Mass Effect 2
For: Xbox 360 and Windows PC
From: Bioware/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, drug reference, sexual content, strong language, violence)

“Mass Effect” marked a bold venture for Bioware, which took the underpinnings of its superlatively deep role-playing games and crammed them into a tactical third-person shooter with combat as real-time as in any other sci-fi action game. Surprisingly, it worked: The combat was highly imperfect but easily sufficient, and the branching storylines, deep character progression and ridiculous interplanetary scope made for one of 2007’s best games.

How impressive, then, that “Mass Effect 2″ comes along and makes its predecessor look like a rough draft by comparison.

Principally, “ME2″ doesn’t mess excessively with what worked previously. In particular, the storytelling — and the absolutely amazing branching conversation trees that allow the player to mold the personality of chief protagonist Commander Shepard and, by proxy, the story and galaxies around him — retains its considerable polish. “ME2″ is as saturated with planets, alien races and mythology as “ME1,” but it also benefits from not having to introduce it all to the degree its predecessor did. The story takes a sharp turn straight away — a dramatic change of fortune and a pretty serious turning of some tables dictate the game’s first sequence — and while “ME2″ has hours’ worth of optional side missions in tow, pretty much everything operates in the name of barreling the story forward.

(Side note for those who missed “ME1:” While “ME2″ offers additional benefits to players who are already familiar with the characters and alliances, Bioware offers enough guidance to bring new players up to speed without boring those who need no introduction.)

Though “ME2″ is large enough to span two discs on the Xbox 360, Bioware has done a commendable job of cutting fat where it needed cutting. A slick mining mechanic allows players to explore barren planets from the ship instead of via a pointless ride in the Mako buggy, which has been excised completely. The side missions, by extension, have more consequence in the overall ecology, and a cleaner set of menu interfaces makes it easier to (among other things) jump from one mission to another with little downtime in between.

Speaking of saving time, the famously long load times from “ME1″ are considerably more tolerable (and more elegantly presented) this time around. Even more importantly, the wretched save system — which almost everyone learned, the hard way, didn’t autosave like it appeared to — has received a very user-friendly overhaul. (It works, in other words.)

But what truly is remarkable about “ME2″ is how profoundly Bioware transforms the weakest ingredient of “ME1″ into this game’s most jaw-dropping asset. The combat in “ME2″ is more than just sufficient: It’s completely indistinguishable — in terms of speed, control fluidity, explosiveness, and enemy/squad A.I. — from the best cover-based third-person shooters available today. A stunning visual presentation, led by perhaps the best camerawork the genre has yet seen, arguably puts it at the top of the heap.

Best of all, Bioware sacrificed exactly none of the role-playing underpinnings that carried the combat in “ME1.” Those systems worked together well enough back then, but they sing in perfect harmony this time around, putting “ME2″ in a class all its own when it comes to blending two traditionally disparate genres into one.

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Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
For: Wii
From: Capcom
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, mild suggestive themes, violence)

Fans of Capcom’s lighthearted “Vs.” fighting games have felt understandable pangs of jealousy since the distinctively beautiful, meticulously polished but decidedly more serious “Street Fighter IV” raised the bar for fighting games nearly a full year ago.

Fortunately, “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars” doesn’t simply end the near-decade-long “Vs.” game drought; it also closes the gap almost completely between Capcom’s 2D fighting past and the arguably perfect mix of two and three dimensions that made “SFIV” such a staggering treat for the eyes and thumbs.

This being a Wii game, “TvC” understandably cannot match the level of visual detail “SFIV” pulled off on more powerful hardware. But in borrowing that game’s approach — characters animating in full, fluid 3D but fighting on a 2D plane — it reaps the same benefits: The fighters pull off spectacular moves with abandon, but the removal of unnecessary 3D space whittles the fight down to the same psychological science that made “Street Fighter” so special in the first place. (“TvC,” to its credit, closes the graphical gap by opting for a cel-shaded visual style that really makes its infectiously outlandish style pop.)

Though the fighting shines under the guidance of the new engine, “TvC” is unmistakably a “Vs.” game at heart. The two-on-two matches represent a paring back from “Marvel Vs. Capcom’s” three-on-three insanity, but the speed and accessibility of the fighting remain several notches beyond “SFIV’s” more methodical leanings. Per brand tradition, “TvC” provides a generous arsenal for button-mashers while reserving the really good stuff for players who hunker down and learn each fighter’s respective intricacies.

Whether the roster is a boon or burden will come down to individual tastes. The Tatsunoko half of “TvC” consists of anime characters who are big in Japan but significantly lesser known here, but while the relative obscurity robs “TvC” of the dream fights “Marvel” had, it’s an arguable benefit to players intrigued by the multitude of surprises 13 brand-new (and often wildly designed) characters will afford them. Capcom’s 13 offerings should prove a bit more familiar, but the wide diversity of the cast — Ryu and Chun-Li are here, but so is Mega Man, “Dead Rising’s” Frank West and characters from “Lost Planet,” “Viewtiful Joe” and “Rival Schools” — means a bounty of quirks and highly divergent (but reasonably well-balanced) styles awaits discovery on both sides.

“TvC” complements its polished gameplay by offering enough control styles (remote/nunchuck, Classic controller, Gamecube controller) to suit everyone, and it provides plenty of longevity with a 26-ending single-player component and online multiplayer (two players) that worked without incident in pre-release testing. (Whether that holds up under the stress of thousands of players remains to be seen, but so far, so good.)

Just for fun, Capcom tosses in a “Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Shooters” mode, which is a bizarre but surprisingly filling top-down shooter that features the game’s cast and supports up to four players. The mode has absolutely nothing to do with anything else in terms of gameplay. But neither the freebie “Geometry Wars” mode that snuck its way onto “Project Gotham Racing 2,” and look how that one turned out.

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Dark Void Zero
For: Nintendo DSi via the Nintendo DSi Shop
From: Other Ocean Interactive/Capcom
ESRB Rating: Everyone (fantasy violence)
Price: $5

Capcom’s infatuation with making mock Nintendo Entertainment System games in the 21st century isn’t new (see “Mega Man 9″ and the upcoming “Mega Man 10″), but “Dark Void Zero” takes the trick to a new level of imagination. Like the new Xbox 360/PS3 game “Dark Void,” “Zero” is a standard shooter that sets itself apart by strapping a jet pack to the player’s back. In the case of “Zero,” though, that translates into a sidescrolling action game that looks, sounds and acts like a game from 1988. In a vacuum, “Zero” is perfect for the price: The controls are polished and responsive in spite of the retro presentation, and with three difficulty settings and a tough-but-fair continue system, it’s challenging without resorting to “MM9’s” level of punishment. But “Zero” is especially cool when viewed in context. The nostalgically sparse story sets “Void’s” table surprisingly well, and it successfully manages to imbue a sense of history into a franchise that doesn’t actually have any. The developers really run with the joke, too: “Zero’s” digital manual includes a mock story detailing why it didn’t come out in 1987 as originally intended, and the composer responsible for “Void’s” score also orchestrated an 8-bit facsimile for “Zero.” Other clever and funny touches await — including one right when the game boots — but they’re best left unspoiled.

Posted in Nintendo DSiWare, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
For: Nintendo DS
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (mild fantasy violence)

Twenty years on, “Zelda” games are creatures of habit to their own detriment. Link never speaks, Zelda’s always in trouble, and the road to fixing that trouble typically runs through approximately eight dungeons, which each contain a special item that numerous times thereafter will come serendipitously in handy.

Superficially, it all holds true yet again in “The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks,” which brings back the cartoony art style and stylus-based control scheme that worked pretty well two years ago in “The Phantom Hourglass.” “Tracks” even recycles a few ideas “Hourglass” introduced — most prominently, setting half of its dungeon-related content inside a single building Link will have to revisit multiple times before the credits roll.

But “Tracks” also gets right what “Hourglass” got wrong. Players don’t, for instance, have to start the dungeon from scratch each time they reenter: This time, whenever the story dictates a return to the tower, a new door takes Link straight to the next portion. More importantly, there’s no time limit hanging over Link’s head, which means the challenges are free to be a little more intellectually interesting than they were in “Hourglass.”

These portions also benefit from Zelda joining Link in (literal) spirit as a playable character. Players can chart a path for Zelda to take, and she can distract and even possess enemies while Link works elsewhere. Stealth levels are nothing new to “Zelda” games, and “Tracks” doesn’t go overboard with them, but the dual character control makes them one of “Tracks’” better assets.

The smarter central dungeon design trickles down to the rest of “Tracks’” labyrinths, which appear to have benefitted greatly from Nintendo’s further refinement of the control techniques it introduced in “Hourglass.” The brainteasers in “Tracks” are among the most satisfyingly intricate to appear in a “Zelda” game this decade, and the dual-screen boss fights, while easy, are nonetheless clever.

As always, a new “Zelda” game introduces some new items to complement the usual bombs, sword and boomerang. Revealing them here would spoil the surprise of finding them, and opinions will diverge on how ingenious or annoying Nintendo’s application of the DS’ special abilities are with regard to using them. If you plan to play “Tracks” in a public space, just know a few items — including the musical instrument that once again provides mock spell-casting capabilities — require you to blow into the DS’ microphone and potentially look a little strange doing so.

No mention of “Tracks” would be complete without discussing the train. The wildly convoluted (but, to Nintendo’s credit, satisfactorily explained) storyline explains the train’s importance, but its utility — like the horse and boat before it — is to get Link and Zelda around the world map.

This, likely, will amount to most players’ least favorite portion of “Tracks.” Controlling the train’s path, though a mix of route planning and speed/track switch toggles, is actually pretty fun, and the experience improves once you outfit it with some necessary weaponry. But after a few instances of backtracking across the map to a village before trucking back to the next dungeon, the experience loses its luster.

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James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Wii, PSP, Windows PC and Nintendo DS
From: Lightstorm Entertainment/Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, mild language, mild suggestive themes, violence)

If “Avatar” movie experience is as extraordinary as early critical returns seem to imply it is, then, “James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game” doesn’t do it a great deal of justice. Rather, it’s one of those highly imperfect games that, if engaged with dampened expectations and viewed presentationally as nothing beyond a respectable companion to the film, still can amount to a good time.

Problems and deficiencies are never game-breaking, but they are numerous and creep into most facets of the experience on some level — and regardless of whether, as an early storyline twist explains, you play primarily as the invading human military or the indigenous Na’vi tribe.

Most visibly flawed is the combat, which feels dated and awkward by the standards of modern third-person games. There’s no cover mechanic when shooting, nor is there a way, with most weapons, to stare down the sights for a more precise shot — a surprising omission given the slight behind-the-shoulder perspective the game adopts. Some weapons have a semi-automatic aim, but the vast majority feel unwieldy and underpowered.

Melee combat, which plays a major role on the Na’vi side of things, feels similarly unchained thanks to some loose character movement that also makes traversing narrow, elevated terrain dicier than it should be.

And so on. The game’s A.I. occasionally loses its mind on both sides of the battle. The mission structure is primarily some variation of kill x enemies or fetch x items, and the occasional offshoot mission feels predictably half-baked for one reason or another. All of it ties together around a storyline that takes place two years before the events of the film but struggles mightily to wrap an engrossing scenario around several hours’ time.

But with all that air cleared — and if you can believe it or not — “Avatar” still emerges as a pretty fun (and pretty lengthy, especially if you replay it from the other side) single-player game. The action mechanics are dated, but the game sends lots of targets at you and moves at a high enough speed to engender some old-fashioned, arcade-style fun. For good measure, there’s a nice upgrading mechanic that affords you unique weaponry and some very handy special abilities unique to both sides.

Lastly, while the game’s storytelling is spotty, it nonetheless adequately educates players about the world in which “Avatar” exists. Between story content and an encyclopedia of people, places and things, the game hands off a ton of mythology that can only help players’ appreciation for the more narratively capable film.

For good measure, if not much else, “Avatar” includes a multiplayer component and fills it out with the usual batch of modes found in a game of this ilk. It’s hard to argue with more content for the buck, but given the rash of amazing multiplayer games that have released in the past couple of months, it likely will be equally difficult to see a lively community develop around this portion of the game.

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Crazy Snowboard
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: Ezone
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence, infrequent/mild horror/fear themes)
Price: $3 (free demo available)

With all due respect to Ezone’s naming conventions, “Crazy Snowboarding” isn’t terribly crazy at all. To the contrary, it rather conventionally acts just as one might hope a pick-up-and play iPhone snowboarding game would. Tilting the device controls the onscreen snowboarder’s steering, and a tap or hold on the screen preloads a jump when a rail, ramp or mound of snow is near. Once in the air, touching each of the four corners of the screen activates whatever trick players have assigned to that corner. The dead simple control scheme makes “Snowboard”  a no-brainer to play, but achieving gold medal scores requires some skillful trick stringing and sharp risk/reward management while in the air. “Snowboard” currently offers 30 missions, and the Halloween- and holiday-themed levels suggest Ezone will occasionally add more as more special occasions pass by. A modest rewards system allows players to use their points scored as currency toward unlocking new boards, outfits and tricks. And while the current online leaderboard system is pretty bare-bones, Ezone says the next update will incorporate support for the Plus+ social network.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, iPhone/iPod Touch

Assassin’s Creed II
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, intense violence, sexual content, strong language)

Most games, broken down, are simply collections of similar actions and commands repeated over and over. But most hide it better than 2007’s “Assassin’s Creed,” which combined majestic core gameplay with an oppressively patterned quest structure that neutered its inventive storyline and instilled some serious déjà vu in many players.

Almost from the start, though, “Assassin’s Creed II” demonstrates that it has learned its lesson. The storyline, now set in 15th century Italy as well as present day, receives the narrative justice it deserves: The present-day cast accrues some essential dimension, the characters in Italy are exponentially more likable than the first game’s humorless cast, and the game lets the story breathe by staying in place over multiple missions instead of continually jumping back and forth in time.

“Creed’s” timeline liberally and cleverly mixes factual and fictional history to reconstruct the legend of its characters’ lineage, and witnessing this reconstruction is miles more rewarding this time around. An optional collection of puzzle-oriented missions unlocks even more doors, connecting everything from Adam and Eve to John F. Kennedy to engineer some wild possibilities for future series installments.

The anatomic improvements extend to “AC2’s” gameplay, which reaps the reward of a quest structure that no longer requires players to complete X number of side missions before assassinating subject Y, jumping through time and repeating. The side missions return, but they’re significantly more diverse and more savvily ingrained into whatever else is happening in the landscape, which feels more alive thanks to some sharper A.I., the introduction of an economy and some great (albeit gamey, so relax your sense of disbelief) new mechanics for managing notoriety and seeking cover from guards while in a crowd.

The main storyline missions integrate themselves better as well: “AC2″ makes it easy to start a new storyline mission almost the instant the previous one concludes, and the game tells much of its story while the player directs the action. Players who skip all that markedly improved optional content to beeline through the main story will do themselves a disservice, but “AC2″ at least leaves that decision up to you. However you approach it, there’s always something to do, and there exists no lingering sense of familiarity haunting the game despite the 15 to 30 hours of gameplay it has in store.

Elsewhere, “AC2″ doesn’t mess with what made its predecessor so great in spite of its unmistakable shortcomings.

The simple act of getting around Italy as Ezio is as fun as it was traversing the Holy Land as Altaïr: The cities are meticulously designed, and Ezio’s freerunning capabilities — combined with a control scheme that’s fantastically intuitive in spite of the demands it puts on a gamepad’s button real estate — make it tremendously fun to scale buildings, leap rooftops and position yourself for the perfect takedown.

“AC2,” for its part, offers a larger repertoire of weapons and techniques to wield, and thanks to the presence of Ezio’s good buddy Leonardo Da Vinci, the inventions — including a flying machine that practically doubles the fun all by itself — pour in throughout the entirety of the adventure.

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New Super Mario Bros. Wii
For: Wii
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

The worst thing about “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” besides its abysmally uninspired title, is the way Nintendo itself has misrepresented it as a shell of Super Mario games past that requires four players in order for fun to be had.

Fun indeed is had by turning what traditionally has been a solo endeavor into a two-, three- or four-player free-for-all, with all active players running through the game simultaneously as Mario, Luigi and two Toads. (The princess, per usual, has been kidnapped.) Nintendo doesn’t change one iota of the levels regardless of whether one or four players are running through them, and the results are predictably and often hilariously chaotic.

Players can cooperate and spring off one another to perform amazing stunts and reach impossible heights. But they also can antagonize one another, going so far as to pick other players up and toss them to their demise. It’s a riotously fun time, but those who want to ace the game — finish every level, find all three special coins in each level, discover every hidden pathway and, of course, rescue the princess — will be impossibly hard-pressed to do it with the “help” of friends.

Fortunately, wonderfully and despite implications to the contrary, “NSMBW” is an equally amazing game as a solo experience, meeting and arguably exceeding the bar set by “Super Mario Bros. 3″ and “Super Mario World” some 20 years ago. Ideas introduced in those games return fearlessly reinvented here, and “NSMBW” continually surprises with new platforming contraptions, level designs and power-ups. The new penguin suit is possibly the most versatile Mario upgrade ever, while the propeller suit ranks with the best of the best on the fun scale.

Classic characters and level archetypes also return, but 20 years of technological and graphical advancements allow them to do things that simply weren’t possible before. Happily, beyond the new suits, the same doesn’t apply to Mario and friends: Nintendo keeps the control scheme classically simple, and instances of motion control in “NSMBW” are infrequent enough to be novel and surprisingly fun in how they function in conjunction with the levels in which they appear.

Totaled up, “NSMBW” is, to perhaps an unprecedented degree, that rare game that is as magnificently enjoyable for long-suffering 2D Mario fans as it is for those who have never played one and had no idea a 19-year drought even existed. It’s an enormous value simply by being a full-featured game that offers two diametrically different experiences that can be cherished on wholly separate levels.

The only bug in the pancake batter is the lack of an online co-op option. Four-player “NSMBW” is a farcical mess in person, and Nintendo is dead right in assessing that the mood wouldn’t translate nearly as well online. But for those who lack the means to set up a local game, having an online consolation prize still trumps not having it.

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WireWay
For: Nintendo DS
From: Konami
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

Given the myriad of fun possibilities, it’s somewhat amazing only one game — “Bust-a-Move DS” — has prominently leaned on a control mechanic built around using the Nintendo DS’ touch screen as a virtual slingshot.

That changes rather dramatically — albeit imperfectly — with “WireWay,” which builds an entire adventure game around the idea.

“WireWay” stars you as a strange little alien named Wiley, and the completely weird storyline — which deliberately is silly to the point of genuine amusement — has Wiley on a quest to gather valuable stars that are useless to Earthlings but extremely valuable to Wiley and his strange kind.

But the game isn’t about controlling Wiley so much as the areas through which he must navigate. Each level starts with Wiley grabbing onto the lowest-hanging wire, and you propel him forward by pulling back on the wire, picking your angle and launching him at stars, special items, enemies and other wires. “WireWay” introduces new contraptions as the game soldiers ahead, but the primary mode of transport involves firing Wiley around the level like a rock in a slingshot.

It isn’t a perfect science. The action takes place on both screens, and the space between screens translates into a blind spot that can complicate your shot selection. A nice touch allows you to shift the camera using the D-pad, but doing so also limits how far back you can pull the wire in certain directions. Practice makes near-perfect and it’s never a game-breaking problem, but it would’ve been preferable if “WireWay” let you zoom in and out rather than simply shift the viewpoint.

Other than that, though, the mechanic makes for a fun trick around which to build a game, and “WireWay” helps itself by regularly introducing variety to the levels and making them challenging to complete. For those who enjoy perfecting games, a grading mechanic that scores your ability to grab all the stars, find the special items and get to the ship as quickly as possible should induce a nice amount of replayabilty. Acing the game is no easy feat.

“WireWay” complements its goofy storyline with a two great challenge modes. Flick Trials limits how many moves you can make to send Wiley to the ship, while Strategery — the jewel of the game both in name and concept — forces you to pause the action and draw in the wires and contraptions yourself. Both modes use the same scoring system as the story levels, so they offer the same level of replayabilty for perfectionists.

All those calls for perfection make “WireWay’s” multiplayer mode, which turns the action into an anything-goes race to the ship, a pleasantly mindless change of pace. Four players can compete locally using one copy of the game, but only two courses are available unless everyone has their own copy. Online play isn’t available, but it’s hard to imagine a niche game arriving smack in the middle of the holiday blockbuster season accruing a major online following anyway.

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

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
For: Nintendo DS
From: AlphaDream/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief, mild cartoon violence)

“Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story” is, in a few words, a whole lot more of the same stuff that comprised the first two “Mario & Luigi” games.

And that, frankly, is perfectly fine. AlphaDream’s “Mario & Luigi” games are practically a genre unto themselves with the way they infuse traditional role-playing game conventions with an extensively satisfying element of action, and it’s hard to object to another chapter of what has emerged as the funniest and smartest piece of storytelling ever to emerge from Nintendo’s extensive library.

The basic crux of “Story” should ring familiar to “Mario & Luigi” vets. You control Mario and Luigi at the same time, and most of the action outside of battle consists of helping the brothers get from story point to story point through a mix of puzzle solving and traditional “Super Mario”-style platforming.

The game’s battle system obeys the same rules as a traditional turn-based role-playing game, but most of the attacks, dodges and counterattacks play out in real time like a traditional action game. Every enemy has a tell, and every attack — be it the classic jump attack or a tag-team maneuver involving both brothers — has an extra measure of effectiveness if you time its execution perfectly. Figuring the ins and outs of all this stuff is, once again, a ton of fun.

“Story,” for its part, raises the series bar in both the gameplay and storytelling departments by giving the brothers’ arch nemesis a share of the starring role. Bowser exists in two forms — as a third playable character and, as the title implies and the blissfully absurd story explains, a living dungeon — and both roles inject the game with far more freshness than appearances would otherwise suggest.

For starters, Bowser has his own bull-in-china-shop style of getting around, which lends new dimensions to the action that plays out between battles. His brutish fighting style naturally gives way to a wholly unique set of combat tactics, including some brilliant touch screen tricks in which he can mobilize Goombas and other minions to do his bidding. The trajectory of the storyline has the brothers working in tandem with Bowser, and the game comes up with some pretty clever ways (no spoilers) to have them work together despite being at odds and in wholly different places and predicaments.

But Bowser’s most memorable contribution to “Story” may be to its story, which ranks among the sharpest and most infectiously funny sagas to grace a game all year. “Mario & Luigi” games have never been hurting for great characters and fantastic dialogue, but Bowser’s crabby, perennially confused but deliriously proud turn here is pure gold from start to finish. “Story” occasionally gets a little too wordy for its own good — especially when it comes to detailing the game’s basics to players who already know what to do — but when there’s so much good stuff to experience, a few dry bits are more than acceptable.

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Saw
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Zombie Studios/Konami
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, strong language)

Say this for “Saw’s” video game debut: Be it on purpose or by accident, it pretty bluntly captures (as best a video game can, anyway) what it must feel like to find yourself trapped inside one of the Jigsaw Killer’s traps.

Mostly, that’s to the game’s credit. From the very first moment “Saw” cedes control to the player, you’re trapped inside a puzzle, and the only assistance the game provides is a simple overview of the basic controls. The puzzle isn’t exactly a mindbender, but it is smarter than your typical “hit switch to open door,” and it’s awfully nice to see the game respect its audience’s intelligence and expect players to figure their way out without help.

That’s a trend that continues throughout the entirety of the game, culminating in some tough end-mission brainteasers that have you racing the clock while a person you need to save screams in your ear to hurry up. Those with fragile nerves will find them frayed not only by these moments, but also by a series of other timed challenges in which you need to escape a room before a trap goes off and kills you. In later levels, “Saw” has no issue stringing several of these challenges in exhaustive succession.

But that’s not all — and not necessarily because Zombie Studios intended to compound your character’s misery. As the storyline explains, there are a number of people who need you dead so they may live, and “Saw’s” awkward movement controls and downright clumsy combat controls most certainly give those poor souls a fighting chance.

“Saw” partially circumvents this issue by giving you some nice abilities with regard to barricading enemies off and even luring them, “Bioshock”-style, into some traps of your own. But those same traps — which kill instantly — also work on you, and some of them are easy to spot only if you tiptoe the whole way through. “Saw” occasionally has the gumption to place one of these pitfalls right near the next checkpoint. Passing through a meaty stretch of the game only to miss a single tripwire, die instantly and start over is about as cheaply unsatisfying as it sounds, and if you’re the impatient sort, it’ll drive you crazy the more it happens.

When all these aspects — time limits, easy-to-miss traps, voices in your ear, your two left feet — work in tandem, “Saw” feels like an exercise in sanity awareness more than a video game.

But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Playing “Saw” isn’t intended as a form of feel-good escapism: It’s supposed to frighten you, stress you out and propel you into a continuous state of unease. Be it though great ideas or occasionally though incompetent design, that’s a task at which this game absolutely succeeds.

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Deca Sports 2
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Hudson
ESRB Rating: Everyone

Last year’s “Deca Sports” was one of the more fortuitous benefactors of the Great Wii Mini-game Compilation Gold Rush, so don’t look so surprised to see a sequel turned around so quickly and in time for the similarly fortuitous holiday gold rush.

“Deca Sports 2,” like its predecessor, tries to ape and outdo the “Wii Sports” model by cramming 10 different sports onto the same disc. Though some selections bear a close resemblance to the first game’s sports, the 10 picks — ice hockey, tennis, kendo, petanque, mogul skiing, speed skating, motorcycle racing, darts, synchronized swimming and dodgeball — are, at least technically speaking, all new.

Some of the game’s problems, however, are not. Like the first game, “DS2″ doesn’t let you play as your Mii character. A simple team/character-editing function lets you design a facsimile, but part of what makes the “Wii Sports” games so personable is the chance that one of your friends’ or family’s Mii characters might make a surprise appearance on the opposing team.

More problematic is game’s inability to capitalize on the new Wii MotionPlus peripheral, which gave the sports in “Wii Sports Resort” a level of control precision the original “Wii Sports” couldn’t even imagine. Some of the sports in “DS2″ — particularly petanque, which you might better recognize as bocce — demand a soft touch that just isn’t possible here. It’s still playable — unlike darts, which just feels broken — but it could have been “DS2’s” sleeper surprise if it afforded players the kind of control the MotionPlus makes possible.

Most of “DS2’s” other selections don’t suffer as much, but that’s primarily due to the fact that they don’t really benefit from motion controls in the first place. Ice hockey and dodgeball are fun (if sometimes factually suspect) interpretations of their respective sports, but there’s no reason the actions caused by generic flicks of the Wii remote wouldn’t have worked just fine (and perhaps better) as button presses.

That goes as well for some of “DS2’s” more oddball picks — synchronized swimming, speed skating, mogul skiing — which use rhythm game conventions to interesting effect but demand more speed and responsiveness than the Wii remote can realistically provide.

Only kendo and motorcycle racing — which has players hold the remote sideways and steer with it — seem to employ motion controls with tangible benefits. Tennis has obvious benefits too, but “DS2’s” take on the sport can’t even match what Nintendo did three years ago, to say nothing of what EA pulled off in “Grand Slam Tennis.”

In the end, “DS2″ feels a whole lot like its predecessor — about $10 too expensive even at its budget $30 price, and detrimentally concerned with providing quantity over quality. As always, there’s fun to be had when others are part of the equation, and “DS2″ does provide some kind of local multiplayer component for each sport. (Ice hockey, tennis and dodgeball also work online, but only time will tell if a community develops around the game’s serviceable online multiplayer component.)

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

Spectrobes Origins
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Genki/Disney Interactive
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (fantasy violence)

The debut of “Spectrobes” on the Nintendo DS was an auspicious anomaly — a game intricate enough to merit its 80-page manual, yet one so recognizant of those intricacies that the whole experience was startlingly accessible. Its mix of depth and user-friendliness was so pleasantly enjoyable, in fact, that it was able to draw inspiration from Nintendo’s “Pokémon” games while simultaneously engaging players who typically would want nothing to do with them.

“Spectrobes Origins,” by contrast, ships with a nine-page manual, but that merely is a testament to its ability to adapt itself to the platform rather than any sign that it’s dumbed itself down. “Origins” thoughtfully transfers the DS game’s chief ingredients to the Wii, employing smart but modest motion controls and using the increased screen real estate to integrate the instruction manual into the game’s opening hours.

It can be overwhelming at first, because even without taking the storyline and “Spectrobes” lore into consideration, “Origins” has much ground to cover. The game will fill in the narrative blanks, but the objective is (as with “Pokémon”) to discover, raise and eventually employ Spectrobe creatures in battles against an invading army of enemy Krawl creatures.

The chief difference is that in “Origins,” those battles take place in real time instead of through turn-based play. The Wii remote’s buttons handle your human character’s combat, while a series of adequate motion controls allow you to order your Spectrobe to fight, retreat and target one particular enemy while you work on another. Party management comes down to little more than switching out Spectrobes and keeping yourself healthy, but the no-frills approach nicely complements the battles’ fast speed and brief nature.

Especially fun is “Origins’” capacity for drop-in/drop-out local co-op, which allows a second player to control the Spectrobe directly. The game’s camera occasionally struggles to frame both players when the fight spreads out, but the small quirk does little to diminish the fun of taking the game on with another person in tow.

Where “Origins” gets a little bolder — and where it nails the motion controls — is in its intricate system for intervening at every stage of a Spectrobe’s evolution, from fossil excavation to incubation to training to using them in battle (or, the case of child Spectrobes, search expeditions.)

For the most part, “Origins” handles these tasks through interfaces similar to what we’ve all seen in some form before.

But the game’s fossil excavation mode, in which you use tools to break apart a fossil that’s encasing a living Spectrobe organism, is, as it was on the DS, more fun than it has any right to be. The Wii remote perfectly mimics the tools at your disposal (a hammer, a drill and a laser, to name a few) and the liberating nature of the task — excavate the organism quickly and safely, but do it however you please — does wonders not only for immersion, but for instantly creating a meaningful relationship between players and the creatures they rescue.

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Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
For: Nintendo DS
From: Level-5/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (alcohol reference, mild violence)

The most surprising thing about “Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box” might be the fact that it’s here and ready for public consumption. Nintendo of America has been uncommonly quiet about the game, stealthily unveiling its existence a few months ago and keeping similarly quiet in the run-up to its arrival on shelves.

The hushed tones somewhat make sense, because really, what is there to say? For those who played “Professor Layton and the Curious Village” last year, “Box” is explicitly more of the same — a new storyline, three digits’ worth of new brainteasers to solve, but otherwise a nearly-identical game in terms of graphics, music, presentation, interface and philosophy.

For those less familiar, “Box” is, in a nutshell, a collection of genuinely smart riddles — the stuff of which brainteaser books and bar tricks are made — packaged inside a charming story that benefits from a level of care (hand-drawn animated cut-scenes, terrific voice acting, a compelling storyline) typically reserved for action and role-playing games. “Box” presents itself somewhat as a point-and-click adventure game, only with self-contained brainteasers as the barriers one must overcome to complete the story.

As with “Village,” the riddles in “Box” are startlingly diverse both in the way you maneuver through them and in how they tax your brain. The game’s optional hint system, along with its allowance for players to pick different paths through the game, permit the riddles to approach a satisfying, rewarding level of challenge without creating a situation where a single, overwhelmingly difficult puzzle could completely impede one’s progress. The complete absence of time limits also removes any need to resort to guesswork, which in turn lets players approach the game’s puzzles as methodically as they would if those puzzles were in a rainy day book instead of a video game.

Totaled up, “Box’s” mix of challenge and concession is an extremely impressive demonstration of how to make a game that not only perfectly understands its intended audience, but remains completely accessible to all without intellectually neutering the riddles that make it so unique in the first place.

“Village” understood this philosophy so distinctively well the first time around that it’d almost be a shame if “Box” tried to be anything more than a retread with new content. A new story, and the 150 or so new puzzles it brings with it, are more than enough to command the $30 asking price even (perhaps especially) for those who wrung the first game completely dry. (As it did the first time around, Nintendo and Level-5 will sweeten the deal by regularly releasing additional puzzles for free download over Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection.)

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Shadow Complex
For: Xbox 360 Live Arcade
From: Chair Entertainment/Epic
ESRB Rating: Teen (violence, mild language)
Price: $15

Someone, eventually, was bound to create a two-dimensional “Super Metroid” facsimile using modern technology, but that someone was supposed to be Nintendo. Instead, Chair Entertainment takes the initiative, crafting a tactical espionage game that stars you as an everyman, mostly uses plausible real-world guns and environments but still, for all intents and purposes, plays like a classic “Metroid” game. It works, and rather beautifully, because Chair — which openly and refreshingly copped to “Metroid’s” influence — did its homework. “Shadow Complex,” like “Metroid,” consists of a single open-world environment, and accessing certain areas requires you to first find powerups and weapons that pave the way. (Surprise!) The concept isn’t fresh, nor is the storyline. But “Complex’s” level design is no slouch by “Metroid’s” lofty standards, and those modern amenities — essentially high-definition 3D graphics and animated presented from a 2D perspective — make it the most polished of its kind as well. Best of all, Chair has designed “Complex” in such a way that — again, like “Metroid” — there are tangible incentives for playing through it multiple times. If the asking price seemed high at the outset, it feels like a bargain after your third or fourth trip through.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Xbox Live Arcade

Space Bust-a-Move
For: Nintendo DS
From: Taito/Square-Enix
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

A dramatic overhaul would not appear to be in the cards for “Bust-a-Move,” which has stuck to the same script — shoot bubbles toward a cluster of bubbles at the top of the screen and match sets of three or more same-colored bubbles to clear them — for ages now. That’s doubly true for “Space Bust-a-Move,” which isn’t even the first “Bust-a-Move” game to appear on the DS.

But within the confines of that formula, “Space” turns out to be a surprising departure from 2006’s plain-named “Bust-a-Move DS” — and not just because, for whatever reason, it takes place in space.

The starkest change comes in the control scheme. The first DS game used a fun touch screen mechanic that allowed you to shoot bubbles with a virtual slingshot, but “Space” opts for more traditional, button-friendly controls (D-pad to aim the bubble shooter, shoulder buttons to fire). You can use the touch screen to emulate the button controls, but it’s disadvantageously slow.

But the loss of slingshot controls, which took up the entire touch screen in “BAM DS,” isn’t in vain. “Space” shifts the action down so that the shooter and the bubble cluster share the same screen, which also alleviates the previous game’s biggest problem: that annoying gap between the two screens and the havoc it could wreak on a perfectly-angled shot. The top screen generally serves a presentational purpose, which means different things in different modes.

The big exception to that rule takes place during “Space’s” entirely nonsensical but entirely wonderful story mode, which finally gives Bub and Bob some narrative motivation for clearing all those bubbles. It also blesses “Space” with some impressive two-screen boss fights, and guess what? “Bust-a-Move’s” gameplay lends itself startlingly well to boss fights.

The story mode headlines a slew of new feature tweaks “Space” tosses at the wall to belie its $20 asking price. Single-card local multiplayer (four players, down from five) returns, and the debut of online multiplayer (four players) goes off without a hitch despite some occasional and very temporary lag issues.

For dedicated solo players, a game-wide rewards system awards currency good toward unlocking a handful of alternative modes that tack on different rules to the standard “Bust-a-Move” gameplay. “Space” even tosses in a “Brain Age”-style challenge system, which tracks daily progress through a pair of time trial challenges. The customary, no-frills endless mode is, of course, in there as well.

Under the “useless but cool” umbrella, “Space” also lets you use the rewards currency to change the bubble and shooter designs, which only enhances what already amounts to a hilariously whimsical explosion of audiovisual cute. Charming though “BAM DS” was, “Space” ups the ante in every respect, and the goofy storyline knocks it out of the park.

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G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Also available for: Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, PSP and Nintendo DS
From: Double Helix/EA

Double Helix wants to take you down memory lane with “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” but it probably isn’t the destination anyone had in mind.

Rather, instead of capitalizing on the nostalgia of the cartoon and toys that inspired the movie of the same name, “Cobra” evokes memories of the original Playstation era, when third-person shooters first ventured into three dimensions but lacked the sophistication or capability to do the things we now take for granted.

Instead of over the shoulder or even behind the back, “Cobra’s” action takes place from a partial bird’s-eye view. The right analog stick controls neither the camera, which sits at a fixed perspective, nor your weapons’ aiming reticule, which doesn’t even come into play. Holding a trigger activates the game’s auto-aim capability, and all the right stick does is swap between enemy targets. In terms of shooting sophistication, “Cobra” doesn’t even approach “Robotron,” much less “Gears of War.”

“Cobra” attempts to compensate for the mindless demands by laying down a pretty thick gauntlet of enemies. The game tips its cap to present day by including a cover mechanic, but the action tends to get so manic that you’re almost better off continually running and dive-rolling under hails of gunfire whenever your Joe’s health needs replenishment.

Sometimes, you don’t have a choice. “Cobra’s” fixed camera usually does what it should, but there are recurrent instances in which you’ll be firing blind because the enemies have spawned from behind or have populated an area before the camera swings around to show them. “Cobra” flirts with complete disaster during fights against ultra-powerful mechs that are only vulnerable from behind: Not only does the camera lag miserably while you try to get in position for a sneak attack, but occasionally it hides the enemy altogether, which for obvious reasons is a potentially fatal problem.

Dying is no small matter in “Cobra,” either. Each mission features two faux-checkpoints, but failing a mission sends you back to the start no matter where that failure happens. You can sidestep this problem by playing “Cobra” on its easiest difficulty, which revives your Joe ad nauseam until you beat the mission, but there’s no real gratification in playing a game you essentially cannot lose.

The strange nods to outdated conventions, along with “Cobra’s” bland presentation — a byproduct of staying faithful to an equally drab film — add up to a game that cannot possibly be universally praised nor recommended as a $50 purchase in 2009.

But “Cobra’s” unwavering adherence to its bizarre design sensibilities also makes it more unique than the bevy of third-person shooters that aim higher. When the game isn’t getting in its own way — and, particularly, when you have a friend (offline only) instead of the computer playing alongside you as the second Joe — “Cobra” makes for a stupidly fun good time for an audience that can appreciate the old-time mentality. For that small sliver of the gaming public, this has “guilty pleasure” stamped all over it.

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Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta
For: Xbox 360 and PC
Requires: Fallout 3
From: Bethesda Softworks
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs)
Price: $10

It’s been an exemplary ride for “Fallout 3,” which followed a fantastic core game with four pieces of downloadable content that each improved on what came before it. So it’s quite a shame to see “Mothership Zeta” not only end the game’s run on a down note, but lay bare “Fallout 3’s” most glaring weaknesses in doing so. The premise, which finds you the object of a 1950s-style alien abduction, is no slouch, and it certainly marks a departure from everything that preceded it. But it also means you’re conducting business almost entirely in the tight confinements of a spaceship, traversing one generic corridor after another while doing little more than hitting a few switches and blasting the same aliens and drones ad nauseam. “Fallout 3’s” shooting mechanics have always fared competently in the wide-open wasteland against a wandering enemy or two, but they’re a nightmare in a claustrophobic hallway against a half-dozen ruthless aliens. Some audio logs and a few cool (but only incrementally more powerful) weapons aside, “Zeta” also leaves nothing to discovery, which arguably is the bread and butter of the “Fallout 3″ experience. The listless story isn’t nearly compelling enough to counter all that’s wrong here, and it’s probably best to save those $10 for 2010’s “Fallout: New Vegas” instead of spending it here.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Downloadable Content

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

Excitebots: Trick Racing
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Monster Games/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)

For all the credit “Wii Sports” garners as the Wii’s gateway drug, perhaps no Nintendo-branded game better demonstrates the benefits of motion controls than “Excite Truck,” which launched on the same day and aptly set itself apart from other racing games in ways no non-Wii game ever could.

The entirety of that game exists within “Excitebots: Trick Racing,” which lifts the controls and methodology and inserts them into an entirely bizarre but blissfully fun racing experience starring giant, mechanized bugs and animals.

Like “Truck,” “Excitebots” asks you to hold the Wii remote sideways and tilt it like a steering wheel to control your bot’s steering. The setup isn’t particularly conducive to precision steering and hairpin turns, but it also doesn’t need to be. “Excitebots” prefers hilly straightaways to sharp corners, overtly encouraging players to drive recklessly and constantly ride the fast, fine line that separates edge-of-seat control from unwieldiness.

That strong embrace, combined with “Excitebots’” unique metrics for success — winning races is helpful, but racking up stars via dangerous driving and gravity-defying turbo jumping takes precedence over everything — make for a racing experience that’s wildly exciting and completely casual at once. Achieving gold medal scores is a worthy pursuit for skilled players, but anyone who can hold the Wii remote can enjoy “Excitebots” on some level.

The inclusion of mechanized turtles, ladybugs, bats and other creatures is the most overt symbol of distinction between “Excitebots” and “Trucks,” but it isn’t the only one. The off-road tracks wouldn’t look out of place in more traditional racing games, but Monster Games has littered them with ridiculous bonus contraptions ranging from stunt triggers to bowling pins to a constructible sandwich. Take advantage of these and other surprises littered around the track — including the cool landscape-altering triggers previously found in “Truck” — and you’ll have all the stars you need to unlock additional tracks and bots.

Annoyingly (and puzzlingly), you’ll also need a few good single-player runs to unlock the game’s multiplayer content. “Excitebots” includes splitscreen (two players) and online (six) play, but you’ll have to play through the first batch of single-player races to access it. Fortunately, it’s worth the small wait: “Excitebots” ranks right up with “Mario Kart” in terms of its online suite, and being able to bet accumulated stars on races is an amusing feature with obvious upside.

Finally, there’s the entirely unexplainable inclusion of the Poker Race mode, which tasks you with simultaneously winning the race while also forming the best poker hand using cards littered around the track. Why? Who knows. Who cares. Like everything else in “Excitebots,” Poker Race is there for your enjoyment more than your understanding, and it serves that purpose beautifully.

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Rhythm Heaven
For: Nintendo DS/Nintendo DSi
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)

If you’re rhythmically challenged and prone to bouts of impatience, you may as well stop reading now, because there will be nothing heavenly about “Rhythm Heaven.”

For those unfamiliar with the series’ previous success in Japan, “Heaven” is best described as a “WarioWare” game without Wario and with an acute emphasis on keeping the beat. Like “WarioWare,” “Heaven” is digitized madness — a few dozen or so mini-games, each with its own strange art and music styles and each with slightly different objectives built around a recurrent theme.

In the case of “Heaven,” that translates into a string of minute-long exercises centered around keeping a steady rhythm. The objectives range from pulling radishes to playing ping-pong to controlling a three-piece band of ghosts, but the crux of each challenge involves some combination of tapping, holding, and sliding the stylus across the touch screen in time with the music.

As anyone who has experienced “WarioWare” already knows, the combination of simple objectives and short-attention-span theatrics is a magnificently fun one in the right hands. “Heaven,” happily, channels most of what makes those games so appealing, and it’s almost immediately apparent that it’s a product of the same developers rather than a troubled knock-off.

Just don’t expect it to be as easy as those “WarioWare” games — or anything close, for that matter. “Heaven’s” control scheme starts and ends with the touch screen, and the touch screen simply isn’t as conducive to split-second timing as the buttons would be. Compound this with whatever troubles you might already have with the game’s rhythmic demands — “Heaven” regularly requires you to switch between sliding, holding and tapping at precise intervals — and the result can be disastrous if you can’t bring a certain level of concentration, practice, patience and rhythmic instinct to the table.

“Heaven” isn’t completely unforgiving, and you need not perfectly achieve an objective to pass it and unlock additional challenges. But those fooled by the cute graphics and expecting the usual “WarioWare” cakewalk will find themselves on the business end of a pretty rude awakening.

This, of course, should be music to the ears of player who miss the days of Nintendo knocking them upside the head with brutally challenging games. “Heaven” is surmountable for those willing to bring their “A” game, and the rewards — new mini-games, marathon versions of existing mini-games, a handful of fun digital toys, the simple satisfaction of conquering a legitimately tough game — are immense. The game lacks any kind of multiplayer option, but there’s more than enough single-player content here to justify a purchase for the right type of player.

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Left 4 Dead Survival Pack
For: Xbox 360 and Windows
From: Valve
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, language)
Price: Free

PC gamers are used to Valve padding its games’ value with free content, but it’s a special day when console gamers get something for nothing. The “Left 4 Dead” Survival pack includes Versus mode versions of two campaigns, “Death Toll” and “Dead Air,” that previously only were playable in single-player or co-op form. But the reason for downloading — and the source of the pack’s name — is the new Survival mode, which tasks you with staying alive as long as possible while an ungodly number of zombies storm you in a confined space. Likely, that won’t be very long, because Survival mode sends special zombies at you in amounts the other modes wouldn’t dream of doing. But dying quickly and repeatedly makes for some exciting short play sessions that — thanks to the addictive nature of trying just one more time for a better score — add up to a lengthy, eventful good time with friends. Not bad for the price. The only nitpick: The mode, outside of a new map that takes place inside a lighthouse, uses the same locations you already visited elsewhere in the game. Also, if you prefer to play “L4D” by yourself, this pack offers nothing for you, as Survival mode supports online multiplayer only.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 Downloadable Content

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

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
For: Nintendo DS
From: EA
ESRB Rating: Everyone (cartoon violence)

At first sight and first play, “Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure” is a game that dares you not to love it. It’s immensely pleasing on the eyes, and the storyline — fronted by the charming, monocle-clad title character whose life is in your hands — is adorably but sharply amusing.

Also, the game’s premise — a “Mega Man”-style sidescroller on the top screen working in tandem with a “Tetris Attack” clone on the bottom — is uniquely, expertly executed. Enemies you topple and power-ups you find as Henry become blocks on the puzzle game below, and clearing those blocks away both prevents those enemies from returning and activates those power-ups. The two games influence each other in other clever ways, and you can switch between them at will with one button press.

If it sounds rather unwieldy, a little acclimation proves otherwise. Henry’s adventures use the DS’ buttons, while the puzzle portion works multiple ways but plays best with the stylus. Once you develop a system for keeping the stylus handy while focusing on the top screen, switching becomes second nature.

Most importantly, “Adventure” doesn’t drop the ball in either area. Had the top game released on its own as a Super Nintendo or Game Boy Advance game, it would be one of the more accomplished sidescrollers on either system. And while the “Tetris Attack” clone pretty much is exactly that, it’s a fast, fun homage that puts many dedicated DS puzzle games to shame in the responsiveness department.

All of this holds true throughout the entirety of “Adventure,” but unless you’re a sidescrolling virtuoso who enjoys an absurd challenge, it grows increasingly difficult to admire once the game unleashes a serious spike in difficultly, which happens around the midpoint of the third world.

At no point is “Adventure” hopelessly unreasonable. But there exist multiple points going forward where you’ll find yourself under attack from all angles with nowhere to escape. Once Henry loses a certain portion of his health, it’s practically a death sentence: He gets knocked into other enemies, who can pile on attacks, and your ability to rebuild his health through the puzzle portion takes a crippling hit. Throw in some sparse checkpoints and the occasional cheap bottomless pit death, and “Adventure” gives gamers of average ability every reason in the world to shut it off and never go back.

It goes without saying, then, that casual gamers seduced by the vibrant artwork and promise of puzzle-solving are better off getting those fixes elsewhere. “Adventure” ultimately is one of the DS’ better games, but not every great game is for every player. Disappointing though it is to say it, only those with godly skills and saintly patience need apply here.

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Fallout 3: The Pitt
For: Xbox 360 and PC
Requires: Fallout 3
From: Bethesda Softworks
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs)

Though fun on its own terms, “Operation Anchorage” was something of an awkward way for “Fallout 3″ to kick off its run of downloadable $10 expansion packs. The episode took place almost entirely within a simulation inside the existing game, and because the story focused on past events in the “Fallout” timeline, little beyond a few new pieces of gear stuck with you once it ended and you were back in Washington, D.C.

“The Pitt,” on the other hand, feels a bit more traditional. The location has changed — to Pittsburgh, accessible now via underground rail — but the norms established in “Fallout 3″ mostly translate verbatim. Everything plays out in the game’s real world and present day, and everything from the people you meet to the loot you find is as fair game here as it is in D.C.

Respect to “Anchorage’s” fresh ideas aside, this faithfulness makes for a much better episode. With the ground rules already established, “The Pitt” is free to focus entirely on the human fallout of post-nuclear Pittsburgh, where human slavery has returned and a makeshift monarchy — established by a new strain of the same raiders who run wild in D.C.’s landscape — inexplicably but unmistakably holds rule.

In true “Fallout” fashion, “The Pitt” gives you a starting point — disguised as a slave, with designs to help plot an overthrow — but takes the gloves off from there. A few central characters remain invincible per usual, but the vast majority can, depending on your preferred methods and intentions, be reasoned with, provoked or killed outright. “The Pitt” lets you play devil’s advocate far more than “Anchorage” did, and whether you negotiate with the overlords, play ball with them or pick them off without even introducing yourself, the presence of innocent bystanders means even a reckless gunslinger with good intentions might accidentally find a few casualties on his conscience.

Along with a better roster of characters comes a better storyline with a few fantastic detours and a truly disarming reveal near the end. As it’s presented, “The Pitt’s” storyline matches and arguably outclasses the main storyline from “Fallout 3″ proper, though it also benefits from having to fill three to fours’ time instead of 30.

Like “Anchorage,” though, “The Pitt” ultimately feels like a standalone diversion. You can revisit Pittsburgh as you please upon completion of the episode, but your travails through D.C. don’t change much as result. The major exception, of course, is the gear you bring back. In “The Pitt’s” case, that means two truly vicious new weapons that, once found, likely will become staples of your inventory no matter where the game takes you next.

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Pocket God
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: Bolt Creative
iTunes Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)
Price: 99 cents

With respect to processing power, 3D graphics, tilt sensitivity and Internet connectivity, one of the iPhone’s most understated assets is the wide availability of silly, guilt-free, 99 cent amusements. “Pocket God” aptly demonstrates why. “God” gives you a simple desert island and a single inhabitant. From there you can do whatever you please within the bounds of game, which includes adding additional islanders, tossing them into the ocean or a volcano, changing the weather with a flick of a finger or sending everybody clinging for their lives by turning the device on its side. That, and a few other surprises, is all “God” really does, but that’s the point: You pay a buck once, and the game pays you back by being a perennial source of easy giggles whenever a spare moment calls for them. To its credit, Bolt Creative is encouraging return visits via free updates which it dubs as episodes. Each adds a new trick to your godly arsenal, and the title of the episode offers a hint as to what the new power is and how to activate it. Bolt has released 11 episodes since “God” debuted in January, and all indications point to more ahead.

Posted in Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Downloadable Content, iPhone/iPod Touch