Transformers: War for Cybertron
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: High Moon Studios/Activision
ESRB Rating: Teen (violence)

Yes, “Transformers: War for Cybertron” is a tangibly better game than the two rushed-to-retail games that accompanied the two godawful “Transformers” movies released in the last three years. And yes, by having nothing to do with the movies, “Cybertron” is free to base its storyline, visual presentation and gameplay on the cartoon, which is all “Transformers” fans have wanted all along.

But “Cybertron” improves on those games like a football team improves to 8-8 a year after it finished 1-15. It’s a leap in the right direction, but one still flawed in ways fan service alone can’t obscure.

First, the good stuff. The storyline not only takes place within the cartoon’s timeline, but is a bona fide prequel instead of some trivial side story. The playable characters — among numerous others, Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream and Jetfire — are colorful instead of drably indistinguishable like they were in the movies, and humans have no presence whatsoever.

As with previous “Transformers” games, players can play from the perspectives of both the Autobots and the Decepticons, but in a welcome evolution, “Cybertron” merges both campaigns into a single storyline. Previous games had players repeating the same events from both perspectives and effectively canceling out the two different endings that resulted, but “Cybertron” reaches a single, satisfying conclusion that nicely sets the table for the cartoon.

In terms of fundamentals, the news remains good. “Cybertron” looks great — colorful, but also just a little grimy — and it finds the sweet spot between making the Transformers both agile and impressively weighty. The controls are more conducive to transforming than they were in the movie games, and both the third-person shooting and vehicular controls are pleasantly responsive. “Cybertron’s” environments are tighter than the movie games’ wide-open levels, but they offer enough room for players to switch between forms as they please.

The problem comes when “Cybertron” tries to do anything ambitious with those mechanics… because outside of a couple of missions that incorporate air combat, it never really does. Regardless of storyline condition, practically every mission consists of killing X number of grunt enemies, moving to point Y and repeating ad nauseam until the boss fight, which usually consists of more mindless shooting with the occasional extra condition based on each boss character’s attack pattern.

The moment-to-moment action is good enough to make “Cybertron” mindless fun anyway, but fighting the same grunt enemies and completing the same objectives so many times gets old long before the credits get to rolling. “Cybertron’s” support for three-player online co-op livens things up somewhat, but repetition with friends is only so much better than repetition alone. (A bonus horde mode, which removes the storyline pretense and just floods the screen with enemies until you can’t take it anymore, is a better, no-nonsense use the co-op function.)

For some, “Cybertron’s” competitive online multiplayer (10 players) will be the star of the show, if only because it dangles a carrot in the form of attainable experience points and unlockable abilities for players who level their four classes (leader, scout, scientist, soldier) up the 100-level scale. But the actual gameplay relies on the same old game variants and feels simplistic and dated compared to more tactical shooters with similar leveling systems, and it might be too simple for persistent leveling alone to keep the community bustling.

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Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
For: Playstation Portable
From: Kojima Productions/Konami
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, drug reference, language, suggestive themes, use of tobacco, violence)

From the optional-but-recommended pre-game data installation to the offering of three imposing control schemes to the tutorial and eventually the game itself, “Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker” stakes its claim as perhaps the most demanding game in the PSP’s five-year-old library.

But if you’re part the intended crowd, and if you have company, the good news is that Kojima’s latest wholeheartedly justifies that demand with an experience that’s as filling as any of the big-screen “Metal Gear Solid” games.

Out of necessity, “Walker” — which sets itself 10 years after the events of “MGS3″ — also plays like a cross between that game and “MGS4.” The lack of a second analog stick and extra set of triggers, and the control freedom those afforded, makes it hard to run and gun to the extent “MGS4″ allowed on the PS3. “Walker” makes generous concessions to counter the button gymnastics needed to accommodate the PSP’s limitations, but it also encourages players to just stay out of trouble by avoiding enemies and using close-quarters combat the way older “MGS” games practically mandated. There’s an unquantifiable but noticeable easing up of enemy A.I. and the damage their weapons cause, but Kojima tunes it just right, accounting for the system’s deficiencies without dumbing the game down, stripping players of weapon/gadget depth or making the journey a cakewalk.

“Walker” plays like it should, tells another winding story that covers yet more ground in the bizarre “MGS” timeline, and it manages once again to stretch itself over 25-plus hours of playtime without being dog tired by the time the credits roll.

As usual with this series, though, that’s not all — and this is where it might get confusing.

“Walker” complements its primary gameplay with a surprisingly deep tool for managing Snake’s base of operations. Snake can make allies out of enemies he non-lethally neutralizes in the field, and the tool lets players put them to work researching intelligence, developing technology and even assisting in battle. “Walker” packages the tool inside a byzantine interface it doesn’t explain terribly well, but players who figure it out will find a strangely engrossing management game that regularly improves the action in the field.

Even with the presence of that tool taken into consideration, though, “Walker’s” biggest surprise has to be its co-op support for up to six players via local wireless play. The availability of co-op and the number of players allowed varies by mission, a nice consideration that shows Kojima values the story’s integrity over shoving six soldiers into every mission.

Unfortunately, some of the missions that do support co-op — in particular, fights against boss characters that take an army’s worth of bullets to defeat — practically require it for all but the most skilled “MGS” players. Given the series’ traditionally single-player leanings, this little surprise is bound to frustrate some, especially because players have to seek out other players who also have PSPs and copies of the game instead of just look online for willing partners. (Players with a Playstation 3 can use the free “Ad Hoc Party” app to jerry-rig an online session, but the number of players doing so is bound to be smaller than if the game supported online play on its own.)

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Guess the News
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: Finger Arts
iTunes Store Rating: 12+ (infrequent/mild mature/suggestive themes, infrequent/mild profanity or crude humor, infrequent/mild sexual content or nudity, infrequent/mild alcohol, tobacco, or drug use or references)
Price: $3

There’s nothing wrong with a game being just a game, but sometimes it’s nice to accomplish something with that entertainment. Enter “Guess the News,” which combines “Wheel of Fortune”-style phrase guessing and whatever’s in the news to create a word game that’s as enlightening as it is fun. “News” grabs fresh headlines from various news sources and presents them as incomplete phrases, scattering the missing letters among a sea of letter tiles below. Tap and/or drag the titles to their proper spots — and do it quickly to maximize score combos and avoid timing out — and the game hits back with increasingly obscure headlines that have more letters to fill in. “News” complements its concept with an exquisite interface that allows players to customize their experience according to difficulty and genre of news (top stories, sports, entertainment and so on). The game also makes it easy to dig deeper into those headlines, even mid-game: An in-app Web browser takes players to the stories behind the headlines they help complete, and if your continued research takes you out of the app entirely, “News” saves your progress for easy resumption later. OpenFeint integration — leaderboards, achievements and so on — rounds out the package.

MLB 10 The Show
Reviewed for: Playstation 3
Also available for: PSP
From: Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone

Maybe the best news about “MLB 10 The Show” is that nobody broke anything.

In terms of fundamentally emulating the game of baseball, “MLB 09″ got practically everything right. The audiovisual presentation blurred the lines between video game and real-life broadcast. The button-based pitching and hitting control schemes didn’t shake things up and use the right stick for the sake of doing so, and they straddled the “easy to learn, hard to master” line almost perfectly by sticking to stuff that works just fine. Fielding felt entirely natural, baserunning controls made sense, the pace of every action felt right, and the game had just about every base covered in terms of features to complement what was an unprecedented emulation of professional baseball.

The simple act of getting all of that right all over again makes “MLB 10″ a pretty amazing game straight out of the gate, and players who logged a significant number of hours into last year’s game will spot any number of little presentational details — in camera angle selections, player animations, outside-the-lines interactions, day/night lighting effects, even something as innocuous as public address system announcements — that have been added or refined during Sony’s continued pursuit of broadcast-quality perfection.

A few gameplay tweaks, including more expansive pickoff controls and an optional mound warmup mode for incoming relief pitchers, also are present. But the fundamental game has not been mucked with just for newness’ sake, and Sony’s decision to reheat what already worked so perfectly well absolutely works to the “MLB 10′s” advantage.

For the most part, the show’s primary talking points lie in the features realm. The “Road to the Show” centerpiece, which lets players emulate the rags-to-riches career of a minor leaguer with Hall of Fame aspirations, returns with slightly better incidental controls and, for catchers, a significant (and overdue) emphasis on the value of calling a game.

The frighteningly deep franchise mode, meanwhile, now allows up to 30 players to play armchair general managers in the same league. Also included: a mock e-mail inbox to streamline franchise-wide communication and an interface for examining and managing player injuries. The practice mode also makes some needed enhancements, better emphasizing pitching and now including fielding training as well.

“MLB 10′s” resurrection of the Home Run Derby mode isn’t a particularly splashy development, but the matter in which it returns — alongside the Futures Game in an all-points replication of All-Star Week festivities — perfectly underscores Sony’s ability to understand the wants of baseball fans and go a step beyond the expected.

That goes as well for the new multimedia features: The ability to save end-game highlight reels won’t rock anybody’s world, but the new Movie Maker feature, which allows players to cut and edit together game highlights of their choosing, just might. “MLB 11″ needs to include some functionality for sharing these videos online to really make this feature sing, but as is, it’s just another toy in what easily has become the premier video game baseball playhouse.

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC
From: DICE/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, strong language, violence)

All the important bullet points that were present in 2008′s “Battlefield: Bad Company” — and, fundamentally, just about every “Battlefield” game in the series’ magnificent lifetime — are present in “Bad Company 2″ as well. Mechanically, there might not be a better military first-person shooter, and the multiplayer component that is the franchise’s hallmark has only improved with the refinements DICE has made.

This is good, maybe essentially so, because the single-player campaign that was such a major surprise in the first “Bad Company” has taken a slight turn into sophomore slump country this time around.

This isn’t the same as saying it’s bad, because for the most part, the campaign actually is pretty good. “BC2′s” gunplay is every bit as polished as that of “Modern Warfare 2,” and the more expansive environments and amazing attention to sound detail, to say nothing of the staggering tech that makes pretty much everything destructible, arguably make it the new best in class.

“BC2′s” warfare also is more tactical in nature: It’s easier to die here on normal difficulty than it is in “MW2,” and the battles place a premium on fighting defensively and catching enemies unaware over mindlessly rushing in with guns blazing.

But while “BC2′s” campaign takes full advantage of all these exemplary mechanics, its stumbles are too notable to ignore. Checkpoints are placed inconsistently, occasionally sending players through a long string of firefights that all need to be repeated if something goes wrong at the very end. Three A.I. squadmates are on hand to assist throughout the majority of the campaign, and they’re as fun to listen to as they were in “BC1,” but when they aren’t hanging too far back to even participate, they’re demonstrating some comically bad aim. Enemy soldiers, perhaps sensing this, overwhelmingly target the player no matter how the battle is arranged. (In case you’re wondering: Sorry, no co-op support.)

Too many moments like these — and a few unfortunate instances of contrived scenarios that require contrived solutions — add up to a campaign that, while still absolutely worth playing, outstays its welcome before the credits roll.

Fortunately, and to absolutely no surprise, “BC2′s” single-player action really is just an elaborate primer for the obscenely good multiplayer, which takes all that wonderful tactical gunplay and puts it to spectacular use on huge maps with fully operable vehicles (tanks, helicopters, even jet skis) and up to 23 other human players.

Per “Battlefield” tradition, “BC2′s” multiplayer modes emphasize teamwork and strategic 12-on-12 territorial play over the lone-wolf run-and-gun deathmatch action most multiplayer shooters favor, and the diversity in player classes speaks to that approach. “BC2′s” upgrade and perks system isn’t as elaborate as “MW2′s” upgrade bonanza, but with so many more strategic possibilities available right from the start, it doesn’t need to be.

Still, in what amounts to a nice compromise, “BC2″ introduces the squad deathmatch, which pits four four-player squads against each other in an old-fashioned free-for-all. The action’s a bit more uncorked here than in a typical “Battlefield” excursion, but not so much that it doesn’t betray the things that separate a “Battlefield” shootout from the rest of the pack.

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Jungle Swing
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: Category 5 Games
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $1

A number of factors have come together to make the iPhone a surprisingly viable gaming platform, and the unassuming “Jungle Swing” pretty well illustrates all of them. Conceptually, it couldn’t be simpler: The goal is to keep the monkey swinging, Spider-Man style, from tree to tree without falling into the water, and the further he travels, the better the score. Playing “Swing” is simple, too, but as is the case with the best low-concept games, mastering the timing and swing physics takes a lot more skill than the one-button control scheme initially implies. A handful of unlockable items and upgrades is on hand to reward players who sink a lot of time into the game — a simple feat, given how easy it is to knock out a game or two during the course of a spare moment — and OpenFeint support sweetens the deal with online leaderboards and unlockable achievements. Finally, there’s that price tag. “Swing,” like so many absurdly-priced iPhone games, costs as much as a bag of chips, and the price-per-pound value is incalculably small for players who really get into the game and all it has on offer.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Climax/Konami
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, drug reference, language, sexual themes, violence)

It’s always exciting when a game like “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” takes complete liberty not only with the franchise that bore it, but also the system on which it runs.

It’s also a downer when problems that have regularly haunted the franchise creep in yet again and debilitate the mood to a potentially eject button-pressing degree.

“Memories” purports to re-imagine the original “Silent Hill” game by resurrecting its main character and introductory plot. Harry Mason has once again awoken in a snowbound town after a car accident knocked him unconscious, and once again, his daughter has mysteriously disappeared.

From there, though, most everything changes. For starters, “Memories” is combat-free: It controls like a third-person shooter, but the only aiming Harry does is with his flashlight, and encountering a monster triggers a pursuit sequence in which players’ only options are to escape or die trying.

The precise flashlight control is the tip of an iceberg’s worth of clever uses “Memories” devises for the Wii remote. An early puzzle, for instance, has players picking up cans and overturning them until a key falls out of one. “Memories” never tells players what to do: It places the cans prominently, and real-world curiosity and motion take over from there. It’s a perfect mix of obtuse and intuitive, and similar tricks permeate “Memories’” puzzles in numerous simple but inspired ways.

“Memories” also crams the bulk of its user interface — camera, GPS, some storytelling — into a virtual cell phone, and whenever Harry makes or receives a call, the game uses the Wii remote’s speaker as a cell phone speaker players actually hold up to their ear. The gesture looks predictably silly, but as an immersion tactic, it’s pretty great.

“Memories’” best trick, though, is its attempt to mentally profile players through a series of psychological evaluations that take place after the events of the storyline but are intercut throughout the game. How players complete these evaluations partly dictates what they see, what they can access and how Harry behaves when “Memories” resumes the action. Regardless of the game’s ability to read players, it’s an awfully clever way to mix up the scenery and engender a second playthrough.

Unfortunately, “Memories” fumbles some classic conventions en route to devising so many new ones.

Per series tradition, navigation is needlessly laborious, with visibly open paths from A to B getting arbitrarily walled off for no believable reason. Getting lost among arbitrary blockades would mean something if there was danger in doing so, but “Memories” strictly relegates monster encounters to alternate-dimension portions of the game, and if you’re not in one of those zones, you’re in no peril whatsoever.

Not only does this make “Memories” a frightfully unscary game, but it turns getting lost into a dull session of backtracking, trial and error that will frustrate some into losing interest completely. Lots of amazing little reasons exist to keep pushing ahead, but it’s hard to think about those when you’re wandering fruitlessly with no way out in sight and no reason to be alarmed by that fact.

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Buzz! Quiz World
For: Playstation Portable via Playstation Network (No UMD version available)
From: Relentless Software/Sony
ESRB Rating: Teen (drug reference, mild language, mild suggestive themes, violent references)
Price: $20

You lose some but win plenty with “Buzz! Quiz World,” which can’t match the presentational pizazz of its Playstation 3 counterpart but more than compensates in other departments.

The biggest loss “World” suffers, obviously, is that of the Buzz! buzzer controllers, which are chiefly responsible for transforming “Buzz’s” PS3 iteration into the best game show emulator ever crammed into a $60 package. The $20 “World” controls just fine using the PSP’s face buttons to represent the four multiple-choice answers to a question, and it’d be absurd for Relentless Software to conceive a scenario in which players are crowding around a tiny PSP screen with buzzer controllers as big as the screen, but the loss is felt all the same.

“World” compounds the loss of buzzer controller functionality by turning the game’s interface into something more representative of an emceed quiz than a full-featured game show. Buzz still plays the part of gabby quizmaster, but the sets and studio audience are stripped away in favor of a sparser interface that trains its focus on Buzz and the quiz information and keeps it there. The presentation remains slick for what it’s attempting to convey, but it’s definitely less flashy than its PS3 counterpart.

The more intimate approach almost certainly is due to Relentless smartly presenting “World” as a game players are more likely to play alone on a train than with friends on a couch, and “World’s” significantly meatier single-player component would speak to this as well. Where the PS3 game offered some bare-bones solo challenges with no real progression, this edition presents four multi-tiered challenge trees — each containing numerous quick-play challenges that themselves are replayable thanks to high score tables and medal rewards. Though they don’t register as official Playstation Network trophies, “World” also offers a large handful of unlockable trophies for players to collect throughout the entirety of the game.

“World” features the requisite support for wireless multiplayer (four players locally running on one copy of the game, four players online), but Relentless again plays the realistic expectations card by including a suite of six-player modes in which players pass a single PSP around the room. In a cool touch that’s far more inspired in practice than it appears on paper, “World” also includes a Quiz Host mode in which a player plays the role of host and manages the questions, answers and scores on the PSP. The mode essentially turns a video game into a board game, and it absolutely works in spite of its no-frills approach.

Elsewhere, “World” retains all the trappings of recent “Buzz” games. The roster of questions, at 4,500 deep, is plenty sufficient, and players can download the same bonus and free user-made question packs the PS3 game supports. And while the game show feel isn’t quite as apparent as in the PS3 version, “World” still throws out enough special modes, gimmicks and rule variants to give the action significantly more variety than its quiz game peers can muster.

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PixelJunk Shooter
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Q-Games/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (lyrics, mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10

The inadequately-named “PixelJunk Shooter” is, technically, a shooter — superficially, a 2D space shooter in the vein of “Geometry Wars” and its ilk. But while there are enemies to shoot in “Shooter’s” subterranean caverns, the real objective centers around rescuing workers trapped deep within. Blasting through dilapidated cave walls is all it takes to rescue some, but a majority of the rescue effort revolves around using one element — magma, water, ice — to nullify another. Cracking a wall to unleash a tidal wave, for instance, will cool a lava pool into rock, which then can be shot away to create an opening for civilian rescue. “Shooter’s” physics-laden elemental riddles begin as simple cause/effect puzzles, but the challenge ramps up nicely as the enemies grow more dangerous and the elements, environments and available tools increase in number. Executing adequate rescues and taking down the screen-sized boss enemies isn’t a lengthy or difficult exercise, but engineering perfect rescues and mining the caves for every hidden valuable is. For players bent on doing exactly that, “Shooter’s” core action (playable solo or with a friend via local co-op) and terrific audiovisual presentation are more than inviting enough to inspire the repeat playthroughs likely needed to master it inside out.

LittleBigPlanet
For: Playstation Portable
From: Studio Cambridge/Media Molecule/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

Despite what the name implies, “LittleBigPlanet” isn’t a straight port of the 2008 Playstation 3 game of the same name, but a legitimate followup with an entirely new suite of single-player levels.

Better still, despite what common sense and a knowledge of that PS3 game’s sky-is-limit scope might imply, the PSP incarnation of “LBP” also isn’t a watered-down tribute to its predecessor, but a full-featured game that matches it in terms of ambition and possibility.

The overriding style, of course, remains the same. For those unfamiliar, “LBP” is a 2D platformer that incorporates real-world physics to an exponentially deeper degree than, for instance, “Super Mario Bros.” Objects slide, swing and topple according to their real-world properties, and even your playable character — the obnoxiously adorable, highly customizable Sackboy — runs and jumps according to the rules of inertia and gravity.

These physics, combined with the use of multiple planes on a 2D playing field and a reward system built around discovery more than mere survival, allows “LBP” to present levels that simply aren’t possible in other games. The generous checkpoint system and modest penalty for failure also frees the game to challenge players far more than its charming exterior would imply. Mining each level for its every last secret is a dicey endeavor, and Studio Cambridge really lets its cruel flag fly during some brutally tough side levels that, fortunately, are there for fun and don’t prohibit player advancement.

All of this extends to the game’s level creation engine, which sacrificed almost nothing during its migration from the PS3. Some additional controller gymnastics are necessary to overcome the PSP’s button and joystick deficiencies, and the graphics and physics calculations obviously aren’t as refined. Two-player level creation isn’t possible — there’s no wireless multiplayer of any kind in the PSP version — and levels designed in one game aren’t playable in the other, which is to be expected but nonetheless is worth noting for those who might hope for the impossible.

Elsewhere, though, “LBP” has everything it needs to develop a community on the level of its PS3 counterpart. Learning to harness the level creator’s insane power isn’t a blink-and-you’ll-get-it affair, but the game’s exceptional presentation coaxes newbies in and makes it fun to learn and make mistakes. The toolbox responsible for the single-player levels lies completely at players’ disposal, and sharing levels online and downloading others players’ creations is as simple here as it is on the big screen. As always, “LBP” has an online leaderboard for every created level, so there’s always a record waiting to be broken.

“LBP’s” true value will become apparent in the coming weeks, but some inspired levels have already appeared online, and things look promising. The PS3 game continues to pay dividends a year later even for those who ignore the creation tool altogether and simply download other players’ designs, and having a similarly bottomless well of gameplay on the go is just about the best thing this series could have done for a second act.

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Tony Hawk Ride
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
From: Robomodo/Activision
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (Lyrics, mild suggestive themes, animated blood)

Without being behind the scenes, it’s impossible to discern whether “Tony Hawk Ride” is a case of hardware failing software or software not properly utilizing hardware.

At least on appearance, it isn’t due to shoddy hardware workmanship. To the contrary, the board controller that ships with “Ride”  — picture a wireless skateboard deck sans wheels — feels durable enough to easily outlast the mountain of iffy plastic musical instruments that paved its way. It looks good, too — like a sophisticated piece of electronics instead of just another one-trick toy.

Most importantly, in fleeting bits and pieces, it also works. The board rocks from side to side and nose to tail without demanding too much effort, yet it isn’t so malleable as to make it easy to spill out of control. Performing basic flip tricks is simple enough, and it’s fun to let loose, take one foot off the board, place the other on the far nose or tail, and perform a 360 spin while your onscreen skater does some facsimile of the same. Small sensors located on all sides allow for grab tricks, and between the lower body acrobatics and the fight to maintain optimum balance, “Ride” sneakily provides a good workout for muscles you may not otherwise work.

It’s unfortunate, then, that the game designed around the board fails to cater to what makes the board fun to use.

In stark contrast to the string of recent open-ended “Tony Hawk” games that let players ride freely and take on objectives at will, “Ride” is stiflingly straightforward: Each city breaks into a few small levels, and each level offers a handful of objectives — typically a time trial, trick session, collection of five mini-challenges and half-pipe trick session — that require a few minutes each to experience. “Ride” offers a free skate option, but the levels aren’t built with that in mind and there’s nothing to do during these sessions. A multiplayer component (eight players locally sharing one board, four online on the 360 and PS3) consists of the same events recycled under party play rules.

The abrupt, linear nature of “Ride’s” trick and race sessions makes it hard for players to just let loose and have a creative good time on the board, and the precise demands in the challenges create needless aggravation because the board simply isn’t smart or precise enough to consistently discern different flip tricks from one another. Instances of nailing a trick, only for the game to claim you didn’t, are aggravatingly common here, and there’s little reward for getting it right thanks to a bare-bones presentation that just trots out more of the same.

Ultimately, “Ride” feels like a half-finished game hastily designed to complement a board that maybe took longer than planned to complete. Maybe the board’s true calling will be as a snowboarding game controller or something else entirely. The potential is there. Right now, though, “Ride” adds up to an experience that, in its current state and at its current $120 price, just isn’t worth the investment.

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Backbreaker Football
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: NaturalMotion Games
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $1 (free demo available)

NaturalMotion’s Backbreaker football physics engine has sparked lingering curiosity since its 2007 unveiling, and if its first playable appearance in the wild is any indication, it’s no mystery why. “Backbreaker Football” isn’t a complete football game by any stretch, but a low-concept arcade game in which you, as the ballcarrier, must evade oncoming would-be tacklers and reach the end zone. Tilting the iPhone controls your directional movement, and some onscreen buttons allow you to juke, spin, sprint and, if the end zone is in sight, showboat. Evading defenders in style nets you points, stringing moves together results in bountiful combos, and the more times you can reach the end zone without being tackled and losing all your turns, the better your placement on the game’s leaderboards. “Backbreaker” backs the simple concept with a series of challenge levels, an endurance mode and multiple difficulty settings, but it’s the technological underpinnings that elevate it from a decent time-waster to bona fide addiction. Even on the underpowered iPhone, the tackle and running animations look fantastically authentic, and reading a would-be tackler’s body momentum — and countering it with perfectly-timed, perfectly-placed evasion — is a skillful undertaking rather than a matter of guesswork. Seeing this tech in motion on more powerful hardware can’t happen soon enough.

Half-Minute Hero
For: Playstation Portable
From: Marvelous Entertainment/XSEED Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (animated blood, language, mild fantasy violence, mild suggestive themes)

If you’re one of those poor souls who enjoys the trappings of a good role-playing, real-time strategy and/or tower defense game, then boy, does “Half-Minute Hero” have a wholly unique and brilliantly original deal for you.

“Hero” arrives divided into three (and, after a little unlocking, six) pieces, with each piece representing an era in the game’s storytelling legend. Additionally, four of them represent a separate popular (and, in three cases, traditionally complex) gaming genre. The “Hero 30″ chapter is “Hero’s” answer to role-playing games, while “Evil Lord 30,” “Princess 30″ and “Knight 30″ respectively take on tactical strategy, overhead 2D arcade shooting and tower defense.

“Hero’s” willingness to cover all four of these bases is potentially remarkable in its own respect, but it’s how the game does it — and where it gets the “Half-Minute” part of its name — that elevates it to a world all its own.

In a nutshell? Each level must be completed in 30 seconds. In the case of the Evil Lord, Princess and Knight chapters, that means completely wrapping up a battle and meeting any necessary objectives in the time it takes a commercial to air. In the Hero mode, that means completing an entire role-playing game — complete with title card and end credits for each “sequel” — in that same span of time. You don’t have a choice: The world ends if you fail.

“Hero” predictably skirts this time mechanic to some degree: You can pray for more time in the role-playing game and purchase it in the tactical games. The shooter levels feature special red carpets that, if traversed, add seconds back to the clock.

But even with those limited-use workarounds, you never have more than 30 seconds to spare at any point in “Hero,” which brilliantly bucks the conventions of the genres it mimics by turning them into frantic sprints against always-ticking clocks. RPG battles began and end in a second or two. Full-scale wars against enemy armies take 15 seconds. The gameplay is far more manageable than it sounds on paper, but the speed at which is soars by is nonetheless truly remarkable, and the whole experiment is a shocking success given all the conventional polarities in play. (“Hero’s” fifth and sixth mode, bend the RPG mode by putting 300 and three seconds, respectively on the clock. That ladder mode is as ludicrous as it sounds.)

“Hero’s” spirit is similarly buoyant on the outside thanks to an inspired audiovisual style that harkens back to 16-bit gaming’s early-1990s glory days. The game’s dialogue reads like the work of a junior high school kid writing fan fiction, but it does so deliberately and with a dry wit. What “Hero” lacks in sweeping storylines, it more than makes up for in funny characters and absolutely hilarious throwaway lines that come out of nowhere.

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Need For Speed Nitro
For: Nintendo Wii
From: EA Montreal
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (mild lyrics, mild violence)

At first blush, it’s easy to mistake “Need for Speed Nitro” — which takes a proper “Need for Speed” game, strips it of its simulative leanings and whittles it down to a streamlined racer with a very heavy arcade bent — as something of a raw deal.

But “Nitro’s” arcadey disposition isn’t just a case of subtracting and oversimplifying for a more casual audience. Rather, because it isn’t constrained by the same parameters, “Nitro” does things a traditional “NFS” game cannot. Depending on how you choose to play and how extensively you wish to succeed, it also poses a more satisfying challenge than its more well-rounded cousins.

Speed rules everything in “Nitro,” which gets its name from the two tanks of nitrous oxide equipped on all 30 of its licensed vehicles. Driving with style replenishes your nitrous bars, and from there you can activate one for a significant speed boost or both for something not of this world.

“Nitro’s” low camera placement and overall visual presentation convey a nice sensation of speed all by themselves, and the brake button exists more as a means to drift around corners at high speeds than as a tool for cautious driving. Master the drift, enable a double nitrous boost and weave between cop cars bent on shutting your race down, and the action moves at an exhilarating clip more straight-faced racing games can’t feasibly deliver.

The arcadey approach, thankfully, doesn’t translate into a powderpuff challenge. “Nitro” offers steering assistance for those who want it, and the control schemes that only require the Wii remote are forgiving enough for “Mario Kart” graduates. For more experienced players, though, the traditional schemes and assist-free physics complement a surprisingly ruthless A.I. to make “Nitro” a legitimately (but never unfairly) challenging game. Completely cleaning up in the career mode — winning events, beating par lap times and accruing style points across a variety of event styles — is tougher here than in a traditional “NFS” game.

Similar design decisions course through the entirety of “Nitro,” which counters most of what it lacks with something of its own that traditional “NFS” either couldn’t do or couldn’t get away with. The stylized, spirited graphical presentation — which uses graffiti art in a brilliant way that’s best unspoiled — nullifies the Wii’s technical shortcomings to a startling degree. Similarly, while you can’t tune cars to nearly the same extent that you can in other “NFS” games, you can paint them however you please using the Wii remote as a freeform paintbrush, which arguably is better as far as personalization is concerned.

The only gap “Nitro” can’t close, though, is a big one. The game’s local multiplayer support — four players and drop-in/drop-out capabilities even in the career mode — is terrific, but its online component is nonexistent. Painting cars would be that much more satisfying if you could show them off online, and that’s to say nothing of the extra longevity online competitions and record-keeping would provide.

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Lego Rock Band
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS
From: Harmonix/TT Games/MTV/Warner Bros. Interactive
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, mild cartoon violence, mild lyrics)

Band Hero
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS
From: Neversoft/RedOctane/Activision
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (lyrics, mild suggestive themes)

The grudge match between “Guitar Hero” and “Rock Band” rages on, and because “Lego Rock Band” and “Band Hero” exist primarily to lure in families put off by the parent games’ more mature set lists, even the children no longer are safe.

If you’re a cynic, “Band Hero” probably merits a dirty first look: The name will positively terrify parents already confused by the two franchises’ shrinking discrepancies, and the game itself is basically a cloned “Guitar Hero 5″ with a pop theme and a family-friendly, 65-track setlist that’s 20 songs poorer than “GH5″ despite matching it in price.

But if you don’t have “GH5″ and prefer “Hero’s” family-friendly disposition, that’s actually perfectly good news. “Hero” doesn’t dumb the gameplay down in any respect, and outside of the setlist size, it matches its parent product in terms of features — career mode, support for any configuration of up to 4 (local multiplayer, online co-op) or eight (online competitive) drums, guitars and mics, even the imposingly robust studio mode that lets you create and share your own instrumentals.

“Lego Rock Band” can’t make quite the same claim, in large part due to the puzzling omission of any online play whatsoever. If the idea wad to protect the children, an option to disable online functionality would have more than sufficed. The 45-song setlist also presents an even bigger drop-off from “Rock Band 2′s” 84 tracks.

Presentationally speaking, though, “LRB” is a brilliant realization of what should happen when Harmonix’s airtight gameplay mixes it up with TT Games’ masterful use of the Lego license. “LRB’s” storyline is as cleverly funny as TT’s “Star Wars” and “Batman” send-ups, and the Lego setting allows it to explore storytelling frontiers — monster-infested mansions, outer space, a drumming octopus seeking vengeance — traditional “Rock Band” games could never visit. Players who play through the storyline also unlock furniture, instruments and body parts, which they can use to customize their characters and rock den.

Additionally, while “LRB’s” setlist is smaller than it should be and home to its fair share of flavor-of-the-month hits, it also brings along the likes (and in a few spectacular cases, playable Lego facsimiles) of Queen, Spinal Tap, David Bowie, T-Rex, Elton John and Iggy Pop. For parents who want to instill some reverence and good taste in their kids at an early age, this — along with a new Super Easy difficulty setting that’s extremely accommodating to entry-level players — makes “LRB” a pretty powerful ally.

mebeliElebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero
For: Nintendo DS
From: Konami
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence)

Though it’s an “Elebits” game in every superficial respect, “Elebits: The Adventures of Kai and Zero” shares almost nothing in common with the Nintendo Wii game that birthed the franchise. That game was a quirky action/puzzle game that had you using the Wiimote to overturn furniture and play virtual hide and seek, while “Zero” translates some of the same concepts into a far more traditional, two-dimensional adventure game in the “Legend of Zelda” vein.

It works, albeit in spite of itself sometimes, and it allows the series to spread its ever-deepening mythology to systems that (a) can’t do what the Wii can and (b) can do things the Wii cannot.

As with the original “Elebits” — and as satisfactorily explained by a brief storyline introduction — “Zero” has you trapping and collecting little Elebit creatures, which provide you with energy.

This time, though, that energy goes toward more than simply moving forward. Progression through “Zero” rewards you with Omegas — evolved companion Elebits who not only help you round up lesser Elebits, but also exhibit special abilities (breathing fire, freezing and so on) that grant you access to areas on the map you can see but otherwise cannot reach.

For the most part, beyond some boss encounters, that’s how you play: Find the hiding Elebits, collect energy, and use your team of Omegas to ward off small enemies and solve puzzles that impede your progress. But again, it works. “Zero” doesn’t throw a lot of frantic action your way, but the puzzles are designed well — neither embarrassingly easy nor unnecessarily cryptic in their riddle.

The boss fights are similarly fun, though they also best expose “Zero’s” somewhat awkward controls. The game overwhelmingly uses the touch screen to conduct business — move and shake objects to uncover Elebits, tap Elebits to stun them, tap your Omega to send it into capture mode — and it works fine on this basic level. But “Zero” also gives occasion to take direct control over your Omegas, and it handles this change of control awkwardly, which in turn can trip you up during a heated moment. The handoff becomes less jarring with time and practice, and it never develops into a deal-breaker, but the awkwardness never fully dissipates.

Beyond that, “Zero” is quite a pleasant surprise — a visually vibrant, pleasantly paced adventure that uses ingredients from its vastly different predecessor to create its own unique niche on the DS. A return to the wacky Wii format would be most welcome, but kudos to Konami to spinning this one off in just the right way while we wait for that to happen.

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Star Ocean: Second Evolution
For: Sony PSP
From: Square-Enix
ESRB Rating: Teen (alcohol and tobacco reference, mild fantasy violence, mild language, suggestive themes)

It’s all “Star Ocean,” all the time at Square-Enix, which is gearing up to release a brand-new “Ocean” chapter on the Xbox 360 while giving the original games a well-deserved kick in the pants on a very game-starved PSP.

For those completely unfamiliar, the original “Star Ocean” games played out like your typical role-playing game from the mid- to late-1990s, albeit with one difference: Instead of engaging in turn-based battles, the encounters, while still randomly generated, played out in real time. Players control one character, while the game’s A.I. handles the rest of your party, which fights according to the attributes you’ve established for them. Just imagine an old-school “Final Fantasy” game with real-time battles, and you understand “Star Ocean” well enough to be comfortable with it.

As remakes go, “Star Ocean: Second Evolution” isn’t as drastic a makeover as last year’s “Star Ocean: First Departure.” Nor should it be: Whereas “Departure” reinvented a 16-bit game that never even made it out of Japan, “Evolution” takes on a sequel, “The Second Story,” that both appeared on more modern hardware and debuted in America less than 10 years ago.

Furthermore, most of what was novel about “Departure’s” remake — a polished translation that does the original story justice, brand-new animated cut scenes, a streamlined mix of 2D and 3D graphics that’s tailor-made for the PSP’s screen — returns for “Evolution.” That isn’t bad news at all, because the visual symmetry does wonders for realigning the series’ timeline. But if you played “Departure,” the changes in “Evolution” won’t drop your jaw the same way, and that merits noting.

Where “Evolution” truly excels over “Departure” is, in fact, where it counts most: It’s based on a better game. The two remakes operate almost identically, but where “Departure” was bogged down by sloppy storytelling and the need to backtrack incessantly, “Evolution” continually barrels ahead with a better, more focused story that begets similarly forward-minded gameplay.

Beyond that, little else needs be said. You don’t remake a game if it wasn’t any good and people didn’t treasure it the first time around, and “Star Ocean” isn’t the series to change that rule. Playing “Departure” before getting into “Evolution” is the right move if you want the full series experience, but if you don’t mind skipping ahead a little bit, this easily ranks as the better of the two remakes.

Condemned 2: Bloodshot
For: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
From: Monolith/WB Games/Sega
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, use of drugs and alcohol)

There are horror games, and there are first-person games, but there hasn’t been another game remotely like “Condemned,” which mixed the two in shockingly competent fashion when it arrived in late 2005. That it arguably was one of the most frightening games ever made didn’t hurt, either.

Think a few folks are hungry for a sequel? You bet they are. Happily, “Condemned 2: Bloodshot” not only (mostly) matches its predecessor in tone, but blows it away in most major respects when it comes to actual gameplay.

While portions certainly fall into the first-person shooter bin, much of the action in the “Condemned” games finds you fighting with fists or blunt objects rather than guns. The original game handled this surprisingly well — a feat, given how many games before it utterly failed — by keeping things simple and focused on the sensation of actually being in a first-person fight for your life.

“Bloodshot” recaptures this sensation but also dramatically expands the arsenal, adding the ability to fight more defensively and respond with combos, special maneuvers and the occasional environment-aided finisher. The suddenly-loaded control scheme flirts with contrivance, and it arguably succumbs to it in the game’s final level. But the steps forward vastly outnumber the steps backward, and Monolith gets major points for not breaking the whole system in the process of tweaking it so heavily.

Beyond survival, “Condemned’s” gameplay consisted of a handful of humorously pedestrian detective missions that required almost zero intelligence to complete. “Bloodshot” brings back the detective portions, but it smartens them up exponentially and actually applies actual consequence to them this time. The better your detective work, the higher the reward, which results in special upgrades and additions to your arsenal.

With both chief gameplay ingredients seeing such significant improvements, “Bloodshot” almost can’t help but be an inarguably better experience than its predecessor. All that remains is the arguable point of how the sequel’s story and environments stack up to what the original delivered.

This, unfortunately, is where “Bloodshot” is at its shakiest. As suspenseful storytelling goes, it’s first-rate, gifted with exceptionally good character building, healthy sprinklings of madness and a second-act twist many fans of the original will absolutely love. But the story dictates the design more than it did the first time, and that leads to a game that’s more darkly mysterious than scary. You’ll still jump, but anyone looking for a legendary scare (department store, anyone?) isn’t likely to find it.

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Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
For: Sony PSP
From: Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, mild language, mild suggestive themes, violence)

Square Enix has tried — lord, has it tried — to capitalize on the undying affection so many gamers have for “Final Fantasy VII.”

Finally, after a full decade and some projects we’d all like to forget ever happened, it’s struck oil with “Crisis Core.”

Ironically, part of what makes “Core” work is how non-reliant it is on the game that inspired its creation. The game builds its story around a character, Zack, whose role in “FFVII” was relegated to flashback duty only. That creates a win-win situation for all: Fans of the original game can sink their teeth into “Core’s” expansion of the “FFVII” universe, while the mostly self-contained storyline allows newcomers to dive in without fear of alienation.

On the other hand, what also makes “Core” shine is the way it applies bits and pieces of “FFVII” to what is, at least on the surface, an entirely different brand of gameplay.

Whereas “FFVII” was a turn-based role-playing game in the traditional “Final Fantasy” vein, “Core” places a much greater emphasis on semi-real-time action. Battles are self-contained per usual, but within that space, you’re free to run around, attack at will, and cycle through items and spells while simultaneously trying to avoid enemy attacks.

Such action-oriented leanings will come as terrible news for those “FFVII” fans who simply want a verbatim return to that game’s turn-based combat. But things aren’t as simple as they first seem, and many of the underpinnings that powered “FFVII’s” combat remain intact despite the new approach. “Core” automates and randomizes certain processes that previously were left to player discretion, but the ingredients that power engagement — from hit points to limit breaks — are still there. Gamers fearful that Square Enix has lumped together a dumbed-down button masher in “FFVII” clothing need not worry. For those with the desire to dissect the game’s intricacies, the depth is there.

“FFVII” devotees may not have a choice anyway. While “Core’s” gameplay almost certainly will polarize fans, Square Enix’s knack for transcendent and visually dazzling storytelling is off the table. “Core” was simultaneously tasked with playing the nostalgia card and feeling epically fresh, and it rises to the challenge with scary ease. On this merit alone, it’s a must-play for any “FFVII” fan, and those who don’t care for the new gameplay approach had best find a way to deal with it.

God of War: Chains of Olympus
For: Sony PSP
From: Ready at Dawn Studios/Sony
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, sexual content)

There was never any real doubt that “God of War: Chains of Olympus” would be good. This is, after all, the portable debut of Sony’s premier action franchise. And if developer Ready at Dawn Studios’ work on “Daxter” is any indication, few studios are as capable of shrinking down Sony’s prized properties as the one tasked with bringing the mighty Kratos to the small screen.

But even with those expectations in play from the outset, it remains rather shocking how impressive “Olympus” is in its finished form. Ready at Dawn didn’t simply make a good interpretation of “God of War.” It made the genuine article.

Reports that “Olympus” is indistinguishable from its PS2 counterparts is a bit exaggerated. The graphics feature some jagged edges not found in those games, and while the framerate is fantastically stable, it only rarely approaches the level of perfection those games could handle without breaking a sweat.

But that pretty much is it for the divergences. Aside from those ultimately insubstantial issues, “Olympus” is “God of War,” verbatim, on a handheld. All things wonderful about the PS2 games — the incredible combo system, bounty of combat maneuvers, epic boss encounters and a so-well-tuned-that-you-take-it-for-granted balance between puzzle-solving and button mashing combat — make their way to the PSP without compromise.

In fact, if there’s a legitimate gripe with “Olympus,” it’s that it’s a little too faithful. Ready at Dawn throws in a cool new weapon in the late stages of the game, and the story — a prequel of sorts to the original game — provides some fun insight into Kratos’ come to being. But beyond that and some of the boss fights, much of what you see in “Olympus” will look some degree of familiar if you’ve played the other games. That’s not necessarily a terrible thing, but some will take umbrage with the game’s refusal to take risks in the hands of a new developer.

Also, “Olympus” is short. You can topple it in no more than five hours, and beyond a few harder difficulty settings and a smattering of arena challenges, there isn’t much in the way of other content to explore.

On the flip side, “Olympus” also is one of those games that easily commands replaying on the simple basis that it’s just that much fun. That’s been a hallmark of the series since the beginning, and given how brilliantly “Olympus” keeps up, it’s hardly an exception.

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Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
For: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC
From: Spark Unlimited/Codemasters
ESRB Rating: Teen (language, violence)

“Turning Point: Fall of Liberty” kicks off its rewriting of history with a real head-scratcher: What if Winston Churchill had been killed in 1931 by that taxi that struck him in New York City? Would the Allies ultimately have lost World War II, and would the White House be draped in Nazi red?

Unfortunately, this little “what if?” isn’t just “Liberty’s” first moment, but its finest as well. The game hands the controls to you, and a stiff downhill tumble follows shortly after.

The problem is that, while “Liberty’s” story takes place in 1953, its gameplay comes from around 1998 or so. Enemy intelligence is barely there, with Nazis recklessly bum-rushing you or standing perfectly in place, ready to eat your bullets either way. Sometimes they even spawn out of thin air, only to disappear just as quickly when killed. They’ll readily throw grenades at you, even if you’re only a few feet away. That’s fine, though, because explosives only sometimes kill enemies.

Technically, the game fares little better. Clipping problems are humorously rampant, framerate drops not-so-humorously frequent. Animation is choppy, sometimes to the point where soldiers randomly warp a few feet. None of it is justified, either: “Liberty” looks no better, and often looks worse, than your average first-generation Xbox 360 game.

Even when “Liberty” does something different, bad code undoes it. The ability to melee enemies and use them as human shields is very cool, and the game occasionally allows you to dispatch enemies creatively using environmental kills. Unfortunately, “Liberty” has serious trouble with context recognition. Unless you’re positioned perfectly in front of a soldier, the melee option doesn’t appear. And without a general-use melee button to save you in a pinch, that often means you’ll die simply because the game failed you. That’s especially annoying when you’re in one of the portions of “Liberty” where the developers seemingly forgot to include checkpoints.

In the end, none of it is worth it, because “Liberty” barely expands on the intrigue brought forth by that original question. A few cool set pieces aside, the game could take place in almost any universe, and the mid-mission cutscenes do little to form a relationship between players and the average Joe-turned-one-man army they control.

With a decent storyline stripped away, “Liberty” becomes just another first-person shooter for three systems already bursting with them. Stripped of everything else it should have but doesn’t, it’s also impossible to recommend even as a curious rental.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Teen (cartoon violence, crude humor)

The bad news? “Super Smash Bros. Brawl” is more of the same.

The good news? It’s a lot more of the same.

For those still playing “Super Smash Bros. Melee,” “Brawl” represents a small step for gameplay and a giant leap for most everything else. It’s still chiefly a fighting game starring Nintendo characters, and the pick-up-and-play sensibilities that buoyed the first two games make the move to “Brawl” with almost no change to the formula. (Case in point: Despite several control schemes involving all manner of Wii controller configurations, the configuration that utilizes the Gamecube outclasses them all.)

Where “Brawl” really shines, more than perhaps any Nintendo game ever, is with content. Six years have passed since “Melee” arrived, and Nintendo pads “Brawl’s” already-loaded roster of characters and stages with a ton of familiar faces and places from the franchises it’s created in that time. The amount of fan service crammed inside sets a mind-boggling new standard that likely won’t be matched until the next “Smash” game arrives, and while “Brawl” isn’t miles prettier than “Melee” was, it’s definitely an upgrade in every facet.

The feature offerings also blow “Melee” away.

Online play makes its debut in the “Smash” universe, and while the clumsy friend code system, occasional dropped connection and lack of voice chat and leaderboards make this a bittersweet debut, it generally works as advertised. The adventure mode — featuring “Smash” characters starring in a mix of sidescrolling and fighting levels — is considerably longer and more story-driven than in “Melee,” and a handful of mini-games and objective-driven stages round out a surprisingly mountainous single-player component.

“Brawl” also engages your creative side for the first time, allowing players to share replays and screenshots and even create their own levels for use in offline (though sadly, not online) matches.

As with “Melee,” “Brawl” also offers a humungous suite of stuff to unlock — trophies, virtual stickers, characters, stages and even a few laughably time-limited demos of classic Nintendo games.

All that said, the best way to enjoy “Melee” — throwing down with friends on the same couch and screen — remains the definitive way to enjoy “Brawl.” Nothing’s changed there.

As such, if you didn’t get into “Smash” before, “Brawl” won’t change your mind. But Nintendo clearly aimed “Brawl” squarely at the same crowd that embraced “Melee,” and the trove of content packed inside should keep fanatics engaged for at least another six years. If you’re a “Smash” fan and you had any doubts, consider them put to rest.

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Patapon
For: Playstation Portable
From: Interlink/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence)

Genre-blending is all the rage nowadays, but that doesn’t mean you can mix just any two flavors and expect peanut butter and jelly.

A huge hat off, then, to Interlink, which mixes two wildly different genres (rhythmic gaming and real-time strategy), dresses them in a side-scrolling graphical style that’s almost completely foreign to both, and somehow makes the whole thing not only work, but sing.

In “Patapon,” you command a strange-looking group of creatures (called Patapon) as they march from left to right, encounter hordes of creatures, and complete objectives as dictated by a surprisingly charming storyline. But rather than move your units with a cursor or even just the d-pad, you control their actions with a drum, pressing different combinations of face buttons in time with a beat that plays in the background. One set of button presses advances your troops, for instance, while others prompt them to attack, defend, or perform context-sensitive actions.

At first, it seems wildly simplistic and repetitive, with the first mission asking you to execute the advance command ad nauseam in order to outrun an unstoppable monster. The second mission isn’t much more complicated, prompting fears that “Patapon” never evolves beyond a rote exercise of memorizing button combinations and rhythmically executing them.

With time, though, the game surprises with its depth. The mission structure quickly opens up, forcing you to focus as much on formulating a smart attack strategy as keeping up with the beat. Different Patapon have different abilities and liabilities, and you can manage troops by acquiring new equipment and elements that go toward the creation of new troops. As with any good strategy game, success in “Patapon” comes down to how efficiently you distribute your resources.

None of this is to suggest “Patapon” is for everyone, because it isn’t. The continual focus on rhythmic button presses while also managing an army makes this a demanding game in spite of its implied simplicity, and the reliance on music and lack of in-game pause means this isn’t the easiest game to pull out for a quickie on the bus. Never mind that this combination of two rather niche genres simply isn’t for everyone in the first place.

But those intrigued by what they’ve read are in for an extremely unique treat. “Patapon” deserves major kudos not only for trying something new, but for nailing it on the first go. That the whole thing only costs $20 sure doesn’t hurt, either.

Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2
For: Xbox 360
From: Bemani/Konami
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (lyrics, mild suggestive themes)

If it wasn’t possible for one game to be both the absolute best of its kind and a disappointment, it is now. “Dance Dance Revolution Universe 2″ proves it.

As “DDR” games go, “DDRU2″ rules all. The backing of the Xbox 360 gives it a visual edge over its PS2 and Wii counterparts, and that’s to say nothing of the online capabilities (four players and leaderboards now, downloadable content possible later) brought forth by Xbox Live functionality.

More importantly, though, “DDRU2″ features a ridiculous array of ways to play. Listing and describing them all in this short space would be impossible, but there’s a reason a game that involves little more than stepping on a dance pad in time with music ships with a 42-page instruction manual. Bemani also allows gamers to tinker settings large and small in order to cater the game to just about any level of dance style and ability. Games in every genre should strive to be this accommodating.

Thing is, everything you just read applies to the previous “DDRU” game as well, and if you played that game last year, you’re about to experience some serious déjà vu. “DDRU2″ ships with a new soundtrack, of course, and it refines a few modes and adds some new ones, including a freestyle mode for people too hopeless to play the game as intended.

But for gamers who do play “DDRU2″ as intended, the changes aren’t terribly exciting. The quest mode is better organized than last time, but it’s still clumsy and confusingly presented. It also remains the one mode in which Bemani forces harder difficulty settings on unfit players — a real problem given the cliff dive between basic and even moderate difficulty settings.

Meanwhile, secondary modes such as the Workout mode haven’t matured beyond their peripheral status. (Given how much improvement the Wii version’s Workout mode showed, it’s surprising to see none of that carry over here.) Also speaking of peripherals, the solid but unspectacular dance mat returns unchanged. Unless you want a second mat, you’re fine buying just the game disc.

The incremental growth is a product of a game that already was doing so much. While “DDRU2″ is easy to recommend to anyone who loves the series, if only because it presents new songs to conquer, it’d still be nice to see “DDR” blow our minds again. (Translation: It’s time for custom soundtrack support. Bite the bullet, Konami.)

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Atari Classics Evolved
For: Playstation Portable
From: Stainless Games/Atari
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild violence, simulated gambling)

Massive compilations of Atari games on a single disc aren’t the novelty they once were, and Atari has responded by going back to the well in as many fresh and inventive ways as possible.

In “Atari Classics Evolved,” developer Stainless Games plays it safe by offering 11 games — Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Centipede, Lunar Lander, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, Super Breakout, Tempest and Warlords — in both their original and “evolved” form. Both forms play identically, with the evolved form offering a prettier coat of graphical paint and a few bonus perks such as achievements, online leaderboards and wireless multiplayer for Battlezone and Warlords.

While the graphical overhauls definitely look nice, the achievements should stand as “Evolved’s” greatest contribution to the retro compilation racket. Each evolved game features four distinctive goals to conquer, and knocking out all 44 of them unlocks a library of more than 50 Atari 2600 games. Reaching these goals likely will fall beyond the means of all but the most skilled and dedicated of players, but it’s nice to see a retro compilation offer something beyond nostalgia as a reason to pick it up. Having something to work for does wonders for longevity.

It’s merely a shame “Evolved” only is available for the PSP, which proves once again why it’s the most incapable system on the shelf to handle compilations of this sort. The analog nub isn’t precise enough to replicate the experience of playing with a trackball or arcade stick, and fiddling with the sensitivity settings doesn’t help much. The system’s heavy widescreen orientation also clashes with vertically-oriented games like Centipede and Tempst, which force you to turn the PSP sideways and hold it awkwardly while negotiating with the aforementioned shoddy control inputs.

Atari certainly isn’t shy about porting its catalog to as many systems as will have it, so there’s hope that “Evolved” eventually will make its way to a system with a better controller. (The Xbox 360′s Live Arcade has downloadable versions of some of the games, but that’s not quite the same thing.)

At no point is “Evolved” unplayable on the PSP, though. The games are emulated expertly, and if you can find a soft touch with the analog nub, the control issues may pose less of an issue. If nothing else, the inviting $20 price makes it easy to take a gamble if the concept has your attention.