Tag: Xbox 360 Downloadable Content

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.

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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.

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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 12/20/11: Striiv, Playstation 3D Display, Marvel Pinball: Vengeance and Virtue

Striiv
From: Striiv
Price: $100

Yes, it’s awfully nice to carry around a single, compact device that replaces your telephone, calendar, netbook, camcorder, GPS, MP3 player, Game Boy, alarm clock and who knows what else.

But while attempts have been made to conquer the humble pedometer, they have thus far failed. Step-counting apps have flashed promise by doing more than simply counting steps, but they’re non-starters when you always need the app active and gulping down battery life. Never mind that pedometers are one of the few gadgets that actually make smartphones feel bulky by comparison.

In that respect, the arrival of Striiv — a device that combines the physical makeup of a pedometer, the digital sensibilities of a tiny iPod touch and the achievement-dangling compulsion of a contemporary video game — is as welcome as it probably was inevitable.

At its absolute core, Striiv is just a fancy pedometer. It’s light and small, and the full-color backlit touchscreen delivers an interface that’s prettier and considerably more intuitive than that of a typical pedometer. The device counts steps whether it’s on or off, you can drop it in your pocket and forget about it, and it discerns between walking, running and stair-climbing steps with impressive accuracy. The built-in battery lasts roughly a week between charges under normal use, and the package includes the necessary cables to charge it via USB or a wall outlet.

For those who like to gauge their progress, Striiv’s software is similarly impressive. A charts application lets you compare steps, miles and calories burned over the past week or month, and a separate stats program breaks down your step types and lets you view all-time totals, personal bests and daily averages.

But it’s the trophies and challenges that push Striiv beyond classification and blur the line between fitness aid and living video game.

Trophies function like achievements, awarding you for everything from beating your daily average to walking the equivalent of Peru’s Inca Trail (70,000 steps) in a week. There are daily, weekly and all-time trophies, and Striiv tracks how many times you earn trophies in the first two categories. Every trophy awards you with energy points, which are to Striiv what Gamerscore is to Xbox Live — mostly just a number, but a carrot that makes earning them irrationally (but healthily!) fun.

Challenges, meanwhile, are toggled manually but are more urgent once activated. Striiv scatters randomly-generated challenges across three difficulty levels (walk half a mile in a half hour on Easy, run 500 steps in 10 minutes on Medium) and tackling a handful of them and doing whatever it says makes for a great impromptu mini-workout. Like trophies, successful challenges pay out in energy, though you’ll also earn trophies if you complete enough of them in one day.

Striiv dangles a seemingly endless steam of attainable rewards, and the gamut they run in terms of size and time investment makes it easy to feel an immediately sense of progress while still eyeing a larger goal way down the road.

Additionally, while all that collected energy isn’t a very tangible reward, it does feed into some of the device’s more unusual extracurricular activities.

Most prominent is the quirky Myland minigame, in which you can populate and decorate an enchanted island by exchanging collected energy for plant life and manmade structures. As simulations go, Myland’s simplicity more closely resembles “Farmville” than “SimCity.” But grinding for rewards by walking and running is considerably more satisfying than nagging your Facebook friends until they unfriend you, and a lively island of fantastical creatures is a pretty clever way to view an abstract picture of your progress.

But the coolest use of your energy is as a conduit for acts of charity. Via GlobalGiving, Striiv lets you participate in virtual walkathons and convert bundles of energy into donations toward clean drinking water, polio vaccinations and/or rainforest conservation. (As with everything else, the device tracks how many contributions you make.)

Striiv sends the donations whenever you connect it to a Mac or PC via the USB charge cable, and it also uses this occasion to do another thing — check for and automatically apply firmware updates — pedometers typically never do.

Since release, the device has received a few minor firmware updates that have brought no major feature enhancements. But Striiv has made known its intentions to supply new programs and games through future updates. Little else is known at this point, but the company seems actively engaged with its community via Facebook, Twitter and its own blog. If you keep up, you’ll likely know what’s coming next as soon as it’s announced.

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PlayStation 3D display
From: Sony
Price: $500

Your appreciation of Sony’s PlayStation 3D display will be at least partially dependent on how far on board you are with the entertainment industry’s umpteenth attempt to make 3D technology stick past the fad stage.

But while the display’s embrace of 3D — and Sony’s subsequent positioning of it as the rare 3D television with a three-figure asking price — are significant factors, they aren’t the only ones in play.

It’s worth clarifying up front that while the display sports Playstation branding, it doesn’t use any proprietary technology that only a Playstation 3 can understand. The range of inputs is a little limited, and you’ll need to get an adapter if you want to connect a VGA or DVI cable, but the input ports it does offer — two HDMI, one component — aren’t exactly unique to the PS3. If you can connect a device to the display, either natively or with the help of an adapter, it will look just fine (though if all you want is a top-end PC monitor, you can get displays with better refresh rates and native driver support for less money.)

It will look better than fine, in fact. Though the display isn’t designed with maximum flexibility and intuitiveness in mind — the glossy screen is pretty reflective in harsh light, the inputs are on the display’s left side instead of in a neutral spot at the bottom, and the buttons are placed awkwardly behind the display instead of on the side — it looks absolutely lovely once properly set up. It’s thin and sleek but also feels sturdy, and if the 24-inch screen is a good size for your setup and viewing range, the picture doesn’t disappoint.

While your success will vary if you use it with unsupported devices, the display’s 3D support in conjunction with games and Blu-ray discs worked as good as advertised when tested on a PS3. You’ll need to keep the included 3D glasses charged via the included micro-USB cable — in case you’ve lost track of where we are with 3D technology, the glasses are now battery-powered — but enabling 3D is as easy as selecting it in the game or Blu-ray’s menu interface.

(Your mileage will, of course, vary with regard to your tolerance of 3D and the potential eyestrain it incurs over extended sittings.)

For games that support it, the display’s SimulView technology arguably is the more exciting result of the 3D technology than 3D itself. With SimulView enabled, a two-player game no longer need be splitscreen: Instead, each player receives a unique (and complete) view of the action via his or her glasses. It’s like playing via LAN using one display, and while it sounds like voodoo, it actually works. Because the images passed to the glasses are 2D, the aforementioned concerns about viewing fatigue also don’t factor.

The downside? You’ll need a second pair of glasses, which retail for $70 each — which means the display isn’t quite as affordable as you thought if you wish to take advantage of its best feature.

There’s also a matter of games actually supporting SimulView. The bundled “MotorStorm: Apocalypse” supports it, as do a handful of other games published by Sony, but it’s anyone’s guess whether third parties will climb on board with their own support. Presently, there’s also no easy place to track which games are receiving or have received support. The display’s page on Playstation.com lists the initial batch above a “Coming soon” message, but there’s no telling if new information will appear there or elsewhere.

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Marvel Pinball: Vengeance and Virtue
For: Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade; requires free Pinball FX 2 download) and Playstation 3 (via Playstation Network; requires Marvel Pinball)
From: Zen Studios
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10

2011 wasn’t a great year for video games bearing the Marvel name — unless you prefer pinball to other genres, in which case it was the best year ever. “Marvel Pinball: Vengeance and Virtue” adds four more tables to the roster, and they fit in perfectly in terms of personality and use of their respective licenses. The Thor table will appeal to those who love high-scoring tables, and in true “Marvel Pinball” fashion, Thor himself appears on the table to do battle with Loki (among other enemies) as you indirectly guide the action via pinball. The Ghost Rider table is the noisiest and most festive of the bunch, and the dual-layer table design is overshadowed only by an incredible second ball launcher that resembles a giant waving shotgun. The X-Men table presents the stiffest challenge via devious ramp designs that are harder to hit and unapologetically shift the ball’s speed when you do hit them. But Moon Knight’s table may be the most novel: It looks extremely simple at first glance, but it uses tricks of light and deceptive rail patterns to set a tempo that’s unlike any of the other tables (Marvel-branded or otherwise) on Zen’s roster. Like the tables that preceded it, “Vengeance’s” selections are extremely visually lively and reasonably authentic with regard to pinball physics. They also hide a startlingly deep array of missions and objectives beneath the surface. As per custom, the tables integrate seamlessly into their respective games, adding new achievements/trophies and adopting existing leaderboard and score structures, making the best pinball platforms on the console block that much better.

Games 5/24/11: L.A. Noire, Dream Trigger 3D, Pinball FX2: MARS, Pinball FX2: Fantastic Four

L.A. Noire
For: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
From: Team Bondi/Rockstar
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs, violence)
Price: $60

Fans of Rockstar-published games might look at “L.A. Noire’s” marketing, see the usual Rockstar game symptoms, and very understandably assume that, just as “Red Dead Redemption” was “Grand Theft Auto” in the Old West, this is “GTA” in 1940s Los Angeles.

But while “Noire” looks and sounds like a “GTA” game, it plays almost nothing like one. In fact, it plays quite like no other game out there, and if you can give it a chance to grow on you, this police detective simulator achieves its objective skillfully and with exceptional confidence.

First, a word on what “Noire” is not. Though you’re free to explore this massive, meticulously replicated chunk of Los Angeles however you like, this isn’t your typical open-world game. There are random street crimes scattered outside the game’s main storyline, but the overwhelming majority of “Noire’s” activity lies along the main road.

Additionally, you cannot run around, Niko Bellic-style, and raise random hell. Outside of specific instances in which you’re trading bullets with criminals, you can’t even draw your weapon. You’re police detective Cole Phelps, and this is the story of his ascent through the ranks, not of the time he lost his mind and murdered half the city.

Perhaps more jarring is that, third-person shootouts and car chases aside, “Noire” is primarily an adventure game. Some criminals will die from your gun, but most of your play time will consist of carefully scouring crime scenes for evidence and using your findings — combined with smart witness questioning and suspect interrogation — to successfully close a case.

Games have covered this ground before, but “Noire” does it better by venturing beyond the usual adventure game limitations.

Crime scenes, for instance, aren’t restrictive, cause-and-effect pixel hunts; they’re wide-open areas you freely explore like you would in any other open-ended third-person game. Some wonderfully subtle (and, if you’re feeling confident, optional) musical clues tell you if you’re near clues or have found all there is to find, but if you proceed to interrogation before fully turning a scene inside out, “Noire” does not intervene.

That goes as well for interviews. “Noire” compiles questions from clues you find, and you’re tasked with believing, challenging or (if you have evidence to back it up) outright accusing interviewees of deceit. “Noire” leaves it up to you to read people’s faces for signs of dishonesty, and it provides the means for doing so with some frighteningly advanced facial animation technology.

Occasionally, you can request help — most cleverly, via an “Ask the Community” feature that polls other players’ responses in the same situation. But “Noire” mostly lets you sink or swim here as well. If you fudge a line of questioning that undermines a case, the game doesn’t ask you to try again. The story barrels ahead, with the consequences of your misdeeds funneling into the overarching storyline.

(Don’t worry, completionists: You can replay completed cases as you please.)

The only place you’ll see a retry button is if you die in a shootout or get caught while stealthily tailing a suspect, but “Noire” keeps the difficulty of these portions pretty tepid.

Compared to “Noire’s” creative, lavishly detailed crime scene searches and its polished interrogation interfaces, the actual action is more sufficient than exemplary. The cars handle well and the cover-based shooting works perfectly fine, but both function more as dessert than the main course. Given how perfectly Team Bondi prepared that main course, that’ll more than do.

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Dream Trigger 3D
For: Nintendo 3DS
From: Art Co. Ltd./D3Publisher of America
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $40

At first glance, “Dream Trigger 3D” looks like the fresh and totally bananas game some of us have been waiting for since the Nintendo 3DS launched with a lineup full of safe sequels and retreads.

At first play, the game seems absolutely impossible — a ridiculous mix of old-school shooter, “Lumines” and “Rez” that appears punishingly hard even on its very first level.

Upon subsequent playthroughs, though, the pieces that comprise the madness reveal their intricacies, and “Trigger” turns into a manageably frantic game with some unique ideas.

Unfortunately, that quickly leads to a whole new and wholly surprising problem: Is “Trigger,” which initially felt fresh and brutally imposing, really just shallow and way too easy instead?

It’s hard to translate “Trigger’s” methods into words that do it justice, but let’s try.

On “Trigger’s” top screen is your spaceship, which you control with either the joystick or D-pad. Surrounding you, along with the occasional power-up, are blips of light that are enemies who can attack you but are, in that incarnation, invincible.

To make them vulnerable, you have to use the touch screen, which functions like a radar screen and illustrates your invisible enemies as dots on a map. Drawing over those dots, and letting the “Lumines”-like sonar bar run over your scribbles, makes them visible on the top screen, where your ship is now free to blast them into oblivion.

Here’s the catch: Your ship only shoots forward, so you have to come into direct contact with each enemy to destroy it. The counter-catch, is that while your ship is firing, it’s invincible. The counter to that is that your ship can fire for only so long until it’s vulnerable again, and the best way to recharge your firepower is to continually expose new enemies with sonar.

Throw all those catches and conditions into one pot, turn the speed up, set the whole thing to a complementary musical beat and place it in front of various scrolling backgrounds that take terrific advantage of the 3DS’ 3D capabilities, and “Trigger” is an exciting exercise in managing two planes of activity at once.

Problem is, once you figure out the science behind it all, “Trigger” doesn’t throw any curveballs or do anything to meaningfully enhance it. There’s the appearance of a lot of content inside the box — a 55-level quest mode, free play, time attack, in-game achievements, two-player local wireless co-op and competitive multiplayer. But outside of aesthetics, little about the game changes from one level to another, and if you can beat the first level, you almost certainly can beat the last.

Perhaps most troubling is “Trigger’s” tendency to crash the 3DS entirely when the 3D slider is on — a rather significant issue, considering this is one of the better visual implementations thus far of the new system’s most prominent new feature.

Is this the game’s fault or the system’s firmware’s fault? Is this fixable with a patch? Are patches even possible on the 3DS? And if they are, does this mean the 3DS has joined the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in the unfortunate age of the patch? Time will tell, but there’s nothing comforting about these early findings, and it’s impossible to recommend purchase of a game that, at least for now, is prone to these breakdowns.

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Pinball FX2: MARS
Pinball FX2: Fantastic Four
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade (requires free Pinball FX 2 dow
nload)
From: Zen Studios
ESRB Rating: Everyone (Comic Mischief)
Price: $3 each

The tables keep rolling in for the endlessly expandable “Pinball FX 2,” and the latest additions keep the bar as high as it’s been since launch. The “Fantastic Four” table complements the Marvel four-pack Zen released last December, and like those tables, it makes excellent use of the comic’s heroes and villains by bringing them to life right on the table. In fact, its utilization of the The Thing, who guards the top of the table and can literally pick the ball up and swat it back at you like a volleyball, may be the most amusing application yet of a Marvel character in “PFX2.” The Mars table — a revamped version of a previously-released “Zen Pinball” table — appears less flashy at first glance. But once a Space Station soars in for a landing over your head or you make acquaintance with patrolling scanner bots or a spider bot who saves your ball, it’s clear that first impression was deceiving. The Mars table also features one of the better ramp layouts in a “PFX2” table thus far. Like its predecessors, both tables look terrific, handle authentically and hide a startlingly deep array of missions and objectives beneath the surface. Both tables also integrate seamlessly into “PFX2?s” overriding achievements, leaderboards and score structure, making the best video game pinball platform around that much better.


Games 12/7/10: Disney Epic Mickey, The Shoot, Marvel Pinball

Disney Epic Mickey
For: Wii
From: Junction Point Studios/Disney Interactive
ESRB Rating: Everyone (cartoon violence)

The gift of your patience is requested in “Disney Epic Mickey,” which asks you to accept some baffling game design decisions in order to experience what might be the most ingenious merger ever between a studio’s icon and its dormant vault.

“Mickey” begins with a slightly mischievous but very clumsy Mickey Mouse accidentally bringing untold destruction to a world, known as the Wasteland, where forgotten Disney cartoon characters reside in retirement. The Wasteland was something of a utopia in spite of its dispiriting premise, but Mickey’s screwup has reduced it to a grey, monster-drenched mess that finally earns its name.

“Mickey” mostly plays like your typical 3D platformer, with players (as Mickey) running and jumping through non-linear levels to complete various objectives, sometimes a few at a time. The hook here is that, while running and jumping, players also must hold the Wii remote like a pointer and shoot paint and/or paint thinner at enemies and other objects in the environment.

As a tool for restoring and destroying the Wasteland, the paint/thinner idea works great. “Mickey’s” levels are intricate and full of secrets, and Mickey can use paint and thinner to alter those levels on the fly and access areas that would otherwise be inaccessible. Most of the rewards are trivial, but the intuition and dexterity needed to find them makes for a fun elective challenge.

The paint/thinner trick also lets “Mickey” take the story down two different paths without basing Mickey’s morality (or lack thereof) around boring good/evil answers. Mickey can complete objectives by using paint to turn enemies (even boss enemies) friendly, rescue allies and restore the environment, and he can use thinner to destroy everybody, ravage the environment and coerce a way to safety. “Mickey’s” opening levels make the means to each end plainly obvious, but the lines between hero and scoundrel increasingly blur as the levels and tasks develop complications.

It’s too bad this isn’t all there is to “Mickey,” which has more than enough core game content to avoid depending on needless filler. But it leans on filler anyway, interrupting stretches of action with story-mandated fetch quests that, beyond the opportunity to meet additional discarded toons, offer nothing in the way of stimulation. The quests never challenge, not even intellectually, and when they ask players to backtrack between areas, they’re as time-consuming as they are dull.

“Mickey’s” other big issue — a camera that regularly needs babysitting — is a bit more predictable given the demands placed on the Wii remote, and its inability to keep up will almost inevitably sabotage your progress in harder levels with heavy combat demands. It’s annoying, but it isn’t a deal-killer, and the quicker you master the auto-center button, the less harmful it is.

The aggravations are worth it because, as stories go, this is the best one Disney’s iconic characters have told in ages. “Mickey” transforms Mickey Mouse back into the morally unpredictable rat he used to be before Disney neutered him, and the respect the game pays to Walt Disney’s past creations — Oswald the Rabbit, Horace Horsecollar, Big Bad Pete and so many more — is surprisingly moving. “Mickey’s” core levels are a similarly stirring mess of discarded theme park rides and toys, and the game connects these levels with short 2D levels that send Mickey running and jumping through scenes from old Disney filmstrips.

The level of care in every drop of this celebration makes “Mickey’s” missteps even more puzzling than they would be in a more careless game. But if those missteps are the price one must pay to witness one of the most imaginative stories told in a game this year, so be it.

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The Shoot
For: Playstation 3 (requires Playstation Move)
From: Cohort Studios/Sony Computer Entertainment
ESRB Rating: Teen (animated blood, fantasy violence, mild language)

Against all odds, the light gun shooter has survived 25 years of gaming advancements that probably should have rendered it obsolete. And thanks to the advent of the Playstation Move, it finally, against even greater odds, gets a chance to ever-so-slightly evolve.

Even before that becomes apparent, “The Shoot” makes a pretty likable first impression. The game is set on a movie studio lot, and each four-pack of scenes takes place in a different genre — western, alien invasion, mob shootout, horror story, deep sea plunge — of movie. Players (either alone or with a friend via local multiplayer) are the star of the film, and a director barks instruction and expresses satisfaction or scorn depending on how the scene is playing out.

The clever premise pays off by letting “The Shoot” throw out a more diverse variety of environments than most rail shooters get, and it also gives the game a degree of levity that, outside of unintentional humor from bad storytelling, rarely shows up in this genre anymore. The graphics are nice and colorful, and while some will scratch their head at the game’s decision to present enemies in prop form — enemy mobsters, for instance, are wooden cutouts rather than actual people — it’s a surprisingly good look in motion.

The appetite for props also lets “The Shoot” better show off how destructible everything is. Levels are full of optional bonus targets that award points, alter the environment and even open pathways to “deleted scenes” that award additional bonus points. But even completely inconsequential backdrop pieces break apart nicely when you miss your target and hit them instead, making the game a lively experience even when played incorrectly.

Clever gimmick notwithstanding, “The Shoot’s” core concepts and objectives remain as pure as those of any other arcade shooter. The primary goal is, as always, to score as many points as possible, minimize mistakes, and hit targets in succession without fail to boost the score multiplier and achieve gold-medal (career mode) and five-star (score attack mode) scores. Blowing through “The Shoot’s” five films won’t take more than a few hours, but nabbing every medal, star and hidden bonus is a legitimately fun challenge that, for the right crowd, gives this game plenty of legs.

Where “The Shoot” moves the needle a little is through an assist from the Move’s ability to do more than just mimic a light gun. Made of wood or not, the enemies regularly fight back, and the game gives players a chance to dodge the projectiles they fire. Sections with more dangerous enemies occasionally call for players to duck behind cover, duels against special enemies play out like quickdraw shootouts, and a special power-up that temporarily slows down the action only activates when players perform a spin move or wave the Move wand overhead like a lasso.

During the most frantic stretches of the game, when all these parts are in play, “The Shoot” becomes a surprisingly active game. Better still, though, it remains a responsive game. Mastering the timing of the dodge takes practice, but the game does a good job of reading dodges once you figure it out, and it’s similarly proficient with ducking, spinning and dueling. (The lasso motion is hit-or-miss, so be prepared to spin instead of trying to take the easier way out.)

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Marvel Pinball
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade (requires free Pinball FX 2 download)
Also available for: Playstation 3 via Playstation Network (sta
ndalone game)
From: Zen Studios
ESRB Rating: Everyone (mild fantasy violence)
Price: $10 for all four tables (both platforms) or $2.50 per table (Xbox 360 only)

Zen Studios set the table for something special in October when it rolled out “Pinball FX 2” as a free and endlessly extensible Xbox 360 pinball platform instead of a standalone game, and the first batch of add-on tables provides some serious validation for all that excitement. “Marvel Pinball” features four tables, with Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wolverine and Blade each spearheading a machine. The inclusion of Blade in that foursome may raise eyebrows, but “Pinball” seems to have picked its heroes with pinball design instead of popularity in mind, and one playthrough of the Blade table — which features, among several other surprises, a day/night cycle with different opportunities in both phases — overwhelmingly justifies his inclusion here. The pinball version of Stark Industries, meanwhile, becomes a maze of ramps, side rail decoys and upgrades with which to turn a dancing Tony Stark into Iron Man, while the Spider-Man table’s idea of multi-ball comes in the form of bombs lobbed by the Green Goblin. Both the Spider-Man and Wolverine tables feature a satisfying roster of iconic villains, and skilled players who rack up bonuses can watch Wolverine fight on the table while the pinball action continues. The PS3 version of “Pinball” rounds up the tables as a perfectly enjoyable standalone game, but for those with a choice, the tables’ integration into “PFX2’s” overriding achievements, leaderboards and score structure make the Xbox 360 versions the better value for now.