Between the LucasArts presentation of the game and my brief hands-on, I walked away feeling confident that this could not only be one of the most exciting Star Wars video games of all time, it could very well provide moments more epic than anything we saw in the three prequel films.

One particular moment had me believing in the Star Wars franchise all over again. The story opens with Vader hunting down a surviving Jedi hiding out on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk. He finds the cowering Jedi, but as he prepares to strike him down his lightsaber flies out of his hand, into the hands of a small child. There is a moment right then...Vader looming over this small boy, defiantly holding a weapon against one of the most powerful beings in the universe...it gave me chills. Nice chills.

From then on the story revolves around this secret apprentice, whose powers can only grow. He walks into a room filled with Rebels and Imperials, and everybody dies. He's a secret, you see? You see him, you've pretty much signed your death warrant. His is, for all intents and purposes, a Force ninja.

Despite the recent spoiler-filled trailer, there will still be plenty of surprises in The Force Unleashed for fans of the Star Wars films, from returning characters from the prequels to all-new characters never seen before in the Star Wars universe. During a brief bit of game involving a fight with a massive rancor a dark-haired male character flashed by the screen, and the gentleman presenting the game quickly blurt out "Who's that!?" before telling us we'd have to play the game to find out. I have my suspicions though.

As for the gameplay itself? While I didn't get to try out the Wii version with it's lightsaber controls, I did spend a bit of time with the Xbox 360 version in which our hero (anti-hero? villain?) wanders into a fight between Rebel and Imperial forces in a Tie Fighter factory, and carnage ensued. Force powers tossed enemies about like rag dolls as they desperately tried to save themselves from my wrath. While I longed for some of the powers I had been shown during the presentation, the potential was certainly there. The only problem I really had was overconfidence - I felt like such a bad ass that I wound up dying horribly. Should probably have channeled all of that confidence into hate or something. Whoops.

The graphics are nice and clean, but of course the physics are the real star here. The Digital Molecular Matter technology really shines in conjunction with NaturalMotion's Euphoria and Havok physics. I notice a few issues, such as trees that seem to break as if they were planks of wood instead of living plants, but for the most part it does the job quite nicely.

While LucasArts' Fracture gives you control over the forces of nature, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed makes *you* the force of nature. It could very well surpass Republic Commando as my favorite Star Wars game of all time, and it's really hard to top Sev and crew.

No. They were very good. After all, at that point they'd been playing the game for three days straight, so I didn't stand much of a chance. Still I took a few swings, only to discover the force isn't quite so strong in this one.

The reps were really keen on showing off the Star Wars characters, so that's what I mainly played. First came Yoda on the Xbox 360, who proved a bit of a nuisance to my opponent's Cervantes, who couldn't seen to land a high attack to save his life. Yes, Yoda effectively cuts the attack arsenal of his enemies by a third, with upper attacks harmlessly passing over his tiny, wispy head. His character model was excellent - in fact the characters have never looked better, but that's the sort of thing you'd expect from a "next gen" game. I was so busy button mashing gawking at Yoda's character model that I was soundly defeated.

Then I tried out Vader's secret apprentice, and proceeded to get pummeled by my opponent's newly useful upper attacks. He did show me some of the special force moves, including a force lightning attack that actually had me win a round before the Namco Bandai rep realized he was better than that and came back strong.

We moved over to the PlayStation 3 then, where another rep had been working on creating a custom character than looked a lot like Jack from the Tekken series. He moved aside to let me try my luck playing as Darth Vader in a match against an AI opponent.

"So who do you want to fight against?"
"Oh, let me fight against Raphael. She's hot."
"Um, Raphael is a guy."
*blank stare* "Riiiight.

Apparently Raphael is a vampire, a fact that I must have completely missed in the last two games? When did this happen?

Confusion aside, I quickly found the one hidden weakness of lightsabers - real swords. If Obi-Wan had just pulled out a scimitar during his final battle aboard the Death Star, the trilogy would have been severely truncated. I decided to forego button mashing and note taking for actually playing the game as it was intended, and Raphael went down like the little bitch he is.

My final match pitted me as the pointy-breasted, anime-inspired Angol against the game's big boss, bird-armored Algol - no relation. Using a secret combination of "blocking" and "attacking intelligently" the boss soon succumbed to my adorably spiky chest armor and I was triumphant.

Force powers aside, the game plays out much like any other Soul Calibur game does, only prettier. The Soul Calibur series has been uniformly excellent for years, and the fourth installment (technically fifth) looks to be no different. Tons of characters, smooth controls, and what looks like one of the best character creation elements ever included in a fighting game - you were expecting anything less?

I shouldn't have to go on from there, but I will.

LEGO Batman: The Videogame looks like it will be delivering the sort of over-the-top addictive LEGO fun of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones games, but with even more memorable and equipment-laden playable characters than both games combined.

"Over the decades there have been lots of stories about Batman, this is a distillation," said Traveller's Tale's Jonathan Smith. "It is our original telling of Gotham City in chaos."

While the game will have you playing as a "stern Batman" and "try too hard Boy Wonder", Smith said you will also be able to play as a number of villains including the Joker and the Penguin. The game will include a 15 level campaign divided between the heroes and villains.

The game's central hub will be the the Batcave and yes, Alfred will be an unlockable playable minifig.

Sitting down with the game, I found it fairly easy to drop into. The main difference between LEGO Batman: The Videogame and past LEGO games is the batarang mechanic. To use Batman's nifty weapon you tap the X button and then move a bat symbol around the screen to target things, multiple things if you want. It may sound a bit clunky, but it works really well and the added step of targeting prevents you from overusing the batarang.

I played through quite a hefty chunk of a level with Batman and Robin, battling across some of Gotham's rooftops with the dynamic duo felt very familiar, but in a good way. The batarang was most useful when targeting items or distant foes. Which is probably for the best. The few puzzles I ran into were about as challenging as those found in the Star Wars and Indiie games, so not very.

To get Batman or Robin to change outfits you have to find a suit swapper, something typically that has to be built with loose LEGO pieces. Once you step on it you switch to a predetermined suit. I got a chance to check out a mag suit which allowed Robin to slowly walk his way up metal walls and such. Batman's glide suit was way cooler, letting him float gently across the sky. While I didn't get to test drive them, I'm told that there will be a number of vehicles in the game as well including the Batmobile, Batboat and Batwing.

After playing around with the Batman and Robin level for a bit I jumped into a level that had me playing as The Joker and disturbingly sexy minifig Harley Quinn.

In these levels I had a lot more puzzles to deal with while taking on a seemingly endless stream of Gotham cops. While The Joker can take people down with old school punching, he can also give them a hearty buzzer handshake. Grabbing onto an enemy with The Joker makes the little minifig light up, briefly showing a faded minifig skeleton as the character vibrates until it falls apart. That minifig dismemberment is right up there with Chewbacca's arm-ripping attack.

While I didn't have time to play as the Penguin, I was told his attack involved exploding penguins.

I suspect that LEGO Batman The Videogame is going to resonate with gamers as much as LEGO Star Wars did, both because of the excellent design and the abundance of memorable characters.

Dead Space was one of those titles that sort of snuck up on me, very appropriate for a survival horror game.

Before taking up a controller for any length of time, I was sort of impressed with its look, but I hadn't yet been introduced to some of the game's interesting gameplay designs. Things like strategic dismemberment and the lack of a HUD and the true zero gravity sections of the game. All three combine to make Dead Space both more immersive and otherworldly.

In Dead Space you will play as Issac Clarke, a space engineer responding to a distress call from a "Planet Cracker." In the game's reality, these giant spaceships tear apart dead planets to extract ore. In the case of this particular ship, the planet they were raping wasn't so dead. Soon after boarding the ship, and realizing that most everyone onboard is dead, Clarke is separated from the rest of his team.

From the get go the game nails the look it needs to pull off a space thriller. Things are sterile, dark and otherworldly. Event the design of Clarke's outfit, a blend of deep sea diving suite and steam punk welder's mask, is fantastic. The lack of a HUD helps put you more into the game, making you pay more attention to the little noises and signs of what's going on around you.

The weapons, the weapons are fantastical as the multi-limbed, mutli-headed creatures your face. Dead Space leans heavily on the limited ammo feature found in almost all horror survival games, but than adds a twist. To kill the monstrosities you face you can go ahead and empty a clip into one, and maybe kill it, or you can carefully, and systematically blow off it's head and limbs. You do this by selecting the correct weapon, often one that fires multiple lasers or shots, and lining up the laser sights with the weaving limbs.

My first deep look at the game had me playing through a level of the ship's hydroponics lab. Creatures scuttled and ambled toward me from around corners and out of plants. Some burst from the bellies of dead humans. I lased, shot and burned them all. Other creatures produced toxic gases, slowly killing me until I could find and destroy them. All of the things I took on were wholly unique creations to this game. The creature design, I found, is just amazing.

After making my way through the hydroponics lab, a developer skipped me to a boss battle. In it I had to deal with some patches of zero gravity. My boots, automatically magnetized, allowed me to stick to the floor. To move I would just look at an area that had metal and jump to it, floating crazily to my goal and than latching on.

The boss itself was nested in a giant circular room, its tendrils hidden in ooze. To defeat it I had to run around the walls of the moving room and deal out damage, methodically, taking down the creature one tendril at a time.

I think Dead Space's blend of deep space horror and tactical combat is going to resonate both with hardcore fans of the thriller genre and those more reluctant in the past to dip into it.

I got to wander around the shattered landscape, poking at rubble, shooting at people, and trying on clothes. I got my first hands-on taste of the VaultTech Assisted Targeting system, which allows you to pause the action, choose where your bullets are heading on your target's body, and then plays through in slow motion - and there is nothing sweeter than a slow-motion exploding head. It was all very exciting, but as I took a moment to gaze about the room I realized that the most exciting thing about Fallout 3 is what everyone else was doing.

While we all started at the point in the story where we were exiting the Vault we grew up in for the first time, within 15 minutes each of the groups at the six kiosks they had put up in their booth were in completely different places doing completely different things. Some had made a beeline for a nearby settlement, some had found a ruined school building nearby and were involved in combat with some seedy B&D enthusiasts, while others spent a good 10 minutes trying to see if the ruined playground equipment was working from a physics point of view (it wasn't, and yeah...that was me).

Like Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series - especially Oblivion - Fallout 3 is a game that melds itself to the gameplay style of the player, offering something for people who want to explore, kill, or try on different clothing. By the time my 30 minutes was up I was wearing Mad Max-style bondage armor and a baseball cap, while others didn't even bother going into their inventory at all, the barbarians.

The variety is really something to keep in mind when the game comes out and the reviews start pouring in, as the Fallout 3 the reviewers play could potentially be a totally different game than the one you play. The foundation that Bethesda has laid down for you is excellent, but as with any open-world game the experience is ultimately what you make of it.

Damnation takes place in an alternate early 20th century U.S. where the Civil War has been raging for decades. Now a wealthy industrialist is hatching a plan to wipe out both sides of the conflict, and it's up to your character and his teammates to stop the bastard from recreating the country in his own twisted image.

I actually got to play through a bit of a level of the game with Blue Omega's Jacob Minkoff and Richard Gilbert guiding me through. The level starts with the main character and a couple of AI teammates (one of which can be played by a friend for co-op action) tasked with destroying a far off bridge before the enemy forces can cross, decimating a small, strategically located town. The only problem? The bridge spans the middle of a large chasm, which you just happen to be standing on the side of.

Luckily, Damnation's gameplay is all about verticality and finding your own path. Mine involves an elevator that takes us down to some ruins, which we have to cross in order to make it to the bridge. Enemy-filled ruins. Yum. It starts off as a standard shooting affair, firing my pistols at the bad guys and trying to stay under cover, but if you take things a bit differently...

For instance, how many times have you played a shoot where they place an enemy atop a turret or something and you are forced to shoot him from far off? What if you could run to the turret, grab a ledge, flip yourself up and then take his gun to get into some of the sniping fun yourself? Once again, Damnation is about vertical movement. Sure, you can just approach combat as if it were a standard 3rd person shooter, but why limit yourself when you can jump off walls, climb up ledges, and scurry up ladders?

Fighting my way across the ruins, I stopped and took a look behind me, seeing several other paths I could have taken, already planning out my route for my next play through. Blue Omega claims that if you were to explore all the different options you could take to navigate the levels you could squeeze out upwards of three hours gameplay from each one.

I know we've seen games that combine platforming and shooting in the past, but Damnation just feels good. Maybe it's the gritty steampunk setting, or the cool way your character grabs a ledge, kicks off the wall and flips himself up to where he's standing on it. Maybe it's just the feeling I get that instead of just making the title a combination of two gameplay types, Blue Omega is creating a title in which either element could stand on its own but together brings things to a whole new level. Players will be creating their own play style as they progress through the game, which should make for very interesting and unpredictable online multiplayer down the line.

Blue Omega have got the hook in my mouth with Damnation, but can they get me into the boat, skin me alive, fillet me and serve me with white wine at a dinner party? Am I far too tired to be allowed to dabble in analogies right now? Damn straight I am. Just keep an eye on the game, okay?

On its surface Major Minor's Majestic March is very simplistic, but then again so was Parappa the Rapper. And that's an apt comparison. Both games were created by Masaya Matsuura and both feature bright cartoon characters drawn with bold, clean lines.

Instead of tapping out a rhythm on a controller, as players did with Parappa, Major Minor's Majestic March has players setting their own tempo as the Drum Major of a marching band. That may not sound like a big difference but what it means is that it takes the control away from the game and allows gamers to dictate how they want to play. The key to the game isn't rhythm as much as it is consistency.

To play the game you hold the remote facing you and then pump it up and down in your hand as if you were holding a baton. The faster you pump it the faster your band moves and the faster the music plays. As you march along predetermined routes special power-ups and negative items pop-up on the screen. To grab them you have to swipe your controller left or right as you pass the items. You also pass a number of would-be band mates who can be tagged into your band.

The key to te game is to keep your rhythm steady while paying attention to what you want and sometimes have to swipe.

If you march too fast some of your band members might get exhausted and mess up your music and if you go to slow you might not make it up the steeper hills.

The final game will ship with seven levels, each broken up by rest periods, and additional modes including a straight forward multiplayer mode and a father and son mode which allows one player to keep the temp and another to swipe for people and items.

The game will also support bands of up to 80 members, which each of their instruments playing on a separate track.

Playing around with an early build of Major Minor's Majestic March was fun for a time, though also fairly wearing on the arm. The one issue I did have with the game was that the swiping recognition didn't seem as tight as it should be. I was told that they developers were still working to finesse those controls and recognition.

This is one of those titles that could get the sort of fan base that Parappa landed, but I think it's far to early to tell.

The demo starts off with my character (Chris) holed up in a shack with Rosario Dawson.

Okay, so she isn't Rosario Dawson, but the South African B.S.A.A. member Sheva Alomar bears a striking resemblance to the Clerks II actress. In fact, throughout the demo I could be overheard mumbling, "out of the way, Rosario" or "I'll save you Dawson!" Perhaps an unintentional likeness, but I'd like to think that if I found myself in the middle of a zombie holocaust Rosie would be nearby, just in case.

Chris and Rosie are holed up in a shack, peering out the window as a big boss baddy has a character executed by a bulky figure with an axe, much like RE4's giant guy with chainsaw. Of course we all know what happens when you peek. The bad guy sees Chris through the dirty window and orders his minions to attack.

You're in a dirty shack in a small African town and you're surrounded by zombies. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO!? You and Rosario Dawson open fire, of course. The controls are very similar to RE4 right now, though of course that's subject to change. Hold down the right trigger to pull your gun, aim with the stick, fire with one button, reload with another. Pull up the menu to switch weapons, left trigger does a melee attack with your knife.

These new zombie-ish enemies begin pouring in, crawling over obstacles, coming through windows, or using the door like polite diseased madmen. Killing them is extremely enjoyable. Shoot them in the head and it could blow off, revealing a strange tentacle creature sprouting out of their necks. The enemies react to where you shoot them, which is even more enjoyable when you switch to the shotgun and start shooting them...well, everywhere.

From time to time you'll be forced to do the old left-stick waggle out of a grapple trick, or you'll get the opportunity to deliver a special attack with a button push in certain situations. Rosie gets into a lot of trouble with the zombies, required you to rush to her aid, brutally brushing off her attackers. She also returns the favor, responding to your calls for help when things look most dire.

Your enemies keep coming in relentless waves, as the whole point of the demo is to survive until your support opens an escape route via missile strike. The game looks slick, though there are a few places where nitpicking can be applied. At one point I took cover against a wall and could see the zombies on the other side clipping through as they lined up to scale the surface and take us out. Other times enemies reacted strangely, such as the executioner from earlier, who would take a swing at me and then just stand there with his back turned until I did damage to him. Of course an E3 demo isn't the full game, and I am sure they'll get that cleaned up in post.

While I am not the biggest fan of the Resident Evil series, I have stuck with the series over the years and am happy with the evolutionary steps the franchise has taken. Resident Evil 4 wowed me when it debuted on the GameCube, with graphics unlike anything we had seen on the system and new gameplay mechanics. Resident Evil 5 isn't as much of a leap. It looks great, but aside from a few mechanics (you crouch to pick up items) it feels the same as the last one. That fact bothered me for a moment, and then I pulled out the shotgun and took out six of the crazy bastards at once. Not too big of a leap, but when your starting point is as excellent as 4 was, anything above that is icing on the cake.

As Iga said, Castlevania Judgment is not your standard 3D fighting game. You move in full 3D, almost as if you were playing in a room in one of the various attempts at bringing the platformer to into the 3D arena. There are objects to smash (and in Dracula's case, possess), power ups to be gained, and spectacular special moves to master, but at its core the gameplay is a very simple, pick-up-and-play affair.

The controls are pretty basic for a Nintendo Wii 3D fighter. The X button blocks and the C button dodges. Wiggle the WiiMote to attack, holding A for certain attacks or B for super attacks. Wiggling the nunchuck has your character dodging in a character-specific fashion. Maria slides out of the way, while Alucard disappears in a puff of mist, reappearing a short distance away.

I took on Konami's Jay Boor, who turned out to be relatively good at navigating Alucard, beating me only twice during the two rounds we played. Fights are smooth, enjoyable, and filled with nifty little moments that will have you recalling Castlevania games past. Maria's spellcasting is especially entertaining, with a wiggle of the Wiimote and a press of the B button bringing down a giant heavy object on top of the unfortunately blocking Alucard's head. The final match ended with me finding the perfect combination of mashed buttons and wiggling, launching Maria into a spectacular fire attack that left Alucard in flames, just in time for the round timer to run out, causing me to lose. Damn round timer.

So far I like what I see. It really isn't just a 3D fighter. It's something else entirely. It felt a bit more like a Dragon Ball Z fighter or a Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series game than it did Tekken or Soul Calibur. The only question I was left with really was, "How many characters are going to be included in the game?"

Stay tuned tomorrow for Konami's press conference for the answer to that question and more!

The full Spore, as we've talked about in detail before, is broken down into five phases which allow you to take a single-cell organism and run it all the way up the evolutionary ladder to a space-exploring civilization.

My concern, after watching the Spore demonstration in Leipzig last year, was that the game wouldn't live up to the spectacular creation tools that are so integral to Spore. I worried that it may be more of a series of toys strung together than a full-blown game.

My time with the game managed to ease some of those concerns.

I decided to start Spore as you should, at the cellular level, controlling an organism floating aimlessly in a sea of life.

This stage of the game, which took me about 20 minutes to play through, felt an awful lot like flow. In it I moved my organism around avoiding larger critters and eating smaller ones. I also tried to find bits of meteorites to gobble up which would give me evolutionary abilities.

After enough attacks or gathering enough bits of rock I earned the DNA I needed to add on new bits to me creature. Initially I gave him a set of pincers for attacking, later I added a bulb that produced poison when he was attacked and extra limbs for faster swimming.

The game, like flow, took place among layers of a 2D environment in an almost through-the-microscope point of view. As I grew I floated up the layers towards the surface of the pool. Eventually, I was able to evolve and make it to land.

This initially cell level, while short, was quite fun to play.

Once I made it to land, I was asked to modify my creature with a set of legs. Oblivious to the placement of his mouth, which pointed straight down, and his eyes, which pointed straight out, I accidentally misplaced my unfortunate creature's legs. When he took to land, I saw that his mouth jutted out straight down from his rounded torso. Imagine my surprise when my little mistake attacked his first creature with a series of short, angry squats... That's right, my new lifeform had to teabag people to kill them. Oh the humanity.

After getting over the initial shock of what I had just created, I spent an inordinate amount of time running around teabagging other unsuspecting creatures to death. You'd be surprised just how much time you can burn playing a game that allows you to kill things in that particular manner. I tried my best to get Wright's attention, to show him my creature, but I suspect he wanted nothing to do with it.

In this second phase you spend most of you time hunting for smaller creatures to complete quests of a sort and earn DNA and body parts. Again, fun to play, though a bit short lived.

The next stage, which I didn't test out, is the Tribe stage which has you controlling an entire tribe of your creatures, issuing commands to them and evolving their technology. It's in this stage that you can create some pretty amazing buildings. I saw a collection of them and was blown away with what you can do. For instance, a factory made to look like a turn-of-the-century detective in an alley with trashcans nearby, the building's smoke coming out of the detective's pipe. Or a city building made to look like a young couple sitting on a park bench. It was pretty spectacular stuff.

The game's final phase is space exploration, which I managed to tinker with for a few minutes. Long enough, at least, to see that space ships can also take any form, like a jumping Mario.

My time with the game was painfully shorty, enough to tantalize and perhaps put some fears to rest. Is it worth the price, likely, will it be the next Sims? Too early to tell.

Earlier in the day Wright told us that Spore was a way for him to "convey interesting concepts in fun ways" a game of an entire universe, something that makes a game editor a toy and becomes a "creativity amplifier."

With more than 1 million creatures already created with Spore's Creature Creator, and Wright expecting the number of creatures to exceed the population of Earth by launch time, I think it's fair to say Wright nailed what he was going for.

This band game light is both peripheral and original music free, using only cover bands so the developers would be allowed to tweak the music to better fit the game. Those tweaks include the ability to have the lead singer be either a man or a woman, no matter who originally sang it.

The Disney folks told me that they did a number of focus tests during their development of the game. In them they asked potential gamers which of nine versions of the game they would want to play. The options ranged from a peripheral-heavy version of the game with original music, to the game they ended up producing. All of the tests showed, they told me, that gamers wanted a game that didn't require peripherals.

To play Ultimate Band gamers use the remote and nunchuk to strum, drum and flick their way through songs on a bass or lead guitar or drums.

To play lead guitar a player strums with the remote to the beat, matching the on screen timing, while holding different buttons or no buttons on the nunchuk. Depending on difficulty settings, you can guitar with just rhythm strumming or with as many as four virtual frets. The frets are triggered by holding the C, the Z, the C and the Z buttons or no buttons.

Bass is played by flicking the nunchuk and strumming while drums are played by drumming straight down with both controllers for standard drums, to the side for cymbals and then twirling the controllers in the air to mimic grandstanding.

A fourth option for playing, called frontman, consisted of dancing with the controllers. Because the game is peripheral free there is no way to sing in the game.

It may sound like the recipe for a douche simulator, but I actually found the game quite a bit of fun. The biggest problem I saw was that it was far to easy for even the most novice of Guitar Hero or Rock Band players.

I play guitar on medium usually (yes, I suck) but even on the expert setting in Ultimate Band I was able to score above 80 percent.

Hopefully this is something that can be tweaked, though it may be they'll be satisfied trying to drawn in younger, less dexterous gamers instead.

ULTIMATE BAND FACT SHEET

Publisher: Disney Interactive Studios
Developer: Fall Line Studio
ESRB Rating: E10+ (anticipated)
Audience: Tweens, teens and music fans

Coming Holiday 2008 for Wii™ home video game console

It’s no secret that the music video game genre has exploded in recent years. While the attention of this genre has focused mainly on creating music simulation games for an older demographic, Disney Interactive Studios has been developing a performance-based music video game that will appeal to tweens, teens and families alike. With songs that represent new favorites and old classics, truly interactive venues, and innovative controls using only the Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk™ (no peripherals), Ultimate Band for Wii will round-out any family’s entertainment library: right music, right console, right price.

Why Disney Interactive Studios?
Video games rated E through T represent an $11 billion market and no one knows the audience for those games better than Disney Interactive Studios, especially when it comes to developing third party titles for Nintendo platforms. From January to November 2007, Disney Interactive Studios was the No. 2 publisher of Nintendo DS™ games in North America according to NPD. Also in 2007, the company sold 3.4 million units of Nintendo DS video games in the United States alone (source: NPD Data). Fall Line Studio, which is developing Ultimate Band, is Disney Interactive Studios’ Nintendo-dedicated entity, focusing exclusively on developing games for Wii and Nintendo DS™. Fall Line Studio co-developed last year’s Hannah Montana: Music Jam video game that introduced new music mechanics to Nintendo DS titles through its unique “Creative Play Mode” where players could compose original songs using four different instruments. It also helped solidify Disney Interactive Studios’ position as a leader in creating music video games for tweens and families.
The Gameplay
· In Ultimate Band, there are four band roles that players can take on – drums, lead guitar, bass guitar and a band front man - all with unique motion mechanics using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
· Players can either follow a unique narrative story mode or stand up and jam to any songs and venues they’ve already unlocked.
· Ultimate Band offers group and family entertainment through multi-player modes that include head-to-head competition or cooperative play.
The Music
· 30+ songs made famous by artists such as The White Stripes, The Who, The Jonas Brothers, Weezer and more.
· All of the songs are re-mastered so they are performed in the gender of the front man and lyrics are age-appropriate.
The Atmosphere
· Players can customize their bands by creating characters that look just like them, or by selecting from different character genres.
· Imaginative and real-life venues, such as a haunted mansion or a garage, come to life during gameplay and react to how well fans perform.

After spending some time with Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway earlier this month my opinion hasn't changed much, though I was impressed with some of the visual work Gearbox Software is doing on the franchise.

In this latest version of the series you continue to play with Sgt. Matt Baker and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division. I played through a couple of encounters in the game and noticed a few changes.

This time around Brothers In Arms has some destructible cover, which can play a pretty big role in the firefights. There are also a few new commands you can issue, like snipe or destroy.

One of the neat visual tweaks is the inclusion of occasional cinematics which are triggered by certain events. For instance, I was behind cover with my squad shooting it out with some Germans and I popped up and landed a quick headshot. The game slowed and the camera angle switched to show my bullet blasting through the guy's eye. Pretty impressive. It helps that Hell's Highway is running on the Unreal Engine 3.

I also loved the weather effects. For the section I played through it rained constantly, and the rain effect actually cut down on my ability to spot enemies.

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway was fun enough to play, I just don't know if tweaking commands, adding destructible environments and a couple of new units is going to be enough to help this game stand out from the pack.

But despite having modes for missile-lock and bomb drops that are akin to flying with training wheels, the game seems to still provide the technical controls that have always drawn fans of arcade flight sims to air combat games.

The area I played around in was located over Rio and featured a map created by satellite data (the best on the market, I was told). The city, while amazingly detailed, was a bit too flat for my taste, though it did have plenty of high rises to zip through at break neck speeds. The final version of the game will also include settings in Africa and Afghanistan, I was told.

The game, which will include 50 licensed aircraft, takes place during the same time frame as the events of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and even includes several missions in which you are providing air support for the ground missions played in the shooter. In this world the fighter pilots are part of a private military force, the devs told me.

The game has two modes of flight. In the assisted flight mode you can’t stall and to get a lock-on you have to fly through a series of large transparent triangles. Once you land the lock-on you fire away a missile. You also are lead through a path of triangles when trying to evade incoming missiles. Neither are easy to do, but both take away the need to fly tactically and instead hold your hand through the process of lining up targets or ditching in-coming bad guys.

Hopping out of the assisted mode is as easy as double clicking a trigger and then you’re in free control which allows you to force stalls and doesn’t assist you at all when it comes to evasion and lock-ons.

It feels like this provides a nice mix for casual gamers and the hardcore, though I wasn’t thrilled that the free flight mode seems to force your perspective to more cinematic angles, rather than just in-cockpit.

The overall graphics of the game were very impressive and the controls seemed pretty tight. If they could just add a bit more vertical to their cities and tweak the free-flight camera angel I think I’d be sold on the game.

Leading up to last week's event all of the stuff I saw about the game made me feel like it was another shooter, albeit one set in space, but one that didn't seem to offer anything new or interesting to the formula of scary shooters.

But after spending ten minutes or so watching a demonstration and then a few minutes controlling a hapless space engineer, I've got a taste for the game.

The most defining element of the game, besides its graphically rich environment, is the way in which you have to dispatch enemies. Instead of selecting your favorite weapon and pouring ammo into the limb-sprouting Necromorphs that populate the darkened halls of the abandoned spaceship, you have to be slightly more tactical. Each form of the creature, it seemed has it's own particular weakness and a weapon that best takes advantage of that.

After watching the accompanying writers at the demo get obliterated by a varied selection of limb-waving, ceiling-scrambling aliens, I was handed over the controller to give it a try. The weapon I settled on looked like a cross between some sort of battle rifle and a pitchfork. Blue targeting lasers emitting from the prongs of the device helped me try to line up the weapon's spread with the swaying tentacles of my first opponent. A couple of misses and I settled on the empty-the-clip-into-the-abdomen method, which causes a bit of a mess, but did little more than delay my death by a few more minutes.

Dead Space, which is due out for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, this Halloween, seems to add a level of tactical weapons use that I've rarely seen in a third-person shooter. Graphically, the weapons and their resulting damage is amazing, but whether the tactical shift will be perceived as a welcome change or an annoyance stands to be seen.

The Korean mobile developer and publisher is best known for their mobile role-playing game Heroes Lore.

“This acquisition is a major milestone in growing our mobile business in Asia,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager EA Mobile. “Hands-On Mobile Korea brings us a great leadership team, proven studio talent, and outstanding carrier and OEM handset manufacturer relationships.”

While mobile gaming and it's plethora of platforms continues to fail to substantially tap it's mammoth market, it must be heartening for that industry to see a company as large as EA show such interest.

Deal Will Strengthen the Presence of EA Mobile in Asia and Expand its Development and Publishing Teams as the Global Mobile Leader

Seoul, Korea/Redwood City, CA, – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced that it had agreed to acquire the assets of Hands-On Mobile Korea, a leading Korean mobile developer and publisher, best known for its mobile role-playing game, Heroes Lore. Upon completion of the acquisition, the former Hands-On Mobile Korea team will become EA Mobile Korea and will play a strategic role in the EA Mobile™ Asia development and publishing growth plans. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal quarter. Hands-On Mobile Korea is a subsidiary of parent company Hands-On Mobile™, based in the United States.

“This acquisition is a major milestone in growing our mobile business in Asia,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager EA Mobile. “Hands-On Mobile Korea brings us a great leadership team, proven studio talent, and outstanding carrier and OEM handset manufacturer relationships.”

“We are excited about joining EA Mobile and its mission to bring to market some of the world’s most innovative, cutting-edge and commercially proven mobile games and applications,” said Gilbert Kim, CEO of Hands-On Mobile Korea, who will become head of EA Mobile, Korea Division. “Korea is one of the most ubiquitous entertainment markets in the world, and we look forward to continually pushing the edge with our partners here to enrich the mobile user experience across all aspects of daily life.”

Following completion of the acquisition, Hands-On Mobile Korea will continue to be managed by Gilbert Kim as head of the EA Mobile, Korea division. The studio will remain in Korea with growth planned for both the development and publishing teams, and will work within the management structure of the EA Mobile Asia Publishing organization.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. EA does not expect the acquisition to impact the company’s fiscal year 2009 financial guidance.

While we didn't get a walk through of the game's storyline, we were given a chance to mess around with a chunk of the game.

The DS title shows the action of the game on the bottom, touch screen, while the top screen is taken up by a large colorful map of the section of the world you are currently exploring.

The game has you playing a team of Sonic characters, selected among 11 playable in the game.

Typically while playing only one of your team is shown on the screen and controllable, but you can switch between them by tapping on their icons. Each character has different abilities, which can be used by tapping icons that pop up at times while wandering the map.

For instance, only Big the Cat was able to make his way through a dense fog of clouds in portions of the map I was on, while a wing icon showed me that I could use Tails' flying ability.

The fighting segments of the game did a nice job of capturing the essence of typical role-playing and adding enough to make it exciting. While you still select who you are attacking and how you are attacking them in a turn-based setting, once the attacks start some require the gamer to rhythmically tap the screen or drag the stylus in particular places, ala Elite Beat Agents, to succeed.

Fleeing an encounter is also very hands on, as you have to keep an eye on your entire team and tap different members to get them to jump over obstacles as you run from the bad guys in a sort of mini-game.

Despite being on the compact DS, the game seemed to pack most of the features one would expect to find in a role-playing game including lots of wandering, dialog trees, puzzles, leveling up and even an equipable pet of sorts.

Over the years I've found myself losing interest in role-playing games, but this slight blending of genres, a move that gets more involved in the process and makes the title feel slightly more like an action game, has me thinking that this would be a great game to take with me on a trip.

When Mike told me that he didn't like the SIXAXIS controls for the game, and wasn't even able to complete the tutorial, I chalked it up to some innate hatred of the PS3's motion controls on his part. In fact he did admit that he doesn't really like the PS3 games that use SIXAXIS motion sensing, but there are several that I quite like (Warhawk comes to mind), so I decided to give it a whirl.

After playing through GTA4 on the Xbox 360, I swapped seats with Mike and settled down to get to the bottom of his SIXAXIS hatred. A few minutes into the tutorial I figured out what the problem was. The special SIXAXIS controls for this particular game suck, they're absolutely abysmal.

I suppose with some time I could master using the bike, in fact it wasn't that hard, and maybe one day I would fly the helicopter, but that's not the point, the point is there's no benefit using the motion sensing in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The in-game tutorial for the controller, which is an annoyingly permanent option on your in-game cell phone, walks you through the four ways you use the special controller in the game. Here's the break down and my thoughts:

Reload Weapon: Instead of having to mess around with, you know, pushing a button, the SIXAXIS lets you snap the controller back toward you to reload. Very easy to do, but absolutely no benefit.

Motorcycle: This was by far my favorite of the lot, allowing you to steer your bike by tilting side to side. Unfortunately, it also allows you to lean forward on the bike or do a wheelie by tilting the controller forward or backward. It's unfortunate because if you're leaning forward as you play, or sitting back in the chair, it forces you to hold the controller oddly.

Power Boat: The steering works quite well and while this also lets you tilt the controller forward and backwards to adjust the trim, its not as problematic because doing so really doesn't have much of an impact on the controls.

Helicopter: Whooo-boy, this is what prevented Mike from wrapping up his tutorial training. It took me a good three or four tries to pass it as well. Not only do you have to worry about the pitch problem seen with the motorcycles and boats, but the helicopter is much touchier than the other two vehicles. I also seemed to notice a lag issue with the controls that had me overcompensating and, twice, turning my copter so far sideways it would slam into the ground. It was an exercise in frustration and made me want to throw the controller across the room in frustration. Fortunately, you don't have to fly using it.

Final Thoughts: I'm not sure why Rockstar decided to include SIXAXIS motion controls in GTA IV, maybe they had to, but I'm sure happy they don't force you to use them. Not only can you override the motion controls at any time with the sticks and buttons, but you can turn them completely off preventing it from really flawing this fantastic title. Now if I could only remove the SIXAXIS tutorial option in the menu I might be able to stop fiddling.

Check here for a detailed comparison of the 360 versus PS3 versions of the game.

Ed's note: While the SIXAXIS does include the ability to use aftertouch, that function was not included in the tutorial written about above.

"Mommy, is Daddy dead?"

Good times, good times. Hit the jump for plenty of pictures of the wheel. SEXY!

By all means, check it out, and the screen grabs, and the gameplay movies. Following the overblown, knocked-down Gears of War 2 debacle, I'm not thrilled to be touting GamePro with the first crack at it. But this isn't like the days at the Rocky Horror Mountain News, when The Denver Post would beat us on something and our editors would pretend it didn't exist. GamePro did get the exclusive, and you want to know about it. So here we are:

Hands-On: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots [GamePro]

And folks, I want to apologize for purely fucking up the publication of this story, if you saw it on the site and then it vanished. My first big screwup.

"Yeah, just stay there, because you're not going anywhere and now I'm not fucking going anywhere. Park right there."

He lays on the horn.

A map pops up on the video screen showing our exact location, easy to pinpoint because now we're not moving at all.

Outside the passenger window people walk by, each, seemingly, in their own world. The level of detail is amazing, the buildings, piled almost on top of one another, are all alive with activity. Wind whips down the street tossing scraps of paper in the air, it almost looks like the real thing, like Grand Theft Auto IV.

But it's just Manhattan on a crisp weekday morning, me trapped in a cab, staring at the taxi's video screen built into the seat in front of me, headed to see and play around with Rockstar's latest.

Later, inside Rockstar's nondescript offices, located next to a Best Buy in Greenwich Village, I experience Manhattan again, though now it's called Algonquin.

There's no confusing the two, reality and game. Reality is boring and drab, Algonquin is shot from spectacular cinematic angles. I suspect there's a filter involved, something that gives the world a touch of artistry.

Later, over beers at a nearby pub, Rockstar's Jeronimo Barrera tells me that Rockstar loves its filters. It helps, he says, fool the eye, masks some of the imperfections that games, no matter how next-gen, will always have.

I ask about the game's camera angles, which fascinate me. The game makes extensive use of them—and not just during cut-scenes. They seem to pop up at times during play, making you feel like you're part of a cut-scene of your own creation.

Barrerra says one of their team members has a lot of film experience and brought that to the new game.

It works. Not because it makes the game feel like you're watching a movie, but because it makes the player feel like they're making one. There are times when playing Grand Theft Auto IV that it felt less like a video game and more like an engine for experiences. Like the game was, at times, transcending what I had always thought was important about video games, having fun, and opening my eye to a new way to enjoy gaming, by creating.

It helps that the controls have been, or at least feel like they've been, totally revamped for this latest GTA. To any adept of the franchise the controls will still feel very familiar, but gone is that mushy feeling that made me struggle with previous versions of the game.

Movement is tight, backed up by Rockstar's use of the Euphoria, a game animation engine that anatomically animates character movement by simulating not just the body, but the muscles, bones and, it is said, the central nervous system. The result, the thing that matters to gamers, is a layer of movement minutia that help brings the world to life with moments like accidentally tripping a side kick, or watching someone flail as they plummet from a high rise.

What's important though is that these things don't happen as much by accident or because of bad control mechanics. GTA IV's controls do what the best control designs are meant to do, not get in the way of the experience.

Driving, too, is much improved. The times you are behind the wheel feel almost like you are playing a racer, with tight turns and the ability to really maneuver in a city that's all about making split-second decisions. Designers even added a slow-mo mode which allows you to slow time down as the camera drifts up and away to top down perspective, making it much easier to cut between cars, slip past barricades and perform bootlegger 180s.

I found myself wasting inordinate amounts of time playing keep away from the cops, just because I enjoyed the driving so much.

The biggest change in the game's controls, though, come with shooting. I'm a huge first-person shooter fan and I absolutely hated the shooting controls for previous GTAs. The problem was I always wanted to play what was essentially an action game like a shooter.

The new system allows you to do just that. Aiming has been tightened up and now includes a reticule that shows your targets current health. There's also a two stage lock-on system, allowing you to lock-on to a target, but still aim at particular body parts to perform things like headshots. Instant kill headshots. A cover system lets you pop up and fire or fire blindly at targets.

I played through a few missions during my hands-on, but it was "Harboring A Grudge" that felt most like a classic shooter. In the mission, you make your way to a warehouse rooftop near the dock of Algonquin. Down below is a sea of bad guys talking over the finer points of a prescription drug deal.

I start by sniping a guy, marveling at how much it feels like sniping in some of my favorite shooters. I toss down a few Molotov cocktails, mostly missing because, as with grenades in just about every shooter I play, I throw like a grade schooler.

Deciding to take advantage of my ridiculously robust arsenal, I switch to a rocket launcher and send a couple of rockets toward the bad guys. The first glances off the sheet metal roof in front of me, sending the rocket spiraling out of control. The second skips off a container. Finally I manage to plant one in the cement next to a cluster of bad guys. I'm rewarded with a glorious explosion and a few less enemies.

Moving down the roof, not so gracefully, I scramble to some cover and switch over to an assault rifle. The game plays fast, letting you pop off shots quickly and precisely. I take out a couple of people with the simple lock-on. Emptying bullets into the bad guys until they drop, and then I slow down and take my time with the loose lock-on, shifting my aim to focus on headshots.

Taking out the last few guys, I realize that I've just played through an entire mission of Grand Theft Auto IV as if I was in Call of Duty and it felt nice.

And the game has a lot of nice touches an awful lot of nice touches that really have nothing to do with game play. When you snag a car, sometimes the door is left unlocked and you can just hop in. Other times you have to smash in the window with an elbow.

To shoot while driving you have to smash out your window. Once, while driving around a guy who was smoking pot, I smashed out the window and within seconds billowing clouds of smoke were pouring through the busted glass.

There's almost no HUD—instead your entire communication with the game and its many options is through your cell phone. You use it to get missions, find people, even do things like play (and buy) music or take pictures in game.

One of the more memorable moments for me was almost an accidental aside. Standing near the docks one in-game evening, I noticed little white lights lifting and drifting down. Nice touch, I thought, they've included distant airplanes. As we moved toward the lights, talking about some mission or maybe the mechanics of play, I looked up and saw that those lights were now fully formed airplanes. I could actually make them out in detail.

"Oh wow, those are actually airplanes?" I said, a little surprised.

My demo team seemed just as surprised.

There is an entire airport of them, they tell me, taxiing, landing, taking off. And it's all part of the game.

It's no wonder then that when a team of game guide writers descended on Rockstar to work through Grand Theft Auto IV and write their books, they were surprised at the level of depth they found both in game and story, likening it to a Final Fantasy.

GTA IV, I'm told, is a game measured not in hours of play, but weeks. But its greatest potential, I suspect, won't be found in the traditional measures of game—graphics, sound design, mechanic—but in how these things manage to stay transparent and elusive, allowing the gamer to be the center of an experience they create.

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 is a throwback to the original arcade hit with updated graphics and controls to suit console play. Up to three players can choose between three different playable characters: Wolf, Coyote and Fox (she's the girl of the group) each with their own special moves. An arsenal of weapons is also at your disposal to help take the enemy down. You can also all pile into various vehicles together and blast your way to victory. The three player mode will be supported both online and on a single console. As a special bonus, the music is being composed by Norihiko Hibino of Metal Gear fame.

I teamed up with the inimitable Hamza from Destructoid and we immediately dove in to the game. The graphics looked great for a downloadable game and the controls were fairly simple. one thumbstick moves you around while the other fires your weapons much in the Robotron style. A simple flick of the trigger will make your character throw grenades which I actually found quite effective for certain situations. A click of the other trigger starts your characters special move which in my case involved a massive explosion, taking out everything around me whether it was buildings or enemies.

Scattered through the game are cut scenes done in a great comic book-like graphical style that I really liked. All the menus we similarly styled and each special move is preceded by a little drawing of your character that fills the screen right before the madness ensues. We plowed our way through about two levels before we finally had to relinquish our seats and move on, but it was enough to have me hooked and along with Plunder, turned out to be my favorite hands on of the day. And don't forget, if you purchase Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 you'll get that invite to the Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix beta!

The key to playing Rondo is letting go of your old turn-based strategy habits. Seeing a screen filled with enemies heading your way is very daunting until you realize that a few well-placed charges through their ranks will leave them completely decimated. You've also got to realize that having your characters too close together means the enemy can charge through you as well, so it isn't only about where your route takes you, but your final destination as well.

Basically it works like this. You select your character, which has a defined movement range. Instead of a flashing dot showing your final destination, a route marker shoots our from your character as you move the cursor. The only limitations to movement are you cannot cross your own path, and cannot land on another character or enemy. Once you choose your route you get moving, with combat taking place in the form of a sort of cutscene on the upper screen. If an opponent counter-attacks or blocks you, your charge stops, potentially leaving you very vulnerable.

You can also plan your route through allied units, some of which add effects to your active character when they pass by. This adds yet another layer of strategy to an already strategy rich system.

Then you have to figure in a unit's Momentum Counter points. The more enemies you defeat, the higher your MC raises, increasing the likelihood of enemy attacks. Certain skills can lower a unit's MC drastically, allowing them to move nearly unseen through the enemy ranks and strike vital targets. Likewise, you might need to be careful with your spellcasters, who can take out groups of enemies at once at the cost of having every baddie on the map suddenly gunning for their robe-wearing asses.

It really is a lot to take in. I found myself replaying levels over again after completing them, playing around with the system, seeing what worked for me. I often found myself using my front line fighters to make a huge bloody racket at the beginning of a stage to allow my more stealthy character to reach an objective relatively unscathed, or changing up my troops' routes in order to optimize positioning for the enemy turn.

There's much more to Rondo of Swords than the Route Maneuver System of course. You can send inactive characters on errands during battles in order to gain training, items, and open up new quests, for instance. There's the skill system, which allows you to spend skill points on each unit every level to learn new abilities or strengthen ones they already possess. Want your caster to have every spell in the book at a weak level or a limited number of extremely powerful ones? It's all up to you.

Having only played about a third of the way through the game, I'm quite impressed with Rondo so far. The storyline can get a little dull at times, but turn-based strategy storylines are rarely their major selling point. It's all about the combat system, and Rondo of Swords' movement-based system makes traditional TBS mechanics seem like they're standing still.

Rondo of Swords is due out April 15th for the Nintendo DS from Atlus.

Disclaimer: these impressions are eyes-on only. No one at the GDC EA event from which this write-up stems had the chance to play.

You launch the game through the website. a big button on the front and center of the page. You go through a series of screens to select your character and join a game, and you're in. Why is this moment so exciting? The start of the game is also the end of all advertising. That's right, in Battlefield Heroes, despite EA drawing their profits from advertisements, players will not be subjected to dynamic in-game billboards destroying the mis en scene.

As for the combat, it's sort of like Battlefield Light. Players choose between 3 classes (soldier, heavier gunman and spy) and let it rip from there. The third-person gameplay is a cross between capture the flag and team deathmatch. Each team races for 50 kills, but capturing a flag gives the successful team a score modifier that will affect the fragcount (meaning a 2x modifier will give your team two kills for the price of one).

The level we saw tested featured both tanks and planes. The tank was designed to be easy to drive, with each mortar round exploding light a classic Adam West punch. The plane looked just as easy to operate, with the fun option of dive bombing a teammate to give them a seat on your wing. (Note: the pilot can also leave his seat to sit on the opposite wing, in which case the plane will land softly on the pillow-like ground). Yeah, this ain't realism.

Then there's the power-up system. On top of your base skill set, you'll occasionally have access to more powerful techniques. Do things like see through walls or replenish health. It's a balancing system for casual players, and it's one part of the game that actually reminds us more of Shadowrun (R.I.P) than Team Fortress 2.

So are we pumped? Not really. Don't get us wrong, for a free web game Heroes looks great. But for those used to online multiplayer fragfests, Heroes' simple (read: rudimentary) mechanics will grow dull quickly. It's hard to see in the promo clip above, but there's something about the physics and general interface that just feels a generation younger than the current consoles...let alone PCs.

But honestly, we're not so sure that Battlefield Heroes is intended for anyone reading this article anyway. We're betting it's EA's gateway drug for casual gamers to try out shooters. And with that hat on, the game could be quite successful.

Here's a run down of his posts which include impressions, images and such:
Super Smash Bros. Brawl Line Madness
Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the House
Here's The Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online Menu
What's Super Smash Bros. Brawl Online Like? Eh...
Does Super Smash Bros. Brawl Actually Deliver?

Today's Playstation Portable firmware update came with a little touch of Skype (except if you live in China, go figure). Once patched, the Skype option shows up under Network. I was able to pretty quickly register for a new account using the PSP and get it working in less then five minutes.

It's a pretty cool build of the software and while I'm not sure how often I'd use it around the house, I definitely plan on bringing it with me when I travel for some free calls. Also plan on abusing the hell out of it to harass Ash since it only cost me $10 to buy seven hours worth of worldwide Skype to phone service. (Skype to Skype is free) That's right seven hours of me rambling to Ash... can't wait!

"Patapon" has the look and the charm. The controls I used were solid. I'm curious to see if the game offers enough gameplay variety — enough rhythms for the player to apply, enough strategies for them to execute. If it does, then this game should come together nicely.

Over the years, good rhythm-based games have been consistently impressive to listen to and to control, but not often to look at. If "Patapon" comes together, it could be joining "Rez," Jungle Beat" and "Everyday Shooter" in some rare company: fun to hear, to play and to see.

Good thing I don't have a PSP, as I find games like this painfully addictive. Will Patapon hold up to expectations? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Behold 'Patapon' — Hands-On With Near-Final Version Of Sony's Wild PSP Rhythm War Game [MTV Multiplayer]

First off, the continues have gone from endless to a mere three, which completely changes up the difficulty factor of the game. Amateur shooter fans will have to go through the first three stages multiple times before making it completely through with enough lives to even consider going on to the remaining five. You'll have to learn enemy patterns, figure out which of the game's five special weapons best fit the situation, and basically learn the level like the back of your hand. Frustrating at times, sure, but if this sort of thing gets you riled then maybe you should go back to your happy, colorful platforming genre where it's safe.

You can play through Adventure mode to unlock levels for play in Arcade mode, where you get the standard allotment of lives with no continues, with the goal to get the highest score. In Nanostray the first you then would get a code you could upload to the online leaderboards via the internets, but now you simply connect via Nintendo Wi-Fi and slap that baby up there for the world to see. The feature was already running in the preview and worked without a hitch. Granted my score sucked compared to the ones already posted, but such is life.

Challenge mode helps a great deal. In Nanostray 2, the challenges are like little shmup nuggets that test your skills in various aspects of the genre. They've created completely new sequences for the challenges, rather than rehash established levels, and they focus on completing quick tasks, like scoring 30,000 points in 45 seconds, or surviving for a certain period of time. Some are even exercises in tactical thinking, as you are put in a situation such as a ship rising to completely fill the area you are in, killing you unless you find a way to open up an area to hide. There are four sets of eight challenges, and every time you complete one you get a little better at the main game. Very nicely done.

The developers took complaints about the control scheme to heart, changing the weapon-switching over to the shoulder buttons so once you are in the game you don't need to touch the screen at all, unless you opt to control your ship with it. Choosing touch-screen control schemes moves the action from the upper to the lower screen, with the control pad handling your primary weapon and the shoulder working the special weapon. Controlling the ship with your stylus adds a degree of control and speed you don't get with the standard setup, though of course you're going to have a portion of your screen obscured by the stylus itself and your giant, snausage fingers - where applicable.

All in all, this is one amazing shoot-em up for the Nintendo DS, better than its predecessor in virtually every way. Unless they do something horribly wrong between now and the January release date, expect Nanostray 2 to be the shmup to beat on the DS.

Ultimately the key for me here lies in the animation. I've played too many wrestling games were highly detailed portrayals of the sport's superstars promise amazing action only to discover that they ultimately move as they are marionettes controlled by an arthritic puppeteer, jerking from one motion to the next. It's like typing in a cursive font...everything looks pretty but nothing really connects. Midway has taken there impressive animation tools from titles like NBA Ballers and Blitz and applied it to the wrestling genre with pretty sweet results.

As far as control goes, the game is easy enough to pick up and play that I looked like an old hand at it by the time I played my third bout. Unfortunately my opponent looked like an even older hand, but I'll chalk that down to the fact that he'd been drinking and I had not. Drinker's luck is real I tell you. Characters were quick to respond to button presses...another pet peeve of mine from previous games taken care of.

The graphics, despite being not quite in a finished state, were quite impressive indeed. Along with the highly detailed players themselves, almost everything was rendered. Crowds, the ropes themselves, shadows...all dynamic. When a wrestler is launched out of the ring the lights playing over the crowd play themselves over the character's skin as well, and as he climbs back in the ropes realistically part and spring back into place as he passes.

A few of the more acrobatic moves brought a little bit of slowdown, but the game is still being tweaked and for the most part runs at a lovely 60FPS throughout.

All in the only real problem the game faces is consumer familiarity, but with former WCW star Sting becoming TNA's World Heavyweight Champion at yesterday's Bound for Glory event (at nearly 50 years old no less!), buzz can only grow for the relatively young wrestling organization.

I feel really good about TNA: Impact!. Once all the moves are finished and the stadiums are complete, it truly has a chance at being one of the best wrestling video games of all time. However, winning critics over is one thing. Winning over fans is something else entirely.

I just played through the short, but rather sweet God of War Chains of Olympus demo being shipped out to fans of the game and the PSP.

The Battle of Attica gives you a taste of what to expect from the game when the full version hits the portable next year. And from what I saw, it looks like a game that mostly lives up to the God of War name. The pacing of the game remains frenetic, but not so over the top as to be exhausting.

The game still manages to deliver the sort of heft in both movement and actions that make you feel like your watching and controlling something real. While the attacks from the console versions of the game to be mostly intact, I was disappointed to see a bit too much repetition in some of the animations. The straight grab attack, for instance always delivered the same couple of second scene that grew tiresome over the short length of the demo.

The boss battles, there are two included in the demo, are again very reminiscent of the console versions of the game. You have to carefully wear down your opponent while avoiding damage until you get them to the point that you can jump into a animated death scene that is moved along by following a series of on-screen button prompts.

While the animation is still quite nice, it does appear that the PSP doesn't quite have the oomph to deliver the goods on the last boss's death. I liked what they were going for, but the graphics didn't quite match up with the concept, I suspect.

The demo includes enough of a mix of boss battles, very simple puzzles and fighting to, I believe, give you a sense of what to expect from the game. And what I come away with is that Chains of Olympus is going to be a nice addition to the God of War franchise. One that hits all of the notes, but doesn't try to change the tune. And that's fine. It would have been nice to see a bit more innovation edge into this production, and maybe we will come the release of the end product, but that's not necessary to ensure that the game will be well received and fun to play.

I just came back from playing around with the new rumblerific DualShock 3 controller.

It's funny how you don't realize how much you miss a thing sometimes until it returns. I knew that sho