Metroid: Other M
For: Wii
From: Team Ninja/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, violence)

Nintendo took a risk with “Metroid” in 2002 by turning a sidescrolling, exploration-heavy platformer into a trilogy of first-person shooters, so it’s kind of funny that “Metroid: Other M” feels significantly riskier despite at least partially fulfilling what fans expected a 3D “Metroid” game to look like in the first place.

Generally speaking, “M” is a third-person action game that’s heavy on shooting but presented through a semi-fixed camera perspective typically reserved for “God of War” and other action games that lean on melee combat. The shooting is assisted to the point where it feels like an old “Metroid” game: Samus fires in whatever general direction she’s facing, and instead of testing players’ aiming proficiency, the game challenges by loading areas with enemies and forcing players to dash, jump, dodge and otherwise change direction quickly. It works, and in terms of combat intensity, it’s a huge leap forward.

In another nod to “Metroid’s” formative years, players control “M” solely with the Wii remote, holding it sideways and moving Samus with the D-pad instead of the more natural nunchuck joystick. It’s an odd fit given the game’s 3D disposition, but the controls are responsive enough to make it work when in third-person mode.

Where the nunchuck is missed is during “M’s” most clever trick, which lets players enter first-person shooter mode at any point by turning the remote and pointing it at the screen like a blaster. The additional viewpoint is an ingenious use of the Wii’s capabilities, and “M” capitalizes on it by giving players free reign to mix both viewpoints during exploration as well as combat. Problem is, the lack of joystick support means players are sitting ducks in first-person mode. Switching between the two perspectives is a bit jarring, and when you have to do so quickly and in the company of enemies whose movements are never restricted, cheap attacks are inevitable.

That occasional problem aside, though, the gutsy use of two disparate viewpoints and schemes makes “M” a special game instead of simply what everyone expected “Metroid” to become, and it doesn’t come at the expense of anything for which the series is known. “M’s” lush landscapes are rife with secret passageways, hidden upgrades and non-linear terrain that only becomes traversable once Samus finds some of those upgrades. Classic enemies accompany numerous new faces, and the boss fights that have long been the franchise’s hallmark are consistently inventive and, thanks to “M’s” new ideas, very intense. This is a wonderfully tough and intelligent game.

Perhaps “M’s” biggest risk of all is its outfitting of Samus with a full backstory, that she narrates, after 24 years of games in which she rarely uttered a single word. “M’s” stab at Samus’ origins is drippy and clumsy, and those who have enjoyed her silent stoicism might wish to avert their eyes and ears from her newfound ability to pour her feelings everywhere. But any attempt to color the past of an iconic Nintendo character is a valiant one, and even if “M” doesn’t take the history where some would like it to go, it still beats driving down the same tired avenues we already know by heart.

And if you absolutely hate the story? Sorry, you can’t skip the cutscenes. But they’re brief, and they don’t dictate the mood of the gameplay, which is as perfectly “Metroid” in this incarnation as in any other.

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Mafia II
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC, OnLive
From: 2K Czech/2K Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, intense violence, nudity, sexual content, strong language, use of drugs and alcohol)

Because “Grand Theft Auto” popularized it and because most other games have simply fallen in line, conventional wisdom suggests that any game with an open world must fill that world with umpteen pointless activities to justify its worth.

“Mafia II” doesn’t do this. Empire Bay, the fictionalized but very recognizable riff on 1940s New York City, is wide open for discovery, and players can steal cars and visit shops between missions until their thumbs are sore. But outside of some collectibles and a small smattering of elective activities, there really isn’t much of anything for players to accomplish off the storyline’s main roads.

But is that really a terrible thing when those main roads include a storyline that spans 12-15 hours and takes players from World War II, through prison and up the ladders of multiple families? “Mafia II” prioritizes its characters and the finer details of their world over obligatory busywork, and the choice pays off at little expense to the game’s value.

It certainly helps that 2K Czech gets the core mechanics right, even if the game falls into the open world mission design trap of having players repeatedly assume the role of virtual errand boy. Story dictation aside, the bulk of “Mafia II’s” missions consist of some combination of driving to a destination, shooting or brawling with enemies, and driving back.

But while the shooting is standard cover-based third-person fare — and is saddled with a radar system that occasionally misleads players about the proximity of enemies — the action is considerably more polished than the sloppy gunplay that was excused in the “Grand Theft Auto” and “Godfather” games as a byproduct of their open-world design. “Mafia II’s” hand-to-hand combat portions lose steam due to how easy it is to dodge punches, but the one-on-one nature of the fistfights far outclasses the meandering brawling found in those other games.

“Mafia II’s” driving controls, while no more exemplary than the norm, are similarly dependable, and the game strikes a nice chord by both increasing and decreasing the realism at the same time. Empire Bay’s cops try to pull players over for speeding and running red lights in addition to the usual violations, and cars flagged as wanted remain that way until they’re modified at a body shop. At the same time, the game doesn’t make it a hassle to lose the police — especially when a mission is in progress — unless the chase is part of the mission’s design.

Small considerations like those continually enhance the experience. Stealing cars means physically picking the lock instead of just tapping a button, and because it’s easier to just keep the car you already have, it’s also easier to form bonds with (and pay to upgrade) certain cars instead of steal any ride in sight. Hiding from cops while wanted is fun because the cover controls double as stealth controls, and while injuries heal themselves and cars always run, players who stop for food and gas will outperform those who don’t.

It’s also easy to develop a true sense of place when the game coats the streets with ice and plays Christmas music during one stretch and presents the same environments later on with the effects of changing seasons and passing years both accounted for. “Mafia II’s” storyline borrows liberally from the big box of Mafia movie tropes, but between the scope, the details and how good everything looks and sounds, the excessive reverence is easily forgiven.

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Shank
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade
From: Klei Entertainment/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, sexual themes, strong language, violence)
Price: $15

Everything about “Shank” has been done before and will be done again, but maybe no game has put it all together and made it look this easy to do so. Like “Metal Slug,” “Shank” is a cartoony sidescroller that outfits players with some guns, a few grenades and a jump button. But “Shank” also borrows the melee combat of a “Devil May Cry” and, like that game, lets players mix the two styles on the ground, in the air and in whatever combination they please. A handful of hand-to-hand attacks — including the magnificent pounce ability last seen in the “Wolverine” game — further expands the arsenal, and the ability to scale ledges and run along walls lets players perform stunts normally reserved for the Prince of Persia. “Shank” is by no means an easy game, and some of the tougher enemies and bosses have some pretty cheap attacks in their bag. But the game’s rich arsenal of abilities is outclassed only by its ability to tuck everything into a dead-simple control scheme that turns even middling players into supermen, and a generous checkpoint system allows players to play dangerously without worrying excessively about the consequences. “Shank” sports a single-player storyline as well as a separate suite of co-op (local or online) missions, and it bakes both inside an outstanding graphic novel presentation that’s refreshingly minimalist, beautiful to look at and bursting with awesome character designs.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
Coming soon for: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade
From: Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, cartoon violence, language, mild suggestive themes)
Price: $10

Were “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” simply an awesome stab at capitalizing on a comic book and movie that itself lovingly rides the wave of 1980s video gaming nostalgia, it’d be a perfectly easy game to recommend.

But “Pilgrim” humbles simple nostalgia by taking those old games down avenues that either weren’t imagined or weren’t technologically possible back in their day. And it even does contemporary gaming a few better with a level of stylish abandon few games have the appetite to match.

This isn’t to suggest “Pilgrim” reinvents what it fundamentally is — a sidescrolling beat-em-up in the vein of “Double Dragon,” and especially “River City Ransom” — or that those who couldn’t get into those games 20 years ago will somehow get into this now. The objective remains the same, and while “Pilgrim” uses slightly more of the controller than its forebears could, it inevitably and regularly devolves into pounding the same couple of buttons when things get hairy.

But for those who still love the mindless reactionary action this genre provides, the contributions “Pilgrim” makes are wonderful. The game regularly crowds any given screen with enemies — as in up to a dozen or more — without slowing down even a trickle, and it’s just as generous with the variety and amount of items in the environment that players (and enemies) can use in lieu of fists and feet. A weird but enjoyably generous physics system allows quick-thinking players to use these objects in myriad creative ways — throwing a ball at an enemy, for instance, and then kicking the ball at another enemy after it bounces off the first guy’s face.

“Pilgrim’s” fighting controls are versatile and plenty responsive enough to offset the imposing imbalance of manpower, and a persistent leveling system adds new moves whenever players level up one of the game’s five playable characters. “Pilgrim” measures player and enemy attributes with a points system normally reserved for role-playing games, and acquired attributes carry over to new games, tempting completists to replay the game multiple times to fully max each character out. In a nice concession, acquired experience carries over even when players lose all lives and have to otherwise restart a level. Like its influences, “Pilgrim” is a tough game even on its default setting, but it’s savvy enough to give players some sense of progress even when all else fails.

While “Pilgrim” truly succeeds on the strength of its gameplay, it likely will be best remembered for its audiovisual style, which combines garishly pixelated graphics and high-definition polish to marvelous effect and slaps on a magnificent chiptunes soundtrack that would be iconic today if it had originally debuted 20 years ago. Thematically, “Pilgrim’s” levels run the gamut — a rock concert here, a dojo there — and it mines those themes while piling on numerous callbacks to gaming’s past for a presentation that is nothing short of blissful.

While “Pilgrim” supports four-player local co-op to frantically fun effect, the only place the game feels dated in all the wrong ways is in its failure to deliver an online equivalent. The sheer insanity of the action is miles more fun with three friends in the same room, but for those who lack that option, the omission of any kind of conciliatory prize is a major blemish in what otherwise is a work of art.

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Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade
Coming soon for: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network, Windows PC
From: Crystal Dynamics/Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, violence)
Price: $15

Given the lack of “Tomb Raider” in the name, to say nothing of the budget price and downloadable state of the game, one might mistakenly assume “Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light” is a lark for player and creator alike while everybody waits for the next proper “Raider” game to appear and get Lara back to doing what she does best.

But that isn’t necessarily so — and actually, it may be those who don’t normally take to “Raider” who might enjoy “Light” most of all.

Though “Light’s” storyline and environments very obviously exist in “Raider’s” universe, the actual game generally eschews the epic environmental platforming challenges that are the series’ typical centerpiece. Instead, “Light” takes place from an overheard isometric perspective, and like “Diablo” and other games that share that viewpoint, its primary ingredient is combat.

Lara has never excelled at combat from close range, but from high above, she’s a natural. “Light’s” controls — left stick to move, right stick to aim, trigger to fire — are a natural convergence of twin-stick and traditional third-person shooters, and outside of providing players a nice variety of weapons to discover and use, the game doesn’t muck with time-tested conventions. In a nice touch, “Light” scores players based on their ability to dispatch enemies and discover hidden treasure, and each level has optional score challenges on top of other bonus objectives that, upon completion, reward players with special weapons and upgrades.

The combat and scoring systems make no bones about “Light” being a more arcadey experience than traditional “Raider” games, so it’s all the more pleasantly surprising when it becomes apparent just how much the game still offers to those with a penchant for exploration. Platforming challenges are significantly less ambitious than in the proper games, but they’re here, and “Light’s” control scheme allows Lara to jump, climb, and swing around environments and puzzles that provide a satisfying challenge without overshadowing the combat.

Additionally, while “Light” doesn’t stop players from beelining through the primary objectives, the slew of optional challenges that lie off the beaten path — including self-contained challenge rooms that dangle additional rewards at the end of the puzzle — also provide many of the game’s most gratifying and fun challenges.

As the story explains, “Light” supports two-player co-op throughout the campaign, and a crop of bonus speed-run challenges are clearly designed with two players in mind. At the same time, dueling scores encourage players to get the kills and gems and one-up each other. “Light’s” execution of co-op play is as no-nonsense and functional as one expects it to be, and the loose treatment lets players be as ancillary or antagonizing as they wish.

Unfortunately, until late September, it’s also local only. Crystal Dynamics plans to patch online co-op into the Xbox Live version and include it out of the gate when “Light” comes to Windows and Playstation 3, and the patch will naturally be free. Still, if you’re downloading “Light” specifically for the online co-op experience, you still have six weeks of waiting to do.

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Quake Live
For: Various Web browsers (Windows PC/Macintosh/Linux)
From: id Software/Bethesda Softworks
ESRB Rating: Teen (language, suggestive themes, violence)
Price: Free for basic account, $24/year for premium account, $48/year for pro account

Stunning though today’s games are, there may be no better demonstration of gaming’s rapid technological growth than the ability to open up a browser window and play something that brought computers to their knees barely 10 years ago. But that’s what “Quake Live” does: It takes the underpinnings of “Quake III: Arena,” builds a persistent community and modern interface around it, and, at its base level, gives the thing away to anybody willing to set up an account and download the plug-in needed to make it run. The game looks predictably dated, but it hardly matters given how smoothly and quickly it runs, and the essence that drove “Arena” in 1999 — fast, trigger-happy action and lots of weapons, maps and customizable modes to keep players engaged — still burns bright today. “Live’s” out-of-game particulars all take place via a Web portal that makes it easy to manage friends, build clans, customize characters and keep track of leaderboards, achievements, rewards and character experience. Perhaps most pleasantly surprising, though, is a suite of tutorials and practice arenas that allow nervous newbies to practice against A.I. opponents, making “Live” as inviting to try out as it is easy to set up. “Live’s” release from beta status keeps it free to play on its base level, but for those who plan on digging in, the premium (20 additional maps, one extra mode, additional awards and clan/stat-tracking support) and pro (self-hosted server support, limited premium content sharing with friends, yet more additional awards and clan/stat-tracking support) subscription plans are available as well.

Sin and Punishment: Star Successor
For: Wii
From: Treasure/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Teen (fantasy violence)

The genius of “Sin and Punishment: Star Successor” is not simply how skillfully it creates order out of what initially looks like sheer insane nonsense, but how easy it continually makes that skill look during the five or so hours it takes to experience it for the first time.

Dismissively, “Successor” can be classified as an on-rails shooter, which has become a term synonymous for all the Wii lacks in terms of traditional control schemes. The tag technically applies, because outside of when it pauses to swarm players with enemies or a boss fight, “Successor” is constantly in some form of forward motion, and it’s the duty of players to clear enemies away and keep up with it. Think of “Successor” as an old-fashioned space shooter that moves forward in three dimensions instead of sideways in two, and you can start to picture what’s going on here.

Like most on-rails shooters on the Wii, “Successor” also employs a cursor-based control scheme for shooting purposes. Aim the Wii remote around the screen to pick targets, press B to fire. No surprises there.

But “Successor” enhances these core elements by mixing in more extensive character control than the genre traditionally allows. Isa Jo and Achi, the game’s playable protagonists, can freely run and jump on the ground as well as hover to any corner of the screen, and outside of the on-rails forward and backward movement, “Successor” leaves all character movements in players’ hands.

Even the cursor controls, which complement the often frantic pace by incorporating a perfect dose of aiming assistance that’s effective but so subtle as to potentially go unnoticed, puts most similar control schemes to surprising shame. (An optional control scheme, supporting both the Classic and Gamecube controllers, allows players to go all the way traditional and control the targeting with the right stick.)

All that freedom is crucial, because “Successor” inspires more thrills from mastering and avoiding enemy attack patterns than from putting on a good offensive show. Like a great sidescrolling shooter, “Successor” swarms players with such a high variety of frantic enemy attacks that at first, it looks nothing short of (a) completely random and (b) impossible to circumvent. But everything in the game has a pattern, and players who put in the time to figure “Successor” out will gradually start to see it in a completely different (and far more appreciative) light once those patterns start to emerge.

The quest to master the insane variety of patterns “Successor” devises gives the game considerably more value than initial impressions might imply. The game has a story, and it’s sufficient if you absolutely need some narrative purpose, but seeing how it ends is nowhere near as interesting as playing and replaying stretches of the game to push your high scores up the online leaderboards.

“Successor” scores players like a classic arcade shooter, rewarding the ability to stay alive while also dangling a score multiplier that’s continually in flux and dependent on players’ ability to shoot quickly and just a little recklessly. The system lends itself perfectly to score chasers and perfectionists, and “Successor’s” complete understanding of that art — along with hours of great game design to back it up — makes this a must-play for anyone who identifies with either demographic.

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The Cages: Pro Style Batting Practice
For: Wii
From: Alpha Unit/Konami
ESRB Rating: Everyone

At no point does this review know whether “The Cages: Pro Style Batting Practice” is a smart option for would-be baseball stars who, for all baseball science can tell us, might screw up their swing technique by swinging a Wii remote at a television instead of a real baseball bat at a real baseball. Considering the discrepancies in bat weight, among other obvious factors, it’s entirely likely this is more harmful than helpful for serious baseball players.

But taken simply as a video game simulation of a trip to the batting cages — and taking into account the limitations of the Wii even with the MotionPlus attachment in tow — “Cages” does a surprisingly good job at recreating this particular aspect of baseball practice.

With that said, first things first: Though “Cages” is playable without the MotionPlus attachment, the loss of precision that little attachment provides makes this a useless practice tool at best and completely unplayable at worst. If you’re at all serious about enjoying “Cages,” owning or purchasing a MotionPlus attachment should be viewed as mandatory in order for anything that follows to apply to your experience.

“Cages’” primary interface is as spartan as you might imagine: There’s a baseball field, a pitching machine, your bat (which, in the recommended first-person view, you barely even see) and very little else. The machine throws pitches, and players swing the Wii remote like a bat to try and hit the ball.

What makes it work, in addition to a refreshingly unforgiving demand on swing precision, are the options and interface touches the game lays atop the threadbare gameplay. Every pitch is followed by a skippable but very useful swing analyzer that shows players how early, late, high, low, inside or outside their swings are in relation to the ball’s trajectory. Players also can customize and save presets for the pitching machine, selecting what pitches it can throw and the range of speeds at which it can throw them. A stat-tracking feature logs your batting average and other numbers, and a calorie counter provides a morale boost for those days when your swing completely fails you.

“Cages” pads its value with a couple competitive multiplayer modes (one for two players, another for four), but nothing in the game’s feature set will satisfy players looking for anything resembling a game of organized baseball. The game, along its budget price tag, make no bones about its acute focus, and buyers who expect more from it will do so at their own peril.

What it does though — and taking into account the disclaimers from paragraphs one and three above — it does rather satisfactorily. By no stretch of any imagination is “Cages” a better experience than hitting real baseballs with a real bat, and its value as a training tool is pretty dubious. But for those who go to the cages purely for enjoyment’s sake but wouldn’t mind an alternative in a pinch when the time or means isn’t there, this isn’t a bad investment to make.

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DeathSpank
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade
From: Hothead Games/EA
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, cartoon violence, crude humor, mild language, mild sexual themes)
Price: $15

Considering the enduring popularity of the two things — “Diablo”-style dungeon crawling and comedy — “DeathSpank” attempts to merge as one, it’s rather amazing it’s taken this long for the two to come together as naturally as they have here. “DeathSpank” starts off a little slow, and there are a handful of things it does adequately but never expertly. The sensation of combat “Diablo” absolutely nails never feels quite so satisfying here, and between the simplicity of the quest designs and the modest ambitions of the game’s comedic writing and voice acting, this likely will be neither the best-playing dungeon crawler nor the funniest game you play this year. Fortunately, what “DeathSpank” doesn’t do amazingly well, it does more than well enough — so much so that the experience actually improves rather than degrades once the novelty of comedic dungeon crawling wears off. The quests, while not terribly ambitious in terms of variety or design, are at least numerous, as is the bounty of armor, weapons and items waiting to be discovered. The depth of the combat improves with the ability to cast new spells and even combine special attacks. And the world’s fleeting resemblance to an illustrated pop-up book (without the actual pop-up animation) works in tandem with the amusing overall tone to create a universe that, imperfections or not, is a whole lot of fun to explore.

Green Day: Rock Band
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Harmonix/MTV Games/EA
ESRB Rating: Teen (drug reference, lyrics, mild blood)

Some would argue that “Rock Band’s” migration from honoring The Beatles last fall to honoring Green Day now is akin to Ken Burns following up his Civil War documentary with a 15-hour look at Wrestlemania. But that, like nearly everything else with regard to music, is entirely subjective.

Still, in case it somehow needs to be said, “Green Day: Rock Band” isn’t for anyone who doesn’t appreciate the musical stylings of Green Day enough to play the band’s songs ad nauseam. Just as “Beatles: Rock Band” featured nothing but The Beatles, this package contains nothing but Green Day songs, and while players can migrate the catalog into “Rock Band 2″ (and eventually “Rock Band 3″) this time, this game itself allows nary a note from any other band. So if you don’t like Green Day, you know what not to do here.

What is a little cloudy is what to do if you do like the band.

In every expected way, “GD:RB” is as solid as everything that preceded it in the “Rock Band” line. It’s compatible with all the virtual instruments you already own. The note charts are terrific on both ends of the difficulty spectrum, making it easy for players of all disciplines to participate. The band’s real-life likenesses transform into in-game caricatures to terrific effect, and the recordings the game uses are top shelf as always. Developer Harmonix caters to solo players with a healthy career mode but offers just as much to those who want to play together online or in the same room. Support for three-singer and six-member bands, introduced in “Beatles,” returns here.

But “GD:RB” has the same annoying problem “Beatles” had: Its song count, at 47 deep, is only slightly more than half as large as what a mainline “Rock Band” release gets for the same $60 price.

The thin “Beatles” roster was accepted as a byproduct of the labyrinthine procedures needed to digitize The Beatles’ well-guarded catalog in the first place, and the game countered it by at least sampling songs from the entirety of the band’s career and complementing that with memorable venues and set pieces from each turning point in the timeline.

“GD:RB,” by contrast, ignores the first seven years of the band’s existence and focuses almost entirely on 1994′s “Dookie,” 2004′s “American Idiot” and 2009′s “21st Century Breakdown.” The three albums that released between “Dookie” and “Idiot” receive only eight songs’ worth of representation, while the band’s first two albums may as well not exist. The availability of only three venues feels similarly lacking, especially when the one venue even non-Green Day fans recognize — the mud-slathered Woodstock ’94 show — isn’t one of them.

Harmonix has stated it has no plans to squeeze fans for additional money by releasing more songs as downloadable content, so it doesn’t really matter whether the incomplete timeline is a result of label politics, licensing issues, band preferences or something else. What you see is what you’re getting, so budget accordingly: You know what “GD:RB” can do, you know what it can’t do, and you’ll have to decide if that adds up to $60 well spent until “Rock Band 3″ touches down this fall.

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Joe Danger
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Hello Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence)
Price: $15

Last year’s “Trials HD” took “Excitebike’s” time-tested brand of 2D motorbiking and modernized it with physics, stunts and lots of clever new modes. The only problem? After a few reasonably challenging batches of tracks, it grew oppressively hard, obeying the harsh laws of physics to a spirit-crushing degree. That’s a problem “Joe Danger,” which adopts the same perspective and general controls, does not have. Like “Trials,” “Danger” prefers its tracks be stunt playgrounds instead of straightforward motorbike races. But “Danger” ventures a step further by playing almost like a platformer, challenging players to maneuver obstacles, rack up stunt scores and complete the same track different ways to fulfill completely disparate objectives. That adds up to a surprisingly filling single-player mode, and because “Danger” is equipped with a terrifically responsive control scheme that respects but doesn’t worship physics, it’s well-equipped to challenge players different ways without ever undermining its own fun. The vibrant, cartoony exterior perfectly complements the increasingly crazy tracks, a threadbare story does just enough to make Joe a thoroughly likable character, and players who want more can create their own tracks and trade them with other players whose PSN IDs they know. About the only thing that doesn’t impress is “Danger’s” multiplayer (local only, two players), which is limited to straightforward races. But the game’s persistent leaderboard support provides some consolation by letting players constantly challenge their PSN friends’ highest stunt scores on every track.

Blur
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Bizarre Creations/Activision
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (lyrics, mild language)

Bizarre Creations has attempted to make it perfectly clear that while “Blur” uses vehicle and track designs typically reserved for the likes of “Burnout” and “Need for Speed,” the game it’s really targeting is “Mario Kart.”

Looks and a few other particulars aside, the comparison isn’t a stretch — for reasons good and bad.

While “Blur” doesn’t completely nullify the value of able and dangerous driving — the cars handle almost identically to those in Bizarre’s more serious “Project Gotham” racing games — the real key to victory comes from sabotaging the opposition with power-ups scattered around the track. The use of real-world graphics trickles down slightly to these power-ups, but while they don’t look as fantastical as “Kart’s” mushrooms and turtle shells, their general behavior certainly calls that game to mind. “Blur,” to its credit, introduces some nice improvements to the system by mixing in defensive items, including a shield, and by letting players go after the items they specifically want instead of picking up unmarked boxes and hoping what they want is inside.

The heavy premium on power-ups in what otherwise feels like another “Project Gotham” game certainly makes for a novel change of pace, but the degree to which “Blur” deemphasizes the importance of driving well is kind of disappointing. Ramming and sideswiping cars is practically worthless, and while there are occasional rewards for agile driving, most of the advancement through the game comes from pelting other drivers with items and zipping past them while they recover. Some of “Blur’s” constricting track designs practically mandate dull, safe driving, especially early on when the only vehicles available to drive are Class D cars that handle like tugboats.

Frustration with these and other factors, including some unfortunate difficulty imbalances (the game’s too easy on the easy setting, but gets ruthlessly, cheaply difficult on normal difficulty and beyond) and a long wait before the cars that are really fun to drive become available, makes “Blur’s” single-player component something not everyone will love. Bizarre has designed a inventive career mode that functions like a role-playing game and allows players some measure of forward progress toward unlocking better cars even when they finish dead last in an event. But while that setup gives the mode some serious longevity, it also feels designed to make players grind away by losing the same events repeatedly until they have the experience and cars necessary to win it. That this can lead to frustrating stagnation is both obvious and an understatement.

Fortunately, “Blur” has a similar system in place for online multiplayer (20 players), and it carries all the benefits of the single-player mode without the aggravations the A.I. brings to that table. The game matches players against others in their experience class, and because the playing field is completely level and factors beyond player control have no say on the outcome of the race, it’s a significantly better realization of what Bizarre envisioned when it first conceived this idea. Kart racing has always been a genre that shines brightest in multiplayer, and “Blur” gets major points for recognizing that and giving that crowd just as much to strive for as those driving solo.

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Backbreaker
For: Playstation 3 and xbox 360
From: NaturalMotion Games/505 Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone

The problem with “Backbreaker” — and there probably couldn’t be a worse problem for a football game to have than this — is that its diversionary modes are better than its presentation of a complete game of football.

The promise of “Backbreaker” — which champions a game of football based around a dramatically more intense physics engine than what “Madden” uses — is everywhere in the optional but recommended tutorial portion. The mode introduces the controls and physics via 25 lessons, covering everything from open-field tackling to the art of the interception, and it doubles as a validation of the concepts NaturalMotion has introduced to make this a step in a new direction for football games.

“Backbreaker” treats the two control sticks as extensions of a player’s body — the left stick controls the feet per usual, the right stick good for juking, hitting, passing, swimming around blocks and so on — and it presents the action from closely behind whichever player you’re controlling instead of from fixed angles a la “Madden.” You can switch between players at will, but “Backbreaker” encourages picking a player during the play-calling screen and sticking to him throughout the play. The camera unwieldiness that happens when switching mid-play certainly validates that approach.

The zoomed-in camera angles work well during the tutorials, which operate within controlled parameters. They also work in the terrific Tackle Alley mini-game, which finds players running through a gauntlet of would-be tacklers and racking up arcadey scores by dodging defenders and reaching the end zone.

But “Backbreaker” tumbles hard when placed in real, 11-on-11 game situations. The camera zooms too far in for players to have any field presence in unscripted situations, and while we get a nice look at the cool tackling physics, it’s too difficult to find open lanes while running, check multiple receivers while passing, or do just about anything near the line on either side of the ball. It’s sometimes preferable to just break the system: Lining a defensive end on the opposite side of the play makes it far easier to sack, for instance, while running the ball east and then north makes for much larger gains than following the block.

Which leads to the other problem: “Backbreaker’s” A.I. is both too easy to exploit and excessively prone to undermining the fun. Quarterbacks randomly throw directly to defensive backs nowhere near the route, and your teammates go on spurts of committing the same penalty multiple times. Turnovers are way too commonplace, and the afflictions affect human and A.I. teams alike on all difficulty settings.

“Backbreaker’s” dead-simple playbook isn’t bad news for players overwhelmed by the sea of formations and plays in “Madden,” and the absence of the NFL license doesn’t necessarily sting thanks to a customization tool that lets players extensively edit the name, look and roster of 32 teams. (Players can’t share created teams online, but even if they could, the lawyers that be likely wouldn’t allow the sharing of user-created NFL teams anyway.)

But the features and arguably refreshing simplicity are for naught until “Backbreaker” figures out how to get the main course right. First effort or not, too much goes wrong here to recommend this, novelty factor or not, as a serious alternative to “Madden’s” brand of football.

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Planet Minigolf
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Zen Studios
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, mild suggestive themes)
Price: $10

The good thing about “Planet Minigolf” is that its biggest problem is potentially treatable with a patch. The bad thing, unfortunately, is that if that never happens, that problem — control — rates pretty high on the list of issues not to have. On every other front, “Minigolf” is an extraordinary package for $10. The 16 nine-hole courses, which disperse over four different environmental themes, look great and offer a healthy mix of surprises and homages to classic minigolf traps, and a surprisingly rich course editor allows players to create their own courses and share them online. There’s a single-player campaign as well as online/local multiplayer (up to six players), and players can customize their character’s look for both components. “Minigolf” even supports three-on-three team play, and the truly patriotic can represent their country and contribute their scores to an inspired multinational leaderboard. So it’s too bad about those controls: The default analog stick scheme is way too touchy to feel natural, and the button-centric alternate controls (in addition to being entirely too easy to miss completely in the menus) suffer the same problem to a smaller degree. Practice makes that touchiness easier to anticipate, and the present settings are nowhere near unreasonable enough to completely derail the experience. But “Minigolf” will need some developer fine-tuning before it feels as effortlessly intuitive as the PS3′s best traditional golf games presently do.

Skate 3
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Black Box/EA
ESRB Rating: Teen (crude humor, drug reference, language, mild violence, suggestive themes)

“Skate 3″ arrives a mere 16 months after its monstrous predecessor, and there’s no sane point in pretending that doesn’t factor. Everything that was great about the first two games — the awesome control and open-world freedom the first game introduced, the bonanza of features the sequel brought along — is here, and some nice new features and a brand-new city make this one a no-brainer for fans of the series, but the roster of changes isn’t as dramatic this time as it was last time.

That isn’t to say what’s new isn’t welcome, though — particularly if, as “Skate 3″ clearly encourages, you plan on enjoying the experience with friends.

Black Box has done a surprisingly thoughtful job of injecting the right amount of storytelling continuity into the “Skate” games, with callbacks and inside jokes for seasoned players that new players starting fresh need not even recognize. This time, the story shifts to team play, both in terms of winning team competitions and developing a profitable new skate brand.

“Skate” has never shied away from making online play a big part of its appeal, and “Skate 3″ takes it further by essentially allowing players to engage the entire game online. Antisocial types can enroll computer-controlled teammates during the story mode’s team challenges, but calling on up to five friends to assist and/or antagonize — players can slip between cooperative and competitive play dynamically — is so much more fun with the right crowd. Along with the new city to explore, the dynamic multiplayer also presents the biggest fundamental shift to the story mode, which otherwise leans upon familiar challenges and the same general structure (the “don’t fix what ain’t broke” rule) to move things along.

The socialization extends to “Skate 3′s” creation tools, which function like they did previously but now present themselves within a social networking interface that makes it easier for friends to find each other’s clips, graphics and photos. The bigger addition here is the skate park creator, which functions just as any fan of the old “Tony Hawk” series’ park editors might wish it to. “Skate 3″ also increases players’ ability to modify their environment as they wish by allowing them, a la “Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground,” to place common skate park objects in any part of the city at any time with few button clicks.

Elsewhere, it’s a series of little things that some will appreciate and others won’t even notice. A new Skate School feature (starring a very funny Jason Lee, who upholds the series’ terrific voice and character acting standards) helps initiate new players, who might also appreciate an optional new camera angle that’s straight out of classic “Hawk” games. Players who wish to perfect their technique on their own time can employ the optional trick analyzer, which charts joystick movements and breaks down why attempted tricks don’t go as planned. The Hall of Meat, which scores players based on their ability to maim themselves, is a little more flexible and, for those who prefer, able to score all bails automatically without being activated first. The off-board controls are no longer absurdly stiff, and while the trick bag is pretty full by now, a few new ones, including advanced underflips and darkslides, make welcome debuts.

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Iron Man 2
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Wii, PSP and Nintendo DS
From: Sega
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, violence)

If you’re bound and determined to enjoy “Iron Man 2″ in video game form, here’s a tip even the most skilled of you may wish to follow: Play the game on its easiest difficulty setting.

That isn’t a testament to the steely challenge “IM2″ poses to players so much as — as was the case in the first “Iron Man” game — its aggravating propensity to let some truly sloppy execution get in the way of what otherwise could be an ideal action gaming playground.

Like its predecessor, “IM2″ kinda sorta keeps in step with the movie throughout a series a linear missions in which Iron Man (or War Machine; outside of one mission, “IM2″ lets players select whichever character and corresponding weapons loadout they prefer) performs some occasional bodyguard duty but mostly just shoots and blows stuff up.

When it’s done well, the results are perfectly, mindlessly fun. Both characters can dash, hover, fly, engage in airborne hand-to-hand combat and fire short-burst and explosive weapons, and “IM2′s” flexible controls allow players to mix and match those abilities as they see fit.

But any time the action enters a tight space or finds our heroes surrounded by a barrage of enemies — which, by the way, is often — things just fall apart.

Nine times out of 10, it’s the fault of a spastic camera and auto-targeting system, which finds the former spinning around wildly while umpteen targets fire liberally from all angles and play tricks on the latter. On the easiest difficulty setting, it isn’t terribly difficult to just dash away and rebuild the deck, but those who engage the higher difficulty settings should expect to die repeatedly and cheaply at the hands of these technical failings.

The headaches come to a head during a final boss fight against an absolutely gargantuan Ultimo. The scope of the showdown is visually fantastic, but it’s entirely beyond the camera’s capabilities, and the hysterical fit that ensues will leave some players dizzy and others just scrambling for the off switch. What should have been “IM2′s” shining moment instead becomes its lowest low.

The co-op applications for “IM2″ are pretty obvious given its two-protagonist cast, but in another sign that the game was probably rushed to stores in concert with the movie’s release, the relatively short single-player story is all there is. An interface for upgrading and unlocking customizable weapons and suits is nice (if a bit user-unfriendly), but once the end credits roll, there’s nothing to do beyond replaying old missions.

Hopefully, some developer will one day get a chance to do with Iron Man what Activision is doing this year with Spider-Man: create a proper game that isn’t tied to the creative direction and release date of a film. The ingredients for gaming greatness are there, and a proper development cycle and all it entails (polish, a stable camera, a storyline written specifically for the game and some value on the features side) would probably produce something pretty special.

Beyond “IM2′s” startling inability to improve on the well-publicized failings of the troubled first game, no such significance exists here.

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Tecmo Bowl Throwback
For: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Southend Interactive/Tecmo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild suggestive themes)
Price: $10

How faithful is “Tecmo Bowl Throwback” to 1991′s “Tecmo Super Bowl?” One button press holds the answer. “Throwback’s” biggest shortcoming — the missing NFL license — is a big one, and while it makes concessions by allowing players to rename the fictional team and player names, the loss still stings. Had Southend Interactive gone a little farther and allowed players not only to customize team colors but also create entire online leagues with friends and their customized teams, “Throwback” might have the legs to be a full-blown sleeper sensation. As unsensational callbacks go, though, this one’s still got it. The modernized audiovisual presentation is a surprisingly good fit, but it changes nothing about the series’ celebrated two-button gameplay and dead-simple playbook. “Throwback” is so faithful, in fact, that players can switch between the new look and the old 16-bit graphics and sound instantaneously — even mid-play — with one button press. The gameplay has aged just fine despite all that’s happened to football games since its heyday, and those discouraged by the increased complexity of EA’s football simulations might find such pleasurable simplicity to be the chief selling point here. While “Throwback” doesn’t go as far as it should in terms of features, it also isn’t threadbare: Along with local and online multiplayer (two players), there’s a very simple (no general manager tools) but sufficient (if some continuity and stat tracking is enough) season mode for solo players.

Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Relentless Software
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (alcohol reference, cartoon violence)
Price: $7.50 per episode, $15 for a bundle that includes episodes 1-3

As is always the case with a Playstation 3 game, “Blue Toad Murder Files: The Mysteries of Little Riddle” requires a Playstation 3 controller.

Not required, but arguably equally valuable to those who wish to maximize their immersion and success, is a pen and some paper.

Superficially, “Riddle” is, like the recent “Sam & Max” and “Tales of Monkey Island” reboots, part of the pleasantly surprising revival of point-and-click adventure games, which have found new life as downloadable games served in episodic installments. In this case, the three available episodes center around the murderous developments taking place in the quaint English town of Little Riddle, and players are tasked with solving each crime before the killer gets away.

But where most point-and-click adventure games employ a system of cause-and-effect in which players figure out how to use various objects in the environment to trigger story advancement, “Riddle” takes the murder mystery motif to heart.

The storytelling in each episode comes punctuated by 16 challenges that unlock clues and paint a clearer picture of the killer. But while some of the challenges are self-contained brainteasers in the traditional sense, “Riddle” just as often tests players’ memory of events that have transpired up to that point. That includes information about the environments of Little Riddle, the answers its residents give during questioning, and pretty much any other cue that might be construed as a clue. Some of these challenges are straightforward quizzes, but others are packaged within something more clever, and “Riddle” doesn’t necessarily focus on the obvious in either format. So don’t feel bad about using the aforementioned pen and paper: Real detectives don’t commit every last detail to memory, and “Riddle” seems to prefer challenging players to pick their observations carefully rather than simply memorize and regurgitate the obvious stuff.

The nature of the action, or lack thereof, seems an odd fit for a Playstation 3 library better known for the likes of “God of War” and “Uncharted,” and it’s an understatement to note a game that’s niche even by adventure game standards isn’t for everyone.

But “Riddle’s” presence on the Playstation Network makes more sense when you realize the same folks who created Sony’s phenomenal “Buzz!” quiz games are behind this series as well, and many of the same things that make “Buzz” special also are present here. The same cartoony character design that makes Buzz such a distinctive character does similar favor to the people of Little Riddle, and the writing and voice acting that give life to the narrator and characters are more polished (and spirited) here than in most $60 games.

The addition of four-player multiplayer support (local only) is another nice touch in a genre where lack of multiplayer functionality is practically a foregone conclusion. “Riddle” doesn’t do anything fancy with the multiplayer component, but the ability for players to work together on clues or compete to outsmart each other is all it needs to turn itself into a surprisingly successful party game.

“Riddle’s” first three episodes are available now, and the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes will be available at the end of April.

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Supreme Commander 2
Reviewed for: Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Gas Powered Games/Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (fantasy violence)

The bad news about “Supreme Commander 2″ is the same bad news that’s held true for every real-time strategy game developers have attempted to migrate from PCs to consoles: If you’re playing it this way, you’re settling.

The good news? You’re settling a lot less this time around.

Contrary to the buggy volcano that erupted when Hellbent Games ported the first “Supreme Commander” to the Xbox 360, “SC2″ generally functions as it should. It isn’t as pretty as on a top-shelf PC, but it’s pretty enough, and outside of the occasional framerate dip, it keeps up on the performance side as well.

A handful of interface changes also makes “SC2″ more accessible to consoles without neutering the depth that has made the series what it is. The number of unit types in each faction has decreased in favor of fewer unit types with higher upgrade ceilings, and the new tech tree and research points system make upgrading these units notably less laborious than it was in the first game. That adds up to a less imposing learning curve than what “SC1″ threw at players, which allows the game to get off to a faster start and drop players into battles that neither overwhelm nor insult them.

Most important, “SC2″ does not — as happened in “Halo Wars,” for instance — nullify players’ ability to build units and structures how and where they want. “SC2″ softens the curve without flattening it, meeting players halfway for an experience that’s approachable but free of the lingering suspicion that the kid gloves are on.

This isn’t to suggest “SC2″ completely closes the gap between a controller and the keyboard and mouse. The game maps all major commands to buttons in ways that make sense, and the one-button shortcuts that allow players to select multiple units certainly help. Even better is the ability to zoom so far out that the map turns into a virtual game of Risk, with units represented by easily-identifiable icons that are just as easily dispersed as needed.

But when the battle is in full rage, it’s still easy to get rattled when there’s no keyboard and mouse to provide the flexibility and speed a controller simply cannot replicate. Even with the action zoomed out and the whole map visible at once, the analog stick’s cursor control is too loose to replicate the more natural sensation a mouse allows. That isn’t the game’s fault, but it also can’t not be mentioned.

Fortunately — arguably — “SC2″ is designed in a way that encourages players to face off against equally disadvantaged human competition. There are three campaigns (one for each faction) and a so-so story accompanying each, and the Skirmish mode allows solo players to set up custom matches with computer-controlled opponents and allies. But online play is the real heart of “SC2,” which supports any combination of four human and A.I.-controlled players one can devise using the three factions. The large maps and lack of unit construction restrictions become enormous assets when combined with customizable victory conditions, and the shortcomings imposed by the controller become less of an issue when they apply to everyone equally.

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Final Fight: Double Impact
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network and Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade
From: Capcom
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, mild violence, suggestive themes)
Price: $10

Most longstanding game publishers are savvy enough nowadays to tap into players’ nostalgic nerves. But nobody has as much fun doing it as Capcom does, and if the PSP compilations, “Mega Man” revival and brilliant “Dark Void Zero” weren’t proof enough, “Final Fight: Double Impact” should do it. “Impact’s” main attraction is, naturally, the arcade-perfect translation of 1989′s “Final Fight,” which endures remarkably well as one of the best 2D brawlers ever made. The port is spotless, and Capcom does it modern justice with online leaderboards and two-player local/online co-op support. That alone would comprise a job well done for most publishers, but Capcom showers its source material with additional love by way of a superbly remixed soundtrack, an awesome optional visual presentation that filters the graphics through a mock arcade cabinet screen, and a large assortment of in-game achievements that unlock various “Final Fight” multimedia and give longtime fans of the game entirely new challenges to overcome. Additionally, and because Capcom can, “Impact” also includes an arcade-perfect port of another game, “Magic Sword,” that’s too obscure to sell on its own but a fantastically fun sidescroller in its own right. The same care that goes into “Fight” — co-op support and achievements included — graces “Sword” as well, giving fans of arcade gaming’s most golden years something to discover as well as something to treasure.

Bayonetta
Reviewed for: Xbox 360
Also available for: Playstation 3
From: Platinum Games/Sega
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, partial nudity, strong language, suggestive themes)

The net worth of “Bayonetta’s” idiosyncrasies is game for debate until time ceases ticking. Some will marvel at the insane narrative theatrics and some will find the overt sexuality of the vixenish titular main character either genuinely titillating or so overt as to be farcical. Others will be repulsed or embarrassed by what they view as a sophomoric display of adolescent fantasy come bursting alive, while still others will find themselves unable to tolerate how little sense the story makes or how incomprehensibly noisy the whole production generally is. (If you’re on the fence, both systems offer a downloadable demo that should clear up any confusion.)

But “Bayonetta” is what it wants to be and probably wouldn’t dream of being something for everyone. And while what it is makes it impossible to blindly recommend or pan, how it goes about being what it is is almost inarguably impressive.

Themes and imagery aside, “Bayonetta” plays in the “Devil May Cry” and “God of War” school of action games, and it matches those games in terms of combat arsenal, control responsiveness and general visual and technical polish. Button mashers can wreak havoc on the easier difficulty settings, while a huge list of special attacks allows more skilled players to deal damage with a surprising degree of strategy for such a frantic game.

Most impressive about the combat is the emphasis placed on fighting defensively. Dodging enemy attacks the instant before they connect — and every enemy has tells — temporarily sends all but the player into slow-motion, allowing Bayonetta to unleash unspeakable damage before the enemy even knows what happened. Bull-rushing the enemy on normal or higher difficulty is a recipe for trouble —  like the best of these kind of games, every fight in “Bayonetta” has the potential to cost dearly — but using these defensive techniques is so much fun that no extra motivation is necessary to learn them.

Structurally, everything else falls in line. The polish and fearless design translates into labyrinthine levels and massive, multi-part boss fights that give “War” a run for its money, but “Bayonetta” complements these ruthless fights with a generous checkpoint system that lets players of all disciplines fight dangerously. Old-school pattern memorization comes in handy when taking on tougher enemies, but the controls are so fluid that it’s easy and entirely fun to wing it and take Bayonetta’s combat arsenal for a ride. All that zaniness will rub people different ways, but it does translate into a healthy variety of environments that keeps things interesting over the course of a satisfactorily lengthy single-player trip.

A review of “Bayonetta” would be incomplete without mentioning that Platinum Games, which developed the Xbox 360 version in its entirety, passed off some of the Playstation 3 version’s development load onto Sega’s internal studio. A review copy of the PS3 edition wasn’t available for evaluation, but while the games remain identical in terms of content, reports of performance issues in the PS3 version — in particular, some ugly slowdown and longer load times in spots — are commonplace enough to recommend picking up the 360 version if it’s an option.

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Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces
For: Wii
From: Project Aces/XSEED
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, violence)

Those unfamiliar with Project Aces or the origins of its latest dogfighting game won’t know it just to look at it, but “Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces” comes courtesy of the same development shop behind the deservedly-beloved “Ace Combat” games. So while the $30 price tag and slightly out-of-left field release might make “Aces” look like just another budget flight sim on a console that’s already full of them, its pedigree suggests something else entirely.

Happily, pedigree beats perception, in large part because “Aces” soars and stumbles in much the same way the “Combat” games do.

The stumbling happens, albeit innocuously, when “Aces” tries to tell its story. Fans of the “Sky Crawler” novels (and eventual animated film) have more than enough guidance in the game to know exactly what’s going on, but those who come in cold won’t get as much from the narration as they might want. Like “Combat,” “Aces” sets the table with some nice cutscenes and some compelling mythology, but also like “Combat,” it leaves much of the storytelling to between-mission briefings that look and sound great but can do only so much in terms of character and environmental development.

Fortunately, a bare-bones understanding of the situation is enough to enjoy the game, and those bare bones (world at peace, greedy corporations disrupt peace, war erupts) aren’t terribly difficult to grasp.

Where “Aces” gets it right, as Project Aces always does, is in the air. Neither the air combat nor the art of banking and diving is mindlessly simple, but “Aces” places a premium on action over simulation and backs it up with fast, intense dogfights that are accessible to anyone in spite of the challenges they present.

Additionally, “Aces” lets players play their way within the confines of its tempo. Control schemes range from traditional (Gamecube/Classic controllers included) to a motion scheme (nunchuck emulates the yoke, Wii remote emulates the throttle) that works pretty well with practice. Per developer tradition, “Aces” also allows players to view the action from inside the cockpit or behind their plane. The former adds an extra layer of immersion and challenge while the latter allows less experienced players to play without handicapping the action.

“Aces’” more substantial misgivings arguably are more the fault of the system its on than the game itself. It looks great but obviously cannot touch what “Ace Combat 6″ did visually on the Xbox 360. That game’s online multiplayer functionality also doesn’t cross over — no surprise, given that the odds of an online community forming around a niche flight simulator on the Wii is basically nil.

But “Aces” also costs a full half of what “AC6″ cost when it first released, which more than compensates for some unavoidable graphical downgrades and the loss of a mode most people likely would ignore anyway. XSEED has done an admirable job of importing great Japanese Wii games, localizing them and selling them for a song, and if the Wii’s first notable game of 2010 is any indication, there’s more to come in that department.

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Polar Panic
For: Xbox 360 Live Arcade and Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Eiconic Games/Valcon Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence, tobacco reference)

Most puzzle games aren’t actually puzzles so much as color-matching reflex tests, but the charming “Polar Panic,” which stars players as a polar bear who has to get his paws dirty to keep trappers off his back, embodies the genre’s name quite nicely. “Panic” takes place in a series of top-down, maze-like levels, and the general objective is to eliminate the trappers by pushing ice blocks off maze walls and, eventually, straight into them. There’s an element of action to the challenge — the trappers don’t stand still — but pushing the ice blocks off the right sequence of walls in order to line up a direct shot at each trapper (or better yet, multiple trappers at once) requires a good degree of on-your-feet thinking once the game takes the kid gloves off and starts delivering harder levels. “Panic’s” 50-level Story mode is its arguable centerpiece, but the 50-level Puzzle mode (which ditches the trappers and tasks players simply with escaping the maze in as few moves as possible) and Survival mode (take out as many trappers as possible, ad infinitum) do wonders for giving a simple concept a ton of legs for the price.

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.

Treasure World
For: Nintendo DS
From: Aspyr Media
ESRB Rating: Everyone

It’s a shame it’s taken this long for a game to take the plunge and base itself completely around the Nintendo DS’ built-in Wi-Fi capabilities. But if we had to wait this long, at least it was for a game that isn’t afraid to run with the idea — to the point where it arguably isn’t even a game anymore.

The overriding goal in “Treasure World” is to collect enough fuel to help a fellow named Star Sweep refuel his ship and resume his galaxy-wide treasure hunt. To do this, you employ the Star Sweep’s trusty robot companion, Wish Finder, to find stars in the galaxy, clean them, and collect whatever fuel or treasure is hidden inside.

Translated, Wish Finder is your DS’ Wi-Fi finder, and the stars in the game’s galaxy are Wi-Fi hotspots in ours. Whenever the DS discovers a new hotspot, Wish Finder discovers a new star in the game.

Essentially, you play “World” by carrying the DS around with you and letting it discover stars by itself while you go about your day. “World” is one of those rare DS games that runs even when the lid is closed, so you conceivably can boot the game up, drop it on your bag and collect a mountain of stars for later perusal. Depending on the density of Wi-Fi signals in your area, “World” might nab hundreds of them within a few hours. Just mute the DS before you stash it, because the game dings loudly whenever it finds a star.

All those stars add up to treasures and fuel, which you can trade with Star Sweep for yet more treasure. A few stars also hold Web keys, which players can take to clubtreasureworld.com and, among other things, trade for items unavailable elsewhere.

That treasure, believe it or not, goes toward enhancing a music creation tool reminiscent of “Mario Paint” from the Super Nintendo days. Every treasure in “World” emits a musical sound when tapped with the stylus, and you can arrange them on a stretch of grass to create some surprisingly intricate and tuneful melodies, which can be shared with other players on clubtreasureworld.com.

That, along with the oddly satisfying compulsion that comes with collecting so much stuff, would be all “World” would need if it didn’t so badly hamper the music creation tool’s versatility. Nice though the tunes can sound, they can’t exceed five seconds in length, which is a killer. The clubtreasureworld.com site also includes no means to export the songs, which would have transformed “World” into the world’s strangest ringtone creation device.

Such limited functionality makes “World” impossible to universally recommend. Connoisseurs of the truly weird and original will find more than enough of both to justify “World’s” $30 asking price, but those in search of a game that truly feels like a game will walk away perplexed and probably underwhelmed.

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NCAA Football 10
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Other versions available for: Playstation 2, PSP
From: EA Tiburon/EA Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone

If you’re a fan of EA Sports’ college football juggernaut but haven’t yet introduced your console to the joys of the Internet, now probably is the time to fix that, because “NCAA Football 10′s” two most prominent new features require it.

“10″ marks the return of the too-long-lost ability to create a custom-designed school for use in exhibition play as well in the game’s offline/online dynasty modes. But in a surprising move that’s bound to burn some, the tools for doing so are available on a Web site (teambuilder.easports.com) instead of inside the actual game.

The decision to go this route makes more sense than it doesn’t. The Web tool — and, particularly, the portion where you can edit every single player’s name and attributes —works exponentially more efficiently with a mouse and keyboard than it ever possibly could be with a controller. Being able to turn any image file into a truly personalized team logo with a few mouse clicks is a pretty nice touch as well.

Still, there’s no reason EA shouldn’t — in next year’s game, anyway — provide at least a bare-bones in-game tool for those who lack the means to take advantage of what turns out to be “10′s” best new feature.

But “10′s” other nifty addition, the metagame “Season Showdown,” couldn’t exist any other way. Once you enable “Showdown” by picking your favorite school to represent, “10″ keeps a continual tally of your game-wide accomplishments, converts them to points, and combines your score with the scores of other players representing the same team. Schools facing each other during the real NCAA season also face off each week in “Showdown,” which plays (and presumably culminates) like a popular-vote version of the 2009 season.

Elsewhere, “10″ is a whole lot like “NCAA 09,” albeit with the customary annual refinements. The new “Road to Glory” mode, hosted by ESPN’s Erin Andrews, essentially is last year’s “Campus Legend” mode with a better presentation. Other presentational touches include the return of marching bands — no small deal in a game such as this — and various stadium effects.

The biggest on-field beneficiary is the playcalling screen, which functions the same as ever but includes a few new tricks — chaining plays together to exploit defensive weaknesses, setting up overriding strategies beyond formation, defensive coverage adjustments with a flick of the right stick — that both add depth for studious players while allowing less experienced players to feel empowered without understanding all those formations.

Alas, the same can’t be said of the optional Family Play controls. Giving new players a simpler control scheme with which to get comfortable is a fine idea, but this scheme goes overboard and feels childishly simple even by the humble standards of EA’s football games from 15 years ago.

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Shatter
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: Sidhe Interactive
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $8

“Shatter” is the latest attempt to freshen up the “Breakout” formula of hitting a ball into a collective of bricks with a paddle. It also might be the first to truly pull it off, thanks to a number of ideas that give it more depth than its peers. The object is the same, and nothing about the paddle controls or angle the ball takes off the paddle should surprise “Breakout” veterans. But “Shatter” includes a mechanic that allows you to apply a gravitational push or pull to the paddle, which lets you bounce the ball without actually hitting it. The push/pull mechanic also affects anything else floating around the level, including broken brick fragments (which, when accumulated, add up to a special attack) and stray bricks that stun your paddle upon contact. It sounds like a gimmicky trick, but it essentially doubles the available plans of attack of any other “Breakout” game. “Shatter” further goes its own way with its willingness to mix horizontal, vertical and even radial levels. The audiovisual design, reminiscent of “Lumines” and “Wipeout,” gives way to some clever brick arrangements, up to and including boss fights against what essentially are living bricks. The only downside: Sidhe didn’t find a way to make “Breakout” multiplayer-friendly. Outside of leaderboards, “Shatter” is strictly a solo endeavor.