The fun, challenging Oozi: Earth Adventure loses its charm in a sea of recycled ideas. Poor Oozi. The perpetually grinning yellow alien isn't likely to join peers like Mario, Meat Boy, Rayman, and Sonic among the ranks of the platforming protagonist elite anytime soon. Awesome Games Studio has indeed erected a vibrant and deadly world for its fledgling hero to charge through, but for all its visual creativity.

This stand-alone zombie expansion for Sniper Elite V2 can be a lot of fun in four-player co-op, but the action gets monotonous over time. It's the most cherished of World War II stories: There was Hitler, then Hitler summoned demonic zombies, and then the Allied forces really wished to be rid of both those things. That's pretty much the extent of the plot in Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army, the stand-alone.

The troubled real-time strategy dungeon sim Impire fails to recapture the charms of its inspirations. Being an evil dungeon lord has its perks. Simpering minions eager to do your bidding are in abundant supply, piles of treasure make great home decor, and you never have to wait too long before a new gaggle of doe-eyed do-gooders come charging into your realm to be gutted and looted. Impire's strategic dungeon-sim revival channels Dungeon Keeper.

This Napoleonic wargame redeems its flaws with tense multiplayer matches that foster alliances as fragile as L'Empereur's. The Napoleonic Wars are a great setting for strategy games. After all, the conflict between Britain and France engulfed practically all of Europe from Iberia to Russia, revolutionized warfare, and spawned numerous temporary alliances in which vanquished enemies became (unreliable) allies.

Though not as polished as it could have been, SimCity 4 is still a complex and detailed strategy game that can entertain you for hours on end. Long before game designer Will Wright created the best-selling computer game of all time, The Sims, he created SimCity, an innovative game with a clear, compelling premise: You're the mayor, and your goal is to plan a city from the ground up and turning what starts as a sleepy little town into a bustling metropolis.