Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Big Huge Games/38 Studios/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, suggestive themes)
Price: $60

Role-playing games aren’t expected to play as crisply as pure action games do, and action games need not run as deep in the storytelling and character-building departments as role-playing games do. These are the compromises we’ve come to accept and expect.

So when something like “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” comes along and shoots for the moon in both areas, it’s hard not to pay attention.

And when it hits the moon flush, it’s impossible.

It doesn’t hurt that, while doing this, “Reckoning” also inspires hope that it’s capable of putting a similar charge in the stagnant art of fantasy storytelling.

Whether it actually succeeds may come down to how you play. “Reckoning’s” massive world easily holds more than 100 hours’ worth of main and side quests awaiting completion, and each has a story to tell or character/land/race/legend to introduce. But as often happens with a story that sprawling, tales have a tendency to get weighed down and spread thin amid a gargantuan list of names to remember and quest objectives that, at least structurally, are more formulaic than not.

At the same time, there’s plenty to love about the colorful world in which “Reckoning’s” legend unfolds, and your role in it — as a mortal human who returns from death to shatter an immortal race’s sacred (and comforting) belief that everyone’s fate is set in stone and documented in full — is a terrific catalyst around which to assemble it. That storyline can’t help but occasionally disperse in the sea of characters, quests and everything else “Reckoning” offers outside the main road, but if you tend to it regularly and stay abreast of the mythology, the story makes good on the possibilities.

For its part, “Reckoning’s” interfaces make it pretty painless to manage not only your quest log, but the usual host of traditional role-playing elements. Though combat is as real-time here as it is in a game like “God of War,” classic role-playing underpinnings — hit points, experience points, dropped spoils from defeated enemies — still apply.

Most of what “Reckoning” does is borrowed, but it’s borrowed from the best. Dialogue trees and moral barometers are Bioware game staples. The chance to find (and craft) rare armor and weapons is heavily reminiscent of “Diablo,” right down to the color-coded system for increasingly rare tiers of loot. Lockpicking, extracting plants for potions, joining factions, committing crimes and warping to locations you’ve previously discovered are “Elder Scrolls” hallmarks. And while the system for leveling up your character is smartly designed around your fateless blank slate, it’s assembled using timeless role-playing pieces.

Where “Reckoning” surprises is with how it puts those pieces into play. The aforementioned “God of War” comparison wasn’t an oversell, because “Reckoning’s” polished action plays markedly in that vein — fast, violent, and with equal importance placed on your skills as a player and the choices you make for your character’s abilities and arsenal.

Initially, when your skills are limited and your inventory light, it’s fun but simple. But as you level up, unlock new abilities and tap into the surprisingly wide array of weapon classes, the doors blow off the barn. Streamlined controls make it possible to transition between melee, ranged, and magic attacks without pausing the combo, much less the game, and as tougher enemies appear, “Reckoning” places a premium on blocking, evasion and (to a wholly optional degree) stealth tactics as well.

Before long, “Reckoning’s” combat is dishing out a kitchen sink’s worth of ways to play, and doing so at the same fast pace at which it began. It’s always been fun to find a rare, absurdly powerful weapon in a role-playing game, but being able to wield it with abandon — as “Reckoning” gleefully allows — takes that fun to a whole different plane.

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SoulCalibur V
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Namco Bandai
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, suggestive themes, violence)
Price: $60

Call it a shame, call it wonderful or call it inevitable and/or overdue. But if you’ve traditionally counted on “SoulCalibur” to give you a comprehensive single-player fighting game experience that’s accessible to all, your calls to “SoulCalibur V” may go unanswered.

It’s a sign of the times. Since “Street Fighter IV” revitalized the genre, fighting games have become kings of the mountain with regard to attracting high-level players and packing ballroom arenas and online lobbies with those bent on challenging or even simply watching them play. It’s a serious business, and “SCV” feels like Namco’s attempt to reposition the series as one to be coveted rather than mocked by that crowd.

Whether “SCV” succeeds at that is a question only that crowd can definitely answer in time. But the strides it makes toward that end at least give it a chance, even if they feel like me-too mechanics instead of innovations.

To wit, the most plate-shifting change to the fighting system, the Critical Edge, is “SCV’s” answer to “SFIV’s” Ultra Combo: You fill up a Critical Gauge meter, pull off nearly the same stick/button combo, and unleash an attack that’s visually spectacular and devastating to your opponent’s health. (Also customary: If you’re bad at these games, executing a Critical Edge is, let’s say, trying.)

Fortunately, the Critical Gauge feeds into other, easier maneuvers as well, including Brave Edge attacks (slightly more powerful versions of regular moves) and parrying. The inability to parry at will without cost means you’ll have to time your blocks and pick your spots to fight defensively — no curling into a ball allowed.

Along with the need to manage the Critical Gauge for maximum effectiveness, “SCV” places a premium on fighting smart instead of mashing buttons. That’s a pillar of any respectable fighting game. But if you’re accustomed to playing “SoulCalibur” with your button-wailing hat on, take heed: Unless you’re playing against like-minded friends or the A.I. on its easiest setting, you will be punished.

(Disappointingly, while “SCV” offers a training mode in which to practice at will, there’s no in-game tutorial that effectively lays it all out. If you need lessons, look to Youtube.)

As should be expected with the shifting mindset, “SCV” is plenty capable with regard to competitive play. The lag that tarnished “SoulCalibur IV’s” online component isn’t present here, and the new offerings — spectator mode, the ability to watch other players’ replays — are obvious concessions to those who want to study how others play.

Most fun is the Global Colosseo mode, which turns the online lobby into a 100-person virtual meeting place where players can chat, size each other up and set up matches as if in an arcade. With the Fighter Creator mode back and considerably more robust than before, there’s no telling whom you’ll end up fighting against once you dip into these waters.

If, however, you flock to “SoulCalibur” precisely to get away from the competitive scene to which “SCV” caters, you might be dismayed to discover just how costly that groveling was to its single-player offerings.

In particular, the abundance of match variants and challenge missions that made the series a must-play even when its only multiplayer offering was two players on the same couch? Nowhere to be found in “SCV,” which includes a standard arcade mode, an even more standard quick battle mode and a completely substandard story mode (roughly two hours long, no branches, one ending and most between-fight “cutscenes” comprised of little more than static storyboards and spoken dialogue) as its prime single-player offerings. Unless you’re willing to bite the bullet, make like Namco and join the competitive fray, that’s not a lot of return on your $60 investment.

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Niko
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: Sulake Corporation Oy
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: Free for first six levels/$2 to unlock full game

There’s a big gap between the kind of platformers you can play with a fully-stocked controller and the stuff we typically get on buttonless mobile devices, and “Niko’s” attempt to close that gap just a bit is most welcome. Instead of automatically running forward, Niko (a cute little creature of unknown classification) waits for you to control him directly with standard virtual left and right arrow buttons. And instead of tapping the screen to make him jump and hoping you timed it right, an “Angry Birds”-style slingshot mechanic allows you to control the distance and angle of the jump to almost foolproof effect. (Fortunately, if you miscalculate or need to change tactics, you can adjust Niko’s trajectory while he’s airborne.) Control touches like that are, of course, nothing new in the land of buttons and joysticks. But they’re an order of magnitude more sophisticated than what is typically found in mobile games, and “Niko” makes all the right moves — precise controls, a clean interface and elaborate, wide-open levels that exploration as well as survival — to make them work in this space. Like any good platformer these days, it’s also as easy or tough as you want it to be. A generous checkpoint system means anyone can feasibly reach a level’s finish line, but if you want to do it right — a three-star performance, no lives lost, all collectibles found and an enviable high score on the online leaderboards — your work is cut out for you.

Run Roo Run
For: iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad (separate versions)
From: 5th Cell
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $1 (iPhone/iPod Touch), $2 (iPad)

iOS gamers, are you tired yet of running games? You must be. While the genre — wherein your onscreen character runs automatically and you handle jumping and other forms of evasion by tapping the screen — is a perfect fit for a device with no tactile buttons, it’s grown so saturated as to become an indictment of the platform’s limitations.

With that said, can you maybe handle one more? It’s charming and very well made, and even if you’re sick of the same old thing, it adds a couple wrinkles that very effectively set it apart.

In “Run Roo Run,” you star as an adorable but vengeful cartoon kangaroo who treks across Australia to rescue her offspring. As you might guess, your job is to keep Roo hopping safely over obstacles while she automatically handles all the forward motion. Not exactly a trailblazing idea.

But “Roo” breaks away by presenting itself as a series of levels instead of one endless run where the only goal is to stay alive and accumulate as high a score as your skills allow. Each level is short, too — really short, in fact, with the entire thing fitting on a single screen. The earliest stages present maybe two obstacles to leap over, and you can clear most of the opening levels in three seconds or fewer.

Fortunately, there are 420 stages to complete, and with each 21-level chapter you unlock, “Roo” sprinkles in a new wrinkle beyond simple hopping. In chapter two, for instance, Roo acquires a limited-use double jump, while chapter four introduces fans that blow her upward. Later chapters bring forth tire swings, moving platforms, oil slicks, cannons, level-altering switches and more.

Once an ability or apparatus makes its entrance, “Roo” doesn’t isolate it to the chapter that introduces it. After Roo learns to double-jump and long jump off a bouncy tire, those abilities can come into play in later levels while she gets acclimated with another new ability. Gradually, those insultingly simple early levels blossom into intricate cause-and-effect obstacle courses that put multiple tricks to use in rapid fashion. Everything still takes place within the constraints of a single screen, but Roo might have to trek to the end of the screen and back before reaching the goal becomes a possibility.

The task grows increasingly devious in “Roo’s” later chapters, and it’s downright frightening in each chapter’s optional six-pack of Extreme levels, which rival “Super Meat Boy’s” harder levels in terms of testing players’ ability to navigate a small, trap-laden space with Jedi-like quickness.

And yet — and in a nod to another page from “Super Meat Boy’s” playbook — “Roo” never aggravates even at its most dastardly. Whenever you fail a level, there’s no reset screen to wait though: Roo immediately returns to the start of the level, which marks the spots where you jumped in your most recent unsuccessful attempt. Fail again, and it instantly resets again, and you’re free to keep trying — without even a slight interruption — until you get it right. You’ll get gold medal scores for clearing levels quickly and in one attempt, but you can experience “Roo’s” every level regardless of how much time you need to do so.

Good thing, too, because in another nice twist, 5th Cell plans to release free weekly 10-packs of new levels to complement the 420 that come included straight away. There’s no telling how many weeks they plan to do this or whether these packs will introduce new gimmicks beyond those already in the game, but with a price tag like that, it’s hard to go wrong.

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Rayman Origins
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Wii
From: Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, mild cartoon violence, suggestive themes)
Price: Varies

Every post-holiday afterglow, when the gaming industry briefly but emphatically hibernates in advance of livelier spring release schedules, there inevitably emerges a game that demands another look after getting unjustly buried in the sea of sequels and blockbusters that released all around it in November.

In a year as stacked as 2011, there is no shortage of candidates. But even on those grounds, “Rayman Origins” belongs at the top of the list, and it really isn’t even close.

Though not framed as an origins story — or concerned with storytelling in general, really — “Origins” earns its name by taking Rayman back to his two-dimensional roots. Like the 1995 original, “Origins” eschews three dimensions in favor of 2D platforming in the classic “Super Mario Bros.” vein.

But to leave it at that, even with the stipulation that “Origins” does its roots extremely proud, would be to spectacularly undersell how far games have come during Rayman’s 16-year lifetime — a point made apparent the instant “Origins” drops you into the first leg of its first level.

In contrast to the colorful but kinetically-limited sprites of yesteryear, everything that animates in “Origins” does so with the visual fidelity of a Disney cartoon — ridiculously detailed, silkily animated and very overtly expressive. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about Rayman, his friends, his enemies or random objects with no inherent pulse: If it’s capable of being manipulated, “Origins” illustrates that manipulation in beautiful, incredible detail.

Presentationally, “Origins” is the total package, bringing all that line art to life in front of immaculate hand-painted backdrops and setting everything to a diverse soundtrack that’s in tune with the action and unabashedly cheerful without ever approaching grating. Treat it to good speakers and a high-definition display, and it’s a rare case where hyperbole applies. Two-dimensional gaming has never spoiled the eyes and ears quite like this.

With all that said, though, the real shock with “Origins” may be with the way its gameplay evolutions gratify every bit as much as — maybe even more than — its audiovisual advancements.

Partially, it’s a case of one feeding the other. All that pretty animation works in the service of “Origins’” controls, which feel as good as the animation looks. Rayman has an occasional tendency to over-animate and take a perilous step too far, but mostly, his movements are spot on. Even the underwater levels, typically the bane of any platforming game’s existence, are a treat: If you ever played “Ecco the Dolphin” and know how fun it is to dynamically change direction in that game, you’ll be pleased to know “Origins” does it even better.

“Origins” also provides an ample playground in which to put all this beauty to good use. The occasional special stage aside, every level has one goal in plain sight and two more hiding off the main road. Additional secrets abound, and while simply clearing a level isn’t extremely difficult, perfecting one — finding every goal and performing the acrobatics necessary to uncover other secrets — very well can be. The truly accomplished can even replay cleared levels with a speed run option, which requires you to beat the level in one go and under the posted par time to collect a reward.

Tallied up, and fortified with four-player offline co-op that lets friends jump into and out of your game as they please, “Origins” is a surprisingly lengthy game on its first playthrough and a wondrously fun time sink for those bent on replaying and acing it. Perceptions about 2D games aside, it was as deserving of its original $60 tag as nearly any other $60 game. With rapid price drops now in effect, what was easy to recommend before is now a task of cakewalkian proportions.

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Wooords
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: Stray Robot Games
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $2

If you spent part of your childhood forming words from those colorful letter magnets that are ubiquitous in every preschool and kindergarten, get ready to put those magnet-moving skills to good use. “Wooords” drops a handful of letters and tasks you with forming as many words from them as you can, and the interface is a transparent ode to those little plastic magnets. Dragging letters into other letters causes them to stick, and whenever you form a word that (a) contains at least four letters and (b) includes the circled letter that has to be used, it automatically registers and scores the word. Not having to register words manually leaves you free to add and remove letters rapidly to form new words, and as result, “Wooords” is simultaneously relaxing and frantic — relaxing because there’s no overlying time limit to worry about, but frantic because forming strings of words rapidly is worth more points than taking your time. “Wooords” includes a 60-level Classic mode in which the goal is to reach a score threshold to advance, and an arcade-style Word Jam adds a timer that you must keep at bay by hitting score thresholds. But the best mode — especially if your Game Center friends play as well — is the Daily Words challenge, which gives players 24 hours to compile the highest score from the same nine letters everyone else gets. The global leaderboard likely is tainted by cheaters, but the presence of friends-only leaderboards — in this as well as the other modes — makes that less an issue if you pull friends in to challenge you.

Pushmo
For: Nintendo 3DS (via Nintendo eShop)
From: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Price: $7

Though it took its sweet time, a stream of exciting original games is trickling onto Nintendo’s new handheld. Elsewhere, and following an even longer wait, Nintendo’s downloadable portable games channel is finally finding a groove.

No game embodies the light at the end both tunnels quite so perfectly as “Pushmo,” a $7 gem that also ranks among the best puzzle games to appear on any platform this past year.

In “Pushmo,” the goal of each level is to rescue a kid who’s stuck atop a structure and has no safe way to get down. You play as Mallo, and you have complete control of his running and jumping prowess.

Were the structures arranged accessibly, Mallo could simply climb them and rescue the kid. Of course, they aren’t. Each structure is comprised of multiple blocks of different shapes, and your task is to push and pull each piece (toward or away from you, but not side to side) until they’re arranged in such a way that Mallo can navigate upward and save the kid.

As Mallo’s mentor, Papa Blox, reveals different methods for arranging pieces, “Pushmo” offers some disconcertingly elementary levels on which to practice. It’s enough to wonder if the entire game will be entirely too easy to enjoy.

But around level 20, the tricks learned in those insultingly easy early levels start to manifest in more intricate ways.

At around level 55, “Pushmo” starts revealing its true self. The structures — sometimes formed in the shape of objects, animals or Nintendo characters — grow increasingly intricate and require layers of manipulation before a clear solution takes shape. A few additional wrinkles — manholes that warp Mallo around a level, switches that dictate which pieces can be manipulated at a given moment — eventually join the fray to complicate things further.

“Pushmo” comes with a staggering 250 levels baked in, and as the level count rises, it mixes patterns, switches and warp spots to create arrangements that are deviously clever and often look impossible to solve at first glance.

The fun, naturally, comes from the realization that a solution really does exist in there somewhere, and “Pushmo” takes wonderful measures to never let that fun degenerate into frustration.

There are, for instance, no unnecessary limitations in place. No time limit means you’re free to approach a puzzle as methodically as you please, and the lack of a move limit means you can engage in reckless trial and error without penalty. If you become hopelessly tangled, a reset switch at the far end of the level instantly resets everything. And a rewind button literally rewinds your progress if you make a mistake or two and want to hit the undo button without starting over. Finally, the option to skip levels and return later avails itself if you get stuck for a while.

None of these assists dumbs “Pushmo” down in any way whatsoever, but all of them combine to make even the most deviously difficult level a total pleasure to slowly pick apart and solve.

Also a pleasure: “Pushmo’s” presentation. Mallo and friends are the most delightful characters to debut in a Nintendo-branded game in years, and every facet of the game — from polished controls to vibrant level designs to an excellent utilization of stereoscopic 3D — would look first-rate in a $50 retail game.

Also? For your $7, “Pushmo” also throws in a shockingly robust level editor, complete with a means to trade created levels with other players. It’s easy to use, it works, and if “Pushmo” develops an active online community, the best value on the 3DS will only get better.

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Wind-up Knight
Reviewed for: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
Also available for: Android
From: Robot Invader
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)
Price: $1

If you play your share of mobile games, you’ve likely played “Wind-up Knight’s” opening level before. As the Wind-up Knight, you’re automatically and continually running forward, and your only means of control is to jump over trouble when trouble draws near. Yes, another running game. But “Knight’s” second level adds a wrinkle by giving you a sword and challenging you to thwack a few enemies while also leaping over trouble. Momentarily, you’ll also acquire the ability to roll underneath low-lying obstacles and block peril from above with a shield. Once you have a full arsenal, “Knight” truly comes into its own, throwing intricately perilous levels at you and demanding you juggle all four moves (sometimes two simultaneously) to survive the gauntlet. An upgrade system provides armor that affords some room for error (and, this being a mobile game, there naturally is the option to pay real money to unlock items without earning them). But until those slight comforts avail themselves, “Knight” is a make-one-mistake-and-try-again affair, making it one of the purest embodiments of NES-era console gaming to appear on mobile devices thus far. If that sounds like a recipe for aggravation, it’s worth noting “Knight” makes concessions to alleviate frustration: Challenging though its 52 levels become, they’re also manageably short. The controls are about as responsive as could be hoped for, collision detection is more generous in your favor than not, and when all else fails, the amusing visual and storytelling presentation make “Knight” too likable to stay mad at for long.

Kung-Fu High Impact
For: Xbox 360 (Kinect required)
From: Virtual Air Guitar Company/UTV Ignition
ESRB Rating: Teen (fantasy violence, mild language, use of tobacco)
Price: $40

There’s plenty to like about “Kung-Fu High Impact.” It is, in fact, one of the year’s better Kinect games, and one of the few that reaches past the realm of fitness tools and minigame collections to produce an actual game that tangibly benefits from Microsoft’s motion control device.

Just don’t be surprised if some of the most fun you have with it is when you have a controller in hand.

“Impact” is a 2D brawler somewhat in the vein of “Double Dragon,” “Final Fight” and any number of other games that propagated during the genre’s heyday. The stages are small but open-ended instead of large but constantly scrolling from left to right, but the gist — punch and kick the bad guys into submission before they do it to you first — remains the same.

In this case, though, you very literally are the character. The Kinect’s camera uses its motion-detecting magic to superimpose a direct feed of yourself onto the level, and once you’re there, “Impact’s” hit detection leaves you free to punch and kick as efficiently or sloppily as your ability allows. Backflips and a handful of special powers are triggered via poses or half-move gestures (because asking players to actually backflip is asking for trouble). But as far as your elementary punches, kicks, elbows, blocks, dodges, jumps and lateral motion go, successful execution is entirely dependent on your willingness to fight with conviction.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because “Impact” first tried this, with dodgy results, on the Playstation 3 as “Kung-Fu Live.” Fortunately, the Kinect’s significantly better ability to discern player from background makes “Impact” effortless to set up and exponentially less likely to betray you in the heat of battle. You’ll ideally want to play with good lighting to make it easier to see your onscreen likeness, but it isn’t mandatory to do so — only more difficult if you don’t.

On that note, it’s bears mentioning that even on its base difficulty, “Impact’s” single-player storyline can punish you. More than not, it’s punishing in a good way, with furious enemy rushes and an expectation that you paid attention to the tutorials about dodging and blocking as well as punching and kicking.

Sometimes, though, “Impact” simply betrays you — confusing forward jumps with backflips, for instance, or just plain not recognizing a crucial evasive maneuver. “Impact” is tough with regard to mid-level checkpoints and health pickups, and one bungled move at the wrong time can bring your life to an aggravating end. It doesn’t happen too much if you accentuate your motions, but it will happen.

Of course, when a game is as physically intense as “Impact” is, accentuation gradually becomes easier said than done. If you like the Kinect for its fitness possibilities but still want actual games to play on it, this arguably is the best combination of both ideals in the system’s library.

Occasional aggravation aside, “Impact’s” story mode is a treat, with diverse environments, some surprising special powers, and a clever means of putting you in the motion comic cutscenes. The game asks you to assume a fews poses for pictures that later are superimposed atop the comic panels, and it’s hard to say whether cooperating or flagrantly disobeying the instructions produces funnier results.

Local multiplayer (five players), however, is “Impact’s” crown jewel. Player one’s role remains unchanged in this mode, but instead of A.I.-controlled enemies, you’re taking on your friends, who control the enemies with standard controllers. It’s a brilliant way to make a multiplayer Kinect game without cramming everyone into a small space and confusing the camera, and the lengths players can comfortably go to torment an out-of-breath friend makes this a must-play party game.

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Zombie Gunship
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: Limbic Software
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild realistic violence, infrequent/mild horror/fear themes)
Price: $1

It’s hard to be mystified by the explosive popularity of mobile gaming when games like “Zombie Gunship” — which takes one of the most popular mission styles from a $60 “Call of Duty” game and practically gives it away — keep springing up. “Gunship” puts you at the controls of an AC-130 gunship, and if the aircraft needs no introduction, the game’s presentation — a semi-blurry, night vision-esque visual filter, presented from an altitude that makes zombies and fleeing humans look like ants — won’t need one, either. The customary weapons (a 25mm Gatling gun for precision’s sake, a 40mm Bofors auto-cannon for more explosive strikes and a 105mm Howitzer cannon for clearing out zombies by the dozen) are at your disposal, and the object is simple: Help as many humans reach the bunker safely before zombies overwhelm the perimeter and lockdown takes effect. “Gunship” doesn’t aim much higher than that: You’re playing essentially for high score, and the game’s two maps aren’t tied into any kind of narrative. But given its faithfulness to the mission style and its consequential ability to satiate the itch to rain down destruction from high above, that’s plenty good enough for the price. “Gunship” carves out some replay value via a currency system that lets you upgrade the weapons and unlock some other perks, and Game Center support means you can compete with friends for leaderboard bragging rights. (Achievement-collecting junkies are, for the time being, out of luck.)

Mario Kart 7
For: Nintendo 3DS
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)
Price: $40

“Mario Kart” is the only racing franchise in existence where the worst experience a player has is when he or she leads a race. That misery persists in “Mario Kart 7′s” single-player cups, where opposing racers routinely will pelt you with blue shells and other unavoidably cheap weapons any time you dare control the lead before the finish line comes into view.

Fortunately, “MK7″ is — like each of its six predecessors — exponentially best enjoyed when playing against friends (eight players, local wireless or online). That same horror persists, and it’s doubly pronounced with friends whose need to terrorize one another is as paramount as any need to win a race. But when everyone’s tormenting everyone and having a laugh in the process, any pretense about “MK7′s” shortcomings as a pure racing game fall away.

In other words, the seventh “Mario Kart” game isn’t too fundamentally far removed from the first. If you’ve grown tired of the act and wish Nintendo would at least do away with items that require no skill to deploy effectively, you’ll have a bone to pick with this one before you even turn it on. And if you still love the formula, “MK7″ finds the series at its prettiest, most versatile and — thanks to 16 new tracks that are all kinds of inspired in their design — most elaborate.

Though they range from cosmetic to curious, there are still changes to the formula worth noting. “MK7′s” courses — the new ones as well as the 16 remastered tracks Nintendo hand-picked from just about every previous game — include stretches set underwater and in the air. In terms of locomotion, neither is a game-changer: You glide in the air and drive with some drag underwater. But the extra surfaces add vertical alternate paths to courses that already have horizontal shortcuts to seek out. A single track can have racers simultaneously racing beneath the surface, atop it and high above on a rooftop.

Nintendo also takes a nudge in the right direction with a couple new items, the tanooki tail and fireball, that allow you some measure of defense against shells and other weapons. The blue shell and lightning bolt remain invincible as ever, but hey, baby steps. The truly lucky will get the new Lucky 7 item, which grants a seven-piece variety pack of items to deploy as needed.

In the “funny but probably useless” column, you can toggle a new first-person view that lets you steer by turning the 3DS like a steering wheel. The viewpoint puts you at a competitive disadvantage and negates “MK7′s” 3D effects, which are the most eye-pleasing of any 3DS game thus far. But it’s amusing, a little exciting and, in a multiplayer session where everyone agrees to drive that way, potentially riotous.

In terms of features, “MK7″ delivers what’s expected of it. The Grand Prix has eight cups of four races each, and completing each difficulty tier unlocks new characters, including your Mii. Collecting coins across all modes unlocks new kart parts, which you can mix and match to create the kart of your speedy, weighty and stylish dreams. Time Trials and Balloon/Coin battle modes return, though the excellent Mission mode from “Mario Kart DS” does not.

“MK7′s” online component also comes through with lag-free racing and a polished interface that makes it easy to race against friends, recent opponents or random strangers. The Community mode is particularly nice, as it allows you to set up an always-open lobby for friends to access as they please, though you’ll have to create separate communities different race and battle modes.

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Carnival Island
For: Playstation 3 (Playstation Move required)
From: Magic Pixel Games/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief)
Price: $40

Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest
For: Playstation 3 (Playstation Move required)
From: Zindagi Games/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (fantasy violence)
Price: $40

Every motion control system needs its own collection of carnival-themed minigames, and “Carnival Island” would appear to be the Playstation 3′s me-too equivalent. But the hand-drawn animation that opens the game’s story mode suggests there’s more to this collection than simple imitation, and while that isn’t all the way true, it bears out to an encouraging degree.

“Island” features seven carnival standbys — frog bog, skeeball, hoops, coin/ring/baseball toss and shooting gallery — in its base offerings, and because the Move controller is just plain more precise than the Wii remote or Kinect, the games work exactly as you’d expect and respond to your motions precisely as they should.

The responsive controls are, naturally, “Island’s” most important virtue. But the game’s best asset lies in the way it breaks from convention in designing 28 additional games simply by rearranging those seven base games.

While some of these variants are simple tweaks to the rules or the way the playing field is arranged, others — replacing the baseball with a swingable wrecking ball, turning the skeeball lane into a slot machine, providing frogs you can steer in the air after launching them with the frog bog — are considerably more clever. Many of them exercise enough creativity to feel like different games entirely instead of mere offshoots.

“Island’s” four-player multiplayer (offline only, sadly) very obviously positions it as a party game, but it bears repeating that the story campaign — about a dormant carnival you gradually return to life — is legitimately charming as a solo endeavor. If you like a challenge, all 35 games include a checklist of bonus objectives to complete, and many of them are certifiably tough. Naturally, because this is a carnival, you’ll win tickets from games that let you collect prizes for your character and unlock a few exhibits (a magic mirror, for instance) that are just for fun.

At first blush, “Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest” appears to have nothing in common with “Island” past its controller. But like “Island,” its best asset is the way it adopts a genre (light gun shooter) that’s part and parcel with motion controls and takes it down a novel new road.

In “Quest,” Deadmund (a friendly skeleton fighting unfriendly skeletons, and the story explains all) handles the walking while you handle the rest — swordplay, arrows, throwing stars, dynamite, a grappling hook and a periodic jump, duck or gear turn. You can choose which path Deadmund should take when he reaches a fork in the road, but otherwise, he moves forward automatically.

The resemblance there to light gun shooters is unmistakable, as are “Quest’s” enemy formations and the way it scatters bonus items you can pick up if you’re quick enough to do so before Deadmund runs past them.

But Deadmund’s arsenal makes “Quest” a much more versatile and lively experience than your typical shooter, particularly because you can mix attacks as freely as you like. Swordplay is ideal for close-quarters combat, and how you wield the Move controller is how Deadmund will wield his sword and shield. Imitating a quill-pulling motion allows Deadmund to shoot arrows at faraway enemies, while a quick sideways fling of the controller lets him throw stars at advancing enemies.

“Quest” intuitively maps all these tasks to one controller, but if you have two, it’s best enjoyed that way. The sword and shield are assigned to separate wands, alleviating the need to hold a button to use the shield, and shooting arrows is more fun when you imitate the bow motion with two controllers instead of point the one at the screen like a gun.

Either way, though, “Quest” is terrific fun — more an arcade game than what typically constitutes a quest in video game terms, but a fast, active adventure that is too nimble and seamless to feel gimmicky.

“Quest’s” storyline is a solo endeavor, but a separate Battle mode — designed primarily around surviving formations of enemies in an arena you can zip through using the grappling hook — offers competitive and cooperative play for one or two players (online or splitscreen). It’s simple, but it’s fun for the same reasons the story is fun, and a persistent leveling system gives it legs by letting you upgrade weapons and unlock new characters as you accrue experience.

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Need for Speed: The Run
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Windows
From: EA Black Box/EA
ESRB Rating: Teen (language, mild suggestive themes, violence)
Price: $60

If “Need for Speed: The Run” was a sitcom plot device instead of a game, it’d be that one where a character makes a list of pros and cons and fills out both sides of the paper doing so. Great mechanics and a cool premise — a coast-to-coast, “Cannonball Run”-esque race — do battle with some regrettable design choices, and while “The Run” ultimately comes out ahead, the final score is closer than it should’ve been.

The benefits of driving cross-country are obvious, even if the story that creates the opportunity is drab. (Happily, the much-maligned on-foot chase sequences — interactive cutscenes that look flashy and push the story but aren’t fun to play — are so short and infrequent as to not even factor.)

“The Run” takes place in the United States as we know them, and while it’s doled out in stages instead of as a single, uninterrupted cruise, the recreations of numerous locales are extremely visually impressive. The premise also provides some considerable terrain variety, with San Francisco’s hilly streets and Colorado’s slippery mountains demanding different disciplines than South Dakota’s straightaways, downtown Chicago’s sharp corners and New Jersey’s perilously tight alleys.

“The Run’s” breadth of vehicles and tuning options is narrower than the norm, but it offers a satisfactory array of cars built to handle different surfaces and weather. The tug of war that ensues between responsive handling and the perennial sense of being one twitch away from disaster will strike some simply as less-than-optimum handling controls, but it does make for an exciting (and visually impressive) time on the road. The opposing driver A.I. is similarly polarizing: It brazenly rubberbands at points where a close finish makes for good drama, but you may not appreciate driving a spotless race that still finds an opposing driver cutting a 10-second lead down to nothing in seemingly no time.

“The Run’s” boldest idea comes with its attempt to treating a racing game like an action game. You get a limited number of resets (lives, basically) per event, and each event has a handful of checkpoints that you’ll revert to if you wipe out. Considering every event is pass/fail — if you don’t outright win that stretch of the race or complete the event’s objective, you have to redo it — it’s a novel, sensible approach.

Occasionally, though, you’ll get pegged for a reset simply by driving a little bit too off-road at the wrong time. Other times, the same offense doesn’t trigger a reset. “The Run’s” definition of out of bounds is frustratingly arbitrary, especially considering most tracks have approved shortcuts that reward you for going off the track.

This wouldn’t be an issue if the reset process wasn’t so obnoxious. “The Run” has deflatingly long load times between events, but it also frequently takes forever to load your last checkpoint in the middle of a race. Couple that with a supremely annoying reset loading graphic that flashes like a strobe while you wait seemingly ages for a chance to try again, and the mechanic’s intentions of maintaining momentum completely backfire.

That seemingly innocuous issue is the spark that ignites the fire that will polarize those who find “The Run” exhilarating and those who find it antagonizing and frustrating.

“The Run’s” story is fairly brief, but the game complements it with a lot of challenge events that reward medals instead of impose pass/fail restrictions. Online multiplayer (eight players) is pretty straightforward, but the inclusion of the Autolog social network — a persistent interface that makes chasing friends’ times in single-player events as much fun as racing them directly online — gives the game plenty of legs for those who like its methods and wish to master them.

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Age of Zombies: Anniversary
For: iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (universal app)
From: Halfbrick Studios
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (frequent/intense cartoon or fantasy violence, infrequent/mild mature/suggestive themes)
Price: $3

With respect to the angry birds and that cute “Cut the Rope” monster, no character’s ascension through the App Store has been as fun to witness as that of the Bruce Campbell-esque Barry Steakfries. His personality, and the sense of humor that drives it, are what transformed “Age of Zombies” into something more than just another twin-stick shooter with zombies in it. If you played that game, you should know “Age of Zombies: Anniversary” isn’t a sequel, but rather a graphical remaster of the original game that’s designed to take advantage of iPad and Retina Display-equipped iPhone screens. You can decide yourself whether a pretty new wrapper is worth a second purchase. If, however, the whole experience is new to you, “Anniversary” is worth a look. As a (virtual) dual-stick shooter, it’s fundamentally faithful to genre conventions. But those other games don’t necessarily have this game’s personality, and “Anniversary’s” storyline — which finds Barry traveling to different time periods to conquer cowboy zombies, gangster zombies, future zombies and more — is pretty funny. The weapon variety is high, as is the opportunity to chain together considerable chaos for high scores, and the game’s polish — from control responsiveness to graphics to support for iCloud save data syncing — belies the price tag.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Bethesda
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, sexual themes, use of alcohol)
Price: $60

Bethesda’s massive open-world role-playing games have forever been an endearing battle between vision and technology, with the limitations of the latter always causing bugs and weird production value hiccups that keep the former in check.

Quirks like those still make appearances in “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” but a sparkling new engine makes these occurrences feel like occurrences instead of the norm. Technology finally appears ready to ride along with vision, and “Skyrim” takes it to the ends of its earth in what almost inarguably is the biggest game anyone has ever made.

Improvements make subtle introductions during an opener that spotlights two elements — voice acting and character design — that ranked among previous games’ biggest reality checks. They remain weak links here, but the days of faces even a mother wouldn’t love and one voice actor seemingly voicing half the cast appear to be over.

From there, ambition takes over. “Skyrim” quickly introduces you to your first dragon — the game’s star attraction, and the lynchpin in a big first-act reveal that won’t be spoiled here. The scope and individual pieces of that encounter — dragon artificial intelligence in particular — are immediately stunning.

Shortly thereafter, you’re fully loosed into Skyrim — with a quest and a burgeoning storyline, but with the freedom to ignore them indefinitely and explore the land’s 16 square miles as you please.

And what a world it is. That “Skyrim” is gargantuan isn’t a surprise, because these games always are. But when you experience the enormity and variety of terrain — mountains crawling with everything from blizzards to bears to wooly mammoths, elaborate caverns and towns that exist far off the storyline’s main road, lush forests and fields that house bandits, dragons, giants and more — that exists between two locations that appear so close to each other as dots on your map, it’s just staggering.

Best of all, everything is fair game. Dragon chasing you? Lead him into a giants den and watch giants, dragons and who knows who else duke it out (and come for you next if you make a play for the post-fight spoils). In an era of games growing obnoxiously reliant on cutscenes, “Skyrim’s” most memorable encounters just happen — organically, dynamically and differently for every player who plays it their own slightly unique way.

That stands to reason, because you can sink 100 hours into “Skyrim’s” optional quests, guilds and storylines before even setting another foot on the main road, which should be good for another 50 or so hours. If you want to get technical, “Skyrim” never completely ends, thanks to a system that generates random secondary quests into perpetuity. There’s a limit to the variety of those quests, of course, but that’s the price paid for endless adventure.

“Skyrim’s” first-person melee combat still feels clumsy and artless, though ranged and magic attacks work well, especially with the ability to map different spells to each hand. Happily, Bethesda has finally figured out how to make the third-person perspective something more than useless curiosity fulfillment. It looks good, and it feels good for melee combat. A button press swaps perspectives at will, so you can enjoy the benefits of both in tandem.

Much more roundly improved is “Skyrim’s” overall interface, which organizes your quests, maps, inventory and development with considerably more polish than in the past. Leveling up is exponentially more dynamic: As you flex certain skills — be it combat and defense or persuasion and lock-picking — those skills improve and contribute to your overall development, which you can augment with special perks that are neatly arranged across all 18 skill categories. The interface still presents a learning curve, but it’s Bethesda’s most accessible system by several orders of magnitude.

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Super Mario 3D Land
For: Nintendo 3DS
From: Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild cartoon violence)
Price: $40

It’s hard to believe there’s a dimension that has eluded the plumber who took platforming mainstream in two dimensions, reinvented it in three, and spent entire chunks of two recent adventures running upside down like it was a morning jog.

But “Super Mario 3D Land” takes place in a dimension that is neither exclusively two nor three dimensions, and the game’s willingness to present itself from semi-fixed angles that change from level to level makes it hard to pin this down with mere numbers or names.

Lest you worry, “SM3DL” plays at its core like any other Mario game. Mario can run, jump, punch blocks and kick turtle shells as naturally as ever, and the goal — reach the flagpole before time runs out — is a callback to the very first “Super Mario Bros.” A hall of fame’s worth of classic enemies (Goombas, Bullet Bills, Boos, Bowser and his kids) returns alongside some new enemies, and Mario complements some new power-ups (the boomerang suit being the most prominent addition) with a handful of perennial and returning favorites (fire flower, Tanooki suit, propeller box).

“SM3DL” moves at a very slightly slower speed than most contemporary Mario games do, particularly with regard to how quickly Mario can transition from a run to the kind of sprint needed to make longer jumps. But the difference is nearly negligible, and if you’re familiar with Mario’s repertoire, you need not even crack the manual to become almost instantly acclimated with “SM3DL’s” controls.

Rather, where “SM3DL” deviates is by filtering that time-tested action through a new perspective that borrows equally (and simultaneously) from Mario’s 2D and 3D adventures.

Though levels frequently look like 3D Mario levels, they’re presented from a fixed angle that prioritizes running through them linearly instead of exploring them from all angles. Every level hides three special coins off the main road, and collecting them often comprises the most satisfying and challenging aspects of “SM3DL’s” main quest, but that’s the extent of exploration.

Initially, and thanks to a crop of early levels that are fun but too short and entirely too easy to complete, the perspective shift feels like a compromise.

But once it gets comfortable, Nintendo does what it does best and mines the new angles for as much unique gold as it can. Some levels pull the camera sideway to start as old-fashioned 2D levels before rotating and zooming way out to reveal a massively vertical environment that still moves with the urgency of an old-fashioned sidescroller. Occasionally, the game shifts slightly diagonally to add layers behind layers (think “LittleBigPlanet,” only more intuitive). Sometimes it opts for a strict overhead view with scrolling rooms — essentially paying tribute to the original “Legend of Zelda’s” level design while infusing it with the full might of Mario’s athletic arsenal.

“SM3DL’s” original eight-world quest never becomes terribly difficult, but when these and numerous other ideas start flowing and Nintendo goes a little crazy with the level designs, the continual promise of surprises lurking around corners makes the tepid difficulty relatively easy to forgive.

Should you disagree, the revelation of a second quest (which avails itself upon completion of the first) should soothe your concerns. Nintendo has been protective of the knowledge that a second quest even exists in “SM3DL,” so without spoiling too much of what lies within, let’s just say this: It’s much tougher than the first quest, and its fearlessness with regard to difficulty lets it go that much crazier with the designs and special conditions it tosses around. If the “SM3DL” Nintendo advertises on the box isn’t doing it for you, the one hiding behind it almost certainly will.

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Slam Dunk King
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: PikPok
iTunes Store rating: 4+
Price: Free

With respect to the big-budget masterpieces and sprawling epics crashing onto store shelves this fall, sometimes all you want to do is dunk a basketball. On that, the polished-in-its-own-right “Slam Dunk King” has the last word. In “King,” basketballs fly into the air as if fired by a clay shooter, and your objective is to grab them with your finger and dunk them with a powerful swiping motion. Where “Dunk” makes this fun is in its allowance for creativity. A no-nonsense dunk will get you a couple points, but mimicking a windmill, corkscrew, alley oop or double pump (among numerous others) will award you considerably more. (You even get bonus points for pulling down the rim post-dunk.) If you want to net a truly inspired score, a combo system lets you chain a massive score by juggling one basketball in the air and dunking others without letting that first ball drop, which kills the combo and could potentially end the game. “King’s” embrace of style and risk/reward makes it a ton of fun to play, and a leveling system and suite of unlockable power-ups and courts gives it surprising legs for such a simple idea. It’s responsive to your swipes, pretty to look at, and supports Game Center and OpenFeint (complete with cloud saves, so you can resume progress across different devices) as well.

Jetpack Joyride
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: Halfbrick Studios
iTunes Store Rating: 9+
Price: $1

So-called running games — those games where your character is continually bolting forward with increasing speed and your task is to jump, duck and slide out the way of trouble — have become a little too prevalent on mobile devices over the last few months.

But if you still have room for one more, this probably is the one to get.

“Jetpack Joyride” changes the core formula ever so slightly by strapping a jetpack to the back of Barry Steakfries, who has become to Halfbrick Studios’ games what Mario is to Nintendo’s. Barry’s still dashing forward, but instead of tapping the screen to jump, you’re tapping (jump), holding (ascend) and releasing (descend) to control the jetpack’s altitude and dodge obstacles at every elevation.

On that level alone, “Joyride” is good fun, with responsive controls, obstacle design that takes advantage of the gimmick and the best implementation yet of the humor and visual vibrancy that accompanies Barry’s adventures.

“Joyride” also takes a cue from Barry’s more traditional running game, “Monster Dash,” and includes a handful of vehicles that give Barry a little room for error and give players an extra jolt of variety. The motorcycle makes a return, but the new models — a hopping mech, a squirrelly teleportation device, a gravity suit and a shuttle with the face, shape and squawk of a bird — are creative in both their design and the unique ways they harness the same basic gameplay mechanic.

Ultimately, though, it’s Halfbrick’s dedication to compulsion that transforms “Joyride” from fun curiosity to total time sink.

Coins collected while in flight allow you to purchase power-ups, new jetpack models and new playable characters. A game-wide ranking system awards you for the completion of side missions, which may (fly 750 meters without crashing the teleportation device) or may not (travel 1,750 meters without touching a single coin) coincide with the game’s more traditional goals. Leaderboards and achievements — via OpenFeint and Game Center — provide another layer of stuff to accomplish, and a stat-tracking system will please those who appreciate absolutely useless but strangely fascinating numbers.

But it’s the slot machine, which greets you after your game ends, that provides “Joyride” with its best trimming. Collecting special tokens during a run will unlock spins on the machine, which rewards bonus coins, single-use power-ups, free spins and explosives that give you one last bump for a little more distance (and, if you catch them during the bump, coins and spins).

The holy grail, of course, is the triple hearts spin, which revives Barry and lets you continue your current run like nothing bad ever happened. Getting it is a rare occurrence, but the wait for a third heart after the first two spin that way is sometimes as exciting as compiling a run good enough to make a second chance matter.

No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise
For: Playstation 3
From: AQ Interactive/Marvelous Entertainment/Konami
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, crude humor, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language)
Price: $40

If you wanted to love “No More Heroes” on the Wii but couldn’t get around its logistical roadblocks, the least interesting news about this overdue port may also be its best news.

Before we continue, let’s restate that: “No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise” is a port of the first “Heroes” game. The game’s new developer and publishers haven’t dramatically remixed it or spruced up what ailed it back in 2008, and while the graphics benefit greatly from the high-definition bump, that’s exactly what they are — a high-definition presentation of visual assets from the Wii version. It suffices just fine, in no small credit to a unique graphic style seen most commonly in motion comics, but you won’t be floored.

If anything — following an opening sequence that gives you an enticing taste of “Paradise’s” combat, mainline mission structure and storytelling flair — you might be confused. Because between those missions lies perhaps the worst open world design ever devised, and it arrives on the PS3 fully intact and still seemingly incomplete.

“Paradise” mandates that you take jobs (minigames) and side missions to fund your career as an up-and-coming assassin, and it spreads those tasks out across a huge map that’s perplexingly empty between destination spots. Driving through town once is, thanks to motorbike controls that give “stiff” a bad name, a bit of a chore. Doing it ad nauseam to play so-so minigames that eventually allow you to get to the next mission is just tedious, and “Paradise” missed a major opportunity to just do away with the open world or at least make it skippable via menus.

As with “Heroes,” though, what lies at the heart of this barren environment is what makes “Paradise” worth the trips through it. The game’s combat — doled out with your fists, feet and a beam katana that by any other name is an off-brand lightsaber — is simple but fun in an outrageously violent B-movie kind of way. The satisfaction of ripping through an army of no-name thugs is matched on a different scale by the mainline missions’ final encounters, which bring some terrifically weird character designs to a head with tense (if often unwieldy) one-on-one fights.

The boss designs work in tandem with monologues, dialogues, style choices and anything-goes narration to create a world that’s confidently capable of pulling double duty as a heart-on-sleeve spectacular and a fearless self-parody. Completely unrelated Influences come together to create discordant harmonies in “Paradise,” and the glee with which it all happens makes it easy to appreciate the game’s stylistic misses almost as much as its hits.

As should be no surprise, “Paradise” supports the Move controller in the same fashion that “Heroes” supported the Wii remote. But a lack of refinement in this area means that the camera issues that plagued this control scheme once plague it all over again here. There’s no 1:1 fidelity between the Move wand and the katana, and the annoying motion needed to recharge the katana is actually less responsive than it was on the Wii because the Move wand wasn’t built with jerky movements like this in mind.

Fortunately, “Paradise” had the good sense to include compatibility with traditional controllers, and the second thumbstick does wonders with its allowance of manual camera control and increased responsiveness with regard to certain finishing attacks. Playing this way undoes some of the novelty that made “Heroes” special in its first incarnation, but if the novelty of the Wii remote has already long worn off, it’s hardly a loss.

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Quarrel
For: iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad (universal app)
From: Indiagames Limited/UTV Ignition
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)
Price: $5 for deluxe version; lite version available for free

The conceptually brilliant (and arguably excessively cheerful) “Quarrel” is what happens when Boggle and RISK have a child. The setup might sound familiar: Up to four armies share adjacent territories with one another, and dominating a “Quarrel” match comes down to wiping out the other armies before they eliminate yours. In this case, though, a battle comes down to eight random letters and one chance to build a better word than the opposing army. The more troops you have occupying the conflicted square, the more letters you can use to build your word, and the winning battalion can (depending on circumstance) take the square completely, whittle it down to one opposing troop, or make opposing troops switch allegiances. “Quarrel’s” cheerful presentation is a bit too caffeinated for its own good, but the actual game is a polished execution of a seriously great idea. You can play a base game of “Quarrel” for free, but most of the good stuff — a campaign, match customization, daily challenges, most of the maps and characters — is available only in the deluxe edition. Unfortunately, neither edition includes any kind of multiplayer, which might be a deal-killer given the influences in play and the state of word games on iOS. The A.I. is reasonably good, but here’s hoping multiplayer tops the to-do list for future updates.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Eidos Montreal/Square Enix
ESRB Rating: Mature (intense violence, blood, sexual themes, strong language, drug reference, use of alcohol)
Price: $60

When we greeted “Deus Ex” as a liberator from a first-person shooter genre that badly needed a growth spurt, few probably predicted history would repeat itself 11 years later.

But here we are, neck-deep in a genre that’s reverted to old habits and covered them up with cinematic flimflam. And here’s “Deus Ex: Human Revolution,” which holds so true to its pedigree that what was amazing then is amazing all over again now.

This isn’t immediately apparent, because while “Revolution” quickly establishes itself as a cover shooter — with a third-person perspective while in cover —  it also makes a point to let you know that attacking enemies at the front door is as viable a tactic as using stealth to neutralize them from behind. The cover interface makes complete use of the controller and requires some finger gymnastics when “Revolution’s” other systems are in play, but once you acquaint yourself, all the pieces — responsive controls, satisfying gunplay, intelligent enemy A.I. and an intuitive cover mechanic — are there.

“Revolution” complements this encouragement of freedom with a design that very ably suits it. In place of the same old corridors are open-ended areas with multiple paths straight through and around enemies. A tense and deceptively deep hacking minigame allows access to locked pathways, security cameras, sensitive data and other access restrictions, and you can move certain objects to create your own cover when cover isn’t readily available.

But it isn’t just “Revolution’s” levels that branch: It’s the whole game. True to the series’ lineage, “Revolution” operates around a role-playing core that’s built to accommodate your preferred attack style. In this instance, you can use experience points — accrued through everything from kills to finding secret passageways to completing side missions — to purchase bionic augmentations. (The story, set 25 years before the first game, explains all.)

“Revolution’s” augmentation selection is large and wonderfully diverse. Stealthy players can purchase an augmentation that briefly turn them invisible, for instance, while other augmentations let you see through walls, lift extremely heavy objects, and read other characters’ minds when in conversation with them. (Verbal manipulation, thanks to a great dialogue tree system, goes a long way here, which is why “Revolution” stocks an entire augmentation shelf dedicated to social mastery.)

The long list of augmentations works in concert with open-world hub cities and a massive, branching storyline — roughly five times the size of a typical shooter — to create an experience that truly feels tailor-made. Fans of the original expect nothing less, but if you’re new here, “Revolution’s” scope and freedom allowance might shock you. Engage in each cities’ side quests and dive into the ridiculous amount of discoverable exposition hiding behind locked doors and firewalls, and you’re looking at a 40-plus-hour investment that’s almost universally polished.

It’s merely a shame “Revolution” loses itself so badly whenever things come to a head in a boss fight. In contrast to everything that precedes and follows, these boss fights — enclosed shootouts against a massively overpowered enemy who can withstand an inhuman amount of firepower and has no issues firing explosives willy-nilly and unloading his or her own augmentations without rhythm or limitation — are a horridly rude awakening, especially if you’ve adopted a stealthy approach and don’t carry a ton of ammo. Outside of their infrequency, there is nothing good to say about these encounters, so you’ll just have to endure them to get back to everything else that makes “Revolution” so incredible.

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The Adventures of Shuggy
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: Smudged Cat Games/Valcon Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone (animated blood, comic mischief)
Price: $10

It happens every summer. Amid a glut of terrific downloadable games that fly off the virtual shelves under the generous promotional umbrella that is Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade, there drifts a ridiculously unlucky game that, despite being good or even great, gets instantly and thoroughly buried simply for releasing shortly before or after the campaign runs its course.

This year’s dishonoree, “The Adventures of Shuggy,” is especially unfortunate, because despite an outer shell that would suggest otherwise, it arguably outclasses the entire 2011 Summer of Arcade crop.

If you’re type of player to which “Shuggy” most explicitly caters, it may not even be close.

It certainly doesn’t look that way. “Shuggy” tells a cute but simple story about a vampire named Shuggy and the haunted castle he inherited and must clean out, and while the cartoony graphics are pleasant and certainly sufficient, they won’t drop jaws the way the likes of “Bastion” and “From Dust” can. Most of the game’s levels span no larger than a single screen, and the overriding goal of each level — collect all the gems — isn’t exactly groundbreaking.

But if you confuse the Flash-style graphics, bite-sized levels and older-than-Atari objective for a lack of ambition on “Shuggy’s” part, you’re letting vanity fool you. Simple and cute though the whole thing seems, the game is a beast in terms of physical and intellectual challenge.

Though the overriding gem-collecting objective holds steady, “Shuggy’s” gameplay parameters rather drastically vary from level to level. Sometimes, it’s 2D platforming at its most classic — jumping across pits and dodging enemies to collect each gem in a single run. But sometimes those levels take place upside down, asking you to be just as spry while also demanding you push the control stick left when old habits want to push it right. Occasionally, you have to do it at a 90-degree angle.

Other times, “Shuggy” asks you to rotate the entire level so that Shuggy lands on platforms and not spikes once gravity kicks back in. Frequently, you’ll have to time a jump while simultaneously rotating a level.

Yet other levels task you with manipulating multiple Shuggies, who must work in tandem to unlock some brilliantly devious cause-and-effect puzzles. They may or may not be observing the same laws of gravity while working together. Other times, when controlling one Shuggy, a crack in time will create ghost Shuggies, who both can help you (if you time certain cooperative actions to the cracks) or kill you (if you run into them and disrupt the space/time continuum).

These variants represent a sample of the laws obeyed in “Shuggy’s” 100-plus single-player levels, which liberally mix these and other parameters to create some absolutely maniacal challenges.

For the right crowd, though, the difficulty level is just right. “Shuggy” is a demanding endeavor, insofar that you have to collect every gem in one run without making any fatal mistakes. But the game takes a page from the similarly engrossing “Super Meat Boy” by providing unlimited lives and instantly restarting a level whenever you fail. The capacity for frustration is still there, but it’s extremely short-lived when you immediately can pop back up and give it another shot.

For those who enjoy working together, “Shuggy” includes an additional 36 levels that require a second player to complete. The co-op levels are offline only, but “Shuggy” includes online support by way of leaderboards and a two-player competitive gem race (also available offline) that dials down the intellectual demands in favor of a mindless but enjoyably frantic scramble.

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Anomaly Warzone Earth HD
Reviewed for: iPad
Also available for: iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows PC, Mac,
From: 11 bit studios/Chillingo
iTunes Store Rating: 12+ (frequent/intense cartoon or fantasy, infrequent/mild alcohol, tobacco, or drug use or references, infrequent/mild mature/suggestive themes)
Price: $4 for iPad, $2-$10 for other versions

Tower defense games are a perfect fit for the iPad, which is why there are way too many of them coming out at once for the genre’s good. But if you’re hungry for a change of pace instead of a break, “Anomaly Warzone Earth” flips the script by giving you the keys to the offense — a convoy of tanks, mechs and other vehicles — and tasking you with blasting your way through an alien defense. The general rules of tower defense apply, but rather than lay out towers and turrets, you’re assembling a convoy lineup and drawing a path for it to follow through and around the streets of Baghdad’s urban battlegrounds. Vehicle upgrades and repairs replace tower upgrades, a handful of power-ups let you devise temporary defenses for your offense, and when all else fails, a terrific Tactical View interface lets you re-chart your course at any time. Nothing “Earth” does represents a seismic shift for tower defense, but the change of possession is a welcome twist for a genre that could use a few of them. The game’s strategic interfaces are intuitively polished, the in-game action is really visually impressive, and the maps grow considerably elaborate as the campaigns — one traditional and built around a storyline, the other driven more by scores, enemy waves, time limits and survival — progress.

Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions
For: Nintendo 3DS
From: Namco Bandai
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, fantasy violence)
Price: $40

Dual screens aside, Nintendo’s 3DS still has one advantage over its trendier, phone-call-making portable competition, and it isn’t the 3D gimmick.

Rather — and as “Pac-Man Tilt” ably demonstrates — it’s the ability to combine tilt and touch controls with real, tactile buttons and put all three into simultaneous, chaotic play.

“Tilt” represents one-seventh of “Pac-Man & Galaga Dimensions,” which combines five other games and a silly “Pac-Man” movie into a package that’s both great fun and noticeably deficient.

For many, the star attractions will be the games they’ve played before. “Dimensions” includes arcade ports of the original “Pac-Man” and “Galaga,” both of which play perfectly despite not being an ideal fit for the 3DS’ horizontal screens. “Dimensions” amusingly compensates by allowing you to view the action through a mock cabinet, curved CRT monitor effect and all. Everything still looks a little small, but not so much that the games are hard to play.

“Dimensions” also includes the “Pac-Man Championship Edition” and “Galaga Legions” reboots. Given that these newer games were designed for widescreen displays and analog joysticks, their ports to the 3DS feel more natural. The only downside is the hardware’s fault: That 3DS joypad isn’t as precise as a 360 or PS3 controller’s joystick, and you’ll occasionally pay for that in “PMCE” with your life.

If you have a question right now, it’s probably regarding why “Dimensions” includes those two games but not “Pac-Man Championship Edition DX” or “Galaga Legions DX,” both of which released to even greater acclaim than their predecessors received. There’s no good answer other than the likelihood of Namco holding them so it can double-dip with a second compilation. That’s unfortunate, but the original reboots hold up awfully well, so it only partially stings.

Instead, “Dimensions” reserves those spots for two new games that take specific advantage of the 3DS hardware.

“Galaga 3D Impact” re-imagines “Galaga” as a first-person rail shooter, and you can use either the accelerometer or joypad to aim and shoot down contemporary representations of the “Galaga” waves you know and despise.

The new viewpoint is no replacement for traditional 2D “Galaga,” especially as presented in “Legions,” but “Impact” easily fulfills its mission as a challenging throw-in whose aim is to turn an arcade classic on its ear for one time only. It sticks to imitating the things that make other rail shooters fun, and enhances the experience with an upgradable weapons tree that makes inspired use of the iconic “Galaga” tractor beam.

Ultimately, though, it’s “Tilt” — in which players run, jump, roll and ride as Pac-Man — that sheds enticing light on what’s possible when the 3DS’ control inputs are working in tandem.

At its core, “Tilt” controls like any other sidescrolling platformer with regard to running and jumping. But if you want to destroy certain obstacles and clear a level as quickly as possible for a higher score, you’ll want to tilt the DS and send Pac-Man into a roll that’s faster and more dangerous than his top running speed. A typical “Tilt” level also features platforms, cannons, bomb balls and other apparatuses that you must move and aim using the accelerometer — sometimes while simultaneously using the buttons to control Pac-Man and the touchscreen to activate a crucial power pellet.

“Tilt’s” 30 levels make increasingly frantic utilization of these tandems, and achieving top marks is a legitimately tricky good time. Had Namco gone whole hog with the idea and upped the level count to the triple digits, this sliver of “Dimensions” may have been worth the price of admission all by itself.

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Call of Juarez : The Cartel
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Techland/Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language)
Price: $60

Those who stroll unknowingly into “Call of Juarez : The Cartel” are in for a serious case of video game culture shock. The third game in a series of gunslinging first-person westerns takes place in present-day Los Angeles amid a looming war between the United States and a Mexican drug cartel, and while the national park setting is slightly novel, the game’s first shootout would otherwise feel at home in that other series that has “Call of” in its title.

“Cartel’s” chief protagonist has ancestral ties to the previous game’s protagonist, but otherwise, this may as well be a new series altogether. If you played previous “Juarez” games precisely to get away from assault rifles, C4 explosives, launching rockets at choppers and small armies constantly firing on your position, “Cartel’s” embrace of all that in the first mission alone will leave you deeply dismayed.

Whatever attempt “Cartel” makes the justify this change isn’t helped any by its storytelling. The leap to present day doesn’t strive for novelty, opting for a pedestrian cops-versus-gangs story instead of something that calls back to the Old West or makes the main character a fish out of water. You can play as one of three characters — “Cartel’s” online co-op functionality lets you assign two other players to the other two — but all three are dull caricatures who blather in cliches and (along with their enemies) repeat themselves way too often.

Past the national park, the areas in which the story unfolds — warehouses, a nightclub, a whole lot of streets and alleys — feel like a who’s who of urban warfare standards as well.

As for how it plays… how does “passable” sound? “Cartel” has a good assortment of guns and its controls and aiming are perfectly sufficient. The artificial intelligence of your allies and enemies leaves much to be desired, but neither is so unfortunate as to break the game.

Rather, like everything else, they’re competently ordinary. And while that faint praise is nothing new for the series when it comes to gameplay nuts and bolts, it’s harder to defend when it’s surrounded by the same old guns, enemies and environments instead of an Old West setting that’s considerably more unique in this medium. You might enjoy “Cartel” while you play it, but it also might be the most forgettable game you enjoy all year.

The one area where “Cartel” flashes some ingenuity is via a handful of optional assignments and findable items that allow you to build a resume as a dirty cop on the take. Getting your hands dirty nets you rewards, but only if you can successfully do so when your partners aren’t looking.

Thanks to the aforementioned A.I. deficiencies, going rogue is moderately fun but not very challenging when playing alone. But trying to pull some valuable wool over your friends’ eyes while they try to do the same to you adds a fun layer of two-way paranoia to “Cartel’s” co-op mode. The rewards and consequences for success and failure aren’t powerful enough to make the feature a total game-changer, but if you elect to play “Cartel,” asking a couple friends to play along will go a long way.

“Cartel’s” competitive multiplayer content (12 players) brings the game back to earth. The two modes —  gangs-versus-cops team deathmatch and a modified team deathmatch with rotating objectives — fit the new setting, and everything that was competent in the campaign remains competent here. But if you’re already invested in another online first-person shooter, nothing “Cartel” does is fresh or fleshed out enough to shake your loyalties.

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Trucks and Skulls NITRO
For: iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad (separate versions)
From: Appy Entertainment, Inc
iTunes Store Rating: 4+
Price: $1 for iPhone/iPod Touch, $2 for iPad

If you like the concept behind “Angry Birds” but wish it was less chirpy and a whole lot more metal, your wish could not be more granted. “Trucks and Skulls NITRO” takes the same general idea (executed with comparable competence) but replaces the birds with trucks and rockets while swapping out the pigs in favor of skulls and demons. The audiovisual presentation makes similar trade-offs, though not at the expense of a colorful presentation and a sense of humor. But while “Skulls” initially feels like a transparent knockoff of the hottest game around, it goes its own way just enough to freshen things up. There’s a greater emphasis on full-scale destruction, along with some awesome contraptions that assist in the wreckage from multiple angles. A few of the “birds” perform tricks that no angry bird is capable of, and a more flexible scoring system makes it possible to achieve four-gear scores (the “Skulls” answer to “Birds’” three stars) by completely destroying a level instead of defeating the skulls using the fewest amount of moves. “Skulls” stays fresh over more than 200 levels by introducing new gadgets and obstacles at a steady pace, and Game Center support allows you to compare scores and achievements with friends also playing the game.