Games at a Glance ? Capsule Reviews of the past two years ...

SHOOTING/KICKING

? ?Alice: Madness Returns? by EA for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC ? This twist on ?Alice in Wonderland? sends you (Alice) back to Wonderland, 10 years after you?ve been institutionalized in an asylum. It?s a colorful Wonderland. Portraying Alice, you?re constantly attacked by monsters; teapots with eyes; crabs with cannon arms and other horrid creatures. You shoot them with three weapons: a pepper grinder that acts like a machine gun; a knife; and a horse head that slams down as a sledgehammer would.

Much of the game is jumping from platform to platform, and if you miss a platform you die. The problems are too much, though. The controls aren?t super responsive, which stinks in a hard game that requires quicksilver reflects to live. Camera angles can be idiotic. And weapon upgrades come too slowly and don?t seem to make you much more formidable. Plays interesting but not super fun. Looks great. Very challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, sexual themes, strong language, violence. Two stars.

? ?The Amazing Spider-Man? by Activision for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii, 3DS and DS ? This game is half-good and half-bad. Portray Spidey and swing on webs between buildings across the big city, landing on rooftops and climbing towers. That?s kind of impressive. The plot: OsCorp unleashes crazy cross-species creatures, plus robots to track down and destroy the cross-species. As Spider-Man, you fight the weirdo creatures, but also the robots because they hate Spidey. And you battle boss villains from Scorpion to Rhino, Vermin and others. The best things about ?Amazing? are the cinematic scenes. They get us involved in basic storylines. And it?s nice that Spidey (voiced excellently by Sam Riegel, star of many TV and game voice-overs) talks to us a lot while fighting crime and goofing off. But this is a quintessential, workaday, average adventure. The first few hours are outright boring. (Crawling through ventilation ducts: Oy!) Finally the game lets me begin to make adequate upgrades to beat up villains ? who all seem the same, as if they?re from the jerk store. During interior action sequences (the heart of the game), fist fighting and web-combat routines feel very rote. Big bosses are stunningly confusing. And the ?open-world? part of ?Amazing? offers embarrassing side missions, such as punching street robbers, snipers and escaping cars (very blas?), and transporting virus-infected civilians to hospitals (one of the dullest things in any game in 2012). Plays average. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?T? for mild language, mild suggestive themes, violence. Two stars. (Reviewed 07/05/12.)

? ?Batman: Arkham City? by WB Games for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC ? This is a sprawling game featuring engaging film scenes, capable film directing and voice acting, and lovely visuals. Gotham politicians realize there are too many super villains to hold in one prison. There?s the Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Harley, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze and Bane. So to incarcerate them all, Gotham has turned a big city area into a prison capital called Arkham City. You portray Batman, and Catwoman at times, tasked with taking down bad guys, ziplining from rooftop to rooftop while floating by your cap. But Batman is a weak wimp. It takes him a lot of punches to knock out one goon, while a few goons can kill Batman pretty quickly. Even with upgrades, armed goons kill you a whole lot. That?s tedious, dull and frustrating. Much worse: The game provides awful target beacons to try to let you know where next missions are across this vast place of skyscrapers and alleyways, causing long stretches of just looking for action. Also, ?silent? takedowns are clumsy, so nearby goons often sense a silent takedown and shoot you, hurting the stealth underbelly of the game. Plays un-fun. Looks terrific. Very challenging. Rated ?T? for alcohol reference, blood, mild language, suggestive themes, use of tobacco, violence. One and one-half stars.

? ?BioShock 2? by Take Two for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This horror sequel returns the action to a nasty little undersea Art Deco city where little girls jam needles into corpses and suck out their blood. They?re guarded by bubble-helmeted guys in diving suits who kill people with giant industrial drills. You play as one of the diving-suit guys, who somehow rejects the status quo of this undersea society and is bent on taking out the crazy tyrannical woman who runs the city. So, your action is to kill many people many ways, with guns, telekinesis, burning them with fire, freezing them with ice, and on and on. It?s a very prettily drawn action-adventure, full of imagination, and it?s fairly addicting. It?s short. I almost finished it in one day. Plays quite fun. Looks really great. Not too challenging. Rated ?M.? Three and one-half stars.

? ?Blades of Time? by Konami for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? The plot is so confusing, I have no idea what it?s about. Portray a super hot blonde (of course) treasure hunter (of course) with a British accent (of course) named Ayumi. Journey across a ye olden time fantasyland of swords and monsters, but also a rifle and a machine gun. The game play begins poor but improves dramatically. It?s a typical fantasy. Swing a sword. Double-jump into the air then come smashing down on monsters. Break crates and vases. Open treasure chests. Solve a few puzzles. And travel along an ornate path of pretty vistas, such as vine-caves, lush forests and castle hallways. This is one hard game to beat. Even early bosses took me 30 minutes of swordplay and gunplay to slay. At first, this upset me. Then I realized this is a game fit for super serious, hardcore gamers. And ultimately, all of the bosses were beatable. I just had to invest the time to be trapped in little arenas for 10 minutes at a stretch, battling one big dumb villain, or a horde of ceaseless villains. Some battles feel clunky. An action button didn?t do its job for me sometimes, particularly during finishing moves, and I died as a result. But if you?re looking for a decent challenge, this is one. Although, the dialogue, plot, acting and character investment is laughable. Plays just fun enough. Looks good. Very challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, language and violence. Three stars. (Reviewed 03/20/12.)

? ?Borderlands 2? by 2K Games for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This is one of the very best games of 2012. This sequel takes place on the planet Pandora, populated with a violent cast of species ? murderous men, murderous giants, murderous birds, even murderous bugs. You portray a warrior, travel across desert landscape (alternately hot and snowy), shooting these murderous creatures, while also engaged in missions to stop a nefarious corporate warlord from doing corporate warlord stuff. The style offers pretty, comic book-esque visuals (big fat drawing lines), with slightly ?Mad Max? motifs. The first-person shooting is exquisite with guns (pistols, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers). Even more impressive is the artificial intelligence of powerful bad guys. Many hide behind cover. Many duck and weave. They are difficult to kill. The main and side missions usually tell you to travel across the desert, find a cave or desert steppe group of people or animals, and assassinate top-ranking villains of heinous natures. Side missions are so good, sometimes they are more vital and detailed than main missions. And the scope: Wow. I imagine there?s about a small American state worth of geography here. To help me cross it, I get cars at times. And I can ?fast travel? from one location to another. This comes with a multiplayer, featuring cooperative missions with other online gamers. The replay value is gigantic. Plays insanely fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, language, sexual themes, use of alcohol. Four stars. (Reviewed 09/17/12.)

? ?The Darkness II? by 2K Games for PS 3, Xbox 360, PC ? Portray mafia honcho Jackie Estacado, who has an outright devilish supernatural ability: An extra set of arms called Demon Arms. They are shaped like really long snakes with fangs. You use the left snake arm to grab a rival gangster, and use the right snake arm to rip him in half. Then snatch his dead heart out of his chest and eat it for energy. Oh, this is a crazy-bloody, freaky game for six to eight hours. You also use regular hands to merely shoot other gangsters in the face with guns. There?s plenty of talky plot dialogue and film scenes. But honestly, ?Darkness II? is a half-shooter, half-snake-arms-ripping-torsos-in-half-while-eating-hearts affair. By the way, ?Darkness II? gives you a sidekick, a gassy monkey-size demon who eats gangsters? faces off. The shooting and Demon Arm stuff is fun, though somewhat redundant and banal, if you can stomach a comically horrific brutality that would make Edgar Allan Poe say, ?Whoa, dude, that was nasty.? Plays fun. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, strong language and strong sexual content. Three stars. (Reviewed 02/28/12.)

? ?Dead Space 2? by EA for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? You portray Isaac, the gun-toting engineer, trapped on a space city in 2511. The plot is confusing, minimal and negligible. But the action is morbidly thrilling. You slowly make your way through steel corridors, icy church innards and subway cars that are so dark, you often look around with a flashlight (creepy). You kill aliens with guns, laser weapons, and by using telekinesis to stab them with their own knife-arms. You must be careful not to die much, because you exist off of rare health packs you find here and there. And you?re always looking behind you, as aliens sneak attack. It?s gruesome and entertaining, if you enjoy very bloody, very well-executed executions. Plays Fun. Looks great. Very challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Four stars.

? ?Dishonored? by Bethesda for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This is a steampunk, retro-future game set in a land resembling Victorian England, the Industrial Revolution, and a doomsday sci-fi city. I portray a guard who protects an empress. She gets killed. I stand falsely accused. So I fight scumbags to clear my name, while saving the gilded empire from squeaky plague rats. I can play this action-adventure one of three ways ? as a shooter/sword swinger where I slay everyone; or as a stealth game where I sneak past henchmen without murdering them; or as a combination of both. That game play (fluid, intuitive and fun) reminds me of the assassin series ?Hitman? (which I love), but with these steampunk visuals and supernatural powers (teleporting, stopping time, and spirit-possessing humans). As the game progresses, I earn new superpowers to keep me interested in fighting and sneaking around, which gets harder but never imposingly difficult. Missions are interesting, and characters talk a lot. And there are good maps (environments). The world of ?Dishonored? feels like a creepy vacation to a weird place, and that leads to cool exploration, since steampunk visuals are still a fresh trend in games. One quibble: Despite the steampunk originality, the graphics look low-fi. Faces and environments do not appear as finely detailed as most epics. Another quibble: I don?t love the layout of the action buttons. Plays very fun. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, sexual themes and strong language. Four stars. (Reviewed 10/09/12.)

? ?Duke Nukem Forever? by Take Two for PS 3, Xbox 360, PC ? This decade-in-the-making sequel defies massive anticipation by being perhaps the most disappointing major release of all time. It?s a first-person shooter. You portray Duke in future Vegas, battling aliens destroying the Strip. Guns are blah. Aliens are alternately easy to kill, or annoying when they magically reappear behind your back. Worst of all, there?s way too much slack in the action, with a super boring first hour, and many times after that where you race around looking for anything to do next. Plays un-fun. Looks average. Moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, mature humor, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs and alcohol. One-half star out of four stars.

? ?Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon? by D3P for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? Portray U.S. soldiers, running around New Detroit, which has been invaded by B-movie-esque giant ants, spiders, flying saucers and biped aliens who walk six-stories tall. Like any old arcade game, you basically just constantly shoot machine guns, rocket launchers and air-defense bullets at seemingly never-ending waves of these aliens. Beginning reload time for weapons (six seconds) is way too long. It?s too simple for hardcore gamers. But if you?re a casual gamer and just want to shoot, shoot, shoot without purpose ? have at it. Plays repetitive. Looks OK. Easy to challenging based on settings you choose. Rated ?T? for animated blood, mild language, mild suggestive themes and violence. One and one-half stars.

? ?El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron? by Ignition Entertainment for PS 3 and Xbox 360 ? This third-person action-adventure and platform-jumper was inspired by a B.C. Jewish book. You portray a priest who must hunt down seven fallen angels. Along the way, you use a sort of double-fisted sickle, plus floating arrows, to slay the fallen angels? minions. The action feels monotonous and slack, but the artistry is cool. Levels have different looks, including black-oily floors, floating platforms to jump to, and skies of purple, white and other colors, which wave and billow as watercolors might in a pond. ?El Shaddai? seems less capable of addictive gameplay than presenting an abstract art gallery in motion. Plays only slightly fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?T? for animated blood, fantasy violence, mild suggestive theme. Two stars.

? ?Fallout: New Vegas? by Bethesda for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? If you?ve played a ?Fallout? game before, this one will seem pretty familiar. Nuclear war has destroyed much of the earth (a few centuries from now), except Vegas is still kicking, and so are nearby towns. You start in the desert, walking your way through the town of Primm and encampments, shooting bad guys and upgrading your weapons and first-aid kits. This was the hardest game of 2010, a role-playing shooter that never pretends to be anything but very difficult. You shoot people in the head, and it doesn?t kill them, and they keep shooting at you. It has flaws and glitches, but this is a very engaging and lovely futuristic Old West outing. Plays intriguing and fairly addicting. Looks great. Very challenging. It?s rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, sexual content, strong language, use of drugs. Four stars.

? ?Far Cry 3? by Ubisoft for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This is a pretty good sandbox game, an open-world adventure set on a gigantic island nation. You portray this dude who goes vacationing with his brothers and rich friends on the exotic island. The tourists get kidnapped by sadistic pirates and a military enthralled with murder and prostitution rings. Anyway, the dude you portray goes walking around the island, killing pirates, and looking for his girlfriend, brothers and friends. You kill villains and henchmen, earn rewards, loot dead bodies of cash (and, um, crack pipes, really?) and upgrade guns and personal traits, such as walking faster. There are fast-travel spots that let you magically transport across certain parts of the island. But there aren?t enough of them. So I walked 34 miles over nine hours, according to the game?s stat counter. That is boring. The revenge plot is nicely fleshed out, although villains are written like cardboard. And it?s idiotic we must kill pigs and goats just to make wallets and holsters to hold my cash and guns. Plays decently fun. Looks very good. Moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content and use of drugs. Three stars. (Reviewed 12/04/12.)

? ?Halo: Reach? for Xbox 360 ? ?Reach? is a prequel to the other main ?Halos,? set in 2552 in the era when the aliens of the Covenant invade the human space colony of The Reach. If you?ve played ?Halo? before, this will seem very familiar. Your offline campaign mission is to shoot aliens, pick up weapons off the ground, drive land vehicles, fly space vehicles, and take out the defensive shields inside alien bases. The offline campaign is pretty good, and the settings are excellently sprawling. But the online multiplayer and cooperative modes are so promising, you could play them for months or a year. Plays fun online; and pretty fun offline. Looks very good. Goes from easy to very challenging suddenly. Rated ?M? for blood and violence. Four stars.

? ?Hitman: Absolution? by Square Enix for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This is a spectacular, adrenalin-pumping, beautifully designed, perfect masterpiece. You portray a world-class assassin, Agent 47. Powerful men have done something nefarious with a little girl. So in the beginning, you find and hide her. Then you gear up for a journey of seeking and eliminating villainous scum. You can play this in various ways ? as a stealth game where you sneak around and kill just a few people; as a kill-everyone murder-a-thon; or as something in between a sleuth and shooter. The game play is flawlessly intuitive and fun. The acting is great in sometimes shocking cinematic scenes. And the sound system is smoking hot, from sound effects to dialogue tracks, giving the whole adventure a deliciously devilish feel. If this were any other goal-oriented game, you would progress by trekking each mission via only one path shaped by the game makers. But ?Absolution? lets you can find various ways into and around each mansion ? sneaking through windows and basements, or knocking people out to don their clothes and walk around mostly freely through mansions. It is gruesome. Plays incredibly fun. Looks amazing. Easy to very challenging, depending on the mode you choose. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs. Four stars. (Reviewed 11/26/12.)

? ?Infamous 2? by Sony for PS 3 ? In this sandbox/open-world game, you go on missions as Cole, a New York superhero, to save a battle-torn New Orleans-inspired dystopian city, post-hurricane, from gangs, thugs, a city-controlling militia, radiated swamp monsters and ice creatures. To do this, you use superhuman electricity, ice-based and other powers to kill bad guys, with a big baddie waiting for you at the end. There?s a lot of good game play here, reminiscent of sandbox ?Spider-Man? games. It?s got interesting stories, dialogue and imagery. It?s not perfect. Button-pushing isn?t always responsive. And the open-world genre is well-tread. But this may be the best New Orleans game ever made. Plays fun. Looks very good. Pretty challenging. Rated ?T? for blood, drug reference, language, sexual themes, use of alcohol and violence. Four stars.

? ?Inversion? by Namco Bandai for PS 3 and Xbox 360 ? You portray a man whose wife has been killed by invading aliens, and whose daughter is missing, so you go on a quest to find her and to kill the aliens who nabbed her. You (the distraught and angry cop Davis Russell) and your cop buddy Leo go on an alien-killing streak of some magnitude. ?Inversion? feels a little ?Gears of Wars?-inspired. It?s a third-person cover shooter, and when you run across city streets, the camera angle goes all wiggly-woggly, as it does in ?Gears.? But here, the gaming process also involves gravity. Humanoid aliens have created 90-degree gravity twists on Earth. So one minute, you are running across a street-battlefield. The next, gravity changes, so you are running across a building wall, or across a battlefield-ceiling. That?s cool. I also enjoy the telekinetic-type gravity guns I steal from aliens. These guns let me move giant objects, to hold objects as shields, and to throw objects as weapons. There?s a deeper-than-expected storyline. And the game is correctly paced. Unfortunately, ?Inversion? just doesn?t have enough money behind its development. Thus, it lacks visual extravagance, a smoother shooting experience, and more varied villains. It is a fairly decent ?B-film?-type action-shooter ? a workaday, slightly above-average shooter featuring a novel gravity idea, plus a couple of online multiplayer and cooperative modes. Plays slightly above-average. Looks poor. Easy to moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language, suggestive themes. Two and one-half stars. (Reviewed 06/05/12.)

? ?Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days? by Eidos for PS 3 and Xbox 360 ? This sequel is a quite good shooter, though I finished it in a mere six hours. You portray Lynch as he and Kane

run through the buildings and streets of Shanghai after a drug deal goes awry, leaving an innocent victim dead, causing both cops and mobsters to come gunning for our anti-hero duo. I definitely dig its thrust, as it?s presented with a real story (of two scumbags), gritty dialogue (although I can?t hear it, sometimes) and a memorable cinematography and editing style (shaky, TV Americana mise-en-scene). Plays fun. Looks cool. Moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity and strong language. Three stars out of four.

? ?LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes? by Warner Home Video Games for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii, Vita, 3DS, DS ? This is a very fancy, very artful epic for kids, for fans of puzzle games, and for adults who have never played a ?LEGO? video game before. You portray Batman, Robin and Superman. The big city (despite being made of Legos) is a gorgeously drawn place full of mythical wonder, gritty streets, tall buildings (you scale up them at times) and insides of buildings. The plot is very comic book: Joker and Lex Luther combine forces against you and the Justice League. The action is typical ?LEGO:? Punch evil henchmen and occasional boss villains, and they shatter into pieces of LEGO. Punch furniture. Everything shatters into pieces of Lego that you collect as currency (which is tedious after all these years). I regard solo missions of ?Batman 2? as puzzles, more so than as combats with bad guys. Back and forth ? you portray Batman, then Robin, then Batman, then Robin, then Superman ? and you do that fairly quickly at the touch of a button, in order to solve puzzles, so you can escape traps and rooms staffed with henchmen. You can also run around the city?s open-world, solving crime or whatever, a la ?Spider-Man.? ?LEGO Batman 2? is of superior craftsmanship. But I wish designers would change two big things in future games: 1) Stop making us destroy planters and other dumb things to make them splatter into currency we have to collect. It?s boring. 2) The script is terrific. But there?s not enough talking. Characters mostly chat only during interstitial cinema scenes. Verdict: It?s a very good, silly, cute, fun and epic game with excellent music from Danny Elfman, John Williams and others. But the typical ?LEGO? action wore thin on me. Plays fun enough. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?E 10+? for cartoon violence. Three out of four stars. (Reviewed 05/19/12.)

? ?Lollipop Chainsaw? by Warner Bros Games for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This is a T&A game in which you portray hot cheerleader Juliet, the zombie slayer. It provides many upskirt camera angles, and plenty of naughty dialogue, but no real nudity or sex. You kill zombies ? zombie students, cops, punk rockers and many others ? at your school, on a farm, on a UFO and elsewhere. You kill them by kicking them, sawing off their heads or torsos with a chainsaw, and (later in the game) by shooting them. The gameplay begins as a pretty good romp but it gets more fun by the hour until I loved it. It?s just a hack-and-slash game, created by Goichi Suda, 44, who previously helmed ?No More Heroes,? ?Killer7? and ?Shadows of the Damned.? But ?Lollipop? is his best writing and directing so far. There is a lot of variety. The only gameplay bummers: The button-mashing is very repetitive. And the camera-angle controls felt flippity-floppity to me. To enjoy the silly storylines and funny dialogue, you must enjoy lowbrow humor. I do. Often when you kill villains, the screen floods with red hearts and silver glitter. Is it a typical male fantasy of a hot cheerleader? Or is it an aspirational female fantasy of being a hot, butt-kicker, a la Drew Barrymore?s ?Charlie?s Angels?? It?s both. Welcome to 2012 feminism. Plays fun. Looks good. Moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, strong language. Four stars.

? ?Max Payne 3? by Rockstar for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? A major disappointment, although this was a popular and acclaimed game in early 2012. Once again, portray Max in a third-person shooter, but he is flip-flopping between New York and Sao Paulo, Brazil, for reasons of mobsters and who cares? Here are three big yucks. 1. The visual style annoys me. The screen flickers in broken frames, instead of letting me play more naturally through the business of shooting people in alleys, buildings and so forth. This imagery effect reminds me of the 1979 film ?More American Graffiti,? which was awful. 2. The noir writer of the first two ?Max Paynes,? Sam Lake, did not write this. So it doesn?t soar with Lake?s grasp of Raymond Chandler?s noir tongue. Also, Max is given cohorts. Noir heroes are typically loners, to magnify their nihilism. 3. The shooting is no fun. The game play feels like the following to me at any given point: Enter a new room. A bunch of idiot henchmen who have no value for their own safety rush toward me. I shoot as many as I can with weak guns, limited bullets and a dumb reticule. I have shot guys four times with shotgun blasts, and they have continued to live and shoot me. I have shot guys point blank with 10 automatic rifle bullets and they have kept living to shoot me. Is this game out of its mind? Plays no-fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, partial nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, use of drugs and alcohol. One star. (Reviewed 05/29/12.)

??Prototype 2? by Activision for PS 3, Xbox 360 ? This is a good superhero game, but it?s not very novel. You portray a guy who hops across city rooftops, then soars over the city (similar to ?Spider-Man?); smashes the ground with his fists (reminiscent of ?The Hulk?); and exhibits other tropes and superpowers that feel familiar to me, since in the past few years, I?ve played many such games starring ?Spider-Man,? or ?Hulk,? or vampires, or zombies, or other ?Spider-Man?/?GTA? sandbox homages, from ?Crackdown 2? to ?Just Cause 2? to the first ?Prototype.? Fortunately, ?Prototype 2? has a saving grace: The action gameplay (its raison d?etre) is mostly executed very, very well. To be blunt, large parts of this bloody game are violently fun (when they don?t feel like a rehash of the ghost of gaming past). The artistry is prettily drawn. The movements are smooth. The game flows intuitively. Technically speaking, everything works ? except the game keeps making me choose a weapon, instead of remembering which weapon I used last time. I hated the mini-games where I had to race across rooftops on a timer to collect packages. And missions feel super easy or super frantic. Where?s the middle? Plays just fun enough. Looks very good. Moderately to very challenging, depending on settings you choose. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence, sexual themes, strong language. Three stars. (Reviewed 05/01/12.)

? ?Resident Evil 6? by Capcom retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This horror-survival, third-person shooter is neither pure joy nor pure misery. Its game play is barely good enough, but the imagery is great. And it?s four games in one, since there are four long narrative paths to complete. The basic plot: Kill zombies and try to save humanity from evil. I am not kidding. It?s that simple. I?d rather run past most zombies than kill them, because I don?t feel rewarded for shooting them. It takes a gazillion bullets to kill them. And I don?t have an endless supply of bullets. I must find and pick up bullets and First Aid plants when I occasionally see them lounging around on the floor or on a dresser. ?RE6? (for me, at least) is about just running through train tunnels, across war zones, caves and corridors, dodging and weaving past zombies, sometimes engaging in hand-to-hand combat, solving puzzles, and enjoying the game for its pretty cinematic images. Although, boss monsters are absurdly un-killable. After many hours of shooting boss Derek over and over and over, I finally killed him and judged him the most embarrassing, boring game climax of 2012. I wanted to quit the game because of him. Plays OK. Looks very good. Very challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, nudity, strong language and suggestive themes. Three stars. (Reviewed 10/01/12.)

? ?Singularity? by Activision for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC ? This game owes a debt of gratitude to the movie ?Aliens,? though it also stands on its own for its crazy time-bending weapon. Like ?Aliens,? you fight your way through hallways in close-quarter battles. But you?re fighting zombies on a Russian island much of the time. The rest of the time, you?re time-traveling to the 1950s on this island, shooting Soviet troops. It?s not just guns. You have this weapon that A) ages people, so you can use it on soldiers to make them age fast and die suddenly, and B) un-ages things, so you can use it on a dilapidated bridge in order to make it new and cross-able again. It?s a fun shooter, with plenty of plot and nuance. But you do have to always pick up ammo from the ground. Plays fun. Looks very good. Starts easy but becomes challenging. Rated ?M.? Three and one-half stars.

? ?Sleeping Dogs? by Square Enix for PS 3, Xbox 360, PC ? For me, this below-average game was too lame to finish. Why should I invest a full 20 hours into it when the first five hours are so lame? It?s a ?Grand Theft Auto?-styled mob game set in Hong Kong. I portray an undercover cop. To protect my undercover status, I must behave as a mobster ? shaking down senior citizen street vendors for payoffs, killing people, carjacking, buying drugs, and so forth ? so I feel more like a thug than a cop. Complaints: 1. Hand-to-hand combat partially relies on cumbersome counter-moves. I feel as if I must stand in place, bored, for three to five seconds, waiting for a gangster to lurch at me. Then I press a counter-move button. 2. I must drive (or jog) for long stretches across the boring city to arrive at mission destinations. If I accidentally kill a pedestrian, which is easy to do, cops chase me, and I can?t arrive at my destination until I outrun them. This is no longer a novel idea in gaming. 3. Quick-time events are a mess. Upsides: It?s pretty. Hong Kong looks cool. For character voiceovers, game makers paid for serious actors, including Tom Wilkinson, Lucy Liu, Emma Stone, James Hong, Will Yun Lee and Lindsay Price. There are still people in the world who have never played a ?Grand Theft Auto? game or who are fanboys. They may enjoy ?Sleeping Dogs? as a fresh thing. But to me, this ?GTA? shadow feels like a flat rehash. Plays lame. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, sexual content, strong language and use of drugs. NA/too lame to finish out of four stars. (Reviewed 08/21/12.)

? ?Starhawk? by Sony retails for $60 for PS 3 ? ?Starhawk? is a great idea for an online-shooting game, but you have to overlook a few serious (but non-fatal) flaws to really enjoy it. You engage in the usual online-multiplayer craziness ? running, driving or flying over the battlefield to kill rivals on the other team. However, what is awesomely different about ?Starhawk?s? online battles is they give you the option to instantly manufacture weapons on the battlefield. So let?s say you want to drive a four-wheeler. You simply press a button, and presto, a four-wheeler appears in front of you. You jump in it, then drive away. Or if you want to drive a Transformer-esque flying machine, you press a button and make that vehicle appear immediately. So, the game runs incredibly smoothly, without lags or major game play difficulty. And it comes with that insanely great bonus of letting you manufacture (on the fly) weapons, jetpacks, land-based vehicles, flying vehicles and supply-fortresses. Sadly, there are two reasons why I?m not giving ?Starhawk? a four-star review. Flaw No. 1: I keep getting stuck in battles with small teams of two or three gamers each. That?s not much fun, because battlefields are so large, it takes a boring forever to move around and find rivals to engage in a firefight. Flaw No. 2: On a few occasions, a rival teammate has been un-killable, and that makes me want to just quit the game. Plays fun online. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?T? for blood, language and violence. Three stars. (Reviewed 05/15/12.)

? ?Syndicate? by EA for PS 3, Xbox 360, PC ? Portray a super soldier in a futuristic age of robot Earth soldiers. The glossed-over plot is befuddling: Evil corporations have done ? something bad. I don?t know what. Anyway, you journey through a series of sci-fi building corridors, shooting evil humans or evil robot soldiers, or something. Whatever. The shooting is nice and smooth and fun. You also wield a wild supernatural ability against bad guys ? using Jedi-esque mind tricks to force them to commit suicide/shoot their dumb friends. But the game often spawned me back to life in front of a horde of rival soldiers, who killed me, or in front of a big boss character, who killed me. Way worse: The first big boss, named Agent Tatasuo, has a game-sucking superpower. When I shot at Agent Tatasuo, he magically disappeared, rendering my ammo nearly pointless, then magically reappeared somewhere else, and then shot me. I shot at Agent Tatasuo for one hour, yet his health meter told me he was still at 80 percent health. This stupid, horrendous, awful, despicable, villainous superpower ruined the game for me. Plays almost fun but is ultimately frustratingly. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language, suggestive themes. One star. (Reviewed 02/28/12.)

? ?Tekken 6? by Namco for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This one?s kind of a let-down. In the offline solo campaign, you have to sit through tedious cinema scenes (although you can skip them); you trek a poorly crafted third-person fighting adventure comprised of short paths; then finally, you get into the arena, where one-on-one fights go from super easy to super hard in about five minutes. Online, I had trouble with lag time as I beat rival gamers merely by mashing buttons instead of memorizing trick moves or strategizing punches and kicks. Plays acceptable only if you crave fighters; has some lag time online. Looks just good enough. Moderately challenging. Rated ?T? for alcohol reference, crude humor, mild language, suggestive themes and violence. Two stars.

? ?Twisted Metal? by Sony for PS 3 ? This is a combat-car game with no racing, so it feels more like a shooter than a traditional car game. You choose a vehicle ? car, truck, motorcycle, ice cream truck ? then drive around towns, firing rockets at rival vehicles. That?s it. The whole point is to blow up other cars. Solo missions are fast, fun and difficult, but fairly redundant after a while, as I?m so familiar with the series? modus operandi. The online multiplayer of ?Twisted Metal? is more exciting. However, when the multiplayer launched, it made me wait a lot during server troubles. Plays fun but somewhat redundant. Looks very good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Three stars. (Reviewed 02/22/12.)

? ?Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception? by Sony for PS 3 ? This is a gorgeous-looking adventure. You portray Nathan Drake again, on a quest to find a lost city in a desert, but what will you find there? Treasure? Or trouble? This sequel starts fairly slow and dull, but when it picks up steam, it is a powerhouse of a game, in which you and other non-playable characters wend your way through huge castles, caves and cities. There?s a lot of movie scenes to watch, and they?re terrific. The voice-over acting is stellar and funny during those scenes, but the great voice-over conversations continue during action sequences, even when you?re just running around. This is essentially four games in one. It?s got all those movie scenes. You do a lot of shooting, punching and sneaking up, stealthily, on bad guys. You solve puzzles to open secret doors. And it?s a parkour game, in which you shimmy up walls and crawl across roofs by fingertip. It?s not perfect. Headshots don?t always kill an evil henchman. And it takes a while to get used to the controls, because Nathan walks very ?splashy,? so the controls don?t feel crisp. But this is a beautiful and fun adventure, and the cruise-ship sequences near the end are unbelievably enjoyable (if hard). Plays fun. Looks incredible. Starts easy, ends challenging. Rated ?T? for blood, language and violence. Four out of four stars.

? ?Wet? by Bethesda for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This gun-and-sword action-adventure borrows from the best. It looks like ?Kill Bill Vol. 1? at times, but also like Quentin Tarantino?s grindhouse projects. You play as a mercenary who wall-runs like ?Prince of Persia,? gymnastically jumps from pole to pole like Lara Croft, and shoots people in slow motion while jumping or sliding on her knees like ?Max Payne.? All of that borrowing works. ?Wet? is a fun and colorful good time, though there?s no multiplayer, and if you?re a regular gamer, you can finish it in 10 hours or so. Plays quite fun, but too short. Looks outstanding. Challenging to very challenging, depending on settings you choose. Rated ?M.? Three stars.

SPORTS: BASEBALL

? ?Major League Baseball 2K11? by Take Two for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii, PC, DS, PSP and PS 2 ? This thing is fantastic, and mostly realistic-feeling. Players move and look mostly like the real thing. There are plenty of options with game play and camera angles. It does have choppy animations at times, and an ever-so-slight arcade feel. But it?s excellent. Plays entertaining if slow as baseball. Looks great. Very challenging. Rated ?E? for mild lyrics. Four stars.

? ?Major League Baseball 2K12? by 2K Sports) retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3; $40 for Wii; $30 for PC; $20 for PS 2, PSP and DS ? The baseball mechanics are perfect for what they are. It?s a very intuitive outing. I understood immediately how to pitch, field, bat, run and steal bases. It?s not too hard. It?s not too easy. It?s just right. Visuals are only above-average. That?s the only knock against it. But you can play a season. You can play real-time games-of-the-day, if you?re wired online. You can compete against other gamers online. You can hit the home run derby. Plays fun. Looks good. Moderately challenging. Rated ?E.? Four stars. (Reviewed 04/24/12.)

? ?MLB 11: The Show? by Sony for PS 3 and PS 2 ? This is as close to a perfect baseball game as I?ve ever seen. Players look like real people when they?re pitching, hitting, running, fielding or just walking around. It?s incredible. It?s nearly a simulator. Which is to say it?s slow and incredibly difficult to hit the ball. You can play against the computer; or you and a friend can play against the computer, taking turns at bat and pitching; or you can play two people vs. the computer. Plays fun, like a baseball simulator. Looks incredible. Very challenging. Rated ?E.? Four stars.

SPORTS: BASKETBALL

? ?NBA 2K12? by 2K Sports for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This game looks so good. And it?s quite fun to dribble, penetrate the lane and shoot long jumpers. However, there are far too many unforgivable, unforgiving things about ?2K12.? It feels impossible to smoothly pass the ball; or to shot the ball from near the basket without getting blocked; and there?s the usual shenanigans of how the game makes opposing, computer-controlled teams catch up to you by shooting four straight three-point shots late in a game, even if you?re double-teaming their shooters. Worse still, the game needs to react faster when you press the button to block a pass. This could have been a remarkably classic NBA outing, if the game designers hadn?t decided to make it the hardest NBA game in history. Even when I humiliatingly changed the settings to ?Casual? and ?Rookie,? it remained too difficult to pass the ball and shoot near the rim. Games shouldn?t make you constantly angry. Plays un-fun. Looks terrific. Supremely challenging. Rated ?E.? One and one-half star.

? ?NBA 2K13? by 2K Sports for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC, Wii and PSP ? It?s very similar to most ?NBA 2K? games, although there?s a revamped use of both thumb sticks so I can

pull off cool fade shots and other subtle moves. New animations occur in real time. If you?re playing as LeBron James, these new animations expertly mimic the real LeBron?s running, dribbling, shooting and defensive gestures. However, those animations also give me pause. Correct me if I?m wrong, but animations are so time extensive, they seem to slow down my feet. So if I?m dribbling and I juke out a defender, I then try to sprint toward the basket. But I feel as if the game takes so long to process my player?s gestures that by the time my feet start moving, the defender recovers and repositions in front of me. That?s not a game killer. But it convinced me to run fast break offenses, since player animations don?t seem to slow down the run-and-gun. Anyhow, ?NBA 2K13? does look great and offer gobs of options (during solo play and in online multiplayer competitions) so that you can tweak those player movements, plus camera angles and other important aspects. It?s like Burger King. You can have it your way. Plays fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?E? for mild lyrics. Three and one-half stars. (Reviewed 10/16/12.)

? ?NBA Jam? by EA Sports for PS 3, Xbox 360, Wii ? This latest iteration of the two decade-old franchise is silly and fun. It lets you play two-on-two basketball with icons (Kobe, etc.) but they are cartoonish basketball stars (stick figure-esque, with bobble heads). The game play is ridiculous and entertaining, with no fouls, so you?re constantly pushing rivals to the floor, stealing balls, and jumping higher than the backboard, alley-ooping frequently. It may be more fun in competitive multiplayer. Plays very fun. Looks good in a funny way. Easy to challenging, based on settings you choose. Rated ?E.? Three and one-half stars.

SPORTS: FOOTBALL

? ?Madden NFL 12? by EA for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii, PSP and PS 2 ? This is a pretty fun football game that looks and feels realistic yet still (mostly) has the fun of a video game and not the frustrations of a simulator. However, ?NFL 12? shipped with no auto-save feature, which is unforgivable. The artificial intelligence of computer opponents don?t seem to be as smart as in previous ?Maddens,? letting me run the same winning playsets over and over without the AI adjusting much. And the replay videos seem to stutter a bit at times, taking me out of the game mentally. Still, this is a good outing, if not as good as the best ?Maddens? of the past. Plays fun despite frustrating flaws. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?E.? Three and one-half stars.

? ?Madden NFL ?13? (Electronic Arts) for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ?This is the ?Madden? whereby Electronic Arts revamped the football series. But it still feels like ?Madden.? Football players do seem to move quicker (faster running, faster tackling, faster games). But ?13? also feels somewhat weirder than before. The most notable result of ?13?s? new software ?engine? is a tougher defense. Defenders swarm ball carrier as if they were mercury-fast magnets. It?s, like, kill-the-man-with-the-football, with serious injuries from hard tackles. The quickness of players give them (to my eye) a more herky jerky look. And I don?t think my running blockers are any good on the corners. All my old winning tricks still work, such as creating hot routes for receivers on every down, and toying with my linemen to befuddle the game?s artificial intelligence on offense. There are new menu changes, particularly to create hot routes and call audibles, but it?s not revolutionary stuff. I do like the defensive tightening. I used to win games in old ?Maddens? by 38 to 60 points. My victories now generally run 31-0 or 28-7. As for downers, I?m not sure I love the feature whereby my players flop-fall to the ground sometimes when they slightly bump into a teammate. And I?ve seen too many interceptions and fumbles ? benefiting both me and my opponents. All the modes remain. You can play a whole season in franchise mode. You can compete online. You can customize players and coaches. Plays fine. Looks good. Easy. Rated ?T? for animated blood and violence. Three stars. (Reviewed 08/23/12.)

? ?NCAA Football 12? by EA for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? Either this game or ?NCAA Football ?11? is the best college football game of all time. ?2012? looks, plays and feels like football, while including immense amounts of authentic, cinematic looks at college mascots, cheerleaders and ESPN-like presentations. It has flaws, mostly on defense. Linebackers sometimes just stand around, which doesn?t help you win. Occasionally, a referee or booth review gets a call wrong. And the tackling joystick is a little off. But you could play this amazing game for a year. It?s that good. Plays addictively fun. Looks phenomenal. Very challenging. Rated ?E.? Four stars.

? ?NCAA Football ?13? by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? Here is a slick behemoth, offering more than 120 teams in their native stadiums, and great gameplay. It?s just so much fun to run and pass. It?s fun to change receiver routes before the snap. It?s ever so satisfying to play defense and sack quarterbacks. You can stick to the seasonal format, so you can helm the same team forever. But there are other tantalizing modes. You can compete online. You can take the Heisman challenge, which lets you portray Herschel Walker and other trophy winners. You can create a player from scratch and build him up over time. Options, options. This game?s got options. Some gamers complained computer animations get choppy. I see their point. Some complained new twists are unrealistic, as is the ability to slow time on occasion to make better running choices. I see their point. But those are quibbles compared to this excellent edition of NCAA football. Plays very fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?E.? Four out of four stars.

SPORTS: HOCKEY

? ?NHL 2K11? by Take Two for Wii ? What a disappointment. The hockey moves adequately fast, but it?s messy to control and sloppy to the touch, with blocky characters, and it?s physically jarring to always shake the Wii wand on offense and defense. Plays yucky. Looks bad. Moderately challenging. Rated ?E 10+? for mild violence. One star.

? ?NHL 11? by EA for PS 3, Xbox 360 ? This is a great game that should serve the interests of hardcore hockey fans. It moves very fluidly. It?s intuitive to the touch. There?s a bunch of new bells and whistles. For instance, your hockey stick can break, and the physics of body checking is now more accurate. There are a ton of game modes, from regular solo play and franchising to online competitive modes, as well as a virtual trading card system that lets you build ultimate teams from classic cards. Plays fun and comprehensive. Looks great. Challenging. Rated ?E 10+? for mild violence. Four stars.

? ?NHL ?13? by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and PS 3 ? This game is as thrilling as a cup of frozen ice. During face-offs, I do not feel as if I have an exquisite touch on my hockey stick when the referee drops the puck. My guess, without exaggeration, is I win about one out of every 20 face-offs. Then comes the actual skating. This is where ?NHL ?13? shines. When I control the puck, it?s easy to outmaneuver defenders, on offense and defense. And skating just feels like a more authentic motion. But to score, I usually need to pass cleanly. And very often, when I try to pass to a teammate, the puck goes in the wrong direction, or it?s a weak pass, and rivals steal the puck. What doesn?t help me to score: Opponents often merely bunch up in front of their goalie, creating a blockage wall. On defense, it?s quite nice, how I can move my men into position to steal pucks and, especially, to poke my stick out, to block rivals? passes. However, I?ve seen my fair share of unlikely goals against me. But what I hate most: ?NHL ?13? reflects the current kill-everybody style of play in the NHL, so I often get tripped and creamed without referees calling penalties. That?s frustrating. Plays meh. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?E 10+? for mild violence. Two out of four stars. (Reviewed 09/11/12.)

SPORTS: SOCCER

? ?Pro Evolution Soccer 2013? by Konami for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii and Nintendo DS ? Here is why I prefer ?PES? to ?FIFA.? I can see plays developing on the field better and easier, which doesn?t mean ?PES ?13? is easier than ?FIFA,? per se. It just gives me more clarity and feels more authentic. Also, I prefer how ?PES ?13? lets me choose this option: I can personally pick which of my players to nimbly control throughout the course of a soccer match ? instead of letting the game?s artificial intelligence change the cursor-control over my fielders when I?m in the middle of a play. On the other hand, if I let the game?s artificial intelligence change which player I?m controlling mid-match, it will almost always change my control to the wrong player at the wrong time. That can destroy my flow, and allow my opponents to score more goals. ?FIFA? has an individualized player-control system, but I prefer ?PES?s? by a lot. ?PES? still has its obstacles. I can?t master many of the gazillion pass options. And it took me forever to figure out how to correctly shoot the ball, which is hard. But compared to ?FIFA ?13,? ?PES? just feels more real and fluid, and I can control the ball much smoother. Plays fun. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?E.? Three stars. (Reviewed 10/16/12.)

SPORTS: TENNIS

? ?Top Spin 4? by 2K Sports for PS 3, Xbox 360 and Wii ? Compete as Agassi, Pete Sampras, Serena Williams and 22 other legends. Or, choose the more challenging task of creating a player from scratch, male or female, slowly improving them to become a better player over time. This is a very enjoyable and satisfying outing in which you level-up athletic attributes. Players look, move and feel realistic. The learning curve is short, in figuring out how and when to properly hit a flat ball, normal ball, top-spin, killer serve, volley and drop shot. Plays very fun. Easy to challenging modes. Looks great. Rated ?E.? Four stars.

? ?Virtua Tennis 4? by Sega for Xbox 360, PS 3, Wii ? The gameplay of the tennis here is barely decent, since the computer-controlled players are superb, never hitting the ball ?out,? creating two-minute volleys that seem interminable. What?s worse is that your player gets fatigued very fast, and there?s scant opportunity to revitalize your health. More badness: In the create-a-player mode, you don?t get to just play one full match after another. Instead, you must play a ?Risk?-looking board game where you land on spots that make you play frilly mini-games. Plays just decent. Looks good. Very challenging. Rated ?E? for comic mischief. One and one-half stars.

WAR

? ?Battlefield 3? by EA for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This is a gritty, very challenging war game that is intense, impressive, only slightly flawed and short. Plot: Terrorists plan to blow up international cities with suitcase nukes. You portray soldiers and spies hunting them down across Paris, the Middle East and elsewhere. It?s tough. You can?t just run into open fields, pretending to be un-killable Arnold Schwarzenegger, or else rival soldiers will kill you. Frequently, you don?t even see where bad guys are located, as they sneak up on you. I finished all the offline missions in about six hours. The online multiplayer seems more vertical than ?Call of Duty? (bigger hills and mountains to negotiate), and it?s a sniper?s paradise. Many gamers find nooks and crannies to hide in, then just camp out and snipe. However, you too can find your own favorite niches ? soldiering, driving tanks, flying planes and helicopters, or using portable Stingers (infrared homing missiles) to blow rival planes and helicopters out of the sky. This is ridiculously satisfying. Plays fun. Looks fantastic. Very challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, intense violence, strong language. Four out of four stars.

? ?Brink? by Bethesda for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? There?s not a big storyline in this first-person shooter. The setting is a futuristic U.S.-Pacific island torn apart by civil war. For half the game, you shoot on behalf of the government. For the other half, you switch sides and portray a member of the resistance. It?s not just shooting. You also accomplish online-multiplayer-esque missions, such as setting and defusing a bomb in the middle of the battlefield, or escorting a prisoner safely across a map. This means you die and respawn frequently. There are tons of great options here, from upgrading weapons and characters to the ability to change your type of soldier mid-battle, from soldier to medic to engineer to spy. This is a genius game, well-executed, but recommended only for fans of first-person online multiplayers. Plays fun offline and online. Looks very good. Challenging. Rated ?T? for blood, language and violence. Four stars.

? ?Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? by Activision for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC and Wii ? The solo campaign is rote. America and Russia are at war. You portray soldiers shooting at rivals in the rubble streets of New York, Dubai, Paris and elsewhere. Bad guys stand still in front of your gun, as if they were practice dummies. So this is terribly similar in feel and style to any old ?Call of Duty? game ? decently crafted but not addicting if you?ve played ?Call of Duty? games before. It feels arcade-y, slightly dated and sometimes cartoon-ish. The online multiplayer is fun but not awesome. The maps feel small and cramped. You rapidly run, die and re-spawn back to life hurriedly. It feels like an arcade game where you rarely get your footing. I also don?t like ?MW3?s? kill-streak system. It allows matches to immediately turn into madcap anarchy, where you get slain by helicopters and bombing raids the moment you spawn to life. Boo. Plays fun. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, drug reference, intense violence and strong language. Three and one-half stars.

? ?Crysis 2? by EA for PS 3, Xbox 360 and PC ? This first-person, sci-fi fantasy shooter takes place in 2023 in New York. Aliens have bubbled up from under the Earth?s surface to wage war on humans across the globe. You portray a super soldier who shoots them to death on your journey to take them all out and save the city. This is an exquisitely drawn adventure, with massively illustrated battle scenes and cinematic cut scenes on the streets of New York and in the subways and park. But the guns are pretty weak, which could frustrate you as the aliens? guns are plain better and take you down fairly quickly. You can deploy an invisibility option and sprint past aliens to complete many levels, although the second half of the game becomes very difficult indeed, raising the question: Are you a super soldier, or not? Also, despite the visuals, the storytelling is rote and not emotionally or intellectually fulfilling. Comes with an online multiplayer. Plays sort of fun. Looks top-tier. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, partial nudity, strong language and violence. Three and one-half stars.

? ?Gears of War 3? by Microsoft for Xbox 360 ? Earth has become a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to aliens going all psycho-killer on humans. You portray several beefy soldiers, shooting aliens on playgrounds, in buildings, in dusty valleys and elsewhere in this third-person cover shooter. It?s surprisingly easy to stay alive in any mode except ?hardcore.? And the offline campaign battles seem somewhat same-as-before, even redundant at times. Still, this is a beautifully illustrated, solid and cinematic adventure. The online multiplayer runs smooth and tight, like in previous ?Gears,? though you still move around slow, like a lumbering asthmatic. Plays fun. Looks terrific. Easy to moderately challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence and strong language. Four stars.

? ?God of War Collection? by Sony for PS 3 ? For the first time, both ?God of War? and ?God of War II? appear on the high-definition PlayStation 3. There?s been no tinkering with either game. They have been ported to the PS 3. But that?s great, because both ?God of Wars? are masterpieces of action-adventure. You portray Spartan super warrior Kratos during the reign of Zeus, who has angered you, and now you vow to kill hundreds of other warriors, plus supernatural giant villains, on your journey to track Zeus down for payback. Plays immensely fun. Looks great. Challenging to very challenging, depending on settings you choose. Rated ?M.? Four stars.

? ?God of War III? (Sony) for PS 3 ? Once again, you play as Kratos, the one-time god of war, continuing his 12-hour or longer quest to find and slay Zeus in Hades, Olympus and beyond. The journey is unbelievably creative and awe-inspiring one, from the

sumptuously drawn visuals to the orchestration, story arcs, dialogue, voice-overs, camera angles, settings and the smooth and realistic movements of absolutely everything. It may be the best game in three years, since the last ?God of War II.? Plays as fun as games get. Looks better than maybe any game ever. Challenging. Rated ?M.? Four stars.

? ?Halo 4? (Microsoft) for Xbox 360 ? This series looks, feels and plays like it always has. So if you want more of the same ? a solid and familiar solo campaign and online battles ? here you go. The solo campaign asks us to once again portray Master Chief, a military space warrior battling sci-fi warriors. At first, there is a peace between humans and their rival species, The Covenant. But skirmishes break out on a Covenant ?forerunner planet.? Master Chief reemerges after a long slumber and stumbles back into war. The game play feels like this: I run across sterling-clean terrain ? forest, desert, space stations and blue-steel warehouses ? shooting at Covenant-type guys while trying to reach end points. The most striking new thing is a touching relationship between Master Chief and his computer hologram helper, Cortana, whose ?brain? has sadly twisted with age. As for the online multiplayer, ?Halo 4? does come with new battlefield maps, but it also includes old ?Halo? maps. In both the solo campaign and the online multiplayer, this is a game of, ?How many times do I have to shoot this guy to kill him?? This is a very, very good game. It is smooth, intuitive, interesting and expertly designed, even if, personally, I burned out on ?Halo? years ago. Plays fun. Looks very good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood and violence. Four stars. (Reviewed 11/05/12.)

? ?Killzone 3? by Sony for PS 3 ? You portray an interplanetary hero soldier fighting in a war against a peoples on a distant, Earth-like planet. There is a plot with acting scenes, but it?s centered mainly on war. Besides, it?s all about the first-person cover-shooting, offline and online, in a smooth-playing, yet gritty looking, battlefield game with generally awesome guns. Plays very fun, including online. Looks utterly fantastic. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence and strong language. Four stars.

? ?Resistance 3? by Sony for PS 3 ? This cookie-cutter, first-person shooter is set in a ?Red Dawn? sort of 1950s America, when 90 percent of humans have been killed or body-snatched by an alien virus that fell to Earth. You portray a guy who travels buildings, fields, tunnels and other battlefields, shooting aliens as they run at you and at your friends. Usually a game with this much shooting comes with self-healing health, or with a cover system to hide behind walls, away from rivals? bullets. This game comes with neither, leaving you pretty defenseless in many shooting situations, thus it?s possible to die a whole bunch even on the easiest ?casual? setting. The game is also somewhat dull, as the storyline is blah, and the gameplay is basically a track of arcade-ish situations. The online multiplayer is OK, and that?s if you can jump through all the patch hoops Sony put in place (an online-access code, software downloads, etc.). Plays average/half-tedious. Looks OK. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Two stars.

? ?Spec Ops: The Line? by 2K Games for Xbox 360, PS 3, PC ? This third-person cover shooter was inspired by ?Heart of Darkness? and ?Apocalypse Now.? You portray Delta Op Walker. You and two military comrades trek by foot through Dubai, which has been turned into an apocalyptic wasteland due to killer desert windstorms. Your mission is to find a U.S. military hero named Konrad who may have gone mad with power over the few remaining locals and U.S. soldiers on site. There are unusual and icky things about this game: 1) We portray an American soldier who shoots other American soldiers, presumably because they went to the dark side. 2) It becomes unclear if we are the good guy. What if those soldiers we are shooting are good guys? 3) We kill them anyway, sometimes with finishing moves, such as bashing their heads with a rifle. It is a bizarre feeling to portray Delta Op Walker. Cinematic film scenes prove to us he believes he?s doing the right thing. But other film scenes hint Walker may be an unreliable narrator. That psychological struggle is what the makers of this game want us to feel. ?Spec Ops? never feels like a celebratory event. It is a gruesome affair that makes us question why we are even playing this bloody war game or, frankly, anyone else?s. The challenging game play is well-executed cover-shooting. It?s intuitive and flows nicely, although the campaign is too short at six hours, and some storylines are hard to follow. Plays well, but short and sometimes confusing. Looks good. Challenging. Rated ?M? for blood, gore, intense violence, strong language. Three and one-half out of four stars. (Reviewed 07/31/12.)

? ?Tom Clancy?s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier? by Ubisoft for Xbox 360, PS 3 and PC ? This war shooter sends you into covert missions in internationally troubled hot spots. You portray a U.S. special op, accompanied by three special-op comrades. The four of you are dropped into a series of missions on the ground in dangerous lands overrun by warlord thugs. This is the best ?Tom Clancy? game in years, or maybe ever. The game?s designers have developed intense, difficult and finely illustrated battle missions for you to carry out. You are helicoptered to an entry point. You sneak around bases; quietly killing bad guys; extract a prisoner or gather intel; then escape via helicopter. The cool effectiveness of ?Ghost Recon: Future Soldier? rests in its execution. It is designed spectacularly. You creep around terrorist tents, buildings and hideout-hills. You are equipped with several super-cool tactical accoutrements: Some electronics let you see through walls, count bad guys standing their ground, and ?tag? them for elimination by your comrades. My two favorite ?future? abilities in this game: 1) A cloaking device, much like Harry Potter?s cloak of invisibility; and 2) goggles that let you see X-ray vision through buildings and cars. The game comes with cooperative and online-multiplayer modes. Plays fun. Looks terrific. Challenging. Rated ?M?

Source: http://www.nola.com/science/index.ssf/2012/12/games_at_a_glance_capsule_revi.html

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