Silent Hill: Shattered Memories tells a very different version of the first Silent Hill game, chronicling writer and father Harry Mason's horrific search for his missing daughter Cheryl. Having unfortunately lost her in the town of Silent Hill after a car crash, Harry takes to the streets, sewers and dilapidated haunts of the accursed town to recover her. In Shattered Memories, Harry is equipped with some new tricks, including a multi-functional cell phone that acts as his map, camera and a source for many of the clues that flesh out the re-imagining's story. Developers Climax Studios also have a new trick up their sleeves, the psychological profiling of the player throughout the game, offering a personalized experience during each playthrough.

And in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Harry is more lover than fighter. The game features none of the traditionally awkward combat for which the series is somewhat infamous, favoring frantic escapes over clunky confrontations. Including Cheryl, there are plenty of things missing from this Silent Hill. Will longtime fans miss the series' trademarks? Or is Shattered Memories a cool, refreshing update to a franchise in need of a new perspective?

Loved
A Retelling, Not A Remake: Shattered Memories is thankfully more than just a warmed over version of Silent Hill, tacking on Wii Remote controls and updated graphics. It is a very different account of the events following Cheryl Mason's disappearance. Trying to fit the game's storyline within the canon of the rest of the Silent Hill universe is an exercise in futility, an exercise that will likely cease at the game's conclusion. Climax Studios was smart not to offer an obvious, cleaned up rehash, giving the Silent Hill fan something to pick apart and appreciate as a side story to the series.

Profiling: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is peppered with interactive intermissions in the form of therapy sessions with the unusual Dr. K, a psychologist who has the player perform a battery of tests. You know, the kind where there are no right answers. The player's responses to each test will substantially change the characters, the settings, and the flow of the adventure, even the screeching beasts that hunt Harry Mason in Silent Hill's otherworld. The options for changing one's Silent Hill experience and its endings are less cryptic than in previous games, making the story worth revisiting, worth experimenting with. While this Silent Hill may be the shortest of the bunch—my first playthrough lasted somewhere around six hours—it is designed with replays in mind, chances to change the world while having one's head examined. Oh, and did I mention that Shattered Memories spins one of the more interesting yarns of the series, capably delivered with smart symbolism? Because it does that too.

Silent Hill On Ice: As much as I enjoy the rusty, bloodstained, throbbing otherworld of Silent Hills past, it's well worn territory. Shattered Memories doesn't recycle those familiar nightmarish environments, instead choosing to establish its own alternate world, one claustrophobic and frozen. Granted, it's nowhere near as frightening or visually stunning, but Shattered Memories deserves credit for doing its own thing.

Smart Use Of Wii Controls: The Wii Remote acts as a pretty good flashlight, a fact not lost on most Wii developers, including Climax. Illuminating one's way around the town of Silent Hill is satisfying, as is the act of using the remote as your disembodied hand while searching for clues. With shooting and hand-to-hand combat abstracted from the Shattered Memories experience, the games simplified control scheme makes one appreciate not having to deal with previously awkward mechanics.

Hated
Running Down A Dream: As interesting as Silent Hill: Shattered Memories' chase scenes—Nightmares, the game calls them—would have been as a complement to more traditional monster encounters, the game unfortunately relies on them as the only action sequences you'll experience throughout the game. It's fairly repetitive, expectation setting stuff. Normally, you'll explore, find keys, hunt down messages, open doors, but when the town of Silent Hill freezes over, just... run! The Silent Hill series' combat has never been that much "fun," mind you, but replacing all of it with running toward blue markers and shaking off leathery demons with Wii Remote thrusts isn't any more enjoyable. Worse, the sense of tension elsewhere in the game is practically non-existent, thanks to the clear division between action moments and exploration moments.

Losing My Bearings: The game may feature solid use of Wii Remote controls, but the motion controlled camera-flashlight combo can be disorienting, especially when hopping down from ledges during Nightmares. The GPS-style map system on Harry's phone is less useful than any previous Silent Hill in-game map and painful to manipulate during portions of the game. Finally, one moment in the game drops the player into a nearly pure black abyss, an exasperating search for radio static.

Quality Assurance: A pair of bugs, one involving falling through the world and into blackness, the other turning Harry into a disembodied arm holding a cell phone, less than a complete human—making the game unplayable and forcing a reload—happened to me during my first playthrough. Not outlandishly frustrating, since the game lets the player save at any point on Harry's cell phone, but bothersome nonetheless. The game also experiences some slowdown when Harry opens doors, which is more frustrating, especially during panic-filled chase scenes.

Perhaps appropriately, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories left me torn. On the one hand, I was appreciative of Climax Studios' effort to bring something new to the series, blazing a potential new path for future Silent Hill adventures, where the same environments and aged mechanics needn't be revisited. And, better, Shattered Memories doles out a well-told, fairly blunt story, somewhat atypical for the series. Straightforward though the tale may be, sequences and allusions throughout that may seem like storytelling stumbles gel later on, giving the player something to ponder after the game's surprising conclusion.

But as with pretty much every Silent Hill game beyond Silent Hill 3, I was left somewhat disappointed. I personally enjoy the horrific creations that populate the rustier, bloodier underbelly of Silent Hill. And I like confounding, abstract puzzles. And I like bizarre boss fights, disturbing monster design, mood-setting music and hallucinogenic fear. Shattered Memories doesn't have any of that; the scares are few, the monsters nearly nonexistent and the Akira Yamaoka composed soundtrack... well, I barely remember any of it.

It may not appeal to the Silent Hill fan in me, one who's been regularly disappointed since 2003, but at least this re-imagining shatters expectations.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was developed by Climax Studios and published by Konami for the Wii on December 8. Retails for $49.99 USD. PlayStation 2 and PSP versions are due later for $29.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played game to completion on Wii. Experienced a second, different playthrough until about the halfway mark.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Okay, maybe not a glass. PixelJunk Shooter is a game about saving miners and scientists trapped beneath the surface of a strange planet, but it's also a game about using opposing forces of nature in order to make your way through a twisted series of underground caverns. You can douse lava with water to create land, ignite pockets of gas with molten rock to unleash destructive explosions; over the course of the game you'll discover new tools to help you harness the elements, all the while using your weapons to take out the various mysterious enemies lurking beneath the planet's crust.

Water and fire are two of nature's most destructive forces, and many have lost their lives trying to harness them. How'd Q-Games do?

Loved
Troubleshooting: PixelJunk Shooter is a puzzle game disguised as a shooter. While there are times when your main focus will be on firing your weapons at enemies to survive, the main focus of the game is using the elements against your environment and each other in order to save miners stranded deep underground. It's this clashing of elements, water and lava, that forms the foundation for the gameplay. Lava cools heats you up, water cools you down, and when the two meet, destructible earth is formed. As the game progresses the difficulty ramps and new tools are introduced, but the relationship between the two is always paramount. It's a simple concept brought to life, and it's a wonderful life.

Bring A Friend: PixelJunk Shooter is a game that begs to be played with a friend. In a world where one stray bullet can mean the difference between freeing a trapped miner and being engulfed by lava, adding an unpredictable human element to the mix can be entertaining, to say the least, and raises all sorts of new questions as you play. Do you take turns saving miners, or is this a competition? Who gets to wear the water suit and who wears the lava suit? Will the player wearing the lava suit bury the other in a cascade of deadly molten rock? Most likely, but all will be forgiven once you realize how helpful it is to have another set of guns during the game's rare but entertaining massive boss fights.

Hated
A Candle In The Wind: Ah, PixelJunk Shooter, you had only just begun when you ended. Three different worlds with five levels each split into multiple stages seems like a great deal, but it's over in a flash. All things considered, four hours for a $9.99 game isn't bad, and multiplayer extends the game's life considerably, but it feels as if there could have been so much more.

Like PixelJunk Eden, the third game in the PixelJunk series, Shooter takes a simple concept and creates a complex, entertaining gameplay experience from it. With Eden it was the pollination of plants, and with Shooter it's the relationship between two opposing elements. Like water and magma crashing together to create rock, Q-Games has married this natural relationship with puzzle and shooting mechanics to create something more enjoyably substantial than its parts.

PixelJunk Shooter was developed by Q-Games and published in North America by Sony Computer Entertainment America for the PlayStation Network. Retails for $9.99 USD. A download code for the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the entire game solo and multiple levels in two player mode.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Here's what I can be sure of. The Street Fighter IV Round 2 Tournament Edition FightStick is a fight stick for Street Fighter IV, one that you might be able to play at tournaments. Also: It's the second wave — or shall we say "round"? — of Mad Catz SFIV sticks. The change for round two? Black on the sides instead of white. A new image on the controller surface.

I pondered the stick and this thought popped into my head: "Nothing brings the arcade experience closer to home than the Street Fighter IV 'Round 2' Arcade FightStick: Tournament Edition. Featuring the same authentic Vewlix arcade configuration, robust build and genuine Sanwa Denshi Japanese style ball-handled joystick and 30mm Action Buttons embraced by gamers worldwide in the original range, the ‘Round 2' Arcade Fightstick Tournament Edition houses these premium components in a sleek, piano-black housing, featuring all new monochrome artwork taken directly from the game. The collectible packaging reflects the understated appearance of the Stick with approved artwork provided by Capcom and certain to be appreciated by fans of the franchise."

That's what the press release said, actually. On to my judgments:

Loved
Clicking To A Better Fireball: The MYTH that I can't throw a fireball comes from the pathetic video shot of me earlier this year playing Street Fighter II against rapper Soulja Boy Tell 'Em. We both played horribly and neither of us is seen throwing a fireball. I did throw some, I think, but the truth is that I haven't been able to throw them reliably since I had SFII on my Super Nintendo. The skill to throw one at will was lost to me until I tried the FightStick I'm reviewing here. At last, I understand why people shell out money for these things. Quarter-circle turns are so much easier with an actual arcade stick, as opposed to an Xbox 360 control stick or PlayStation 3 d-pad. I'm terrible with those controllers. The clicking feedback of winding an arcade stick from the 6 o'clock position to the 3 o'clock position was exactly what I needed. At home, with this stick, away from the cameras, I was throwing fireballs at will. It was like I went from being a doubles hitter to a homerun hitter, with the aid of a legal and metaphorical Mad Catz steroid. I was even able to throw Ryu's Shoryuken. I nailed the zigzag move to do it every time. To go from ineptitude on a 360 controller to perfect input execution on this FightStick was quite exciting.

Not So Garish: Thrilled as I was to feel like I'd gained some instant Street Fighter skills by using the Round 2 FightStick, I was concerned that it didn't quite fit into my life. First of all, it probably doesn't fit because it is big, about the size of my fat housecat. I don't think a game controller of that size is compatible with my marriage, and, truth be told, I had to go buy a copy of SFIV to even review this stick (GameStop only had it used. Weird.) So maybe I'm not the ideal customer. But. If I decided I needed a stick, I'd get this one due to the fact that its yellow-orange Street Fighter logo is the only major splash of color on the mostly black shell. This thing is nice and subdued and doesn't quite look like I'm covering my lap in Street Fighter IV art when I use it — unless you look closely, in which cast that's exactly what I'm doing.

Hated
The Wire: I'm sure there's a good reason for this FightStick to need to be plugged into a game console rather than working wirelesses. Maybe it's cost or latency. Hey, there's probably a good reason why this arcade stick has a headphone jack and why my headphones plug doesn't fit into it. And who am I, the guy who couldn't beat Soulja Boy to complain? But in a world of wireless controllers, I want a wireless controller.

So let's say you're on the fence about whether to buy this Round 2 FightStick. I would ask you to consider how much space you have, how much money you have and how much throwing fireballs means to you. If you're answers were "a lot," "a lot" and "a lot," then you're a potential customer. Or, if you're like me and your answers are slightly different, at least bear in mind that if you ever need to have a Street Fighter showdown and you can name the equipment, request an arcade stick. Don't use a game controller. Oh, and play with your arms crossed. The skilled players do that, or so I've seen.

The Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Round 2 Arcade Fight Stick: Tournament Edition was manufactured by Mad Catz and was made available for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the fall of 2009. Retails for $149.99 USD. An Xbox 360 edition of the stick was given to us by Mad Catz for reviewing purposes. Used it in Street Fighter IV matches and training sessions.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Those of you familiar with the series Might & Magic are probably surprised to see it, one, on the Nintendo DS and, two, converted from a hardcore role-playing game to a puzzle RPG. So, for the sake of not causing the Might & Magic fans to die inside by calling this game by the same name and to introduce the game as something new and different from the series — we'll stick to calling it Clash of Heroes.

Clash of Heroes puts players in a generic fantasy plot involving elves, necromancers, wizards and a ton of other stock fantasy characters. The game is divided into chapters with the player taking the role of a different stock fantasy character in each chapter. On the world map, you move your cute little 2D sprite from node to node to talk to characters, open chests and get into battles with other cute 2D sprites. Battle consists of two armies lining up on both the lower and the upper screen. Players' armies are made up of color coded units with specific stats and magic powers. To "fight," you've got to line up units of the same color in a vertical line. To "defend," you arrange them in horizontal lines that then form walls. Battle gets more complicated as you get bigger units that require you to sacrifice smaller units of the same color to charge them up for attack and equipped items also become a huge factor in battle.

Loved
So Cute! Aside from 2D sprites, Clash of Heroes is terminally adorable. The writing and characterization of the stock fantasy characters is witty and amusing — which goes a long way toward spicing the plot up. The anime-style cut scenes and character dialogue images are also very pretty and depict some of the cutest moments in the story. I think the instance that actually made me coo aloud was one where a cute demon sprite watches a volcano explode enraptured. Then he's hit by debris and burns up into an equally cute skeleton that says "It was worth it!" before crumbling into dust.

Very Clever: At their best, the battles are truly challenging in a way that makes you feel good about yourself when you beat them. Most of the challenge comes from finding ways to stretch out your turn. Unless you've got a special item equipped, most of the time you can only get extra moves during your turn to shift around units by causing chains of units to link up. For example, you could spend one move plugging a green unit into a formation that completes both a horizontal line and a vertical one — and that becomes two extra moves that you can use that turn — which will give you a major edge on the enemy if you manage to activate a larger unit and set up walls all in one turn. Aside from these normal battles with enemies, there are also specific "puzzle battles" that are actually brain teasers worthy of Professor Layton: You have to destroy all of you opponent's units in one turn.

Hated
Unbalanced: The game suffers from fluctuating difficulty levels, weird distribution of special items and a frustrating game design choice. You notice this right away in chapter two when you have to start with a new character, Godric. For whatever reason, his boss fights seem tougher and the progression of fights in his level leave you battling people three levels higher than you almost constantly. Also, the items you find in his level are not nearly as useful as the items other characters have in other levels and most of them are geared toward defense instead of offense. Finally, unlike every other character you play in the game, Godric's special spell that charges up as he takes damage or deals damage is also defense only. This proves to be a poor design choice because it makes Godric feel like the weakest of the all the character even after you level him up all the way. Then, you get to chapter three with Fiona as a ghost and suddenly the game is a breeze because Fiona has offense magic and an item in her level that multiplies all her units' damage by 100%. Crazy!

Can Be Repetitive: Because the game forces you to start fresh with a new character every time, the gameplay starts to feel stale. You always get the same type of units to start and then you have a grind a bit before getting the bigger units that actually have special powers. Then, once you're comfortable, it's time for a boss battle and end-of-the-chapter sequence that starts you back at zero all over again. I thought this repetition might go away in the final levels when the characters reunite to take on the ultimate baddy — but nope! Even there, you start over again with another character and then have to suffer through a string of boss fights with characters that the game picks for you (so you can't not play as Godric — ugh).

There is some good game design in Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes and I can't stress enough how adorable it is. But I would have appreciate some extra gameplay balancing with respect to offensive/defensive spells and what kinds of items are in which levels. I'm happy to recommend it to hardcore strategy game freaks and everybody who's waiting around for the next Professor Layton. But I have a harder time recommending it to the easily frustrated, especially kids who might miss the sexual innuendo between the succubus and Godric's brother, Aidan.

As for Might & Magic fans, I'm sorry to tell you there's not much here that resembles the games you loved from times past. It's a completely different experience more akin to Puzzle Quest than to anything else. While we're on the subject, Puzzle Quest fans beware — you cannot change units horizontally a la Bejeweled and this will drive you totally nuts for the first two hours or so. After that, though, your color-recognition skills will come in handy.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes was developed by Capybara Games and published by Ubisoft for the Nintendo DS. Released December 1 for $29.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played all game types in both single and multiplayer modes and still think Fiona was better off as a ghost.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster is a full-sized replica of Fender's famous guitar, with all of the necessary Rock Band bells and whistles thrown in. Instead of strings, pickups, and frets you get a strum bar and fret buttons, with the various dials and ports assigned to functions normally found in music games, like start and select. As an added plus, the wireless controller actually functions like one of Microsoft's own, requiring no additional dongle be hooked up in order to play. All of this, housed inside the body of one of the most iconic instruments in rock history.

It certainly sounds lovely, but is it $300 lovely?

Loved
How It Feels: This isn't a small wooden replica of a guitar. This is a real Fender Stratocaster body, crafted and assembled at a Fender manufacturing facility. It has all of the weight and beauty of a real Strat, with real metal bits and an authentic three-tone sunburst finish. It even comes with a real cloth guitar strap. It's a beautiful thing to behold, and even more satisfying to hold in your hands. It feels more like a real guitar than my real guitar does, though in all honesty my real guitar is a $99 piece of crap. The point here is that the Wooden Fender Stratocaster has the sort of look and feel that will ruin you for plastic guitar controllers for all time.

I should note that during my initial session with the guitar I dropped it, dislodging one of the fret buttons. It popped back on readily, however, and I noticed no degradation in the action. And no, it wasn't the orange one I never use anyway.

How It Plays: Along with having the satisfying weight on your shoulders and the feeling that you're holding an actual grown-up guitar, the action on the fret buttons of the wooden Stratocaster have a much smoother action than you generally find with its plastic counterparts. The strum bar has more of a click to it than I would like, but I found it extremely responsive, so I can't complain too much.

Hated
Everything Else Is Just Toys: Playing Rock Band with a full contingent now leaves me slightly embarrassed for the rest of my band. When you've got one guitarist with a full-sized wooden replica and the other on a tiny plastic piece of crap, not to mention a drummer playing what looks like My First Electronic Drum Kit, you begin to feel like one of the kids in those Sesame Street "One of these kids is not like the other" skits. It might not be an issue for everyone, but for me it tends to throw off the feeling of the endeavor somewhat.

The Rock Band Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster is hands-down the best guitar video game peripheral I've had the pleasure to play. Having said that, is this a controller I would go to the store and buy? Probably not. There are simply too many other things approaching that price point that I'd rather own, and up until I spent a good month playing with this wooden model, the plastic guitars worked just fine for me.

That's not to say you shouldn't pick one up. If the highlight of your week is getting together with your pals and burning through the latest Rock Band downloadable content, or you have a friend or relative that you never see without a plastic guitar controller in hand, then the Rock Band Wireless Wooden Fender Stratocaster might represent $300 well-spent. Just be warned - there ain't no going back.

The Rock Band Wireless Wooden Stratocaster was designed and manufactured by Mad Catz and Fender, and released in September for the Xbox 360. Retails for $299.99 USD, though retail prices may vary. A review unit of the controller was given to us by the manufacturer for reviewing purposes. Used the controller for two months in Rock Band, Lego Rock Band, Guitar Hero 5, and Band Hero.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

From Software's PlayStation 3 role-playing game sloughs off many of the conventions one typically associates with Japanese RPGs, putting players into a world unlike any other. The real-time action RPG features a heavy focus on hand-to-hand combat, not calculated menu choices. There are no party members to recruit, no love interests to pursue. There are only demon's to slay and souls to collect and a goal—defeat the Old One and free Boletaria from its colorless curse.

Demon's Souls is full of complex challenges and complex concepts, a game with no traditional save point system, no pause option and no coddling of the player who may have become accustomed to simpler, more forgiving fare. it is a hellish place of suffering, where men are routinely crushed by the powerful demonspawn that inhabit it.

So, why, then is Demon's Souls so rewarding, so refreshing and so engrossing? Here's why.

Loved
A New Brand Of Survival Horror: Fear is a constant in Demon's Souls, at least during your first unfamiliar adventure in the kingdom of Boletaria, as death can come to the player at any moment. These frequent deaths—which will become more frequent to the player not mindful of the world around them—are by design. Demon's Souls is meant to be studied, to be carefully considered and for its world to be absorbed. Its inhabitants are meant to be feared, so that the player can learn how to dispatch of them properly. You may die in Demon's Souls dozens, in not a hundred times or more. But you'll become the better player for it, mindful of your fear.

A World In Need Of Mending: Beyond the need for self-preservation, Demon's Souls offers a heavy dose of gloom and doom through its well-realized, beautifully designed lands. From the prisons of the Tower Of Latria, closely guarded by Mind Flayers, to the depths of the Stonefang Tunnel, guarded by fire-spewing beasts, each of Demon's Souls five massive environments offers something new to be awed by, to be afraid of. And each of those five worlds come with their unique inhabitants, their own trappings, new rules for the player to observe and new denizens to dread. The one safe haven for the few unscathed humans, The Nexus, is a gorgeous elaborate structure. But it is soon dwarfed by the massive castles and major demons that the player will face.

Demon's Souls' world is both fantastic and realistic, never patronizing the player. For the most part, the player is free to visit any of its diverse lands in the order of their choosing, letting the player decide how to navigate the world. And thanks to Demon's Souls' fluctuating World and Character Tendency system, which changes Boleteria's populace and environments based on a number of factors, the game world offers plenty to do beyond the first play through. This is a world worth revisiting, death after death after death.

Major Demons: Depending on how you play Demon's Souls, whether your world ventures towards white or black, you'll face over a dozen impressive and diverse bosses. All of them are memorable in some way, from the quiet calm of facing the Old Hero, to the massive scale of tackling the Dragon God, to the shocking tension of facing the Penetrator or Flame Lurker. Or any of Demon's Souls spectacularly designed demons, for that matter. Some can simply be dispatched with hundreds of arrows from a hiding spot, but others will require ample dexterity, a calm demeanor and smart strategy. Some may invoke warm feelings of another PlayStation hallmark, Shadow of the Colossus, due to their impressive magnitude.

Simple Made Complex: Where other role-playing games throw complex upgrade paths and a flood of weapons, armor and items at the player to create the illusion of depth, Demon's Souls offers it genuinely. Strategic trade-offs must be made in your choices of what to equip, how to fight and where to engage your enemy in battle. Demon's Souls offers a simple base upon which to build its system—the ten starting character class templates—then lets the player decide how to progress from there. It's both freeing and rewarding.

Massively Multiplayer Loneliness: Demon's Souls features a rather unique online multiplayer component. Players will see, but not hear or touch, the echo of other Demon's Souls players, each fighting demons in their own instance of the world. Players can also read or leave messages for others, attempting to help strangers (and help themselves) during their adventure. Bloodstains left by fallen comrades in other instances can also be left behind, illustrating how other adventurers died, a warning to first-timers of what awaits them in the next step.

Demon's Souls does have a more traditional multiplayer component to it, letting players summon other warriors to their world as spirits, teaming up to tackle major demons. But other players can also invade your world in Black Phantom form, adding a player versus player gambling element to the experience. There is no voice chat, there is no lobby to join, which may seem like a drawback. But this implementation further entrenches the feeling in Demon's Souls players that the lonely existence of demon slaying is largely theirs alone to do.

The Soul Economy: Demon's Souls soul system adds a fascinating layer of strategy to the game. Souls, which you'll collect from fallen enemies and find scattered about Boletaria's land, serve as currency, experience and materials. You'll need them to upgrade your character and your weapons, resulting in an interesting trade-off. And should you die in one of Demon's Souls worlds, you'll lose your current soul stock—unless you find your own bloodstain—making the decision to soldier on or return to the Nexus for upgrades a constant struggle.

Torchlight: Demon's Souls is dark and it is best played in the dark. And while it might seem odd to highlight the game's lighting, it's expertly crafted. Not so much from a technical sense, but that the player must be mindful of the glowing souls, the deadly exploding Will o' Wisps, the torches, the glowing eyes that populate every dark room. There's much the player can glean from Demon's Souls lights as they cut through the blackness.

After Careful Consideration: This is a hard game. Cruel, punishing, unforgiving, relentless, sadistic... whatever you want to call it, Demon's Souls is a challenge. But you'll learn. You'll adapt. And if you're careful, attentive to the events occurring around you, you'll be fine. That Demon's Souls demands this, making the game feel more like pure horror than the traditional fun one expects of a video game, eventually spellbinding the player, is what makes the game so enjoyable.

Hated
My First Few Hours: This may make me sound like a wimp—and ultimately a crazed Demon's Souls zealot—but you need to know. Demon's Souls was, for me, torture for the first few hours. I didn't "get it." I didn't play games this way. I've played difficult action games, like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry and Otogi, and enjoyed them. But Demon's Souls is different, requiring a unique mindset—and, in my case, some help from the Demon's Souls community. Eventually, pain gave way to pleasure as I learned to appreciate the game's strict rule set, ultimately becoming absorbed by the game. You may hate Demon's Souls from start to finish for its difficulty. But I'd wager you'll come to appreciate it as I did.

Faces, Fonts & Frame Rates: There are a handful of presentation issues holding back Demon's Souls, none of them game breaking, but worth mentioning. Despite Demon's Souls' overall beauty, it has some of the ugliest character faces I've seen. Character creation is a turn off, because most options look as monstrous as the demons themselves. The game's interface also has a few quirks, with no easy way to compare items from vendors with current equipment and an icon system for attributes that has its own unnecessary, confusing language. Finally, there are a few moments where Demon's Souls can't keep up with what's happening on screen. Nothing that impairs gameplay, but not pretty.

When I talk about Demon's Souls with some of my fellow players, I feel that we're in danger of sounding like a part of some cult—or, possibly worse, a group of addicts—as if we've gotten over the hurdle of viewing From Software's brilliant, visionary creation just for its sheer difficulty. And it is difficult. But it is also laden with a smart combat system, in which equipment and weapons matter greatly, for so many reasons. But having pushed past the fog of Demon's Souls, which meant spending well over 50 hours with the game, I'm happy to see it for what it is—one of the best PlayStation 3 games of the year and perhaps one of the smartest console role-playing games ever.

To be clear, however, Demon's Souls is not some orgiastic, blissful experience. It is not the type of game one may want to wind down with, less than "fun" in a normal video game sense. But it is a wholly engrossing, enjoyably solitary experience, if you've got the patience and the bravery to look into the fog and face what's inside.

Demon's Souls was developed by From Software and published by Atlus for the PlayStation 3 on October 7. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played single-player game to completion, testing multiple classes, invading other's worlds and summoning them to my own.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

The arrival of Tekken 6 on the PSP could only mean great things, right?

Loved
Graphics: The PSP version of Tekken 6 is a surprisingly attractive game. The portable version does cut a few corners, for instance there's no option to turn on blur, but overall it's a sharply detailed game.

Controls: With four face buttons and two shoulder buttons and a snappy directional pad, the PSP is a perfect match for the Tekken series. Each face button controls a limb of your fighter and the heavy reliance on single direction controls for special moves makes pulling off attacks on the PSP a breeze.

Responsiveness: There's no stutter, no lag here when playing the game. Controls and the fighters are smooth and responsive, making taking Tekken 6 on the go a joy.

No Filler: The PSP version of Tekken 6 doesn't include that annoying, seemingly never ending Scenario Campaign that bloated the console versions of the game. Everything you find in this version of the game you'll want to do.

Faster Load Times: My other chief complaint about the console version has also been fixed in the portable version. The load times, especially if you pre-load the game onto a Memory Stick, are lighting fast. I experienced almost no wait while working through the single-player story lines and arcade mode of the game.

Mappable Buttons: It may seem like a minor thing, a no brainer. But it's nice that the developers allow you to map all of the buttons on your PSP to whatever controls you want. That way you can make use of the shoulder buttons or ignore them. Your choice.

Hated
Stories: While cutting the scenario campaign from the portable version of Tekken 6 was the right move, it would have been nice if the team spent some of that extra time on beefing up the character's cartoon story lines.

No Online Multiplayer: Dark Resurrection's lack of true online multiplayer was, perhaps, forgivable, but why doesn't Tekken 6 have it? Worse still, while the ability to save and share ghosts of your fighting style with other players to use as AI is still in the game, that data can no longer be uploaded or downloaded online. All ghost data, as with multiplayer matches, can only be shared via a local connection.

No Replay: It's nice to be able to check out your finishing move after playing a difficult match in Tekken, and there are plenty of them. Unfortunately, the PSP version trimmed this feature from the game for some reason.

Tekken 6 is a fantastic game, one that improves the graphics and playability of the fighting franchise for the portable. What it tragically doesn't do is push the envelope in anyway to extend the reach of multiplayer gaming for the franchise. In fact, it actually cuts down on the ways the game can deliver more lasting fun.

While the game will be a must-have for fans of the franchise, it still disappoints on that key issue.

Tekken 6 was developed and published by Namco Bandai for the Playstation Portable on Nov. 24. Retails for $39.99 USD. A download code for the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played multiple arcade, story, ghost and challenge matches.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

In the console version of the online mini-game you and up to three others fight off a never-ending horde of Nazis. When it came time to try and bring World at War over to the iPhone, the developers made the right call: Zeroing in on the zombies rather than the World War II realism.

Let's see how they did.

Loved
Concept: The premise of Call of Duty: World at War Zombies seems a perfect match for the iPhone and iPod Touch. You are a Marine hiding out in a German barracks trying to stave off the ever-encroaching horde of ambling zombies. While the game may look like a traditional first-person shooter, the emphasis on resource management and guarding the boarded up windows creates a game vastly different than you'd expect to find in the genre.

In the iPhone game, as with the console game, you'll find yourself spending as much time running between windows to repair barricades as you do shooting zombies. This makes the game a more natural port to the iPhone than it would if it were a straight-up shooter.

Controls: While shooting zombies is an important part of the game, it's not the only thing you spend your time doing. That makes me OK with the developers' decision to essentially add auto-aim to the title. Sure, you can take the time to zoom in to snipe or even quickly adjust your aim as you walk, but if you start firing off shots with the crosshairs on a zombie it will lock on and let you keep firing. The game also has three control schemes, allowing you to use touch, digital dual analog sticks or tilt controls. My favorite is the dual sticks control.

Hated
Single Map: For $10, even with Wifi multiplayer for four, it would be nice if the game came with more than the single map. Sure you can play the hell out of it, and you will. But I'd like a bit more variety for so steep a price.

More maps are said to be coming for the game, including the zombie asylum, Verruckt, but you'll have to pay to get them.

Call of Duty: World at War Zombies is most favorite iPhone game at the moment, and I'm not the only one. The game has enjoyed three weeks at the top of our iPhone Charts list.

The combination of zombies, Nazis and, essentially, horde mode, is highly addictive and fun. Despite the pleasure I've gotten out of the game, the $10 price tag means you should maybe hold off a bit until the maps, and a likely price drop, hit.

Call of Duty: World at War Zombies developed by Ideaworks Game Sudio, and published by Activision for the iPod Touch and iPhone on Nov. 20. Retails for $9.99 USD. Code for the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played multiple matches alone and with one to three others.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The Saboteur is the final game developed by Pandemic Studios out of the EA-owned label's former offices, the last hurrah of the studio that brought gamers new takes on combat through Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars Battlefront, and Mercenaries. And their last standalone effort may have been their boldest, a World War II open-world game set in and around Paris, starring an Irish race car driver on a vendetta against the Nazi occupiers of France's beautiful city.

The game has received headlines for its inclusion of optional nudity and near-nudity, and it's likely turned the head of anyone who has seen screenshots or video featuring its terrific mixture of black-and-white graphics and color. But what makes it worth playing is its attempt to offer a mix of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed and thankfully some of its own style, situated in a time and place of history no other major game has explored, letting its players be the hero in a battle they can't truly win, sneakily killing Nazis and brashly blowing up zeppelins along the way.

Loved
Winning Theme: Setting a game amid the resistance movement against Nazi-occupied France is fresh and original. This isn't a game of storming beaches but hiding in brothels, not (often) of driving a tank but of slipping into an enemy uniform and poisoning the rival army from within. You don't play many games in which you can walk around without the Nazis shooting at you until you raid their bases. Better, though, is sneaking behind them to blow up their parked cars, sucker-punching them while they're harassing people on the street, or walking calmly away after you've set a ticking stack of dynamite at the foot of their sniper tower. Basically, this is the ultimate game of griefing Nazis, which is a lot of fun and feels morally sound. That this is all draped in one of the most unusual color schemes in gaming history is a bonus. Nazi-dominated areas of Paris and the surrounding towns and countryside are rendered in black-and-white, save for the colors of flames and red Nazi arm bands and banners. The game colorizes sections after the completion of certain missions, generating a sense that some vitality has been returned to the locale thanks to your actions.

A New Tale: I'm a sucker for a novel plot. This one doesn't have you fighting Nazis because you were drafted. It has you fighting them because your character, Irish race car driver Sean Devlin lost a race against crooked Nazis, tried to prank them and wound up stumbling across a scheme that got someone close to him killed. He's in it for revenge in the middle of a war, the French resistance a convenient cause to assist rather than one he was dedicated to serve. It's a nice touch that you play in the pair of races that are both key to the story, adding the historical nuance of the Nazis' attempt to demonstrate Aryan superiority in sporting events.

Beyond Paris: The game hits its stride best, for better or worse, outside Paris, where the player is most empowered to feel like a saboteur. Climbing rooftops and battling some control and design issues in the big city can hurt the fun, but on the vast outskirts, a player can speed down dirt roads, quick-stop next to a Nazi gas station, plant a bomb and peel out. The biggest delight comes from the explosions you hear and don't see, the sounds of the chain of blasts you managed to trigger from beneath those Nazi noses. All your sneaking and planning is rewarded as they scramble or die while you drive off to your next place to cause more mayhem.

A Man Of Many Talents: An open-world game is often improved by an wide array of character abilities. Our hero, Sean Devlin, can do the stealthy chaos-causing things described above, or he can toss grenades and fire machine guns into a nest of Germans, turning the tactical subtlety that feels most distinct to Saboteur into moments of gun-facing, man vs. army action. In other words, it begins to feel like Mercenaries, a playground, as they said in the commercials, of destruction. Other options, some not commonly seen elsewhere, include arming a bomb in a car you've stolen and then bailing from the vehicle just before it speeds into a Nazi base. Or you can call in resistance fighters to help you out, sometimes with drawbacks (see below).

Dynamic Intent: Almost a "Hated" instead of a "Loved," but something I ultimately cannot knock Pandemic for is its pockmarking of its map with several hundred "freeplay targets." These dots represent Nazi guard towers, trucks, supply drops and other things worth detonating. The winning concept behind them is to empower the gamer of this open-world game to gradually influence the dynamics of his terrain. Destroying a sniper tower while wandering through Paris removes that tower from the map, making a story-advancing mission the player might take right near the sniper tower easier. The game falters in inundating the player with so many freeplay target options while making it very unclear what the incentive is for taking out most of them. Sure, knocking over a guard tower makes a mission easier and earns Devlin some cash for buying better weapons. But does the elimination of propaganda speakers make the pedestrians more willing to resist? It'd be nice if the game made that more clear.

For The People: The most original missions in The Saboteur branch from the game's main story. A lady asks Devlin to stop a Nazi book-burning. A priest requests the murder of the Nazi half of a wedding party. Most of the game's main missions feel like they could have been generated for other action games, but those that engage with the manifold struggles of one society to survive the pervasive menace of another are the most refreshing. They show the scope of The Saboteur's potential.

Hated
Very Bad Timing: In Paris, Sean Devlin needs to climb, But he is no Altair or Ezio, and this game suffers in its proximity to the release of Assasin's Creed II. Sean's climbing is slow and stymied in odd ways by seemingly surmountable out-croppings. Worse, he has a hard time lowering himself down a roof in controlled ways. That the designers named Devlin's race car the Altair or that they included summit points that spin the camera around when he reaches them does the game no favors in avoiding the comparisons. These are Assassin's Creed 1 mechanics in a world that is enjoying Assassin's Creed II. And that makes much of the emergent action in Paris — the escaping from Nazi patrols by taking to the rooftops — or climbing walls to reach ziplines to reach bomb-able targets, less fun that it would have been a year ago.

Very Bad Timing Part 2: Sean Devlin is less the Irish rogue and more the jerk. He's gruff to the point of unpleasantness, the lead in a cast of characters who seem to hate each other except when they are sleeping with each other. Uncharted 2 just showed us how very likable an overmatched, cocky hero can be and how a game with romantically-linked leads can be sexy without being sophomoric. In this game, a stressed Devlin is asked how he feels after a rough battle. He says: "I could eat a nun's arse through a convent gate."

Glitches: The game is glitchy in an absurdly amusing way at least once per hour you're playing it. I approached a Nazi to snap his neck. He animated properly, dropping to his death. But so did the Nazi standing next to him, in synchronicity. I went into a base camp to talk to a resistance leader and wondered why he had a mannequin on his office. That was no mannequin. That was another character, accidentally spawned atop his phonograph. I called in a car-load of resistance fighters while I was taking fire in an intersection. They drove over, some got out of their car, and then their driver ran over one of them. I had to escape a mission on the back of a truck and kept failing because a character not involved in my mission — but who happened to be standing on the road we passed — kept dying, for reasons I can't explain. I'd just get a notification that he was dead. Etc. Once an hour with things like these. Not gamebreakers, but certainly mood-killers.

Truncated: Why Devlin brushes off an aerial crash he survives — right after the scene that was about him not having a parachute — I can't explain. Nor can I explain why the game's main adventure ends before we've again fought the Nazi henchwoman who is set up in earlier missions or why it ends with an enchanting but incredibly easy last mission. This game's story feels like it was cut off, though The Saboteur does offer enough terrain and optional missions to keep players busy past that early end.

The Saboteur has enough originality and enough of a capacity for the player to have fun at almost all times that it's a hard game not to recommend. It's a game for the curious, for gamers seeking something different. But as with so many original games, it is a game that has rough edges.

This may be the most un-polished major-label game I've reviewed this year, which is too bad. Because when The Saboteur is being The Saboteur and not being Assassin's Creed or choking on a bug, it's got the spirit and spark of a game that should be played. That is, if you ever wanted to blow up a Zeppelin with a rocket launcher, kiss someone to hide from the people chasing you or knock over a Nazi gas station without them ever knowing you were there.

The Saboteur was developed by Pandemic Studios and published by EA for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on December 8. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played the campaign to its narrative conclusion, which was, for me, 88% mission progress in about 19 and a half hours. Liberated five chocolate bars and nine cans of caviar.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

It sounds like a jewel-matching RPG made in heaven. Players taken on the role of Rivel, a summoner traveling through the Aldemona Wood who becomes embroiled in an evil plot that could change the face of the world forever. Instead of charging into battle himself, Rivel takes on the creatures of the woods by summoning mythical beasts to fight in his stead in battles that combine the gameplay of Bejeweled Twist with hit point meters and damaging special abilities.

Did the combined effort of two developers are at the top of their games result in a stronger whole, or does all of that spinning throw Gyromancer off-balance?

Loved
Spinning Your Fate: Gyromancer's core game mechanic is a highly satisfying melding of Bejeweled Twist's gameplay with RPG conventions such as hit points and special powers. You choose one of three monsters in your party, each with a color affinity that has strength and weaknesses depending on the color of the monster you are fighting. Both creatures have a number of powers that activate via gauges that steadily fill with each turn of the focus wheel. Making a match with your creature's colors speeds up power activation, while matching your opponent's colors halts the progress of their gauge. Activating a power places special gems on the game board that must be matched to set off damaging effects.

It starts off simply enough, ramping up as new creatures with new abilities join the fray. Soon a penalty is applied for twists that don't result in a match, ramping up the pressure significantly by lowering the amount of time it takes for your opponent's spells to go off. It's all timed well enough that once this limitation is imposed you're already thinking ahead to ensure you've got a match lined up. While luck does play a role in Gyromancer, pulling off a big win still takes a certain amount of skill. There are few feelings as satisfying as taking out a powerful foe with a creature that started the round on its last sliver of health. It's a feeling of accomplishment that can be quite intoxicating.

Gotta Catch Em' All: While the puzzle battles are the main draw of Gyromancer, you're only as good as the monsters you collect. Throughout the game you'll discover new, color-coded creatures to add to your collection, spending points earned in battle to upgrade them to their more evolved forms. You can only take three creatures into battle at a time, and with color affinities weakening or strengthening your pets depending on the foes they face, knowing which three to take into which level is a key element of the game's strategy.

While initially it seems as if the only difference between creatures is hit points and color, you'll soon discover differences in powers and behaviors that will have you mulling over your lineup for minutes at a time, trying to form a winning team. Some creatures offer greater power at a price, such as one gnat that locks pieces in place on a regular basis, making it difficult to activate the strong magic it possesses, while others carry a wealth of hit points but are slow to accumulate the power necessary to damage enemies. You'll develop favorites, and certain enemies will make you groan when their portrait appears on the versus screen. That kind of involvement and recognition is the hallmark of a good game, especially in this genre.

Hated
Spinning Around And Around: While battles in Gyromancer are involving and satisfying and the odd challenge levels you'll encounter will test your skills, there really isn't all that much to the game. It's an endless string of battles without any of the extra activities like spell research, crafting, and mount leveling that made Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords so very addictive.

Despite obvious influence from both both developers, Gyromancer comes across as more of a PopCap game than a Square Enix title. There's a heavy emphasis on the puzzle aspect of the game, while the roleplaying elements are limited to gaining levels and just a hint of exploration and problem-solving. What's missing is the depth that Square Enix normally brings to its RPG titles. There are no side quests or mini-games here; just 15-20 hours worth of fights with a little story drizzled over top.

Gyromancer will certainly satisfy a puzzle gamer and might even win over the odd Pokemon player, but RPG fans lured in by the Square Enix name will find themselves somewhat puzzled.

Gyromancer was developed by Square Enix and PopCap Games and published by Square Enix for Xbox Live Arcade and Windows PC on November 18th, 2009. Retails for 1200 Microsoft Points or $15. A copy of the game was procured via Steam for reviewing purposes. Completed PC version of the game's main story and dabbled a bit in the additional content.
Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Fans of the iPhone and iPod Touch game Flight Control are everywhere. My 7-year-old nephew runs his finger over the iPhone screen as if he's making a messy painting, but manages to land the game's planes with surprising effectiveness. And I recently discovered that the air traffic control game was the secret recreation of a 50-something technology investor I was meeting for lunch. 

Loved
Welcome Appeal: Flight Control achieves the holy grail of casual games: It is easy for the uninitiated, requiring nothing more than a finger to trace a path for the helicopters, propellor planes and jets that need to be brought in to land without colliding with one another. (The game is two-dimensional, so planes can't fly over each other.) But the Firemint game requires time and skill to master. 

Deeply Strategic:: Once I had established that Will Leitch, the sports writer, was a fellow addict, I settled into an arcane discussion about whether it was better to establish consistent flying patterns. For a while I thought it was best to bring planes in to land on a grand sweeping anti-clockwise flight path looping north over the main runway while landing slower craft from the south. But Leitch preferred to land planes as rapidly and directly as one could; elegance be damned. And his record score — well into three figures, a level I barely reached — indicated that was the better strategy.

Hated
Sharp Turns: I have a few problems with Flight Control. The game allows jagged flight paths with bizarrely abrupt turns. I'd like to declare that my objections are technical; that passenger craft require gentler turning circles. But my real objection may be instead that style seems to favor my nephew's haphazard finger tracing.

[*From Totilo: Denton sits right next to me at work. I can tell you what his conclusion would be. He told me that this is the game to play. Told me that just about on my first day of working here. Then I told him I didn't have an iPhone yet. Thankfully, I'm still employed here.]

Flight Control was developed by Firemint for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch in the spring of 2009. Retails for $0.99 USD.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The PSPgo in-ear headsets from Sony are silky black, ring in under $20 and come with their own little pouch. Are they worth picking up or should you stick with the headphones you already own?

Loved
Sony Stylish: Shiny black with a rubberized cord, the in-ear headsets are as pleasant to look at as they are to listen to. The headset comes with three sets of soft, black earbuds and an ironically-UMD-shaped soft case that can store the buds, earphones with room to spare.

Sound: You won't be confusing these for high-end, more expensive in-ear headphones, but for just under $20, the sound these plugs deliver is surprising. When called for, the headset pumped out meaty bass and was able to hit the high notes with no discernible distortion.

Hated
No Control: A big must for me when it comes with headpones for my multi-media devices is an on-cord remote of some sort. It has to at least be able to mute and control volume. The ability to skip around your music is also a plus. Unfortunately, the only thing dangling from these headsets is a tiny plastic housing for the microphone.

I'm a big fan of in-ear headsets. They're primarily what I use when on the game. I own a couple pair of high-end cans as well, but almost never use them these days. While the PSPgo in-ear headsets certainly won't be replacing my V-Modas anytime soon, they're a solid, inexpensive back-up.

PSP Go In-Ear Headset was developed by Sony for the PSPgo. Retails for $19.99 USD. A set of the headsets was given to us by Sony for reviewing purposes. Played games, listened to music and watched videos on the PSPgo with the headset.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

There are the Zelda games that are great in ways that influence an industry and nearly mandate that they be played. These groundbreakers include the very first Zelda and The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, both of which have, as a whole or in parts, inspired dozens of games and probably hundreds of developers.

Then there the Zelda games that are great at being Zelda games, achieving a less widely-appreciated magnificence, but one that plays to the fans. These Zelda games — A Link To The Past, Majora's Mask — excel at making enjoyable a clockwork complexity of characters, puzzles, music, locomotion, exploration, locked-room-mysteries, and hours-incubating-eurekas — a combination of design elements that may be the road hardest taken in video game franchise development. And it's in this latter category that Spirit Tracks, the third in the cartoon-Link series, the second on the DS and the first to put Link on a train with Zelda adventuring at his side, excels like the best of them.

(And for the newcomers, just note: This is an action-adventure game played mostly from an overhead perspective. You explore an overworld, visit towns and head into several dungeons to solve puzzles, fight enemies and gain key tools and items that enable you to explore more of the overworld. And it's almost all stylus-controlled.)

Loved
The New World: The map of Link's latest land in need of saving doesn't look all that different from the terrain earlier Links have tread before. There's snowy sections and mountains, beaches, forest and the rest of standards. Well, you can't judge a world by its topsoil. This is a world stuffed with interesting towns that contain interesting characters, more than the standard I-lost-my-chickens Zelda townsfolk but instead people with semi-real problems — think the love woes of Majora's Mask, for example — and good senses of humor. It's not just the people but the places. This is a world so full of diversions, many of them as well-hidden as anything put in a Zelda since the first entry in the series, that the optional wandering you do could probably account for half the game. And what you'll find for it is as surprising as, well, make sure, for example, that you find the pirate hide-out and therefore the best prison-break mini-game of the year. Discovery is possible in ways big and small. The relatively barren overworld of the Wii's Zelda, Twilight Princess, is not back.

Train Vs. Horse Vs. Boat: The boat and the horse, previous Zelda games' means of conveyance were great go-anywhere devices. For the first several hours of Spirit Tracks the train will feel like nothing but an inferiority. Then, surprisingly late in the game, the designers begin to celebrate what trains can do well — aside from stay on their tracks, avoid other trains and shoot cannons at boars. What trains do well is carry stuff and people and serve more uses than one. Eventually you're swapping train car types (I went with the skull-shaped engine), carrying ice or lumber or whatever was requested, ferrying passengers, watching out for bandits and pirates that might upset your animate and inanimate cargo, hitting warp gates and engineering like a pro. A few journeys in the game will feel long, but if you smartly multi-task a lot, then there's a lot of fun to running this train.

Amelie, The Game: One of the finest parts of a Zelda game I've ever played was a level in the little-discussed Four Swords four-player game made for the GameCube. Unusual in that it was multiplayer and broken into levels, it was also odd for having a level in which our hero(es) Link killed no one and nothing. This was a town level that took all of the item-trading and occasional favor-doing that Zelda players had done in previous games and dared to offer a satisfying level composed just of that. Spirit Tracks can, for hours on end, be played in just that way, with Link doing favors for people all around the game's expansive world. Technically these may be fetch quests — bring that ice from snow town to ocean town to chill the lady's fish and bring the kid to the castle town because he desires an adventure. But it's the writing and the clever construction of these quests — plus the ability to stack them by loading your train with supplies and a passenger related to two separate quests — that make this unadvertised element of Spirit Tracks possibly the best thing about the game. The traditionally single-species towns of Zelda games become integrated thanks to your efforts, odd constructions are built thanks to your supplies, and most magically, making people happy, generates new train tracks that lead to surprising hidden destinations. I've never had so much fun being nice in a video game.

The Music: The music the game plays for you — headphones are a must — is magical, diverse and superb, but it surpassed by the game's playable instrument, a pan flute that rivals Ocarina of Time's Ocarina for best interactive instrument. A combination of stylus-pressing and blowing on the DS mic closely mimics the physicality of playing a wind instrument in real life. It feels good (even though it looks a little goofy to bystanders on the subway, I'm sure!).

Her Majesty: The inclusion of Zelda as a partner character for the duration of the game is no mere marketing gimmick. Zelda's companionship makes the well-told story more interesting because her feisty personality enlivens moments that would normally only see the presence of Mr. No Personality, Link. In gameplay she's better, elaborating on the teases of single-player/two-character control that have been dabbled with by Zelda designers since at least the GameCube's Wind Waker. There are moments when the game asks of the player the dexterity of someone who can fight one enemy with two characters, controlling both with a mix of stylus swipes, taps and line-drawing (to denote Zelda's path of attack). No video game has asked for these kinds of hand gymnastics since Square-Enix's The World Ends With You. But this game builds to that complexity with skillful purpose and pacing. The learned ability — the rare instance of a Zelda game asking the player to improve his or her own skills rather than just rely on Link's game-long improvement of his own — is great reward. Why, I can control Zelda, who is pretty much only playable when she is possessing a suit of armor, so well that I can make her do the notorious series-cliche block-pushing puzzles for me by just drawing a few paths for her. That's terrific.

The Dungeons: Words fail in describing the complexity of a Zelda dungeon. But you know a well-designed one when you play one. Those are the only kinds of Zelda dungeons in this game, which includes a handful of main ones, a central one for the Link-Zelda play that is re-visited (without the annoyance of needing to be re-played) throughout the game and many other places that, buried in narrative are essentially mini-dungeons of their own. There are many puzzles, several items and a lot of clever solutions.

Visuals: The game looks better than its DS predecessor, The Phantom Hourglass, probably mostly thanks to rich art design. There is some annoying pop-in that makes it hard to see certain objects ahead of you while you're on the train, but that limitation is compensated for by a top-screen map that has all the info you need. For better or worse, some of the game can even be played with just your eyes on the top-screen map, but it's so tempting to look at the bottom screen because this is, maybe one of five best-looking DS games ever made?

Hated
Lost Princess: There are some technological drawbacks, though. The game's most ambitious dungeons, full of moving characters, force framerate slowdowns than only add to panic when a cool head is needed. Worse, Zelda in her clunky armor does not always waddle over when you call her. Her path-finding in some dungeons has her walking the wrong way and/or into a wall instead of toward Link. Thankfully the player can always assume manual control to overcome this problem.

Bad Reflexes: There are some things done in Zelda games that must be in there only because That's How It Was Always Done. Why must every gem I remove from a treasure chest be accompanied by a message telling me how much it's worth? I get it. And why can't I return to this world after I finish this game? Thankfully a save prompt right before the final battle allows for a post-credits return by the player to the game in its 11th hour, when, I gather, it is still possible to do the generous amount of side-adventuring offered in the game.

Wind Breaker: The game's musical instrument requires the player to blow into the mic. That is the same mic that can pick up sounds. Woe to the person who tries to play the healing song and restore their nearly-dead Link to health during a boss battle while riding in a New York City subway car. The clatter of the real train fools the game into thinking notes are being played. These are the wrong notes. The song isn't played. Link isn't healed. He gets killed. If only there was an option for players in noisy environments. Or I'll just yell: "Quiet everyone! I'm playing Zelda."

I've not described the story or named the new items. I've not detailed a puzzle or described the game's allusions to Ocarina of Time. I've left a lot out because discovery is the fun of a Zelda game. In 2000, Majora's Mask won me over because it took a formula I knew and contorted it, gave extra verve to the types of characters who appear in the series and impressed me with the complex precision of its interactive machinery.

There is a way to play and not like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. The train might be dull for people who don't wait for the designers to get warmed up and who ignore the side quests. The dungeons may well be too hard for some of the DS's newest consumers. This game may not have the broadest of appeals, but if you like Zelda, this is upper-echelon stuff.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks was developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS on December 7. Retails for $34.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played the campaign until the end, but was unable to play the local wireless multiplayer mode, which was not considered for this review. Saved the world in the campaign, of course, and made a few gold dolphins jump.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Released in Japan in late November, the Nintendo DSi XL features 4.2 inch screens that are 93 percent larger than the DS Lite's screens. It is also bundled with an extra (and larger) 5 inch touch pen. The redesign comes at the request of customers who said they wanted a larger screen — however, the pixel count is the same. Nintendo claims that the bigger screens make it easier to watch others play.

The DSi XL is available in three colors: Dark Brown, Wine Red and Natural White. While the handheld has been announced for The West, the colors have not yet been announced. The Japanese version is also packed with three DSiWare titles pre-installed: Two brain training games (one for humanities, the other for sciences) and DS Easy Dictionary.

Loved
The Big Screens: Even though Nintendo is touting the DS XL's screen as making it easier to watch others play, the most refreshing about the new, bigger screens is how they breathe life into old titles. While the graphics are the same, old favorites like Mario Kart look wonderful (and not blown out) running on the XL's screens. The extra size both adds to the experience and creates an entirely new experience. The screen size is also well-suited to younger players who often stare over each other's shoulders when watching a friend play. Brain Age also feels surprisingly fresh on the XL — a larger touch screen means a larger space to write. That, certainly, is a welcome addition.

The Big Pen: The XL's new Touch Pen feels like, well, a pen. The DS Stylus, traditionally, has been on the small size — not so great for games that require writing. To overcome this issue, players have, in the past, had to find third party solutions. For those looking for a larger pen that's easier to grip, the XL has that. But if you are happy with the traditional DS Stylus, the portable is bundled with that as well. The smaller stylus slides into the DSi XL's body, while the larger pen does not.

The Buttons: As with the regular DSi, the buttons are clicky — in a good way. They're responsive and certainly don't feel mushy.

The Finish: The top of part of the DSi XL's clamshell has a glossy, smart finish. Looks great. However, the rest of the portable has a matte finish, making it practical. It's easy to hold and isn't a fingerprint magnet. The contrast works well, too.

Hated
Not So Portable: Yes, yes. The DSi XL is big. That's the point! And while it works great playing it at your kitchen table or sitting on the sofa, it's heavy and less great to lug it around outside of the house.

Nintendo, it often seems, makes reiteration after reiteration of its products. The DSi XL might simply be that — the latest iteration until the next one comes along. As customers, it's hard not to feel that we are directly involved in Nintendo R&D process (more so than with other companies), that the company sometimes releases products just to see if they catch on with consumers (ditto). In Japan, the DSi XL does seem to be catching on as the product posted strong initial sales. The extra large DSi could very well be here to stay — which means that this must be one of the first examples in which a Japanese company has released a bigger version of its products to commercial success.

The larger screens are great. If only Nintendo could shave a bit off the DSi XL's thickness, making a slightly slimmer and lighter DSi XL, if only. DSi XL Slim anyone?

The DSi XL was released in Japan on November 22 for ¥20,000 (US$222). It is scheduled to be released abroad in early 2010. A unit was purchased by Kotaku for review.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Sports sims' increasing complexity and granular game management decisions can be off-putting, even intimidating, to players who just want to wing the ball down the sidelines or blitz the QB. Sometimes even diehards want to play a game without turning it into a film session on Edge NFL Matchup. But stripping a sport down to just its fun parts is risky in its own right. Like, is it still fun?

Loved
Pick Up and Play: Despite its limitations (below) Madden NFL Arcade does a good job of luring you back in for just one more game. The singleplayer games go quickly (although, some multiplayer contests were epic in length), they have all the boring stuff stripped out, and the singleplayer achievements are challenging enough to keep you trying. Even now, I've got 15 minutes to kill before I have to make a phone call and I'm thinking about taking the Patriots out to kick the Browns' ass. Or vice versa. In singleplayer, the ratings are not so overbearing that you can't win with the Lions or Redskins, if they're your favorite teams (and God help you if they are, but that's beside the point.) Online, you'll have to resort to cheese and dirty tricks to win with lesser teams, but that's in real Madden too. Bottom line, Madden NFL Arcade is video game potato chips; even if they aren't my favorite flavor, put a bowl in front of me and I'm a-scarfin'.

Hated
Lack of Variety: Madden NFL Arcade succeeds at delivering a uncomplicated shootout-style football game akin to what you play in the backyard, but doesn't go much further than that. While I don't need a full playbook, two sets of passing routes per play is not enough, and the deep pass fly patterns are too easily defended. The game just begs for hot routes or an audible to a basic run or pass. Just give me one play I can put in at the line of scrimmage. The cartoony players are built on three body types, some looking a little out of character. Colts safety Bob Sanders (5-8, 206) gets a linebacker's tank body but Ravens safety Ed Reed (5-11, 200) looks like Merton Hanks, giraffe-neck and all. The game-changers are a nice touch but two of them, which do nothing more than slow down or speed up the players, are unimaginative, mostly useless, sometimes even helpful to the offense if called by a defense. The rosters, ratings and team attributes are all built on beginning-0f-the-year models from the full Madden title, so Cincinnati, a division leader in real life, is a weak team in the game. Finally, the game begs for stats. Somewhere, even if it's just a boxscore. If this game's supposed to inspire trash talk, stats - beyond your multiplayer win-loss - are necessary.

Game Changers: I wanted to like these, but the gimmick really under-delivers. I won more with playcalling and execution than I did doing things like freezing a defender (or receiver), turning off someone's passing icons or assuring their ballcarrier fumbles when he's hit. The game randomly selects a game-changer cheat for you each play (or gives you nothing), which you may hold over until you really need it (the extra-play for fourth down, for example). You don't get a changer on every down, which is good, but the rotation over-seeds the more useless ones, doesn't bring up bona fide game changers often enough, and the ones that are valuable are useful only in very specific situations (fourth down, or inside the red zone for "make-it take-it.") You can turn the game changers on or off; I would have liked greater control over how many and what quality you get. Sure, against a computer, you don't want to flipflop the score every other down, but among friends, bombing each other with douche moves would add some good-natured spite and revenge to the bragging-rights contest.

Madden NFL Arcade is not boring but it does come off a little bland at times. You've got cartoon players performing the same animations of the real-world sim, for example, and it could really benefit from a little more zaniness, especially in the hitting. For those who want to play some chuck-and-duck football without setting aside time for an hourlong game or learning the finer points of an offense, it'll satisfy your gridiron cravings. Potato chips are a snack; a cupcake is a treat. Madden NFL Arcade is a football snack.

Madden NFL Arcade was developed by EA Sports and published by Electronic Arts for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on Nov. 25. Retails for 1200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live Marketplace, $14.99 on PlayStation Network. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played about three dozen games, single and multiplayer, on varying difficulty settings using multiple NFL teams. Shut out the Patriots with the Lions. OK, that one was on rookie difficulty.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Canabalt is a game of escape, a simple, one-action platformer that—from a gameplay perspective—is little more than careful jumping, an accelerated sprint across rooftops, through windows and over tower cranes. As the highwater pants-wearing star of Canabalt, a black and white escapee with impressive stamina, players must avoid obstacles that can slow their sprint and bombs that will turn them into a fine mist as they run away from... something. Players must also avoid running face first into a wall and plummeting to their death.

There's a free Flash version of Canabalt and an iPhone port available through the iTunes App Store. Canabalt is worth playing, but is it also worth buying? (Yes, but humor me and read the review anyway, OK?)

Loved
The Best Graphics Six Colors Can Buy: Canabalt's minimal graphics don't skimp on atmosphere. From the smoothly animated runner, to the hulking monstrosities in the distant background, to the little touches, like the shatter of windows and rooftops lined with doves, the game's simple presentation does well in telling a more interesting story. There's no narrative to speak of, but Canabalt's high-altitude world gives an impression of a fascinating sci-fi disaster happening around you.

The Maximum Awesome Effect: The iPhone version of the game prefaces the experience with "For maximum awesome, headphones recommended." That's good advice, because Canabalt's attention to detail in the sound department deserves proper attention. When the game's catchy, high energy electronic soundtrack takes a pause and turns to a moody whine, the player can hear the plink of footsteps on metal, the quiet grunts of the protagonist's exertion as he jumps from building to building. The sudden sounds of bombs dropping and alien ships zooming by make the rooftop-to-rooftop action that much more tension filled. Canabalt simply sounds spectacular.

Gaming By The Minute: The Flash game is a fine distraction from doing real work. The nearly identical iPhone app is just as addictive of a diversion, offering two-minutes and under opportunities to play a video game, a brief opportunity to improve one's Canabalt run—then brag about their score on Twitter—when the moment strikes.

Canabalt's a straightforward, simple action game with an impressive presentation that belies its hasty creation. It's incredibly short and offers no ultimate goal other than extending the length of your daring escape. And despite its brevity and its sometimes frustrating randomness, it's the iPhone game I've dedicated the most time to in 2009 due to its incredibly addictive appeal and sharp visual design. There's always another escape attempt, just a tap (or click) away.

Canabalt was developed and published by Semi Secret Software iPhone on October 2. Retails for $2.99 USD for iPhone and can be played in a web browser for free. Attempted too many daring escapes to recall, but maxed out at 3600 meters. (Wait, just played again and reached 4225 meters.)

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

Small games don't often get a lot of critical attention. Nor do free ones. But don't ignore the work of David Shute, who made a game called Small Worlds that is small and free but also spiritually in sync with some of the urges that drive gamers to play much more expensive games.

Small Worlds is his recent browser game, one that, as much as Shadow Complex did or a new Metroid might, scratches the need I and so many other gamers have to explore a 2D video game world. Knowing the unknown doesn't get much purer than this.

Loved
The Magic Of Discovery - I couldn't put it cornier, but, yes, the "magic of discovery" is what makes Small Worlds a wonderful 20 minutes of one's life. You control a small person (?) who is all of a few pixels tall, can run and can jump. The game begins with a zoomed-in view of your character, dabbed in front of a pixelated landscape of equal ambiguity. The surroundings are dark. But as you make this man or woman run and jump, as you explore the nooks and crannies of his or her path-finding possibilities, the camera zooms out and the image of this small world begins to sharpen. It is a science base, perhaps, that we are inside? Or a spaceship? Or, in another level, we're at the foot of waterfalls, walking over to see that we're also at a cliff? There are sites to see and jumps to figure out. But there's nothing to shoot and no powers to gain, no coins to collect and no stats to improve. Failure is reaching a dead end and having to turn around. Progress is discovering that the next gap, just a few pixels wide, is narrow enough for a successful jump. Over there, there's something shiny. Something to walk to. And a new world awaits.

The Power Of Pixels: We live in an era thankfully past the automatic discarding of older video game art styles. Makers of Small Worlds and Pictobits and, I'm sure, other games, have seen a beauty to a world made of square that hints at what it is and can be composed of, block by block. To be back in a pixelated world is to have a part of one's gaming imagination reawakened, the part that could see Mario's personality through a cycling of 8-bit marks. We're back there with Small Worlds or, if you're younger and luckier, maybe this is the first trip for you.

The Ease Of Exploring: This game can be played with just one hand on the arrow keys, making it feel — to use a word in a way it is seldom used in gaming — casual. There is an ease to playing a game that can be manipulated with the twiddle of pointer finger and middle finger, and that ease fits perfectly with a game about the low-stress, enemy-free wandering through an imaginative place.

Small Worlds is a snowglobe of a game, a brief delight that seems to work almost as if by magic. It asks for a little more from the player than a good shake, but not much. It's a game you'd be hard-pressed to lose and one, if you have the curiosity to peek into some darkness, you would be hard-pressed to dislike.

Small Worlds was developed by David Shute in Flash for Internet browsers. Music by Kevin Macleod. Play the game for free here. Played through the whole game. All of it!

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

Tropico 3 is the third game in a series that tasks you with assuming control of small, tropical islands then building the most benevolent (or malevolent) regime you can manage with the limited resources at hand. While the second game shifted emphasis to the age of pirates, this one takes us back to the age of Batista and the Cold War.

Can Tropico 3 lead its people into a new era of peace and prosperity? Or will it be taken out back and shot with the rest of the revolutionary pigs?

Loved
It's Good To Be The King - I've got to say, having never played a Tropico game before, I love the premise. It sounds completely uninteresting, but there's a reason power-mad little men are always fighting for total control over small Latin American countries: it's fun. Or, at least, these games make it fun, somehow glossing over the nastier aspects of totalitarian rule, and whatever is left, brushing it off with a smile and a wink.

Hands-On Rule - In Tropico 3, you're not some ethereal presence, hovering over the land as a mouse pointer. You're given an avatar - which can be suitably customised with big hats, cigars and medals - who can wander around the countryside on foot or in a limo, inspiring the people to do things faster/better. It's a shame more strategy games don't do this, as it's nice to see your rule given a little on-screen representation outside a collection of statistics.

Zeitgeist - Like I said, Tropico makes the Cold War fun. But it also does a good job of basing both its tone and indeed core gameplay on the politics of the time. The entire game hinges on your ability to interact with the US and Soviet Union, and having to both manage your daily affairs and keep the superpowers happy adds a nice piece of context to your actions.

Simlish - I'm often intimidated by strategy titles that have you rule your kingdom/land via numbers and sliders. Tropico still does this, but the way it provides feedback is a big help, taking the route of more recent SimCity titles and making each inhabitant a personality, who will tell you how hungry they are, what their job situation is like, etc. Seeing angry mobs forming on street corners, or groups of workers trudging off happily to the banana plantation, is a much better way of presenting the workings of your government than raw numbers.

Hated
The Garden Path - With a big strategy game like this, you need a good tutorial. Problem is, Tropico 3's is too good to start with, then not good enough for the more complicated matters of state. It could have done with smaller training wheels, but leaving them on a little longer.

Click & Miss - Tropico is a fully 3D game. No grids or tiles here. Which leads to problems laying down roads and buildings, as quite often the game seems to delight in refusing to link up two perfectly compatible pieces of road, or in letting you place a building on a perfectly flat piece of ground. So, yeah, the actual process of enacting your will can be a little hit-and-miss.

Shut Up - To update you on the status of your people and your island, you'll continually be interrupted by DJ Juanito, telling you this, telling you that, all in the most grating voice an actor could possibly manage. If only the game had an option to have the man shot.

Tropico 3 won't be to everyone's tastes, sure; at the end of the day, it's still a "proper" strategy game, requiring you to juggle resources, micromanage the economy and make sweeping diplomatic decisions. But the way the game wraps all that up and personifies it, immersing you not just in the stats but in the world, also makes it one of the more accessible and presentable games in the genre.

While it's a little rough around the edges, Tropico 3 is a game you can't help but be impressed with, its vision, black humour, originality and sole tenancy over a gratifying niche outweighing any issues you may have with the game's learning curve or interface.

NOTE: Throughout the month of December, Kotaku will review some of the games that we missed earlier in the year. We're catching up.

Tropico 3 was developed by Haemimont Games, and published by Kalypso Media for the PC (version played) and Xbox 360. Released on October 20 on PC, and on February 2, 2010 on Xbox 360. Retails for $40. Played all 15 "missions", and spent considerable time in sandbox mode. Smoked two cigars, had countless dissidents shot, and consumed several glasses of expensive French brandy.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

NVIDIA's 3D Vision Glasses use today's advanced technology to deliver two different images to your two different eyes, creating the illusion of depth. How this works is rather simple. The monitor runs at 120 Hz, delivering two sets of images at 60 Hz each. The glasses contain an extremely precise shutter that alternates the images your eyes see. It's like old red and blue 3D, which uses color filters to achieve the same effect, only much more technical and much more expensive to pull off. Using this stereoscopic method, the glasses deliver a 3D effect to a large selection of PC, without the games needing to be designed with 3D in mind.

The 3D Vision Glasses kit comes with a pair of glasses which can be charged via USB to provide up to 40 hours of playtime, and an infrared receiver that communicates between your PC and your eyewear, telling the shutters in each lens when to open and close.

Hardcore PC gamers enjoy being on the cutting edge of technology, but with some rather steep hardware requirements, are the 3D Vision Glasses cutting too deep?

Loved
Almost Like Being There: The differences between running your average game normally and with the 3D Vision glasses on is night and day. Describing it to someone who hasn't seen it before is difficult. A certain sense of depth is added to the monitor, creating the illusion that you could look behind objects in the game simply by turning your head. Rather than being pasted over your game, HUD objects seem as if they are floating in front of your face as part of an actual heads-up display. In a game like World of Warcraft, ground cover looks like it is really jutting out of the ground.

I could go on for paragraphs giving examples that won't mean anything to someone who hasn't experienced the technology. Perhaps the best reference I can give is a Viewmaster. You know how the Viewmaster toy made flat animation cells look as if they were layered? That's exactly what NVIDIA's 3D Vision does to your computer screen.

The effect takes a certain amount of getting used to, and you'll find yourself adjusting the depth slider on the base frequently as your eyes adjust to seeing in stereoscopic 3D, but once you find your sweet spot it can greatly enhance your gameplay experience.

A Good Fit: My first thought when I found out I would be reviewing a pair of 3D glasses was, "What about my own glasses?" I'm blind without my specs, so I was afraid that the 3D Vision glasses would be next to useless on my giant, bespectacled head. In my instance at least, this wasn't the case. The glasses fit somewhat comfortably over my glasses, and NVIDIA provided extra rubber bridges to accommodate all sizes of noses. Sure, I look completely ridiculous, but that's why I game inside with the curtains drawn.

Strong Support: NVIDIA's official compatibility list contains more than 300 games tested and approved for use with the 3D Vision technology, and I sampled about a half-dozen or so from the various categories of support - excellent, good, and fair. Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Resident Evil 5 all performed without a hitch, and the experience was relatively smooth with each game I played. I even played a few that weren't on the list with varying degrees of success. Aion, for instance, looked amazing, but had a tendency to crash when running in 3D. Still, you always have the option to turn 3D off, and NVIDIA is constantly updating the drivers.

Hated
The Price: Viewing your games in stereoscopic 3D isn't cheap. The base NVIDIA Geforce 3D Vision kit, which comes with the glasses themselves, the IR receiver, and cords needed to connect it to your PC or HDTV, runs $199. Not much considering how much a hardcore PC gamer can spend on their rig, but then you have to take into account your video card, which has to be a higher-end NVIDIA card, adding at least another $100 to the mix. Then you're going to need a monitor or HDTV capable of running at 120 Hz, and that can get pretty expensive. NVIDIA sells a bundle that comes with a 22 inch Samsung monitor for $598. Whether or not seeing games in 3D is worth that much is completely up to you.

Headaches: After about an hour of using the 3D Vision glasses my head starts to throb, and after two hours it starts to pound. This could just be how my eyes react to seeing this way - I do have a rather severe astigmatism in one eye - but it is enough of a problem that NVIDIA addresses it in the FAQ for the product. Adjusting the depth as suggested on NVIDIA's site helped somewhat, but I'm still wary of using the glasses for extended play.

While the NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Glasses will certainly have a profound effect on how you view your PC games, they won't really affect how you play your games. Seeing other players popping off the screen in Call of Duty didn't stop them from killing me where I stood again and again. They simply looked better doing it. With benefits that are strictly aesthetic and a rather exorbitant price when you take hardware requirements into consideration, the 3D Vision glasses are purely luxury objects.

With that in mind, are they luxury objects we'd recommend? If you've got the spare money floating around and are looking for a PC gaming experience like no other then by all means, pick up a pair, but I'd suggest giving the 3D Vision glasses a lengthy test run before you invest, lest you wind up with some very expensive headaches.

The NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Glasses were developed and released by NVIDIA. Basic Kit retails for $199.99. A kit with Samsung monitor was supplied by the manufacturer for reviewing purposes. Used glasses while playing Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, Aion, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Resident Evil 5, and various other supported PC games for varying periods of time.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The draw in The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned are new locations in which to adventure, loot and shoot, plus new enemy types of the zombie variety at which to shoot. The downloadable expansion brings with it a new suite of missions and a new, self-contained story about Dr. Ned and his beastly creations. And did we mention zombies?

Does the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned expand the Borderlands experience enough to warrant a download? Or is this new content just death warmed over?

Loved
Loot Goons, Wereskags & Tankensteins: While much of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is teeming with slightly more rotting versions of the psychos and midget psychos Borderlands players are no doubt familiar with, the new area is home to many a unique species. Some of these, like the vomit-spewing Defiler and charging Tankenstein, while unapologetic in their unoriginality, will require new tactics to combat and present a noticeable challenge for higher level characters. Others, like the dexterous Wereskag, explosive Suicide Zombie and lootable Loot Goon just add welcome variety to the mix of new things to shoot. The rest of the stuff, the rank and file undead, are merely cannon fodder, but perfect for going after those killstreak chain challenges.

Hated
Location, Location, Location: During my playthrough of the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, not once did I come across a vehicle or "Fast Travel" teleportation beacon, ensuring that one of my prime complaints about Borderlands—its excessive foot-based travel and reliance on frequent map-checking—was still an annoyance. While the valleys of death the player must walk through are attractive, a moody change of scenery from the bright and arid Badlands, the expansion's go here, fetch this, cash in tedium is the same as it ever was.

Where'd All Those Brains Go? You'll harvest zombie brains throughout the game. Who knows how many I'd collected over the five to six hours worth of scouring Dr. Ned's island of the undead? Probably hundreds, considering how many headshots I'd accumulated. Too bad that at near the end of the downloadable episode's experience, when I need all those brains for a particular mission, my stock of brains was a whopping zero. And speaking of brains, the enemy AI is just as artificially brain-dead as ever, with path-finding issues making two of the game's more voluminous bosses—including the final final boss—a joke to take down.

The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a fine addition from a content perspective, offering a gigabyte sized slice of Pandora to explore and exterminate. If more of Borderlands' addictive brand of gameplay is what you're looking for—now with more of those zombies the kids are so crazy about—this downloadable episode should suit your needs.

What the downloadable content is lacking is anything substantive beyond that. There's no adjustment to the level cap, so anyone looking to grind on zombie flesh will rack up experience points that go nowhere beyond level 50. While the content is fresh and probably worth the ten dollar ticket to get to Dr. Ned's island, don't expect much beyond reanimated, recycled corpse looting.

Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned was developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on November 24. Retails for $9.99 USD. A download code was given to us by the developer for reviewing purposes. Completed all story missions and bounties on Xbox 360 with the exception of the extended "Braaaaaaaaaains!" series of missions.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.