There are a certain number of things one should expect when booting up a new game.  You'd expect it to play well, providing hours of fun, or at the very least, playable.  It's also not so much to ask for graphics on par with that of an average game on the system.  It's also important that a game is easy on the ears, with good sound effects and a solid background score, or at least custom soundtrack support, assuming it's an Xbox game.

Stake seems to completely disregard most of the qualities that you can find in a good game.  The basic idea is this: you pick a character, jump into a big, open level, and brawl with a number of enemies.  It's a little reminiscent of Power Stone, except there are too many problems to have any fun.  These problems arise immediately.  The menus aren't very nice looking, with ridiculous white fonts on bright, yellow-ish backgrounds.  The character designs are pretty generic; you have your big, muscled warrior, your ugly, green monster, your busty, scantily-clad gypsies, and so on.

When you actually start playing, though, you'll probably find that staring at the character models would make for a more entertaining experience.  Controlling your character has an incredibly sloppy feel.  Jerky movement, stiff jumping, and pretty much no physics whatsoever make for a game with a bland, unfun feel.  Combat is performed with three buttons, but you won't find much depth.  One button is for basic attacks, one is for strong attacks, and yet another for a super attack that requires magic points.  You can press each button a number of times to perform different combos, but you can't mix buttons.  It lacks any sort of flow or depth, making for shallow fights.

One thing Stake seems to like to boast about are its big interactive environments.  While they are big, they lack good design.  There are a number of themes, from the lava-filled area, to a grassy hill with a temple on it, to what is apparently a haunted house.  Each of them are so big you'll get lost, but there's really nothing to do on them - they're usually just filled with a bunch of open space or repetitive terrain.  Not helping matters is the constant clipping that goes on, leaving you stuck in many areas you wish you weren't.

The camera is equally bad.  You can use the triggers to make it zoom in or out, but that's basically it.  You can't even rotate it, which is incredibly unfortunate.  It's simply stuck at a fixed angle the whole time.  Zooming out won't even help you see what's going on, as Stake employs some kind of strange blur effect, making it almost impossible to see anything but movements.  The camera also becomes troublesome if you're inside a building with a roof on it - you have to adjust the camera every so often, or you're stuck staring at the roof.  This area of the game needed major improvement.

The graphics are so unimpressive, you'd swear this was a Nintendo 64 game.  The environments are rigid and lack many interesting sights.  Textures are incredibly blurry and repetitive, making it easy to get lost.  Character models are the best looking part of the game, but that's not saying a lot.  They sport clunky, jittery animation and lack much detail.  Between the camera and the lackluster graphics, you'll be hard-pressed to actually understand what's going on half the time.

Sound is probably one of the best parts of the game, but that's only because the game offers custom soundtrack support.  Even, then, though, the way its implemented feels cheap: you have to scroll through an incredibly long list to get to any particular song, and it repeats throughout the whole match instead of moving on to the next track.  If you want to select the next track, you have to scroll through the whole list again to get to it.  It's simply not practical.  Sound effects aren't too impressive either - many of them seem out of place or just plain silly.

Stake hasn't received a lot of hype, but that's understandable - the game is really disappointingly bad.  It feels like it could have used a lot more time in development, despite being delayed several times.  It wants to be a fun brawler, but instead, is a clunky, boring game consisting of running around and mashing buttons.  I advise you to not spend your money on this game. 

Gameplay: 3.0

To put it bluntly, Stake is no fun to play.  Control is very stiff, with jumpy movements and poor animation.  The fighting system is shallow and becomes stale within minutes.  Level design is poor, as well.  There's not much incentive to play here.

Graphics: 4.0

The graphics are glitchy, with a lot of clipping going on.  Character models are okay, but pretty simple in comparison to other games.  Animation is junky and abrupt, though, and the environments lack any kind of interesting points.  Textures are extremely blurry, looking downright pathetic.  Cover your eyes, folks.

Sound: 3.5

Sound effects are ludicrous, voice samples are super-annoying and monotonous, and the background music will get on your nerves after a few minutes.  Although the game supports custom soundtracks, it does so in a very unappealing fashion.  Work that mute button.

Difficulty: Hard

It's not really too difficult to defeat an opponent - you basically just mash the attack button until your foe is dead.  Of course, frustration immediately sets in as you are killed by many hazards unknown to you, or trapped in an endless combo from an enemy.

Concept: 4.0

At best, Stake is a rip-off of the Dreamcast classic Power Stone.  At worst, it's a stripped down, un-fun version of Power Stone that looks like its part of the Playstation's library from 1995.  Either way, any good ideas apparent in Stake are executed quite poorly.

Multiplayer: 4.0

There are only two uninspired modes, deathmatch and team deathmatch.  Absolutely no gameplay problems are resolved in either mode - the game is still no fun.

Overall: 3.6

I honestly cannot understand why Metro3D approved this game's release.  Though a decent idea on paper, Stake has poor controls, pathetic graphics, a terrible camera, and sound that even makes your custom soundtracks seem lame.  The entire package just seems like it needs a lot more work.  I hate to say it, but to be quite honest, you will not want to play Stake for more than five minutes or so - I think it's around that time when the realization of just how weak this game really is kicks in.