Pandemic Studios set about making a different sort of World War II game with The Saboteur, and it is decidedly different. Whether than being a small part of a bigger war, you are a force for change, bringing color back into the cheeks of Paris.

How could mixing together elements of Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, and THQ's De Blob with bare breasts not result in a runaway hit? Let's ask the assembled video game critics of the internets.

Total Video Games
Just when you thought comedy Nazis had left videogames forever, EA pulls them back in. We're talking about the sort of Nazis who run around with a flamethrower shouting, "There iz die Saboteur! Ve must get him!" while wearing an unlikely combination of a trench coat and gas mask. Although this archetype is getting a little old now (in fact, pretty much the only time it's been entertaining is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Blackadder, and 'Allo 'Allo!), life would be fairly depressing if you couldn't mock the most evil people in history once in a while, and what better way to do this than with a Celtic protagonist called Sean Devlin?

Giant Bomb
Though set in World War II—more specifically, the Nazi occupation of Paris—The Saboteur is notable for, if nothing else, foregoing the reverent tone most WWII games assume. This isn't Saving Private Ryan; this is more like The Great Escape by way of Inglorious Basterds. This is a two-fisted tale of revenge about an Irish mechanic-turned-race-car-driver named Sean Devlin whose vendetta against a diabolical Nazi officer—the same man that both cheated him out of his first race victory and murdered his best friend right before his eyes—puts him in league with the Parisian underworld, comely cabaret girls, and the French Resistance. It's got an odd tone to it, and the game sometimes has a hard time juggling the tough-talkin' Devlin's personal angst, his multiple femme fatale love interests, his role within the Resistance, and all of the war-time business that actually propels the story forward. The story doesn't pack as much of a punch as it could have, but it sets an appropriate mood for the improbable craziness Sean gets up to.

GameSpot
The story may not be able to decide if it wants to be goofy or serious, but the intriguing atmosphere definitely adds to the experience. The depression and fear cast on the city by the occupying forces are expressed visually through striking black and white backdrops. The buildings and roads in the Nazi-controlled sections of the city have a bleak, suffocating feel, making your actions to free these areas carry more weight. The most interesting aspect of this art design is the way in which color is carefully placed. During cutscenes, a scarf on the person Sean is speaking to may be drenched in shocking blue, standing out brilliantly against the dire background. Action scenes are even more impressive, using the orange flash of a gunshot or the glowing red of spilled Nazi blood to create a dazzling look. When you finally kick those evil Nazis out of parts of the city, the color comes flooding back, giving you a visual reward for your hard-fought progress. Ironically, the colored sections don't look nearly as impressive as the black and white areas, although the pristine countryside is a pleasure to take a leisurely drive through. Just make sure you don't hit any cows. They explode as if filled with dynamite, which could ruin your mood.

Game Informer
The Saboteur isn't afraid to borrow concepts from its contemporaries. An amalgamation of the open world sandbox of Grand Theft Auto, the chaotic freeplay of Crackdown, the climbing of Assassin's Creed, and the zipline and rooftop traversal of Infamous, the game wears its influences on its sleeve. While these game mechanics work, like the French resistance they seem to have been done on the cheap. The sluggish car controls seemingly turn on an axis in the middle of the vehicle, which takes practice to master. Climbing frustratingly requires you to jam on the A button for each movement up the building. The gunplay has a sketchy auto cover system and the weaponry lacks the punch of more visceral shooters.

Gaming Nexus
The one thing that made The Saboteur feel less smooth than it could have been was the controls. Especially when climbing or hitting an action button, the response wasn't where I would have liked it to be. Part of my problem with the controls might also be due to how cluttered they are. For instance, to activate your various modes of fighting (brawl, sneaking) you have to hit either the left trigger or left button (PS3 controls). Then a combination of the d-pad buttons while still hitting the button/trigger will perform a specific action within that mode. To fire a weapon, you'll have to equip your gun of choice and then use the left button to aim and the right button to fire. Perhaps it's my hastiness when there's a showdown with the Nazis, but mixing up the buttons always blew my cover and had me outrunning the dreadful red zone on my map.

Kotaku
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.

Steady as she goes

Spirit Tracks takes place in the future of the Wind Waker timeline, utilizing the same sort of cel-shaded graphics that everyone complained about in the Gamecube title but have learned to love in the subsequent Nintendo DS outings. While Link is escorting the Princess Zelda aboard his train in order to investigate disturbances with the titular Spirit Tracks - chains that bind the evil Demon Lord in his earthly prison, the pair is attacked. Zelda's body is stolen, and so her spirit and our hero must team up to rescue her flesh and keep the evil overlord from escaping.

Yes, yes, we know all of this. How does it play? All aboard for game critics' junction!

Teletext GameCentral
The idea that an interest in trains is the most socially unacceptable hobby imaginable is a concept largely limited to the UK. However, being forced to tour Hyrule on a magic train is really only a surface issue in what is probably the most disappointing Zelda of modern times. Although as ever with Nintendo, disappointment doesn't mean the game itself isn't of the highest quality.

GameSpot
You can control only Link and Zelda in the Tower of Spirits, an area you'll have to visit several times to gain new maps that open up spirit tracks to different parts of the gameworld. Phantom Hourglass veterans who are worried that the Tower of Spirits is simply another name for the annoying Ocean Temple in that earlier game needn't fear; while you'll make multiple trips to the Tower of Spirits, the repetition and the time limits of the Ocean Temple have been done away with. You won't ever need to repeat the same levels. Outside of the Tower of Spirits and its dual Link-Zelda mechanic, Spirit Tracks plays similarly to most other adventures in the series. You'll venture into a multilevel dungeon, obtain a new weapon, and then use that new weapon to defeat a powerful boss creature at the end of that dungeon.

NintendoWorldReport
Our hero uses a train to get around the world, and the whole point of the game is to reinvigorate the Spirit Tracks, which are torn apart at the game's outset. The train traversal starts off slow, but as you progress more wrinkles are added. First you get a cannon to attack enemies, and then you learn that you can search for rabbits to return to an eccentric man in a rabbit suit (or an eccentric rabbit who looks like a man. I can't really tell), and about halfway through the game you learn that you can customize your train with different cars. The train controls are easy and intuitive. You control the speed with a switch, tap on the screen to fire your cannon, and drag the stylus around the screen to change your view. Like the regular controls, sometimes the on-screen icons get in the way, but it doesn't happen often enough in the train segments to become a large issue.

GameFocus
Combat in Spirit Tracks is identical to that of Phantom Hourglass in that everything is controlled using your stylus and the touch screen. For those who played through the first DS Zelda game, you will feel right at home. There are also a lot of interesting items you will obtain along the way, including a cool Whirlwind instrument and a whip shaped like a snake. The dungeons themselves have also improved greatly over the last game, offering a good mix of fun action and challenge.

IGN
Spirit Tracks is never dull, it's never boring, but it does border on monotonous at times, and while there's always strong writing, beautiful music, and new locales to experience, the designers seem to revel in sending you on ping pong quests, bouncing you from location to location to solve otherwise mudane tasks. Want to get to the fire temple? Tough break, kid: there's a lava river in the way. Don't worry, you're just a five minute drive to the ice village where ice can be made to cool the lava. That is, you can make ice after you take somebody from the ice village to the forest where fresh water can be found; don't want to be making dirty ice. Delivered him there? Nice! Come back later and you can get the ice. Go kill some time. Oh, you made it back to the fire world with the ice? Congrats, it's time to move on. Unless you want to do it all over again in a side quest, that is.

Kotaku
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.

One day they'll make a really bad Zelda game so we can use the phrase "Link dump"

Tony Hawk Ride is the latest installment of the storied Tony Hawk skateboarding video game franchise, given new life by developer Robomodo with the inclusion of a plastic skateboard controller. How could such a concept fail? Read on.

Giant Bomb
There's a good idea at the center of Tony Hawk: RIDE. Attempting to make some sort of peripheral-based skateboarding game is a neat idea, and one that, if the peripheral were robust enough, could result in some sort of faux-skating experience that approximates the real thing in a way that's accessible to non-skaters without being completely offensive to anyone who's ever pulled an ollie. But everything about Tony Hawk: RIDE, from the game's structure to the skateboard hardware itself, is an absolute mess that feels incapable of pleasing anyone, regardless of his or her skill level.

Games Radar
Instead of using a huge piece of expensive plastic to enhance what could have been a pretty awesome Tony Hawk game, the development team chose to tailor the entire game around a huge piece of expensive plastic. The result is a gimmicky-as-hell title that's certainly not a step forward for the franchise, as much as it tries to be. The sturdy, wheel-less skateboard peripheral that serves as the sole means of input for Ride is a deceptive beast. It's hefty, looks sleek, and just feels right – at least before you sync it up and start trying to "skate" on it.

IGN
The more you play, the more you'll also begin to notice that the physics and collision detection aren't up to speed – I once watched my skater go straight through the wall of a half-pipe and then fall through the world. Other times you'll watch your skater's head slide right through a cement wall. The camera has plenty of difficulties, too, once you take the game off of the casual rails. Ride simply lacks the polish that is necessary to match the hardcore controls. All of these things are problems that would absolutely not fly in past Tony Hawk games, and they're more than enough to make any serious gamer walk away.

Game Informer
Totally rad skaters can use the hardcore mode, which ditches the rails and lets you skate your heart out. Developer Robomodo added the ability to loosen or tighten the steering, but in the end, trying to skate a planned line requires so much focus and concentration you'd be hard-pressed to find some fun along the way. Instead, the reward is usually a quick, painful faceplant into a wall.

GameZone
What makes this game so dynamic is obviously the controller. It gives the game a brand new vibe and feel and elevates the enter genre. In 2009, Activision introduced a couple of new controllers – one for DJ Hero and the board for RIDE. Of the two, the board will have the biggest impact and may well become a staple for other games to build off. But more importantly, the board takes the Tony Hawk franchise to a new audience – the entire family. This is no longer about fast fingers on a controller, but it is a decent workout (you may break a sweat playing the game and you will feel it in your legs) but this is a game that will appeal to the younger members of the family as well as the older ones.

Kotaku
During one of my play sessions with Tony Hawk: Ride, my girlfriend looked up from her random knitting and said, "It's a pity you can't play it with the regular controller. It looks fun." For me, that simple statement sums up everything that is wrong with the game. Ride is a game built completely around a plastic skateboard controller that doesn't come close to getting the job done. Since the board is required to play, it drags everything else down with it-the integrity of the Tony Hawk franchise included.

Just going to sit here quietly, rocking back and forth

Assassin's Creed II picks up where the first game left off, with assassin descendent Desmond Miles once again delving into his genetic memories to explore the life of another white-clad killer. It's bigger, deeper, and more ambitious than the original game by far, but those aren't always good things, are they?

Let's see how the Templar game critics feel.

Giant Bomb
Assassin's Creed II has a bit more to offer those already familiar with the high-concept intricacies of the original, where you played as a bold and highly serious young assassin named Altair living in the Holy Land during the Crusades. Although, really you were playing as Desmond Miles, an average every-man strapped into a genetic memory machine called the Animus. Locked-up in a high-security facility, Desmond was forced to play through this whole Altair scenario by a high-tech, ultramodern, and exceedingly diabolical order of Templars, who are searching through history for clues concerning some ancient artifacts of supernatural power that they hope to use to end their centuries-spanning war with those do-gooder Assassins. If all this premise is just whizzing clean over your head, you may want to read up before jumping in here. Assassin's Creed II makes some token effort to catch up new players, but after a quick summary reel, it picks right back up from the final shot of the first Assassin's Creed and doesn't look back.

VideoGamer.com
As in the 2007 game, Assassin's Creed 2 takes place in numerous open cities, with large swathes of countryside to explore in-between. Being set in Italy, you've obviously got brand new locations to visit, including Venice (complete with row-able boats), Florence, Romagna and Tuscany. Each is stunningly reproduced here, with even more attention to detail than in the still beautiful original. Hundreds of civilians go about their business, guards patrol the streets and roof tops, and, more importantly, each place is packed with things to do. There is a core series of storyline missions to play through, but these only represent a portion of what's on offer. Ezio is even more nimble than Altair, so he's more than up to the job of climbing the numerous towering buildings scattered about each city. Reaching the top of marked 'viewpoints' will reveal a hidden part of the map, simultaneously unlocking new missions.

PSM3
In all this game is 30 hours long and (unlike the original) very little of it feels like filler. Even the traditionally mundane side-quests, like letter deliveries, are spiced up by AC2's characters and scenarios. Want an example? One of the first courier missions sees you delivering letters for Casanova (who looks like an old letch) to rich ladies who have been put under armed guard by their fathers. Again, these little incidentals really give you the feeling that everything in Assassin's Creed 2 is there for a reason. There's no sloppiness or dead weight. In fact, there's often more going on than might first meet the eye.

Game Informer
Combat features strong new additions like disarming techniques and an expanded array of weapons. Countering and special kills remain a blast, and the new techniques and weapons make defensive fighting more enjoyable than ever. However, enemy AI is often questionable; guards will stand and stare without attacking for too long or ignore you completely when they're fighting your allies. In addition, I'd love to see a more engaging way to handle attacks initiated by the player. Most enemies auto-block any frontal assaults, so it's hard to bust out into a flurry of motion to take them down. The combat is still thrilling, but it needs some work to stand toe-to-toe with the best action games.

Games Radar

Kotaku
The level of craft and care evident in the creation of Assassin's Creed 2 - to say nothing of the level of obsession with conspiracy - is on par with those of the creators of the Metal Gear Solid series. This is big budget with polish. This is technology put in the service of artistry. Climbing and killing might wear thin by the end of the next game if the current formula of Assassin's Creed is maintained, but given the willingness of the series' creators to think and execute boldly that is evident in this sequel, complacency and obviousness are two things for which Assassin's Creed is little at risk.

Right on target

It's a year after the release of Left 4 Dead, and the zombie invasion has made its way South, where a different breed of survivors wait to take them on. Survivors not afraid to pick up a baseball bat and knock some heads around. It's not just the location and the cast that's changed either, with new game modes to keep the infected and not-yet-infected occupied until help arrives.

Is this the sort of peril the assembled game reviewers would launch themselves into?

GameTrailers
Just like the first, the general premise of the game is to brave the oncoming horde of undead in the hopes of making it to each level's safe house. How you'll make it to the end, as well as what measure of difficulty you'll contend with, is largely decided by the director: the game's all-powerful, all-knowing A.I. Depending on your performance, the director will affect certain factors like weapon placement, item spawns, and the much-dreaded crescendo events. All of this, and much more, factors into Left 4 Dead 2's brutal algorithms. Big parts of the level layouts and even weather conditions change every time you play through a level, resulting in a different experience each time.

GameDaily
This time around, you'll play as four different characters: Coach, Ellis, Nick and Rochelle. Each controls exactly the same, but their unique stories add depth to their personalities. Valve also mixed things up with five episodes set in the Deep South: Dead Center ("Prices aren't the only things getting slashed."), Dark Carnival ("You must be this tall... TO DIE!"), Swamp Fever ("The only cure is dying."), The Parish ("This time it all goes south.") and Hard Rain ("Come hell and high water."). All of them feature the same final objective (make a last stand until help arrives), but the detailed scenery sets each one apart. Dark Carnival, for instance, not only takes place in a monster-infested amusement park, but also sports a final mission where you must battle zombies at a rock concert, complete with fireworks and music. Another, Dead Center, challenges you to navigate a shopping mall and eventually pour gas into a racecar to make your getaway, while scores of enemies pour through the entrances.

Eurogamer
Those already expecting new, high-contrast locations and graphical themes wrapped around refined gameplay may still be shocked by the bold changes to the structure of the five campaigns we get this time. Dead Center sets the tone, with an escape from a burning building, a rush to re-supply an entrenched caffeine addict, and a finale that is still built around a siege like the ones in the first game, but which requires you to gather petrol cans to fuel a car rather than simply surviving waves of attack.The others go further. Hard Rain sees you fighting through a town one way and then fighting back through the same locations as a violent thunderstorm floods them.

Game Informer
Littered across each new setting are brand-new saliva-inducing melee weapons like the katana and frying pan. You have not experienced ghoul-gibbing bliss until you've been bum rushed by infected and spun in a circle while wielding a chainsaw. Melee weapons fit so naturally into L4D2 that you'll wonder how you ever managed the first game without them. Other useful items and firearms equally expand gameplay. Use a defibrillator on a fallen friend, pump yourself with adrenaline for a life-saving speed boost when you're in the red, or throw a vial of boomer bile at a charging tank and laugh with twisted delight as nearby zombies tear it to shreds. The standard weapon types of shotgun, automatic, and sniper rifle now feature a broader variety with unique characteristics as well. All these additions combined with the brand new grenade launcher allow your band of survivors to methodically customize your strategy like never before.

1UP
Then there are all the little details. Pipe bomb explosions now create a satisfying spray of ragdolls. The individual infected suffer wounds to different locations on their bodies, with visible differences resulting from various caliber firearms, or large gashes in the case of bladed melee weapons. Alarmed cars are more randomized, along with paths through certain areas. Finally, game modes like scavenge provide a quick and furious multiplayer option for when you don't have a whole hour to kill.

Kotaku
...if you didn't care for the original Left 4 Dead's brand of multiplayer mayhem, Left 4 Dead 2 won't do much to change your mind. Me? I did care for the original Left 4 Dead, deeply, playing more of that game than any other this year. Left 4 Dead 2 brings with it the same high quality, the same barebones storytelling and, at its core, the same intense competitive and cooperative gameplay. But that gameplay has been heavily tweaked, radically changing and improving the experience for the Left 4 Dead veteran, offering a unique environment in which to get infected all over again.
Dead sexy...

Old-school charm can only get you so far, or can it? New Super Mario Bros. Wii puts that notion to the test, upgrading classic Mario gameplay with support for four players at once, throwing in a few new power-ups, and letting gamers and their friends go to town on an all-new adventure that seems amazingly familiar.

Is this a whole new experience? Is it old, but in a good way? The assembled video game critics help us figure that out.

Games Radar
Startling fact: this is the first traditional Mario game to appear on a console since 1991's Super Mario World. That's a huge burden to bear, as this is the exact type of game that transformed Nintendo into the worldwide juggernaut it is today. With such a grand legacy to live up to, we expected New Super Mario Bros Wii to exemplify Nintendo's creativity and unrivaled skill, but despite "New" being right there in the title, we honestly feel this is the least inspired entry to date.

Giant Bomb
With this product, Nintendo is simply reselling your childhood to you in a way that's playable on its latest hardware. Or, if you're still a child, it's doing the Disney thing by repacking its history in ways that are still palatable. By modernizing some bits around the edges, this doesn't feel like some kind of cheap rehash or shameless cash-in. By giving you more control over the characters via the additional jumping moves and power-ups like the ice flower, which lets you freeze enemies into blocks of ice that you can then stand on, the game provides a path for players who want to play with reckless abandon, holding down the run button at all times and just doing everything they can to stay alive during a mad break for the finish line.

GameSpot
You'll need to dig deep and mine whatever experience you have with previous Mario offerings because New Super Mario Bros. Wii is by far the most challenging game in the series for many years (certainly more so than New Super Mario Bros. on the DS or Super Mario Galaxy). It starts off innocuously enough, but by the start of the second world, things get noticeably more difficult. It doesn't let up as you make your way through to the fiery eighth world and a particularly epic Bowser boss battle. It's a welcome challenge because despite the fact that you'll no doubt lose plenty of lives and at times be tempted to throw the Wii Remote in frustration, the game never feels cheap, thanks to its consistently outstanding level design.

Destructoid
While the entire game can be played as solo Mario, this is the first Mario game that will allow you to play cooperatively with up to four players. Whether or not this is a blast or completely frustrating is mostly up to the player and his or her partners. In some cases, four players on the screen makes the game slightly more difficult. The camera will pan back, and it's easy to lose yourself, or accidentally bump a player on the head and knock him or her into a bottomless pit or an enemy. Of course, this can be done intentionally (which can lend to a lot of laughs), but more often than not it's simply a product of too many cooks in the kitchen at once.

Nintendo Life
Heck, there's even a help system in place that will have Luigi play the level for you showing you the best way to beat any of the regular levels in the game. Couple the game's amazingly challenging level designs with a wide range of pattern-based bosses and you have one of the most solid and impressive gameplay systems available on the Wii console and a testament to just how viable and creative 2D gaming can still be when in the right developer's hands.

Kotaku
I haven't had this much goodhearted, simple fun on a video game console since my days playing the original Super Mario Bros. snowed in at my house in Maryland. Sure, a lot of what makes a game like New Super Mario Bros. Wii so much fun for someone like me to play is the nostalgia factor. But there's more to it than that. This is a delightful game, one that delivers a lasting and challenging experience without making you feel like you need to learn how to walk again. If Nintendo still needed a reason for people to buy a Wii, this is the ultimate argument winner.

Looks like Wii have a winner

so here we are. It's the next installment of Infinity Ward's s***. We could drone on and on about Modern Warfare 2's controversial terrorist level, or the fact that this could very well be the bestselling game of the year and possibly all-time. We could talk about robust multiplayer, the new cooperative missions, and the fact that Soap MacTavish is at least one of our writers' personal hero.

We won't do that, however. Instead, we give you the assembled game critics' responses to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Eurogamer
Twice, Infinity Ward asks if you're absolutely sure you want to see it. The scene, the fourth you'll encounter in the most widely anticipated game of the year, could be "disturbing" or "offensive", repeats the warning. You smile and agree that, yes, you are sure you want to see it. This is a videogame. They give them 18 certificates, but only to appease people who don't really understand what's going on. Sure, the images of violence and bloodshed on Modern Warfare's battlefields can be disturbing to an onlooker, but death in a first-person shooter is a five-second setback, a micro-reincarnation designed to provide challenge and an impetus to improve, not distress.

Strategy Informer
Of course there will be a significant chunk of the audience that end up wondering what all the fuss was about; and for those of you of that persuasion, MW2's action beat and constant assault on the senses will prove the primary draw. It's here that Infinity Ward steps above and beyond criticism with superlative gunplay and a visual panache that – at times – borders on best-in-show. Enemies crumple realistically under fire, set-piece animation is integrated in an almost seamless fashion within the level design, and you'll be hard-pushed to spot a single respawning set of foes - which is about bloody time, even if early reports of nerfed veteran difficulty as a direct consequence are to be believed.

IGN
Thankfully many of the glaring issues from last time around have been fixed. You won't find unlimited enemy spawns in areas, there's always a waypoint icon on-screen showing you where to go or who to follow, and the amount of in-game chatter from your team is simply astounding. It isn't often in games that you'll hear your squad call out specific areas on the map and have it mean anything. When your friend shouts, "Two tangos behind the yellow station wagon!" you'll actually see two enemies behind a yellow station wagon. It's a pretty engaging experience. You'll still have random issues with friendly AI, specifically with blocking your movement or deciding to walk in front of you mid-firefight, but for the most part it's a better experience than the first Modern Warfare.

Game Informer
Modern Warfare 2's competitive multiplayer offering is the soul of iterative design. New ideas arise like third-person play and death streaks, but nothing substantially affects the core gameplay. On the other hand, the tweaks are almost uniformly great. Weapon-specific unlocks, cosmetic titles and callsigns, and upgraded "pro" perks contribute to a dramatic increase in the depth and breadth of persistent progression. The strategic variance of each map invites hours of study and experimentation. Included due to the mountain of feedback, the playlists (preset rotations of maps and modes for groups to play through) offer delightful bouquets of varied-yet-similar gametypes for all tastes.

Telegraph
The game's new mode is Special Ops which can be played solo or in co-op, both local and online. It's unlocked by completing the campaign mode, and is essentially a series of mini-missions; their design is similar to the epilogue mission in COD4's campaign mode, "Mile High Club". They're divided into four groups – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta – and are based on sections within the campaign's levels. They include scenarios such as defending a raised platform in a snow-covered shipyard, racing snowmobiles across tundra and taking out guerrillas in a favela in Rio de Janeiro while avoiding civilian casualties. A couple of fan-favourites from COD4 are also included, such as the chilling Death From Above mission in AC-130 Spectre Gunship. Special Ops range from one to three stars in their level of difficulty, and players can use the stars they earn to unlock more challenges. There are 23 missions in all, and a lot of them are highly addictive; the temptation to better one's time in the snowmobile race is particularly compelling.

Kotaku
Modern Warfare 2 may not innovate or raise the bar as impressively as Call of Duty 4 did in order to grant it automatic game of the year consideration. The better praise it may deserve is that it's likely the game that many will be playing well into next year.

Anyone surprised?

Not only is this the first Tekken game appearing on a console that doesn't have Sony in the front of its name, it's also the first Tekken game to ship with online multiplayer built right in. On top of all of that, the game features 42 different characters - the largest roster ever seen in a Tekken game.

With all of these big numbers and firsts going down, you'd think there was no way Namco Bandai's latest fighter could fail. Then again, odds are you aren't one of the assembled game critics. These guys are.

VideoGamer
It seems difficult to criticise Tekken 6 for feeling like an uninspired effort from Namco Bandai in the same year we heap praise upon Street Fighter 4 - a fighting game Capcom is delighted to hear described as Street Fighter 2.5. But it lacks the freshness, sparkle and zing SF4 has in abundance. It lacks excitement, pizazz and spunk. It feels tired and devoid of new ideas. And yet, it's Tekken. The one-on-one fighting is just as bone-crunching, spine-snapping and easy to learn yet hard to master as it's always been. If it 'aint broke…

1UP
Tekken 6's netcode will disappoint online players. Online matches persistently run below optimal conditions, even if your opponent lives close to your area. The netcode isn't as bad as, say, The King of Fighters 12, but it's not even close to other recently released fighters (Blazblue and Street Fighter 4). It's shame that Namco didn't put more resources and development time into optimizing Tekken's online component, because Tekken 6 is an excellent fighting game. The core mechanics sit on a solid foundation, emphasizing movement on the X and Z-axis, close-range fighting, mix-up games involving a high-low-throw system (high and mid attacks must be blocked high; low attacks blocked low; throws are unblockable) and frame traps based on a move's speed and recovery.

GameSpot
Even series veterans may find Tekken 6's jam-packed character selection screen a little overwhelming because it's initially tough to identify characters from their small portraits alone. But once you've found your favorites, experienced Tekken players will see that the tweaks and changes made to the move sets of returning characters are, for the most part, minor. Most characters get a new attack or two, some stances have been modified, and it seems the damage dealt by some of the more powerful combos in the past have been slightly toned down. Despite this, all of the returning characters feel completely familiar, so you'll never feel like you have to relearn your favorite fighter from scratch.

Game Informer
Newcomer Lars is the focus of the new Scenario Campaign mode, which is the weakest aspect of the game. Cutscenes are surprisingly long considering they make little to no sense and feature (surprise!) a spiky-haired protagonist with a case of amnesia. This mode has its own built-in version of arcade mode, featuring CG endings for characters after a few short fights. Going back to the lazy beat ‘em-up levels of Scenario Campaign is rough after a few traditional one-on-one fights, as the colorful and interesting locales of the latter are replaced by the cut-and-paste docks and bland environments of the former.

TeamXbox
One of the Tekken's biggest draws has always been that its accessibility, regardless of your skill level. Whether it was the first time you've ever played a fighting game or it was just another notch in your extensive fighting-game prowess, you could pick up a controller and get into the action. Things aren't any different in Tekken 6. While the simplicity of the game's controls will keep newcomers from getting frustrated, there's still a surprising amount of depth in the fighting system. Punches, kicks, throws, grabs, blocks…button mashing will only get you so far in Tekken, but to really excel, you're going to need to pick a character and learn all of the nuances of his or her fighting style. Tekken is a game in which you'll live and die by your use of combos. And all of this without a ranged attack anywhere in sight.

Kotaku
I'm a big fan of the Tekken franchise, but I really don't care about the single player campaign. All I want is to be able to smack other people around online, at home or in AI-controlled arcade mode. So I can forgive almost all of the issues I pointed out. They're almost entirely about what I think is a completely needless single-player campaign. What I can't forgive, won't endure, is online lag. Let's hope Namco gets right on patching that, because until they do I won't be risking my piddly ranking.

Aww, their poor net code.

We've been following the star-spanning adventures of Ratchet and Clank since 2002. In this 9th game in the series, developer Insomniac brings everything to a head, answering questions players have had since they first stepping into Ratchet's little space boots. Dr. Nefarious from Up Your Arsenal returns, Ratchet continues the search for Clank he started in PSN release Quest for Booty, and Clank learns a little something about himself while screwing about with time.

One of the most consistently solid platforming franchises in gaming history, with each iteration the chances of Insomniac screwing something up rises. Does Crack in Time continue the fine tradition, or have they finally made some sort of horrible mistake?

Eurogamer
Ratchet & Clank fans who just want more of the same won't be disappointed with A Crack in Time. It's pretty, polished, funny, expansive, satisfying and rewarding, just like all the previous instalments in the series. There are hordes of enemies to batter and bolts to collect. There are puzzles to solve, doors to open, rails to grind on and jump pads to bounce off. Despite the global economic meltdown, business at the crate factory must be booming as there are endless piles of boxes to smash open - wooden ones, metal ones, exploding ones, more wooden ones.

Videogamer
By far the biggest change from previous games in the series is how Clank now has more or less equal game time to Ratchet. One level blasting away aliens as the furry Lombax (Ratchet's species) is followed by a slower, puzzle-laden sequence as Clank. Ratchet is once again extremely nimble, and has access to loads of weapons that are upgraded as they're used and modifiable through collectables. There are numerous control set-ups, with gamers able to choose to play through with a fairly traditional platforming control scheme or with a dual stick third-person shooter setup. I've always opted to play it as a shooter, as the combat is such a core part of the experience, but the choice is yours.

GameTrailers
As you might expect, the weapons and gadgets are the real show-stoppers. Some of the classics return along with recent favorites like the negotiator and your flying friend, Mr. Zurkon. New weapons are plentiful as well including a fan-made armament called the spiral of death, a huge bullfrog called the sonic eruptor, and many more that we don't want to spoil. The pistol, shotgun, and bomb glove can be upgraded in a number of categories with cases you find around the universe. The number of guns and gadgets is certainly vast, but the imagination seems to have run a little dry this time around. We didn't feel compelled to spend bolts just to try out some of the weapons like we have in the past, and like prior games in the series, you can find a few that you like and lean on them. This is only exacerbated by the weapons that level as you use them.

Destructoid
Insomniac also added an all new space exploration element to A Crack in Time, which Ratchet can board his upgradable ship and zip around the galaxy...Controlling the ship is pretty basic, moving left and right with the right analog stick, and the buttons used to "pew pew" various enemy ships along the way. While there's nothing particular wrong with the flying sections (they're actually a good bit of fun, and a nice break from the standard action), they can get a bit repetitive. It's a whole lot of "pew pew" and "pow pow" in a vast space that mostly looks the same, which one can only take so much of. There are a few story-related battles that take place during the sections to switch things up a bit, they really take a back-seat to the more traditional style of Ratchet and Clank gameplay.

Giant Bomb
While Ratchet is tearing about the universe, Clank will be engaging in his own subtler methods of world saving. He'll be using his newly acquired time-shifting abilities to navigate and solve puzzles within the Great Clock. The most devious of these time-and-mind-bending obstacles are the ones that require you to record multiple versions of yourself as you race to trigger different events around the room...The complexity quickly ramps up and you'll eventually have up to four versions of yourself all running around performing tasks that somehow aid the other recordings. If that sounds complicated, it is, but it's also extremely rewarding and once you've completed a puzzle you will not only be showered with bolts, the currency of this universe, but you'll also feel like the smartest human on the planet. If you truly are not feeling up to the task, you can opt to bypass the puzzle entirely, but will miss out on the monetary rewards as well as the boost to your ego.

Kotaku
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time retains a lot of what was good about the previous games. But it also continues one of the best traditions of its developers - to compress past accomplishments, quickly give players a lot of the old stuff in the game's early going and then try new things. Earlier games' experiments with dialogue systems and multiplayer didn't thrill me. But, the new game's more dynamic physical movement (hooray for hoverboots), more interesting mission flow, amazing graphics and smart system of relatively easy main missions that branch off to more challenging moon challenges, are good innovations. The Ratchet gameplay is improved. The Clank gameplay is a revelation. Two years ago, Ratchet & Clank Future showed how good Insomniac could make this series look on PS3. A year ago, Ratchet & Clank: A Quest For Booty showed that Insomniac was still prepared to innovate with gameplay. A Crack In time, the space case notwithstanding, finally shows the series leaping forward.

Sounds good to me.

A ragtag quartet of adventurers wander across the surface of the planet Pandora, searching for the Vault of legend. Along the way they shoot things, gain levels, and gather enough weapons to choke something large that eats weapons, thanks to Gearbox's random content generation. Things to shoot and things to loot. What more could a group of players ask for?

For the answer to that question and more, we turn to the assembled game critics.

Games Radar
Borderlands lacks the charm of Fallout 3, Mass Effect, or Half-Life 2, but it does offer a crap-ton of ‘roided-out bandits, effed-up dog things, giant spider demons, and screeching pterodactyl beasts to shoot with a crap-ton of guns. And that's really what it's about – finding weapons and shooting things with them. You have to assign a skill point now and then, and there's kind of a story, but those things don't matter much. You can skip the text description of every quest in the game, because they will always consist of the following steps:

A. Go somewhere.
B. Kill some shit.
C. Flip a switch or something.
D. Kill some more shit.
E. Success!

1UP
A more traditional description for Borderland would be, "cooperative FPS with Diablo-esque mechanics." You start off by picking a character: Roland the gun-toting soldier, Lilith the stealth/magic femme, Mordecai the sniper, and Brick the boxer/tank. Then you guide that character through a grand journey with multiple quest hubs and dungeons; most of the quests are of the simple "go to a dungeon and kill/collect x amount of y." My first playthrough, where I mostly focused on going down the critical path with a little bit of (but not nearly all) of sidequesting, took about 27 hours. By the way, the overarching story of "finding the secret Vault while guided by a mysterious woman who talks to you in your mind" is just serviceable; it's there to give you a reason to kill things, but don't expect anything more in-depth.

Official Xbox Magazine
Just make no mistake: Borderlands is a hardcore-gamer's game. It won't be fun to those dudes whose two major purchases this year were Transformers and Madden 10. For starters, there's no difficulty setting whatsoever, so when you're getting pummeled - and you will get pummeled - you can't bop down to Easy and race ahead through the story missions. That thrashing you're getting is Borderlands' way of telling you to take your time and properly level your character. Side quests are usually optional in games, but the only optional part of them here is which ones you do. The story missions won't level your character enough to let you survive, so you'll need to linger in each location until you've built yourself up appropriately. (Thankfully, the missions have tags that clearly display this info.)

GamePro
When you can get a full party going, Borderlands begins to shine; it's one of those games that's chock-full of moments that you'll lovingly recount later. Each online experience is made memorable by fun things like smashing into each other with two rocket-mounted buggies, periodically punching your friend to instigate a duel and reviving him later amidst a fight you can't win without him. These moments jive perfectly with the tone of the game, which is surprisingly jovial considering the post-apocalyptic theme. The incredible comic-book art style is a significant factor, with the thick black lines and bright colors breathing a surprising amount of life into an otherwise bleak setting. Watching the nipple-pierced torso of a goalie mask-wearing psycho tumble away from its blood-geyser legs was so silly that I couldn't help but giggle at the absurdity. I got an extra kick out of a lot of the game's goofy characters as well: T. K. Baha is a perfectly loony farmer; the singing, dancing and periodically profane Claptrap robot is adorable; and Dr. Zed's a wildly unprofessional (and unlicensed) medic.

Game Informer
While Borderlands and Fallout 3 share a similar apocalyptic, Road Warrior-esque setting, the former does a much better job of making you feel like a wasteland scavenger. Very few story elements are present, so you don't have a constant "I better get back to the main quest" feeling hanging over your head. There's no disappearing family members or ominous government forces making you feel the need to progress through the story, only the desire to grow stronger and survive the myriad creatures populating Pandora. No matter which character you choose, you're not the offspring of a brilliant scientist or politician and you're not the only hope for humanity...you're just a journeyman with a gun (and ideally a few friends).

Kotaku
Borderlands gets a lot of things right, in particular the balance between being a first-person shooter and being a role-playing game. The shooting mechanics are sound, as are many of the role-playing aspects, save for a few design quirks. Growing and customizing my level 35 Siren was a great deal of fun, when the tedium of all that walking around didn't spoil it. But where Borderlands excels is in offering a functional four-player cooperative loot-hoarding experience, with gorgeous environments to adventure in and smartly crafted items to collect or covet. The game has a few faults, including its traveling inefficiencies-a weak map combined with plenty of long-range fetch quests-and its easily forgettable story line, but it's still relatively easy to recommend, provided you can tap into the best portions of Borderlands, its cooperative multiplayer modes.
Why am I craving Taco Bell?

Xbox 360 Update Hands-On: Facebook And Twitter
Microsoft provided Kotaku with an early version of the November Xbox 360 dashboard update. I just tested Twitter and Facebook on my 360. Watch.

Xbox 360 Update Hands-On: The Stuff That Didn't Work, For Me
Instant streaming in 1080p? Microsoft did warn that its new Zune video marketplace might not allow for streaming for people with slower (slow-ish?) connections. This is my low-point in my three-part preview of the 360's new November dashboard.

Xbox 360 Update Hands-on: Last.FM In Action
The final part of our Xbox 360 November dashboard update saves the best for last, without intending the pun. Here's Last.FM in action on my 360, injecting a bit of Zelda and MF Doom into my system.

Brutal Legend creator Tim Schafer is known for his humor. The musical talent in the game are known for their metal. The game's star, Jack Black, is known for being Jack Black. Combine all of those elements together and you have a funny game about good heavy metal with Jack Black in it, but that's only a part of picture. It's pretty safe to assume that Brutal Legend is entertaining, but is it entertaining to play?

To answer that question, we throw up horns and bang our heads to the assembled video game critics.

Giant Bomb
It's pretty clear within the first few minutes of Brutal Legend that the folks at Double Fine have a deep, profound love for heavy metal. There's a reverence here, not necessarily for the reality of heavy metal, but for the gleaming, violent, sexy, and well, brutal power fantasy that a wicked Judas Priest album cover, and the contents within it, might inspire in a 13-year-old boy. And while heavy metal has a tendency to be pretty self-serious, Brutal Legend is anything but, taking all of the demonic imagery, S&M gear, hot-rod fetishism, closeted druidic fixations, and ultra-macho barbarian warriors, and blowing it out to its logical and absurd extreme. This is, far and away, Brutal Legend's biggest strength: its ability to be both giddily ridiculous and fist-pumpingly badass, often in the very same moment.

Wired
Based purely on Brütal Legend's premise - a heavy metal roadie played by Jack Black is transported into a world based on the imagery of metal album covers - I expected nothing more than farcical comedy from the game. What I got was an impeccably crafted, surprisingly human tale of love and death that had me playing and playing to find out what happened next. The thing is, after a while, the story was the only reason I was still playing. While Brütal Legend is set in a cohesive, tightly written universe, the gameplay never settles down into a coherent experience. The game mixes elements of many genres, with none pulled off particularly well, and delivers an astoundingly complex design instead of a simple one that would have sufficed and better served the engrossing story.

Eurogamer
Threaded inside the main narrative - and becoming an increasingly regular occurrence as the game continues - is a surprisingly elaborate RTS: the characters you meet en route double as traditional unit types, and the open world you explore on foot or behind the wheel of the Deuce is built to pull back into a smart arena of capture spots and choke-points. It's all rather elegant; as the game's dual nature starts to take shape, it's fascinating to watch how Double Fine gets the videogame equivalent of overtime out of the same small handful of elements. That said, it may come as something of an annoyance if you were expecting a few hours of soothingly simple hacking and slashing only to find yourself leading troops into pitched combat instead.

GamePro
Visually, however, Brutal Legend is pretty impressive. It doesn't sport next-gen effects like you'd find in Uncharted 2, but the game's personality really comes through, which means much more than I can express. From the crackling lighting on Eddie's flying V to the gaudy amount of make-up caked onto General Lionwhyte's face, you feel like you're really in Brutal Legend's inventive and oftentimes insane world. Occasionally players are bound to come across some murky textures or a few of the previously mentioned graphical glitches, but the moment they find themselves flying through a swarm of Spark Plug Bugs after blazing over a cracked canyon via an off-road ramp, they're bound to look past these minor hiccups.

Play Magazine
Like all of Tim Schafer's games, the heart and soul of Brütal Legend is its story... And while Brütal Legend may start out seeming decidedly straightforward for a Schafer yarn, the first kiss changes everything, but nothing will prepare you for the twists ahead. By game's end you'll feel like Brütal Legend is home and home will seem empty without it. You might not expect much from a story about an old-school Metal roadie transported to a parallel universe where his skills turn the tide in humanity's struggle against its demonic oppressors (unless of course you know the Milkman) but between the writing, acting and the performances Double Fine manages to pull out of their real-time characters, it's, well, it's just the best there is.

Kotaku
In the end, Tim Schafer's trademark wit, an amazing cast of characters, and an unforgiving faithfulness to the heavy metal culture that Brutal Legend celebrates helps bring together what could have wound up a disjointed mix of clashing genres. It's a game that is worth experiencing, even if you have to call in a more strategically-minded friend to ease you through the hard bits.

I completely agree with that last guy...

Wii Fit Plus is an enhanced version of the game that saw people who normally wouldn't be caught dead in a video game store flocking to them in droves. Along with all of the original game's content, Plus adds 15 new balance board activities, strength training and yoga, a calorie counter, workout planning, and the ability to make profiles for your pets. Add in streamlined navigation and Nintendo has a recipe for further success on their hands.

Right, assembled video game critics?

GayGamer
Basically, your mileage with Wii Fit Plus will vary depending on how you reacted to the first. If you already have and enjoy Wii Fit, this is kind of a no-brainer, as the additional games are well worth the $20 price tag for just the disc. If you tried Wii Fit, but found it lacking as an exercise program, you might want to check this one out as it is a little more focused, and you've already got the Balance Board. On the other hand, if you never bought Wii Fit, well, this is the game that will now come bundled with the Balance Board, so you don't even have to worry about the first game. Oh, and it should go without saying that if you really hated Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus is probably not going to change your mind.

GamePro
The body test has been modified to include one standard fitness test, and another that taxes your brain alongside your bulk, so that your Wii Fit Age represents your mind and body, instead of just the latter. There are three additional yoga and strength exercises each, and all of them are among the most strenuous activities in the game. Can you make your body into a V shape while sitting on the balance board or lay your body completely flat two feet above the ground while supporting your body with only one foot? Wii Fit Plus will test your body a lot more than the original did.

IGN
One of my favorite enhancements in Plus is its calorie counter. Every action in the game has been assigned a metabolic equivalent of task (or METS) number. A lot of the mini-games feature METS ratings of 2, which isn't much — about the same as going for the easiest walk you've ever taken, but some, like push-ups, rate higher. In Plus, calories are counted by multiplying your weight times your METS. And after every exercise, whether yoga, aerobics or strength, and after every balance board game, you'll see the calories you've burned, which is both encouraging and discouraging; the former because you can visualize some scientific representation of your workouts and discouraging because the calories don't usually come off in triple or double digits, but single.

GameDaily
Not only will you receive the previous balance games, but also 15 new Training Plus activities designed to put some fun into working out. Rhythm Kung-Fu, one of our favorites, incorporates the remote, nunchuk and balance board, as players punch and kick with the beat. Meanwhile, Obstacle Course plays like Super Mario Bros., with gamers jumping over logs and dodging objects, except they physically perform those actions with the balance board. We're also fans of Bird's-Eye Bull's-Eye, a game where players flap their arms to control a Mii dressed as a bird, the goal to land on targets and score the most points.

1UP
Wii Fit Plus is a better product, but keep in mind that it's not a sequel. Like the second edition of a book, it looks and feels exactly the same as before, but the additions effectively make the previous version obsolete. And it's $20 by itself, which helps even more if you still have a Balance Board lying around. Still, things have changed in the year since the first Wii Fit, with multiple exercise games that just keep coming, and are more targeted at people who want nothing but to lose weight. Games like EA Sports Active are made by Americans and likely with Americans in mind, whereas Wii Fit Plus tries to go for a culturally-neutral — though still Japanese-leaning — approach, where traditional ideas of exercise seemingly clash with the practical (not that flapping away like a chicken to land on targets isn't appealing). In short, there still isn't much more focus or guidance in Wii Fit Plus, but the ease of use and greater number of enjoyable, not so "exercisey" games within, make it worth it.

Kotaku
Nintendo has been very careful to call Wii Fit a fitness "tool" not a fitness "solution" for obvious legal reasons. Neither Wii Fit nor its successor, Wii Fit Plus, will magically make you thinner or more easily able to resist tasty food. However, there's a lot to be said for a game that makes the very idea of fitness fun. It takes your mind off the anxieties about health we have in this country and reshapes your expectations of your body to something more positive than "Will I fit in my skinny jeans tonight?" With the multiplayer element and new games that Wii Fit Plus adds to the experience, I have to say, I've been converted from a skeptic to a believer. A believer with a 14 pound cat and a high score on the Obstacle Course.
If the Wii Fits...

When a major Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 title makes the trip to the Nintendo Wii, you generally expect a watered-down version of the original game. Not so with Dead Space Extraction, which presents an entirely new chapter in the sci-fi survival horror experience, complimenting the original game rather than simply aping it. Trading in the third-person shooter gameplay of the original title, Extraction capitalizes on the Wii's strengths, delivering on on-rails shooter experience that heightens the tension by wresting control from the player.

Is Dead Space Extraction a worthy entry in the series, or did Wii owners get the short end of the remote again?

Giant Bomb
I almost feel like I need to offer apologies or excuses while recommending Dead Space Extraction, EA's Wii follow-up to last year's breakout original sci-fi horror shooter. Extraction's marketing campaign would like you to think of it as a "guided experience" that whisks you through the dramatic beginnings of the series' horrible space-monster outbreak, but in blunt terms, Extraction is an on-rails shooter. Blunter still: it's a light-gun game. These days, that's not a style of game serious game players usually gravitate toward. But keeping the genre's inherent restrictions in mind—not to mention the limitations of the Wii hardware—Extraction is really pretty good, for what it is.

Game Informer
Dead Space: Extraction runs on rails, pulling the player forward at a scripted pace. Developer Visceral Games did a commendable job of making this experience feel more organic. Shaky cameras constantly distort your field of view, and you can hear your character's labored breathing. As intended, the bobbing camera combined with dancing shadows plays tricks on your eyes, and can lead to a few shots being fired ­at ­nothing.

Eurogamer
One area that definitely benefits from the on-rails nature of Extraction is the overall pacing. Sometimes you creep along agonisingly, other times it feels like the enemy onslaught is never going to end. There are few occasions where you don't come away feeling like your scraped through by the skin of your teeth, and even on the game's lowest 'Normal' difficulty, there's a definite sense of achievement when you get through.

Extreme Gamer
The controls in the game are perfectly matched for what the Visceral was trying to get acrossed. The Wii-mote and nunchuck are required unless you are going to use the Wii Zapper. Reloading the weapons, using your suits powers and melee attacks are all balanced out perfectly and the controls never get in the way of the action. The game slides you through all the different ways you'll be using the controllers and eases you into the game without any confusion. It's good to see a developer really think about the controls in a Wii game and how they can be immersive to the in-game situations and not just a gimmick, or a borrowed scheme from an already proven game.

The Onion A.V. Club
The characters often fall into horror-movie tropes. There's the hardened security officer, the shady guy who won't tell you why he's there, and the scared woman mourning her recently deceased boyfriend. The game controls your movement and facing, so you often have to grab items as soon as you see them, or miss the opportunity. Events are often timed, which is frustrating when you have to spot a creature's weakness and determine the best way to exploit it within a few seconds. At least the time issues become easier in co-op mode.

Kotaku
Dead Space Extraction is not just a light-gun shooter. It's not just an on-rails game. It's an adventure as exciting as anything I've played in a while. If players can stand the brevity and don't mind something else controlling their hero's legs, it's well worth playing. The game presents a model, like tennis in Wii Sports, of how to get a whole lot more out of a simplified user set-up. I can imagine some gamers - and some potential gamers - who wouldn't have the skills to have a fun time in the original Dead Space. They'd have ample skill to get through Extraction and might even have a better experience doing so.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune gave PlayStation 3 owners one of the most cinematic action-adventure titles ever created, filled with high-flying platforming, tense gunplay, and most importantly, characters with more personality than many game developers could ever hope to achieve. Nathan, Elena, and Sully are now joined by even more compelling characters in the sequel, which promises an even richer cinematic experience. This time around Naughty Dog has even included multiplayer so we can take the adventure online.

Did one of the best PlayStation 3 franchises just get better?

VideoGamer
Don't get me wrong: I really enjoyed the original Uncharted, but the combination of cover-based third-person shooting and Tomb Raider-esque exploring didn't quite gel together as well as I'd hoped it would. The gun-play at times felt too twitchy, the cover system caused a few headaches and there were some terrible vehicle and on-rails sections - and for what was predominantly a third-person shooter, the lack of multiplayer seemed like a wasted opportunity. Well, it seems as though developer Naughty Dog had very similar feelings; the sequel, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, is a superior game in practically every way. This is the very definition of a triple-A must own title.

IGN
The great storytelling extends to the character development, which has been turned up a good notch or two. Almost everyone with more than two lines of dialogue has an interesting reason for doing what they're doing (though the main bad guy is just bad), and the way that everyone interacts with one another is realistic and interesting. Almost every character is unpredictable in some way, but not in a forced or unnatural manner. The story itself twists and turns throughout the course of the game, as you might expect, and for the most part it's a solid tale. Nate and his pals go through a lot, so it does a good job of reeling you in and keeping you hooked until the end.

Vandal Online (Translated from Spanish via Google)
If platforms include more dynamic on stage when he or move by climb, shootings have also evolved. In the first game we had a great deal of coverage, but the scenes were sometimes too linear and hallways, but wide, where we found ourselves on one side and enemies on the other. Uncharted 2 In the scenarios are broader, although still running from point A to point B, and coverages are more dispersed. The shootings do not happen from one side to another, but in areas through which we move, outflank the enemy, being outflanked, we throw a grenade and have to flee to another side and the enemy (enemies) do the same.

Eurogamer
That mystery, once illuminated by the lost writings of Marco Polo, flares to life through restrained exposition and underpins the game's puzzles, which continue to rely on your reading of Drake's journal. There's less mechanical invention here than in the game's imaginative cross-country train sequence or a final act with a touch of the 1925 Lost World about it, but there's reasonable satisfaction to be had unlocking the entrance to an underground temple by reconfiguring a Buddhist monument, or rotating gigantic tumblers in a sunken ice fortress, and more importantly the circumstances of each brainteaser are infused with the right level of urgency and a convincing sense that only Drake, through his actions and acquisitions, could be in a position to solve challenges of the ancients left in plain sight for so many centuries.

1UP
And, once you complete that delicious blend of combat, cinematic storytelling, and visual/aural spectacle, there's also multiplayer. At press time, I've only played some of the beta and a handful matches with other media and Naughty Dog personnel, but I can at least say this: multiplayer isn't a random, bullet point tack-on. It takes the great "movement plus gunplay" mechanic of single-player, and adds live players to the mix. It feels different than, say, Gears of War; here, it's about balancing shooting against running/jumping/climbing. Plus, your single-player moves work as well; players can neck-snap unsuspecting foes or, sneakily climb up to a ledge and instantly throw them over the side. There's no shortage of modes; competitive multiplayer include Deathmatch, Elimination (last man standing), Plunder (CTF), Turf War (capture-and-hold), and so forth.

Kotaku
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves succeeds in as many ways as possible: It had me telling myself "just one more chapter" from the first to the 26th. It made me laugh at jokes and mutter in annoyance at characters. And for a moment at the end, touched me. I'm not one to say something is the best ever or to dole out perfect scores, and Uncharted 2 does have its share of trivial issues, but to date, Naughty Dog's second adventure with Nathan Drake appears to be the best experience hitting a console this fall.

One of the best gets even better

Since the very first Gran Turismo title, Sony's racing series has been lauded for three things: realism, graphics, and its massive stable of drivable vehicles. Now the game finally makes it to the PSP after being first teased around the time of the handheld's launch in 2005. After years in development, has Polyphony managed to successfully transfer those three features onto the portable device?

Assembled video game critics, start your engines!

Computer And Video Games (CVG)
If Gran Turismo PSP was a race car, it'd have go-faster stripes, a fat exhaust and an engine that roars like it wants to take off. But it'd spring an oil leak off the start line, bellow smoke all over the place and fart its way over the finish line. This is Gran Turismo. The big boy. The game that should define PSP. It's been in development for absolutely yonks. Now we've played it extensively we find ourselves wondering what Polyphony has been doing with it since 2004 because this is not at all the game we expected.

Eurogamer
...the handling model may be cut straight from Gran Turismo 4 - something Polyphony actually claimed to have achieved on PSP as long ago as September 2006 - but that handling model was and remains a cut above the majority of comparable handheld titles. There's real subtlety across the more than 800 vehicles available for purchase, allowing you to appreciate the difference not only between cars with different drivetrains, tyres and performance settings, but between different cars with the same drivetrains, tyres and performance settings.

PSX Extreme
When you boot up the game, you'll have four dealers to access and 100,000 credits to spend on a car, which is a gracious sum. Once you buy a car, you can participate in a few events. As the days roll on in the game, a new set of four dealerships will be made available to you. But, just because you can access a Nissan dealer, doesn't mean you can have the ability to buy any of their cars. No, no. If you don't see a GT-R or a 300ZX TT, you have to wait until the next time Nissan becomes one of the four dealers you can shop at and see if the assortment of cars features the ones you want. Yes, it's that complicated, confusing, and stupid.

TheSixthAxis
The game manages to throw around the exact same courses that we enjoyed in Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 with remarkably few cut-backs – yes, the texture detail is lower, there's obvious seams in the tracks, the polygon count is a little less on the roadside objects and the lighting rather passive, but given the framerate and the four nicely detailed cars on screen (throughout all the modes, including the drift races) any slight feelings of last-gen can be forgiven. Polyphony have wrung more out of the PSP than anyone else has, with the possible exception of Ready at Dawn, and managed to represent that clean, sharp Gran Turismo aesthetic almost perfectly. The sound's exactly what you'd expect, too – multi-note engines, skidding on every corner and music seemingly pulled from Vidzone's current top twenty with the likes of The Prodigy headlining the licensing.

VideoGamer
Make no mistake, this is Gran Turismo as you remember it but on a handheld, and done in a way that betters what I imagined was possible. It looks great, plays superbly and has an absolute ton of content to work through. It's impossible not to feel more than a little let down by what's missing, though. A more structured career mode would have been great, online leaderboards and ghosts simply should have been included, and the lack of online play is bitterly disappointing. Who knows what will be added to the game post release, but as it stands we've got the ultimate handheld driving game with a fairly bare bones feature list. Buy it, spend hours earning credits and buying cars, and try to overlook the glaring omissions without shedding a small tear.

Master Chief is such an iconic gaming figure that it almost seems wrong to have an FPS with the Halo name on it without him. It's like a Mario game without Mario in it, or a Team Ninja game without breasts. Yet here we are, with a brand-new single-player adventure in the Halo universe with no sign of the big man.

O.D.S.T. began as a little bit of downloadable content that got too big for its own classification, making the leap to full-fledged game. The question is, is it worth its own game, and if so, how are they pulling it off without old MC?

Games Radar
Are you hoping for more Halo 3? Are you looking forward to another adventure in that game's grandly exaggerated yet comfortingly familiar universe? Are you excited to wield the same crazy weapons and vehicles in brand new battles, to encounter the same smart enemies in unexpected new situations and to witness the same epic war from an entirely new perspective? Are more missions and more multiplayer enough? If so, then ODST is the answer. You will definitely not be disappointed. But what if you got carried away by the hype? What if that amazing live-action trailer, or that significant September release date, have you convinced that ODST is the next major milestone in the Halo phenomenon? What if the talk about detective characters, film noir settings and gritty close-quarters combat have you anticipating a bold departure from the Bungie formula? Then yeah, you might be in for a bit of a letdown.

Eurogamer
Halo 3: ODST does present a compelling alternative to the Master Chief, but the smartest thing about the game is that Bungie faces down this intimidating challenge by realising it cannot do so through one man alone. Although you control the Rookie, a seemingly fresh-faced but faceless new tip of the spear in the battle against the Covenant, the developer prefers to tell the story of New Mombasa through a series of playable vignettes, each of which showcases individual acts of very human heroism on the part of a scattered group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.

ActionTrip
Halo 3: ODST retains the familiar Halo AI, which we still hold in high regard. Stronger enemies react according to your behaviour and will never rush until they are certain they have the upper hand. Grunts and weaker enemies such as the Jackals lose their nerve in battle if you take out nearby Brutes or other Covenant Chieftains. However, with help of the new VISR (standard addition for all ODSTs) enemy threats are easier to make out. When switched on the VISR allows you to see areas of interest and tell friend from foe. It sounds like it makes things too easy, but thanks to the well-balanced AI the game remains challenging throughout the entire campaign. Also, you'll enjoy the freedom that was given to the main character. Yep, the game is not as linear as Halo 3 or other titles in the series. Now, you can choose where you can go and which opponents to tackle.

VideoGamer
Length aside, the campaign is not without other problems. The story is a largely un-engaging affair. The mysteriously silent Rookie is hard to love, and certainly lacks the heroic appeal of Master Chief. His squad mates are classic cliché-ridden space marines, with personalities that aren't explored to any great detail. The plot makes more sense than previous Halo titles, but is still hugely silly. The ending is barmy, and seems as if it should have had a massive bearing on the Halo universe as a whole, but clearly didn't because it's ramifications never came up in Halo 3.

Worth Playing
Aside from the single-player game (which can also be played through in co-op), Halo 3: ODST also features a co-op multiplayer mode called Firefight. Similar to the Horde Mode in Gears of War 2, Firefight pits four human players against wave after wave of Covenant forces. The waves are randomly generated, though things do get progressively more difficult as you progress due to the skull modifiers. Firefight is a true test of skill, as it doesn't have an ending. Your team simply fights until it is dead. The catch is that you have a shared pool of lives, so one weak link can bring down an entire team. While reviewing the game, we saw some Firefight matches exceed an hour in play time. There's no doubt that this is going to be a popular gameplay mode on Xbox Live.

Kotaku
If you want to judge ODST for its fun without worrying about its price and the contents of its case, then know that its campaign hits the peaks of Halo 3 less often due both to its relative brevity and its uneven, experimental hubworld. The campaign can mostly be a joy. Firefight with a group of players is a blast. The main hero may be a bore, but the fiction is at least as interesting as it was in prior Halo games. Bungie's done good this time. That's a victory, even if that's a departure from a series which has often seen Bungie do great.

So there is life beyond Master Chief?

I did my best to prioritize the stuff we hadn't seen before, but I found myself jockeying with a lot of other journalists for a turn to play the hot stuff. While committing said jockeying, though, I ran into one of my Stanford classmates. Oliver Chiang scored himself an internship over at Forbes.com – earning the praise of our Stanford journalism overlords, whilst the mention of Kotaku drew only scorn and strange mispronunciations – but Oliver's been fighting the good fight for games journalism by getting games-related articles up on Forbes.com.

Check him out here for the tech perspective on the PSP Go. And check me out down below to see which games I successfully scored turns with:

Previews:
Army of Two: The 40th Day PSP Preview: A Fixed Perspective

Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier PSP Preview: A Blast From The Past

LittleBigPlanet PSP Preview: PSP Platforming At Its Cutest

Undead Knights Preview: Tag! You're A Zombie!

Tetris Preview: Adding and Subtracting From A Classic

Petz Preview: There's Some Strategy Here

Impressions And Other Stuff:
Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines Opens Up Gameplay And Closes The Book On Altair

Fat Princess: Fist Full Of Cake - Cake or Death? That Is The Question

PSP's Comic Book Store: Watch Civil War Unfold

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Graduates To Holocron Canon

Visualization: A Weird Experience With Beaterator

We've been enthralled by the concept of Scribblenauts since we first received word of the game in December of last year. Your goal is simple: help Maxwell collect the Starite in each level to proceed to the next. The way you accomplish this goal, however, is where the fun kicks in. By writing words in the lower portion of the DS screen, the associated object appears, allowing you to use it to overcome obstacles standing between Max and his star.

We've put the game's vocabulary to the test on countless occasions. Now it's the video game critics' turn.

Games Radar
If you're like us, you had high hopes for Scribblenauts. This little DS game represents something revolutionary not just for the DS's library, but also (we're being serious) for videogames as a whole. Forgive us if we sound hyperbolic here, but Scribblenauts is one of the most important games to come out this year. Which makes it all the more disappointing that it doesn't quite live up to its potential.

GameSpot
The best part of Scribblenauts is using the massive dictionary to come up with all sorts of wacky ideas. Sure, you could ride a horse from one side of the screen to the other, but why settle for something so mundane? If you have a saddle and a mind-control device handy, you can summon Cthulhu to be your noble steed. When a herd of dinosaurs are bumming you out, you can call forth a superhero to put them in their place, infantilize them with a shrink ray, or just drop a meteor from the sky to trigger a convenient extinction-level event. This creativity is present in the many puzzles as well. In one level, you must transport three deceased criminals from the purgatory in which they currently reside to the pearly gates of heaven. You could construct a bridge between the two eternal planes, but why go through that trouble when an all-forgiving god will absolve them of their sins and transport them to the promised land?

Game Informer
When Scribblenauts is working the way it should, it is an undeniable blast. But unfortunately, this game's skies are not always sunny. The touch-based character controls are touchy to the point that one miniscule tap on the screen can lead to a stage being restarted or a carefully planned strategy falling apart. Moreover, some of the objects I summoned into the world didn't function the way I thought they would. NPCs also get in the way, blocking your ability to pick up an object. These irksome moments pop up more than I care to see. But in the end, I learned to work around them. It's a bit of a crutch, but if you learn to play it through trial and error, you can manipulate the system to work in your favor.

Hardcore Gamer
There are well over two-hundred challenges to complete throughout the campaign of Scribblenauts. Half of these are relatively simple and easy to understand, whereas the other half caters to hardcore and determined players. As you progress through the game, your objectives will become increasingly more difficult, some of which will press you hard for time and quick thinking. This is where the game shines the most as each puzzle is incredibly creative and offers tens, if not hundreds, of ways to complete. There are obvious paths to take, but there are also alternate ways that you may have never considered before.

Play Magazine
Sure, there are frustrations here. Control is the first and most glaring problem in the game. Getting Maxwell from one place to another, using the items we provide him with, is an obvious shortcoming of the game. The physics of the game are unstable; sometimes, we can cheat our way through a room just by jumping at something until we slip past it. Scribblenauts isn't perfect; it's just audacious and unique. I wish I could manipulate Maxwell with the D-Pad. But then again, we're not really controlling the child; we're maestros, conducting the orchestra his reality.

Kotaku
While Scribblenauts is a well crafted puzzle game, its real power is its ability to tap into the soul of the Internet. Finally, someone has created something that puts our vast knowledge of the inane and arcane to use. I can proudly say that I know how to vanquish a griffin, what to summon when I'm confronted by Cthulhu, and why a river is handy when facing Nuckelavee, all without looking it up. Embrace your inner geek, pick up this game.
The writing is on the wall...

300's Gerard Butler plays Kable, a wrongly-convicted felon who has been injected with a substance that essentially gives his brain an IP address that can be accessed by a player who controls him as he participates in the deadliest first-person shooter ever. Dexter's Michael C. Hall plays an eccentric internet gajillionaire game mogul named Ken Castle, who developed the technology to allow the human brain to be accessed by outside sources. The whole thing is the brainchild of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor of Crank fame.

We don't normally Frankenreview films here at Kotaku, but with the heavy emphasis (and some would say criticism) on gaming in Gamer, we just couldn't resist. One thing we've learned - movie critics can be quite brutal.

New York Daily News
This year's hot sci-fi concept - putting one person's consciousness in another body - is really getting a workout. Earlier this year there was the Mexican film "Sleep Dealer," and coming up is the Bruce Willis actioner "Surrogates," and of course the Big Kahuna, James Cameron's "Avatar." For right now, though, there's "Gamer," which pushes its way to the front of the line like a gorilla with a chainsaw.

Entertainment Weekly
In the fractious future of Gamer, videogames have ''gone human,'' with real live blood-sport warriors controlled by geeks with joysticks. The sickest of these games is Slayers, in which death-row inmates kill each other off in a noisy orgy of skip-stutter editing and dirty-ash-spattered explosions. It's The Dirty Dozen meets TRON, updated for the age of action incoherence. As the brutish Kable, Gerard Butler must find out who's pulling his strings, but it's the audience whose chain gets yanked by this headache-inducing techno-violent mishmash.

Los Angeles Times
It's a deeply cynical and joyless point of view, completely lacking in the winking visual style that made "Crank" worth a look. The one touch of wit — Hall lip-syncing and dancing to Sammy Davis Jr.'s rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin" before going ballistic on Butler — is quickly enveloped by an ending that could generously be described as perfunctory. Rarely have the words "game over" come as such sweet relief.

The Onion AV Club
Eventually, Gamer just goes off the rails-or rather, onto very familiar rails. A dance number set to Sammy Davis Jr.'s version of "I've Got You Under My Skin" offers a glimmer of hope that old action-movie clichés won't triumph, but they eventually prove too powerful. A dastardly villain with dubious/stupid motivation battles a wrongly convicted family man whom he could have killed a hundred times during the movie with the touch of a button. Based on what comes before it-queasily ingratiating action sequences, a couple of really smart jabs at the media-it's clear that Neveldine and Taylor could have come up with something deeper, darker, and better for their third act. Instead, they lean on the easy cheat codes of conventionality, somehow forgetting they're better at exploding them.

LA Weekly
Neveldine and Taylor's spazzy (but coherent) action scenes rely mostly on blood spurts instead of feats of badassery, but their dystopia is inventive and their visual schemes diverse: The fight scenes play like a buffering online video, with the transmission glitches warping our sense of time, while Castle's home looks like a live-action Speed Racer, with Hall munching snacks against bizarre nature imagery in disorienting tableaux. Their sense of the grotesque can overshadow their targets - close-ups of a 500-pound guy to indict lazy media consumers isn't exactly subtle, and more of a distraction - but they're as smart about the details as they are loyal to corporation-bashing.

IO9
Gamer is intensely conflicted about the pleasures afforded by gaming. And in the end it's that conflict that makes this movie such a winningly demented satire. The bad guys, covered in gore, sing little songs about how they're about to frag the good guys. A warehouse full of blanged-out ravers from Society get soaked in day-glo viscera when Castle's goons attack. Even Castle has an incredible zombie dance number, surrounded by his mind-controlled videogame-slurping minions, who follow his every little shufflestep because he's beaming his moves straight to their Nanex.

Kotaku
Gamer isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect, but it's not nearly as good as it should be. Instead, the film is lost in that grey area between egregious mishandling and untapped potential. I wouldn't suggest going to the movies to see it, but it's probably worth a view once it comes to the small screen if for no other reason than to wonder at the possibilities of what could have been.

And this is why we can't have nice things.