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.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade

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.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, PSP, Playstation Network

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.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360

Wii Sports Resort
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (cartoon violence)

Nintendo was perhaps more lucky than good with “Wii Sports,” a terrifically fun compilation of games that made the Wii remote look considerably more versatile than it actually was.

With “Wii Sports Resort” — and particularly, thanks to the Wii MotionPlus attachment that’s bundled inside — that illusion is now for real. The MotionPlus attachment allows the Wii remote to mimic real-time motion in ways the remote cannot do on its own, and “Resort” takes full advantage en route to establishing itself as a superior sequel.

Structurally, “Resort” feels a lot like the original “Sports.” Each of the 12 available sports (up from five) features a handful of modes built around the sport, and each mode offers a single-player mode with scalable difficulty, two- or four-player local multiplayer or (in most cases) both. Online play, once again, is a no-show.

The incremental differences are no surprise, because “Resort” exists primarily to make the MotionPlus’ introduction a smooth one.

That, happily, is where the game shines. Bowling returns almost structurally unchanged from “Sports,” but the added control flexibility makes it easier to add spin and pick up trickier spares. Tennis, now reborn as Table Tennis, also benefits immensely by giving you more control over not just the trajectory of your shot, but the angle with which you hold your paddle. (Golf, unfortunately, still suffers from the excessive sensitivity that hampered it in its original incarnation.)

The new events hit more than miss as well. The Frisbee events, which include Frolf and a Frisbee Dog contest, replicate the sensation of tossing a Frisbee shockingly well, taking into account both your toss and how you hold the disc while doing so. Archery, which employs the Nunchuck attachment, never quite feels realistic, but it nevertheless incorporates the motions and the science of archery to surprisingly good effect. Basketball’s Pickup Game mode is a bit weird — you can’t control your player’s on-court movements — but the 3-Point Contest is great because of how well the remote replicates the artistry of a perfect jump shot. Even the Canoeing event shines due to how responsive and flexible the paddling feels.

But it’s the Swordplay events, which allow you to wield a Nerf-style sword with remarkable freedom of motion, that headline this endeavor. The freedom is such that you can even turn the Wii remote around and bonk opposing swordfighters with the butt of your sword, and the range of events — from one-on-one battles to a surprisingly lengthy single-player adventure game in which you take down waves of enemies like a wannabe Jedi — allow you ample opportunity to take full advantage.

Doing so much right makes “Resort’s” lowlights entirely forgivable. Cycling and Power Cruising, in particular, feel gimmicky and unnatural to the point of unwieldy. The Air Sports (flying, skydiving) and Wakeboarding events fare better, but their simplicity positions them as occasional diversions rather than heavy rotation material.

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Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
For: Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 2 and PC
From: Blue Sky/Eurocom/Activision
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (cartoon violence)

Games based on kids movies absolutely love to bounce around between genres under the assumption that multiple jobs acceptably done makes up for an inability to do any one of them especially well. More often than not, the assumption doesn’t fly.

It takes longer than it should, but “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” emerges as an exception to the rule. Instead of diluting the experience democratically, “Dinosaurs” lives dangerously by getting its worst moments out of the way and rewarding anyone who remained faithful long enough to keep playing.

It isn’t easy. “Dinosaurs’” first level, starring players as Sid, feels like any old so-so 3D platforming level from any old so-so game. Sid controls sloppily, his hand-to-hand combat repertoire is pitifully bad, and his mission objectives never aspire beyond simple forward progress and item collection.

The second mission, which thrusts Sid into what essentially is a multiple-part chore simulator, fares even worse. It also ranks among the game’s longest levels, combining with the preceding level to create a most distressing first impression.

But it’s during mission three that “Dinosaurs” starts turning it around, embarking on the first of what amounts to an impressively high number of successful right turns. The mission, starring players as Diego and sending him on a high-speed chase to catch a gazelle, is as simple as it sounds and lasts barely two minutes long. But it’s fast, slightly exciting, and more fun in those two minutes than the preceding two missions combined.

Following another so-so Sid level — which, happily, is better conceived than the preceding two — “Dinosaurs” mixes it up again with a mission objective that sends Sid rolling down a mountain atop of giant snowball. The challenge amounts to a simplified but fun riff on “Super Monkey Ball,” and bumping into certain enemies like a high-speed sumo is a blast.

From there, “Dinosaurs” tries a little of everything — second-person-camera escapes from rampaging dinosaurs, 2D platforming levels starring Scrat, third-person projectile shooting, a ride on a pterodactyl that pays strikingly good homage to 2D sidescrolling space shooters that dominated arcades in the 1980s. Somehow, it all works. Even “Dinosaur’s” later 3D platforming levels, starring the much more capable Buck, are a considerable upgrade over what preceded it. It’s as if another developer took the reigns halfway through the game’s creation.

The sum total of “Dinosaurs” — a single-player story mode that runs five or six hours and a healthy collection of single-player challenge levels and multiplayer party games — would amount to ideal rental fodder were it made for older players. But the level of variety found inside — to say nothing of how well “Dinosaurs” pulls most of it off — makes this a surprisingly viable (and replayable) buy for younger fans of the movies. Outside of perhaps “Monsters vs. Aliens,” it’s the best of its breed so far this summer.

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The Punisher: No Mercy
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: ZEN Studios
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language)
Price: $10

“The Punisher: No Mercy” comes to the Playstation 3 on the assumption that those who purchase it have no need for the mountain of advances first-person shooters have made in the last 10 years. It exists primarily as a multiplayer shooter (eight players), but the online play lags and the interface makes it trickier than need be to set up a game with friends. In terms of action, “Mercy” is similarly uninspired: The bounty of unlockable weapons and power-ups is nice, but the modes, maps and general look and feel of the action just feels old and excessively simple. It doesn’t help that you need to play through the single-player mode — essentially a collection of multiplayer matches with absolutely lobotomized A.I. bots charging at you instead of human opponents — to access most of that armory. The reliance on such ancient conventions and technology is slightly forgivable considering “Mercy’s” $10 price tag, but that leniency goes out the window when games like “Battlefield 1943,” which costs $5 more but feels exponentially more modern, release at the same time. In terms of which shooter deserves your dollars, it’s not even a contest.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360

Let’s Tap
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Sega
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

Tired of plastic guitars, drums, racing wheels and zapper guns cluttering your life? “Lets Tap” offers a solution: a gimmicky peripheral you can fold flat and even toss into the recycling bin once you’re done playing with it.

The vast majority of “Tap” is played with the Wii remote not in your hand, but placed face down on a cardboard box of your choosing. (“Tap” recommends something akin to a tissue box, but the game’s adjustable sensitivity settings make it easy to use whatever box is handy.) Playing the game, in case you haven’t drawn the conclusion already, consists of you (and up to three other players with three other boxes) tapping said box like a cheap drum.

As stupid as this all sounds, “Tap” actually works. The game can sense three different levels of tapping intensity, as well as single- and double taps, with rather remarkable accuracy. The accuracy is such, in fact, that one can navigate the menus using nothing but single and double taps and do so without aggravation. The traditional navigational method obviously works faster, and “Tap” is keen enough to pause gameplay the instant a player picks the remote up off the box, but it’s still a pretty cool trick.

The surprising degree of control on display allows “Tap” to dole out an impressively diverse, if small, collection of mini-games to support the concept.

“Tap’s” arguable showpiece mini-game is “Tap Runner,” which pits players against three human- or computer-controlled opponents in a race through an obstacle course. Tapping softly makes the onscreen character run, while a soft but fast tap sends him into a sprint and a hard tap makes him jump. Maintaining an optimal sprint without accidentally jumping is trickier (and more labor-intensive) than it sounds, and that’s especially true as “Runner” piles on hazards and alternate paths in more advanced levels.

“Tap’s” other selections run the gamut in terms of surprise. “Rhythm Tap,” which finds you tapping in time with various music tracks, makes perfect sense. Ditto for an open-ended visualizer toy, which lets you tap at your leisure to launch fireworks, paint a canvas and more.

But “Silent Blocks,” which combines tapping with what essentially is Jenga, is pretty out there. And “Bubble Voyager,” a sidescrolling shooter that adapts a “Joust”-style control scheme to tapping, might be the gem of the bunch, thanks in part to a wild multiplayer mode that’s essentially tap “Asteroids.”

Beyond its mere ability to work as advertised, what’s especially nice about “Tap” is that each mini-game comes with multiple stages, options and modes designed separately around solo and social play. For a game that revolves around a completely silly gimmick, “Tap” pretty convincingly justifies its budget price.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Other versions available for: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS
From: Activision
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, violence)

As licensed tie-in products do, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” scores an unintentional direct hit as a game that, for seemingly avoidable reasons, feels every bit as disposable as the movie on which it is based.

It didn’t have to be this way, because “Fallen” does an awful lot right on the mechanical side. The various Transformers — and you can embody quite a few of them by playing out the story from both the Autobots’ and Decepticons’ sides — control as they should in robot form. Outside of some temporarily clumsy helicopter controls, they also move fantastically well in their vehicular incarnations.

Switching between forms happens instantly, and “Fallen” makes it fun to do so by allowing you to execute transformations and attacks in a single motion. The distinctive transformations, weapon arsenals and special attacks give each Transformer a unique fighting style that, in turn, gives “Fallen” more variety than its structure otherwise suggests.

When those ideas are given room to breathe — say, during a one-shot level above the Atlantic ocean or during some of the missions set in Egypt — a simple but fun action game emerges.

But those instances overwhelmingly lie in the minority, vastly outnumbered by claustrophobic missions set in cities so cramped, it’s often tricky just to get around, much less do so gracefully. The act of transforming in these areas causes the camera to jerk violently in search of a desirable angle, which disorients players enough to undo whatever good the transformation was supposed to accomplish.

“Fallen” does itself further disservice by ordering players to accomplish the same handful of objectives numerous times, and it only mildly rearranges these objectives between the two campaigns. That makes some missions seem longer than they are — a point made sorer by a complete lack of mid-mission checkpoints. Spend 12 minutes taking down waves of the same enemies over and over, only to die near the very end? Sorry, start over.

Outside of a few unlockable pieces of eye candy, which along with both campaigns can be turned inside out in the span of a weekend, “Fallen” sports an online multiplayer component (eight players) that, for better or worse, does exactly what one would expect it to do. The modes are standard multiplayer modes, and the cramped levels give way to chaotic fights that, while fun for a while, lack the direction and organization needed to give them any meaningful legs.

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Battlefield 1943
For: Xbox 360 Live Arcade and Playstation 3 via Playstation Network (coming September for PC)
From: DICE/EA
ESRB Rating: Teen (violence)
Price: $15

Despite the lower price and budgetary disposition, “Battlefield 1943″ is, in ways crummy and wonderful, a “Battlefield” game through and through. There are only three (eventually four, pending the release of free bonus content) maps, and they’re essentially remakes of maps from 2002’s “Battlefield 1942.” There’s also only one objective (territorial control) and three soldier classes (infantry, rifleman, scout) from which to choose. But the pared-down options palette merely pushes “1943″ along as the get-in-play-a–round-and-get-out experience it purports to be, and at that, the game excels magnificently. “1943″ allows friends to set up custom matches if they prefer, but for those who just want to play, a single button click is all that’s needed to drop into battle. Once one 24-player fight ends, “1943″ whisks you straight into another and continues doing so until you decide you’ve had enough. It might be a while: The classic maps from “1942″ and the technology from last year’s “Battlefield: Bad Company” are a fierce tandem, and everything that made past “Battlefield” games great — guns, tanks, planes, jeeps, boats, medals and ranks — is here. Like too many “Battlefield” titles before it, “1943″ has suffered early from server overload and all the misery that entails. But those issues have grown scarcer by the day, and they’ll likely be just a memory by week’s end.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade

Ghostbusters: The Video Game
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Other versions available for: Wii, PS2 and PSP
From: Terminal Reality/Atari
ESRB Rating: Teen (comic mischief, fantasy violence, mild language)

It’s rare, perhaps unprecedented, to praise a video game for its incorporation of imprecise controls.

But there’s nothing graceful about the way a Ghostbuster wields a proton stream when it’s at full blast and the ghost on the other end of the line is doing everything in its power to make a bad thing worse. “Ghostbusters” gets a whole heaping lot of things right, but the way it so perfectly captures this struggle — as well as the gratification of winning that struggle — reigns supreme as its best asset. It’s a magnificent movie-to-game translation.

Terminal Reality keeps that sensation fresh throughout the game by finding reliable and clever ways to diversify the gameplay. You’ll fight more than ghosts, and as the story explains, you’ll also receive proton pack modifications that can do things your default stream cannot. The new tricks (which are better enjoyed if not spoiled here) spice up your attack plan with some variety, but they also allow for some surprisingly fun, physics-based puzzle solving during the game’s second half.

The puzzles and freeform ghost-trapping action underscore one of “Ghostbusters” finest points: It’s refreshingly hands-off. There is, for instance, no heads-up display to lead you around the levels. All the information you need is available on your proton pack, and you can pull up a wonderfully implemented first-person Paragoggles mode and inspect your PKE Meter at any time to further track down suspicious activity.

“Ghostbusters’” multiple difficulty levels will allow just about everyone to experience the entire script, which shines brilliantly under the immensely talented guidance of the original writers and cast. But the game poses a legitimately fierce challenge on the harder levels, and some stretches are as genuinely spooky as others are funny. It’s a remarkably adept use of the franchise, with classic “Ghostbusters” references and creative license teaming up to enrich both gameplay and story alike the entire way through.

Little buzz has been made of “Ghostbusters’” multiplayer (four players, online only) offerings, but that merely allows the game to continue its run of pleasant surprises. “Ghostbusters” doesn’t allow co-op play of the main storyline, but the six game types it does offer nicely thread the needle between cooperative and competitive play. You can work together to take down as many objectives as possible or compete for selfish personal glory (the game keeps a lifetime tab of your monetary earnings), and each of the game types has the potential to turn from cooperative to competitive and back depending on how players decide to conduct themselves. Sadly, no mode exists that allows players to be the ghosts.

—–

Fuel
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 (Coming June 30 for Windows PC)
From: Asobo Studio/Codemasters
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

“Fuel” has neither difficulty nor reservations about showing you some of the amazing things it can do. Codemasters boasts that the game is home to more than 8,600 square miles of open-ended terrain on which to race motorbikes, ATVs, cars, trucks and more, and once you realize (a) it takes 30 minutes to drive from the first camp to the second and (b) there are 17 other camps ahead, it’s hard to doubt the claim.

“Fuel’s” groundbreaking scope is all the more impressive because of how good it looks and moves. The various vehicles handle as they should, and the dynamic weather and day/night cycles combine with some pretty scenery to create some gorgeous odes to the great outdoors.

But Asobo Studio appears to have had considerably more trouble figuring out what, beyond the occasional jaw drop, “Fuel” is supposed to accomplish from there. The sheer enormity is impressive, but it also sheds some unflattering light on how little there is to do between hot spots on the map. Once the novelty wears off, driving for 20 minutes on near-empty roads to pick up an out-of-the-way collectable feels like a chore. “Fuel” smartly allows you to instantly access each camps’ events and challenges via a menu once you’ve discovered that camp, but completionists who want to see all the game has to offer will need some serious free time to do so.

Philosophies also clash during some, though not all, of “Fuel’s” races.

Winning races — and you have to win them, because finishing second awards you nothing in terms of currency or career progression — is a matter of clearing checkpoint gates in order. During “Fuel’s” better races, those checkpoints are spread far apart, leaving it up to you to navigate the terrain however you please so long as you hit each gate. But “Fuel” also is full of races in which the gates are crammed together, and it’s not particularly good at notifying you if you missed a gate or hit them out of order. This, along with the long length of the races and the fact that one mistake on the home stretch can leave you completely empty-handed instead of with some reward for your time, can make “Fuel’s” career progression a frustrating affair.

These issues would be enough to sink “Fuel” in the fall, which is loaded with top-shelf racing games that won’t make these kind of mistakes. But fall is a few months away, “Fuel” has most of the summer to itself, and the game’s unique shortcomings don’t completely overtake the things it does with respect to the vehicles, the controls and some really impressive tech. If you’re starved for some solid racing action and a gimmick you’ve never seen before, this will do.

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Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast, Comix Zone, Phantasy Star II, Shinobi, Sonic the Hedgehog 3
For: Xbox 360 Live Arcade (Gunstar Heroes also available for Playstation 3 via Playstation Network)
From: Sega
ESRB Rating: Everyone-Everyone 10+
Price: $5 each

At first glance, it looks like quite a haul for Xbox Live — six classic Sega games, all benefiting from good emulations of their original arcade or Sega Genesis forms. Thing is, five of them are already available on both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 as part of the disc-based “Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection,” which is a supremely better value with 44 additional games and a $30 price tag. That leaves “Gunstar Heroes,” which makes its debut on both platforms and, quite frankly, might be better than all 49 of the games that preceded it on “Collection.” The game, which plays like a “Mega Man” game but operates with the kind of frantic energy reserved for the likes of “Radiant Silvergun” and “Ikaruga,” has aged magnificently since its original 1993 inception, and the emulation doesn’t slow it down any. Spending $30 to acquire all six games makes no financial sense unless your 360’s disc drive no longer works, but “Heroes” is an absolute steal on its own at $5.

Posted in Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade

Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
Reviewed for: Nintendo Wii
Other versions available for: Playstation 2, Nintendo DS and PSP
From: LucasArts
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, violence)

“Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings” is, when its ideas are working, a crazy good time that deftly embodies the spirit of the films.

That’s a good thing, too, because when its ideas aren’t working, “Kings” is a mess teetering on collapse.

Structurally, “Kings” is attention-deficit gaming at its finest. A brief adventure sequence, which finds you swinging between and sidling along ledges, is followed by a brief brawling sequence in which you use the Wii remote to throw down with a handful of indistinctive goons. A 30-second quick-time event might follow that before the game whisks you into a brief cover-based shooting level (hold the Wii remote like a pistol), a jaunt on a plane (steer it like a flight stick) or some other means of navigation through some other set piece.

More than not, the ideas come together satisfactorily, if not necessarily spectacularly. The fighting controls are sloppy due to the Wii’s inability to always differentiate jabs from hooks, but the degree to which the game lets you use foreign objects (either as weapons or as an environmental tool for Hollywood-perfect finishers) makes these sequences a whole lot more fun than their technical deficiencies would suggest. The vehicular missions are enjoyably arcade-like in their simplicity, and once you realize the shooting bits are more like cause-and-effect puzzles than traditional shootouts, they mark a nice diversion from the rest of the action.

But “Kings” never stands more than three steps away from some miniature breakdown or another. The motion controls work, but not always, and the whip-cracking motions aren’t as responsive as they should be. The shooting cursor occasionally falls prone to jerkiness, and every now and then — be it during an adventure sequence or a quick-time event — stuff simply doesn’t respond like the onscreen example suggests it should.

A puzzling checkpoint layout, easily “Kings’” worst issue, occasionally turns these small problems into big ones. A slip can cost you five or 10 minutes’ worth of effort, and sometimes, you’ll have to watch an unskippable cut-scene multiple times before you pass a checkpoint that finally leaves it behind. The first post-tutorial shooting sequence is particularly maddening: You might require two or three attempts before you realize how these sequences truly operate, and if you die figuring it out, you have to start the entire (long) tutorial over.

That “Kings” is fun in spite of these slips is a testament to its willingness to try so much and mostly succeed. Still, those with options might wish to inquire about the Playstation 2 version instead. A review copy wasn’t available for testing, but if it’s the same game with foolproof button controls (and a $20 price difference), it likely is the way to go.

—–

диваниDamnation
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Blue Omega/Codemasters
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, language, violence)

If handled competently, “Damnation” — which combines third-person shooting, “Tomb Raider”-style platforming, steam-powered weaponry and an alternate-reality 19th Century United States — should be able to coast by as a fun action game built atop a great premise.

But trouble slips through the front door almost as quickly as “Damnation” can open it, and it doesn’t take very long before it’s clear even basic competency lies well beyond this game’s reach.

It’s not all terrible. In fact, if “Damnation” had found some way to exist purely as an evasive platforming game, it might have been all right. As rebel leader Hamilton Rourke, you can rather acrobatically leap between ledges, backflip up the side of a building, ride zip lines and generally take roads untraveled by your less athletic adversaries. “Damnation’s” control scheme is more complicated than it needs to be with regard to pulling these moves off, but it’s something you can get used to fairly easily, and Hamilton is satisfyingly agile despite his slow speed on the ground.

Problem is, “Damnation” is a shooter first and a platformer second, and it’s a disastrously bad shooter at that. The various guns, in addition to feeling underpowered, also suffer from unwieldy aiming controls that constantly leave you vulnerable to enemy fire before you can properly fire back.

Sometimes, for no reason beyond buggy code, an enemy doesn’t even notice if you line up a perfect shot and shoot him point blank. Other times, he might mysteriously jump a few feet to the side. In both cases, you simply will have to take another shot and hope the game understands what you’re trying to do. “Damnation” is, unfortunately, full of strange and unintentionally instances of bugs completely undermining your progress.

Things aren’t helped any by Blue Omega’s staggering attempt to replicate the cover systems found in the likes of “Uncharted” and “Gears of War.” You can press a button to take cover, but there’s no way to quickly pop out of cover and take a shot, as has been customary since “Gears” popularized this genre three years ago. Instead, you have to manually stand up, then align your shot, then hope your shot actually registers before your enemies fatally pepper you. More likely, you’ll avoid the cover mechanic altogether in favor of shooting and fleeing.

Little can be done to redeem a shooter with such issues in the shooting department, and nothing about “Damnation’s” other particulars — unremarkable story, uninspired level designs that run too long, a framerate prone to stutters, sorely dated graphics and animation — is up to the task. Codemasters has shipped a game that feels decisively unfinished in far too many respects for it not to notice, and its insistence on selling it at all in this state, to say nothing of asking $60 for it, is pretty unreasonable.

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Trash Panic
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
From: SCE Japan Studio/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence, mild language)

Imagine a real-world implementation of “Tetris” and replace the shapes with pieces of trash, and you have a basic understanding of what “Trash Panic” is all about. The objective, as with “Tetris,” is to keep the mass of falling pieces from reaching the top. But doing so here involves not only arranging falling trash (everything from light bulbs to staplers to televisions to a giant safe) in as neat a fashion as possible, but using each object’s real-world properties to your advantage. Heavy objects crush less durable trash, while dropping a lighter near some toilet paper might set the whole pile ablaze and clear out tons of room. “Panic” throws a few additional objectives into the mix, and between the penalty for failing those and the general randomness of the order in which different pieces of trash arrive, it’s considerably (and sometimes unfairly) more difficult than appearances first suggest. Still, the premise is novel, the execution is sound, the graphics and sound are viciously charming, and the $5 asking price is more than right. All that’s missing is online play. Between two-player local multiplayer and three varieties of solo play, “Panic” has the other bases covered.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360

Punch-Out!!
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Next Level Games/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (cartoon violence, comic mischief)

With “Punch-Out!!’s” dreadfully overdue return to the big stage, Nintendo has ignored its typical attention to all-ages accessibility with regard to its Wii lineup.

If you’re a fan of past “Punch-Out” games, the news of this lapse could not be better.

Exteriorly speaking, everything about the new “Punch-Out” is exponentially more inviting than what older games could ever possibly deliver. The cast overwhelmingly consists of holdovers from games past, but they’re significantly more alive thanks to a some inspired cel-shaded art, a loving attention to animation detail, and voice acting, which adds an entirely new (and frequently funny) dimension to each boxer’s preexisting personality. In terms of presentation, it’s everything “Punch-Out” should be in 2009.

But all that audiovisual likability is merely a front for a game that remains as faithful as ever to the “Punch-Out” philosophy.

In fact, though the challenge is never unfair, this is the most imposing iteration yet. The classic fighters have modified and diversified their attack patterns since you last saw them, and there are numerous instances in which dodging in a specific direction and countering with a specific punch is the only way to expose a fighter’s true weaknesses. The extra frames of animation give fighters more opportunities to fake you out, while other ticks and vocal cues clue you in on what you need to do and how quickly you best do it.

Best of all is what happens when you knock out the defending champion and take the belt. Previous “Punch-Out” ended here, but this time around, you have to fight the entire cast again and figure out a slew of dramatically more challenging new attack patterns. Each fighter also has addressed a glaring weakness you might have exploited the first time through, so you’ll have to find another way to put them down before they get you first.

“Punch-Out’s” unflinching dedication to its original ideals is wonderful, almost astonishing news, because this level of challenge also completely undermines the game’s optional support for motion controls and even the Wii Balance Board. Using motion controls to punch and the Balance Board to dodge makes for a silly good time during the game’s no-frills multiplayer mode (two players, offline only), which pits you against friend as dueling Little Macs. But the fighters in the single-player modes’ upper echelon, to say nothing of challenge you face when defending the belt, are simply too quick to take down using any of these methods. “Punch-Out” allows you to turn the Wii remote sideways and use it like an NES controller, and if you wish to master “Punch-Out” in 2009 as you did in 1987, this unequivocally is the way to go.

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Bionic Commando
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: GRIN/Capcom
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, strong language, violence)optical communication

There aren’t many hard and fast rules that apply to the entirety of game design, but there are some.

For instance: Don’t punish your most spirited customers.

That “Bionic Commando” even nicks this rule is bewildering when you realize GRIN got the hardest part absolutely right. The original 1988 “Commando” made its name entirely through the main character’s bionic arm, which allowed him to swing through the kind of 2D levels most characters jumped through at the time. It worked then, and it works remarkably well now in spite of a third dimension and a mostly hands-off approach that makes it easy to miscalculate a swing and plummet to your death. Intuitive controls, combined with credible motion physics, make for a fun swing mechanic that’s neither too hard to master nor so easy as to be mindless.

The arm proves just as invaluable in combat. Spencer (that’s you) can toss everything from parked cars to park benches at enemies. He also can, among other tricks, lift enemies into the air like kites and swing kick into them like they’re bowling pins. “Commando” employs a deep rewards system for using every trick in your arsenal, but considering how pithy your firearms are by comparison, the bribery isn’t even necessary.

But all this cool stuff never gels like it should because of some constricting level design, which teams up with some unfortunate methods of punishment to keep adventurous players from getting too frisky. Outdoor levels that look like open-ended playgrounds reveal themselves to be anything but, walled off by a very blurry line of radiation that quickly kills players who accidentally cross those lines and can’t cross back quickly enough. Optional collectables off the beaten path should be a blast to acquire due to the gymnastics needed to reach them, but many of them take you so far out of the way that it’s hard to even get back to square one without risking a plummet.

That alone wouldn’t be so bad if “Commando’s” sparse checkpoint system didn’t punish you for playing adventurously. After a few instances of losing 10 minutes of forward progress because you accidentally landed on a radioactive rooftop or missed one jump after nabbing some useless collectable (which you lose anyway if you don’t reach another checkpoint before perishing), you might be too annoyed to bother anymore.

The bitter taste left by moments like these, to say nothing of a storyline that’s hammered by awful voice acting and frightfully unlikeable characters (Spencer absolutely included), makes “Commando” a game that’s as detestable at its worst as it is loveable at its best. Those entranced by the series’ legacy absolutely should carry out any plans to give it a run-through. But a weekend rental likely will be all “Commando” needs to make its mark, provide some entertainment, and subsequently wear out its welcome.

—–

Star Trek: DAC
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network and Xbox 360 Live Arcade
From: Naked Sky/Paramount Digital Entertainment
ESRB Rating: Everyone (fantasy violence)
Price: $10

The “DAC” in “Star Trek: DAC” would seem to stand for “Deathmatch, Assault and Conquest,” if only because those are the gameplay options presented to you in the game’s menu screen. The actual game is similarly straightforward. “DAC” is a two-dimensional, overhead-perspective space shooter. It features four environments inspired by “Star Trek.” It pits the Federation against the Romulans, and allows you to embody one of three ship types on either side of the fight. The aforementioned modes provide the basis of the game’s objectives, and while “DAC” allows soloists to play against A.I. bots, it’s clearly designed with online play (two teams of up to six players each) in mind. The actual gameplay is unspectacularly solid: The three ships on each side (Flagship, Bomber, Fighter) have unique characteristics, controls and firing methods, and an abundance of power-ups caters to both strategic and frantic combat styles. The different modes of play are timeless for a reason, and while “DAC” does absolutely nothing to break any ground anywhere, it plays competently and looks nice doing it. Just don’t expect much more than that: “DAC” doesn’t expound on the “Trek” universe for any sort of storyline, and beyond the timing of its release the game shares no significant ties of any kind with the new film.

Posted in Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade

UFC 2009 Undisputed
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Yuke’s Co./THQ
ESRB Rating: Teen (alcohol reference, blood, language, mild suggestive themes, violence)

No sense being coy: This, despite being developer Yuke’s Co.’s very first effort, easily ranks as one of the very best instances of a video game replicating the sensation of the sport it’s emulating. In terms of demands and payoff, “UFC 2009 Undisputed” simply has mixed martial arts down cold.

Part of MMA’s appeal is its capacity to pit fighters of different disciplines — wrestling, karate, boxing, jujitsu — against each other, and in its remarkably successful attempt to map all those moves to the controller in reasonable fashion, “Undisputed” presents a similar demand. Technical fighters will benefit from memorizing the controller gymnastics needed to execute takedowns, throws and submission maneuvers. (Tip: Play through the tutorial. Maybe twice.) Timing, meanwhile, is of the essence if you prefer to weaken your opponent through quick strikes (or, more importantly, counterstrikes and reversals).

Then, there are moments that degenerate, as they should, into furious bouts of button mashing. A well-executed shoot takedown might still fail if you don’t follow up by pounding the buttons to overpower your opponent’s like-minded efforts to withstand your charge. Ditto for attempted submissions or the omnipresent temptation to unleash a flurry of strikes in hopes of pulling a knockout out of the sky, which absolutely does happen.

That, in fact, might be the game’s best asset, even if everyone who plays “Undisputed” almost inevitably will find themselves on the wrong side of it at some point. You can win a fight through points and by simply wearing your opponent down, but, just as in the real thing, knockouts sometimes happen out of nowhere and with only one perfect punch. It’s a downer when it happens to you, but it never feels completely unfair, and it’s obscenely gratifying when you do it to someone else.

“Undisputed,” in addition to looking outstanding, is no slouch in terms of content. The 80-plus-deep roster includes current and former fighters, you can design up to 100 more, and the single-player career mode makes for an extensive simulation of the life of an up-and-coming UFC fighter. Online play (two players) isn’t too fancy, but it works, and the game keeps good records of your win-loss totals.

But while “Undisputed” is a terrific experience for solo and online fighters, it is, like its source material, best enjoyed in the company of others on the couch. The differing styles make it a game players of all abilities can effectively enjoy in different ways, and stuff that might frustrate players who fight alone — particularly those out-of-nowhere knockouts — are good for a thrill and probably a laugh when experienced among a crowd of players passing the controller around.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Nintendo Wii and Playstation 2
From: Raven/Activision (PS3/360), Amaze Entertainment/Activision (PS2/Wii)
ESRB Rating (PS3/360): Mature (Blood and gore, intense violence, language)
ESRB Rating (Wii/PS2): Teen (Blood, mild language, tobacco reference, violence)

With all due respect to what it is — a “God of War” knockoff built around the story and murderous stylings of Wolverine — “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” deserves credit for what it isn’t.

For starters, “Wolverine” isn’t nearly as mindless or shameless as your typical knockoff. There are a few basic attack maneuvers you could, theoretically, mash ad infinitum up to and through the closing credits. But the game quickly complements those moves with some unique attacks — including grapple maneuvers and an awesome lunge attack that allows you to pinpoint and pounce on an enemy from the other side of the screen — that simply are too fun to ignore.

“Wolverine” also resists most urges to use onscreen button prompts as a means of executing routine finishing attacks or playing out elaborate action sequences. There are cutscenes, but you’re free to simply enjoy them before the game frees you back up to do whatever you want. A special quick kill attack, which seems destined to be dumbed down through onscreen prompts, instead uses a cool slowdown mechanic that tests your timing rather than some ability to mindlessly obey simple commands.

The sum total of Wolverine’s diverse offense makes navigating the game’s shortcomings less of a chore than they otherwise would be. “Wolverine,” like most movie-based games, has the unenviable task of turning a two-hour film into a six-to-eight-hour story, and the game strains by taking you back and forth in time (and, consequently, through a few mid-game levels that look awfully similar to early levels).

For similar reasons, you’ll encounter huge numbers of the same enemy types, which can be a chore when the enemy in question poses little challenge but still requires time to take down. Wolverine’s innate ability to regenerate health makes for some easy boss fights that drag on longer than necessary, though some impressive set pieces in the late going do plenty to mitigate the onset of repetition. A continuous leveling system, which expands your arsenal and makes finding the optional collectables a fun and worthwhile endeavor, also keeps things from getting too mindless.

The only place “Wolverine” can’t escape its fate is in the perceived value department. Like its fellow knockoffs, it’s a single-player, single-trip experience that, despite an unlockable extra difficulty setting, won’t entice a great deal of immediate return engagements. Recommending this as a buy will be easy once it inevitably drops into the $20-$30 range, but anyone who drops $60 for a game that requires a weekend to turn inside out is likely to regret it soon after.

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

Zen Studios already proved itself in 2007 with “Pinball FX” on Xbox Live Arcade, and this first-rate follow-up only cements its standing in video game pinball simulation circles. “Zen Pinball” brings with it four original themed tables (classic cars, jungle adventure, shamans and Nikola Tesla), and per usual, each comes loaded with visual eye candy and a myriad of unlockable bonuses and mini-objectives. More importantly, Zen once again nails the nuances of real-world pinball, from ball and flipper speed to the angles the ball takes when bouncing off different objects and corners. But “ZP” also improves on “FX” on numerous fronts. The default camera viewpoint is more useful than any of “FX’s” five viewpoints, though those are included as well if you disagree. Superficially speaking, the game’s interface is considerably more polished, and the sound department benefits immensely from the inclusion of announcers unique to each table. Last but not least is the optional slowdown feature, which allows you the toggle slow-motion on the fly. Enabling the feature voids your ability to record high scores and earn PSN trophies, but it’s a great way to dissect each table’s intricacies, which is no small benefit for gamers bent on mastering these tables before Zen produces more.

Posted in Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360

Nintendo DSi
From: Nintendo
Price: $170

It’s always exciting to get a new toy, and unless you count the meteoric advent of the iPhone, it’s been a good two-and-a-half years since a new gaming system touched down.

As such, the arrival of the semi-new Nintendo DSi was cause for more excitement than it probably merits under the harsh light of rationality.

To Nintendo’s credit, the DSi marks improvement over the DS Lite in ways apparent and not so apparent. You wouldn’t know it just to look at it, but it’s more powerful inside than the Lite. Eventually, there will be games that either offer more features on the DSi or simply don’t work on the other DS models at all.

The system’s most visible new feature — a tiny camera on the outside and an even tinier one on the inside — promises similar results, though it remains to be seen how well the cameras function in the areas of motion and light detection. Nintendo’s first attempt, the downloadable “Wario Ware: Snapped,” fails pretty miserably.

Still, the cameras benefit from some fun applications in the DSi’s redesigned virtual dashboard, which also features a fun voice manipulation program. The dashboard also links to the new DSi store, which offers new games for download to the systems internal storage (new) or SD card slot (also new). Nintendo included $10 worth of store credit with each DSi — a shrewd move that could inspire untold numbers of users to give downloadable games a chance. But while the temptation to spend that credit straight away is strong, the iffy early offerings in the store make it wise to hold out for something better.

Elsewhere, it’s the little things that loom large. The buttons feel sturdier than they did on previous models. The battery light indicator says more than just red and green. WPA encryption support is included for wireless Internet access, though a convoluted menu arrangement makes setting it up trickier than it should be. The two screens are larger than before, though some may not even notice the difference. The DSi also finally includes the ability to hot-swap games and return to the dashboard without restarting the whole system — small but wonderful convenience.

The DSi does suffer one big loss with the removal of the Game Boy Advance slot, which both cuts off that entire library and marks an end to such weird attachments as the rumble pack and the goofy “Guitar Hero” guitar peripheral. The value of that slot varies wildly from person to person, but if you ever got a chance to use the paddle controller that shipped with the Japanese release of “Arkanoid,” you probably understand what a loss it is.

Losing anything from the $129 DS Lite becomes hard to swallow when you consider the DSi’s notably higher price tag. Similarly, while the system improves on the Lite in all those aforementioned ways, it’s hard to recommend it to Lite owners until some compelling games arrive that take specific advantage of its power and abilities. That day will come, but DSi’s price may drop before it does. The immense range of the DS’ library makes the DSi easy to recommend to anyone who lacks any kind of DS hardware at all, but Lite owners might feel some serious buyer’s remorse once the novelty wears off and there’s little else to show for their purchase.

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC
From: Starbreeze/Tigon/Atari
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, sexual content, strong language)

If selling games is a race, then “The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena” is a 100-meter sprinter with an eight-second head start. In a move that hopefully becomes a trend, developers Starbreeze and Tigon have included a remastered copy of “Athena’s” prequel, “Escape From Butcher Bay,” as bonus content.

“Bay” was incredible enough to command $50 on its own five years ago, and its approach to first-person stealth still feels fresh in its 2009 incarnation. Tigon and Starbreeze took an oft-inaccessible genre and made it immersive and exciting by nailing the control scheme and devising some ingenious means of communicating your ability to hide and remain hidden. It didn’t hurt that the game’s storyline and characters were more engaging than those found in the “Riddick” movie that released around the same time.

“Athena,” at least initially, doesn’t monkey around with the formula. The story picks up where “Bay” left off, and following a brief reintroduction to the controls and nuances of the stealth system, you’re back in the shadows, avoiding fights whenever possible and dividing and conquering when that won’t do. As was the case in “Bay,” even the most pedestrian of enemies can deal quick and debilitating damage, and picking multiple fights at once almost always is fatal.

But it’s on the same token where “Athena” arguably loses its way. Following a deeply satisfying stretch in which melee weapons and a dodgy tranquilizer gun are your only bets, the game slathers you in guns and ammo, and it counters this bounty by sending waves of stupid enemies storming your way. You still can shoot out lights and lurk in the shadows, but you don’t necessarily need to, and once you face enemies who only succumb to gunfire or force you to fight in entirely cover-free environments, all that delicate balance takes a flying leap.

This isn’t to suggest “Athena” is a failure. It’s more fun than not, and some of its best moments are during these wheels-off-the-bus stretches. But with “Bay’s” meticulous construction feeling fresh all over again in the same package, the reckless abandonment of stealth and artificial intelligence feels sloppy even when it’s fun.

Even with “Athena’s” problems taken into consideration, though, the total package — two nice-sized campaigns and a respectable suite of multiplayer offerings (12 players, online only) that capitalize on Riddick’s special abilities — comes recommended without hesitation. “Bay” did things in 2004 that no game until now has done since, and its rerelease to a wider audience is absolutely deserved. That it brings a whole additional game along for the ride is merely a very, very nice bonus.

(For those wondering, “Bay” and “Athena” exist as separate options in the main menu, so you can play them in whichever order you please.)

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Flock!
For: Playstation 3 via PSN, Xbox 360 Live Arcade and Windows PC
From: Proper Games/Capcom
ESRB Rating: Everyone (crude humor, mild cartoon violence)
Price: $15

“Flock!” presents a stiffer barrier to entry than most downloadable puzzle games — and not merely because it’s $5 more expensive than most think it should be. In “Flock,” you’re a UFO, and your objective is to herd farm animals around hedges, past natural and unnatural pitfalls and doohickeys and onto your mother ship. The idea is inspired, and a fantastic look and personality pile on the whimsy. But because you’re merely herding animals instead of controlling them directly, “Flock’s” intricacies may give you fits. Things start to click when you learn not to overdo the controls and let the animals do some of the work for you, but that’s not an easy thing to understand when the game rewards speedy herding with medal bonuses. Fortunately, finding a way to carefully herd every single animal on the board is more fun and worth more in the rewards department, and “Flock’s” 50-plus levels don’t disappoint in the brainteaser department. The game also earns its price tag by letting players design and trade their own levels online. If the game finds a devoted following, that translates into months of continuous (and free) downloadable content. It’s merely a shame you can’t actually play the game online with those same people: “Flock” has co-op play, but it’s offline only.

Posted in Nintendo DSi, Playstation 3, Playstation Network, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Arcade