You are not a plumber. You are not prince. You are not even Rayman in the Rabbids Go Home, the new single-player action game starring three bunnies (one of which lives in your Wii Remote) and a shopping cart. The raving Rabbids are making their fourth annual Wii outing since seemingly hijacking Ubisoft's Rayman platforming series, turning it into a party game series, and now making it a platformer again — sans Rayman.

Who would be clamoring for this? Welll, do you like Looney Tunes? Do you want to run a shopping cart over someone's dinner? And do you see many other platformers from which to choose?

Loved
Screaming Absurdity: From start to finish this is a game that tastefully borders on bad taste, making it perfect for 11-year-old boys and anyone who wants to feel like one. We've got a level-based action game that stars some maniac rabbits, who think that they can steal enough junk from human civilization to build a pile that will reach the moon. To do this, they (you) are wheeling two Rabbids and their shopping cart through shopping malls, airports and hospitals, among other locales, frequently pressing an attack button which emits a Rabbid yell that blows all but the underwear off any people in the Rabbids' way. This includes Santa Claus, who drops not just his red suit but cheeseburgers for the Rabbids to horde. Not just nurses, air traffic controllers and other people who lose not just their clothes but — from almost all of them! — a bottle of soda. Even old people get stripped to their underwear.

Yes, you are even yelling the clothes of old people who are slumped in their wheelchairs with an IV drip above their slouched heads. But you only do that after you yell the gowns off hospital patients in their sick bed, then you bounce off their bellies to vault the Rabbids and cart over walls. Do the patients mind? Actually, they pray out loud a thanks to the lord for giving them this "trial." The guys from whom you snatch their dogs whine for the ASPCA. The people on the plane that's taking off while your Rabbids remove an engine from its wing don't say anything — but hopefully they made it! I'd be troubled by some of this if it wasn't all portrayed as slapstick cartoon comedy where no one gets hurt. Remember when more games made joyfully this little sense?

The Good Kind Of Simple: This is indeed a platformer without a jump button. A Wii Remote and Nunchuck are used, but the inputs are simple. You steer and speed up as one Rabbid pushes and the other rides in the shopping cart. You drive them into all this human stuff so they can collect it into an ever-changing tower of junk in the cart. You've got a pair of attacks, and that's about it as a default. Though it is in vogue for the stat-upgrading influence of role-playing games to infiltrate other genres through the likes of Borderlands or Ratchet and Clank, Rabbids Go Home stands with the Marios in keeping the default characters little changed throughout the game.

The novelty in games like these is in how each level is shaped. In a rare return to quality 3D platforming (played from fixed camera perspectives), most levels present the evolving challenges of exploring and careening through halls of malls and hospital rooftops, trying to collect the most items, not fall off tilting platforms, bashing a few enemies and accelerate off many a jump ramp, before reaching a large item at the end to add to the pile. Like a good Mario game, Rabbids Go Home will offer a break. Maybe a level produces an item that temporarily allows the Rabbids to jump after all. Some levels turn out to be a fun mix of inner-tube slaloms and a sort of upside-down-Plinko. A few are simply chases along a roadway to catch a truck carrying a cow.

The Lunatic Fringes: There is much in the periphery of this game that's odd, but welcome. The soundtrack, for example, is decades' old, offering such non-modern hits as John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or the relaxing Calyspo song "Jamaica Farewell," which can calm nerves during nervous narrow rooftop dashes. Other oddities include the ability to torture and deform the Rabbid living in your Remote (remember I mentioned borderline bad taste?). You can use this little guy as a projectile in levels. But he or his friends can be shaken in the Remote and then entered into online fashion contests administered by Ubisoft through the game's Rabbids Channel. That separate Channel can be installed to your Wiii dashboard and accessed without the game, allowing you to keep up on which mad entries people have made for, say, the most Halloween-appropriate Rabbid.

Hated
Hapless Hub: Continuing an often-irrelevant tradition, Rabbids Go Home has a hub world, a small city that includes doorways to five batches of stages. It's unclear why the designers thought the player should access a hub before getting to one of five lists of levels they might want to access and play. Let's say you lose interest in the levels in the current menu and want to try some earlier ones. You have to return to the city and head over to the doorway that will bring your Rabbid to another list of levels. Given the lack of original and interesting things to do in the city, it feels like a time-waster.

The Less Good Kind Of Simple: Rabbids Go Home is easy. Maybe that's for the 11-year-old boys. Your busy reviewer won't complain about a game he could casually dip into each night this week, laugh at a lot and proceed through with few lives lost. But if you grumble when games are easy and don't consider returning to levels to find every hidden item the way to get your money's worth, then this game might not be your thing.

Rabbids Go Home mixes the inanity of a good Saturday morning cartoon, the fluid movement of a Mario game (as good as you can get without the jumping), the collecting of ridiculous human stuff of Katamari Damacy and winds up serving a fun, easy comedy.

The game looks and sounds good, and, best of all, surprises with its warped sense of humor. It's another strong Wii game from a non-Nintendo company, adding to what's become an eclectic shelf of small 2009 Wii gems alongside Dead Space Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill and Deadly Creatures. And this one doesn't even have "dead" in the title.

(Rabbids Go Home was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and published by Ubisoft for the Wii on November 1. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played to the end, helping the Rabbids approach the moon and liberating the clothes from hundreds of skinny, dopey cartoon humans.)

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As in the first Nintendo DS title, Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter asks the player to tap into their artistic touchscreen skills to draw platforms, vehicles, weapons and even the game's hero itself—my ninja Musashi, armed with a giant corndog, is just one of almost limitless possibilities—who must return color to the desaturated world and rescue a missing Raposa named Heather. In both the top-down adventure portions and side-scrolling platforming sections, players will flex their creativity to make this Drawn To Life adventure their own.

Should you apply your brush to Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter?

Loved
Presentation & Animation: Everything that I didn't contribute to Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter via touchscreen and stylus looks spectacular. Artist Paul Robertson's amazing sprites animate beautifully, adding charm and character to the game's non-playable Raposa and enemies. Beautifully hand-drawn backgrounds have lush, well-animated detail, ensuring a welcome level of visual variety across the game's five worlds. Save for the clumsy characters and items I drew—I often let the game's suggested template sprites take the place of my own creations—the game is a treat to look at.

Surprisingly Engrossing Story: It may not be wholly original, but the relatively simple tale of The Next Chapter has a few twists and a tender moment or two, made the better thanks to well directed, well scored cut scenes. The game's script is sharp and witty at times, dialogue I did my best not to miss.

Da Blob: The platforming portions start to wear thin quickly, but the addition of two additional forms—the amorphous Blob and wall-crawling Spider—help break up the monotony of playing as a sword or yo-yo wielding Humanoid. There are some clever level designs, some not-too-difficult puzzles that require dexterous use of all three forms.

Improved Creative Tools: Just about everything I crafted with Drawn To Life: The Chapter's graphics editor was an eyesore. But the tools have depth to them I've just begun to explore. A larger color palette and a wealth of interesting templates—plus the ability to add extra limbs!—offer the opportunity for a wide variety of cool or kooky creations. The "Action Draw" sections, which lets the player draw simple platforms using a limited supply, aren't particularly challenging, but they're fun.

Hated
Extended Downtime: Conversations in The Next Chapter can drag on, leading to long stretches of watching, not playing. For the most part, the game is careful not to throw unnecessary monologues and long-winded explanations, but there are a few moments where the narrative starts to wear out its welcome.

Mundane Platforming: The game's platforming sections are easy to blow through, offering little in the way of impressive level design or captivating challenge. There are, however, some well-hidden collectibles scattered throughout the game's 45 levels, but the drive to revisit some of these rather dull levels, especially with Drawn To Life's loose controls and sometimes spotty hit detection, is low.

Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter's biggest strength is its creative tool set. It's a wonderful little artistic outlet, a gorgeously crafted game that plays like it would appeal to a much younger, more patient and passionate player. It doesn't offer much in the way of depth for the more experienced action-adventure fan, but makes up for some of its shortcomings with its copious charm.

There's enough to do, see and collect over the course of the game's storyline to make the journey worth the while. It's just a shame that Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter's gameplay is its weakest link.

Drawn To Life: The Next Chapter was developed by 5th Cell and published by THQ for the Nintendo DS on October 27. (A Wii version developed by Planet Moon Studios is also available, but was not reviewed.) Retails for $29.99 USD on DS. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played game to completion.

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In League of Legends you take on the role of a summoner, calling forth a champion that you control in Warcraft-esque skirmishes as you work to tear down defensive positions and destroy the enemy nexus. Working with other player-controlled champions, the game is based on cooperation and collaboration, with all of the micro-managing thrown out the window.

As with its mod-inspiration Defense of the Ancients, League of Legends won't cost you a dime to play, but is it good enough to convince you to shell out cash to upgrade and excel?

Loved
Simplified Strategy: Built on the core of Warcraft III, League of Legends strips away the need to micro-manage, or manage at all. Defense towers exist when a match starts, minions spawn automatically and course through a map's paths on pre-determined routes, stopping to attack the first foes they encounter or to try and level enemy defense towers. You have no control over any of that. What you do have control over is your single champion, his or her ability to impact the lines of minions, and the champion's growing power, which can be used in battles to shift the tide of war. Of course you also have to look out for the other champions on the map looking to take you out or clear a path to your nexus home base.

Cornucopia of Champions: In many ways, League of Legends plays like a straight-up action role-playing title. The character you level up over the course of a match is selected from a growing number of champions, each with their own abilities, spells, attack styles and look. As you play through a match your champion earns experience and levels up, unlocking skills and spells that only last until the match ends. The game launches with 40 of these characters with a steady stream promised from the developers. Mastering the game is one challenge, but learning the ins and outs of each champion is the sort of enjoyable task that could takes months to complete.

Mastering Masteries: While the champion you summon and control is drawn from the same ever-expanding pool all of the other players draw from, the summoner (that's you) levels up over time, earning mastery points which can be applied to three different fields: Offense, defense and utility. The way you spend these points impacts whatever champion you decide to use in a match giving them stronger attacks, better defense, improving their magic or even tweaking the spells they can cast. This summoner leveling adds another level of complexity to the already cleverly constructed game.

Items and Spells: Champions all start out as level one at the beginning of a map, but as you gain experience they level up, letting you assign points to their abilities and spells. The fact that you have some choice means that even if two of the same champions meet in battle, there's a good chance they won't play the same. On top of that, you can spend the gold your champion earns in battle to buy magical items that augment attack and defense abilities, spells and give your character new skills.

Stealth: While the maps can get a little old over time, the fact that there are creatures stalking the marsh and woods between paths can make things interesting. Better still, certain areas of the map allow you to hide from other characters, making it possible for you to slip behind them during battle and pull off a stealth attack.

Anime Warcraft: The selection of champions include a wide variety of art styles, from large-eyed, big-headed anime-ish characters, to characters that would fit in as heroes in Warcraft III. The look, as much as the abilities, of these champions are the biggest reason you may want to take the time to master one.

Free Forever: While it's probably worth dropping $30 to pick up the collector's pack, and score special runes, items and a champion, you can actually play this game for absolutely nothing. The better you are at it, the more points you earn to use in the online store to purchase new champions and other power-up items. And the game always gives you access to 10 of the 40 champions. If you're not good, or you're impatient, you can also spend cash to buy items, champions or new skins. It's a serious win-win.

Hated
Need More Maps: With the game already out for more than a week, there's really only one map to play on and earn experience. A snow version of the map is said to exist, but I could never find a match with one. A third, smaller map, is in beta right now. As much as I love the game, and I borderline can't stop playing love it, the lack of maps is a serious issue. Riot Games' biggest push right now should be on rolling out more maps so the current one doesn't go so stale no one will ever want to play it again.

Slow Matchmaking: Matchmaking in League of Legends is a surprisingly long affair. I've waited as long as 15 minutes to find a match, though waits of closer to a few minutes is closer to the norm. While it's hard to directly control, I also found a high percentage of whiney, insular gamers in the matches I played. They complained about tactics, about losing, about experience points. Maybe creating different rooms or leagues could help cut down on the player in-fighting because it's a real turnoff.

As a long-time fan of real-time strategy games, I approached League of Legends with more than a little doubt that it could provide the sort of engagement and intellectual stimulation I'm used to from my RTS gaming sessions. But it only took a couple of matches to prove me wrong.

My biggest concern with League of Legends is not whether it's worth playing, but whether it can survive under the creative micro-transaction pricing system that Riot Games has established to financially support the title.

League of Legends was developed by and published by Riot Games for the PC on Oct. 27. The game is free to play, though you can spend cash on upgrades. The collector's edition sells for $29.99. A copy of the collector's edition and a $10 gift card for in-game item purchases were given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through training mode and dozens of matches with 20 of the 40 champions.

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1) Take five mini-games from what must have been an underwhelming 2002 Game Boy Advance game.
2) Bank on the fact that Americans will be delighted that these mini-games star a Japanese pop culture icon.
3) Charge two bucks a pop.

That's the seeming strategy behind Crash-Course Domo, Rock-N-Roll Domo, Hard-Hat Domo, Pro-Putt Domo and White-Water Domo, five downloadable games starring NHK TV mascot Domo which were all recently released for American Nintendo DS owners.

This is the dark side of DSiWare, from the company you might forget brought you Super Mario 64, WarioWare and Wii Sports but that you might remember used to churn out the Mario Partys and sold NES games on the Game Boy Advance for $20.

Hated
Shallow Gameplay: In the deep end of DSiWare, we've got games such as Art-Style Pictobits and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, which layer complex gameplay atop the simple, offering variations on the essentials of Tetris and Lemmings pioneered years ago. In the Domo end, we've got a side-scrolling bicycling game that lets you change lanes, tap a button to speed boost, go up and down a few hills, with barely a touch of innovation beyond what was done in Excitebike. White-Water Domo is a downstream slalom. Pro-Putt is rudimentary one-button mini-golf. Rock-N-Roll Domo, which at least has an option of touch-control, is the simplest of music games — tap one of three circles in time with music note streaming through them. The only game demanding the player do something they haven't done more interestingly elsewhere is Hard-Hat Domo. That game has the lead character painting floors of a half-constructed building as he tries to erect color-coded ladders that match the floor he's standing on and the one to which he'd like to climb.

Lowest Of Values: Nintendo's frequent release of new cameras and clocks through DSiWare may bother some folks, but the company has provided numerous substantial games for those looking for something to play and enjoy. Even in the 200-points ($2) range, where the company has been releasing chopped-off pieces of larger retail games, there has been gameplay value. Take Bird & Beans, which was ripped from an old WarioWare and consists of nothing more than a single-screen Missile Command riff involving a bird sticking his tongue out to catch air-dropped beans. Its tight design rewards return play and harkens back to an era of single-screen arcade ingenuity. The Domo games, however, lacking in depth or more than a handful of levels of content, feel like clumsy side-attractions. The games make little use of the DS' second screen other than for maps, minimal use of the touch-screen, and sport graphics barely better-animated than what was on the GBA. The DSiWare store doesn't even offer a budget option for people who buy the full-set. What a strange way to sell such strange goods.

Barely a half year old in North America, the DSiWare downloadable service may still be in its experimental phase. If so, these Domo games may be just another test tube shaken up and stared at. What's the better concoction: The $5 and $8 DSiWare games that sparkle with creativity and nostalgia? Or the repurposed portions of a game that betrays no design breakthroughs conceived in the past decade?

The ratio of quality to filler on DSiWare may still be superior to that of iTunes, but the Domo games hurt the credibility Nintendo was gaining as a curator of an online games store that emphasized quality and value.

Crash-Course Domo, Rock-N-Roll Domo, Hard-Hat Domo, Pro-Putt Domoand White-Water Domo were developed by Suzak and published by NIntendo for the Nintendo DSi's DSiWare service on October 19. Each retails for 200 points ($2.00 USD). Played them all. Only planning on playing Hard-Hat Domo again.

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The country of Ferelden is on the verge of being overwhelmed by the demonic Blight, and only the heroic Grey Wardens can save the land from total destruction. It sounds simple, but the struggle between good and evil is merely the backdrop to a much more twisted tale of intrigue, political maneuvering, and betrayal. Once you play through one of six unique origin stories based on your character's race and caste you're plunged into the thick of it, gathering a party of heroic and not-so-heroic adventurers as you struggle to ensure that Ferelden is ready to take on the Blight once they rise.

BioWare has proven time and time again that it can produce high-caliber fantasy roleplaying games based on existing properties, but can they pull off an original fantasy setting? The Dragon Age is dawning.

Loved
In A World...: As comfortable creating their own worlds as they are dabbling into established fictions, BioWare brings the country of Ferelden to life in Dragon Age: Origins. Rather than a simple game setting, Ferelden feels like a real place with a rich history lurking just outside the corner of the player's vision. The look and feel of the world is almost as impressive as the fiction, with several areas - particularly those in the underground realm of The Deep Road - looking as if they were traditional fantasy artwork come to life.

Tangled Webs: The origins in Dragon Age: Origins are more than just little stories created to move your character into the main story arc. Each gives insight into the major political and societal issues that plague the country of Ferelden, all of which crop up on a larger, more important scale later on in the game. The struggle between good and evil merely serves as a backdrop for a much more complicated tale of political intrigue, racial tension, and moral versus popular choices.

You Gotta Have Friends: Expanding on the excellent character work established in titles like Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur's Gate, BioWare once again provides an amazing cast of characters to fight by your side as you travel the twisted paths of Dragon Age: Origins. Each of your NPC companions has a distinct personality, and while they may seem rather cookie-cutter at first glance, exploring their origins and motivations reveals a truly complex collection of individuals. You'll Travel with them on their own personal quests as you progress through the game, establishing bonds and perhaps even falling in love with one of them. You'll grow attached, and should any of them part ways with you, you'll feel it acutely.

It isn't just your party members, either. Each NPC is handled with great care and attention to detail - even the ones who only have one line of text, spoken over and over again. Enchantment?

So Many Choices: I've played every major BioWare RPG released so far, and while they all deal with making tough decisions, none have seemed to have nearly as profound an impact as those in Dragon Age: Origins do. I regularly found myself making the sort of decisions that had me realizing that I had just completely altered a major portion of the game. Kingdoms rose and fell and important people lived or died based solely on my whims. This is definitely the kind of game you'll want to play through multiple times, just to see how your actions affect the world.

Just Talkin' Bout Dragon Age: An extremely well-written, deviously witty script is only as good as the actors who voice it, and BioWare has pulled together a winning team for Dragon Age. Claudia Black does a fine job of voicing the sardonic witch Morrigan, and Steve Blue does one of the best dwarves I've ever heard in his portrayal of Oghren. All in all, everyone does a spectacular job, but by far my favorite is Steve Valentine as Alistair. Alistair has some of the most amusing lines in the game, most of which would have fallen completely flat if not for Valentine's expert timing. Just remember, "There's nothing like a brush with death to make you...not like death very much."

Swords and Sorcery: Combat in Dragon Age can be as shallow or as deep as the player desires. You can spend the entire game simply controlling your own character and letting your party members go about their business, triggering special moves using the double 3-slot quick bar on the bottom right of the screen, and you'll do just fine. For more depth, you can customize your party's AI behavior by assigning situational tactics for individual characters based on a wide variety of conditions and roles. As satisfying as it is to simply plow right through the enemy, constructing elaborate plans and placing your party in just the right positions to completely decimate your opponents is even more satisfying still.

Hot Micromanagement: I really enjoy micromanaging my role-playing characters, from fine-tuning their equipment to placing each skill point to maximize combat efficiency. Throughout the game you unlock specializations which allow you to tweak your characters even further, focusing on particular aspects of the warrior, mage, and rogue classes. Enchanting weapons, applying poisons, constructing traps; these are the elements of a good RPG that get me all aflutter, and Dragon Age: Origins allows me to indulge myself while still allowing the player who'd rather just wing it to go their own way.

Outside Of The Game: BioWare goes above and beyond with the Dragon Age: Origins community site, where players can communicate, share stories, or browse each other's character profiles to see how far along they've gotten in the game. Once you have an account at the BioWare Social Network website, you can see everything I've done in Dragon Age. Skills, plot points, talent, equipment; it's all there for the world to see. It makes the game feel like more than a game, if that makes any sense, adding a new layer to the experience that keeps it alive long after you've finished playing.

Hated
Bugs Aplenty: My time with the PlayStation 3 version of Dragon Age was not without troubles. In fact, my 40 or so hours in the game were plagued with annoying little glitches that, while not breaking the game completely, did hamper the experience. Some special combat animations were way off, with my character performing finishing blows in the air next to the boss I had just downed. Sound glitched frequently, leaving me watching a character's lips move while no words came. On a few occasions the screen would glitch when a character was speaking, showing broken geometry instead of the person talking. I also had issues with monsters dying and taking up to 30 seconds to register as dead, making me have to wait to loot bodies and in some cases delaying the completion of certain quests.

Perhaps the biggest bug I encountered was during the final battle, when I simply could not progress. BioWare suggested it was due to a monster I needed to kill falling through the world. I wound up having to load a previous save in order to complete the game. Luckily the game had autosaved just before the battle started, but it was definitely more frustration than I needed.

Chugga Chugga Frame Rate: Dragon Age is a pretty game, but when it really starts moving, things get ugly. With only a couple of characters on the screen things aren't too bad, leaning towards the high 20's frame rate-wise, but when you're in a big battle or a crowd scene, things dip into the middle to high teens. Mind you I am guestimating here...it's not like I have some magical PS3 FPS tool, but the dip is definitely noticeable.

BioWare's Ray Muzyka once said that "Dragon Age is the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate." I'd take that a step further and say that Dragon Age is the evolution of Baldur's Gate, taking the concepts and mechanics established in that classic PC RPG and updating them using today's more powerful technology. While that alone is a recipe for success, the lack of an established license has allowed the developers to craft a unique fantasy setting from the ground up, populating it with fascinating characters and instilling upon it a depth that goes far beyond the simple tale of good versus evil the game initially presents. Much like CD Projekt's The Witcher, Dragon Age overlays modern day politics and social issues onto its fantasy world, creating a richer, more mature atmosphere in the process.

Perhaps the biggest testament to Dragon Age: Origins is the fact that after more than 40 hours of play time, I found myself contemplating my next character as the credits rolled, working out in my head what I would do differently the next time around. During the busy fall video game release season, when my response to completing even the most enjoyable games is "next," it takes an extremely compelling title for me to want to go again. Dragon Age: Origins is exactly that sort of title.

Dragon Age: Origins was developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on November 3. Retails for $59.99 USD ($49.99 PC). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Reviewed the PlayStation 3 version. Played through the main game on standard difficulty, choosing the City Elf origin and rogue as my character class. Completed main quest, multiple side quests, and The Stone Prisoner downloadable content, which should definitely not be missed.

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Not much, it turns out. The fairy story-themed action title is only adult in that it wants players to be as violent as possible. Players take the role of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, the Naked Emperor (from "The Emperor's New Clothes") or Jack (from "Jack and the Beanstalk") and battle their way through a world peopled with characters from other fairytales like "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "Sleeping Beauty." Nearly everybody in the world except gingerbread men bleeds copious amounts of blood when you slap, beat, slice or hex them and for some reason, nearly everything in the world looks so cute it's almost psychotic.

But there's no sex or sexuality in the game whatsoever. So either the marketing team behind this whimsical gore-fest is made up of inspired geniuses with close connections to the adult film industry – or there's something wrong with this game that they need to hide behind the glamor of porn.

Loved
The Concept: Pairing cutesy stuff with violence is a proven concept. Just look at Happy Tree Friends, Fat Princess or Castle Crashers. Fairytale Fights follows along in lockstep with these examples as far as the setting and back story. Four major characters from four very familiar fairytales have their fame and notoriety stolen from them by a fifth fairytale character and they have to brawl their way through all of storybook land up to the Giants' house to find both the culprit and their missing storybooks. The combat keeps it simple, the setting is loaded with colorful props and characters that evoke a sense of nostalgia, which in turn creates a perverse sense of satisfaction when you bash a gnome or a bunny open to reveal buckets of blood.

The Graphics: The world of storybook land spans forests, cottages, castles, palaces made of candy and beanstalks. Everything is rendered lovingly with big, rounded and blocky art design via the Unreal engine. It's colorful and vibrant with a real sense of depth to the background.

The Music: Despite the raging violence that carries on throughout most of the gameplay, the music is consistently soothing and sweet. Like the cutesy setting, it does a lot to create the sense of juxtaposition and it totally mellows you out when the game aggravates you.

Hated
It's Broken: Fairytale Fights has its share of tiny flaws like graphics hiccups or poor collision detection when enemies go into ragdoll animations after death. However, it's also peppered with some pretty big bugs – like freezing during loading screens, corrupted audio playback and total failure of gameplay mechanics. For example, there's something called a Glory Kill in the game that you can activate by mashing a shoulder button after filling up a kill gauge – it makes enemies freeze in place and gives the player the ability to go nuts with the attack stick in a cool slow-mo animation. An unfortunate bug robs you of your Glory Kill by freezing not only the enemies in place, but you as well while the gauge runs out.

Fake 2D Platforming: Fairytale Fights is one of those games where everything is 3D, but the game adjusts the camera to make the world look 2D and then asks you to complete jumping puzzles in different planes of depth. I cannot stand this – it leads to a lot of pointless deaths from falling off of things while jumping in the wrong plane of depth, and it can get confusing in environments where you don't know where to go to access the next part of the 3D level.

Needs A Treasure Magnet The world is filled with treasure chests that contain either weapons or money. Unfortunately, some of them are placed poorly so that stuff falls off of cliffs as soon as you open said chests. But the real rub comes from the fact that money vanishes within seconds (while weapons stay on screen eternally) and there's no safe way to collect it when it happens to be near a ledge or a pool of acid. Granted, there's no economy in the game that requires you to have money – but it's so annoying to see a puddle of gems and know that it's not worth going after them because they're just going to vanish right when you get there and you might fall off a platform en route.

Camera+Controls = DEATH: Fairytale Fights is cursed with both a lousy camera that pulls way too far back most of the time and with controls that make it difficult to move your character away from dangerous ledges and out-of-shot positions beneath platforms. I think the Unreal engine is partially to blame – its physics make your character top heavy because their heads are too big for their bodies (so it's hard to slow down during jumping puzzles or make hard turns while running). But the fact that the camera can just lose you behind the 3D environment or pull so far back that you can't tell your character apart from the enemies makes it ten times worse.

Fairytale Fights is one of those sad games that suffer from good ideas and lousy execution. I wouldn't be half so upset if the concept was lame or the graphics were terrible. But the truth is that there are some really good things about this game that would be welcome in a normal, not-broken title. Heck, they might even be welcome in a broken title if it didn't cost a player $60. But these good parts don't make up for Fairytale Fights' numerous flaws. They're just made all the more tragic for being surrounded by them.

And Ron Jeremy. That's the most tragic part of all.

P.S. No, that "Kill 1000 Children" Achievement didn't make it into the game, but you can still off the kids you encounter in the candy palace.

Fairytale Fights was developed and published by Playlogic for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It came out on October 27 for $60. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed the main Quest using both two-player cooperative mode and singleplayer on Xbox 360. Played several rounds of Arena.

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It was my reputation among team Kotaku that got me assigned to reviewing what has proven to be the best wrestling game I've played in a decade — Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010, which is also the only wrestling game I've played in a decade. I guess everyone thought I'd be perfect for it. Maybe they know that the only website that I pay to read daily is a pro-wrestling site, a site that allows me to read about the often-mediocre happenings on modern wrestling shows without having to watch them. Perhaps they know I imported Bret Hart's autobiography from Canada and Ohio Valley Wrestling DVDs (when Paul Heyman was booking OVW shows) from Ohio Kentucky. Or perhaps it's that Hulk Hogan thing I did.

Regardless, you'd think that someone who has loved video games and, I guess, loved pro wrestling, for much of his life, would love the melding of the two. But I started this new game, the latest in the annual releases of THQ-published, Yukes-developed modern wrestling games, with almost complete alienation from the genre. (I have some professional embarrassment about this, since I've been to Yukes' studio in Yokohama and met the wrestling-obsessed people there. I even got a great tour that included a look at the back rooms that reek of body odor every summer as the team sleeps in the office while cramming to finish their game by fall). This new game brings to the series a revised Royal Rumble, an enhanced Create a Finisher option, a new training arena, revised rosters, new storylines and — the big feature — the ability for fans to create and share their own storylines. But it was all new to me. And, wouldn't you know it, the game is fun and… intellectually stimulating? Yes.

Loved
The Basic Flow: WWE pro wrestling games, as fans would know, are 3D fighting games played from a quasi-overhead perspective and battled on the surfaces of wrestling ring and floor, with the walls of a steel cage or the top of a destructible announcers' table sometimes also in play. You win not by eliminating an opponents' health bar but by executing enough minor and major strikes, throws, dives, taunts and more, all of which either damage to the opponents' body or build the momentum of your own wrestlers' adrenaline, which enables a successful pinning (or submission or count-out) victory. In other words, the game treats wrestling as if it's a hybrid of combat and performance, with the player driven by more competitive intent to maim than in the real thing. It's a good system that demands the player learn how to smoothly chain their moves to build momentum. And it is a a rewarding one, as Yukes has managed to capture and animate hundreds of moves that transition from one to the next with, of all the rare qualities in games, grace. Winning a match in this game is a performing pleasure.

The WWE Recreated: Even a lapsed fan of WWE such as myself stumbles across Smackdown on Friday nights or remembers older episodes of Raw well enough to see that Edge's shoulder-twitch during his ring entrance is true to life, that Shawn Michaels' super-kick should look as perfect as it does and that selecting Shelton Benjamin will grant the player access to a cool set of moves. The game's venues, from the pay-per-view-specific entrance ramps to the backstage announce areas, look perfect. The tone of violence and sex — an endless parade of T&A and at least one storyline involving a female wrestler sleeping her way to the top — matches squarely with even today's toned-down WWE. The announcing sounds right, issued by (mostly) the right people. This game is very WWE.

The Thesis-Worthy Story-Editor: Of all the new features this year, conveniently marked "NEW" in the game's menu for people like me, the best and most interesting is the storyline editor. In the past, wrestling game fans could create their own wrestlers, customize move-sets and even, more recently, chain pieces of animation to create new match-ending finishing moves. In the new game, players can craft a storyline, mixing matches that include player-defined outcomes with story-advancing sequences. The latter scenes are comprised of WWE-related locales (rings, locker rooms, offices) with wrestlers, a variety of conversational and confrontational emotions, adjustable camera angles, selectable music and crowd-noise background sounds and, most importantly, player-written dialogue. The system's interface has some rough edges that players can work around but is nonetheless fascinating.

This is what you'd write your thesis about: Pro wrestling is already an odd blend of fake sport and acted drama, something fans appreciate as real and unreal at the same time (We know that John Cena is a man really named John Cena, but we also know that the Undertaker is not really a man who has risen from the dead. We buy into the idea that the Stone Cold Stunner hurts, because it looks like it does; we laugh with The Rock that the People's Elbow does not hurt, because we know that he knows that we know that his big elbow move is a love tap at worst). In a wrestling game, that reality/unreality gets twisted some more, as the action in the ring is made to seem both more real than it is in real life (The depicted action in a WWE game involves hurting an opponent thoroughly enough to win, not simply entertaining the crowd through fake-fighting) and less real (The moves in the game, animated without fear of causing bodily harm, are made to look more impactful, thereby exposing how deadly and illegal they ought to really be). The new game's story editor knots these strands of truth and untruth even more. Maybe gamers have been able to re-arrange games through mods for years. Maybe they've been able to puppeteer fake lives through The Sims for over a decade. But now we can mangle and morph the pseudo-reality of real celebrities through the WWE. We could craft a storyline in which CM Punk demands to know John Cena's favorite color and then wrestles the answer out of him (I did this. Search for it on Xbox Live using the keyword phrase "Favorite Color"). We could make a storyline in which WWE Diva "A" falls in love with WWE Wrestler "Z" but is seduced away by the Create-A-Wrestler character who you designed to look just like a muscular Bill O'Reilly. (I did not do this.) You're playing with sort-of real lives. You're creating officially-sanctioned slash-fiction. You're kind of writing the next Indiana Jones adventure at the same time that you're kind of writing the next thing for Harrison Ford to do. The layers of reality and unreality are dense.

The Unintended Consequences: Maybe a simpler way to praise the interesting aspects of the Create A Storyline editor is to mention that I downloaded a storyline called something like "One Night After Raw," and after meeting a condition to have Shawn Michaels win a match, and after sitting through a series of backstage vignette's written with not the best user-generated spelling, my Shawn Michaels was then ambushed in the ring by three definitely-not-licensed wrestlers from rival company TNA. For years wrestling fans have wanted to book Raw themselves. Now they can do it virtually, for me to play through. Too bad the game's canned announcers were still plugging the WWE website instead of reacting to what this one user created.

The Royal Rumble: The game has a revised button-mashing mini-game for eliminating people in its Royal Rumble. The 30-man elimination match is often the most fun pro wrestling match of the year, so any improvements that more authentically let me, as Vince McMahon, team up with The Great Khali to flip some-user's Street Fighter Sagat over the top rope is ok by me.

The Sense Of Pain: WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 is one of those eye-catching games that other people in the room, who may be tired of the Bret Hart and Mankind books on the bookshelf, can't help but be drawn into. Why? I believe it's because the animations are so good that they look like they connect and that the moves hurt, which, given the combat that is supposed to be depicted here, is a victory.

Hated
Poor Counter-Attack Training: The game's menu-screen training arena allows players to swiftly try and learn many of the basic single or double-input commands needed to execute the extraordinary variety of maneuvers available in the game. Consider, for example, that you may want to make your wrester who is standing next to the ropes in the ring either jump over the ropes, crawl under them, wind up on the apron of the ring or on the floor or not do any of that and climb the turnbuckle… or take the padding off the turnbuckle. And there's a button combo for each of those. Offense is easily learned and joyfully executed. But the trick to mastering the game seems to be the execution of a single-input counter-move. The same button counters anything. Animated prompts appear during training and in the game's matches to alert the player that a window to counter has opened. But those windows close so quickly that that game does a poor job teaching the player how to execute this key move well.

The Online Limitations:The WWE game's online competitive wrestling worked fine and minus the lag I saw some complaining about on message boards. But I found the skill-level-matching inadequate. I can breeze through normal difficulty but can't find a player online who I can beat? I also can't easily re-find my uploaded wrestling storyline to find out how people have rated it, nor can I select which ones to download with any filters other than most recent and most-highly-rated. Overall, the options for the game's online modes are just not specific enough for the needs a player might have. The content and gameplay available through online, though, is solid.

Immediately Outdated: I played a developer-scripted storyline that involved a rivalry between Edge and Mr. Kennedy. But Mr. Kennedy doesn't work for WWE anymore. Many of our matches were announced by Jim Ross and Tazz. But Tazz doesn't work for WWE anymore, either. Both men left the company in 2009, and I understand the challenges of adapting to such changes. But this is one of those things that, as a potential consumer, I just want to have work right. This is an online-connected game. So let's see it adapt to the present.

Buried Info:What are my character's finishing moves and what position does his opponent have to be in so I can execute them? How am I doing in career mode in terms of raising my wrestlers' ability to connect with the crowd and raise his charisma stat? There are many pieces of information that are relevant to the gameplay of Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 that seem to have been omitted from menu screens and the instruction manual, possibly being reserved for the official game guide. That leaves the player to stumble across or guess many important details. This is not a bad thing for those who don't like a lot of tutorials and explanations, but gamer beware that you'll have to figure a lot of this game out for yourself.

I used to avoid pro wrestling games because of my disinterest in fighting games and my belief that the games treated pro wrestling as something different than what I enjoyed. I liked the acrobatics and the melodrama of real WWE. The games, I guessed, treated the whole affair as if it was straight-up sport. WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 still does treat pro wrestling a little more as sport than I'd want. Things like winning streaks are almost required in the game, even though they are rare in the real wrestling leagues.

But the addition of configurable storylines provides that element of unpredictable, scripted entertainment that has made WWE programming, in some years, among the best and most enjoyably wild material on TV. Finally, I'm interested. The fact that the configurable narratives — the post-Sims, post-mods playing we can do with sort-of real lives — is a spectacular and mind-bending bonus.

(WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2010 was developed by Yukes and published by THQ for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Wii on October 20. Retails for $59.99 USD on the home consoles. An copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played the 360 version. Won the Royal Rumble as Vincent Kennedy McMahon. Made it on the Road To Wrestlemania as Edge. Progressed Shelton Benjamin up a career ladder to ECW and Intercontinental title glory. Created, uploaded and downloaded storylines. Invented a new top-rope finishing move. Got pinned a lot online, including by a female version of MVP.)

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Loved
Under control: Honestly thought I'd hate the controls, considering this is five-on-five basketball with not a joystick in sight. But getting the hang of them - specifically knowing how much space your juke moves take up, so you can finish a dunk or pull-up jumper - you can run some entertaining, mostly arcade ball with occasional flourishes of realism. (Though, dunks and drives to the basic seemed to be a little too easy, allowing you to brute-force your way out of trouble most of the time.) A blue ball button controls both quick passing and your jukes (by flicking it in one of four directions) and so sometimes, you'll make a crossover when you want to kick out to the nearest man. But the offensive setup capably handles the most difficult part of video game basketball - ball distribution. Pressing and holding the blue button allows you to select a player to receive a pass, in case you have a man free on the wing and the AI isn't highlighting him. And a clipboard icon allows you to call basic plays, like a pick-and-roll or isolation. Defense, I didn't like how your man instantly became a step slower as soon as you switched over to control him. It made defending in transition - and the computer is much better running and gunning than running set plays - a total crapshoot. After a while you learn how to play a guy off the ball, get him in position, and pick up easy steals and blocks, which are your main forms of active defense as the rest is handled by AI.

The Full Package: Like Madden, EA Sports shoehorns as much of its full console experience into this device as possible. You have a season, playoffs and a quick game mode at three levels of difficulty, for both AI and how fouls and penalties are called. At the easy level, backcourt violations, going out of bounds and three-second violations are nonexistent, and they give you breathing room to run your game without turning your learning process into nonstop punishment. In season mode you can go right up to 12 minute quarters and 82 games if your commute is that long. Trades and roster management are enabled, but the former is more like "move players as you wish," because there is no trade AI. (Hello, Dwight Howard-for-Nene trade!) Three-minute quarters for me produced enough results in the 30-40 point range to be satisfying.

Hated
Some Inconsistencies: My wi-fi access is on by default, and I was struggling with some bad framerate drops until I switched it off on a hunch. That seemed to help but there are still some inexplicable lags that make this finesse game feel a little clumsy. Although this is a device and not a game limitation, it feels very cramped playing on an NBA halfcourt with 10 guys on this size of a screen, from the broadcast angle. You can switch to a baseline view that magnifies things but I found the constant camera zooming and movement to be a little dizzying. Contesting shots and going for rebounds, especially in traffic, left me wondering whether I'd grabbed the miss or recovered the ball after a block. Marv Albert's commentary isn't helpful in telling me, either, as misses are either "Comes up short!" or "Off the mark!" or "Rejected emphatically!" His presence lends authenticity but is very, very repetitive. And finally, there were some puzzling AI sequences at the lower difficulties, especially in the final possessions of a quarter, where the opposing team would do things like pass the ball between two guys, repeatedly, or hold the ball until a 24-second violation sounded the horn.

NBA Live has enough of a learning curve, and a large enough price, to be a serious purchase and not an impulse buy. Those who enjoy video game basketball can pick it up easy enough. But you should have a lot of time or desire to play it on your mobile for you to see value in the title, because it requires exploration. It's clear NBA Live on the iPhone is also meant as an entry product to get you to think about its larger sibling. Ultimately, it succeeds, and does so without resorting to fun-size cop-outs like three-on-three, or dumbed-down controls.

NBA Live by EA Sports was developed by EA Mobile published by Electronic Arts for the iPhone and iPod Touch on Oct. 23. Retails for $9.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types and difficulties.)

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Combining the breezy charm and engaging puzzling/platforming formula of the original with a few game-improving tweaks, LostWinds: Winter of Melodias manages to surpass its predecessor with style to spare.

Loved
Waggle the Wind: As with LostWinds, the core gameplay of the sequel involves controlling Enril the Wind Spirit so young protagonist Toku may succeed on his quest. And, once again, Frontier has managed to do what so many other Wii game developers have failed at: Creating truly intuitive WiiRemote motion controls. Toku is still navigated left and right with the Nunchuck's analog stick, while the WiiRemote handles wind and other weather-based trickery. From conjuring simple gusts to elevate Toku, to combining several gestures for more complicated puzzle-solving moves, you always feel in control of the simple swiping moves. Where other-more expensive games-continue to frustrate, Winter of Melodias puts fun first by making good on the hardware's original promise of allowing us to enjoy games in a whole new, innovative way.

Calming and Charming: Not since the PSN's Flower whisked me into its serene settings have I experienced such stunning, soothing visuals. The original game's sun-soaked settings were similarly serene, but the sequel even tops those by adding beautifully rendered wintry environments and effects. From falling flakes to sparkling icicles, the winter wonderland-like atmosphere matches the lush vegetation and bubbling waterfalls of the summer-set areas. Additional touches, such as Toku being realistically refracted when standing behind ice, will make you forget you're not experiencing a full-on retail release. Modest, yet equally engaging music and audio effects complement the strong visual presentation.

Change of Seasons: The addition of ice and snow to Toku's world offers more than just a pretty new paint job; it's also the source of the game's coolest new play mechanics. Early on, you'll use Enril's mastery over Mother Nature to keep Toku warm by lighting heat sources, and later, you'll be able to conjure cyclones to best baddies, blast blocked passages, and solve puzzles. Coolest of all, though, is the ability to actually switch seasons. Going from winter to summer, and vice versa, proves an endlessly engaging mechanic that's needed to crack some of the more complex parts of Toku's quest. Gusting water from a summer lake into a cloud, then raining that same precipitation into a winter void to create a solid, icy path, is just one example of the season-changing fun.

Retaining the endless charm, stunning beauty, and seamless control of the original-while also mixing in some amazing new abilities-this platforming puzzler sequel not only surpasses the original, but is also superior to many retail releases. In fact, if it weren't for LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias' short length (about 4-6 hours), you'd easily forget this one came from the WiiWare channel, and not your local EB Games.

LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias was developed and published by Frontier Developments for WiiWare on October 19th. Retails for 1000 Wii Points. A copy of the game was purchased using WiiPoints provided by Nintendo of America for reviewing purposes. Completed game.

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Scary movies don't creep me out nearly as much as scary games do. It's one thing to yell at the dumb blonde on screen about how bad of an idea it is to go into that dark basement. It's another to be the one controlling the character who's about to go into that dark basement.

In Saw, much to my dismay, you don't control a sexy blonde. Instead, you play as Det. David Tapp, a character from the first Saw film (played by Danny Glover in the movie but not the game), who awakens in an abandoned insane asylum and discovers he's a piece of a deadly puzzle created by the Jigsaw Killer: After suffering a gunshot wound, Tapp was saved by Jigsaw, who removed the bullet and, in its place, embedded in Tapp's body a key. Your goal is to solve Jigsaw's puzzles and free each of six victims related to Tapp's past, and then escape from the asylum yourself. Meanwhile, there are others trapped in the asylum, and, for them, the only way out is to kill Tapp and get the key inside him.

Loved
Jigsaw's Puzzles: Being a puzzle game, Saw would be in trouble if those puzzles were bad. Fortunately, they're not – well, not all of them, at least. The first half of the game keeps things interesting by throwing at the player a good mix of puzzles, the most complex of which occur at the end of each level, when you must save one of Jigsaw's victims.

Some of these are unique – in one, blue and red vials are dropped into a succession of tubes that pivot left or right; you must use gravity-related logic to make sure each colored vial ends up in its respective vat. (It's easier seen than explained.) Other end-level puzzles are more complex versions of those that appear in other forms throughout the game. For example, one puzzle comprises multiple concentric rings, resembling a bullseye. Along the outer edge, pointing toward the center, are two ends of a pipe. Inside each ring are various pipe pieces. The goal is to rotate each ring so that the pipe pieces connect to form one continuous path from one pipe end to the other.

To make things more interesting, these puzzles often have time constraints – Tapp is choking on poisonous gas, for instance, and must solve a pipe puzzle to shut the gas off before his health runs out. The majority of the end-level puzzles have such time constraints. What this means is you should get used to dying. A lot.

Plot: Fans of the Saw series will definitely get more from the game's plot than non-fans. Speaking as a member of the latter category, I thought the story, which fleshes out some of Jigsaw's background, held together fine, and I wasn't too confused by the numerous obvious references to the original film. (I believe the story's timeline falls somewhere between the first and second films.) The game also has two endings, chosen by the player – one of which reveals a twist and another that is far more disappointing.

Hated
Repetition: There are actually two complaints here. The first is that certain puzzles are thrown at the player over and over, seemingly for no other reason than to make the game longer. The pipe puzzle, described earlier, is one of these. Another involves circuits, in which each square of a grid contains either a red node, a piece of wire or a power source. The goal is to rotate the squares – and the corresponding node, wire piece or power source – so that all the nodes turn green, meaning they are connected by an unbroken path to the power source. I wasn't counting, but there are easily a dozen of these puzzles.

What complicates matters is the second part of my complaint: time constraints. Apparently, it's not enough that these puzzles occur multiple times over the course of the game. You also have to suffer death after death each time you come across one and fail to complete it in time. With the circuit puzzles, it's even worse – the pattern of circuitry changes each time, so memorization won't help. (At one point, I was so frustrated that I actually thought the game itself was some meta-puzzle where Jigsaw was real and was trying to make me kill myself.)

Combat: Forget the survival-horror plot – here was the true nightmare. What a mess this was. There are various weapons lying around for you to pick up – pipes, baseball bats, table legs. Press one of the face buttons for a normal attack, a different face button for heavy attack. Each weapon will degrade the more you use it, except for things like hypodermic needles, which have one-time uses. That's about it. Oh, wait, I forgot something: Turns out you don't really need a weapon, because your fists seem to do as much damage, and they don't break! The pistol is useful, but the problem is that, unlike practically any other game that uses a gun, you don't use the right trigger to shoot. No, the right trigger is used to place traps, which you can build using items you find and corresponding schematics. So when an enemy would come charging at me, my instinct was to shoot him with the right trigger, but, instead, I would inexplicably place an exploding trap at my feet, causing us both to die in a fiery blaze. One more thing: There are locked weapons cases in some rooms, and the only way to get to the weapon is to solve a puzzle involving gears, which you find in desks or file cabinets. In some instances, I would solve the gear puzzle, open the case and find …a baseball bat. Which I could've picked up in, oh, a million other places in the game. Thanks.

Other Annoyances: Despite the multiple ways you can die in Saw, I doubt any of them will be from simply running out of hypodermic health needles. Combat is too easy to worry about it, that's for sure. No, a much bigger concern are the tripwires, which are attached to shotguns that blow the heads off anyone who triggers one. Often, they're not really noticeable unless you walk around looking at your feet, so I grew accustomed to seeing Tapp's head disappear in a cloud of red mist. (You can disarm the trap, lure an enemy toward you and then quickly re-arm it, so they do come in handy.) Also, Tapp is shoeless throughout the game; walking on broken glass will cause him to lose health. This is explained in one of the game's first scenes, in which a shoe-wearing enemy taunts Tapp. In fact, just about every enemy Tapp kills in the game has shoes. You know what would've made a cool puzzle? ONE THAT INVOLVES TAPP TAKING SOME DEAD GUY'S DAMN SHOES.

As you can probably guess, Saw is not the game that turns me into a fan of survival horror. Yes, it has compelling puzzles, but, in the context of the game, it wasn't nearly enough. Perhaps it had to do with how relentlessly dark and violent the game is, but playing it just filled me with a sense of unexplainable dread. Then again, maybe that was the point. (It didn't help that the theme of Tapp's questionable morality is pounded into the player, so much so that I wondered whether the game should be called Hammer.)

Finally, one more reason against recommending Saw: Unless you're an achievement whore, there's virtually no replayability. I finished the game in about 13 hours, although I've seen some claim to have completed it in as few as eight. That's the definition of a rental if I've ever seen one.

Saw was developed by Zombie Studios and published by Konami for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 6. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Finished the game on the Xbox 360 on normal difficulty. There is no online mode.

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While Tekken 6 hit Japanese arcades in 2007 and 2008, those of us without a booming arcade scene have had to patiently wait. For those of you who only own an Xbox 360, the wait has been even longer. Was it worth it? Let's see.

Loved
Really, Really Long Campaign: If you're a fan of playing through a single-player campaign in a fighting title, then Tekken 6 is the game for you. The single player experience is a seemingly never ending trip of branching choices, boss fights and low-level thug brawls.

Roster: With more than 40 characters to choose from, Tekken 6 offers gamers a virtual bounty of play styles to learn and try to master. The single player campaign even has a mech suit you get to ride around in for a bit. All of the characters, even the silly ones, are a delight to control.

Controls and Tweaks: Liquid-smooth controls and a design mechanic that relies more on rhythmic button tapping and stick slapping are some of the reasons that Tekken is my other favorite fighter. This iteration adds a few new touches to the core mechanic, like a low-life rage mode that boosts damage and the ability to bounce an enemy off the ground and prolong your chain of attacks. What it doesn't do is mess with what already works.

Graphics: This time around you can play the game with motion blur, which does knock the resolution down to near-standard definition, but if you would rather skip the blur Tekken 6 plays at 720p, the same resolution as in arcades. Graphically, Tekken 6 is an artistically crafted game with fluid movements and an eclectic, colorful cast.

Online Options: The game offers both ranked and unranked matches online, but more interesting are its data options, which allow you to upload or download a player's replay and ghost data which can be used to tweak the play style of enemy AI offline.

Hated
Slippery Slope: In the single-player campaign there will be times when you fight in areas with drops, drops that seem to want to pull you over the edge and kill you instantly. Worse still, sometimes performing a special move will make your character, apparently unaware of their location, flip, kick or punch right into a chasm. It's incredibly frustrating.

Identity Crisis: If I'm going to spend the amount of time it takes to play through Tekken 6's lengthy campaign the least Namco could do is make sure that the character I'm playing is the one who shows up in the many and lengthy cut scenes. I'm Law, not some other guy. It's very off-putting.

Odd Save Points: The game saves at the end of every level. The problem is that later on in the games some of those levels have two, three, even four incredibly difficult bosses. If you die you can start right back up with the boss, but if you want to switch out your powerful items you need to start the entire level over again. It's a fairly annoying issue tied to what amounts to a wardrobe change.

Online Play: I only played a half dozen matches or so online, but even in those I experienced a bit of lag in my battles. Games like Tekken 6, fighters, are all about the mutiplayer, more so then even shooters. If you can't get your netcode right, don't bother releasing your game.

Loading: Tekken 6 is lousy with loading screens. You load between levels, you load between battles, you load to go online, load to get offline. You even sometimes load going from one cut scene to the next. Seriously.

I'm a big fan of the Tekken franchise, but I really don't care about the single player campaign. All I want is to be able to smack other people around online, at home or in AI-controlled arcade mode. So I can forgive almost all of the issues I pointed out. They're almost entirely about what I think is a completely needless single-player campaign. What I can't forgive, won't endure, is online lag. Let's hope Namco gets right on patching that, because until they do I won't be risking my piddly ranking

Tekken 6 was developed and published by Namco Bandai for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on Oct. 27. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through single player campaign mode and multiple matches off and online on the Xbox 360.

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Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony arrives this week as the final planned release of the GTA IV saga that began in the spring of 2008. It follows the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC GTA IV and the 360-only GTA: The Lost and Damned, two releases that only avid franchise gamers would recognize as restrained. The trailers and talk issued by Rockstar Games prior to the release of Gay Tony implied that this third installment, this new adventure starring bodyguard Luis Lopez committing crimes for Liberty City's most warped and wealthy citizens, would return GTA to the dam-detonating, beach-partying gameplay eccentricities of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

That wildness appears during some glorious moment but never quite takes over Gay Tony, which proves to be closer in tone and style to GTA IV than San Andreas. The new episode introduces some strong new ideas to the series, demonstrates Rockstar's medium-leading sophistication in character creation and makes a case for no GTA ever having a single lead character again.

Loved
I Know These People: I don't think I know any cold-blooded killers or pill-popping gay nightclub owners who have crossed the mob, but I know suave players who get all the girls and I know people who are crushed with stress about money. I don't know anyone who has encased their phone in gold nor done the same for their Uzi. But that quality of just not knowing when to stop buying and flashing fancy things is a familiar and sometimes hilarious human quality. Rockstar's characters in Gay Tony — like so many of their GTA heroes, villains and passers-by — feel fascinatingly unreal both because they are colorful and because they stand out from most video game characters by exhibiting recognizable human traits. The Gay Tony cast is distinct and fun to be around. I cared what happened to these folks.

I Know This Place: GTA IV and its expansions may play differently in your world, but for me they bring a city I know well to virtual life with sometimes shocking specificity. In Gay Tony I was assigned in just one mission to parachute onto a building — one that was a replica of a skyscraper I used to work in. In another mission I was brought to a nearly perfect recreation of Manhattan's Chelsea Piers driving range and made to stand in almost the same spot where I witnessed Tiger Woods drive trick shots, except that in Gay Tony, I was doing the golfing and the goal was more brutal than promoting an EA golf game.

Even if you're not someone who would recognize the hundreds of New York City landmarks recreated in Liberty City — not just the signature skyscrapers but the slopes of certain streets and style of certain signs — you will hopefully feel the ways Rockstar uses Gay Tony to once again exploit the emotion of real geography. A leap from the equivalent of the Empire State Building — or a nervous wait to see whether the car that escaped your helicopter by driving into a tunnel under the Hudson River emerges on the other side in New Jersey — still has the texture and tension of something that feels realer than what so many other games offer, without feeling any less fun.

In The Sky: Of the two most commendable gameplay enhancements that Gay Tony offers to the GTA IV structure, the affairs in the air are the more likely crowd-pleaser. Luis can buy single-use parachutes to jump off any building or access 15 pre-determined locations that enter him into challenges to parachute from buildings, helicopters or even off a motorcycle that is driven off a skyscraper roof. In multiplayer, players can release smoke, the better to show their trails and attract gunfire from their so-called friends (A parachutist can't fire back).

Gay Tony also puts the player in control of more and deadlier helicopters than what the series has had before, allowing for the mayhem some players found missing from parts of the earlier GTA IV releases. Of course, the peanut butter and chocolate here is leaping from a chopper with a parachute, landing wherever you want.

In The Club: Not since Shenmue asked players to enjoy driving a forklift has it been so hard to believe a video game's implication that menial labor would be fun, but Rockstar somehow figured out how to make nightclub management a joy. You can try this task almost any night at Tony Prince's straight club, the Maisonette 9, and indulge in what feels like a laboratory experiment of GTA style and gameplay. You've got the soft-scripted gameplay of having to walk from lookout-point to lookout-point in the cramped club searching for trouble and then tossing said trouble out the front door. You've got the edginess of occasional sexual interludes while you go about this task.

And, best of all, you've got the winning twist: The seemingly random call from a co-worker that assigns you an emergency tougher management task that might have you racing to Tony's gay nightclub to rescue a rapper from being outed by the paparazzi or to the Bronx (aka Bohan) to get a sandwich for the do-nothing starlet whose assistant calls you for an update every minute. The collision of pop culture, crazy people and intermittently bawdy and violent content is GTA in a capsule — or in this case, in a club.

The Right Zaniness: The hyped return of a usable military tank may have thrilled the GTA fans looking for San Andreas wildness, but Gay Tony's armed vehicle feels like an obligatory throwback rather than a joyous reintroduction. The choppers are more fun to use. But even better than seeing Rockstar mine from their past — and sometimes they do it splendidly as is the case with the group dance-numbers in the clubs that briefly turn Gay Tony into a Bollywood flick — are the new attempts at colorful chaos. I welcome the missions that riff about Twitter or that threaten the life of — gulp — a blogger.

Johnny And Niko: Few moments in The Ballad of Gay Tony are as powerful as the appearances of Niko Bellic, this man who, GTA IV players know well, has a history, a life that sawed deeply through the streets of Liberty City. To see Niko just standing in a scene — on the side of a Gay Tony enemy — hints at the power of a GTA game that encompasses multiple playable lives. The Lost and Damned's Johnny Klebitz makes his own return as do other side-characters from the other games. In many cases, these appearances help flesh out the character of the characters or offer a new vantage from which to view a familiar event, rewarding returning consumers. But it is the appearance of those who I once played as that had the strongest impact on me and made me yearn for a GTA city in which I could be a part of more crisscrossed lives.

One Magic Moment: The randomness of the series' gameplay system has provided any of us GTA gamers a moment that felt magically unique, when a traffic pattern converged or an exploding car ricocheted in just this one way that created an unforgettable spectacle. Here is my magic moment in Gay Tony, one of my favorite random GTA experiences ever: A mission that I won't spoil left me accused of a murder I did not commit. Chased by a crowd of civilians, I stole a car and sped off, police in pursuit. The radio was tuned to the game's new Self-Actualization station a thematically peculiar offering of relaxing new-age songs. As I peeled away and sirens blared behind me, the zen chill-out sounds of that station suddenly seemed perfect as I tasted something I'd never experienced in a GTA before: Innocence amid the fury and chase of wrongful accusation. I had to relax. Everything was going to be all right and those sirens, if I just gained enough speed on the highway, would fade away.

Double Delivery: You've been reading a review mostly of $20 The Ballad Of Gay Tony, which you can download to an Xbox 360 and play in conjunction with the base disc. But for just twice the price you could play this game off of the Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City disc, get the equally-meaty and interesting Lost and Damned GTA episode (we reviewed it too) and not even need the full game. Given how much we also liked that other episode, that's an unusually helpful way to experience a load of single-player bonus content that would normally have required the purchase of the base game. (Note that, however you play, you access GTA IV and either of the episodes separately from a menu screen — you can't hop from one to the other while inhabiting the digital city.)

Hated
The Unchipped City: Much still feels progressive about Grand Theft Auto, but the immutability of its metropolis does not. In an era in which less-polished open-world games such as Prototype or Mercenaries 2 can react to player mayhem by letting a building hit with a rocket be destroyed and stay that way, it is jarring to see not one brick of Liberty City ever be shaken from its foundation. Even mid-mission environmental changes, such as the destruction of a huge crane, appear to be undone after a mission ends. Rockstar inadvertently winds up effectively conveying the powerlessness we citizens of massive cities might feel to leave a mark on our hometowns, and the technical and gameplay systems that could support any level of destructibility might not mesh with the values of detail and character the developers employ. But just as Gran Turismo's cars finally took a dent, it's tempting to desire that Rockstar's cities best budge someday.

Mom: Well, I actually liked Luis' mom. And his neighborhood friends were interesting too, but the game's early promise to tug Luis between the high-roller life of rich people crimes and poor people struggles too quickly evaporated when the mom missions abruptly ended.

Minor Multiplayer: GTA IV multiplayer is changed in small, good ways for The Ballad of Gay Tony, adding kill-streak benefits of extra money won in deathmatches and fueling car races with frighteningly fast Nitrous boosts. The multiplayer, overall, however, still feels skippable. Some may value its openness as a call-back to a time of lest scripted Grand Theft Autos, but it's hard to imagine the simple, do-it-yourself mayhem of GTA as it is currently presented in multiplayer having the tug on gamers' playing time that the deep single-player content exerts, to say nothing of competing multiplayer experiences on Xbox Live.

I have left so much out, thanks to Rockstar's generosity of content and my desire to leave some good things unspoiled. There are gameplay surprises and lengthy side-activities that I have left unspoiled. And somehow I resisted raving about Princess Robot Bubblegum, nor the new radio stations. Plus, in a console-GTA-first, missions can be re-played on-demand so that players can strive for time, score and side-activity goals. Value-shoppers would find plenty to like in Gay Tony. More importantly, so would fans of well-made games.

Gay Tony is not quite as unhinged an escapade as its superb trailers may have led players to believe, but it is an entertaining and colorful adventure with some great explosive moments and as strong a spine of gameplay and side activities as Rockstar has produced this generation. The entire GTA IV experience might be too much and a shade too similar to take in over a single marathon session, but paced out over its multiple releases, it's gone very well and ends strong.

(Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony was developed by Rockstar Games and published by Take Two Interactive for the Xbox 360 on October 29. Retails for 1600 Microsoft Points over Xbox Live ($20, a copy of GTA IV required) or for $40 as one half of the Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City disc (also includes Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, GTA IV not required). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all main story missions and several side missions. Completed 62.29% of the game over the course of more than 12 hours. Died 32 times)

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While the Guitar Hero series is all about performing music, DJ Hero is all about perfecting it. Packed together with a plastic facsimile of a turntable, the DJ's weapon of choice, the game packs more than 100 licensed songs into 93 tracks, harnessing the creative power of some of the world's top names in turntablism. Talent like Eminem, Jay-Z, DJ Shadow, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Daft Punk provide mashups for the game, with developer FreeStyleGames' in-house talent crafting a few themselves. As a result of all that creativity, DJ Hero features the most unique playlist of any rhythm game out there.

But is music where the difference ends? Is this just another way to play Guitar Hero, or is DJ Hero's Euphoria more than just a different way to say Star Power?

Loved
The Music: DJ Hero features 93 tracks that are completely original, yet immediately familiar. I am a huge fan of song mashups, to the point where genre's and artists I normally wouldn't listen to are fine as long as they are mixed with something I enjoy. Fortunately, the original tracks employed by DJ Hero's various mix-masters are tunes that I enjoyed in the first place. I realize that taste in music is a very personal thing, but no one can deny the brilliance of mixing together Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby" with MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This." This game is filled with clever combinations like this, to the point where I'd say you could easily have the game running on auto-pilot in the background at a party and no one would complain.

The Machine: The DJ Hero turntable is a daunting device when you first get your hands on it, and it certainly takes some getting used to. I tried several different finger positions on the disc itself before finding one that allowed me to comfortably manage scratching without my fingers slipping. Once I found the right position I began burning through the set list at a rapid pace, tweaking the effects knob and managing the crossfader like a pro would if he or she was working with a plastic facsimile of a turntable.

Easing Up: FreeStyleGames has done an excellent job of creating a game that is accessible to players of all skill levels. There are five different difficulty levels in the game, each ramping up the challenge level, adding in new game mechanics leading up to expert mode, where the game pulls out all of its tricks. Beginner mode has the player simply pressing any button, holding it down to scratch, while expert has you scratching to match directional arrows while crossfading like some sort of maniac. The difficulty range makes the game much more approachable to new players, while allowing more experienced players to show off their mad DJ skills.

Guitar VS. DJ: DJ Hero would have been fine without the inclusion of tracks specifically tailored toward a combination of turntable and guitar controller, but the addition is quite welcome, especially for folks who scraped up every last penny they had to afford the $119.99 price tag for the bundled version of the game. As the turntable currently isn't available for purchase as a separate unit, giving players another way to play DJ Hero with their friends is a nice touch.

DJ Style: DJ Hero oozes DJ style, or at least DJ style as far as I am familiar with it. The presentation is light on words and big on images, using a pseudo-graffiti style to depict the options as you navigate through a simple sliding menu. The venues you perform in are vibrant and full of life, ensuring that onlookers have something to keep them occupied while you stare at the DJ highway. You unlock decks, headphones, and outfits as you progress through the game, as well as DJs, from original characters with their own fictional biographies to some of the biggest names ever to touch a turntable. Of course if you're like me, as soon as Daft Punk is unlocked you never go back. Overall, the game presents a rather well put-together package.

Party Play: As mentioned previous, DJ Hero's track listing is definitely party-worthy. Fortunately the game contains a Party Play option, which lets the player choose from a custom or premade playlist, which will run on its own with but a touch of a button. Unfortunately the game flashes a message on the screen during Party Play to keep players from using the automatic play as false examples of how good they are at the game, but it's a small price to pay for some excellent party music.

Hated
Re-Remix: Perhaps a result of having to go through all 93 tracks in the game in quick succession, I found myself growing weary of the repeat songs in DJ Hero's playlist. It isn't that the songs themselves repeat, but you'll find certain songs used in multiple mashups, like Tears for Fears' "Shout" and Rihanna's "Disturbia," to the point where I sighed every time I saw the song names come up. Again, possibly not an issue if you are playing in short bursts - just be ready for it if you plan any marathon sessions.

One-Track Multiplayer: DJ Hero's online multiplayer is a plain vanilla affair, lacking any real sense of competition outside of simply trying to complete the song better than the other player. Two DJs take the stage, playing the same song, with the reverse option turned off as to not interrupt the flow of things. Simply leaving the reverse option on and having it affect both tables would have been enough, adding an element of strategy to the gameplay by allowing the other player to force their opponent to replay parts of the song they stumbled over previously. Hopefully FreeStyleGames will spice up multiplayer in the inevitable sequels.

Can I Just Play A Song Please?: For some strange reason, FreeStyleGames omitted to include any sort of quick play option in DJ Hero. In order to play one song, you have to either find the pre-created playlist the song is in or edit out the other tunes, or create your own custom playlist with only that one song in it. It seems completely silly to me that you can't just look at the complete track listing, choose one song, and hit play, but there you go. Strange.

I've been growing increasingly disillusioned with rhythm games over the past year. It seems like the two major players - Rock Band and Guitar Hero - are doing the exact same thing, only with different music, and let's be completely honest here - the music isn't all that different. New titles like Band Hero and LEGO Rock Band rise up, only to ultimately disappoint when both again feature similar tracks and the same old gameplay.

Perhaps what the genre needs is a fresh title with unique music and an all-new way to play. I've certainly felt that need myself, and DJ Hero has satiated it completely. There's definitely room for improvement, but even a flawed DJ Hero is a breath of fresh air for fans of music games.

DJ Hero was developed by FreeStyleGames and published by Activision on October 27th on the Wii, PlayStation 2. PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Retails for $119.99 ($99.99 for the PS2). A copy of the Xbox 360 version of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Performed all tracks on medium, playing through a selection of tracks on all difficulty levels. Played several tracks in online multiplayer. Completed 92% of the game, with 34 more stars left to go.

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Sure, it has pretty much everything one would expect from a serious driving game, ensuring that the passionate Forza community who prefers the sim side of things is catered to. Forza 3 offers over 400 real world cars, more than 100 tracks on which to race them and impressive physics modeling that simulates some of the world's most coveted rides. And while players can enjoy Forza 3 with a traditional progression, starting small, improving their skills and purchasing better and faster cars, almost everything is available to you from the start.

Now that we've kicked Forza 3's tires—and peeled out with them—would we recommend you get behind the wheel?

Loved
From Arcade To Sim: Look, I'm kind of a driving game lightweight, not the type who would label myself a fan of simulations of almost any sort. I don't have a passion for cars, don't own a driving wheel controller and almost always play using a camera that follows behind the car. Thankfully, catering to my sim phobia, I was given the option from the beginning to play Forza Motorsport 3 according to my preference, effectively putting the game into arcade mode. This toggled on a number of driving assists, including auto-braking, full suggested driving and braking lines, traction control and an inconsequential damage model. Easy. However, as time went on, I became comfortable with Forza 3's handling, learning how to brake on my own, eventually becoming disgusted with my reliance on driving lines and automatic anti-lock braking hand-holding. After just a few hours, I'd turned off many of those assists, then more later on, letting me swim near the deeper end of driving simulation. For serious sim fans, the option to turn on manual shifting (with clutch!) and tire wear is easily accessed from many menus, letting you play the game as you wish.

Bring That Corner Back: One of the most helpful features in Forza Motorsport 3, the option to rewind a race a few seconds at a time, letting one correct one's mistakes, was also the one instrumental to me learning how to drive properly. Had I not had the opportunity to attempt a problematic corner again and again and again, without having to revisit the entire race, I'd have quickly lost the desire to compete. Rewind is a wonderful feature, a welcome addition to a simulation driving game that eases the frustration of that one botched chicane. Granted, rewind can't be used in multiplayer games, so drivers can't rely on it to fix every little mistake in Forza 3.

Power Leveling & Sweet Loot Drops: "Just one more race," I'd find myself saying while playing through Forza 3's rich single-player career mode. The constant allure of leveling your driver via the accumulation of experience points and the free cars gifted to you as you progress makes for a surprisingly addictive experience. Action RPG-like almost. Season-long race events interspersed with hundreds of shorter driving challenges ensures that there's plenty of variety, letting the player experience new tracks, new cars or simply become more familiar with the vehicle of their choice. There's some nice variety here, even if you'll revisit many tracks over the course of 220 available events.

The View From The Inside: Normally, I wouldn't have experienced Forza 3's wonderful in-car cockpit view, playing as I normally do. But after having done so to secure one of the game's achievements, I find myself opting for the cockpit view over everything else, feeling like I had a better feel for the road, an option made more palatable by the beautifully modeled interiors of each car.

Simple, Classic, Beautiful: The presentation here is top notch, with clean, crisp, well-designed menus making it easy to navigate Forza Motorsport 3's many modes and its collection of hundreds of cars. With the exception of a few exclusions—I would always assume I could tune, repaint or upgrade my car from the My Cars section—getting around (in the menus) is easy. Oh, right. The cars look stunning too, with plenty of options to take photos of each or just generally lust over them.

Quick Upgrade: Apologies for belaboring the point, but being somewhat behind the curve on how transmissions, differentials and other car upgrades work can make upgrading a car from stock to A-class race competitive is a little beyond me. Fortunately for the car un-enthusiast like me, the Quick Upgrade option, available when entering races, makes getting your car up to spec a one button affair. Of course, if you want to delve deeper into how brakes, wheel widths and intakes improve the various aspects of your car, Forza 3 lets you do that too. Me? I like pressing the A button and watching credits disappear.

Let's Shop: One of Forza Motorsports 3's biggest innovations is the addition of a virtual storefront, letting players sell cars, designs, vinyls, tuning set ups and more. Since I'm not much of a content generator myself, i rely on the idle time of others to help me customize and expand my car library. Buying and bidding on items is easy and intuitive, thanks to the well designed storefront. Categories for each, including Turn 10 picks and popular downloads, help the cream rise, making sure you can marvel at the excruciating work others put into their creations.

Hated
Wait... You Lost Me At Tuning: Given Forza Motorsport 3's easing into the simulation space—auto upgrades, driving assists, free cars!—I was a little disappointed to not see the same attention paid to the games tuning portions. Yes, these sections are simple to muck with, offering mostly clear explanations of what each tuning characteristic does, and Turn 10 offers a handy benchmarking option, but I was hoping for some suggested tuning options. Fortunately, the community appears to be picking up the slack.

As you might have gathered, I am not the driving sim authority capable of deeming whether Forza Motorsport 3 is the "definitive" racing game of this generation. What I can tell you is that the game, including its single-player Season Play mode and its ample online multiplayer modes, are incredibly fun to play, whether you prefer to keep the accelerator jammed or watch telemetry data tell you just how mangled your 10,000 credit tire upgrade has become over the course of a 34 lap endurance race.

This is a beautiful, broad package, one that was surprising in its most personally important aspect—how fun Forza 3 was to play. It may or may not be definitive, but Forza 3 is a must have for the Xbox 360 owning driving enthusiast. And maybe even the casual Sunday driver.

Forza Motorsport 3 was developed by Turn 10 Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 on October 27. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through three seasons of career mode, played multiple online multiplayer races of each type.

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This feature-heavy entry boasts 20 licensed tracks, retains most of the modes and intuitive play from the console versions, and loses little of the magic that makes the series such a head-banging blast.

Loved
Band in Your Hand: Four instruments-guitar, bass, drums, vocals, 20 tracks, world tour, quick play, multiplayer, and even a music store make the jump to Apple's slick portable. Despite the absence of plastic peripherals and avatars , Rock Band on iPhone, well...rocks!

On-the-go stars can climb the solo career path with all four instruments, or just jump into a single jam in quick play mode. A great track list, featuring such artists as Foo Fighters, Joan Jett, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Pixies, is unlocked as you tackle the solo tour on any of three difficulty settings. And, if you can round up some iPhone-owning band mates (who've also downloaded the game), you can rock out over Bluetooth. One of the cooler features, though, is the music store, which already has 14 new tracks-they're purchased in pairs for a wallet-friendly 99 cents. If the series' support on consoles is any indication, iPhones will soon become veritable jukeboxes of Rock Band-supported tunes.

Tactile Tuneage: As good as the PSP version of Rock Band was, it sacrificed some of the fun by losing the fake instruments. While the iPhone port doesn't exactly put a plastic axe in your hands, it does make great use of the device's touch screen. Coupled with the familiar fret and drum lines, the four touch bars and pads running along the bottom of the screen allow for an amazing amount of satisfying interaction. Holding your iPhone vertically, both your thumbs get one hell of a workout as they frantically keep up with the music racing towards them. Amping the immersion even further is point-boosting overdrive mode, which requires a little shake of the device for activation.

Hated
Voiceless Vocals: Shredding and drumming offer more than enough room-rattling thrills, but the vocal gameplay falls flatter than an inebriated stage-diver. Without any type of microphone support, you're subjected to a lame tapping game that's little more than a tweaked version of the other instruments' play modes. While similar mechanics work great for drums, guitar, and bass, they just don't cut it for vocals, where intricacies such as pitch actually affect your performance on the console versions. If you're not going to let us hone our singing chops, why even bother with vocal play?.

Despite falling slightly short of the console versions, and sporting an expensive-for-an-App $9.99 price tag, Rock Band is an easy recommendation. I played through the world tour mode in the middle of the night, in an abandoned NYC Pennsylvania Station. At 2:30AM, working on little sleep, and dreading the long train trip ahead, I fired it up and soon caught myself bouncing to Joan Jett's Bad Reputation in my uncomfortable waiting-area chair. Trust me-that's quite an endorsement.

Rock Band was developed by EA Mobile and published by EA and MTV Games for iPhone in October. Retails for $9.99. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed World Tour mode on easy, normal and hard difficulty settings with all four instruments. Also participated in several multiplayer games

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In Dungeon Hunter players take on the role of a prince, playing as mage, fighter or rogue, as he fights his way through dungeons and castles, woods and catacombs toward the throne usurped by his murderous wife.

Can a cell phone deliver the sort of experience most expect to find on a computer? Let's find out.

Loved
Colorful Weapons: The heart of Dungeon Hunter's addictive nature is its robust selection of weapons. The weapons include a variety of types and, much more importantly, a number of magical properties. As with games like Diablo and Borderlands, Dungeon Hunters color-codes the weapons. White means no magical properties, green one, blue two, purple three and finally gold four magical properties.

Fun Times Three: Gameloft seems to have gone out of their way to make sure that each of the game's three character classes play differently enough to warrant tackling the game three times over, a huge boon for a game like this.

Leveling: As your character gains experience he levels up, granting points that you can then assign to the character's four attributes. Level-ups also give you skill points for unlocking and boosting special attacks and spells. Those abilities include things like invisibility and summoning an animated sword to fight along side you.

Stat!: Beyond simple attribute stats, Dungeon Hunter also tracks your character's level, experience points, hit points, attacking rating and defense rating. There's more than enough here to give stat fans some fun stuff to dig into.

Graphics: While the game's character models and enemies suffer from slightly bland art direction, the graphics are detailed and smooth, never getting in the way of the often fast-paced and frenetic experience.

Length of Play: It took me about ten hours to play through Dungeon Hunter as a rogue and that was playing through just one of the three available classes. And now I'm playing through it again, this time as a mage. I'm surprised and delighted to find such a substantial and enjoyable game on the iPhone.

Controls: With one minor exception the controls in Dungeon Hunter are simple to understand and easy to use. And, despite tapping the game nearly constantly for all ten hours of gameplay, I rarely had a misfire or mix-up of targeting or movement.

Hated
Touchy Hotkeys: The game's controls are great, with one small exception: Dungeon Hunter's skill icons. These are the buttons you tap to activate your extra skills. The default loads them as a scrollable icon that you can shift through by swiping in either direction. Unfortunately, I often swiped when I meant to tap, causing me to use the wrong skill in the hectic battles. You can change the icons to all display on the screen at the same time, but then it feels a bit cluttered.

Art Design: Not a whole lot of imagination went into how the game looks and the creatures you take on. There are blobs of assorted colors, skeletons, bandits and other generic baddies. It would have been nice to see a more interesting palette of enemies.

Plot: Like the art direction, the plot feels a little too familiar for my taste. You're a prince out to right a wrong you accidentally wrought. Not much in the way of twists or surprises here. Next time it would be great to offer up a little substance in the way of storyline too.

This is the first time Kotaku has taken the time to give an iPhone game a full, ten-point review. There's a reason for that: Dungeon Hunter delivers a substantial and deep experience, one that offers up plenty of opportunity for more thoughtful analysis and pushes both this game and the platform to a higher level.

Dungeon Hunter is worth your time, your money, your attention. It is the sort of game we all imagined might exist on a platform so easy to carry around in our pockets. Sure there are faults, but they're all superficial. With a bit more attention spent on art and story Dungeon Hunter could be the sort of game that better establishes the iPod Touch and iPhone as a serious competitor for the PSPgo and DSi.

Dungeon Hunter was developed and published by Gameloft for the iPhone and iPod Touch on Sept. 14. Retails for $6.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the campaign as a rogue. Completed all side quests and made it to level 40.

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In Marvel Super Hero Squad, tiny cartoon versions of your favorite Marvel heroes and villains race to collect Infinity Fragments in order to either forge them into the Infinity Sword and take over the world, or prevent that very occurrence from happening. The storyline is ripped directly from The Super Hero Squad Show on Cartoon Network, itself based on Hasbro's line of superdeformed action figures. Once you finish story mode, the game also features a Battle Mode that allows up to four players to step into the boots, shoes, spandex, or bare feet of their favorite Marvel characters and beat the living daylights out of each other.

As enticing as that all sounds, Marvel Super Hero Squad is still a game aimed at children. Does that mean that only children will enjoy it? Read on, true believer.

Loved
Strange Tales: Marvel Super Hero Squad is a kiddy game, but the plot and the way missions are split up is very reminiscent of the way multi-character team-up events were once traditionally treated by Marvel Comics. An Infinity Crystal is shattered in the initial chapter, and then subsequent chapters feature individual heroes - Hulk, Wolverine, Falcon, Iron Man, Thor, and Silver Surfer - as they fight through countless enemies in order to retrieve the fragments before Dr. Doom and his henchmen do. Each chapter is distinct and tailored to the hero involved - Thor fights his brother Loki in Asgard; the Silver Surfer is transported through alternate dimensions; Falcon has to do a lot of flying; and the Hulk just wants ice cream. Okay, maybe the last one was a stretch.

The Squadron Supreme: They may be tiny, but there sure are a lot of them. Between the story mode and the battle mode, Marvel Super Hero Squad features a nice selection of the best and worst that Marvel has to offer. You've got your core hero group, with Ms. Marvel barking orders from behind her S.H.I.E.L.D. desk; a motley cast of villains including Dr. Doom, Mole Man, MODOK, Loki, Crimson Dynamo, and Sabretooth; and then you've got supporting characters like Storm, Invisible Woman, and The Thing. If you were looking for a game with tiny little Marvel characters running about, hitting things, then this is your game.

Secret Wars: Once you unlock all of the playable characters and finish story mod, you're left with quite a passable little brawler for 1-4 players. It's a watered-down Super Smash Bros. with 3D movement, a nice selection of tiny Marvel characters and arenas, and the ability to fight in free-for-all or squad-based battles. It isn't perfect, but there are far worse things you could do with four friends and four Wii remotes.

Funny Pages: While the majority of the humor in Marvel Super Hero Squad is aimed at the much younger set, it does have its fair share of funny moments. The characters are versions of their grown-up counterparts with their flaws exaggerated to humorous effect. Take the Silver Surfer, for instance. He's long been one of Marvel's most long-winded, introspective characters, which in the MSHS universe translates into a Keanu Reeves-sounding surfer dude who thinks really deep thoughts. Some of the dialogue is rather witty as well, such as when Magneto quips, "You interrupted me while I was erasing hard drives just for fun." That's what I would do if I was Magneto.

Hated
The Vile Voice Acting: I realize the game is based off a cartoon which in turn is based on a toy line for toddlers, but even a toddler would wince at some of the voice acting in Marvel Super Hero Squad. It starts with Mole Man and MODOK sharing the same high-pitched squeaky voice and then goes downhill from there. When Stan Lee is one of the most dynamic voice actors in the game, you know something isn't quite right.

The Chaotic Camera: The camera in Marvel Super Hero Squad does grant a certain amount of control to the player, but it isn't quite enough to keep from getting hung up on scenery or stuck behind your character at times when that isn't a good place for it to be. It's also a very large pain during some of the more delicate platforming moments in the game, when you can't quite tell where you'll need to jump to avoid being plunged into molten lava.

The Enigmatic Easiness: Once again, Marvel super Hero Squad is a kid's game, so don't expect any real challenge here. Even when you uncheck Easy Mode, which seems to be checked by default before each mission, you can easily breeze through the game's story mode in a few hours. If you are a small child, it's probably perfect. If you are reading Kotaku, chances are you are not a small child, or your parents are really irresponsible.

The key thing to remember about this review is that I am a 36-year-old man, and therefor not the target demographic for Marvel Super Hero Squad. This is not a game that was developed with the 36-year-old man in mind. I am also a gigantic comic book geek, however, so I can still appreciate the title as a method for introducing a younger audience to the heroes that helped make me the slightly twisted individual I am today, and while some of the things Marvel has done to cater to the younger audience border on blasphemy in my eyes, I'm confident that those younger Marvel fans will eventually graduate to grown-up superheroes (really?), looking back on their time with Marvel Super Hero Squad and thinking how stupid they were back then.

Until that day, Marvel Super Hero Squad serves as a fine entry into the world of comic book heroes for the younger set, but once you get past the point when you start adding "teen" to the end of your age it's probably time for something meatier.

Marvel Super Hero Squad was developed by Blue Tongue and published by THQ for the Wii on October 20th. Retails for $39.99 USD. Additional versions exist for the PSP, PS2, and Nintendo DS. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through story mode and played through multiple fights in battle mode.

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Since the Ratchet & Clank series launched just back in 2002, Insomniac Games has developed four installments for the PlayStation 2 and three — including the new entry, A Crack In Time, officially releasing this month — for the PlayStation 3. Another development studio has created a pair of PlayStation Portable games for the series as well.

That's a lot of Ratchet: A lot of a fuzzy hero jumping and shooting his absurd variety of weapons which become more powerful the more they connect with their hundreds of targets. That's a lot of Clank: A lot of a diminutive robot starring in side missions that usually feature a new and sequel-unique style gameplay. That's a lot of Captain Qwark, a lot of Dr. Nefarious. It's a lot of flying from planet to planet, collecting gold bolts to unlock alternate character models, jumping from floating platforms, shooting futuristic corridors, entering gladiator arena challenges, collecting comedy guns that make enemies dance, and unlocking post-credits challenge modes. Every time.

That's a lot of formula, and finally with A Crack In Time, the supposed conclusion to a three-part story on the PS3 that separated and now reunites the two title characters, there is enough new and enough changed to merit attention by those who may have grown weary. Ratchet is still flying to planets and doing his expected gun-slinging, but Clank's got his best new styles of gameplay yet. Plus, the mission flow, which brings Ratchet into contact with a mysterious other member of his supposedly lost species, finally gets the shake-up it's been needing.

Loved
Clank Makes Me Smarter: Long ago, Clank stole the show in these games thanks to his fun character design and mischievous sense of humor. Now he's stolen it because of his gameplay as well. He starts the game and, between the breaks of Ratchet's inter-galactic adventures, learns an expanding set of moves that help him puzzle his way through a massive clockwork space station floating in the middle of the universe.

The core Clank gameplay involves time-manipulated 3D platforming. The player makes Clank run to a switch that should open a door. But as soon as they step off, the door shuts. The solution is to rewind time and let a recording of the player's Clank — now a color-coded ghost — run to that platform while the real Clank is made to run out the door. Eventually, Insomniac has the player saving and playing back four Clank ghosts and mixing in time-slowing bomb blasts to boot. These puzzle-room challenges are just involved and devious enough to require thought, and they are the most satisfying thing in the game to complete.

Ratchet Makes Me Hold My Breath: The core Ratchet gameplay is what series veterans would expect. You fly to planets, kill funny-looking aliens with an evolving toolset of absurd guns that includes a massive bowling ball of energy, a bomb-gun that has ordinance that detonates upward, a bundle of sticks that dig into the ground to network a web of tripwires and more conventional stuff like a pistol that shoots ricocheting lasers. The oldest of Ratchet ideas — the weapons level up into more powerful versions as you kill more enemies with them — are merged with more recent experiments with modular customization of some of the gun parts. You can imagine this and be on steady ground with your expectations. But once the game introduces two things — its moons and Ratchet's hover boots — something special happens.

Ratchet's planet visits are mostly conventional, fairly easy escapades. His visits to moons, however, are reminiscent of Mario's visits to the difficult no-hoverpack hidden stages in Super Mario Sunshine. The moons, which are presented as spherical levels — a design both the Ratchet and Mario games have used before — provide optional and tricky platforming challenges. These are the stages the more confident gamer will relish, especially once they are forced to activate Ratchet's hover-boots, which are essentially a stand-in for a futuristic skateboard, and precisely and quickly dash along platforms and off ramps that hover high over a magma moon's surface. Finally, physical movement in this series is tricky and exhilarating again. Mario shouldn't have all that fun.

Insomniac Makes Me Gape: More realistic-looking games tend to get the graphics awards, but the cartoon reality of A Crack In Time deserves commendation. As well as the game's heroes animate, its ordinary enemies animate even better. They clamber and dive and die dramatically with a visual flair one usually has to get from Looney Tunes. The game's environments are stunning, as a distant planet's rings peek over the horizon of the moon on which Ratchet stands … or in the clockwork complexity of Clank's domain … or amid the dense gray smoke puffs that emanate from the magnificent beast and rider who has just been toppled in front of his dozen lieutenants in a level that has the colorful richness of the deserts of the American southwest. This game looks great at every turn and is presented in a confident manner that masks little of its horizons and fills much of its scenes with visual variety and imagination.

The Story Makes Me Remember: The creeping problem with the Ratchet & Clank games is that it was all seeming the same. The series' many planets, guns and enemies began to blur together. Who could pick a favorite or remember any four of them distinctly? Insomniac, clearly trying to tell a more emotional story, albeit one that hits nothing more than the familiar beats about the value of friendship and sci-fi sanctity of time, has finally constructed a memorable mission flow. The game doesn't end when you think it might. It doesn't even progress in the standard planet-hopping manner of its predecessors. New twists and branches emerge as the player progresses, making it easy to tell the difference between the level that was the city, the one that was the arena and the one that pitted me in a battle near a waterfall to save a village. Those may sound like simple distinctions, but they are ones the series had been missing.

A Small Trick Makes Me Fix Things: It is not a big feature, but it is an example of how refreshing this game is. Clank has a scepter that, when he hits things that are broken, makes them come back together again. They animate their destruction in reverse. Reminiscent a little of Red Faction's repair gun, it is one of A Crack In Time's best visual tricks.

Hated
Space Makes Me Sigh: I had high hopes for this game's outer-space sections. The game's mission planets and side-mission moons are contained in several space sectors. Ratchet can fly through each sector, landing on those heavenly bodies or taking side missions while staying in the seat of his craft. Those space tasks include blowing up asteroids, chasing comets and dogfighting enemy squadrons. None of it is challenging or all that fun. And it is not helped by attempted distractions like a quartet of available fake radio stations nor by an upgrade system that alters the lasers and missiles fired by Ratchet's ship. A future Ratchet game might improve the space stuff, but this iteration of it is a visually-attractive bore. At least a player sailing The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker's equally-beautiful but often equally-dull ocean had access to camera controls and could use their traveling time to frame the visuals in lovely ways.

Qwark Bums Me Out: Qwark's latest mini-game, My Blaster Runs Hot, continues the tradition of putting low-fi mini-games into high-def adventures. The joke's worn thin. I resisted the urge to play more than one round of his twin-stick shooter.

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time retains a lot of what was good about the previous games. But it also continues one of the best traditions of its developers — to compress past accomplishments, quickly give players a lot of the old stuff in the game's early going and then try new things. Earlier games' experiments with dialogue systems and multiplayer didn't thrill me. But, the new game's more dynamic physical movement (hooray for hoverboots), more interesting mission flow, amazing graphics and smart system of relatively easy main missions that branch off to more challenging moon challenges, are good innovations.

The Ratchet gameplay is improved. The Clank gameplay is a revelation. Two years ago, Ratchet & Clank Future showed how good Insomniac could make this series look on PS3. A year ago, Ratchet & Clank: A Quest For Booty showed that Insomniac was still prepared to innovate with gameplay. A Crack In time, the space case notwithstanding, finally shows the series leaping forward.

(Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time was developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America for the PlayStation 3 on October 27. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the campaign, finding about half of the hidden items in just under 10 hours. Unlocked and tried post-game challenge mode.)

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Whatever the case, such sights are possible in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, a title that's notable for a couple reasons: It again pairs two of the most iconic characters in video games (and their supporting casts), and its juxtaposition of the words "Olympic" and "winter" seems strangely off-putting (why not Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games, hmm?). Regardless, the premise, which builds on 2007's Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, remains simple: Take ten characters from Mario's world and ten from Sonic's and let them compete in two dozen or so events from the Winter Games. Players can take part in a Festival mode–-either alone or with up to three others—that walks you through two "weeks" of events (two or three per "day"), or they can compete in stand-alone single-player or group matches.

And now, the judges' scores.

Loved
Dream Events: While progressing through Festival mode, every so often you'll have to participate in a Dream Event, which takes one of the main events, puts an arcade spin on it and transports it to a Mario- or Sonic-themed environment. In Dream Ski Jump, for example, you glide on skis through the Good Egg Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy, collecting goodies for points along the way. They're nice diversions, especially when you nail a triple axel while leaping a Goomba, as in Dream Figure Skating. I found many of the dream events to be preferable to their reality-based counterparts.

More than Mini-Games: Though some events got annoyingly repetitive, there were a few worth the extra play-throughs. Hockey, with its one-minute halves (they're called "periods," but there are only two of them) was face-paced and fun, as you control the four-on-four action by pressing the A button to pass and flicking the Remote forward to shoot or body-check. Another was curling, which was surprisingly intricate and made for a decent primer on a sport I knew little about.

Balance Board: Unlike the previous Mario & Sonic title, which was released before Wii Fit came out, this game supports the Wii Balance Board. I included it here simply because it makes the sledding events more enjoyable, allowing you to sit to steer. (Hey, when they're appropriate, I'm a sucker for alternative control schemes.) However, the Balance Board is not without its drawbacks. It's compatible only with a handful of events, and it's debatable whether it makes those sports – skiing, snowboarding – more enjoyable. Moreover, anyone with a Balance Board should also have Wii Fit, which also includes ski slalom and ski jump games. Finally, the Balance Board is not supported in Festival mode; it's a separate option, alongside Single Match, Festival and Training.

Hated
Rival Challenges: In Festival mode, after about every other day, a rival will challenge you in one of the events, which you must win in order to advance to the next day. Some rivals are ridiculously easy; others are more difficult. (Of the latter category, I seem to recall jotting something down in my notes … oh, yes, here it is: KING BOO – GIANT SLALOM – DIE! DIE! DIE! This was in reference to how, in order to beat King Boo, you must ski a nearly flawless giant slalom race while surviving the multiple times that the grinning bastard bumps you on the way down the course, including the many instances when he would knock me off balance a few feet before the finish line, causing me to lose and igniting an overwhelming desire to rip that flailing red tongue out of his ghostly freakin' throat. See also: BIG BULLET BILL – SKELETON RACE – MUST … NOT … PUNCH … TV.) But back to the point: Overall, the challenges seemed little more than an artificial way to extend the Festival mode by making you repeat something over and over again until you get it just perfect.

Movin' and Shakin': While the controls for some events seemed intuitive (or, like skiing or snowboarding, were already familiar from similar games), others were less so. In the speed skating 1000-meter short track, for instance, you must shake the Wii Remote on the straightaways and tilt it around the curves. But your time on the straightaways or curves lasts maybe a second or two, so your motions end up a jumbled mess. Furthermore, some of the motions just aren't that responsive. In the ski cross or snowboard cross events, for example, when approaching jumps, you're supposed to jerk the Remote and Nunchuk upward to make your character jump. It worked maybe a quarter of the time for me (and, making me feel doubly dumb, I kept whipping myself in the forehead with the Nunchuk cord).

Length: You can sail through single-player Festival mode in as little time as a few hours (or more if, like me, King Boo or Big Bullet Bill trip you up). In order to unlock all the Dream events, you'll have to play through Festival mode, but, after doing so, I'm not sure there's much incentive to keep repeating it.

Aside from the novelty of seeing Mario, Sonic or their acquaintances competing in winter sports, there's just not a whole lot to Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. The various iterations of skiing, snowboarding and speed skating events make the game seem too repetitive, and the few noteworthy sports – hockey, curling – don't justify the full cost of the game. The game does provide a "shopping" area where you can use in-game cash to buy music from the game or outfits for your Mii, but, again, are you going to get the game just for that? You could probably rent this one and get what you need.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games was developed and published by Sega for the Nintendo Wii and DS on October 13. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed Festival mode and tested the game with the Balance Board on the Wii.

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I think it bears noting that I never played the original A Boy and His Blob for two reasons. First, the reader understands why I don't comment on how well the game adheres to the original - I have no frame of reference, so I cannot comment. Second, it speaks of the popularity of the NES title that, despite never having played the game, I still understand the premise and basic gameplay mechanics. A blob lands on Earth, seeking help in defeating the evil emperor who have taken over his planet. He meets a boy, and together they discover that feeding the blob different flavors of jelly beans grants it the ability to transforms into shapes that conveniently aid in the platforming adventure they embark upon to defeat the aforementioned evil emperor.

With a basic understanding of the game in hand, I ventured into the delightful world of this new A Boy and His Blob. What did I gain, aside from a killer craving for jelly beans?

Loved
Storybook Graphics: The sharp 2D graphics of A Boy and His Blob look as if they were lifted straight out of a children's storybook. The backgrounds are vibrant and colorful (if a bit repetitive at times), which serves as a sharp contrast to the simple style used to render the blob and your enemies. I found myself completely charmed by the game's style.

Here's Your Blob, Go!: If you want to delve into the story behind A Boy and his Blob, read through the game's manual. Once you start playing there are no words; no tutorials; no encyclopedia containing pertinent information. You figure out how to play the game on your own. In other titles this might have been a negative, but A Boy and His Blob plays intuitively enough that you don't need such distractions.

Choose Your Own Jelly Bean: Once you get into the thick of things, A Boy and his Blob affords you a certain amount of freedom in terms of how you progress. While I'm sure there are specific ways of overcoming obstacles that WayForward had in mind, judging from the predetermined set of transformations available to your blob in each level, but there are multiple ways of approaching certain problems that, if successful, leaving you feeling very pleased with yourself.

More To Love: A Boy and His Blob contains 40 levels of gameplay, which is more than enough to keep you blobbing all day long. Then every level contains three treasure chests to collect, which in turn unlock special challenge levels for you to play through. That's 80 levels worth of gameplay, plus the joy of obsessively searching for treasure chests. I'd say that's more than enough.

The Hug Button: The game has a button assigned to giving hugs. Every game should have a game assigned to giving hugs, not just A Boy and his Blob and Army of Two.

Hated
Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs: A Boy and His Blob pretty landscapes are rife with graffiti. Everywhere you go you'll find quaint wooden signs, defaced with symbols letting you know exactly what form your blob should take in order to progress. As you progress through the game they get fewer and farther between, but they still make an appearance now and then, taking away from the most enjoyable aspect of the game - trying to figure out how to progress using the tools given you. An option to turn them off entirely would have been quite welcome.

Pet Pathing: The most frustrating element of A Boy and His Blob for me was waiting for the blob to catch up, which happens quite a lot. In many instances the blob simply comes when you call. In others, it feels like you have to hit the call button over and over again, like an impatient person waiting for the elevator, while the blob slowly made his way back to your side.

Even though I had never played A Boy and His Blob before, I have to admit that I came into this review with some idea of what to expect. The original was such a unique experience, that the re-creation had a lot to live up to no matter who was playing. Now I'm not sure what those of you who played the original game experienced, but I found myself quite pleased with the re-creation as a whole. The sharp and colorful 2D graphics, soothing music, action puzzle-based gameplay, and minimalistic presentation all add up to a gaming experience that can only be described as delightful, and that's not a word that I use lightly. Hell, that's not a word that I use ever. Enjoy it while it lasts; I'm off to stock up on jelly beans.

A Boy and His Blob was developed by WayForward Technologies and published by Majesco for the Wii on October 13th. Retails for $39.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed the game proper and played through at least half of the bonus challenge levels.

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But can a video game capture the essence of a toy made popular by it's ability to physical transform from ball to creature?

Loved
Essence of Bakugan: The popularity of the collectible card game is driven by the nature of the little marble-like Bakugan. These balls, when rolled across a metal card, pop open to reveal a tiny monster inside. Each creature has points, which can be modified with cards. The Bakugan with the highest point count at the end wins.

The video game does an excellent job of capturing the look and feel of these tiny creatures and the way the spring to life. While the battles animate the Bakugan, everything leading up to that moment feels like the real-world game. The marbles roll around an arena responding the shape of the playing field and the tilt of your controller. And if a ball lands on a card it springs open, just like the Bakugan you may have in your home. Cards are still used to modify points. The only real difference is how the winner is determined, with mini-games modifying the final point count for each creature.

Throw and Control: To play the game, both on a console or in the real world, players take turns throwing their balled Bakugan across an arena, trying to land it on a card. In the Wii version of the game, you do this by first selecting a Bakugan with your remote, then determining if you want a standard or power throw. Finally you aim and throw the ball with your remote. Once in motion, you can guide the ball around the arena by tilting the controller. If you run out of energy before landing on a card the ball returns to your hand and it's the other player's turn. The object of each battle is to win three cards either in battle or by lading two of your Bakugan on a card. The responsive controls of the Wii remote, while the Bakugan is in motion, makes the game surprisingly fun and adds a level of skill to what could have been a game of pure numbers.

Arenas: Taking advantage of the video game medium, the developers created a number of themed arenas packed with power-ups and cards. Instead of just throwing your Bakugan at a card, players are tempted into exploring the arena on the hunt for powerful items that can be used in battle. But if you run out of energy before making it to a card you lose everything you collected.

In the Game: While there aren't a ton of ways to customize the look of your character, there are enough to make him or her look sort of like you. And once you've created your character he or she will show up in every animated cut-scene for the game, right there along side all of the characters from the cartoon. It's pretty neat.

Multiplayer: While the single-player campaign may test your skills as a Bakugan Brawler, the multiplayer, which allows up to four players to battle at a time, is where you'll likely have the most fun. It's here that the game will be most played.

Special Shots and Sphere Attacks: Another neat addition to the basic Bakugan play is the ability to rack up enough power over time to do special shots when you throw a Bakugan. You can also use shots to smack into an opponent's opened Bakugan to damage it before a battle starts. Both of these abilities add a bit more tactical action to the game.

Hated
Touchy Remote: While the controls work flawlessly when controlling the Bakugan in motion, the time spent leading up to your throw can be very frustrating. In particular, grabbing a Bakugan and then deciding what sort of shot you want can often be problematic, with the controller deciding for you because of the way the game is designed.

Plot: Unlike a game like Pokemon, where the battles with other characters are neatly woven into the framework of the story, Bakugan's story comes as an aside to gameplay. All of your gaming, with the exception of the forced training done in the park, comes during tournaments which are almost completely story free. It would have been nice to see the game presented in a bit more cohesive manner.

Limited Mini-Games: There are only three mini-games in Bakugan Battle Brawlers. Three games used to decide who wins in a match-up. Players will shoot symbols, tap buttons in a rhythm game or shake the controller. While each of these mini-games have a number of difficulty settings, they can become tedious over time because every single match up has to include one of them. It would have been nice if the developers had included a half-dozen or even dozen mini-games instead. Three is just too little.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers does a better job of laying out the basic rules of playing the game than the actual card and marble game you can buy in a store. It's an impressive feat to manage to outdo the source material and in many ways that's just what this video game does.

Will Bakugan Battle Brawlers usurp Pokemon's throne? No, not by a long shot, at least not yet. To do that the game will have to spend a lot more time on the story and building up both the characters and the creatures they collect, but I found the basic mechanic of battle much more engaging than I've ever found Pokemon to be.

Bakugan Battle Brawlers isn't without its flaws, but there's something very engaging about playing the game. The physical nature of controlling your throws, exploring the arenas and then watching your Bakugan spring to life all had me coming back for more.

Bakugan Battle Brawler was developed by NOW Production and published by Activision for the DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360 on Oct. 20. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played the campaign mode for six hours and multiple multiplayer matches on the Wii.

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Controlling Biggs, a tubby, cuddly creature, players snap up bugs with his tongue from an above board (that's a cross between Space Invaders and Donkey Kong Jr.) and feed them to other creepy crawlies. The goal being to burst their bellies, and eat the jewels that spill from their adorable innards. Once Biggs has gobbled up enough sparkly stones, his hunger meter fills and he moves onto the next level.

Loved
Simple, Yet Super-satisfying: Critter Crunch's concept will be familiar to anyone who's ever cleared a board or filled a meter in any other puzzle game, but the execution is complemented by solid gameplay and enough variety to keep you engaged throughout. Shooting out Biggs' big tongue—it puts Yoshi's lengthy licker to shame—players gobble bugs, then spit them into bigger bugs. When an insect is fed two unlucky bottom-feeders, it bursts, dropping a jewel to satisfy the void in Biggs' ample belly. Once the hunger meter fills, it's time to move on to the next buggy buffet.

Strategy enters into the food-chain fun when you arrange bugs so they can eat each other, or chain like-ones together to clear a large portion of the board with a single burst. When you do this, Biggs' hungry son waddles out, and you'll make daddy vomit a rainbow of big bonus points into his mouth. Additional variety comes from skilled insect species that can do things such as spill hunger meter-siphoning poison. Outside the lengthy adventure" mode, Critter Crunch's charm and challenge translates to "Puzzle" and "Challenge" games, as well as scary-addictive local and online multiplayer.

Gorgeous and Gross: Critter Crunch's puzzling action unfolds over beautifully rendered hand-drawn 2D visuals. Biggs, the bottom-of-the-food-chain bugs, and the lush backgrounds all pop off the screen with Pixar-like crispness. Additionally, animations are surprisingly detailed for a PSN puzzler; from fluttering flies' wings to Biggs' satisfied chomping, everything animates with eye-catching fluidity. Even the gross-out moments are made more cute than stomach-churning-Biggs barfing rainbows into his son's maw is a highlight.

Perfect Pacing: My biggest complaint with most puzzle games is that they're often pathetically easy in the early stages, then have you yanking your hair out by the later levels. With Critter Crunch, though, I was never bored or frustrated by the pacing. Don't misunderstand, it gets super tough late in the "Adventure" mode. However, by the time the action gets frenzied, your brain and reflexes have been taught to keep up. And, even when the arachnid army does manage to overwhelm Biggs, you should find it more fair than unnecessarily frustrating.

A relatively simple puzzle game concept is nicely complemented by appropriately paced challenge and an engaging presentation that manages to be adorably charming without ever becoming annoyingly cute.

Critter Crunch was developed and published by Capybara Games for PSN on September 30th. Retails for $6.99. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed Adventure mode on normal difficulty and participated in multiplayer modes on the PlayStation 3.

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Along the way, from the bus that drops your player off at the nearly deserted town of Fyrestone to the final showdown at the secretive Vault, a lot of looting and a lot of shooting is gettin' done. That constant collection of Halo-esque recharging shields, stat-boosting artifacts, character class modifiers, grenade types and "bazillions" of guns is as much of Borderlands appeal as the four player, drop in, drop out cooperative multiplayer mode.

There are four classes to experiment with: the burly, melee-skilled Berserker; the turret-spawning Soldier; the Siren, whose Phasewalking skill makes her fast and invisible; the Hunter, who favors his sniper rifles and his pet Bloodwing. Each class comes armed with dozens of customizable skills and Borderlands packs in over a hundred missions to play through, so the game can't be knocked for its lack of variety. Is everything else in place?

Loved
Co-op Is King: Borderlands is at its best during co-op, when the mix of enemies becomes more varied, when the challenges are made more difficult, and when you've got a partner to take the gunner position in one of the game's vehicles. When player skills and capabilities complement each other well, you can churn through some of Borderlands' less interesting fetch quests, hauling ass as a team to the next bounty, power leveling each other with quickness. Credit to Gearbox, who made the process of getting into a game relatively painless, minus a bit of confusion surrounding completed or half-completed quests from the game's single-player mode.

A Magical Wasteland: To get the superficial stuff out of the way, Borderlands looks damn good. The "concept art" shading adds personality to what otherwise might have been flat, barren stretches of desert land. The Xbox 360 version holds up relatively well, only slowing down when things get really hairy and when the bad guys get really big—things drag a bit more noticeably during the game's last hour, when some heavy action goes down. Player characters and enemy designs look sharp—we just wish there was a little more room for additional character customization.

One In A Bazillion: With randomly generated weapons, especially when almost everything is a gun of some sort, there's valid concern that the variations will be difficult to notice, that every shotgun or machine pistol will feel the same. Fortunately, that's not true in Borderlands, as weapon manufacturers, elemental attacks (fire, electricity, corrosion) and a long list of attributes make many guns feel surprisingly unique. The same is true for the one-off guns, typically picked up from a major fallen foe or given as a reward. These uniques, like the sub-machine shotgun Boom Stick or a burst fire rocket launcher, tend to be the most interesting variations, if not always particularly useful. You'll likely settle into a quartet of reliable favorites that complement each other well, as well as come to appreciate the handy and illustrative "compare" option in the inventory screen.

Quickly Addictive: Borderlands' reward system, granting you big bonuses in cash and experience for completing quests, kept me coming back for more, even when I had planned to take a break. Just one more quest, I'd say, in search of new loot, new levels and new areas to explore. This quick addiction to the game's frequent pay-offs was made more intense during co-op, when the rewards come much more frequently thanks to cash and experience sharing. (Warning: while the money and XP are shared, the rest of the loot is first come first served. That, and the lack of a secure player-to-player item trading option, means you should play with trusted friends.)

We Got A System: The game's attribute system, focusing on elemental modifiers, reload times, clip sizes, and other weapon functions, works quite well. It's not as complex as many of the role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games that it clearly borrows its weapon/shield attribute system from, but there is depth to it. For the most part, it's easy to understand why one shotgun or shield is better than another, even if the naming system for items can be cryptic.

Second Wind: Second Wind lets the player keep firing with their dying breaths. Should they take out their killer before the screen fades to black, they'll recover a fraction of their health and shields. Not a groundbreaking innovation, but something that saved my ass more often than I'd care to count. And I love it for that.

Hated
Getting There Is None Of The Fun: You're going to spend a lot of time in Borderlands going from point A to point B. And for the most part, all that hoofing it around is going to suck. Here's a long list of reasons why. The game's map is sometimes confusing, meaning I too often had to check and recheck and recheck my location via the menu screen. There is no mini-map overlay, unfortunately. Maps are lacking in key information, things like the locations of main characters, where town-to-town "transitions" actually go, and the ability to place your own waypoints. One of the faster travel concessions, the teleportation between "New-U" respawn points, is made less useful, because most missions don't tell the player where to go to collect rewards, so teleporting can be kind of a crapshoot unless you're taking good mental notes. Finally, vehicles, while much faster than walking, can sometimes get stuck on world geometry, resulting in a very long jog to your destination.

More Like Bore-derlands, Am I Right? Alright, Borderlands is fun, so that may be a little harsh. But at some point, between collecting 24 bottles of booze and scouring six Dumpsters for... whatever and running on foot all over the damn place, monotony can set in. Borderlands, especially when played solo, can get a little... dull. There's plenty of grind here for those who like it, but there's also plenty of grind for those who don't.

Suspect AI, Suspect Aim: I saw the AI do some pretty dumb things during my time with Borderlands—about 22 hours, if you're curious—which usually worked to my advantage. Granted, Pandora's wildlife and lowlife probably aren't that smart or they'd have found a way off this rock, but they'll often forgo cover for standing in front of it or even on top of it. Some of the more difficult boss characters can act thickly as well, getting stuck in behavior loops that make them so much simpler to kill. Dumb though the AI may be, it has an amazing ability to keep its sights trained on you, unfairly in some situations. Like those son of a bitch turrets.

Borderlands gets a lot of things right, in particular the balance between being a first-person shooter and being a role-playing game. The shooting mechanics are sound, as are many of the role-playing aspects, save for a few design quirks. Growing and customizing my level 35 Siren was a great deal of fun, when the tedium of all that walking around didn't spoil it. But where Borderlands excels is in offering a functional four-player cooperative loot-hoarding experience, with gorgeous environments to adventure in and smartly crafted items to collect or covet.

The game has a few faults, including its traveling inefficiencies—a weak map combined with plenty of long-range fetch quests—and its easily forgettable story line, but it's still relatively easy to recommend, provided you can tap into the best portions of Borderlands, its cooperative multiplayer modes.

Borderlands was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 20. Retails for $59.99 USD on consoles, $49.99 on PC. A copy of the game was purchased by Kotaku for reviewing purposes. Completed single-player mode, played 20 co-op missions on Xbox Live with groups of two and three players on Xbox 360. Tested splitscreen co-op mode.

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The aforementioned mutant rat has trapped the artist Axel and his canine companion Pixel in a bizarre dream world and run off with the key. The pair must pursue the vile vermin through four seasons' worth of levels, solving puzzles and completing rudimentary mini-games in order to make their way back home.

Axel & Pixel is the first of two independently developed games 2K Play is bringing to Xbox Live Arcade, having seen "the potential and the talent in these two unique and bold concepts." Is what they saw what we get?

Loved
Pretty Pixels: The first thing anyone notices about Axel & Pixel is the distinctive art style, which blends hand-drawn characters with backgrounds that looks as if they were crafted and textured using cut-out photographs. It's a striking visual style that meshes well with most of the gameplay elements and fits particularly well with the music, creating a wondrous, soothing atmosphere, perfect for a point and click puzzle game. It's no wonder this game caught the eye of 2K Play's new indie game initiative.

Piecing It All Together: Axel & Pixel is, for the most part, a point and click adventure title. Most of the game's levels present a problem you must solve by interacting with objects on the screen. Some levels contain additional challenges, such as sequential button pressing boss battles or the odd mini-game, but for the most part it's a straight up adventure title. It isn't all that difficult, and anyone with half a brain should be able to play through the entire thing without resorting to using hints. Some might consider this a bad thing, but I find an adventure game that mildly stimulates my brain without driving me to the edge of frustration to be a very entertaining and relaxing couple of hours. Your mileage may vary.

Hated
And Then There's The Driving: Yes, the game is a relaxing couple of hours, except when you're suddenly plunged into a river filled with whirlpools on a rickety raft, or asked to maneuver a hot-air balloon through a cavern filled with jagged rocks. These diversions from the point and click norm felt unnecessary to me, like going to a film festival and being forced to exercise between reels. Further distancing these segments from the main game is the fact that while you may have to redo a button sequence during some of the regular adventure gameplay, the driving/boating/ballooning segments are the only moments in the game where you get a game over response, continuing from the beginning of the level should you fail. It doesn't ruin the game for me, but it certainly takes me further outside of the adventure zone then I would have liked.

Axel & Pixel is not a long game, and it isn't a particularly difficult one either. It isn't the sort of game you'll spend hours poring over, trying to find every secret or get the highest possible score. It's a momentary diversion; a game you can wind down for the evening with, or waste a couple of hours playing on a rainy afternoon, perhaps while drinking a nice hot cup of tea.

Axel & Pixel is a somewhat brief yet ultimately pleasing experience that will mildly test your logic skills while treating you to some lovely music and gorgeous visuals. It's not the most adventurous of adventure titles, but if you're in the mood for something short and sweet it should fit the bill quite nicely.

Axel & Pixel was developed by Silver Wish Games and published by 2K Play on Xbox Live Arcade on October 14th. Retails for 800 Microsoft Points. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played game through from start to finish.

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Loved
Senseless Slaughter: Who wouldn't want to go up against an undead horde with unlimited ammo? No matter how bad it gets, you may still battle this game from that expectation - shooting the limbs off a staggering, growling mob that obligingly stands there and takes it. As a top-down shooter, you run around firing Robotron-style with your right analog. It's like putting out a fire, really. Zombie Apocalypse quickly ramps up the difficulty by throwing different zombie classes at you whose behavior make your task a little less straightforward. You'll definitely come to hate the mewling dodgers, those fat-ass construction men, who pancake you with no chance to break free, and those pragnent zombie ladies shitting out fruit-fly spawn that can rip out your spine. Let me reserve a special word of hate for the crazed, dynamite-carrying kamikazes. Still, no matter what you're facing, when you think about Zombie Apocalypse there's always a nagging thought you can do better the next time.

Hated
Singleminded Singleplayer: This is a game built for multiplayer and if you play it primarily for that reason, it'll be a satisfying and even delightful experience. But if you bought it and have no one to play with - or, as I found, have repeated matchmaking problems - it will grow very old and repetitive after the first time you confront the Flesh Pile, which I think is around day 30. (The Flesh Pile is giant bleeding placenta-looking thing that shoots death rays and barfs out zombies.) You only get four different boards to play, and when that variety runs out, then you can play them in blackout mode, and when that variety runs out, then the normal zombies you face become superpowered nukeular zombies, and you progress through their ranks much as you did during your first tour of the undead. It's very repetitive if you're going it alone. The good news is you have unlimited continues. But Day 54 is just utterly interminable (you'll need to kill more than 1,500 zombies, proceeding through waves of every single type, and then their atomic flavors) and for the conclusion it provides, Day 55 is a total waste of time if you're fighting the final Flesh Pile alone.

Weapons Balance: It's bad when you avoid some specialty weapons because your base weapon, the assault rifle, is more effective. The rocket launcher and the sniper rifle had poor areas of affect, considering what you were dealing with, and atrocious rates of fire. The molotovs weren't much better. The grenade launcher was surprisingly effective, mostly because of an amped-up rate of fire, even if the grenades had a delayed burst effect. By far the best weapon is the flamethrower - which is even better than the gatling gun. But every time you're praying for one to drop you always get the goddamn sniper, or maybe the dual wield submachine guns if you're less unlucky. You only get one grenade attack per board - which can be replaced if you rescue a civilian. But deploying it, a teddy bear strapped with explosives, is grating to the extreme because of the conspicuous, Barney-parody dialogue ("I'm stuffed with love! - and C4 ...") it insists on reciting every time it's on the ground. Finally, Zombie Apocalypse bragged about its environmental kills, but I found them to be more cosmetic than useful. Zombies won't stagger or shamble into the woodchipper, you have to shove them there with gunfire, which is more trouble than it is worth. Even the exploding barrels are too sparse to really help you in your job as an undead pest control technician.

Zombie Apocalypse absolutely delivers in the carnage apartment department (Jesus, Owen ...) but I would have loved to see the environment more involved. Alone against the amoeba-like horde, I tried to use the board's obstacles to funnel the undead into killzones. But really any plan to use the environment to your advantage is going to break down after three seconds of standing in the same place. You just need to shoot everything and run, and in most cases that won't be enough without backup. Definitely fun when you're playing with more than one. Alone, it's not worth it after about 20 levels.

Zombie Apocalypse was developed by Nihilistic Software and published by Konami for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Available on Xbox Live Arcade for 800 points and PlayStation Network for $9.99. The game was provided to Kotaku for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in singleplayer, completing the 55-day campaign, and tested multiplayer mode.

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Half-Minute Hero, XSeed and Marvelous Entertainment's unusual, experimental role-playing game is smart, sharp, surprisingly long — given its title — and sloppy in a way that somehow doesn't break the game but instead makes it all the more charming.

Who knew a game that seemed like a three-note joke could accomplish so much?

Loved
Brave Design: Half-Minute Hero was made by developers with guts. They created an homage to 16-bit top-down Japanese role-playing games, but sped up the pace to force you to rush from the start of an adventure to the defeat of a boss in 30 seconds, daring to fill the script with comedy and automate the battles. The main gameplay is the time management of rushing the hero from town to battle to, maybe, secret hidden cave, leveling up in the blink of an eye and strategically spending quickly-earned money to pray to a money-hungry goddess and buy the time to get the clock back up to 30 seconds.

And that's just Hero 30, the first of the game's three main modes. The three other main modes, Princess 30, Evil Lord 30 and the unlockable Knight 30, offer similarly mad takes on side-scrolling shoot-em-ups, real-time strategy games and whatever you call the genre that involves escorting a sage through a dungeon with the help of carefully laid traps that keep enemies at bay. All of the four modes run on 30-second timers, each offering a different angle on how to extend the clock.

Your Time, Not Wasted: The game is fast, sometimes too fast. Most quests go from title screen to credit-rolling in 90 seconds — if you're slow. You don't have to press buttons during battles because, well, you don't have to think too hard about pressing them even in the many major Japanese role-playing games. So, in Half-Minute Hero, you're spared. Te battle screen switches the view of Hero 30's top-down RPG to a sideways view. Your hero automatically rushes from left to right, mauling or being mauled by his opponents. Conversation in towns — where time is frozen — is brisk and funny. Levels are unlocked fast and furiously. And leveling-up is accelerated in every mission you play. Soon enough, the player is leveling from zero to 20 and upgrading armor five times in just a minute. Makes you wonder why you ever had to spend 50 hours doing that.

Splendid Variety: The JRPG mode, Hero 30, is the game's main attraction. It is a strong entry in its own right, offering more than 30 quests before its conclusion and branching off in different directions depending on decisions you make during the adventure. The other three modes are entirely different, but each retain core values of the game and the JRPG genre. All are funny. All involve characters who don't take themselves too seriously. And all offer different ways to level up, access optional levels and experience that ever-satisfying progression from weakling to superstar that typifies a great role-playing game.

A Progressive Look Back: Half-Minte Hero's graphics may look 16-bit, but so many enlightened touches have been applied to them. For example, the pixelated sprite of the main character in Hero 30 changes depending on which head, chest, foot and hand items he's been equipped with. The music is a bravura tour of RPG emotion, hitting all the beats of triumph and sorrow from track to track, the music rotating for each of the game's quick levels. Even when the developers are pretending to be annoying — like when they roll the credits at the end of every Hero 30 level — they can't help but respect a modern gamer's needs by letting those credits be accelerated.

Wonderful Imbalance: Half-Minute Hero is mostly too easy, which would be a problem if completing it didn't require going through more than 120 separately laid-out levels. It's tempting to criticize how, in the RTS mode, the evil lord that the player controls can get caught in a corner and mauled by enemies even when it seems that the controls should enable some type of escape. He can summon monsters after all, so why can't he be liberated? Some of the fourth mode, Knight 30, seems like it's been made to be broken. A level or two appear to be beatable in normal mode if the player does little more than have the protagonist stand still. But it's hard to object, because those rough edges — that apparent sloppiness — fits the spirit of a game that is having so much fun with its trappings and is so quick to move on to the next quest and crack more jokes in script and gameplay.

Hated
Throwaway Level Design: Despite what I just wrote about the imbalance, the game's shoot-em-up mode, Princess 30, does disappoint. Completion of it, Evil Lord 30 (the RTS) and Hero 30 (the RPG) are required to access Knight 30 and the amazing final two unlockable modes that I will not spoil. The conceit of Princess 30 is that the Princess needs to leave her castle, find some medicine for the king and get back home by curfew. It's funny, especially because she turns from docile to destroyer as soon as she picks up her crossbow — and because of the inane logic of the plot that has her fetching bitter grass to heal dad because everyone knows good medicine is bitter — but the whole thing disappoints because the levels are barely-distinct linear rushes. Zip out of the castle with the shooting button spammed. Zip back in. Not enough changes to keep this mode as strong, so woe to the player who leaves most of Princess 30 to be played on its own. If you get the game, mix the Princess levels in. Don't save them.

I thought the appeal of Half-Minute Hero wouldn't last. And it would be if all of the levels were as quick and sometimes-silly/broken as those of Knight 30, Evil Lord 30 and Princess 30. But Hero 30 takes this one over the top. Level design in Hero 30 is clever, full of hidden secrets, fun gameplay twists and everything else that a good RPG can have — brilliantly packed into quests you can hope to clear in 60 seconds.

If more developers want to mess with conventions like this, please, please do.

(Half-Minute Hero was developed by Marvelous Entertainment and published by XSeed for the PSP on October 13. Retails for $29.95 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all quests to completion, except the bonus, crazy final post-completion one. Took me 12 hours, 15 minutes, 8 seconds.)

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I didn't even bother with the American version after that. The Japanese original was scary enough for me, thank you very much. So when I heard there was a game coming out that was made by Japanese developers based entirely on the lore established by the Japanese film series, I was totally cool with it—even if it was "another movie game."

Then I actually played it – if that's what you can call the act of participating in a "haunted house simulation."

Hated
It's Not A Game, It's a Haunted House – and It Fails At That, Too: Ju-on: The Grudge bills itself as a "haunted house simulator," which means you're supposed to experience it rather than play it. True to form, you can't control much of anything in the game except the odd flee-from-malevolent-ghost quicktime event and there is no way to "win" the game in the traditional sense. This might still be an okay thing… except Ju-on isn't a very good haunted house, either. The scares are predictable (except the ones inflicted on you by a second player mashing A on their Wii Remote randomly) and a lot of the monsters, ghosts and motifs are repeated between the four levels. For example, hair tentacles and the little boy meowing like a cat are used way too much to be scary after the first time you encounter them and the random dolls or bodies that fall from the ceiling right in front of you are almost comical in their absurdity.

The Controls Are Lousy:The Wii remote functions as a flashlight which is like a life bar (when you run out of flashlight battery life, you die); and all your movements are mapped to the B trigger and the D-pad. Squeezing the trigger takes you forward at a fixed pace and you can change directions gradually by pointing the Wiimote in a direction while you walk. This system of movement is frustratingly slow and wonky – especially when you're trying to turn around tight corners. The effect ruins whatever scary the game manages to achieve because you're constantly facing in the wrong direction see scary stuff like a ghost running down a hallway, or you can't make the Wiimote obey the QTE sequence of flailing – so you wind up dying and having to repeat the same thing over and over again, which really sucks the scary out of the game.

Not. Scary. At. All. Scariness in games is a result of a lot of things, as we explore here in this feature. Conversely, un-scariness is a result of a lot of things – poor controls, lousy execution of basic startles, etc. Ju-on: The Grudge has some of what it needs to scare you, like the dynamite films on which its based and the necessary creepy settings you imagine in nightmares (hospitals, burned out apartments, etc.). However, its control scheme and poorly-timed cheap thrill scares make a mess of what little the game has going for it. The result is an experience you'd sooner skip, not because it scares you but because it's such a waste of potential.

I'm disappointed that I couldn't find even one thing to love about this game. I really liked the movies and I love horror games. To be fair, there even was one thing I liked: the mechanic of a second player having the ability to scare player one. However, this idea was poorly implemented in Ju-on because the images generated by pressing A repeated themselves too often. So even that doesn't work out for Ju-on and I've got to tell you you're better off just watching the movie. Or going to a real haunted house. Or actually encountering a real death curse. Any of those options is bound to be scarier and way more exciting than Ju-on: The Grudge.

Ju-on: The Grudge was developed by Feelplus and published by XSEED Games for the Wii. Released on October 13 for $30 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all four levels in the game, plus the courage test with a second player periodically mashing on A to give me random scares.

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As Sofi, players are unleashed into a storybook-like, side-scrolling dream-scape evocative of the worlds created by Tim Burton.

Despite Sofi being the main character, players don't actually control her; instead, they protect her by placing objects in her path, ensuring she safely makes it from one end of a level to the other. As Sofi self-propels along, she's faced with pitfalls, traps and creatures that can send her back to the beginning of the level. Players place items such as staircases, blocks and trampoline-shoes to help her overcome obstacles and reach her destination. The objects appear randomly in a Tetris-like fashion, testing gamers reflexes as well as their brains, as they race to find the right piece and place it in front of Sofi, lest she land face first in a spiky pit.

Anyone who spies even a single screenshot of this easy-on-the-eyes offering will be hard pressed to escape its visual charms. However, once in Sofi's world, players might find the actual gameplay to be more a nightmare than a dream.

Loved
Storybook Come to Life: Each one of Lucidity's 40+ levels is a visual treat. Oozing charming atmosphere, they should appeal to anyone who digs the colorful-and often creepy-worlds created by Tim Burton and the like. In fact, it's impossible to watch Sofi skip through her imaginary world and not recall Henry Selick's recent cinematic re-imagining of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. From the lighter palette that begins the game, to the more foreboding tones coloring the later levels, it's always easy to appreciate the developer's visually-driven storytelling style.

Cool Concept: Rather than create a Super Mario Bros. ripoff in this pretty world, LucasArts' unique approach puts a fresh coat of paint on platformers. The idea of not actually controlling the character, but rather her fate, by placing objects in her path is packed with potential. And the actual items used to guide Sofi further speak to the creative passion behind the project; whether you're shooting Sofi with a slingshot or simply placing a make-shift bridge in her path, it's super satisfying to see her not step towards danger because you've altered her path.

Hated
Frustration Trumps Fun: Despite a fantastic idea and appealing visuals, Lucidity (and ultimately Sofi) stumbles hard due to unforgivably poor execution. Beyond the first dozen or so levels, the game becomes an exercise in frustration, as you scramble to keep up with Sofi and find the right pieces to ensure her safe passage. There's too much going on-obstacles, traps, enemies-in the later levels, making it nearly impossible to complete them, never mind take the scenic route to chase collectible fireflies which add life and open bonus levels. Additionally, the slippery controls don't accurately "snap" objects into place, so, as Sofi marches towards a poisonous frog, you're left to wonder if your staircase is maybe a little too far left or right. Of course, you soon get your answer when the menacing amphibian sends little Sofi packing to the level's starting point. Which speaks to the next infuriating factor: How about some damn mid-mission checkpoints?! Sadly, by the time you successfully get Sofi from point A to B, you'll be more relieved than satisfied.

Touchy controls, loose level design, and a lack of useful items when you need them, make Lucidity, despite its potential and beautifully engaging presentation, far more frustrating than fun. I went into this promising title with brimming enthusiasm, but by the end, too many laps on the trial-and-error treadmill had broken my spirit.

Lucidity was developed by LucasArts and published by LucasArts for XBLA and PC on October 7th. Retails for 800 Microsoft points, or $10. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed Xbox 360 version of the game on normal difficulty.

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Brutal Legend is the latest game from Double Fine Productions and Tim Schafer, the man behind Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and Psychonauts. Eddie Riggs is a roadie who fears that heavy metal is dying, until the Fire Beast Ormagöden transports him to a mystical alternate history where heavy metal suffers under the tyrannical rule of the evil Lord Doviculus. Eddie must free this world and its inhabitants from the demon reign, but to do so he's going to need all his roadie skills, and he's going to need an army.

Brutal Legend is a game that is hard to define, mixing several different gameplay styles, from open-world action-adventure to vehicular combat to real-time strategy. Can Double Fine tie together these different threads into a satisfying gaming experience, or do they braid them into a rope and hang themselves?

Loved
The Song Of Eddie Riggs: Strip away the glitz and glam, the gloom and goth, and of course, the metal, and Brutal Legend is the classic tale of a stranger in a strange land, leading a rag-tag band of rebels in an uprising against their oppressors. It's the sort of story we've seen time and time again in books and movies (Army of Darkness comes to mind immediately), though this time around the strange land is far stranger, though at times comfortably familiar. Looking at it another way it could be a forum argument between fans of goth music or glam rock and fans of heavy metal come to life. It's outrageous and over the top, while still maintaining just a bit of humanity, even if it is a more sophomoric, hilarious sort of humanity.

You Can't Stop The Metal: More than an album cover brought to life, Brutal Legend is heavy metal given physical form. Driving your souped-up hot rod across rolling hills with giant monuments to rock jutting up from the ground; navigating jagged cliffs as waves crash against the rocks far below, in search of dragon statues; or running through the swamp as black panthers straight out of a black light poster bound about the twisted trees - it's the sort of place heavy metal fans imagine themselves in when listening to the music. The fact that you are listening to some of the best music the genre has to offer while doing so just makes it that much sweeter.

I'm Free Roaming: While you're not leading your troops into battle or escorting the tour bus to your next gig, you're free to roam about the countryside in your tricked-out Deuce, taking on missions, uncovering secrets, unlocking new music, and earning points to upgrade your powers and equipment at various Guardian of Metal locations scattered across the countryside. Some of my favorite moments in the game were when it was just me and my car, leaping over obstacles while the music blared. Hell, that describes some of my favorite real life moments.

We're The Road Crew: What really makes the story of Brutal Legend work is the amazing cast of characters that Double Fine created and the voice actors behind them. You'd expect a fine performance from actors Jack Black and Tim Curry, but it's the musical talent that steals the show. Heavy metal artists aren't generally known for their acting chops, but for the most part they really aren't acting in the game. They are just being themselves, and it works. From Lemmy Killmister's mumbled comments to Ozzy Osborne's surprisingly un-mumbled quips, their words feel at home because in a way the game is their home. Special props go out to Lita Ford, who actually had to act, and did a surprisingly good job of it.

You Gotta Fight: Whether you're alone against the forces of darkness armed with only your axe and your guitar, or teaming up with the various members of your crew to perform special attacks, combat in Brutal Legend is smooth, fierce, and generally satisfying. Accruing the favor of the gods and spending it at the Guardian of Metal's shop allows you to change the properties of your weapons, granting you special powers, while new moves and new vehicle weapons mean you always have a nice assortment of killing moves at your disposal. Things can get a bit hectic during the larger battles, but all in all I enjoyed killing the various people, places, and things that Brutal Legend pit me against.

Battle Of The Bands: This is where Brutal Legend is going to throw some gamers. The major battles and multiplayer of the game swap out the hack and slash gameplay for what is essentially an action real-time strategy game. You harvest resources in the form of fans, which in turn allow you to upgrade your stage, unleashing more powerful units onto the battlefield as your fan-base grows. Your opponent, be they AI-controlled or another player online, is busy doing the same thing, with the goal generally being to destroy your base before you destroy theirs. You can wade into the battle yourself, playing riffs that buff your forces or debuff the enemy, but later in the game the bad guys get a bit too powerful to spend more than a moment engaged in melee combat. Your job is to fly around the battlefield, guiding your troops as they do the job for you. It's a quick and dirty RTS, and while I had some issues with the overall flow of the single-player game due to the switch in gameplay styles, taken on its own its quite an entertaining little mini-game.

Hated
Record Skipping: The vocal work in Brutal Legend is amazing, but that doesn't mean I want to listen to the same three or four phrases over and over again. Several of the story missions in the game had me gritting my teeth in frustration as the characters repeated themselves over and over as I desperately tried to complete my objectives before going insane.

Re-Mission: The handful of side missions available in Brutal Legend are appreciated for the way they break up the main story and afford opportunity to build up more favor points in order to upgrade your powers, but they could have done with a bit more variety. You can only do so many ambush missions with the same exact dialogue each time before they begin to wear on you, which makes completing them all less of a good time and more of a chore.

An Odd Mix: The game starts off by teaching you the basics of guitar and axe combat. Simple. Then it lets you get used to driving and shooting. Still pretty basic. Then you are plunged into a real-time strategy game, where it doesn't quite feel like a real-time strategy belongs. Until now, my main exposure to Brutal Legend had been funny videos starring Jack Black, so I wasn't quite prepared for a game where the major skirmishes were in RTS form. Double Fine eases players into it as best they can, but it's still an odd mixing of gameplay styles that don't generally get along with each other.

Brutal Legend combines a rather eclectic mix of different gameplay styles. It's an open-world action-adventure game, a squad-based brawler, a driving shooter, and a real-time strategy game. Diversity is its strong suit, but it could also be the game's biggest weakness. Players who enjoy running about, killing creatures with axes might not enjoy suddenly finding themselves in charge of collecting resources and spending points on creating an army to do the work they'd rather do themselves. I really enjoyed the RTS portions of the game, but a part of me would have rather Double Fine had just thrown in a traditional boss fight rather than have me shift gears so abruptly.

In the end, Tim Schafer's trademark wit, an amazing cast of characters, and an unforgiving faithfulness to the heavy metal culture that Brutal Legend celebrates helps bring together what could have wound up a disjointed mix of clashing genres. It's a game that is worth experiencing, even if you have to call in a more strategically-minded friend to ease you through the hard bits.

Brutal Legend was developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Electronic Arts for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on Rocktober 13th. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played though the campaign mode on normal difficulty on Xbox 360 and participated in several online multiplayer matches, kicking ass in the process.

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In this first-person shooter sequel you command a squad of marines helping to retake the island of Skira from the Chinese in a near-future teetering on the brink of war.

But no longer in the hands of developers Bohemia Interactive, can Codemaster's Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising prove itself every bit as difficult and fun as the original?

Loved
Damage System: Getting shot in Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising can have a lasting impact on how you play the missions. Besides headshots killing you instantly, you can get tagged in the legs, the chest, the arms, the head. Injuries show up on a little version of your character on the screen, if you don't fix yourself up fast (or have a medic do it) you'll eventually bleed out. And even when you do patch yourself up you still won't be able to run sometimes. The end result? More cautious gameplay, more thinking before you move. Perfect for this type of game.

Sound: I've played my share of first-person and third-person shooters and, next to America's Army 2, this game has some of the best sound effects out there. You'll hear a sniper bullet whine by your ear urging your to drop to the ground and use the report of automatic fire to pin point an enemy and listen for footsteps to alert you to nearby bad guys.

Difficulty: Played on the average setting, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a brutal, unforgiving experience. If you don't pace yourself, using tactics and squad commands, you're going to be shot down in seconds. And those one-shot kills you land can happen to you too, so don't stand in one place for too long.

Realism: From the whine of bullets and full body damage modeling to the relatively open map, which allows for just about any sort of approach you want in a map, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising plays more like a training exercise than it does a run-in-gun shooter.

Hated
Save System: Managing and creating save points in a game can be an art. Too many and players will just trudge through the game, regardless of loss of life, knowing that they can respawn feet from where they dropped. Too few and you have Dragon Rising, which has you play for 30 to 40 minutes, cross vast tracks of terrain, take out multiple units and then die only to do it all over again. The save points improve as you near the end of the game, but the beginning is brutal and unnecessary.

Line of Sight: When a single shot can kill you instantly and save points are stretched between unforgiving distances of objectives and terrain, having a game that can't render an enemy on the horizon doesn't just look bad, it guts the action. In almost every map I played there were enemies who phased in and out of existence as they wavered on the edge of what the game could handle showing me, making sniping a near impossibility.

Brain-Damaged Friendlies: Your squad mates can be life-savers, helping you flank enemies or patching you up after you've taken a shot to the chest. But man can they be stupid. It's shocking how many times my men came to patch me up and then just stood over me with a med kit in hand, watching me die, or refused to mount a vehicle, or walked directly in front of me while I was shooting. Or the one time I had to restart a section of a mission because my squad had commandeered a jeep, drove to the other side of the map with it and then refused to join me at the extraction point. In a game so reliant on squad, this level of artificial intelligence problems is unacceptable.

Plot: Maybe this is a plus for some gamers, but if you're going to bother having a storyline, even a rudimentary one, then invest a little time in creating a story arch, characters with first names, some meaning. Look at Modern Warfare. It was a core shooting experience, but still managed to deliver a evocative and interesting story.

Not So Online: I'd love to be able to tell you what playing on the Playstation Network is like with Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, but I was never able to even connect to the servers. Going online I found a six-page thread about the problem and promises from the developer that they were looking into the issue. Apparently the same problems can be found on the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game, according to the thread.

Buggy: This game could have used a bit more time in the cooker, it also could have used a thorough once-over after it was finished. From spastic animations to clueless friendlies to missions that won't end to missing radio communications, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is a mess.

Despite the problems, and there were quite a few, I did love the concept of Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. I think games these days are too forgiving. Gamers, especially "hard core" gamers need some tough love. That means permanent death in massively multiplayer online games, overwhelming odds in strategy titles and one-shot kills in shooters.

Playing through the game was a painful, but fun experience. The bugs and overwhelming problems with the title made the time spent gaming often frustrating, but those times when the game was working properly it sang.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising was developed and published by Codemasters for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on Oct. 6. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the single-player campaign, but was unable to join any multiplayer servers over the course of four days.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Last year's version of NBA Live finally helped the franchise pick itself off the mat in the next generation of consoles, where barely acceptable offerings had trailed NBA 2K10's best-in-class effort for years. This year EA Sports Vancouver pushed the focus to team play rather than flashy individual performances and animations. The product is a clean, accessible game with a strong underpinning of realism, and a level of player control that sets it apart.

Edit: In the interest of accuracy, the opening sequence does not use the word "revival." Instead it's "arrival." However, the sentiment stands. It's a revival of the franchise.

Loved
Everyone's under control: Whatever your style of play, the ability to custom-move off-ball player with a trigger-button-stick combination is a strong positive. This isn't a command to an AI, this is you physically moving one player while another has the ball. It creates lots of catch-and-shoot opportunities at the perimeter and do-it-yourself plays that are more technically satisfying than run-and-gun basketball. They're also more efficient - sometimes a little too efficient - than some of the set plays you draw up. You also have the "dynamic quick play" button which basically tells your hottest (or nearest) scorer at the moment "get open." These wielded in combination with the quick pick-and-roll's improved control, give you an impressive sense of power getting the ball in the basket, without ever beating your man off the dribble or going one-on-one. It rebalances the focus on team play and easily does the most to recommend this game.

Fancy passing is no passing fancy: In addition to the above, freestyle passing allows you greater directional control over where you whip the ball, even in traffic, rather than hoping the game AI doesn't send it to an unintended man covered up on the play. With this and the trigger/button direct-pass mechanism, there's almost never a reason to flick A/X unless you're just bringing the ball up. Like Magic and Bird, the controls make the assist cool again. Hell, it makes the outlet pass cool. More importantly, with a clampdown on speed and what you can get away with taking the ball to the hole, NBA 10 places a greater premium on spacing and open shots, and with the passing controls, it gives you the tools to create those opportunities.

Dynamic DNA: It's back again with another layer of fine-tuning and a year's worth of data to build upon. Not only do you get players whose performance is broken down by attribute score and tendency, you're presented with a thumbnail scouting report of your AI opponent in every game and the means to go much deeper in your franchise mode. By no means do I study player or team tendencies of the NBA, but I could sense that, in certain game situations, bad teams defaulted to type, superstars tried to take over (sometimes succeeding), and many other AI choices that seemed to be based on the game's breakdown of players, and not a coaching directive. You get the Lakers down by eight late in the game and Kobe's going to start bombing away, I assure you. Yeah, that's an easy call for any AI to make, but I swear that players who would prefer drives to one direction would hit a point in the game where they would take whatever was in front of them, suddenly defense got a lot easier, and that point at which every team in the NBA makes its run had passed.

Dynamic Season: This is fast becoming all the rage in games, and I don't know who exactly innovated it. But once the season gets going NBA Live 10 will allow you to drop back in time and replay any game on the schedule. That's different and that's a plus. Right out of the box you can pick key moments from the 2008-2009 regular and postseason, and almost immediately I started playing the epic Bulls-Celtics opening round series from the playoffs. It's not integrated into Dynasty Mode; but diehards can play along with their favorite team and change history for any disappointing result in real life.

Hated
Tone-deaf defense: Compared to 2K10, there's less subtlety in the distance your player covers when you move the stick even minutely, and playing man-to-man defense really exposes this. I overran a lot of plays and couldn't quite find the touch necessary to keep from being beaten off the dribble constantly. The standard ball-you-man fundamental, to cut off passing lanes, is hampered by an imprecise way to engage and stick to your man. In defending a shot, getting your hands up seems to have no effect, unless you keep them down, in which case you can count that bucket. It's the cross borne by defense in a game style that largely entertains with scoring, but the defensive controls doesn't feel as responsive as the offense. As such, it is more work and less fun in NBA Live 10.

Setting boundaries:: Again, pointing to the lack of finesse in player motion, there seemed to be some real AI issues with the boundary lines. Passes to the corner can be a faith-based affair, because your man will sometimes set up with a foot over the line and sit there. It does not happen all the time, but it's often enough to be unacceptable. There were also some backcourt violations that defied reality - I had a player run back across the timeline to take a pass in a kind of reset-the-offense way, even though we'd already inbounded the ball to that side of the court. The upside, I guess, is you can work this to your advantage. Sideline traps work often enough to feel like an exploit. Just call a double team, get the hands up and wait for the opposing ballhandler to step out of bounds. I got to the point where I did it on three straight possessions in a Finals game.

Who's (play) calling?: If you're not familiar with what basketball looks like beyond screens, picks, and drive-and-kick, calling set plays in this game will still be a puzzle for you. I'd order a play that had Nene posting up and he'd stand there, facing the basket, while Chris Andersen was backing down his guy and everyone had a full-color pass icon overhead. So I'd wonder if I was supposed to start the play by passing to someone else first and if so, who. Some icons are grayed, some are not. Pretty sure this exposes my lack of proficiency and familiarity with the game, but hey, I don't study the triangle-and-two in my spare time. The game touts playcalling that was advised by NBA scouts for added realism, but the execution was nowhere near as intuitive as NBA 2K10's, where icons on the floor direct you every step of the way. Plus, there's no practice mode in Live to try this out. Your games are your practice.

Postal Disservice: Down on the blocks you are on your own this year, big fella. The trigger/right-stick combos that formed your post-up offense are gone and replaced by ... nothing actually, which is a curious choice for a game featuring Dwight Howard on the cover. It's now entirely handled by the CPU whether your player posts up or not, and much like defensive engagement, I never got a feel for what automatically got me backing my guy down, ass to the basket. My advice is to wait for your swingman to do it on his own and then pass to him, maybe even direct him there with the off-ball control. But taking away post-up is going to leave some feeling really exposed, especially since the game's tightened up on what you can get away with in the lane and in traffic this year. Without the assuredness that you will actually stick your big ass into the defender and not face him head on and start running, interior play feels arbitrary and can make you look silly at times.

Sure, that's a lot of red ink up there, but on the whole, these are problems you can overcome or work through. NBA Live 10 is still a very inviting game. The crowd reaction is exceptional and the atmospheric difference between a regular season tilt - even a tight one - and the drama of the playoffs or the Finals, is quite palpable. To motion your man to the top of the key, shedding his defender as if you'd called for a screen, and then bury an overtime jumper provides a cathartic feeling of satisfaction. And the ability to order up this emotion in a quick play game is a definite plus, indulging the prototypical hoop dream of playing for the title, even when all you want to do is just play one game.

NBA Live 10 will deliver great moments and, especially with Dynamic Season, the individual games you want to play. The long haul of a season's worth of play is a different measure. With a direct competitor in 2K10 the first, if not only question for many is simply which one wins this year. But it is not a zero-sum proposition. I do consider NBA 2K10 to be the better package of the two, but NBA Live 10 is no less a worthy and enjoyable game in the presence of competition than it would be in the absence of it. It may not be a triumph over its rival. But in delivering a strong game for a second straight year, NBA Live is seeing the revival EA Sports wants it to be.

NBA Live 10 was developed by EA Vancouver and published by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and PS3 on Oct. 6. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in singleplayer mode and tested online multiplayer.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

To continue the metaphor, NBA 2K10 delivers both. All sports titles face a justify-your-existence question of what to offer every year beyond a roster update. NBA 2K10 has been such a clear leader that it's almost exempt from such what-have-you-done-for-me-lately questions, and has the luxury of refining its visuals and presentation. That's not to say the game doesn't add new ways to deliver, and experience, the performance art that can happen any given night in the NBA.

Loved
Where Basketball Happens: So much of a sports game review fixates on what's new in a game, but the guts of it still have to be there, and NBA 2K10 shows restraint in its gameplay tinkers. This year's update focused more on nailing down animations for players' signature moves and even facial expressions, rather than how you manipulate them. But the most conspicuous control is how your speed burst works. You have a finite supply of it, and not only can it run out over a single play, going to the well too often will deplete his overall stamina. You cannot sit on the trigger in this game and expect to get away with it for long. This brings some useful balance, especially to run-and-gun multiplayer games. Shot selection is more of a key this year as the game seems to have tightened up on on the ease of shooting. That could also be because of changes in shooting animations, as your point of release means everything to whether the ball goes in. Otherwise, the control scheme remains solid and caters to your preferred style, whether that's set plays versus a more freelancing approach, or basic player manipulation vs. more advanced shooting and post play. If you prefer to make things up as you go along, you can still have a great time in NBA 2K10. My only gripe is that players seem slow to get open on their own, meaning you'll need to do so at least through a quick play from the menu or draw the defense and kick it out yourself.

This is a presentation of the NBA: I halfway expected to hear a 4th quarter announcement that any rebroadcast without the express written consent of the NBA is prohibited. Out of the box, the commentary of Kevin Harlan, Clark Kellogg and Cheryl Miller is much stronger and less repetitive than the competing title from EA Sports. Although the season has not started yet, when it does their remarks, supported by on-screen graphics, will reflect what's taking place in the league, such as recent big performances, slumps, etc. I'm assuming. The point is that the game will serve you up - even if it's just for a one-off matchup - more than the current rosters but the current state of the league and its players. This may not as technically detailed as NBA Live 10's Dynamic DNA, which will break a player down to his tendencies, not just his skill strengths. Gamers who can make use of that information will have to make the choice for themselves; what 2K10 has done here is good enough for me.

That's My Player: This is a compelling mode of play, one that really makes you want to be a better player and learn the game. But you really have to know what you are getting into because you will be judged very strictly in it. In My Player, you are starting off with a rookie rated near the bottom in everything and only slightly better in some core positional attributes. Then, through conditioning drills and scrimmages in a summer league you build yourself into a draftable talent. Or not. Most everyone will head through the NBA Developmental League first. I just don't see how you can accrue the points necessary to make an NBA roster right off the bat and even then, I'm not sure what good it would do because your playing time would be minuscule. But back to the development - your success will depend upon knowing your position and how it contributes to a game. And I mean, if you have no organized basketball experience and are only a casual spectator of the game, it will be rough on you. You need to pay attention to your teammates if someone's calling for a pass. You've got to proactively set picks. You've got to call for the ball only when you're open and even then, you'll be bitched at for doing it too often. You need to do these things more than you need to score, because the development places a premium on being a good teammate. Even burying an spot-up jumper will get you tsk-tsked for taking one too soon, with an attendant reduction in teammate grade. All this said, I know I am a bad baller, so even if I was frustrated I didn't feel like I was being judged unfairly. And I can see that for someone who knows and loves basketball, how the challenges offered and won by My Player stand out not only for this sport, but among all career modes of pro sports gaming. If you're not 100 percent sure you know what you're doing in the game, you should stick to the team mode, unless you are really committed to using My Player to teach yourself video game basketball in a very granular, intensive way.

Multiplied multiplayer: The first two days of the release I could not connect to the 2K servers at all. As of the weekend, the problems appeared to be solved, but this was still an unfortunate black mark against a game going out the door packed to the gills with multiplayer modes. The most intriguing of these is the Team-Up, where you can form or join a crew and run ball in a virtual league against teams comprised entirely of other users. If you don't want to commit to that you can create a pick-up game for a single instance only. My preference trends strongly to singleplayer in sports titles and getting my ass kicked online in this game definitely reinforced that. But the game's deep multiplayer offerings, along with its season simulation, once again make it this year's winner.

Hated
Fritzy framerate: Certain shots during cutscenes, or certain gameplay sequences - especially going into heavy traffic with everyone breaking back to the rim - dropped the framerate quite noticeably on my 360 version. It may be, unfortunately, because of the superior character modeling combining with the crowd animations and background to overwhelm the console. 2K says it's working on a patch, but others have noted that even 2K9 still had its own framerate stutters in some of the same situations.

Information overload: The game triples the number of plays you can call this year, breaking them out by the five positions on the floor plus a menu for calling quick picks and isolations. Unfortunately, the menu deals in floor positions, not which player's number is being called. So if you're running automatic substitutions and don't know everyone on the floor by name and position, you might find yourself in the dark about who you're dialing up. It's petty to gripe about greater options, but it can feel like a big one when you're getting run out of the gym by a superior opponent and trying desperately to think of something that will work.

(No) thanks for the advice: I did not care for the Stephen A. Smith-esque cartoon figure who appears in your season sim and who pretends to be a mentor in My Player. No, his voice isn't as obnoxious as Screamin' A, HOWEVAH, I found him to be condescending to the point of discouragement in My Player, and I could have just taken the pointers in a bullet-point text box. For someone who's pretending to have a close relationship to your player, he needs to have a real face, or at least a more recognizable voice. I'd respect what this guy says a lot more if I knew who it's coming from, instead of someone who passes off another player's quotes as inspiration.

The little things that NBA 2K10 does right could fill a review twice as long as this, but of course they should get a nod here, for pushing the whole enterprise over the top and again delivering this year's NBA choice. Your crowd will chant MVP! when a star player on a hot streak comes to the line for his and-1 free throw. When this happens in the playoffs, it just feels right. The off-ball players' animations, usually where you see forced or sped-up repositioning when the AI has to move them, are very refined and build that overall sense that you're watching an NBA telecast. The players and the coaches' features are mesmerizingly accurate - I loved any cutscene with George Karl in it and could instantly pick out Stephen Curry - a straight-up rookie - from the standard camera angle.

NBA 2K10 represents the brand of choice among hardcore ballers and reputation counts for plenty in both real-world professional basketball and its virtual counterpart. Outside of My Player and the multiplayer modes, the game delivers more subtle changes than profound to your experience. When it's in control of a game, a winning team maintains that lead, and focuses on execution. That's NBA 2K10.

NBA 2K10 was developed by Visual Concepts published by 2K Sports for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and Wii. Retails for $59.99 USD (PS3 and 360) and $49.99 (Wii and PC). A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all singleplayer game types and tested multiplayer quick play mode.)

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

358/2 Days tells the tale of Sora's Nobody Roxas from the time he first came into being up until he finds himself among friends at the beginning of the second PlayStation 2 Kingdom Hearts title. Roxas is a member of Organization XIII, undergoing missions to help the group restore Kingdom Hearts. Soon he begins learning more about himself and his friends, leading him to question the motives of the organization and ultimately guiding him on a path to becoming the boy we meet at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II.

It's the first Kingdom Hearts title for the Nintendo DS, and the first Kingdom Hearts title with multiplayer, but is it a game worthy of the name?

Loved
Behind The Scenes: A major factor in the success any prequel, or in this case, interquel, is how much it enhances the original titles. 358/2 Days takes a character with a large yet brief part in Kingdom Hearts II and fleshes him out in a way that gives you an entirely new appreciation for Kingdom Hearts II. Sure, the story doesn't always make perfect sense, and there are a few contradictions within the twisting plot, but the character development alone is enough to change the way you experience the second game in the series. I have to admit: I cried when Sora returned in KHII. After playing through this game, I can easily imagine my tiny black heart breaking.

The Panel Puzzle: I am completely in love with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days' panel customization system. Basically you have a grid, and on that grid you can slot powers, abilities, items, weapons - everything you need to power up your character. If you need to level up, you slot a level up panel. Need to level up more? Slot an oddly-shaped level multiplier onto the board and your +1 level panels suddenly become +2 level panels. Every aspect of your character's skills are handled in this manner, and different missions call for different powers and abilities. Once you get several odd-shaped panel frames in your inventory it almost becomes a puzzle where you see what powers you can fit together for the highest level of effectiveness. This is exactly the sort of micro-management I love in an RPG.

Ready, Fight!: Combat in 358/2 Days took me by surprise. I was expecting something like a simplified version of the console games' fighting engine or a clumsy facsimile, but I was delighted to find a system that manages to give you all the functionality of those titles while being tailored specifically to take advantage of the Nintendo DS control scheme. Once you get the hang of assigning shortcuts, switching between magic, items, and abilities feels like a little less of a hassle than it did with its PlayStation 2 cousins. The addition of Limit Breaks you can unleash when your health gets too low is also very much appreciated.

So Much To Do: Between story missions, optional missions, challenge missions, and the Mission Mode itself, there is plenty to do in Kingdom Hearts 358/2. There are treasure chests to collect, high scores to beat, time attacks - just a whole slew of content. The mission-based format of the game also suits the Nintendo DS rather well, making this a perfect game to pick up when you have a spare moment, run through a few missions, and then put back down again. Between the content and the portability, this is easily a title I could see myself playing for weeks if not months...if I didn't have to review it.

Mission Mode: While I sadly did not have the opportunity to play through the Mission Mode with friends, it's easy to see how it would be a hell of a lot of fun just by playing through the missions in single-player mode. Mission Mode starts you off with your choice of Organization XIII members, allowing you to experience first-hand some of the unique weapons and abilities they possess. Up to four players can link up and play together, competing for points, or you can play through it on your own as I was forced to. Playing as key villains from Kingdom Hearts II is guilty pleasure enough to recommend the mode, and once you start unlocking old friends it gets even better.

One Fine-Looking DS Title: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days features some of the best 3D graphics I've seen on the Nintendo DS. To the hardcore graphics whore it might not look like much, but the fluid movement of the characters and the amount of detail Square Enix managed to maintain without the game slowing down noticeably is quite impressive.

Hated
Camera Concerns: I spent far too much time being trapped in corners while being attacked by enemies that were off screen then I generally like to while playing through Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. I suppose it's the sort of issue you're bound to run into when you've got so many functions to map and so few buttons. To their credit, the developers did include a secondary control method that allows you to map the camera to the left and right shoulder buttons, but that method means you have to hit both shoulders to fire off shortcuts, which can lead to some confusion.

Recycled Assets: Maybe you have to be a big Kingdom Hearts fan for it to matter, but I was supremely disappointed when I fired up the game and heard Hikaru Utada's "Sanctuary" ("Passion" in Japan) was the opening theme. It set the tone for a game that recycles a great deal of the music and art from the console titles. It's not that the music and art are bad - I just would have liked a little more new material in the game.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is effectively the Kingdom Hearts version of Final Fantasy VII's Crisis Core. It features the same sort of mission-based gameplay, perfect for pick up and put down portable play; a protagonist that is relatively similar to the series' main character; and it tells a side story that, while not entirely necessary, serves to give players a more complete look at the story behind the games. Like Crisis Core, the game does take some gambles when it comes to core gameplay mechanics, but on the whole those gambles pay off, creating an experience that is at once fresh and familiar.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days presents a lost chapter in the Kingdom Hearts saga in a way that will leave Nintendo DS owners feeling completely satisfied, save the sudden craving for sea-salt ice cream.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was developed by Square Enix and h.a.n.d. and published by Square Enix for the Nintendo DS on September 29th. Retails for $39.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through single-player story on default difficulty. Tried each of the available characters in Mission Mode single-player.

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The game has players use coins to build a variety of towers that do things like shoot snowballs, cherry balls, ice and pee-snowballs at incoming enemies like old people, Mongolians and terrorists. Killing baddies causes them to exploded into bits and sometimes shoot out coins which can then be used to buy more towers, build walls or upgrade.

So let's go tower defense play or let's not?

Loved
Dude, It's South Park: Before playing Let's Go Tower Defense Play!, I thought this game had two things it needed to do: One is recapture the show. And it does. Let's Go Tower Defense Play! does a solid job of creating the South Park world, characters and art style. There are unlockable clips, which for most players will be stuff they've seen before. Still, it's a nice addition for an XBLA title. What about the second part, you ask? Well, read on below...

Let's Go Tower Defense Play: Sure, it doesn't reinvent the tower defense game, it doesn't have to. Rather the second thing this title needed to do, I thought, was deliver a solid tower defense game experience. It does.

Hated
Shut Up Fat Boy: South Park is a funny show, it makes me laugh. Though, when you're playing through a stage for the umpteenth time and you're hearing the same sound clip for the umpteenth time, the humor, sadly, wears thin.

Save Points: One of the strong points for XBLA games is that they're shorter than package titles. They are pick up and play games — better yet, play and put down games. Let's Go Tower Defense Play! has some challenging stages that gobbled up a fair bit of this reviewer's time. That's fine, it's value for money. However, it would be nice if players could save their gave between areas in the same level, instead of completing one part of the level and having to play through the entire level to get the stage point. It ends up being a time sink. In the game's defense, the developers have made it possible to skip harder challenges.

After seeing what has been done with previous South Park games, my expectations for South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play were low, exceedingly so. The title was a pleasant surprise with a fair amount of unlockable items and characters and just enough replay grist. Developer Doublesix, who recently released zombie shooter Burn Zombie Burn! bring a workman quality to the game, which never ends up feeling like South Park characters have simply been slapped on a tower defense game.

South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play was developed by Doublesix and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox LIVE Arcade. Released on October 7, the game is priced at 800 Microsoft Points for Xbox LIVE in North America. Played through all levels, tested online and challenge mode.

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The game may have been more appropriately titled in Japan, there known as Katamari Tribute. The PS3 version borrows liberally from previous levels in the Katamari series, recycling levels, objectives and characters from the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 entries. In Katamari Forever, the Prince and his cousins must obey the orders of two royals, the amnestic King of All Cosmos, suffering from a bump on the noggin, and the machine built to act in his stead, the RoboKing.

Is another spin around the katamari worth rolling up into your life?

Loved
Look, It's Katamari: It may be hard to imagine that a game this quirky, this visually distinct—partly thanks to four graphic filters—could feel old hat, but the Katamari Damacy series is in danger of wearing out its welcome. Fortunately, the act of piling on thousands of objects onto one's katamari, marveling at its increasing size, still somehow manages to remain incredibly fun, even if this is your third, fourth or fifth go. The gameplay hasn't changed at all, save for the addition of some new abilities, like the Prince's hop that makes overcoming obstacles much easier.

♥ ♥ ♥: The only other new addition to the Katamari formula are the King's and RoboKing's hearts, power-ups that cause the katamari ball to vacuum up everything (of the right size) within a certain radius. It's an exciting, albeit minor, bonus that adds a bit more strategy to one's katamari run.

Beautiful Katamari: The game looks incredibly sharp on the PlayStation 3 running at 1080p and with a suite of visual styles that give the game a pencil-sketched look, a sepia toned filter and, later, classic Katamari Damacy graphics. Many of the game's objects are low poly by design, but everything looks great up close and zoomed out.

Hated
Technical Quirks Forever: Graphically, the game is impressive, with one exception: the frame rate still comes to crawl when your katamari gets big enough, making Katamari Forever feel just as sluggish as its forebears at times. Camera problems still abound, particularly in enclosed spaces.

Me & My Least Favorite Levels: The rehashing of so much of Katamari's older content inevitably means some of the least enjoyable variations on the formula will also return. Building the biggest katamari possible is great fun—and that shouldn't be the entirety of the game—but some of the tasks, such as building a katamari on a budget and raising the temperature of the katamari by avoiding "cold" items can just be frustrating.

No Online Multiplayer: Want to roll up some Katamaris with a friend? Or an enemy? You'll have to do it locally, as the game offers offline co-op and versus modes only. They're fine additions, but Namco Bandai's rolling backwards.

Enough, Jumboman: The cut scenes, once quirky and uniquely entertaining, may have worn out their welcome more so than anything else. Now they just feel obligatory, as do some of the preambles from the King and RoboKing.

Late in the game, in the middle of a level, the King of All Cosmos (or was it the RoboKing?) says something to the effect of "This is Katamari Damacy. Nothing more, nothing less." It's an accurate description of what Katamari Forever has to offer. It's a trip down memory lane, literally for the King, but one that manages to still be highly entertaining, if only to see just how big one can manage to make that katamari in 12 minutes.

Should you have never played a Katamari Damacy game before, by all means, get the PlayStation 3 version. It's wonderfully fun and there are hundreds of little things to unlock, explore and play with. If you've run through more than one Katamari Damacy game, however, it might be worth carefully considering just how interested you might be in reinvesting your time, because there's little new in this unusually expensive package.

Katamari Forever was developed and published by Namco Bandai for the PlayStation 3, released on September 22 in North America. Retails for $49.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through all levels, tested co-op and versus modes.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The snow and ice setting of this latest MotorStorm, a shift from the arid desert of the first title and the humid jungles of the second, adds plenty of new twists. But the biggest change is how you'll play the game: On your Playstation Portable.

Can a franchise built on the premise of pushing the bounds of the PS3 succeed on a portable platform more similar to the Playstation 2?

Let's find out.

Loved
Smooth Operator: Played on the PSPgo, MotorStorm: Arctic Edge still delivers a lively experience with intuitive and responsive controls. You'll still find the gas and brake, the emergency brake and nitro all easy to use while shifting through packed courses and drifting around hair-pin turns. The ability to use either the thumbstick or the direction pad to steer is a nice addition as well.

Diminutive Deaths: One of MotorStorm's biggest draws for me was the use of rag-doll physics and a detailed spray of car parts every time I screwed up at high speeds. While Arctic Edge has certainly cut back on the car parts, the physics are fully in play during the game, delivering satisfying, groan-worthy crash-ups and body defenestration.

Memorable Maps: MotorStorm: Arctic Edge comes loaded with a dozen hazard-packed, multiple-route tracks, all of which you will eventually race on in both directions. The maps are nicely detailed, coated with patches of ice, flowing water and even some vision-hindering snowfall, making the races feel more open-ended and alive.

Avalanche!: During the course of some races a racer can trigger an avalanche by using their vehicle's horn too much or crashing in the wrong place. The results sometimes alter tracks, but almost always clear the area of all racers in a tumble of snow and ice.

Expanded Cool Down: MotorStorm: Pacific Rift introduced the idea of cooling down your nitro-heated engine by driving through water. Arctic Edge expands on the idea, allowing you to also use high drifts of snow to speed up cool down. A minor, but nice touch.

Screen Cap: At any time while playing on your own, you can pause the game move a camera around and take a screenshot. You can even save that screen to your Playstation Portable for sharing or showing off later. Great idea for community building.

Online Mayhem: Once you get online, playing with others over a WiFi setting is a fairly fun experience. With leaderboards, and support for up to six players at a time, the races are often frantic and the results always have meaning.

Hated
Getting Online: This may be a very limited issue. But when I tried to get online to play MotorStorm: Arctic Edge the game crashed. Finally, I had to create an entirely new Playstation Network account to get the game to run. While I've not seen any forum or support posts complaining about this issue, GameSpot did mention it in their review as well. Sony tells me this is an incredibly rare problem. If so, then it likely won't impact you.

Bubble of Win: I couldn't help but notice that once I got out of view of the pack in single-player races, I often stayed out of view of the pack. It was as if they vanished. Part of me wonders if that's a deliberate attempt at streamlining resources. It didn't kill the experience for me, but it did seem eerie at times.

Too Fast, Too Small: MotorStorm: Arctic Edge is an amazing racer for the Playstation Portable. It's surprising how many elements it introduces graphically to each race. Unfortunately, this can sometimes get daunting on a small screen with such a fast game. More than once I missed a turnoff or drove smack into the wall because I simply couldn't see it in time.

This game is a prime example of why I like to download games for the Playstation Portable. I'm not sure I'd want to keep this game loaded in my PSP's UMD slot all of the time, but it's nice having it handy. And it's great for a quick session or two to kill time.

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge is a handful of fun, a fantastic portable version of the full MotorStorm experience. While it may shave away some of the essence of the console title, it still manages to deliver enough of the full experience to make picking up the game worth your while.

MotorStorm: Arctic Edge was developed by Bigbig Studios and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the Playstation Portable on UMD and as a download on Sept. 29. Retails for $39.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all race modes and tracks in single player with all vehicle classes and multiplayer modes on the PSPgo.

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Couple all of that with the pathological need among my gender to be slimmer, stronger and sexier than the next chick and it's no wonder 10 million women develop an eating disorder and a love-hate relationship with the gym.

Buying Wii Fit Plus won't fix any of that, sadly. But it's a giant leap in the right direction.

Loved
Stat Tracking For The Whole Family: The original Wii Fit allows you to track an approximation of your weight, body mass index and calories burned per day. Wii Fit Plus lets you to do the same for toddlers and pets, extending the appeal of the game to the whole family. True, your pets and toddlers can't do any exercises to improve their weight. But it is a way to get youngsters started on healthy attitudes toward their bodies and a good way to annoy your animal, since you have to hold them while they're being measured.

Fun Games For Multiplayer: Wii Fit Plus adds a ton of new games to the original line-up that challenge your heart rate, balance and coordination. What makes these games even more fun is the multiplayer mode Plus includes in your Wii Fit experience. For one thing, it that eliminates the back-out-choose-new-profile step you had to go through in the original game. For another, it turns all of the games like Super Hula Hoop and Tilt City into competitive smackdowns instead of weird ways to lose weight by flailing around in your living room.

The Obstacle Course: The Obstacle Course is exactly what it sounds like: a course loaded with obstacles that you've got to run your Mii through using the Balance Board to track sprints, jumps and mad flailing if you get too close to an edge. At the Beginner level, the obstacle course looks like an early Mario 64 level with big Chain Chomp-looking balls swinging in your path and grassy fields to sprint across. At the Advanced level, it starts to look like a Bowser boss fight with moving platforms and shifting ice planes to navigate on your way to the finish. Honestly, re-skin the whole thing and you could have an actual 3D Super Mario Bros. game.

Hated
Repetitive: I absolutely hate having the Balance Board or the Virtual Trainer say the exact same thing over and over again during an exercise. Yes, Virtual Person, I know the triceps extension tones your upper arms. That's why I'm doing it, so STFU and let me get on with it!

Finicky On Some Balance Issues: In games like Rhythm Kung-Fu, Perfect 10 and the Obstacle Course, timing is everything. Which is why it's so frustrating when you pick up your left foot exactly when you're supposed to and the Balance Board doesn't track it. Or when you practically throw your back out trying to jut your hips forward to tag a mushroom in Perfect 10 and somehow the Balance Board thinks you went backwards. So frustrating!

Wii Fit Age Measurements: Each day, Wii Fit asks you to complete a body test that measures your weight and BMI. It also subjects you to balance and quick-thinking tests that are supposed to measure your "age" in the way that Brain Age does. However, the balance and logic games that the test subjects you to are ones that you're probably not familiar with, so you're bound to mess them up on the first try, netting you a Wii Fit Age at least 10 years beyond what you actually are. It'd be nice if there were a way to access the games from the Training menu so at least you could get a feel for what the test will throw at you.

Nintendo has been very careful to call Wii Fit a fitness "tool" not a fitness "solution" for obvious legal reasons. Neither Wii Fit nor its successor, Wii Fit Plus, will magically make you thinner or more easily able to resist tasty food.

However, there's a lot to be said for a game that makes the very idea of fitness fun. It takes your mind off the anxieties about health we have in this country and reshapes your expectations of your body to something more positive than "Will I fit in my skinny jeans tonight?" With the multiplayer element and new games that Wii Fit Plus adds to the experience, I have to say, I've been converted from a skeptic to a believer. A believer with a 14 pound cat and a high score on the Obstacle Course.

Wii Fit Plus was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Wii on October 4. The full kit with the Balance Board costs $100, but if you already own the Balance Board, you can get the box copy for $20. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all of the games and tried all of the exercises in Strength and Yoga marked "New."

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With some 800 licensed cars and over 35 tracks on which to race them, Gran Turismo for the PSP offers a broad driving simulation experience that focuses more on car collecting and driving technique than high speed thrills. It also offers local multiplayer, wireless car trading and an undeniably slick package.

The PSP game's spec sheet mostly matches the raw numbers of its PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 counterparts, minus a few concessions, but does it offer the same deep feature set of the games that have come before it?

Loved
Easy In, Easy Out: Gran Turismo for PSP feels more forgiving, more inviting than ever for new players. As someone who dabbled in the first three games and Gran Turismo HD, I typically consider myself a GT noob every time I dive in. The PSP version is generous with credits, initially friendly with its competitive AI drivers, ensuring that getting back into the swing of things is a breeze. It's ideal for a pick up and play session, more so than I'd expected.

Driving Challenges: Also kinder to the casual Gran Turismo fan (who might've had horrifying flashbacks to cruel license tests in previous games) are the PSP game's Driving Challenges. Most can be cleared at bronze level on the first go for easy in-game income, but others offer a serious and addictive challenge for the driving sim disinclined. The demonstration videos of each challenge, narrated by Jay Leno, are generally pretty helpful.

It Gets The Numbers Right: Gran Turismo PSP nails the numbers, with a rock solid frame rate and hundreds of cars to collect, giving the game a Pokemon-like that will have completionists returning for more. There may not be much variety in the gameplay modes, but you can't fault the game for a lack of incredibly diverse cars and trucks to drive.

Technically, It's Gran Turismo: It may not look as sharp as its forebears and some of the early screen shots released for Gran Turismo PSP, but the game's physics model, tracks, car models and general technical prowess impress. The number of cars that can compete in a race have been whittled down to just four, but the game still runs well enough to merit mention.

Hated
Directionless Grinding: After completing the game's Driving Challenge mode and tackling a handful of random time trials, single-player races, drift trials, you may start to wonder where the rest of the game is. There's no campaign mode, no career mode, no structure to the game that would give one much of a sense of accomplishment. This lack of things to do beyond finding things to do with your time gives Gran Turismo a barebones feeling, in spite of the wealth of vehicles to drive.

Limited Time Offers: Gran Turismo PSP curiously randomizes what cars will be available to the player when they're in the mood to do a little shopping. Only four car manufacturers are available at any given time—per day in the Gran Turismo calendar, which admittedly passes quicker than real-time—and up to ten cars per manufacturer are up for purchase. That makes car shopping somewhat of a crap shoot, sometimes limiting the appeal when ultra-expensive Audis or the meek Land Rover offerings pop up.

Personally (and curiously), I found the Driving Challenge aspects of the game—the deep list of driving technique tutorials—to offer the most appeal, helping to make me a better virtual driver. Perfecting some of those techniques was made a little more challenging by my distaste for the PSP's awkward analog nub, a control hang up that might be a turn off to GT fans downgrading to the portable version. But after burning through that portion of the game, buying a few overpriced rides and taking them out in the snow, I felt like I'd exhausted Gran Turismo PSP.

After all this waiting, it's somewhat surprising to see the limitations that Gran Turismo for the PSP comes with. The core essence of the driving game is intact, offering an enjoyable simulation on the go. And that may be all you require of the PlayStation Portable entry, a largely capable if not impressively feature rich driving sim, a portable copy of the Nürburgring on which to study its turns, chicanes and corners.

Gran Turismo was developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PSP on September 29. Retails for $39.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played 50 single player races, completed Driving Challenge mode and tested Ad Hoc multiplayer.

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First introduced at Capcom's 2008 Captivate event, a ho-hum reception cause Bionic Games to go back to the drawing board, changing what was a cartoony action-adventure puzzler into a darker, somewhat grittier cooperative beat-em up. What could have been a subtle, nuanced title became an in-your-face, no-holds-barred biomechanical brawl to the death featuring three cyborg spies taking on an evil army led by a rogue member of their organization. Was this rapid change in direction a change for the better?

Spyborg Style: Spyborgs feels like an attempt to establish a brand, and in order to do so you need to have a distinctive style that sets you apart from similar titles. While not wholly successful, Bionic Games certainly nailed it with the visual design of the characters and enemies in the game. The robotic enemies you face have a unique look about them that I really liked, and the player characters are unique enough that I really wanted to know more about them and their motivations. Unfortunately the game doesn't delve into those areas, but I appreciate the effort the developers put into making things at least look interesting.

Playing Doubles: Spyborgs shines brightest when played with another living person. The repetitive gameplay and lack of depth that make the game a poor single-player experience make it perfect for an afternoon of mindless cooperative gaming with a friend. There isn't much thinking involved, there are hidden items to squabble over, and when the game gets too tedious you can always poke fun at it mercilessly to help keep things fresh. Definitely a title that plays better with a partner.

Difficulty Curve: In its quest to appeal to gamers of all different skill levels, Bionic Games has include a wide range of difficulty levels in Spyborgs. At its easiest, you'll be able to survive for a good long time merely mashing the attack buttons. Ramp up the difficulty and suddenly you'll find yourself hugging the guard button for dear life. It's a nice spread, though even at the lowest setting you need to keep an eye on your health bar when fighting larger enemies.

Hated
Invisible Gimmicks: Talk about tacked on. Spyvision is a mechanic that requires you to point the Wii remote at the screen, press a button, and then swing the remote in order to reveal hidden objects that the enemy has cloaked in order to impede your progress. There is no compelling reason for this feature to be in the game, other than to perhaps half-heartedly justify the word 'Spy' in the title. When the 'spies' spend 95% of the time mindlessly bashing away on a horde of robots, stopping to play hide and seek seems like a silly way for them to catch a breather. As you progress through the game, enemies begin to cloak, but the action of de-cloaking them just seems silly. Obviously you can see where they are. Why not just hit them to make them appear and cut out the extra step?

Walking The Beat: Endless hordes of enemies, walls that appear and disappear when you clear the area - you all know the drill here. While new enemies appear on a regular basis, they're generally just slight variations on the old enemies. Repetitive stages don't help either, and it soon becomes readily apparent in any given level when and where the bad guys are going to pop up. Upgrading your abilities doesn't have enough of an effect on gameplay to really keep things fresh.

Mindless Cyborgs: Without a human partner at your side, Spyborgs' flaws become more obvious. The repetition eats away at your patience faster, and the fact that your AI teammate for the most part does their own thing doesn't help matters much. At several points during my play through I noticed my partner standing off to the side, waiting patiently for something while I got pummeled senseless, or wandering off to chase down some smaller enemy while the larger ones showed me their various implements of destruction. Luckily the enemy AI seems to suffer similar problems, sometimes failing to acknowledge your existence until you are right on top of them, and other times seeing you from a mile away. A little more consistency would have been appreciated.

Ultimately Dull: Despite the visual flair that went into creating the characters and their enemies, Spyborgs suffers from a distinct lack of personality. These unique characters do battle across repetitive landscapes, with brief tidbits of story teasing a depth that never really gets explored.

Simply put, Spyborgs feels like a video game based on a licensed cartoon property, only there is no licensed cartoon. Cartoon tie-ins tend to present simple gameplay and only the barest of stories, relying on the animated properties they are based on to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately, Spyborgs' blanks are just that - blanks. There is no fill-in.

Spyborgs was developed by Bionic Games and published by Capcom for the Wii on September 22nd. Retails for $39.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed the game on Hard, and played a couple of hours of co-op on casual.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

NHL 2K10 sees the franchise at somewhat of a crossroads. It's in its 10th year overall, scrapping with a competitor afforded both cult status and best-in-class accolades. But 2K Sports' hockey offering is also in its second year on the Wii, where it remains wholly unopposed. Will NHL 2K10 on the core consoles veer more to a casual experience, or will it fight for the puck in a realistic league simulation?

Loved
Multifaceted Multiplayer:This is a game noticeably built for multiplayer, adding it into every mode of gameplay and then some. It's best deployed in season mode, where you are now able to play any in-season game against an online opponent. It's not a full online dynasty but it doesn't need to be, and it provides a great incentive to keep your season going even if you've grown bored beating down the computer AI. This innovation really should be imitated in other full-season games. A cooperative mode also has been added, allowing you to call in a wingman and combine forces against the CPU, with devastating results if you're both on your game. One feature touted in the manual that I didn't get much of a look at (for a lack of NHL-playing friends with the game) is a new persistent online team mode that allows you to staff a full side, and battle other user teams, supporting up to 12 players on separate consoles. Assuming everyone stays committed, it can be like a league night for video game hockey instead of bowling.

Do Wii Want Some Hockey?:The Wii Version: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version but I did get the chance to play the Wii version with a friend. Unfortunately, we did not have MotionPlus, which is where the most substantial improvements are said to have been made. But the game's presentation on the Wii gets a thorough upgrade, particularly in the graphics. And I know some might consider it trivial, but the Mii skills competitions - shot accuracy, skating speed, etc., as seen at the NHL's All Star Game - are an enjoyable way to play this game with others without having to commit to a full-blown match.

The Great Outdoors:Surprisingly, NHL 2K10 and not NHL 10 is the game with outdoor stadiums from the NHL's extremely popular Winter Classic series. This year it adds Wrigley Field, where the Blackhawks and Red Wings played last year, to Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the 2008 game. If this matters to you, and it does to some, keep that in mind. Also, diehards who hold a torch for the old Hartford Whalers will find their sweaters, home and road from 1993, in the Carolina Hurricanes' uniform options. These are two big ways in which the game's visuals are very enjoyable. Also, the playoff beards are one of many neat hey-look-at-that touches.

Hated:
Sludgy Skating: The nimbleness of your players does not seem that much improved over previous versions, and the speed is still nothing to write home about. It left me sitting on the speed burst trigger any time I wanted to get anything going. By contrast, opposing players make tight turns and immediate stops, get back on defense in a flash and always break first to a loose puck. Some of this is attributable to the fact that when your player begins an animation he's in it until it's over, so if you blow out someone with a check, you're still finishing that up unless you can jump to a free man. Remember that tuning up the speed in the sliders affects all players, so while you boost your own performance, the defense is still there with you, meaning it's still largely a game of taking the puck to the wings and flipping out a hot centering pass for an unbeatable one timer. I felt the speed issues hindered my attempts at other forms of offense, such as dump-and-chase hockey, making me almost one-dimensional in my attack.

Bland Season-ing: It felt like little attention was paid to improving or deepening the season mode, and it's where NHL 2K10 is most vulnerable to criticism that it's last year's game with an updated roster. Yes, it has added in a dynamic player progression mode, but this is a background feature and won't be fully realized until the NHL season begins and the game starts incorporating player performances. Trade AI is kind of shrimpy and you'll get the better of most deals, which suits a game with heavy offense and a have-it-your-way tone. Again, season mode's biggest selling point is the multiplayer capability as opposed to anything in a simulation or singleplayer mode.

Them's the Dekes: In hockey, I am still a crude enough player and button-spammer that an extra control set is like pearls before swine. While last year's mindboggling two-analog setup for your fakery gets a welcome streamline to a shoulder/face button combo (or shoulder/right analog, similar to NHL 09), they never seemed to respond fast enough to mean much in what is definitely a bang-bang style of hockey play. Then again, as I said, I'm probably not the guy most able to take advantage of this. But while the dekes and their cousins, the stumbleshots, are pretty to look at, functionally they seem a little removed and triggered mostly by chance. When I bore down to score goals I focused more on spacing and passing, not whether I could beat my man or a goalie 1-on-1 or huck garbage into the net from my ass.

Singleminded Intelligence: The opposing AI is not hated per se, because even a rank amateur like me could blow out Detroit 6-3 in its own building shortly after picking it up. It's not formidable as much as it feels singleminded. With some teams, even in a power play you're getting pressed hard, making it difficult to square off your men and work the puck around like you see in the real-life game's set pieces. It can drive you back to run-and-gun arcade hockey even with a man advantage, and can also lead to cheap shorthanded goals against you. The box says they completely rewrote the AI, and maybe I didn't play last year's close enough, but you still seem to be faced with a singleminded opposition that doesn't incorporate a lot of variables in hockey strategy. I only really noticed it late in the third period, with the CPU up by two goals, and then the opposing team finally started playing a puck-control, clear-out-the-zone game to frustrate a comeback.

Even for all its shortcomings - which are rightly viewed in light of Electronic Arts' uncommon excellence in its NHL title, and 2K Sports' conspicuous focus on its Wii presence and multiplayer strengths - NHL 2K10 is not a bad or unworthy title. But nor is it particularly compelling if you are principally playing it in singleplayer modes.

It can, however, be a blast when you're winning and racking up the goals, pushing over your man, taking the puck and top-shelfing it to turn the Pepsi Center into a morgue. These kinds of things just don't feel that hard-earned. But if playing arcade hockey on a core console is a disappointment to fans wanting a deeper game, flip the coin: 2K10 offers the only core hockey on a casual console, and after last year's shoulder-shrugging debut on the Wii, is significantly upgraded there. For those on the 360 or PS3, who want to relive dorm-room hockey nights with next-gen presentation, or those who are just new to hockey and its finer points would be lost on them anyway, NHL 2K10 can still be a comfortable and fun experience.

NHL 2K10 was developed by Visual Concepts and published by 2K on the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii on on Sept. 15. Retails for $59.99 USD on Xbox 360 and PS3, $49.99 on Wii. Rated E10+ on all three platforms. Reviewed on Xbox 360. Played on all singleplayer and multiplayer modes except for "My Team."