Metro 2033
Reviewed for: Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: 4A Games/THQ
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs, violence)

Give 10 nitpickers 10 hours each to run through “Metro 2033,” and each probably would emerge with a unique laundry list of missteps. There’s no multiplayer. The gunplay is just a touch off. Checkpoints occasionally appear before unskippable (and, upon failure to reach the next checkpoint, repeating) cutscenes. The running animation looks hilariously wrong. The voice acting cuts out when it shouldn’t. Human enemies have weird, sometimes amusing A.I. patterns, and they occasionally can withstand a perfect headshot and continue functioning like it’s a bee sting.

But a staunch dedication to atmosphere — and a willingness to do anything, even to the player’s occasional temporary detriment, to creatively make that ambience sing — is perhaps the one thing that makes grievances easiest to forgive. Despite dealing with themes (Nazis, Soviets, mutants, post-apocalyptic wastelands and subterranean warfare) other games have wrung dry, it’s this attention to mood that makes “2033″ not only forgivable, but an arguable must-play.

“2033″ doesn’t get terribly fancy with the basics. Mutant enemies act like rabid mutants, and soldiers, despite the aforementioned occasional A.I. disorder, act like soldiers. Controls, though a slight touch loose, are more than sufficiently solid, and “2033″ rewards ammo conservation and tactical warfare over rushing and spraying anything that moves.

But “2033′s” setting, a modern society made post-apocalyptically archaic, trickles into those basics. The result of that infection is intriguing initially and enthralling once the full might of surprisingly cinematic story is felt.

If, for instance, those slightly loose shooting controls were an accident, they’re a happy accident that creates the sensation of using tinpot weaponry that still packs a punch. Gas masks are prone to visor cracks that can prove fatal if a replacement isn’t found in time, and the stock flashlight comes with a ridiculously oversized manual charger that players must pump with the right trigger. Pre-war, military-grade ammunition doubles as valuable currency toward the purchase of shoddier bullets in higher quantities — a must, given the scarcity of ammunition in general. Homemade pipe bombs substitute for grenades, “towns” consist of dingy subway corridors, and the sky is an object of legend more than a daily reality.

The mastery of atmosphere doesn’t hide the aforementioned quirks in “2033′s” gameplay, nor does it make the occasional bout of crushing difficulty any easier for casual gunslingers to swallow. (Tip: There’s zero shame in playing this one on Easy.)

But for every shaky patch, “2033″ has a shining moment waiting nearby. An escort mission that finds players carrying a kid on their backs significantly hampers player aim with realistic kid-on-back physics, but it eschews the trappings that typically make escort missions so contemptible by not allowing the kid to wander into harm’s way. And the game’s centerpiece, an enormous mission that finds players separately infiltrating both the Nazi and Red Army front lines, is a spectacularly fun confluence of open-ended tactical warfare. “2033″ rewards an achievement to players who kill every last soldier as well as those who sneak past both lines without hurting a fly, and the multithreaded design of the level easily allows for either possibility and numerous more in between.

—–

Calling
For: Wii
From: Hudson Entertainment
ESRB Rating: Teen (violence)

There’s a line horror games must toe in order to entertain players while simultaneously turning them into nervous wrecks, and despite doing some things pretty well, “Calling” stumbles and falls clean off it shortly after it sticks its foot out.

It isn’t all bad at first. In fact, “Calling” gets off to an interesting start because of how quickly its clever and unfortunate sides begin butting heads.

The first-person perspective, for instance, falls prey to the general messiness that ensues when using the Wii remote to control a first-person camera. But it’s also pretty cool to play a game that isn’t a shooter from this perspective, and the lack of full-body awareness lends some extra discomfort to an interactive ghost story that favors cramped rooms and dark hallways.

“Calling’s” interface and exploratory controls contradict similarly. Opening a door, for instance, takes two presses of the A button and a swing of the remote, while examining objects and interfacing with the game’s virtual cell phone is downright laborious. But the need to make deliberate actions in the unpredictable dark enhances the tension for obvious reasons, and where the game’s visual interfaces sometimes fail, its aural design — particularly with regard to that cell phone and the role it plays in the story — is excellent.

But “Calling’s” divergencies descend from interesting to obnoxious as soon as players find their characters endangered, and between the game’s inability to (a) translate that danger into exciting gameplay and (b) do anything but repeat itself ad nauseam outside of some very uninspired puzzles, the fight between clever and unfortunate quickly turns lopsided.

Every now and then, while traversing one of “Calling’s” vaguely designed levels — lots of locked doors and hallways that all look the same, to paint a picture — players will come under attack by one or more spirits. Allow too many hauntings to spike the playable character’s heart rate past a certain level, and it’s game over.

But rather than ratchet up the tension, all these chases do is trigger frightfully annoying exercises in which players must aimlessly scramble to find the one random door or hallway that goes somewhere and, upon inevitably getting stopped by a ghost while doing so, shake the remote furiously until it backs off. Scramble, get caught, shake, repeat, repeat, repeat.

The transgressions of “Calling’s” opaque level designs would be forgivable if breaking free of a ghost required some kind of skillful play, but it doesn’t: Shaking the remote aimlessly isn’t fun, and it’s a tiresome pain to do so every 20 seconds while reconciling the sloppy camera and deducing which door is the one that actually goes somewhere.

Worse, once players find that door, all that awaits behind it is more of the same until the game ends — or half-ends, at which point “Calling” deals out a fake ending and makes players replay the whole thing to see the entirety of the story. (No joke.) Nothing about the storyline justifies repeating these exercises once, and Hudson has lost its mind by demanding players repeat the repetition to see how “Calling” ends.

—–

Perfect Dark
For: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade
From: Rare/Microsoft
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, violence)
Price: $10

No piece of entertainment of any kind has aged as gracelessly as older first-person shooters, which look like cave drawings next to their modern counterparts and often play just as unflatteringly. It’s with that in mind that the blissfully nostalgic return to “Perfect Dark” with a level head, lest their memories of 2000′s best shooter undergo harsh tarnishing. “Dark’s” story holds up reasonably well by today’s standards, and some of the things it does with regard to special enhancements — remote-control spy cams, unique weapons with creative alternate fire modes, unlockable mods for a multiplayer suite (four players locally, eight online, with combinations of the two allowed) that’s faster and looser than most modern-day counterparts — are unique enough to still be special. But even with a new dual-stick control scheme, “Dark’s” aiming mechanism and oppressive reliance on auto-aim feel really archaic, and players looking for a lean button will be dismayed to discover they can’t even jump. The smooth framerate and high-definition sheen are welcome upgrades to “Dark’s” rough visual exterior, but neither is nearly radical enough of a makeover to hide the engine’s age, and the overriding level design — lots of identical corridors, doors and elevators — would never fly in a brand-new product.

Aliens vs. Predator
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC
From: Rebellion/Sega
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, suggestive themes)

There are moments in each of “Aliens vs. Predator’s” three single-player campaigns where the game flashes some honest-to-goodness greatness that other first-person games can’t touch.

The brightest of these flashes happens straight away in the marine campaign, which outfits players as a standard soldier in a world crawling with aliens and, eventually, the Predator. “AvP” drops players into an environment where light is a precious commodity, and the game doesn’t waste time with dull shootouts against grunt enemies. The aliens are the enemy, and each one alone can easily take a player from healthy to dead. In packs and in darkness, they’re a nightmare.

But once the scene changes to less intimidating pastures and the aliens resort to less frightening tactics, “AvP” regresses to also-ran status. The fights start repeating themselves, the level designs feel more generic, and when Rebellion recycles an old twist from a previous “AvP” game and introduces the androids enemy class, this might as well be any shooter.

Unfortunately, “AvP’s” antiquated controls — which lack a lean or even crouch mechanic and rely too much on auto-aim assists to bail out some sloppy aiming precision — ensure it isn’t even just another shooter once the scares peel away and the dated mechanics are exposed. The action is more uninspired than truly bad, but when the game drops piles of enemies in one spot and expects players to avoid making mistakes while it makes so many, it feels pretty cheap.

Fleeting flashes of excellence also seep into the alien and Predator campaigns, which value stealth and melee combat over gunplay. Disabling the lights, climbing the walls and terrorizing humans is a fun thrill early in the alien campaign, and the Predator campaign offers enough trick (albeit with a slightly clumsy control scheme) to leap around the map and massacre humans, aliens and androids alike.

But these two campaigns eventually suffer the same problem: Most of what you see and do will be seen and done within each campaign’s opening scenario, and the same flat levels players see as the marine await yet again once the novelty of both campaigns wears off. None of the three campaigns requires more than three hours to finish, but all manage to wear out their welcomes because of how repetitive they are with regard to design, tactics and enemy intelligence.

Online multiplayer (18 players competitive, four players co-op) fares little better. The survival co-op mode, which pits player-controlled marines against endless alien waves, is just the single-player game’s bad controls and A.I. on overdrive.

Most of the competitive modes, meanwhile, are dampened by player-controlled aliens’ and Predators’ melee kill animations, which are so excessively drawn out that by the time Player A kills Player B, Player C is halfway finished killing a hopelessly vulnerable Player A. A few modes that play off the series fiction establish gameplay conditions that mitigate these domino effects, but it’s a testament to “AvP’s” overall haphazardness that such a hindrance plagues any, much less the majority, of these modes.

—–

World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars
For: Xbox 360
From: Big Ant Studios/THQ
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild suggestive themes, mild violence)

The enormously successful advent of $10-$20 downloadable games left doubts that games like “World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars” — a retail product that shares shelf space with $60 games but costs $20 out of the gate — would ever have a place on the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.

They do, it seems, but they probably shouldn’t, because while times have changed, the problems that plagued shoestring-budget games with retail ambitions have not.

It’s not like “Outlaws” lacks merit, either. This is the first racing game in the Xbox 360′s existence that bears the World of Outlaws branding, and with that come racers, vehicles and tracks that fans of the touring series will certainly recognize. For those who never even heard of WoO, there’s value as well, because the combination of sprint cars and tightly-contained dirt tracks is a rare sight in a racing game landscape that’s beyond saturated in most every other area.

But the true value of a racing game always, always hinges on how it moves on the track, and “Outlaws” simply lacks polish in too many areas to make all that uniqueness enough of a compensation.

Most of “Outlaws’” shortcomings are forgivable. The overall interface is cumbersome and, in the career mode, a little bit confusing to maneuver at first. The career mode feels a bit thin, particularly with regard to car tuning flexibility, but that’s understandable given the budget price. Same with the graphics on the track: “Outlaws” looks a few years old, the cars appear to glide on the dirt rather than dig into it, and despite the box’s promise to the contrary, the lines torn into the dirt don’t seem to have much effect on the action in subsequent laps. Not ideal, but no big deal.

But things completely fall apart in the one area — control — where “Outlaws” couldn’t afford to slip. Steering is entirely too touchy, and the cars lack any sensation of weight. Taking a corner with any kind of force practically guarantees a spinout, but the alternative — babysitting the left stick and practically tapping it so as not to oversteer — just isn’t fun.

Compounding the problem is the game’s A.I., which seems to have no such trouble. Make one mistake in a 30-lap race, and catching up is nearly inconceivable. There simply is no reward for driving dangerously, because doing so is pretty much impossible, and that’s a killer for a game that’s trying to sell arcade-style excitement.

Things fare slightly better in multiplayer (two players split-screen, eight online), if only because everyone is prone to the same steering issues and the playing field is more level. “Outlaws” doesn’t do anything fancy online, but it lets players tweak races according to basic parameters and throws in a hot potato-style bomb tag variant for those who want a little extra danger. But the likelihood of a strong online community surrounding a shaky, budget-priced game is practically a pipe dream, so make sure you have friends waiting to play before placing too much stock in this portion of the game.

—–

Walk it Out!
For: Wii
From: Konami
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief, mild lyrics)

Given the Wii’s initial potential to immerse players and simulate the experience of interacting more freely with virtual worlds and activities, a game built around the entirely banal practice of walking — yes, walking — would seem just a wee bit ridiculous. Even with the Wii’s unexpected transformation into a virtual fitness tool taken into account, who needs a $30 piece of software to motivate them to walk in place?

The good news is that even the goofily-named “Walk It Out!” seems to understand how absurd the whole thing sounds on the surface. The better news is that in subscribing to a formula that’s pretty much a descendent of Konami’s “Dance Dance Revolution” games, it circumvents the issue and emerges as a fun, original and surprisingly rewarding exercise tool.

As implied by the title, the premise in “WIO” is to, in fact, walk it out. Some introductory tutorials and the occasional trainer chatter aside, the game’s primary mode drops players (either solo or with a friend via local co-op) into an open world, and they’re free to walk around at their leisure while the game tracks their step counts.

The kicker is the way “WIO” engages players’ completist tendencies by scattering more than 3,500 icons across the world. Each icon has a price attached to it, and steps are the game’s currency. Accumulate steps and point the Wii remote to “purchase” icons, and the game turns those icons into scenery, new songs for the soundtrack and new pathways that open the environment up for additional exploration.

Players who get into “WIO’s” gamey, collectable nature will rack up steps without even thinking about the working going into doing so. If the point of an exercise video game is to make players forget they’re exercising, this one nails it.

But what of the actual act of walking in place? It works, and surprisingly well, because Konami translates the rote original act into a light rhythm game. “WIO” comes with 120 songs, and players who want to accumulate steps will need to step in time with each song’s beat to do so. The variance of beats gives “WIO” about as much variety as one could expect from a game centered around walking. For players who find “Dance Dance Revolution’s” aerobic demands appealing but can’t get past those games’ difficulty, this offers the same benefits without the imposing drawbacks.

To no surprise, “WIO” supports Konami’s dance pad controller for Wii. But the pad isn’t required, and the game counts steps with surprising competency when players simply put the nunchuck attachment in their pockets and walk on any flat surface. The Wii Balance Board yields similarly accurate results, and it emerges as the ideal setup by giving players something solid to stand on and control their steps.

As any respectable fitness game should, “WIO” tracks calories, steps, distance walked and (special to this game) how competently players stay on the beat. The results aren’t entirely scientific, of course, but any gauge is better than no gauge, and the game’s ability to graph progress over time is a nice touch.

——

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom
For: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade
From: The Odd Gentlemen/2K Play
ESRB’s Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)
Price: $10

For all the wonderful ways 2008′s “Braid” combined art, music, storytelling, “Super Mario Bros.”-style 2D action and some truly mind-melting puzzles built around time manipulation, the production struck many as unnecessarily stuffy. For those folks, “The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom” is a double victory, because in addition to sparkling on all the same facets, “Winterbottom” does it with a sly grin and under the silliest pretense possible (a pie thief manipulating time and space to, yep, steal pies). “Winterbottom’s” puzzles aren’t quite as elaborate as “Braid’s,” if only because the game elects to break them into single-screen challenges instead of larger sidescrolling levels. But the intellectual itch this one scratches is completely the same and, in the hardest challenges, every bit as rewarding. That victory alone makes “Winterbottom” a no-brainer to recommend. But the game significantly sweetens the deal with an outstanding audiovisual presentation that brilliantly recalls the whimsical style of an old silent film serial. The game’s nefarious but silly sense of humor falls perfectly in line: Winterbottom might be the most lovable video game ratfink since Wario, and the rhyming between-level dialogue is as funny as it us clever.

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.

——

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.

——

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.

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.

—–

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.

—–

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.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers
For: Wii
From: Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Teen (alcohol reference, crude humor, fantasy violence, mild language, suggestive themes)

For better or worse — and a trip through this game provides ample evidence of both — “Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers” is trying to do exactly what Wii games should be doing in the system’s fourth year of existence. Whether the result is good or not — and again, the pendulum swings both ways — “Bearers” does things that are unique, weird and physically impossible on other hardware.

“Bearers” certainly gets off to a fun start — first, by tossing players into a free-falling shootout in the sky, and then by putting them at the literal wheel of a humungous airship for a chase sequence through tight canyon corridors. The convoluted storytelling aside — and per “Crystal Chronicles” tradition, the tale of good, evil and crystals is a potpourri of incomprehensible mythology and bad dialogue — it’s clear almost immediately that “Bearers” is going for a much more action-oriented bent than its series predecessors.

The game’s primary means of action also steps far outside traditional “Final Fantasy” bounds: Using a cursor-centric aiming system, players point the Wii remote at people and objects on the screen and then lift them into the air, Darth Vader-style, to move or toss them around. Anyone who played “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed” can grasp the combat and level-manipulation possibilities here, and while “Bearers’” control scheme and camerawork leave plenty to be desired, it nonetheless fulfills that promise.

The combination of this core mechanic, a sloppily passable story, “Final Fantasy” iconography and a consistent barrage of experimental diversions — from Chocobo races to a flawed but fun stealth challenge to a completely bizarre game involving girls, a beach and good balance — is enough to make “Bearers” fun when it works.

But “Bearers” often falls short, and when it does, it falls hard. Worse, the most offensive problems stem from lousy design decisions that would seem almost mandatorily avoidable in 2010.

Far and away the game’s biggest issue is the onscreen prompts it uses to instruct players on what to do during these one-off diversions. Too many of them are confusingly vague, while a few are cryptic to the point of misleading, throwing up meters without explanation and displaying controller animations that only barely resemble what a player is supposed to actually do. “Bearers” is generous with save checkpoints and many of these diversions are impossible to completely fail outright, but stumbling your way through a badly-designed challenge isn’t fun simply because it doesn’t halt your progress.

The problems are less acute during the main adventure, but they’re no aggravating. The opaque map and navigation system feel strikingly unfinished given Square-Enix’s experience with interface design in traditional “Final Fantasy” games, and getting lost or slogging from point to point is entirely too easy. That isn’t helped by the fact that during these slogs, there simply isn’t much to do. For every example of blinding ingenuity “Bearers” displays, there are two or three that feel perplexingly amateurish, and the ratio may prove too much for all but the most ardent and adventurous “Final Fantasy” fans to handle for very long.

—–

Borderlands: Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC
Requires: Borderlands
From: Gearbox Software/2K Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, mature humor, strong language)
Price: $10

Though entirely enjoyable as a solo first-person shooter experience, “Borderlands” relies on a story, quest and inventory structure that’s best enjoyed with teammates (four players online, two locally) via cooperative play. Happily, players who want it both ways have the flexibility to play parts of the game alone and bring in friends on the fly without starting over as a new character.

Good thing, too, because whether you’ve played “Borderlands” alone, with friends or both up to this point, there’s pretty much no point in playing the “Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot” downloadable expansion without help.

As its name somewhat implies, “Riot” ditches the typical exploratory nature of “Borderlands’” quests in favor of post-apocalyptic arena combat: Moxxi is the host, and her “sport” consists of a survivor or four shooting their way out of a labyrinth that’s parts shanty town, stadium and game show studio. Moxxi emcees the action, and between her amusing taunts and the general gaudy design of the three arenas, “Riot” is a fantastic demonstration of the audiovisual spectacle that makes “Borderlands” so unique in spite of its bleak setting and genre.

Just don’t bask in the spectacle alone unless you really enjoy punishment.

“Riot” divides each match into five rounds, and those rounds split into five themed waves. Completing each wave consists of mowing down every enemy in the arena, and the reward for doing so is a brief supply drop of ammo and health. When all five waves of a round are wiped out, Moxxi drops a few items of actual value beneath the stage. Complete all 25 waves, and the match ends. Easy, right?

Not so much — and definitely not if you’re playing alone. Players who succumb to the enemy can continue to assist in the fight, but are confined to a penalty box until the next wave. If all players get sent to the box, gameplay halts and the round starts over from the first wave.

The task of conquering the harder waves and rounds is daunting enough, particularly when Moxxi alters the rules to remove gravity, nullify certain weapons useless or even strip away players’ shields. The challenge amplifies when fighting alone, and it’s made arguably unfair by the fact that if you get banished to the penalty box, the round automatically starts over by virtue of your having no teammates on the ground. Because “Riot” puzzlingly awards no experience points for killing enemies in the arena, it amounts to a lot of effort for no reward.

Though the continued emphasis on teamwork in “Borderlands” is admirable, it would’ve been nice, just this one time and only because the pool of “Borderlands” players has understandably shrunk since October, if Gearbox backed down a little and allowed solo players to enlist an A.I.-controlled teammate or two. “Riot” offers players a mountain of content and perhaps the stiffest challenge so far, but unless you make a pact with friends to take it on together, proceed with caution.

—–

Piyo Blocks
For: iPhone/iPod Touch
From: Big Pixel Studios
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $2

Turnabout appears to be fair play to “Piyo Blocks,” which borrows some unmistakable design points from a game, “Zoo Keeper,” that itself was a pretty transparent knock-off of “Bejeweled.” If you’ve played “Bejeweled” — and pretty much everyone in the world has at this point — the core gameplay in “Blocks” offers little surprise: A grid of colored blocks fills the screen, and players switch two blocks to create as many rows of three or more as possible before time runs out. Creating rows clears the blocks and adds some time to the clock, and meeting certain quotas (as defined by “Blocks’” three separate modes) advances the action to new levels with trickier (albeit randomly-generated) starting patterns. Though it doesn’t have “Keeper’s” charming animal characters, “Blocks” still pretty faithfully mimics that game’s cheerful, intentionally blocky good looks. More importantly, it gets the basic mechanics of “Keeper’s” controls — including the ability to string combos together while the game clears other blocks away — down perfectly. For a game that costs less than a bag of chips, the level of polish, if not the originality of the concept, is most impressive. For good measure, Big Pixel includes support for the OpenFeint network, which provides online leaderboards, friends support, chat functionality and achievements.

Where the Wild Things Are
Reviewed for: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii
Also available for: Nintendo DS
From: Griptonite Games/Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, fantasy violence)

Invariably, once Christmas wraps and the annual holiday onslaught of megablockbusters eases up, there remain a few games that bear the scars of coming out at precisely the wrong time and being completely overlooked for doing so.

In 2009, that dubious distinction belongs to “Where the Wild Things Are,” a not-necessarily-for-kids’ game hopelessly tied to the release date of a not-necessarily-for-kids’ movie and subsequently overlooked for coming out smack in the middle of a tidal wave of bigger releases. A long history of lousy games based on kids’ movies, and the perception that creates for this game, didn’t help matters.

But “WTWTA” borrows heavily from the Playstation 2 classic “Ico” and, surprisingly, succeeds where other like-minded games failed. Players control Max, the mischievous little boy who washes up uninvited on the island of the Wild Things, and most of the game’s action consists of the same mix of light combat and ledge jumping, rock climbing, and environmental puzzles that “Ico” did so masterfully well. Max is easy to control, and the semi-fixed camera angle — also borrowed from “Ico” — presents each environment in a manner that’s intuitive without making traversing it a complete cakewalk. The Wild Things add a wrinkle to the challenges by lending a hand and further altering the landscape whenever they can.

As should be expected from a game based on a movie that itself is based on what practically is a picture book, “WTWTA’s” story isn’t exactly a narrative barnburner. But Griptonite makes good on with what it has to work with: The game looks pretty good and animates nicely, and the Wild Things emerge as really likable characters in spite of their secondary role throughout most of the game.

Like so many other family games, “WTWTA” pads the main story content by dropping various collectables in each level. Unlike as with most games, though, rounding them up is something a worthy pursuit. The game doesn’t overload the environments with hundreds of useless objects to round up, nor does it hide items in places players would never bother to look. There’s a challenge in finding everything, but it isn’t so obtuse as to be a waste of time, and finding them pays off in the form of rewards — some of them leading to fun new optional challenges — in the hub level that doubles as the Wild Things’ home base.

The sum of this content (there’s nothing to do beyond the single-player adventure) doesn’t quite justify the full price the game commanded back at launch, but a quick price drop means finding “WTWTA” brand-new for upwards of $20 less already is a feasible proposition. At that price, it’s hard not to recommend it: Younger players will appreciate a game made for them that doesn’t insult their gaming intelligence, and their parents — or really, anyone in need of an “Ico”-style fix — might come away surprised by just how much this innocuous piece of tie-in merchandising gets right.

—–

Guitar Hero: Van Halen
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and Playstation 2
From: Neversoft/Activision
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild lyrics, mild suggestive themes)

“Guitar Hero’s” previous single-band releases, devoted to Aerosmith and Metallica, were already of questionable quality before “Rock Band” kicked the bar out of the atmosphere with “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

Though a perfectly tenable game for reasons to be detailed later, “Guitar Hero: Van Halen” doesn’t brighten the picture. Depending on your opinion of Val Halen’s present-day relevance and your tolerance for “Guitar Hero” releases in the span of a single year, it might even constitute a leap backward.

Per convention, Van Halen’s visual fingerprints are all over the box and interface, and the band’s likenesses come to life in typical semi-cartoony fashion. This time, though, politics and squabbling have left former bassist Michael Anthony and former lead singers Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone off the bill. Consequently, none of the band’s Hagar- and Cherone-fronted catalog appears, either. Whether the loss of that music and iconography is a big deal will vary from fan to fan, but there’s no arguing it doesn’t splinter whatever hope “GH:VH” had for documenting its subject matter the way “Beatles” did.

Then again, Neversoft’s inability to learn from “Beatles” — or the failings of its own single-band games — torpedoed that hope without the band’s help.

“GH:VH’s” 47-song track list is, like those other games, significantly smaller than the numbered (but same-priced) “Guitar Hero” game. Bbut the real issue comes from 19 of those songs being either Eddie Van Halen guitar solos or the product of bands other than Van Halen. The game claims the other music has some stylistic connection to Van Halen’s music, but one look at the track list (Fountains of Wayne? Third Eye Blind? Weezer?) suggests otherwise. Whatever effort would have been necessary to kiss and make up with Hagar, if not everyone from Van Halen’s past, would more than have been worth it if it resulted in a coherent, complete tribute to the band’s catalog. This, by contrast, feels like a track pack tucked inside a full-priced game with some extra filler to justify the price.

On that note, it comes down to whether the tracks, which would cost nearly $80 if totaled up as downloadable content for “Guitar Hero 5,” justify the purchase. “GH:VH” at least does things — namely, a new career mode and a new suite of achievements/trophies in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions — a track pack alone cannot.

But do you want to buy something Activision seems reluctant to sell? The company gave the game away to anyone who purchased “GH5″ earlier in the year, and it waited two months to sneak it onto shelves after most people’s holiday shopping had concluded. Pushing the game out the door at full price after previously giving it away seems like a move made for the half-hearted heck of it, which seems to have been “GH:VH’s” artistic approach as well. Watching a publisher practically wash its hand of a product doesn’t affect the quality of the product itself, but it’s hard to get excited about a game when the people who made it seem not to care.

—–

LittleBigPlanet: Pirates of the Caribbean Premium Level Kit
For: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network
Requires: LittleBigPlanet
From: Media Molecule/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief, mild cartoon violence)
Price: $6

Media Molecule has made more than good on its promise to consistently support “LittleBigPlanet” long after its late 2008 release, so the appearance of a “Pirates of the Caribbean” level kit would superficially seem no more interesting than the numerous other costumes and packs that preceded it. But with this level kit comes a new element — water — whose significance needs no real  explanation for those already familiar with “LittleBigPlanet’s” modus operandi as a physics-heavy 2D platformer. And beyond the clumsy introduction — the Playstation Store’s description of the pack doesn’t even mention water, much less its significance — the new content works just as one would hope it would. Media Molecule’s attention to physics detail has gone a long way toward establishing “LittleBigPlanet’s” identity, and its year-in-the-making take on water enjoys the same level of care. Implementing it in new and existing level designs is as easy as adding any other ingredient via the game’s level creation tool, and the tool’s extreme flexibility allows players to utilize and control water in a multitude of imaginative ways. That, in turn, gives a game with near-endless legs even more staying power going into 2010. Not bad for six dollars. (For those who care, the rest of the pack, which includes “Caribbean” character costumes, five new single-player levels, new PSN trophies and new music/objects/stickers/materials with which to further modify levels, is pretty hearty as well.)

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.

—–

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.

—–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—–

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

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

Rabbids Go Home
For: Wii
From: Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (cartoon violence, crude humor, mild language, mild suggestive themes, tobacco reference)

Dreary though it generally has been, 2009 at least has been rich with funny video games, and with “Rabbids Go Home,” it has saved perhaps the most deranged for last.

“Home” also finally provides a full-fledged, story-driven game for the Rabbids, an anthropomorphic species of deranged not-quite bunnies who stole the show as the supporting cast for one of the Wii’s first mini-game compilations. They’re as bullheaded and insane as ever, and in this instance, the goal is to help them return to their presumed home on the moon by — how else? — loading everything that isn’t bolted down into a stray shopping cart and forming it all into a makeshift ladder that extends from Earth to the moon.

Absurd though that premise is, it’s right at home in “Home,” which catapults the Rabbids to their complete crazed potential — a mix of nefarious egomania, stupidly dogged determination and the kind of joy and hilarity only a caffeinated child could manufacture — and unleashes it on an pleasantly cartoony semi-open world of unsuspecting humans and dogs. Everything about what the Rabbids do is reckless at best and borderline malevolent at worst, but because all the havoc they wreak is fairly harmless — the most damage they can do to a human, for instance, is to spook them out of their overgarments — it’s not exactly a crisis of conscience to enjoy how stupidly silly the whole thing is.

The Rabbids, for their part, take as good as they give: A brilliant interface mechanic allows players to virtually peek inside the innards of their Wii remotes, where they’ll find a stray Rabbid bouncing around wildly (and seemingly enjoying it) as they shake the remote. A character editor allows players to deform the Rabbids in all manner of ways, and this, too, only seems to please them immensely.

In terms of actual gameplay, “Home” keeps it arcadey and simple: Players move the Rabbids (and their shopping cart) through standalone and hub levels, each of which contains hundreds of visible and hidden items to hoard and add to the moon pile. The object is to grab as much stuff as possible while also fulfilling whatever objectives any given stretch of any given level might toss out, including time trial challenges and puzzle-like instances where the Rabbids must fulfill a quota or activate a trigger to push forward.

It sounds pretty plain on paper, but “Home” pulls it off by doing all the little things distinctively right. The levels are smartly designed and sprinkled with enough variety to make uncovering every last secret and hidden pathway a legitimately fun challenge. The simple act of movement — from the unwieldily sensation of swinging a shopping cart around a corner at a high speed to the similar satisfaction that comes from maneuvering other (unspoiled) contraptions later on — is dead on. And should all else fail, the game’s manic, hilariously infectious energy makes it impossibly hard not to stick with it, if only to see what the Rabbids will do next.

—–

Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles
For: Nintendo Wii
From: Cavia, inc./Capcom
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, language)

Two years ago, Capcom’s relentless milking of “Resident Evil” lore took an inspired turn in the form of “Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles,” which presented old series storylines through the fresh eyes of an intense, arcadey light gun-style shooter that proved a great fit both for the franchise and the Wii remote’s particular capabilities.

Where that game didn’t go, “Darkside Chronicles” does, revisiting the events of “Resident Evil 2″ and “Resident Evil: Code Veronica” through basically the same setup, albeit with the kind of tinkering one would expect from a sequel with two years’ worth of learned lessons in its corner.

Most welcome is the new default assignment for the nunchuck attachment’s joystick, which now allows players to quickly switch between different firearms with a quick flick in any corresponding direction. The stick’s former task — a limited manual control over the camera — is no longer, but considering how useless that control was in “Umbrella” and what a time-saver this new trick is here, it isn’t missed at all here. “Chronicles” still supports playing the game with just the Wii remote, but the extra functionality the nunchuck provides — combined with the game’s allowance for reassigning one-button melee attacks and healing to any button on either controller — is pretty invaluable.

Elsewhere, “Darkside” doesn’t mess with what made “Umbrella” work, though it also doesn’t overcome all of that game’s aggravations. Most exasperating is the inability to switch to a new weapon once a reload animation kicks in: When a monster is clawing at your face and you’re helpless to do anything about it because your character is slowly reloading the shotgun, you’ll find out just how annoying it can be. The camera once again falls prone to bouts of unnecessary shakey-cam-itis, but it shows restraint more than not.

Tallied up, the formula still works. A little creative liberty is needed to transform what was a solitary horror adventure into a mindless arcade romp that accommodates two characters at all times — like “Umbrella,” “Darkside” supports two-player local co-op — but the stories ultimately survive the transition and arguably benefit along their journey. The action is as crazed as one expects from a light gun-style game, but the storytelling does get its due, and a brand-new storyline does a nice job of filling in some gaps the old games never addressed.

As has become an extremely welcome tradition in more modern “RE” games, “Darkside” offers a ton of replayability for players who want it. A long, winding weapon upgrade system allows players to max out weapons and carry their arsenal from one completed game into a brand-new game, and players who invest the many hours needed to max out their weapons can parlay that firepower into higher end-level scores and rankings. “Darkside” lacks any sort of online multiplayer component, but for the right crowd, the game’s online leaderboard system provides a much more valuable utility.

—–

God of War Collection
For: Playstation 3
From: Sony/Bluepoint Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language)

One could argue that releasing a value-priced double dose of “God of War” will backfire on Sony, which will try to sell the all-new “God of War III” to the same crowd not even four months later.

On the other hand: Who cares? And why don’t publishers do stuff like this more often? “God of War Collection” rounds up two of the Playstation 2′s best pure action games, drops them onto a single Blu-Ray disc, gives them a high-definition graphical upgrade, adds in the modern amenities (Playstation Network trophies, PS3 firmware integration) expected from a Playstation 3 release, and sells the package for less — $40 — than each game originally fetched by itself on the PS2.

Though the inclusion of PSN trophies might be the biggest selling point for players who finished both games on the PS2 but can’t resist the allure of a new reward for doing so again, “Collection’s” defining feature is, with good reason, the graphical upgrade. Portions of both games’ interfaces remain ostensibly designed with standard-definition televisions in mind, but the overall visual presentation receives a dramatic resolution bump that brings the series into true high definition — 720p, for those familiar with the metrics — for the first time. The games previously had some limited upscaling options in their PS2 incarnations, but nothing that compares to the facelift they receive here.

The upgrade isn’t without its oddities. Some of those interface assets look out of place in HD, and both games occasionally trot out a graphical element that appears to have been overlooked to a jarring degree during the transformation. Hardest hit are some of the cutscenes, which used in-game assets but were pre-rendered and presented as videos. They looked better than the in-game action on PS2, but now, in their unchanged state, they actually look worse — not dramatically, but enough for it to be noticeable.

Fortunately, “Collection” looks strikingly good where it counts most. Both games look worlds better in action than their PS2 origins would imply they would, and “GOW2″ in particular looks right at home on the PS3. Both games also animate at a rocksteady 60 frames per second, which wasn’t always the case on the PS2.

In terms of additional content, “Collection’s” one bonus — a voucher good toward downloading a “GOW3″ demo before the rest of the world gets a taste in 2010 — is pretty apt. The behind-the-scenes video content that shipped with “GOW2″ also is on the disc, and in a nice touch, all of it is accessible through the PS3 firmware’s video player instead of just within the game. That’s for the best, too: If “Collection” has one seemingly avoidable annoyance, it’s that once you’ve booted up “GOW1″ or “GOW2,” the only way to access the rest of the game’s content is to quit to the cross media bar and boot it back up.

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.

—–

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.

—–

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.