Xbox Live Arcade – Movie/Game Reviews: A Retrospective

Games 5/1/12: Botanicula, The Walking Dead: Episode 1: A New Day

Botanicula
For: PC/Mac
From: Amanita Design
ESRB Rating: Not Rated
iTunes Store Rating: 9+ (infrequent/mild horror/fear themes, infrequent/mild cartoon or fantasy violence)
Price: $10

Every sight, song and expressive peep is a treat to see, hear, witness and bring to life in “Botanicula,” and for a game that caters to curiosity fulfillment above all else, there’s no higher praise.

Skeletally, “Botanicula” is a point-and-click adventure like any other. Completing each of the six chapters entails a sequence of cause-and-effect puzzle-solving where solving smaller riddles rewards you with the means and access needed to solve the larger surrounding puzzle.

But where most adventure games rely heavily on dialogue, “Botanicula’s” story — in which five tree creature friends venture to save a living seed from their home tree after parasites descend on it — has exactly none. Our band of heroes communicates solely though squeals of delight and yelps of despair, and whenever other characters or the game itself want to illustrate a point, they literally do so with illustrations and symbols.

The spartan (and adorable) method of communication works perfectly in concert with “Botanicula’s” ambient soundtrack and visual design, in which handmade cutout pieces cheerfully animate to life in front of comparably handcrafted backdrops. And when all those elements come together, the world they create is, logically as well as aesthetically, one of a kind.

Though its riddles can be tricky, particularly within the back half’s more elaborate levels, “Botanicula” is designed in such a way that a natural curiosity proves as handy as any strain of problem-solving prowess you might have. Nothing in your life likely has prepared you to beat a smug peanut at a beatle race in order to trick him into giving up his bicycle helmet so you can give it to another creature before launching that creature out of a circus cannon. But if you’re curious enough to explore everything that looks like it might be anything, “Botanicula” eventually reveals the odd but oddly sensible logic needed to get from one side of that problem to the other. The puzzles are bizarre in exactly the right way — strange enough to make you wonder what weird surprise lurks next, abstract enough not to hold your hand through the discovery process, but never nearly so opaque as to frustrate or grind that discovery process to a halt.

And what a process that becomes. Fun though unraveling “Botanicula’s” mysterious logic most definitely is, it’s the moments where one stops, looks and listens that almost certainly will endure. “Botanicula” offers a mostly optional secondary challenge in the form of collectible creature cards, giving players a new card every time they fully explore the ways and means of a creature in the game’s wonderfully imaginative ecosystem. The cards themselves aren’t worth anything unless you’re a completionist and achievement junkie. But the things you’ll see and hear en route to receiving them are every bit as smile-inducing as the surprises you’ll uncover along “Botanicula’s” main road.

—–

The Walking Dead: Episode 1: A New Day
For: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network), Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade), PC/Mac
From: Telltale Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (strong language, blood and gore, intense violence)
Price: $5 for the first episode, $20-25 for a five-episode season pass (PS3/PC/Mac)

Telltale Games coasted into a rut with “Back to the Future,” and its stab at something different with “Jurassic Park” was the kind of disaster that shakes your faith in a studio. So the arrival of “The Walking Dead’s” first episode — which finds Telltale again breaking away from formula but subsequently breaking ground instead of confidence — couldn’t be timelier. Set concurrently with the events of the “TWD” television show, “A New Day” tells the story of brand-new character Lee Everett, who has a troubling secret to keep as well as a child to protect from the zombie horde. Safeguarding the latter (and yourself) means engaging in brief but tense action sequences where quick reflexes and the ability to make tough decisions quickly will serve you well. But it’s the guarding of that secret that really brings Lee’s story alive. The meat of “Day’s” gameplay consists of dialogue with other survivors, but instead of asking questions and gathering information, you’re holding answers, playing mental chess and deciding — quickly and without do-overs — whom to trust whom to deceive. Your choices in conversation, along with some other decisions you must make with similar haste and confidence, play heavily into how “Day” concludes, and if the teases for the second episode are any indication, the ramifications of this episode will only intensify as the five-episode series marches ahead.

Games 4/24/12: Trials Evolution, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings EE (360), Devil May Cry HD Collection, StarDrone Extreme

Trials Evolution
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: RedLynx/Microsoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (mild violence)
Price: $15

Purely in terms of how certain returning features relate to their counterparts in 2009’s “Trials HD,” the modestly-titled “Trials Evolution” is very aptly named.

As a description for the total package, though, it’s comically understated.

Superficially, “Evolution” indeed looks like the evolution of the same formula that made “Excitebike” so cherished on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s a motorbike game. It’s set on a plane that’s not quite 2D but not quite 3D either. The controls — one trigger for gas, another for brakes, and the left stick to shift the weight and angle of the bike — are as elementary as ever.

But “Evolution” (like “HD” before it) is a whole different animal with regard to its obsessive attention to the physics of speed, weight and angles. Even the most minor applications of gas, brakes and tilt can spell the difference between a brilliant run and a disastrous one. You’ll receive a track’s bronze medal simply for finishing it, but if you want the gold (zero crashes, a reasonably fast completion time), you’ll have to continually manage all three facets to maneuver through some wildly creative obstacle courses. (“Evolution’s” track designs are, predictably, a cut above “HD’s” in terms of scope and imagination.)

If you played “HD,” you already know these basics, and you likely also remember how quickly that game’s difficulty spiked from zero to infinity.

This isn’t a problem “Evolution” has. Getting golds on easy- and medium-difficulty tracks remains challenging, but the insane bike gymnastics required to even finish many of “HD’s” medium-difficulty tracks are reserved solely for the highest echelon of “Evolution’s” difficulty tier.

Even if you were good enough to handle “HD’s” tracks and didn’t need a more gradual difficulty climb, this likely is a positive development. “Evolution’s” Xbox Live integration makes competing with friends’ times even more fun than chasing those medals, and you need your friends to finish those tracks before they can offer up a high score to conquer.

Besides, “Evolution” won’t run out of nasty challenges until its large community runs out of players.

For starters, you can race other players this time around. “Evolution’s” multiplayer mode (four players, online or offline) is a glorified ghost race insofar that you can’t collide with the other three riders on the track, and it’s a literal ghost race on certain elaborate tracks that have terrain-altering switches each rider must be able to activate separately to keep things fair. But it’s still a race to the finish line against three other riders you at least can partially see, and that’s all it needs to achieve the intense air of a multiplayer battle where one mistake can make or break your finish position.

“Evolution’s” multiplayer is presented in a circuit-style format — a collection of races, with the best combined performance taking top honors — and includes a persistent upgrade track that’s good for unlocking new gear for your rider.

But “Evolution’s” real showpiece is the upgraded track editor, which no longer is merely a track editor. As it was in “HD,” the editor is accessible enough to grasp despite being so powerful that RedLynx itself used it to build tracks. The sharing interface is night-and-day improved, with numerous means of filtering creations based on popularity and difficulty, and every track has a global leaderboard to attack.

But in addition to offering a fresh handful of weird single-player minigames in which you launch yourself like a javelin or replace the bike with skis, “Evolution” blows the editor’s doors off and lets you design minigames of your own. User-created events already exist where you can shoot hoops, go bowling and fire a steerable cannonball, and RedLynx itself built a first-person shooter. There’s no telling what will materialize once players truly get acclimated with the tools, but it’s a safe bet that “Evolution” won’t run out of new content to discover anytime soon.

—–

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings: Enhanced Edition
Reviewed for: Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: CD Projekt/WB Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs)
Price: $60

If it’s possible for anything to emerge triumphant from the fallout over “Mass Effect 3’s” roundly disappointing (and, according to no less than the Better Business Bureau, misleading) ending, you’re looking right at it. Save for Bethesda’s games, no game anywhere gives you the power to carve your destiny as measurably as does “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.” And even Bethesda’s endgames don’t pay off on the choices you make as satisfyingly as this one does.

That’s a credit to “Kings” taking the concept of role-playing to a certain limit but not past it. Though dauntingly thick with side quests and opportunities to explore freely, “Kings” still subtly guides players through a narrative that’s more Bioware (cutscenes, dialogue trees, significant story decisions that fork the road) than Bethesda. You’re playing as Geralt, the titular Witcher, and while his destiny rests in your hands, his personality and physical makeup come pre-designed (and for good reason).

Within that structure, though, things can get wonderfully messy.

“Kings” usually tips its hand when you’re at a crossroads that can shift the makeup of the story and the world at large. But the charismatically blurry lines that comprise the personalities of Geralt and his supporting cast — imagine “Game of Thrones'” irreverent take on fantasy instead of your typical straight-faced and straight-laced role-playing game — allow those crossroads to cloud the discrepancy between doing the right thing and doing the desirable thing. Consequently, it isn’t a question of if some seemingly innocuous decision you make early leaves a surprising mark later, but when and how often it happens. From “Kings'” structure to its personality to the respect it pays to player intelligence and maturity, this is the new standard-bearer.

Though not easily mastered (which may be great or distressing news depending on your stance on hand-holding), the act of actually playing the game is similarly enjoyable.

“Kings'” third-person combat finds a happy Western RPG medium. It isn’t as fast and smooth as “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s” action game-style combat, but it’s in the same ballpark, and it trades in some of that finesse for an extra level of depth and danger.

Specifically, success in combat entails vigorous management of your inventory as well as your adversaries. Where “Amalur” lets you hack away with abandon, “Kings” quickly delivers smart and powerful enemies who will punish you if you don’t play defense and bring a game plan into battle. Geralt’s arsenal includes traps and fortifications as well as swords and daggers, and establishing them as a first line of defense is — along with executing optimally-timed dodges, blocks and counters — incredibly valuable. If you want to have a healing potion handy in battle, you’ll need to mix it yourself ahead of time, and if you want your blades at their sharpest, you’d best oil them up before walking into a fight. “Kings” provides a seemingly bottomless sea of weapons, clothing, special ingredients and combat strategies, but it’s entirely your job to put the pieces together and survive once the world opens up.

Happily, the most notable additions to this enhanced edition — which arrives 11 months after “Kings” originally appeared on the PC — work in the service of user-friendliness. Along with a brief but invaluable in-game tutorial that lays out the combat basics, “Kings” ships with a 90-page handbook that exhaustively walks through every facet of the game. The handbook is loaded with spoilers and should be regarded as a last resort if the bevy of quests and menus are threatening to chase you way entirely, but it more than addresses the grievances players had about the PC version being completely user-unfriendly.

—–

Devil May Cry HD Collection
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Capcom
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, suggestive themes, violence)
Price: $40

On the precipice of a full-scale “Devil May Cry” reboot, Capcom has given in to another popular trend by rereleasing the series’ three Playstation 2 entrants in high definition.

Or rather, it kind of does that, if you don’t count the parts of “Devil May Cry” and “Devil May Cry 2” that remain in slightly blurry fullscreen. The standard-definition content is relegated to menus and cutscenes, and all gameplay in all three games is presented in widescreen with aged but HD-friendly graphics. But the strange first impression this oversight gives is a unintentional sign of things to come if you fully plunder “Devil May Cry HD Collection’s” depths.

Regardless of your memories of it, the original “DMC” — which, in 2001, broke ground and established a blueprint for contemporary action games like “God of War” and “Ninja Gaiden” — has aged considerably.

Conceived initially as a “Resident Evil” game, “DMC” doesn’t quite shake the suffocating fixed cameras and clumsy cause-and-effect puzzles that had already begun wearing out their welcome 11 years ago. Replacing “Evil’s” flaccid combat with a fluid arsenal of melee and ranged attacks was enough to turn heads and reorient the confused trajectory 3D action games were riding back then, but by today’s standards — and even compared to “Devil May Cry 3,” which is this collection’s jewel — Dante’s original repertoire is limited and stunted in its dexterity.

“DMC2,” released in 2003, was panned even then, and it holds steady as this collection’s undisputed dud. Signs of things to come are everywhere: Dante’s skillset is larger and more dynamic, the game’s areas are larger, and the fixed camera is slightly less ridiculous in terms of triggering claustrophobic reactions. But the original game’s personality has vanished, and the larger areas and arsenal are wasted on some demoralizingly drab level designs and enemy arrangements. “DMC” wasn’t necessarily masterful in either regard, but “DMC2” isn’t even trying.

That leaves the third game, and if there’s a reason to revisit this collection at all, 2005’s “DMC3” most assuredly is it.

It’s here where Capcom catches and passes the games for which it initially paved the way: Dante’s combat is fluid in a way that remains fresh even seven years later, his personality returns in force, the level and enemy designs justify the full prioritization of combat over puzzle solving, and even the fixed cameras feel somewhat (though not completely) dynamic.

Beyond the dated graphics, “DMC3” is the one game here that can hang in 2012 without leaning on nostalgic crutches to do so. It also remains better realized than HD-native “Devil May Cry 4,” which looks considerably prettier but regresses in all other respects. The most pronounced ding against “DMC3” was its completely ruthless difficulty, but a special edition — which is the version that’s included here — addressed that with a softer additional difficulty setting. (Masochists, fear not: The original difficulty remains intact as well.)

As a total package, “Collection” is pretty no-frills. The three games are walled off within the disc to the point where if you start one, you have to reboot the entire collection to get back to the collection’s menu screen. The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of the game naturally come with achievements and trophies to respectively unlock, but there’s little else in the way of bonus content beyond some art galleries. Surprisingly, “Collection” doesn’t even include a trailer of the rebooted “DmC: Devil May Cry,” which releases later this year and (so far) looks primed to justify Capcom’s tap of the reset button.

—–

StarDrone Extreme
For: Playstation Vita (via Playstation Network)
From: Beatshapers/Orb Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $4

To really understand “StarDrone Extreme” is to see it in action rather than read about it on paper, because while it combines things we’ve all seen before (a touch of pinball, a touch of “Breakout” and a touch of “Spider-Man”-style web slinging physics), putting into words how it all comes together doesn’t do justice to the unwieldy but very satisfying way these elements collide. Though other objectives factor in, the fundamental goal in “Extreme” is to manage those physics in a way that gets your ship around each of the 60 levels and clears the area of collectible pieces (or, later on, enemies) in as little time as possible. The catch is that you don’t control the ship directly, but instead use objects in the level to sling and bounce it around indirectly. Those levels are loaded with enough obstacles (some dangerous, some not) to make getting around, much less quickly, easier said than done. For the impatient, it may be too unwieldy to even enjoy. But for those who love obsessively replaying levels in hopes of shaving a second off their time and achieving leaderboard supremacy, this is pretty much bliss. The truly bold will appreciate the clever ability to adjust “Extreme’s” speed on a 10-point scale, which makes ever faster times possible for those steady enough to handle the spike in recklessness. Save for a few Vita-specific levels, most of “Extreme” is ported from last year’s PS3 version of “StarDrone.” The good news there is that the PS3 and Vita share a cross-compatible leaderboard. The bad news? “Extreme” inexplicably excludes “StarDrone’s” button controls in favor of touch-only options. They work great — arguably better than the buttons, even — but why deny players a choice they previously had?

Games 4/17/11: Fez, Supremacy MMA Unrestricted, Anomaly Warzone Earth

Fez
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: Polytron Corporation/Microsoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10

Following a quick introductory level and an amusing sequence that will mess with the heads of anyone who has watched an Xbox 360 (or two, or three) fail on them, “Fez” reveals the little trick that has made its release so hotly anticipated for some four years now.

The best part? It arguably — very arguably, admittedly — isn’t even the best trick in “Fez’s” bag.

During that opening level, “Fez” pretty customarily makes the kind of first impression you might expect from a modern-day 2D platformer. As the obscenely cheerful Gomez, you can run, jump and climb up certain walls and ledges, and the goal — reach the exit door at the topmost point of a mostly vertical level — is so obvious that the game seems reluctant to even point it out. Because there are no enemies, time limits or consequences for failure — making a fatal jump into a perilous spot simply places you back at your jump-off point — the reluctance is understandable, because success is inevitable.

But past that point, it’s a different story. “Fez’s” jubilantly silly story (sort of) explains the details, but the nutshell explanation is that your flat, 2D world is now a rare combination of still flat but in three dimensions.

Essentially, like sides of a cube, a level in “Fez” consists of four flat planes instead of one. Press the right or left triggers and the entire level unflattens into a cube, rotates on its axis and flattens again.

The only exception is Gomez, who remains exactly where he was. Platforms, walls, and other objects that were perpendicular to your point of view are now parallel (or, if you rotated twice, turned inside out and reversed), and with the level flattened, objects and areas that sat far apart at one angle might be right next to each other at this angle. Hop over to that now-nearby platform, rotate the level back, and suddenly you’re on the other side of the level.

“Fez’s” goals — find enchanted cube pieces (among other items) and keep on unlocking and opening those exit doors — remain dead simple. But when a cube piece sits impossibly out of reach and you have to find the right sequence of rotations to get over there or trigger the sequence of events that brings it within reach, the achievement of those goals is no longer so inevitable.

The (arguable) most beautiful thing about this arrangement is that “Fez” remains reluctant to explain itself. Gomez’s friends are on hand to marvel in disbelief as you rotate their entire world at will, but very little of the game’s dialogue serves to explain anything beyond the absolute basics.

The deal “Fez” brokers is simple. There are no enemies, time limits, scoring systems or failure penalties, and you’re free to jump back and forth between levels and solve riddles in whatever manner you discover them. In return, “Fez” tells you next to nothing about its riddles and how to even find, never mind solve, many of them. The map, though not entirely useless, seems deliberately convoluted. If you’re missing a few items from an area you last visited hours earlier, finding your way back there can be as tricky as solving some of its riddles.

But getting back there isn’t a chore when it entails uncovering numerous surprise discoveries along the way. “Fez” is that impossibly rare game that’s deviously challenging and absurdly relaxing at the same time, and the carte blanche it provides to truly and freely explore a world that’s as mysterious as it is unabashedly cheerful is a wonderful case of the journey, rather than its completion, being a game’s reward. The lack of stricter structure and harsher peril is bound to turn some off, but for those who derive as much joy from discovering as they do conquering, this is not to be missed.

—–

Supremacy MMA Unrestricted
For: Playstation Vita
From: Kung Fu Factory/505 Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs, violence)
Price: $40

“Supremacy MMA Unrestricted” is, without a doubt, the best mixed martial arts game in the Playstation Vita’s library.

Unfortunately, that’s partly because it’s also the only one. And while some MMA action is better than nothing, there’s enough working against “Unrestricted” to temper the enthusiasm serious fans may have for the sport’s Vita debut.

Most glaring is the uphill battle against UFC’s and EA Sports’ games for fighter name recognition — a problem “Unrestricted” arguably eschews by opting for a mostly fictional roster of fighters based on real-life fighters whom casual fans likely wouldn’t recognize anyway.

The fictional roster allows “Unrestricted” to take liberty and give most fighters a unique storyline to complete. The stories are short and won’t win awards for creativity. But it’s an angle the other games can’t take, especially with a level of grit that doesn’t always flatter the fighters. The cutscenes, distilled through voice-acted motion comics, look and sound good, too.

“Unrestricted” also breaks convention by including woman fighters, and here it does opt for real-life fighters. Problem is, only two — Felice Herrig and Michele Gutierrez — are included, and they can only fight each other. Unsurprisingly, their storylines wrap after 10 minutes because there’s nowhere else for them to go.

The actual act of fighting is a similar case of enticing and off-putting, though it doubtlessly will lean toward the latter for MMA purists.

Like its peers, “Unrestricted” accommodates multiple fight disciplines (wrestling, kickboxing, Jiu-Jitsu and so on) and provides the necessary means for ground, standing, striking and submission combat. Different fighters succeed differently based on their disciplines: Focusing on strikes if you’re a submission specialist will, for instance, probably end poorly.

Unlike its peers, “Unrestricted” distills its action through what essentially resembles a non-MMA fighting game. You get a lifebar, and the only way to win a fight is to drain your opponent’s lifebar. An opportunistic counterattack will hurt more than a plain strike, but there’s no way to thread the timing needle and land one perfect punch that turns a losing contest into a knockout victory. Similarly, the only way to make an opponent tap out is to perform a submission when his lifebar is already near zero. “Unrestricted” rewards players for focusing on specific body parts by giving attacks on weakened areas a damage premium, but the facets of a tense MMA fight — both on the technical side and the thrilling, this-can-turn-in-an-instant side — are dampened when the lifebar rules all.

“Unrestricted” also mimics fighting games by taking place almost exclusively on a 2D plane. You can move more freely to change stances during a ground attack, but when both fighters are upright, they’re always facing each other without any means to circle around and use the octagon.

These aren’t minor shortcomings if you want a true-blue MMA experience and not a fighting game with MMA trimmings.

But if you can settle for the latter, “Unrestricted” at least does that pretty well. Its handling of multiple disciplines certainly suffices, and each fighter has a nice complement of moves they perform merely adequately as well as expertly. You can mix button and touch controls freely — escaping submissions is ideal with touch, while basic attacks work best with buttons — and pretty much every move has a weak spot that can be countered and reversed if you time it correctly.

“Unrestricted” also performs sufficiently in the features department. Along with storylines for 14 fighters, the 16 male fighters each have separate upgrade paths that unlock customization bonuses. A training mode and two tournament styles round out the single-player options. A no-frills multiplayer option (two players, local/online) is available as well, but attempts to find an online match (and sometimes even connect to the server) proved unsuccessful.

—–

Anomaly Warzone Earth
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
Also available for: iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, Windows PC, Mac
From: 11 bit studios
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (fantasy violence, language)
Price: $10

Tower defense games have grown so prevalent that even the ones that mix in other genres and rewrite the rules of engagement are cropping up at a dangerous rate. “Anomaly Warzone Earth” dials it back with a presentation and control scheme that’s pure fundamental tower defense, but it flips the script by giving you the keys to the offense — a convoy of tanks, mechs and other vehicles — and tasking you with blasting 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 and Tokyo’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 more of them. The game’s strategic interfaces are polished, the in-game action is really visually impressive, and the maps grow considerably elaborate as the multiple campaigns — one traditional and built around a storyline, the others driven more by scores, enemy waves, time limits and survival — progress. “Earth’s” Xbox 360 version is late out the gate compared to its counterparts, and the control pad is (while plenty sufficient) less ideal than the other versions’ touchscreen and mouse controls. But along with the Tokyo missions that previously were exclusive to the Mac and PC, the 360 version gets a set of six Tactical Trials scenarios that (true to the name) task you with making creative use of limited resources to complete trials that play like riddles as much as they do missions.

Games 4/10/12: Ridge Racer: Unbounded, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Splatters

Ridge Racer: Unbounded
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Bugbear Entertainment/Namco Bandai
ESRB Rating: Teen (mild language, mild violence)
Price: $60

Between the awkward subtitle and the fact that it neither looks nor plays like a “Ridge Racer” game, “Ridge Racer: Unbounded” arrives with a supremely unfortunate name as its introduction.

Happily, just about everything else is superlative going the other way. If this is the future of “Ridge Racer,” then so be it, because “Unbounded” is one of the most exhilarating arcade racing games ever made.

Per “Ridge Racer” tradition, drifting plays a key role in “Unbounded,” which includes a dedicated drift event as part of a large roster of single-player events centered around racing, time trials, “Burnout”-style car combat and occasional special events. Drifting (along with tailgating, trading paint and other dangerous driving feats) contributes to a power meter that, when full, lets you wreak some exceptional havoc on both your opponents and the track at large.

At its most benign, cashing in a full power meter is good for a quick shot of turbo. But it’s far more valuable as a means for fully obliterating another racer. Activate the power and ram a car before it depletes, and it’s good for a takedown that punishes your opponent and quickly refills your power almost completely. String together consecutive takedowns, and it’s the most fun you can have dominating the field. But with high bursts of speed come frequent opportunities to completely miss a perfect takedown and ram a wall instead. “Unbounded” is fast by default and completely reckless at top speed, and the risks, rewards, reflexes and snap decisions needed to succeed are appropriately thrilling.

A properly-timed power activation also allows for some visually spectacular track modification. Want to drive straight through a building for a shortcut while everyone else takes the road around it? Go right ahead. Again, though, you’d best time it right: Barrel into that building just as the meter empties, and the only wreckage will be your car.

The ensuing bedlam perfectly complements a blend of physics and heft that’s considerably different than the customary “Ridge Racer” laws of motion. Drifting no longer is a comically easy maneuver you can perform for a half-mile at a time: There is a pronounced weight to these cars that, along with a terrific sense of speed and momentum, turns every drift and power activation into a risky play. Different cars handle with varying levels of ease, and there are instances where a touch too much can cause a tailspin that dooms your race position.

That can be problematic, because “Unbounded’s” single difficulty setting is fair but harsh. Commit some ugly blunders, and you’ll find yourself in 12th place with no way to scrape back to third or better (which, in races, is required to pass the event). A persistent upgrade track means even a pitiful finish brings some reward in terms of experience points that eventually unlock new events and better cars. But the goal remains to place or win, and “Unbounded” won’t hold your hand and take you there. That’s refreshing, and it’s genuinely satisfying to ace an event, but if you’re easily discouraged, consider yourself warned.

“Unbounded’s” upgrade path carries over to multiplayer (eight players, online only), and while the head-to-head races are as straightforward as online racing gets, it gets the job done.

Much more interesting are the community challenges. “Unbounded” includes a surprisingly versatile track editor, and you can create your own “city” by packaging created tracks and events together. Your creations are shareable online, and “Unbounded” arranges the content into time-limited (some an hour, some a day) challenges where players worldwide compete for the best score. The event creator’s score is prominently on display as well, and even if you can’t best all comers, there’s immense satisfaction in outclassing a player in an event he or she designed.

—–

Xenoblade Chronicles
For: Wii
From: Monolith Soft/Nintendo
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, mild language, partial nudity, use of alcohol and tobacco, violence)
Price: $50

No single gaming genre is mired in a longer slump than the Japanese role-playing game, which (scattered exceptions aside, naturally) has been consistently reeling for years.

“Xenoblade Chronicles” is the arguable slumpbuster — a massive adventure that arrives with significant fanfare and, instead of using that hype as a crutch, cashes it in to teach a tired genre some overdue new tricks. It liberally adopts concepts that have propelled Western RPGs forward, but merges them with a flavor and storytelling approach that leaves no doubt where its lineage lies.

Crucially, “Chronicles” lays most of it — a monstrous open world, versatile side quests, customizable armor and weaponry run wild — almost immediately at your feet following an opening sequence that’s similarly generous with its combat system.

When it doesn’t get in its own way, that combat is stellar. Like an early Bioware RPG (or, for JRPG fans, “Final Fantasy XII”), “Chronicles” combines real-time battlefield awareness and turn-based strategy. You have continuous, direct control over your character’s position, and because the action doesn’t break for turns, he or she will default to a basic attack against the nearest available enemy unless you dictate otherwise.

And you will, because default attacks get you nowhere. Thriving in battle means managing an array of skills, monitoring allies’ statuses and health, and keeping party morale high enough to execute special chain attacks and (if necessary) revive fallen comrades.

With a story that lands comfortably in the 50- to 100-hour range (dependent on your affinity for exploration, side quests and other electives), “Chronicles” affords plenty of time to get comfortable with combat and master the advanced techniques it gradually introduces.

But if there’s one aspect that stands out alongside the system’s depth, it’s how fast it is. There are no random battles in “Chronicles” — many potential enemies outright ignore you unless you engage them — but as soon as you’re in an enemy’s sights, the action kicks straight into fifth gear. Managing the particulars would be a cakewalk in a turn-based RPG, but it’s an exciting challenge when there’s no breather between snap decisions.

Occasionally, the system is caffeinated to a fault. If nearby enemies sniff a fight, they may jump in, and suddenly four enemies swells to 12. The camera is problematic by default, and it’s a mess when attempting to contain battles this sprawling. The chaos will frequently cost you the fight, especially if those wandering enemies are level 75 creatures who can obliterate your level 16 hide in one hit. (Fortunately, death is merely an inconvenience: Defeated enemies respawn, but “Chronicles” revives you at the nearest landmark with all items and collected experience points — even from the losing battle — still intact.)

Other nagging issues abound. “Chronicles” takes a convenient cue from Western RPGs and lets you warp to landmarks you’ve previously discovered, but the map interface is a hassle to use for general exploration. A passive mechanic that stops a fight to show you an enemy’s future attack is, while clever, disruptive to the combat’s tempo. The story itself is watered down by its immense length, and characters repeat the same annoying catchphrases way too often in battle.

Finally, though primarily the Wii’s fault, “Chronicles'” visual presentation leaves something to be desired. It’s visually sufficient, but it’s impossible not to wonder what this world would look like in high definition.

But “Chronicles” does too much too well for long-starved JRPG fans to fret over quibbles like these. Though strained, the story nonetheless gratifies with strong, likable characters who embrace rather than sulk toward their destiny. And with so much left up to players to decide — from character relationships to gear customization to the minor but wonderful ability to save anywhere — it’s a treat rather than a chore to carry that story to its conclusion.

—–

The Splatters
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live)
From: SpikySnail Games/Microsoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10

On paper, “The Splatters” sounds familiar enough. The object is to clear clusters of orbs scattered around each level, and doing so entails launching smiling blobs (known as Splatters) toward them at the angle and power of your choosing. Along with a three-star scoring system, comparisons to any number of mobile games would appear inevitable. But the Splatters aren’t called Splatters just because. Eventually — be it via collision or combustion — the Splatters indeed splatter into an unwieldy liquid whose properties and subsequent splash effect are exponentially dicier to handle than some angry bird. “The Splatters” offers a handful of maneuvers that let you change direction mid-flight, launch a powerful but messy kamikaze attack, and even rewind your active Splatter’s flight path while its physical instability and the surrounding level continue progressing forward. Chaining these and other tricks is imperative toward achieving three-star scores and sharing brag-worthy gameplay clips on the online community channel, but intricate levels and haphazard physics means even completing these 65 levels — sorted into basic, combo-centric and trick shot-centric flavors — a deviously fun challenge that goes well beyond simple aiming and firing. The challenge ramps up early and significantly, and the mercurial physics elude complete mastery even with practice. But responsive controls and an easy means for instantly resetting a level if a strategy goes south make the pursuit of those stars fun and frustration-free.

Games 3/6/12: Mass Effect 3, Zumba Fitness Rush, Warp

Mass Effect 3
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Bioware/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language, violence)
Price: $60

Bioware wants everyone to enjoy “Mass Effect 3,” which is why it’s instituted options that allow players to enjoy it purely as a third-person shooter (with all role-playing upgrades and moral crises handled automatically) or a role-playing game (in which you still must fight, but against a considerably more generous difficulty curve).

But if you’ve been with the “Mass Effect” trilogy from the beginning and have no desire to play its closing chapter in a compromised state, let there be no confusion: Everyone is invited to play, but “ME3” was very much still made for you.

Bioware poured an encyclopedic ton of galactic mythology into the first two chapters of its space epic, and without spoiling a single story point, “ME3” pays it all off magnificently. The battle against the galaxy-cleansing Reapers is thrilling and narratively exhaustive enough to enthrall new players — instead of assembling a squadron, as you did in “ME2,” you’re rounding up an entire galaxy’s worth of warring races to defeat the Reapers — but there is a considerable bonus for those making return visits. The conditions of “ME3’s” core conflict produce some jarringly unlikely alliances, and the sheer number of loose ends Bioware ties up (with regard to characters and entire sectors of space alike) is staggering.

As per series custom, “ME3” provides the option to import a save file from “ME2,” and it’ll tailor itself to reflect the choices you made (and, perhaps, the characters who consequently perished) in those first two games. Also per series custom, the ending you see will come down to some brutal decisions you’ll have to quickly make en route to your showdown with the Reapers. No one does this stuff better than Bioware, and “ME3” does it better than ever.

The actual act of playing “ME3” has changed little from its predecessor: It looks great, benefits from reasonably smart A.I., and as cover-based third-person shooters with light squad management abilities go, it hits enough competent marks to uphold its part of the package. Seeking cover remains occasionally problematic when embroiled in a 360-degree fight: Sometimes an attempt to find cover will result in a roll that leaves you more vulnerable than you already were. Occasionally the enemy count skyrockets and things just fall apart. But these moments are rare and, over the course of a 30-hour game that mostly plays without incident, forgivable.

A note to Xbox 360 owners: If you have a Kinect that’s suffering from neglect, plug it in. “ME3” uses the Kinect’s voice-recognition abilities better than any game ever has, and being able to manage your squad and change weapons without pausing to use the radial menu is a surprisingly valuable time-saver.

And a note to those who couldn’t stand “ME2’s” space-mining minigame: “ME3” brings it back in an altered, reduced and surprisingly tense new incarnation. It’s still wholly optional, but give it a chance.

“ME3” marks the series’ first foray into multiplayer, and the result — four-player online co-op, tasking you (as a lower-level soldier) and your teammates with eliminating waves of enemies — is your standard survival co-op mode. The combat feels the same, and with six character classes to upgrade and lots of perks, challenges and gear to unlock, the mode certainly has legs. It isn’t wholly fresh, but it’s very solid.

The one ingenious aspect of the multiplayer is how it ties back into your solo campaign. Your efforts to battle enemy forces feeds into the larger war against the Reapers: The more waves you take out in a sector of the galaxy, the stronger your fleet becomes in that sector. You need not participate to see “ME3’s” story reach its conclusion, but your story might have a happier ending if you do.

—

Zumba Fitness Rush
For: Xbox 360 (Kinect required)
From: Zoë Mode/Majesco
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (mild lyrics, mild suggestive themes)
Price: $50

If your aptitude as a Zumba Fitness master is of great significance to you, “Zumba Fitness Rush’s” progress tracker — which compiles daily, weekly and monthly reports about your technique as well as your time invested and calories burned — will be a source of great comfort (or perhaps, depending on the result, great shame.)

But for the rest of you who just want to have fun working out and not have a computer constantly tell you you’re doing it wrong, “Rush” — be it because it can’t or simply because it understands where you’re coming from — is a welcome change of pace.

“Rush’s” setup should feel familiar to anyone at home with dance or fitness games, because it’s basically an amalgamation of both. Along with the progress tracker, there’s a roster of preset classes (15 each of short, medium and full length), as well as a tool for assembling your own workout from the 42 songs (and accompanying routines) on offer.

Rounding out the feature set is a mode for dancing to a single song, a tool for finding live Zumba classes if you’re ready to take your act public, and a place to acquaint yourself with (and practice) the myriad of dance steps scattered throughout those routines.

That practice feature may be of interest to you if you want some grasp of the Zumba method before taking on a workout.

But even if you study up, your first “Rush” workout (and, likely, several more after that) will likely bring with it the sensation of being dropped into the deep end of the pool. Once the song begins, you’re on the clock, and if you’re expecting your virtual trainer to give you any cues as to which steps are in your immediate future, you should just give that idea up and prepare to react and emulate as quickly as you can.

Fortunately, “Rush” drops you into that pool with a life preserver in the form of a very generous technique feedback system. Make an honest attempt to keep up and reasonably replicate what’s happening on screen, and you’ll likely come away with a pretty good score. Keep a good pace, and you might even fake your way into a five-star performance. The Kinect isnt sophisticated enough to dock points based on the flustered expression on your face, so, it’ll assume you at least partially know what you’re doing.

The line of trust “Rush” draws is arguably perfect by way of being so wobbly. You can’t outright cheat it, and you slack or completely disobey the routine, it will catch and penalize you. As with a good in-person workout, the goal here is to get you moving first and learn the technique second, and regardless of “Rush’s” intentions, that’s what it achieves.

Save for its wide berth with regard to technique, “Rush’s” Kinect implementation is pretty sharp. Two-player support works similarly as long as you have the room (some routines require lateral movement that could spell trouble for uncoordinated friends). Getting around the game also is easy thanks to support for Kinect’s voice recognition abilities: Speak a menu option or even a routine’s song’s name, and it’ll head right to it — no annoying hand-waving necessary.

—–

Warp
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
Coming soon for: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Windows PC
From: Trapdoor/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, strong language, violence)
Price: $15

You’d be forgiven for initially wondering why “Warp” — a seemingly harmless puzzle/stealth hybrid starring a muttering alien, named Zero, who might be the cutest Pixar character Pixar never created — got slapped with a Mature rating. Thankfully, once you use Zero’s warping ability to literally warp into the body of a soldier and bloodily explode out of him, it becomes clear in a hurry. Zero’s initial trick, which allows him to instantly warp roughly five feet in any direction, comes into play via an overhead puzzle arrangement that plays as much like a “Metal Gear Solid” offshoot as anything else. Zero is helpless in a direct fight against the soldiers, scientists and other traps trying to contain (or kill) him in the facility he’s trying to escape, so you’ll have to plot a stealthy route through large, open-ended areas that are equally rich with hazards and items he can use to his creative advantage. New abilities, including cloning and telekinesis, gradually expand his arsenal to counter a difficulty that climbs gradually before spiking near the end, and the large environments house special challenge areas (complete with online leaderboards) and other bonus content for players who really want to put their abilities through the wringer. As puzzle games go, “Warp” is a legitimately clever mind-bender, and as a stealth games go, it’s terrifically tense. That odd-couple combination, along with the wild mishmash of adorable and bloody that weaves Zero’s story together, adds up to an experience that has few peers.

Games 2/28/12: Asura's Wrath, Syndicate, Nexuiz

Asura’s Wrath
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: CyberConnect2/Capcom
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, language, partial nudity, suggestive themes, use of alcohol, violence)
Price: $60

Everything you do in “Asura’s Wrath,” you’ve done before … except, perhaps, the part where you have to fight only with your feet because your arms were ripped off during a fall from space. Or the part where you literally fight a sentient planet. Or the part where you battle what resembles a metallic Buddha, who gets devoured by a demonic elephant who himself is blasted into oblivion by a spaceship.

Other than that and some two dozen other things, you’ve done this before.

“Wrath” assembles the wildly grandiose odyssey of Asura — a disgraced demigod whose anger and lust for vengeance makes “God of War” star Kratos look like a teacup puppy by comparison — with three familiar ingredients.

Primarily, it plays like a “God of War”-style brawler, offering Asura an arsenal of melee, ranged and special attacks he can chain together with abandon.

“Wrath” intersperses the brawling with on-rails sequences — sometimes on the ground, other times soaring through space — that play like “Rez.” You control Asura’s lateral movements with the left stick, roll the targeting reticule around the screen with the right stick, and unleash a maelstrom of missiles after locking onto a dozen or so targets at once and pressing the fire button.

Gluing everything together are quick time events, those interactive cutscenes where you follow a series of onscreen button prompts to help your character execute some amazing stunt. “Wrath” has garnered a reputation for leaning excessively on the mostly unpopular QTE mechanic, but it’s undeserved. Though a regular occurrence, the QTEs never overwhelm the other facets of “Wrath’s” gameplay.

More importantly, “Wrath” actually makes them fun. Failing a QTE has consequence, but that consequence doesn’t include (as it often does in other games) resetting the cutscene ad nauseam until you recite the prompt correctly. The QTEs make sense in where and how they’re implemented, they’re generous with regard to how much time you’re given to hit them, and unless you completely drop the ball and flub every single prompt, the cutscene barrels ahead.

“Barrels” isn’t an exaggeration, either. Whether brawling, flying, QTEing or storytelling, “Wrath” screams forward at a frantic pace that ignites all these familiar gameplay concepts with a fresh, exhilarating energy.

The speed does not come at the expense of technique, either: You’ll have to evade as well as attack, whether on foot or in flight, and every boss enemy (even the planet) has patterns and tells waiting to be exploited. It’s controlled chaos at it’s finest, and when “Wrath” interweaves its three big ingredients into a single sequence that starts in the sky and ends on the ground, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen or done in a game.

“Wrath’s” story mirrors its gameplay — absolutely bananas, but surprisingly coherent (and reverent, and even funny) upon closer inspection. The game presents itself like an 18-episode television show, complete with credits on both sides, mock commercial breaks (without the actual commercials) and narrated bumpers teasing the next episode. The presentation is amusing, but it also serves a purpose: Each episode brings its own story arc to the larger narrative, and being mindful of those arcs and starting points allows “Wrath” to unfurl its increasingly crazy saga at a tempo that’s accessible in spite of all the insanity.

Depending on your play style, “Wrath’s” run doesn’t necessarily end when it ends. Casual players can complete the 18 episodes in six-ish hours and find little else to do, making the $60 price hard to swallow in spite of how great those six hours are. But overachievers have reason to give it a second and maybe third spin. Each episode has a scoring system to master, there’s an achievement for beating the game under special conditions that ramp up the difficulty, and there’s a special 19th episode waiting to be unlocked if you have what it takes to unlock it. (The end of episode 18 spills the details.)

—–

Syndicate
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Starbreeze/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, suggestive themes)
Price: $60

Fans of the beloved 1993 strategy game “Syndicate” unleashed a nuclear moan when EA pronounced it reborn as a first-person shooter, and developer Starbreeze responded with assurances that the heart and soul would return intact.

The finished product is a rare case of both sides being right. This most definitely is “Syndicate’s” world, but fans of the strategy games most definitely have reason to howl anyway.

Mostly, it’s because the one hopeful straw at which that crowd could grasp — a storyline that meaningfully takes the universe into a new chapter with the benefits of modern production values at its back — never really pans out.

Conceptually, the finer details of “Syndicate’s” world are there, and outside of some needlessly tiny text and a bizarre case of light bloom so bright it occasionally washes out your view, it looks very good.

But it’s mostly a tease. The concepts behind “Syndicate’s” storyline — corporations battling for control governments once had, a power struggle where even the good guys (you included) have bloody hands, a bizarre technocracy where getting microchipped and connecting your mind directly to the Internet is a status symbol, source of power and grave risk all at once — are immensely fascinating, but the meat of it unfolds via audio logs and a library of text you can read in the menu screen (tiny text and all). The story that plays out in front of you alludes to everything, but it overwhelmingly focuses on you, the corporation for which you work and a select handful of allegiances that threaten its (and your) health.

Ultimately, as perhaps you feared, “Syndicate” boils down to another case of you against most of the world. Here’s hoping you like shooting a whole ton of enemy soldiers as they rush at you from everywhere, because that, more than anything else, is what “Syndicate” is all about.

In fairness to Starbreeze, the shooter they’ve built is a fine one, with polished control, a powerful arsenal of guns, and enemy A.I. that flashes a strong combination of brains and teeth.

Your microchipped mind comes into play, too. A limited-use interface overlay can temporarily slow time and give away enemy positions, while special abilities let you hack enemies’ minds in order to overload their circuits or brainwash them into sacrificing themselves or fighting on your side. Occasionally, you’ll also hack other objects — sentry guns, elevators and so on — to operate in your favor. “Syndicate” never puts the hacking mechanic to use in the form of a truly clever puzzle, but it’s prevalent enough to give an otherwise boilerplate shooter campaign the identity it needs.

Along with the single-player campaign, “Syndicate” offers a wholly separate co-op campaign (four players, online only) that puts you in the boots of a capable but less powerful corporate foot soldier.

The co-op campaign is even flatter in terms of storytelling, but if you come prepared to play — i.e., with three friends ready to work as a team — it’s the better of the two modes. Your hacking deficiencies are compensated for when your three teammates hack alongside you, and being able to heal each other is a godsend. You’re weaker, the enemies are stronger and bolder, and the campaign difficulty is an order of magnitude higher even on its lowest setting, so teamwork and communication are imperative. (The difficulty doesn’t scale for fewer players, either, so find a quartet. You’ll need it.)

For your trouble, “Syndicate” offers a persistent upgrade tree that’s considerably more rewarding than the meager upgrades found in the single-player campaign. You get experience points for being a good teammate as well as marksman, and with time, the perks and weapons you unlock will make you a more formidable soldier than your single-player counterpart.

—–

Nexuiz
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: Illfonic/THQ
ESRB Rating: Teen (Crude Humor, Mild Language, Violence)
Price: $10

“Nexuiz” may proudly proclaim it’s one of the first downloadable games available that’s powered by the CryENGINE 3 engine, but anyone with a discerning eye for shooters knows that the presence of “Quake III Arena’s” heart and soul is the real story here. Originally conceived years ago as a “Quake” mod, “Nexuiz” comes into its own by taking that series’ core principles — blindingly fast first-person shooter combat, small but intricate maps laden with weapons and game-changing power-ups — and giving them a polished, modern sheen (thanks, largely, to CryENGINE 3’s impressive visual capabilities). Those in search of storytelling and along time need not apply: “Nexuiz” offers a practice mode with A.I. bots, but you must play against others (eight players, online only) to pad your statistics and get those achievements. But much like “Q3A” was so pure in its freneticism that anyone could play it, so is “Nexuiz,” which plays spotlessly online and offers a lot to like — nine maps, nine dual-fire weapons, a ton of mutators that can temporarily enhance your skills or sabotage your enemies’ abilities — for its $10 price tag. The emphasis on team play — team deathmatch and capture the flag are its sole match types — also means you’re never fighting alone.

Games 2/14/12: The Darkness II, Gotham City Impostors, Shank 2

The Darkness II
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Digital Extremes/2K Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, strong language, strong sexual content)
Price: $60

Though certainly a first-person shooter at its core, “The Darkness” may be remembered most fondly for the unique ways it applied thick layers of stealth, adventure gaming and a bold devotion to sink-or-swim immersion that no game since has quite captured. Playing “The Darkness” often felt like being a tourist in a new town — albeit one where a disproportionate percentage of the locals wanted to kill you.

Playing “The Darkness II,” by contrast, feels like passing through as Godzilla. Jackie Estacado (that’s you) is more powerful, the powers ingrained in him by the enigmatic force known as The Darkness are considerably nastier, and the game — set two years later and produced by a new developer — sheds most of those layers in favor of a straight sprint that’s exhilarating and potentially dispiriting all at once.

Let’s not mince words: The six-ish hours that embody “TD2’s” main campaign may very possibly be the six craziest hours you spend playing a first-person shooter this year. Jackie’s brandishes the usual crop of firearms, but the upgradable powers granted by The Darkness — wieldable swarms and black holes, a demonic underling who does your bidding while calling you names, and a pair of demonic arms that can tear enemies apart, feed on them and toss them across the room — are anything but rudimentary.

Instead of piecing out combat and creating scenarios where acting stealthily works best, “TD2” throws you into the fire and encourages you to mix gunplay and demonplay in whatever ridiculous fashion pleases you best. One firefight never differs dramatically from another, and even the most powerful enemies aren’t terribly smart, but a mix of busy environments and relentless enemy formations ensures plenty of room for attacking creatively instead of simply twitching and reacting.

With that picture painted, let’s not mince words here either: While “TD2” preserves the original game’s soul in some respects, and while the game is a riot to play on its own terms, the new gameplay comes almost completely at the expense of everything the first game dared to do differently.

The need to literally read street signs and check subway schedules to navigate around an unfriendly and non-linear city is, for instance, no more. “TD2” is nearly always straightforward, and a button press tells you exactly where to go if you somehow still get lost.

The need to shoot out streetlights in order to design the perfect stealth ambush is, to name another example, almost absent. Jackie’s Darkness powers still disappear in bright light, so shooting lights out still works to your advantage, but you’ll do so in the heat of a battle in progress instead of in anticipation of a fight you’re starting on your terms.

Where the spirit of the first game shines without contradiction is in “TD2’s” storytelling, which resumes where the original left off and arguably outdoes that game in terms of presentation, character design and exploration of The Darkness and its roots. “TD2’s” voice acting is superb, its cast (down to that strangely adorable name-calling demon underling) extremely memorable. And the new visual style — which uses hand-drawn and hand-painted textures to give players the sensation of playing inside a freely explorable graphic novel — is a night-and-day improvement over the first game’s more traditional look.

Instead of the first game’s competitive multiplayer, which few will miss, “TD2” complements the campaign with a collection of hit missions and a second, shorter campaign you can play alone or cooperatively (online only, four players). None of the four playable characters are as powerful as Jackie, nor are the missions very creatively designed. But each has a unique power that Jackie lacks, and the game’s devotion to strong storytelling and character design applies remains in full effect.

—–

Gotham City Impostors
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Monolith/WB Games
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, comic mischief, language, mild suggestive themes, violence)
Price: $15

“Gotham City Impostors” posits a wonderfully crazy idea: an urban battleground pitting self-appointed vigilantes in shoddy Batman costumes (Team Bats) against similarly entrepreneurial criminals in homemade Joker getups (Team Jokerz).

It’s such an inventive premise, in fact, you might be dismayed to see it applied to a multiplayer first-person shooter that, beneath the surface, is only so different from the multitude of other class-based shooters already crowding the market.

Purely in terms of being what it sets out to be, “Impostors” is mechanically excellent. Monolith’s first-person shooter expertise — if you’ve played “F.E.A.R.” or “Condemned,” you’re familiar with its work — gives “Impostors” a rock-solid foundation in terms of control responsiveness and other particulars. You can choose preset loadouts catered to five classes (Striker, Defender, Medic, Scout, Sniper) or configure your own, and between the guns you expect and a few that are special to this world, your firearm needs are covered.

Though your toys are nowhere near as impressive as Batman’s or The Joker’s gadgets, “Impostors” gives you a few to play with, and it doesn’t force you to level up before you can play with them. That’s a very good thing, because while you can freely sprint around the five maps, it’s more fun to glide, spring into the air and zip around with the grappling hook. “Impostors,” realizing this, designs the maps to take full advantage, with multiple vertical levels, numerous hiding spots in high places, and lots of opportunities to flee harm’s way in a flash.

For those dismayed by the increasingly uneven playing fields that make most multiplayer shooters practically impenetrable for new players after a few weeks, the news about “Impostors” is good. Unlockables are numerous, but they’re cosmetic and personal enhancements rather than weapons and perks that offer players an unbalanced performance edge. For those invested in the game, the personal enhancements — including new performance trackers and in-game challenges to complete — are terrific carrots within a carrot. A truckload of clothing pieces makes it possible to design Batman and Joker costumes that bring out your personal sense of shoddy style. You even can use unlocked graphics to design a special calling card that other players see when you take them out.

Here’s hoping you enjoy that kind of ribbing, because if you aren’t here for the online multiplayer (12 players), you may as well not be here at all.

Though the Bats and Jokerz spout some funny lines during the course of a match, there’s no story mode to really let the premise shine. You can’t play against bots or against friends via splitscreen, and outside of a tutorial mode and some very brief skills challenges, online play is your only option. The three match types are your standard class shooter match types, the matchmaking system is predictably prone to dropping you into fights against players ranked higher than you, and if you don’t enjoy duking it out online in “Call of Duty” and its ilk, the amusing little things that set “Impostors” apart from its humorless contemporaries will be cold (and short-lived) comfort.

—–

Shank 2
Reviewed for: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
Also available for: Windows PC
From: Klei Entertainment/EA
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, strong language, suggestive themes)
Price: $15

The original “Shank” took a handful of good ingredients from different genres and combined them into one surprisingly focused action game. “Shank 2” doesn’t mess with that approach, providing a second helping of all the first game did right and making adjustments to the few places where it went wrong. For the uninitiated, “Shank 2” is a violent but cartoony sidescroller in the “Metal Slug” vein, outfitting players with guns and explosives but placing special emphasis on close-quarters combat and providing an abundance of weapons (from knives to shovels to chainsaws to wieldable fish) with which to deal damage. The melee combat is, despite the 2D presentation, somewhat in the “Devil May Cry” vein. A when-all-else-fails pounce attack come straight out of Wolverine’s playbook. And the running and jumping occasionally feels like a classic “Prince of Persia” game when Shank is in chase and chaining moves together without hesitation. Beyond telling a new story, “Shank 2” tempers the first game’s occasionally cheap difficulty, fixes a few unfortunate button-mapping choices, and adds some new moves — most notably, a very convenient evasive roll and a terrific counterattack mechanic — that allow players to better fight defensively. A new arcade-style Survival mode (two players, online or offline) also complements the story and allows players to unlock and play as new characters. That feature comes at the expense of the first game’s collection of co-op-only missions, but it’s a better fit that’s built to endure longer than those missions did.

Games 1/31/12: Resident Evil: Revelations, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Quarrel

Resident Evil: Revelations
For: Nintendo 3DS
From: Capcom
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, language)
Price: $40

After Capcom insulted 3DS owners last year with the laughably shallow and overpriced “Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D,” you’d be forgiven for dismissing “Resident Evil: Revelations” as yet another thoughtless cash-in.

You’d be wrong, but you’d be forgiven.

To the contrary, and staggeringly so, “Revelations” is the real deal — a console-quality “Resident Evil” game that arguably surpasses the series’ excellent recent console efforts, and a showcase piece for a system that may be more powerful than you’d figured.

“Revelations” illuminates the murky timeline leading into the events of 2009’s “Resident Evil 5,” and the approach it takes — pieced into episodes like a television show, and fronted by multiple playable protagonists at different points in the timeline — is a novel venture for the series.

The obvious benefits apply, with the episodic approach (and complementary save/checkpoint system) giving “Revelations” some welcome portable-friendly breaks in the action. The structure also keeps the story on point: Every episode, even when ending on a cliffhanger, contains its own satisfying story arc, and the multiple characters and timelines keep developments cropping up at an engrossing pace.

In a more surprising benefit, the episodic structure also lets “Revelations” be all things “Resident Evil” at once.

Jill Valentine returns to carry the bulk of “Revelations'” playable character weight, and her scenes — set almost exclusively aboard a gargantuan cruise liner crawling with secrets — are a callback to the original “Resident Evil’s” sprawling mansion. The enemy count is sparse, but so is Jill’s ammo, and the threat of significant peril around any given corner — even when tracing old steps to access previously inaccessible corridors — provides the best blend yet of the franchise’s contemporary gameplay and original ethos.

By contrast — and without spoiling the who or where — the segments starring other characters unfold in a variety of environments that favor heavier action and a more linear progression.

Impressively, “Revelations” can handle both styles even if you pass on the $20 Circle Pad Pro attachment, which gives the 3DS a second analog pad. The attachment wasn’t available for testing with “Revelations,” but it wasn’t needed.

Hypothetically, “Revelations” — which adopts “RE5’s” third-person perspective but offers an optional first-person view when guns are drawn — is better without it. With only one pad, combat becomes a tense compromise between positioning and firing instead of mindless running and gunning, and during those moments where big trouble breaks loose in small spaces and death can come quick, being just a little purposefully hamstrung by the controls adds to the excitement. The controls are responsive, the touchscreen adds a second layer of intuitive access, and it’s almost fun to fight the game when it’s by design and the design is this sharp.

“Revelations” adds a weird new wrinkle with a scanning device that lets Jill and others analyze the environment for hidden items and enemy data. Initially, its implementation feels clumsy, because you have to stash your weapon to use the scanner. But that, of course, is the point: If you want the rewards, you have holster your gun and assume the risks of doing so. Yet again, “Revelations” mixes intuitive design with deliberate inconvenience to turn a quirky mechanic into a tense gamble.

Presentationally, “Revelations” is a testament to the 3DS’ surprising power, with console-quality graphics that pop beautifully with the 3D maxed out. The sound design is stellar, and you’d do very well to play this one with headphones on.

Amusingly, “Revelations” also includes a mode — playable solo or wirelessly/online with another player — that basically mimics the sole mode that comprised “Mercenaries.” It might be the first time a $40 game has included a $50 game as a bonus feature, but regardless, it’s a welcome (and fitting) concession from a studio that got it all the way right this time.

—–

Final Fantasy XIII-2
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Square-Enix
ESRB Rating: Teen (drug reference, mild language, mild suggestive themes, simulated gambling, violence)
Price: $60

Did you play “Final Fantasy XIII?” Because if you didn’t, this welcome mat is not for you.

“Final Fantasy XIII-2” easily is the most direct sequel Square-Enix has ever made for a “Final Fantasy” game. Neither a spinoff nor a quirky offshoot (like “Final Fantasy X-2” famously was), “XIII-2” directly follows the events of its predecessor’s story and keeps that game’s battle system — a cool mix of turn-based gameplay set to real-time rules in which you devise multiple roles for your characters and set them in furious motion — pretty much intact. The primary cast has changed, with story-mandated events putting “XIII’s” Serah at the forefront of a search for her sister (and “XIII” protagonist) Lightning, but skeletally, “XIII-2” has far more in common than not with “XIII.”

More than anything, “XIII-2” feels like a second draft that might not even exist if “XIII” didn’t attract the harsh criticism it got.

For that crowd, the changes are welcome. Where “XIII” was shockingly linear for a role-playing game, “XIII” offers towns, dungeons with branching paths and side quests to complement the main storyline. Even that main storyline fractures, hinging on an incorporation of time travel that (while narratively uninspired) often lets you jump tracks when you’re ready instead of when the story dictates. (As a welcome — albeit almost certainly unintentional — result, many of “XIII-2’s” most tedious fetch quests and mini-games can be skipped entirely if you wish to ignore them.)

“XIII-2’s” most inspired new twist comes from its unusual party arrangement, which gives you two human characters and “Pokemon”-esque monster to complement them in battle. The game is crawling with monsters to capture, customize and upgrade, and while the exercise is mostly optional, it’s where most of “XIII-2’s” most enjoyable character customization lies.

But “XIII-2’s” inarguable blessing is its willingness to let you commandeer its battle system quickly. “XIII” held players’ hands for nearly 20 hours — that’s 20, not a typo — before completely relinquishing control. “XIII-2” offers a comprehensive tutorial for new and rusty players, but you can skip it if you wish, and without spoiling the narrative hows or whens, you’re off and running in pretty short order.

Along with the battle tutorial, “XIII-2” also offers a chapter-by-chapter story primer for those who wish to understand the events of “XIII” but skip straight to playing “XIII-2.”

But as many who played it will attest, “XIII’s” story was a needless and often incomprehensibly dense climb up a shallow hill, and there’s only so much the primer can do to clean it up. Even if you read the whole thing, jumping straight into “XIII-2” is like skipping the first three seasons of “Lost” and expecting to enjoy the remaining three as much as those who have been watching all along.

Storytelling, sadly, remains the one place where “XIII-2” stumbles as much as (if not more than) “XIII.” It’s opaque almost from the start. The main characters are bland, the supporting characters often obnoxious. And once again, a simple story gets weighed down by its mythology and character dialogue instead of enriched by them. (Given what a kick to the face the primary ending is, though, that may be blessing in disguise.)

—–

Quarrel
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: Indiagames Limited/Denki/UTV Ignition
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (fantasy violence)
Price: $5

The conceptually brilliant and rambunctiously cheerful “Quarrel” is what happens when Boggle and RISK join forces. Up to four armies share adjacent territories with one another, and dominating a “Quarrel” match comes down to wiping out opposing armies before they decimate yours. This time, though, a battle comes down to eight random letters and one chance to build a better word than your enemy. The more troops you have occupying the conflicted square, the more letters you can use to build your word, and the winning army can (depending on circumstance) take the square completely, whittle it down to one opposing troop, or turn enemies into turncoats. “Quarrel’s” cheerful presentation is dangerously caffeinated, but the actual game takes a great idea and gets it absolutely right. All of this was already the case with “Quarrel’s” iOS iteration, which included lots of well-tuned single-player content (campaign, customizable match play, daily challenges) but no multiplayer of any kind. With the move to Xbox Live, “Quarrel” finally fixes that: There’s no local multiplayer (which makes sense given the game’s setup), but you can play online with up to three others. This, along with all the iOS version’s single-player content and some new scenario wrinkles for those playing alone, makes this the best version available (and makes the exclusion of multiplayer on iOS even more annoying than it already was). The only downside: Playing “Quarrel” with a controller isn’t as graceful as it is on a touch screen. Fortunately, it’s a slight rather than significant inconvenience, and if you have a Chat Pad, you’ll be happy to know it’s supported.

Games 1/24/12: Scarygirl, Amy, Saints Row the Third: GenkiBowl VII

Scarygirl
For: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: TikGames/Square-Enx
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (cartoon violence, use of tobacco)
Price: $15

Don’t let the name fool you: Even though its namesake and star has the arms of an octopus and the face of a skeleton vinyl doll, Scarygirl — and the game bearing her name — is more cute than scary.

In fact, for those attuned to “LittleBigPlanet’s” style, “Scarygirl’s” presentation will be familiarly cute. Like “LBP,” it’s a 2D platformer modeled with 3D graphics that look like a diorama come to life — more papercraft and watercolor than “LBP’s” burlap, cardboard and vinyl, but unmistakably riding the same visual wavelength. Throw in the narrator, who introduces each level as if a page from a slightly twisted bedtime storybook, and it’s very obvious from whence at least some of “Scarygirl’s” stylistic influence came.

With that said, don’t let the kindly exterior fool you either. “Scarygirl” gets off to a pretty gentle start, and the levels that comprise the first two of its seven chapters aren’t terribly imposing if your only goal is to clear them.

But then “Scarygirl” drops you into the Hairclump Spider Cave with the cave’s namesake enemy almost immediately on your tail, and just like that, the kid gloves are off.

In part, the challenge spikes for unintended reasons. Though she’s pretty spry, Scarygirl’s repertoire (running, jumping, gliding, swinging, melee combat, and a limited-use forcefield for blocking and counterattacking) sometimes feels almost too responsive, resulting in a slight jerkiness that makes it easy to slip when combining moves or trying to stick a precise jump.

An overly generous hit detection works against as well as for Scarygirl, and there are occasions where enemies spawn right on top of her and cause damage before you even have a chance to react.

Finally, while “Scarygirl’s” level design is generally pretty great — diverse locations, branching paths, gobs of color and style — it also features occasional instances where a jump of faith feels necessary. Sometimes, a jump that looks doable just isn’t because it’s part of a another path on a different perspective plane. “Scarygirl” rarely depends on trial and error, but the few times it does are pretty unflattering. (Fortunately, checkpoints are frequent enough that they aren’t very aggravating.)

Fortunately, the aforementioned points are exceptions to the rule, and “Scarygirl’s” challenge mostly comes from the right places.

The branching, vertical level designs — set in deserts, mountains, aboard airships, in a nightclub and elsewhere — make excellent use of Scarygirl’s arsenal, particularly if you’re bold enough to pull off the tricky acrobatic maneuvers needed to get a perfect level score (no deaths, all collectibles found). You need not perfect a level to pass it, but “Scarygirl” keeps track and provides an leaderboard to motivate the best of the best.

Similarly, while its combat is simple — strong attack, weak attack, forcefield — “Scarygirl” tests it with enemies (and especially bosses) whose attack patterns make it crucial to balance defense, offense and positioning to manage multiple enemies. At its best and most imposing, it’s a perfect ode to the classic sidescrollers of the NES era — modern in its production values and polish, but timeless in the desire it creates to play, replay and master its levels.

If you aren’t quite that dedicated, “Scarygirl’s” two-player drop-in co-op support will take the edge off a bit. It works as painlessly as one hopes it would, with the lack of online support being the only potential downside.

—–

Amy
For: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: Vector Cell/Lexis Numerique
ESRB Rating: Mature (use of drugs, blood, intense violence, language)
Price: $10

In the thin strip of land separating challenge and undying aggravation, the checkpoint is king. As it goes, so often goes a game’s fate, especially when it’s a horror game crawling with elements seemingly designed to purposefully work against you.

The Amy in “Amy” is a young girl who, for reasons not really clarified, cannot speak and wants zero to do with a place known casually as The Center. When things go awry, she’s in the care of Lana (that’s you), who shares her sentiments.

The upshot of the not-really-explained story is that “Amy” overwhelmingly is an escort game. You indirectly control Amy by pressing a button to hold her hand and pull her around, but she’s also capable (when the A.I. cooperates) of following, waiting, hiding and accessing places you can’t reach to create access for you.

Arguably, when not wandering into mission-ending peril, Amy gives more than she receives. When nearby, she automatically heals Lana, and over time, she’s able to (clumsily) wield telekinetic powers and create temporary safe zones that distort enemies’ senses. In “Amy’s” best trick, you also can hear (and feel, via the controller’s vibration) her heartbeat when monsters, infected people and other enemies are near. The closer you are to peril, the more forceful it beats.

The tension that heartbeat creates is palpable, because “Amy” subscribes to much — good or bad — of what made horror games so scary during their mid-1990s advent. Lana isn’t as clumsy to control as those early “Resident Evil” game characters, but her awkward turning skills and the controller gymnastics needed to make her break into a sprint (especially when holding Amy’s hand) means she’s working in the same neighborhood.

Sadly, her melee combat acumen fares even worse — a point you’ll suspect in “Amy’s” easy first chapter and confirm when things get exponentially hairier in chapter two. The weapons she uses break way too easily, and her swing wouldn’t pass muster in a slow-pitch softball game. Though “Amy” offers a dodge mechanic and encourages you to use it, its sloppy camera and hit detection almost certainly will betray (and, if one bad break leads to another, kill) you.

This, by the way, is where “Amy” goes from endearingly antiquated to hellaciously frustrating.

There are checkpoints scattered across during “Amy’s” six chapters, but they are cruelly sparse. Once again, you’ll likely realize this in chapter two, where you’ll do some exploring, find some story clues, find Amy (who fled following chapter one’s closing twist), see a cutscene and almost immediately get killed in one whack by the star of that cutscene.

If that happens, you have to repeat all that mundane exploring and hope to device an escape plan so the quick demise doesn’t repeat. But even if you escape, learn about Amy’s special abilities, solve a couple key card puzzles and then die at the hands of another enemy you meet 20 minutes later, you have to start the entire chapter over. Because where most games would have dotted this half-hour stretch with two, maybe three checkpoints, “Amy” offers zero.

What a shame, too, because with even a reasonable checkpoint system, all of “Amy’s” miscues — stiff controls, clumsy combat, A.I. lapses, some elaborately annoying trial-and-error processes, a stealth section that would feel ancient 14 years ago — could be written off as forgivable callbacks to a punishing niche genre that still has its fans. When “Amy” is tense, it is exceptionally so, and a reasonable scattering of checkpoints would have enhanced rather than ruined that. When immersive tension gives way to the dread of having to replay 30 minutes that weren’t necessarily fun the first time around, there’s no reason to keep playing.

—–

Saints Row the Third: GenkiBowl VII
For: Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows PC (requires Saints Row the Third)
From: Volition/THQ
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual content, strong language)
Price: $7 (also included as part of the $20 season pass)

After the complete spectacle that was “Saints Row the Third’s” main storyline, hopes were high that the first downloadable expansion would go even crazier. On one hand, “GenkiBowl VII” — a series of violently fantastical events emceed by the diabolical game show host/living cartoon character Professor Genki — delivers on that hope. Sexy Kitten Yarngasm, for instance, tasks you with causing as much property destruction as possible with a massive, steerable, shockwave-blasting yarn ball, while Sad Panda Skyblazing combines the timeless sports of free-falling through the air in a panda suit and waging war on people in bunny and hot dog suits. Along with some funny play-by-play, it certainly qualifies as a spectacle. But Yarngasm essentially is a modified version of the main game’s Tank Mayhem missions, and the events where you escort Genki around and venture through a deadly game show-style maze have similar counterparts. Only Skyblazing feels completely new, and with only two missions per event to complete, the entire expansion is over before you know it. You can keep the spoils — the yarn ball, Genki’s car, some characters and outfits — and use them throughout the rest of the game, and the fun of wreaking havoc with a gigantic cat toy cannot be overstated. But even with that said, a few more missions per event would have done wonders for better justifying “GB7’s” price tag.

Games 1/10/12: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012, Invizimals: Shadow Zone, NFL Blitz

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012
For: Xbox 360 (Kinect required)
From: Ubisoft
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild suggestive themes, violent references)
Price: $50

That hissing sound you hear? That’s your resolution to get in shape slowly seeping out of the room as the new year starts feeling familiar and the excitement of 2012’s first week gets pushed out of the way by life as usual. Gym memberships are expensive, finding time to go to the gym is a hassle, making a plan is hard, sticking to it harder. Seeing progress requires saintly patience, and on top of all that, exercise for exercise’s sake is often really boring.

Thank goodness for, of all things, video games — and particularly this one. After a year of good-but-not-great fitness games releasing for Microsoft’s Kinect, “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012” gets pretty much everything right en route to knocking every aforementioned excuse off the table.

The polish is immediately apparent, too. In addition to not being a complete pain to navigate using Kinect (voice control would have been nice, but it proves unnecessary), “Evolved’s” main menu very cleanly lays out a staggering array of workout programs, games, virtual classes and other tools. Inside each of those menus lies a large array of programs organized by intensity and the goals they help fulfill. The offerings — targeted strength training, yoga and dance classes, training programs for specific sports and numerous others — are terrifically comprehensive, and “Evolved’s” uncluttered and intuitive presentation of all these options is extraordinary.

“Evolved’s” My Zone section allows the game to build workout plans for you based on your needs and availability, but they aren’t binding: A game-wide stat tracker gauges your progress against your goals, and it does so regardless of which programs you engage or ignore. Additionally, most programs are on the short side, making it easy to jump around and diversify your workout as wildly and impulsively as you please.

Though “Evolved” can only do so much to make its straightforward workout programs fun, it at least does a good job of keeping hassles at bay. A trainer demonstrates each exercise as he or she calls them out, and while the game’s grading of your form isn’t always accurate, it’s close enough to keep you minding your form without growing needlessly frustrated doing so. Kinect calibration happens quickly and automatically, and “Evolved” works well regardless of lighting and whether you have a surplus of room or just enough.

The ability to jump between programs is additionally welcome in light of “Evolved’s” suite of games and special events, which provide a fun means of breaking up straight-faced workout routines. A block-punching game provides a physically intense way to unleash some aggression, while a rhythmic stepping game evokes the spirit of “DanceDanceRevolution” without the need for a dance mat. An amusing jogging game lets you run through VR recreations of storied cities, while a block-balancing game lets you employ your newfound yoga skills in pursuit of a high score.

“Evolved” provides multiple difficulty settings and a scoring system for each of these and its other games, but it offers the same courtesy to its traditional workouts as well. The periodic tendency to misread your form will dock your scores unfairly now and then, but past that inconvenience, the constant presence of scores to beat and other meters of progress — along with in-game badges and Xbox 360 achievements — allows “Evolved” to continually dangle and dish rewards beyond the simple promise of fitter days ahead.

Should you not wish to do it alone, “Evolved” also includes in-game tools — and a companion website, yourshapecenter.com — that let you stack your progress against that of your friends and the world at large. The games also support four-player multiplayer, though only offline.

—–

Invizimals: Shadow Zone
For: Playstation Portable
From: Novarama/Sony
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, fantasy violence)
Price: $40 (includes PSP camera accessory)

Augmented reality is neat, and Sony’s PSP camera accessory — an adjustable camera that pops into the top of the PSP and can be adjusted to be a front- or rear-facing camera — is pretty nice as well. “Invizimals: Shadow Zone” uses the latter to create a game based around the former, and as a demonstration of all that cool tech, it’s certainly a proof of concept.

Whether it amounts to more than that will come down to your interest in monster-collecting games and your patience with a story that has you watching the game as much as you play it.

“Zone” arrives a year after the original “Invizimals,” and most of the essentials remain the same. It’s a “Pokemon”-style game, and when you drill that story down to its bare bones, the object — collect Invizimals and pit them in battle against other Invizimals — is the same.

The difference, of course, comes with how you discover and track those Invizimals. Instead of exploring an expansive game world, you’re walking around your own world and panning the camera around until you spot an augmented-reality Invizimal frolicking around your furniture or other surroundings. (They favor bright colors, so if your surroundings lack any, it may be wise to correct that before hunting in vain.)

Upon spotting one, you have to lay down your trap card (bundled with the game), and once you do that, one of a handful of rather simple minigames commences. Complete that, and the Invizimal is yours to customize (name and color scheme), upgrade and employ in battle.

“Zone’s” fighting portion also differs from “Pokemon’s” in that it’s more real-time combat than not. Attacks are mapped to buttons instead of menus, but a need to recover stamina between moves lends an air of turn-based strategy to the fight.

Problem is, there isn’t much more to the fighting than the threadbare description implies. Because the Invizimals appear in augmented reality and in relation to the trap card, you can’t move them around the space with the analog stick. Outside of basic and strong attacks and a block button, there’s little nuance to the fighting, and that doesn’t change as you advance through “Zone’s” storyline.

Nor, for that matter, does the act of trapping Invizimals, which is neat until the tech’s novelty wears off. Though “Zone” offers incentive for those who absolutely must collect every single Invizimal for no other reason than sheer compulsion, it never builds on its mechanics in any substantial way, nor does it introduce new concepts as things progress.

That’s a problem when you spend as much time watching as you do playing.

“Zone,” like its predecessor, tells its story through first-person live-action cutscenes, and if you got into the first game’s story, you’ll be happy to know it delves even deeper into Invizimal mythology this time around.

If, however, you didn’t like that story, “Zone’s” incremental advancements over its predecessor are bound to disappoint. The AR tech works better this time around, but the game’s inability to take that tech and expand on it is hard to defend in light of how simple those mechanics are.

“Zone’s” competitive multiplayer portion (two players, local wireless or online) consists of a pretty straightforward versus mode and a tournament option, while a co-op mode (local only) allows two players to team up and complete select quests together. None of the modes eludes the aforementioned problems that bring down the story mode, but it’s still nice to have the option to put your custom Invizimals up against those of a friend.

—–

NFL Blitz
For: Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade)
From: EA Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (comic mischief, mild language, mild suggestive themes, mild violence)
Price: $15

Though Midway’s “Blitz: The League” games were head-and-shoulders deeper than “NFL Blitz” ever was, the one thing it couldn’t provide — the NFL license — was the one players wanted the most. With both the franchise and license now in EA Sports’ hands, that no longer poses a problem. And while this “Blitz” lacks some elements — roster management, injuries, story-driven seasons and giggle-inducing illegal late hits — of those other games, the arcadey spirit of those original “NFL Blitz” games returns in immaculate condition. The old rules (seven on seven, 30-yard first downs, two-minute quarters and no penalties) still apply, and a game of “Blitz” plays so fast and loose with football conventions that you need not even like football to get a kick out of this. Also per usual, it’s a game best enjoyed with others (four players, online or offline). In addition to basic pick-up games, the new “Blitz” includes some clever and surprisingly deep modes for collecting star players, assembling dream teams and pitting those teams against other players’ rosters. For solo players, “Blitz’s” A.I. offers a good (if not always situationally sharp) challenge. And while it isn’t as robust as the multiplayer modes, the Gauntlet Mode — a ladder-style season complete with “boss fights” against teams of fantastical characters — is fun in its own right (especially when you beat those mascots and recruit them to your team).