For: Xbox 360

From: Blueside/Microsoft

ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, violence, suggestive themes)

Through three games, the "Kingdom Under Fire" series had attempted to mix real-time strategy and slice-and-dice combat into a single, ambitious blend of brain and brawn. It never quite nailed the formula, but it inched closer with each chapter and consistently showed promise.

The key word there is "showed."

With "Circle of Doom," developer Blueside has completely stripped away the series' strategy component, leaving behind a mindless and soulless action game that rarely grows more complex than pressing the X or A button over and over (and over and over). Some entry-level role-playing features and a completely unintuitive spell system break up the monotony, but 99 percent of "Doom" consists of walking down a narrow corridor, killing dozens of exactly the same brainless enemy, entering another corridor, and repeating ad nauseam.

That's lamentable in principle alone, but "Doom" truly aggravates once you realize it can't even lobotomize a game properly. Such repetitive action might be tolerable if it zipped by at a spirited pace, but your character moves like a baby with a full diaper and often attacks just as slowly, occasionally leaving you susceptible to inescapable strings of enemy attacks that inevitably kill you. Also perilous: the worst close-quarters camera on the Xbox 360. If you get cornered into a tight space, prepare to go dizzy while the camera completely spazzes out and more enemies blindside you.

Sadly, "Doom" never really redeems itself in any area. The story, if you can even call it that, is completely inane. The enemy A.I. is non-existent, and a rather ridiculous glitch allows all enemies to magically turn invincible whenever they're in retreat mode. The level design ranges from bland to atrociously convoluted _ a labyrinth of indistinguishable corridors that merely lead to more indistinguishable corridors. The boss fights are similarly mundane, often requiring you to do little more than jam the attack buttons literally hundreds of times until you win.

If none of this deters you, you'll be happy to know that "Doom" features four-player online co-op and many hours of gameplay for completists who wish to unlock every last achievement and special item. Just know that all those hours of gameplay, whether with friends or not, consist of those same two seconds of gameplay, repeated endlessly, until the final credits roll. If that sounds like $60 of fun to you, then by all means, step right up.