind of c-o-n-spiracy as the instructions suggest, the villains, dressed in SWAT gear and armed with the loudest and largest guns this side of Ted Nugent's house, aren't doing a very good job of keeping it a secret!  Anyway, as 50 Cent unravels the tightly knotted string of broken Christmas tree lights that passes for a story in this game, he meets a drug-pushing doctor, Eminem (who really should know better), and the mastermind behind the sinister plot against him... Charles Nelson Reilly!  He hasn't seen a paycheck in thirty years, and he's pissed! Well, the lead villain kind of looks like Charles Nelson Reilly, but with the graphics as dark as they are, who could tell?  We're not talking about the kind of dark that sets an effective mood, either... no, playing this game is like experiencing the onset of blindness.  Everything is either pitch black or rendered in hues outside the visible color spectrum, bringing back haunting memories of the original, light-deprived Game Boy Advance.  The only difference is that you can't set Bulletproof directly under a flourescent lamp to brighten up the characters and their inner-city environment.  You'll just have to be thankful for the few things you CAN see, even if they're not as attractive as they are in other, better, Xbox games. While on his illin', chillin', and 40 ounce swillin' adventures, 50 Cent coughs up a random assortment of canned, profanity-laden catchphrases, hoping against hope that one of them will stick.  The music is similarly persistent and twice as obnoxious, with four or five different sound bites from the rapper's albums played ad nauseum.  Did the designers of Bulletproof loop together fifteen second clips from a small handful of songs to preserve space on the disc, or is 50 Cent's work really this monotonous?  Whatever's the case, it won't be long before you start to feel like the test subject in a sadistic mind-control experiment conducted by the RIAA. Of the many crimes against humanity that 50 Cent: Bulletproof commits, none are as atrocious as the gameplay.  You'd need a naughty list the size of Santa's to cover all the mistakes the developers made when creating this game.  On the rare occasion that they actually do something right, they manage to screw it up with another dumb design flaw or unnecessary play mechanic.  Take the melee attacks, for instance.  Cowboy Curtis never runs out of ways to bury his combat knife into an enemy, making the instantly fatal blows the most entertaining part of the game.  Of course, since it's so much fun to dispatch soldiers at close range, the developers included a sluggish stamina meter to make sure you can't use the knife more than once every thirty seconds.  Brilliant! Wait, it gets better!  Say you're standing near a door or next to a corner when you pull off the knife attack.  While you're bissecting that gun-toting agent, another goon will jump behind you and stick an Uzi in your back.  The moment the counterkill animation ends, you're pumped full of lead and forced to start the stage from the beginning.  You're not given a chance to defend yourself, because you've used your knife attack for the week and the game's clumsy manual targeting makes it impossible to aim for that soldier hiding in your blind spot.  If you're thinking your posse's got your back, think again... they're as dumb as a sack of rizzocks, and are all too happy to watch as you get gunned down by foes you couldn't see. Situations like this are why you'll be seeing a lot of the game over screen, with 50 Cent holding out his arms like a 21st century messiah.  The only way you'll keep him off the cross and in the action is to activate all of the game's many cheats, including invulnerability, unlimited ammo, unlimited weapons, and most importantly, unlimited patience.  Once you've switched on all these safeguards, the game becomes almost playable... but "almost" just isn't good enough when you consider the many, many third-person shooters on the Xbox that are better than this one.  With an abundance of flaws so contrary to the point of gaming that they have to be intentional acts of sadism, Bulletproof truly is worse than any review could hope to express. BURNOUT 3: TAKEDOWN ELECTRONIC ARTS (CRITERION) DRIVING    In the 1990's, Electronic Arts released Road Rash.  This intense arcade-quality racing game pushed both the limits of the consoles available at the time and stretched the boundaries of its genre with action that was evenly split between dodging traffic and trading punches with rival bikers.  For many years, Road Rash was the last word in warfare on wheels.  However, this was not to last.  Many lost interest in the games when the controversial Road Rash 3D was released, and the few fans that remained finally gave up on the series after playing its terrible follow-up Road Rash: Jailbreak.   The Road Rash series may be gone forever, but if Burnout 3: Takedown is any indication, its playfully rebellious spirit will be around for many years to come.  Burnout 3 may not seem like it has much in common with Electronic Arts' first successful racing game... you won't find a single motorcycle here, and none of the characters roll down their windows to whack each other with lead pipes as they race down the highway.  However, the similarities will become more obvious after you've spent some time with the game.  Like Road Rash, Burnout 3 is as much about forcing your opponents off the road as it is racing past them.  You'll use your car as a battering ram, shoving the other racers into oncoming traffic, concrete dividers, and other road hazards to bring them to a violent halt and steal their position in the race. Burnout 3 takes much of its inspiration from the Road Rash series, but you could also draw parallels to another once great racing title, Sega's Crazy Taxi.  That game encouraged you to not only take your passengers to their destinations in the fastest possible time, but to keep them entertained on the way there with leaps over ramps and close shaves with other vehicles.  Instead of using high scores as an incentive to perform these hair-raising stunts, Burnout 3 rewards you with "boost", a limited supply of supercharged fuel that increases your speed and adds ferocity to your attacks. All this is enough to make Burnout 3's races sadistically entertaining, but there's more to the game than just fighting for the finish line.  There's a lot more variety here than you're likely to find in the average driving game... in addition to the expected races, there are especially demanding one-on-one competitions, endurance contests stretched across several races, and my personal favorites, the road rage and crash modes.  These modes make the most of Burnout 3's destructive tendencies, challenging the player to lay waste to aggressive computer opponents and streets packed with unsuspecting drivers. The Burnout franchise and its creators, Criterion Entertainment, were recently purchased by Electronic Arts.  The effects of this acquisition are obvious when you compare Burnout 3: Takedown to its predecessors, released by the now defunct Acclaim.  The rough edges in the first two games have been sanded out thanks to an increased production budget... crashes in particular are even more stunning than before thanks to more complex damage modeling and busier streets.  In Burnout 2: Point of Impact, a dozen car pile-up was the best you could hope for... in the sequel, you can get double that amount with a little effort. More importantly, the promising but simplistic play mechanics in the Burnout series have finally reached their full potential in this third installment.  The takedowns give the gameplay more variety, and give the player an outlet for their frustration when an opponent zips past them or pushes them off the highway.  You no longer have to sit there and take it when the computer steals your lead... you can fight back, and make it really hurt!  The crash mode (unquestionably the star attraction of the previous game) has been enhanced as well, with two new features... aftertouch steering gives you limited control of your vehicle after it collides with other cars, and the crashpoint acts as a detonator, letting you take out what's left of your car and anyone unfortunate enough to be near it in a fiery explosion.  Crashes have also been integrated into the game's other modes, elevating them from a fun extra to an important element of the gameplay. If there's anything wrong with Burnout 3, it's Electronic Arts' stubborn insistence on merging it with their other product lines.  Advertisements for other EA titles are scattered throughout each track (great, now I can see Tiger Woods' constipated grimace in yet ANOTHER game...), and the effective instrumental soundtrack from Burnout 2: Point of Impact has been replaced with second-rate heavy metal from Electronic Arts' EA Trax library.  Sure, you get a pretty cool song by hard rock rebels The Ramones along with music by such instantly forgettable bands as The Von Bondies (isn't that what they call Married... With Children in Germany?) and Fall Out Boy ("Look out! Radioactive Man!"), but frankly, The Ramones sound a whole lot better in Tony Hawk's games.  Also, what's with that DJ?  It's amusing that the designers created a radio station devoted to a sport so extreme nobody could possibly survive it, but Striker's flip attitude and repetitive comments become so grating that you'll start to wish that he was along for the ride when you send your car hurtling into the side of a gas tanker.  If the enhanced graphics and more stable online support weren't reason enough to buy the XBox version, the ability to select your own, non-crappy soundtrack almost certainly will be. The default soundtrack and Striker's obnoxious chatter may not win any awards, but the rest of Burnout 3 definitely has a few coming.  One that immediately comes to mind is "Most fun racing game since the glory days of Road Rash." CAPCOM CLASSICS COLLECTION CAPCOM (DIGITAL ECLIPSE) CLASSIC COLLECTION    "Oh wow... Capcom High.  I haven't been here in over fifteen years!  I love what they've done with the place, though... sure looks a lot nicer than when I was taking classes!" "Wings?  Legendary Wings?" "Hey, MERCS!  You're looking great!  It's like you haven't aged a day!" "Thanks!  So what have you been up to lately, girl?  I always wondered what happened to you!" "Oh, me?  I'm a housewife now.  Remember Section Z?  We were dating for a while, but then I met his little brother.  He's a little complicated sometimes, but a whole lot deeper.  We got married... we've got three kids now!" "It's hard to picture you as a mom, you know that?  You were always the wild child here at school... bombing monsters, collecting treasures, and flying into all those bearded stone faces..." "Yep, those were fun days.  Hey, can you believe the turnout?  Just about everyone's here!" "Well, not Black Tiger.  He's on a business trip with Magic Sword and Strider.  You know them... they're probably riding around in a fancy black limosine or something.  They're supposed to be back in town soon, though... maybe we'll see them at the next reunion." "Hello, Mr. MERCS.  Hello, Ms. Wings.  Did you sign the guestbook?  I recommend you take a look at it.  It's really quite nice... we even have pictures of all the students from back in the day." "Yes, Principal Vulgus, we've signed the book." "Yeesh, old Vulgus is still around?  He was sooooo boring!  And weird, too!" "Heh, some things never change.  So, would you like to meet my cousin, Forgotten Worlds?" "Oh, yeah!  I remember you!  You were such a stud, but man, that metal dial was SO tacky!" "Where have you been? I ditched that old thing a LONG time ago.  I've got analog sticks now... they're a whole lot cooler!" "Good choice!  I wonder if Higemaru is around.  I always had a bit of a crush on him..." "Er, Wings, didn't you didn't hear?  Let's just put it this way... they don't call him He-gay-maru for nothing.  That's him, hanging out with Exed Exes and that annoying foriegn exchange student Son Son." "I see what you mean.  He always did seem find of flamboyant, huh?  And I see Son Son is just as obnoxious as ever.  She just goes on and on... isn't there any way to shut her up?" "There's all the usual cliques... the 1942s in the corner, and the Ghosts 'n Goblins standing around the punchbowl.  Talk about a rough crowd... they still scare me, and I served in the military!" "I always wondered why 1943 and Kai keep hanging around with 1942.  They can do better than that." "Hey, Wings, isn't that Street Fighter II?  He's the one behind Gun.Smoke." "Geez, I can't see ANYTHING behind that giant cowboy hat!  Hey, Gun.Smoke, take off the ten gallon!  This isn't a Travis Tritt concert!  There we go... ooh, ouch.  Wow, MERCS, he looks so old!" "Yeah, he was working fourteen hours a day the moment he got out of high school.  They just never gave the poor guy a vacation.  It really took a toll on him." "Hey, Wings!  MERCS!  Long time no see!  Remember that time that... uh, um... oh yeah.  You remember when we stuffed the hall monitor in his locker?" "Yeah, poor Bionic Commando.  Nice seeing you again, Street Fighter II." "Wow, MERCS, he's so..." "Yeah, he suffers from memory lapses.  Takes him way too long to bring up anything now.  One time, it took him a couple of seconds before he could even think of his own name." "That's sad.  At least his cousin is still looking pretty good..." "Final Fight?  Yeah, we still work out together.  We've always been pretty close." "That's cool, but I hope you're not still hanging out with Trojan!  All that guy ever did was make condom jokes and brag about the size of his sword..." "That was kind of amusing for a while, but yeah, it got old eventually.  I think he's here, but you can always ignore him." "Oh wow, look at the time!  It was really nice catching up with you, MERCS!  We should do it again sometime!" "Yeah, definitely!" CAPCOM FIGHTING EVOLUTION CAPCOM VERSUS FIGHTING   It's been a while since I've written a really nasty and vindictive review, but boy does this game ever deserve one.  Take a dozen of Capcom's least appealing characters, throw in an inept newbie with a thirst for blood matched only by Strawberry Shortcake, then roll it all in a lumpy batter of lackluster Shinkorou artwork and imitation Guilty Gear guitar riffs.  What you get is a crispy fried turd of a game that would be lucky to find its way on the left hand side of an evolutionary chart. Capcom Fighting Evolution is Capcom's half-hearted attempt to keep its once great fighting game franchises alive... or at least, in a persistent vegatative state.  Street Fighter II, Darkstalkers, and Street Fighter Alpha are all represented here, along with the less impressive Street Fighter III and Red Earth.  All of the characters appearing in Capcom Fighting Evolution play exactly like they did in their original series, which would be perfectly fine if not for two serious problems.  The first is that Capcom chose fighters that have either been milked dry in the past, or duds that nobody in their right minds would want to play... IF they had any other options available.  Mammoth mummy Anakaris hasn't gotten any less awkward to use, and Urien is still a toned down clone of Street Fighter III's Gill, quite possibly the worst fighting game boss ever. At least they're marginally useful.  That's a claim you can't make about the heroes of Red Earth, a side-scrolling beat 'em up released exclusively in Japan.  None of the four characters from Red Earth make the transition to a versus fighting game especially well... they were designed to carve through dozens of mindless foes, not engage in strategic combat with a single opponent.  As a result, they're ill-equipped to fight the rest of the stars of Capcom Fighting Evolution.  Some, like the bug-eyed nautilus Hydron and dinosaur/ram/chicken hybrid Hawzer, are so gigantic that they're easy targets for the more nimble characters' fists and feet.  The others just don't have the arsenal of special moves necessary to put up much of a fight against tenacious fireball chuckers like Ryu and Guile. The terrible character selection alone breaks Capcom Fighting Evolution in half.  Sure, the game has that same responsive control you've come to expect from Capcom (you know, back when the company actually gave a damn about the Street Fighter and Darkstalker series), along with new backgrounds and a soundtrack that's pleasant enough, even if it is hopelessly derivitive of what you've already heard in the Guilty Gear X series. Sadly, you can only go so far with a solid game engine and competant audiovisuals.  Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has both of those.  So does Capcom vs. SNK 2, and Darkstalkers Chronicles on the PSP. The difference is that all these other games were designed with special care, and a love for the genre that Capcom has long since lost. Just when did Capcom's enthusiasm for fighting games vanish?  Maybe it was the day the Dreamcast died.  Perhaps its programmers just need a break after fifteen years of Street Fighter II rehashes.  Whatever's the case, Capcom Fighting Evolution will leave players every bit as indifferent as the people who were forced to make it. DEAD OR ALIVE XTREME BEACH VOLLEYBALL TECMO (TEAM NINJA) VOLLEYBALL   Not so much controversial as eagerly discussed, Team Ninja's (who with this release solidifies itself as the Russ Meyer of the video game industry)  Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball finally creeps its vaguely prepubescent backside onto the Xbox... and proves to be a surprisingly solid arcade-style volleyball game coated with a light simulation glaze (no pun intended, I swear to God...). DOAXVB's "story" involves Zack winning the Dead Or Alive 3 tournament, then using the earnings to hold an all-girl volleyball tournament on a paradise island, sans the obligatory dwarf. Much to chagrin of the girls, the tournament never actually happens. So all involved proceed to hang around the island for fourteen days, playing volleyball and doing "other things." You know, like hopping around in their teeny weeny bikinis. You start out by selecting a girl and heading for the island. You'll initially meet up with the newly introduced Lisa, who will show you around the island, then proceed to join with you to play against the other girls in two on two volleyball matches. From there, Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball becomes a strange beast of a game. In order to keep your partner, or get new ones, you have to travel the tropical sunny island via static menus to purchase swim suits, accesories (hats, sunglasses, goggles, different colored balls, bracelets, hair clips, flowers etc.), and items (things that would relate to the interest of each character, like Prototype Xboxes, Aromatherapy things, and, er, cherry pie...). Each girl has a hobby, color, and favorite food, and you must figure out who likes what in order to get them as a partner, keep them happy, and eventually get them to wiggle themselves into some of the game's more revealing (read: skanky) swimsuits. Money, referred to as "Zack Bucks", is earned from the volleyball matches and a couple of mini-games.  This in turn is spent on swim suits, accessories and items to please your partner and butter up future partners.  And if you're really nice, they'll be really nice and will give you swim suits, accessories, and items. It all plays out like Sim-Girl lite. Or Girl Crossing. Or Theme Sex chick. Or Front Office amauter scantly clad girl volleybally (I got a million of these...). Besides volleyball, the aforementioned money earning mini-games consist of a poolside "hopping" game, roulette, a few slot machines, and casino poker and blackjack with Dead Or Alive girl-themed playing cards offered at Zack's island casino. The hopping game can be played when you go poolside and serves as a calibration tool for your analog buttons (if you choose to use analog buttons in game). You apply pressure to either the B or A buttons to successfully hop along pads laid across the pool while trying to keep your balance. Doing it fluidly and within a certain time will lead to more Zack Bucks. The casino games are fairly straightforward, with the slot machines each having a theme associated with each girl.  An apparent "trick" to the slot machines floating around is that if you and your teammate win several matches, and if she's happy, you can go to her slot machine and rack up some big money.  However, I have yet to get that to happen. The actual volleyball, the supposed meat of the game (once again no pun intended), is fairly well executed. The right analog stick puts your teammate in various defensive postions (move her toward the net, move her back to set up a spike etc), while the B and A buttons handle receiving and attacks (if using the analog setup, it's just B and A with different pressure applied for light and heavy attacks, and receiving while using the digital mode just assigns light and heavy to each of the Y, X , B and A buttons). You can "place" the ball where you want by mixing the attacks and receiving with the analog stick, which will either place the ball in a spot the opposing team doesn't anticipate, or in the case of strong attacks, hits a player so hard that she can't respond fast enough. Scoring and traditional volleyball rules are tinkered with: there are no lines for the court like in Sega's Beach Spikers and single player mode has matches going to 7 points in order to keep things snappy and fast paced. AI is marveously handled. Games are greatly affected by how well you and your teammate are getting along, and how your oppenents are getting along. If your teammate is "enthusiastic" you can usually dominate matches. She'll knowingly block shots, deliver ace serves and set up spikes or volleys. If they're rated at "usual" they'll cooperate but not act on their own nearly as much, and if they're "unwilling" they will, quite literally, stand around and play with their hair or suit, or mess up serves, volleys, and spikes. The allowance of the right analog stick for formations cuts down a little on the iritation of having an unwilling teammate, but, unless you're REALLY, REALLY good, you're usually screwed going into the match. However, you'll typically know how they're feeling, and how your opponents are feeling before you go into a match. When considered as a volleyball game with a lot of sim-lite stuff thrown in, DOA Xtreme Volleyball is pretty good. When you throw in all the bizarre, and often questionable, sexual inneundo DOAXVB becomes a disturbing and even embarrasing experience (depending on what kind of person you are, of course). There are several locations in the game (poolside, private beach, jungle, beachside and a few others) where you can just watch the girls lay around, ride bikes, run into the water and "bounce" around or sit in a patio chair stretching and moving around. You can not only watch them do this, but you can rotate the camera with the analog stick and zoom in with the triggers. Granted it isn't as weird as, say, the amazing stuff you can do in hentai games like Battle Raper, but it leaves the sane mind wondering what other players are doing while "playing" through these scenes. The standard Dead or Alive innuendo comes full force in the game: boobs jiggle quite often, the girls hop around excitedly shouting in cute Japanese voices after making points, or pout and sit on the ground when they mess up. They also scream violently when you smack them in the face with the ball during play. One of my friends got really excited about this, and not just because he received a thousand Zack Bucks when he creamed them.  Er, sorry again for the pun. The game supports custom soundtracks and itself sports a lot of licensed music, from Bob Marley to Reel Big Fish. The soundtrack selection is, arguably, one of the best in any Xbox game to date that actually supports the darned thing, though it doesn't randomize tracks. That said, you can easily skip tracks you don't wish to hear. The game, as briefly mentioned before, supports analog buttons but, from personal experience, you may want to use the digital button option. It made more sense, to me at least, and you may get a better feeling of the types of moves you're going to pull off. The graphics are, as usual for Team Ninja, excellent. Everything is bright, clean, and smooth, and the plastic doll-quality of the game's cast is better than what was found in Dead or Alive 3. Animation is fluid and nicely done, and rarely gets in the way of the actual gameplay. The only complaint is that the computer rendered full-motion video, much like DOA 3's, is pretty blah (though that complaint shouldn't be lodged against Team Ninja since the CG was outsourced, just like it was in DOA3). On a side note, some of the items buried in the game are pretty neat and alone almost make the game worth playing. The "she kicks high" DOA 3 ad is hidden, as well as a pretty funny ad for the European launch of the game. Also included are E3 movies of Ninja Gaiden, the original opening for the first Dead or Alive, and tech demos for DOA 2 that are pretty interesting. Dead or Alive Volleyball is recommended... but just barely. It's better than I expected on many levels, especially the volleyball game itself.  It turned out much better than the other much highly publicized sex game of 2002, Acclaim's dreadful BMX XXX. That said, it's not for everyone. The interaction is done through static menus, the casino games aren't nearly as interesting as they should be, and while the volleyball is well handled and deep on some levels, it does take a more arcade-like approach, and there doesn't seem to be "enough" of it. No tournaments, no 4 player options, no system link. There are issues with the camera in the volleyball game too. The camera stays on one plane the entire time, following the ball, and without a character indicator of any kind you may find yourself offscreen from time to time. ALSO, it would've been nice if they threw the guys in. Not just for the gays, but for a more varied experience (plus it would've been funny to see Leon pout after screwing up a spike). That said, if you've been following this game since E3, and were obsessed with buying it and seeing Kasumi in a pink bikini since last May, and you really don't care how shallow the game is, add three rating points to my review and go to town. If you want a quality sports title of this ilk and own multiple consoles, however, don't bother. Go get Beach Spikers. DEAD TO RIGHTS NAMCO ACTION Dead to Rights, Namco’s entry into the dark, gritty (and increasingly oversaturated) crime action genre, is a mixed bag of hits and misses. Dead to Rights is best described as a ho-hum Max Payne clone, but the game is not entirely without merit.  In addition to mindlessly running around, ducking, jumping, and firing at more enemies than in a Hong Kong action flick, there are a few features in DtR that most action games are lacking.  Disarming bombs requires careful manipulation of a marble a'la "The Irritating Maze"”.  Lock picking must be performed by pressing the button at different intervals in just the right time.  Controlling your character’s stripper girlfriend to distract thugs and your canine partner to sniff out bombs gives the player a nice break from the monotony of gunplay and fisticuffs.  However, it somehow still beccomes redundant.  This is probably because the gunplay and fist fights are quite tough.  You will often find yourself ALMOST completing the level, only to die right before your goal.  Even if you do succeed, the next portion of the game begins with the stamina and armor you had left after your last bloodbath.  So after fighting past dozens of adversaries, you will find yourself facing a whole new level of bad guys with almost no health. Thankfully, health and armor are almost always lying around, but even so, most (if not ALL) of the levels are very unfair and require a fair deal of luck no matter how skillful you may be. The graphics in the opening sequence are stunning.  I wonder why the actual game’s visuals are so bland.  Ditto for sounds, as the gunshots, taunts, grunts, growls, screams, etc. are nothing too impressive.  I've never played the other console's incarnation of this game, but I just know the Xbox is capable of better than this.  Dead to Rights is an only passable action game. KABUKI WARRIORS CRAVE ENTERTAINMENT (GENKI) FIGHTING Before they aborted it, Genki announced, and Lightweight began work on, an Xbox port of the superlative fighting game Kengo.  The Xbox version was to be the game that everyone wanted on the Playstation 2.  One-hit kills, female characters, cleaner, less Playstation-like modeling, and more multiplayer options were the order of the day.  Alas, a few months after Genki's announcement, the game vanished off the radar and emerged as Kabuki Warriors, a much more arcade-y brawler that closely resembles Samurai Shodown 2 despite the lack of any real special moves.  Kabuki Warriors became synonymous with crap at the Xbox's launch.  It was the one game no one seemed to want until it dropped to $10.  Even then Kabuki Warriors was still considered garbage, but that's an entirely unfair assessment.  While fellow Xbox titles like New Legends, Shrek, Azurik, and Night Caster were lifeless graphically challenged blah, Kabuki Warriors is lifeless graphically challenged blah that is both mindlessly entertaining and dripping with a strange bit of personality and a lot of playability.  This is mostly because you can share the game with other players via a generic (I'd like to refer to it as "straightforward") Vs. mode.  The premise is that you lead a troupe of ne'er do well actors across theaters in Japan "performing" (a euphemism for fighting) with other troupes.  You are given a team of three actors initially and are sent off to compete in theaters.  As you progress, you accumulate money which is usually spent on traveling from theater to theater... the farther away it is, the more you'll spend.  You begin the game with just one character- the hapless Shinto Priest-donning Shiroko.  As you progress and defeat troupes in best of three matches you're allowed to trade off players and gain new ones.  At the onset you'll find yourself constantly switching out actors until you find just the right troupe.  Eventually you'll run into the same actors as you get farther: there's dozens of theaters to travel to and only twelve real actors (with twelve more pallete swaps).  The goal is to get to Edo and do battle with the three best actors in all of Japan.  Moves are incredibly easy to pull off and don't consist of anything beyond left, right, up, and down movements coupled with the attack button, allowing for obligatory slash combos and jump attacks.  The game's controls are much more suited for other genres than a fighting game:  A attacks, X blocks, B jumps, and Y executes a roll which makes up for the game's limited super moves.  Super moves consist of a single meter, shared by both thespians, and a single button assigned to performing the attacks.  Since you ARE an actor and you have to earn money to progress, you must to attempt to win the diminutive, non-existent crowd's favor.  You can gain money by pulling off an amazing move, or by tapping the white button which makes your character "dance"- posing for the audience to earn money and attempt to take over the power meter.  When you've done enough dancing (which WILL make you vulnerable to opponent attacks) your meter will begin to flash, giving you the que to unleash a Kabuki Swollen Monkey Ninja Bowels move.  Or just a super move.  Each of the game's players has just one and each vary widely.  Gender bending Kikunosuke plunks down smoke bombs with delayed release.  The blonde maned Ukon, who most closely resembles the Western idea of a Kabuki actor, turns invisible and gains back health.  Other attacks consist of breaths of fire (the portly Goro), tornados (Tadanboru), and helicopter spinning blade attacks dubbed the "Corkscrew Heaven" (the vaguely western looking Gonroku).  The moves are easily defendable with the possible exception of Ukon's which is just absolutely broken.  You can achieve perfect victories with him once his meter fills up, because his super makes him almost impossible to hit.  The twelve other "versions" of the characters all have different names but the exact same moves.  This really makes the number of fighters twelve, even if they all have snazzy alternate costumes and names.  Outside of the single player mode (the acting tour stuff), Kabuki Warriors features a Vs. mode and a time attack mode.  Vs.  mode is exactly that: you simply do battle with another player and have at it in a variety of levels.  Time attack is pretty lazily designed: it simply records how many people you've defeated and in what time before you finally lose a match.  Kabuki Warriors, despite its name and gameplay, treats its subject matter with respect.  Levels resemble actual Kabuki stages, menus and in game graphics give the air of a theater, and the characters are realistic.  Kikunosuke is really a young man dressed as a woman in binding.  Goro looks like the type of crowd pleasing sideshow character that would breath fire and get money thrown at him.  Sukeroku, Tadanobu, Sadakuro, Kuroko, Danjo, and Hanjo all look like the old Kabuki actors that would carry some important role such as a patriarch.  Ukon and Kagekiyo resemble the high-minded flamboyant actors we've all come to think of when we see Kabuki, and Gonroku looks like a grizzled tough guy.  The atmosphere all works and the graphics and animation stick close to the theme.  In fact, an imperial Kabuki troupe is listed in the credits for doing all of the motion capture model work.  The stages are less than interesting, consisting of simple wood textures and high res bitmaps.   Also, some of the player models are sort of uneven.  A lot of time seems have been put into Ukon, Kagekiyo, and some of the more colorful characters, while others like Kuroko and Hanjo are less impressive.  However, it's nothing too noticable.  In the end, Kabuki Warriors works.  Its simple play and strange style gives it the feeling of a baby project for a bunch of low level Lightweight/Genki staffers, rather than a simple contractual obligiation to Microsoft.  At $10-20, its current going price, it's definately worth a shot. NIGHT CASTER II JALECO ENTERTAINMENT ACTION RPG