Rock Band (Xbox360)

Rock Band is every wannabe musician's dream. A game that takes the four key instruments one needs to make a band a rock band (guitar, bass, drums, vocals), and builds a highly playable and intensely addictive game around them. To a degree, developer Harmonix got a head start on the process of creating Rock Band when it developed the first two Guitar Hero games, but whereas those games were all about the decidedly solo act of severe simulated shredding, Rock Band goes in an entirely different direction. The solo play has taken a backseat to cooperative multiplayer. This game is all about the act of performance as a band, getting a group of four people together and working together to get the highest score bonuses possible as a group, all while fake guitaring and realistically singing and drumming your way through more than 40 different licensed rock hits. The steep $170 price tag for the game and bundled hardware might prove to be a barrier for entry for some, and in addition, the hardware itself comes with a few flaws. But if you're willing to make the investment, Rock Band is a guaranteed good time for any music lover, and one of the best party games you'll ever play.

In a sense, Rock Band is a little like three distinct games built into one. First, there's the guitar game, which lets you play approximately the same sort of game as Guitar Hero on guitar and bass, but with a few key differences. For one, the guitar itself is built quite differently from the Guitar Hero guitars. It's bigger, with a longer neck, and its body feels more solid. The fret buttons are larger, and are flush against the neck of the guitar, and there is a second set of narrower fret buttons all the way down the neck that you can tap on for solos. The guitar even comes with a built-in effects switcher, which puts effects like echo, flange, and wah-wah over the in-game guitar track. The only difference between guitars in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game is the fact that people who buy the 360 version get a wired guitar, whereas PS3 owners get a wireless one. On the flip side, PS3 owners don't get a USB hub to connect all the instruments to, whereas 360 owners do. That shouldn't be an issue if you have an older PS3, but if you have a newer one with the two USB ports, you'll need to buy one of those hubs separately. It's also worth noting that you only get one guitar with the bundle on either platform, but if you own a Guitar Hero guitar for the 360, you can use it with the 360 version of Rock Band.

The actual guitar gameplay isn't much different from Guitar Hero, with you strumming along and periodically tilting the guitar to engage "overdrive" (the game's equivalent of star power), but a couple of neat twists do add some flavor. For one thing, solos are given their own scoring section in each song, and the game tracks the percentage of notes hit during a solo. The higher the percentage, the higher the score bonus you get at the end of the solo.

The guitar game is of good quality, though a couple of things about it might drive a few longtime Guitar Hero fans batty. For one, the difficulty of the game is a good deal less challenging than what the hardcore Guitar Hero fan base is probably accustomed to at this point. The goal with Rock Band seems to be more about bringing in newcomers, so as a result, the difficulty level sits somewhere between Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II overall. Not a bad thing if Guitar Hero III gave you conniption fits, but potentially less exciting for some of the hardcore guitar gamers out there. Also of note is that the note charts for guitar are handled a bit differently, with notes that can be pulled off via hammer-ons and pull-offs appearing as half-sized notes on the chart. It's not quite as easy to see these notes as in, say, Guitar Hero III, so you might end up screwing up a few solos until you get used to this new methodology.

Lastly is the guitar itself. It's a good guitar, but it does some things differently than the standard GH model guitars. The strummer doesn't click when you strum up or down, and the fret buttons seem a bit less forgiving in terms of timing in solos and other, tougher sections. It's not that it's bad or wrong--it's just different, and it takes some getting used to. Also, you're not going to get a ton of mileage out of things like the second set of buttons and the effects switch. Most people will probably forget the switch is even there until they accidentally turn on wah-wah, and sliding down to the second button set is a bit vexing to do just as you're about to head straight into a solo, since it takes a while to get accustomed both to the smaller buttons and to finding exactly where they are on the neck without staring at the guitar for a few seconds. Fake-guitar virtuosos will probably dig it, but most people will likely stick to the standard method.

Next there's the singing game, which closely emulates the mechanics of Karaoke Revolution and SingStar, but, again, with a couple of specific differences. You sing along as the lyrics display on the screen, trying to match your vocal pitch to the meter that moves up and down with the original vocal track. The key thing about singing is that the number of sections where a singer actually gets to do his or her thing is somewhat limited. But even those down moments aren't left for pure silence. Sometimes the vocal area of the screen will turn yellow, indicating for you to "make some noise," which then engages overdrive. There are also sections where you can simply tap the microphone to the rhythm of the song to get a tambourine or cowbell section going.

Beyond these wrinkles, the core of the vocal game design is to just sing, sing, sing...and occasionally rap. If there is any complaint to be made about the vocals, it's that it doesn't leave a lot of room for interpretation. On the higher difficulty settings, the game is extremely intent on you hitting the mapped pitches as closely as possible, even in situations where it seems like the mapped pitches aren't quite exact to what the original vocalist is doing. The same goes for the timing of each word. In some songs vocalists will trail off, but you can't really do that and still get the max score, which makes the vocals feel a bit robotic. Still, most vocal pieces are quite fun regardless, and in a nice touch to help middling vocalists everywhere, you can adjust the original vocal track volume via the controller as you play, so you can use it for as much or as little of a guide as you prefer.

Finally there are the drums, easily the most intense and enjoyable instrument of the bunch. The kit consists of a collection of four color-coded pads and a kick pedal, along with a pair of drum sticks. There's really no reference point for the drums portion of the game except for, well, real drums. You hit the pads in time as you would with a realistic drum kit, and on expert, the game practically maps out each song's drum part note for note. Make no mistake: When you are playing on expert, you are playing the drums. If you can do well on expert, you can probably pull out a decent beat on a real drum set at will. The good news for novices is that easy difficulty does a pretty good job of easing you into the act of drumming. The number of notes is much more limited, kick pedal usage is rare, and drum fills are eased back quite a bit.

Speaking of fills, one really cool thing about the drum portion of the game is that it allows for some improvisation. The way the drums handle overdrive is to give you some blocked-out sections where you can just bust out any kind of drum fill you want. The pads act as a snare, two tom-toms, and a crash cymbal. Go nuts, but just be sure you hit the last crash cymbal note at the end of the fill, at which point you will engage overdrive.

If there is any issue to be taken with the game's hardware, it's its reliability. For instance, one of our pre-release kick pedals from the drum kit, which is made up of a somewhat thin piece of plastic hooked into a spring underneath it, actually snapped in half during a particularly heated rendition of The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again." The other pedals we used for testing held up despite some extreme thrashing, but all the same, our suggestion is that if you've got a Mr. Heavyfoot in your band, tell them to go shoeless and ease up on the pedal slammage a smidge. Another issue is the USB microphone. One of our retail boxes came with a broken mic that cut in and out and wouldn't register our vocals properly. Any supported USB headset mic will apparently work in a pinch on the PS3, and the standard Xbox 360 headset works on there as well, but regardless, that's still a concerning issue. At least EA seems to be aware of potential hardware issues, as a big flyer inside the box explains the 60 day hardware warranty that comes with the game and directs you to an EA Web site. You might want to keep that URL handy if you run into any issues.

Those are all the technicals of the instrumental gameplay, but none of that quite emphasizes how excellent the game is at emulating the act of band play. By themselves, each instrument is basically fun, but when you get four people together playing at once, something spectacular emerges. Part of it is the way in which scoring has been designed for cooperative play. Overdrive can be turned on by anyone, but the more people you have in overdrive at once, the higher the score bonuses. By the same token, if one person in your band fails out of a song, another can simply engage overdrive (provided enough is stored up at that point) and come to the rescue, bringing the player back into the fold. But it goes beyond even the scoring mechanics. There's just something intangibly brilliant about the way having everyone play together feels. For instance, because the drums emulate the real-life instrument so closely, having a good drummer is paramount for success. If your drummer gets off beat, it can badly screw everyone up. Along the same lines, when your drummer is in a solid groove and the rest of the band is able to lock into that groove, the feeling that you're actually performing a song as opposed to simulating one is palpable, and it is quite the exhilarating feeling.

The game's song list goes a long way toward making that multiplayer even more enjoyable. Though the game includes only 45 licensed songs (along with 13 bonus tracks from lesser-known bands), many of these 45 are big-name tracks that are immediately recognizable and span multiple rock genres. Alternative rock fans will find such '90s delights as Weezer's "Say It Ain't So," Smashing Pumpkins' "Cherub Rock," and Nirvana's "In Bloom." Modern rockers will find The Killers' "When You Were Young," Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly," and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps." Classic rock fans will delight in being able to rock their way through Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," and KISS's "Detroit Rock City." Other, less specifically denominational yet altogether awesome songs include The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," Rush's "Tom Sawyer," and Metallica's "Enter Sandman."

The vast majority of these songs are original tracks from the artists, with only a few covers scattered throughout the tracklist. Only a few of the covers really stick out much. The Geddy Lee on "Tom Sawyer" is a bit overblown, and the singer of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" is a bit odd sounding as well. But by and large, the covers blend in nicely, and whoever did the vocals for Steven Tyler and Bruce Dickinson on the Aerosmith and Iron Maiden songs respectively deserve some kind of vocalist soundalike merit badge.

The only real problem with the tracklist is that some of the songs aren't the kind of immediately recognizable stuff you would expect in a game that's all about a bunch of people getting together and making elaborate band karaoke. Quick, off the top of your head, immediately think up the melody to The Police's "Next to You," or Molly Hatchet's "Flirtin' With Disaster." None of these songs are unpleasant to play or anything, but they don't quite fit into the scheme of songs anyone can just pick up and rock to, especially on vocals. Heck, just about anyone can probably whine their way through "Cherub Rock" or snarl through "Enter Sandman" on the lower difficulty levels. But Aerosmith's "Train Kept a Rollin'"? Maybe not so much, but perhaps that just depends on you and your friends' personal tastes in music.

Clearly Rock Band's focus and ultimate strength is as a multiplayer game, specifically a cooperative one. This is also evidenced by the game's somewhat less captivating single-player element, at least compared with its multiplayer game. You can play solo in quick play, or in one of the three solo career modes, one for guitar, one for vocals, and one for drums. These all follow the basic formula laid down by Guitar Hero, with tiers that unlock in order of increasing difficulty. One nice thing is that each instrument's career offers a totally different track order, scaled to the difficulty for that specific instrument. The other cool thing is the fact that you can customize your own rocker for each instrument. You start out with some basic edits, and then as you go, the cash you earn in the career mode lets you buy all sorts of wicked rock garb, tattoos, haircuts, and the like. But as far as the progression of the career itself is concerned, it's pretty boilerplate. Nothing of note really happens during the course of the career, and it ultimately lacks the dynamism of the band world tour mode.

Band world tour is the co-op career mode. Two to four players can create their own rockers and start rocking right away, and band members can jump in or drop out at any time, so long as the profile of the band founder is always signed in and playing. The mode is essentially a much more fleshed-out version of the same sort of tiered career mode as the solo tour. You start out as a nobody band, playing the teensiest club in your hometown. As you play gigs and perform well, you'll earn more fans, which helps propel your band ever forward toward rock stardom. You also earn stars in each gig, and the more stars you collect, the more gigs that will unlock in each available city.

This mode is, in a word, addictive. Working to gather as many fans and stars as you can becomes almost compulsive after a while. If you've got friends with you willing to stick it out, you could potentially lose a lot of hours of your life touring the world. Another thing that makes band world tour so cool is the presentation of it all. As you grow your fan base, you'll earn the opportunity to get a crappy van, then a tour bus, and even a jet. You'll have the chance to win another band's roadies, hire a sound guy, get signed to a label, and eventually work your way into the hall of fame. It's an awesome experience, to be sure.

The mode itself never actually ends, letting you continue to earn fans and keep playing gigs, though after a while you will forced into the higher difficulty settings, which potentially spells trouble if you start running into songs you don't really know yet, and you eventually start to run into a fair amount of song repetition, especially if you haven't already unlocked all the game's songs in the solo tour. Starting out fresh guarantees you'll be playing a lot of the same songs again and again from the very beginning. If you unlock everything in solo, the tour opens up a great deal. While 58 songs might seem like a lot to pick from, you're still going to end up repeating songs a fair amount, especially when you do the special challenges, which automatically pick random songs for you.

It is perhaps a good thing, then, that Rock Band is supported with lots of downloadable content. Several song packs (including artist packs for bands like Queens of the Stone Age and Metallica), single-song downloads, and full-album downloads (The Who's "Who's Next" will be the first) have been announced thus far. Pricing on these songs is slightly cheaper than the Guitar Hero song packs, but not so much cheaper that you won't notice the hurt on your wallet if you start splurging for every song that comes along. Still, the idea of getting regular downloadable content is great (Harmonix and MTV are apparently going to start out by releasing songs on a weekly schedule), and the full-album download idea is awesome. Even better, any song you download makes its way into the rotation in the band world tour, which should alleviate some of the repetition over the long haul.

The one truly unfortunate thing about the band world tour mode is that it isn't online. That might be a dicey prospect for those without regularly available friends with a similar love of music games. The good news is that there is an online co-op quick play option, so if you and your buddies just want to get together and play single songs as a band for fun and high scores, you can. The online also includes competitive options, such as a basic score duel (same instrument, same difficulty, play the entire song) and a tug-of-war mode (same instrument, any difficulty level, trade off sections of the song, try to win the crowd over to your side by performing the best). These modes are about as enjoyable as Guitar Hero III's online component, so if you dug that stuff, you'll definitely dig this. The online modes also performed well across the board, with no noticeable lag while playing.

Perhaps one of the best things about Rock Band is its presentation. The in-game visuals are of very high quality, with great character modeling, top-notch animation work on each musician, and lots of neat lighting and visual effects during the course of the performance. And the best thing about all of that? None of it causes the game to slow down whatsoever. The note charts stay steady no matter how much craziness is going on in the background. If there's any flaw to be found in the visuals at all, it's that the notes on the note charts are a little on the small side. It's not a big deal in one- or two-player play, but when you have both guitars and drums going at once, it can sometimes be tough to make out whether you've hit a note or not. Also, if you're trying to figure out which version of the game to get, visuals won't make much difference. Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game look pretty much identical to one another.

The presentational quality goes well beyond the visuals. Everything about Rock Band just feels authentic. It's the little details, like how some arenas will put your band's name in big lights behind you on stage, or how when you're performing well the crowd will start singing along with the vocalist. Awesome stuff. Heck, even the game's loading screens are cool, offering up some neat band trivia, as well as dynamically generated band photos featuring your created musicians in a variety of delightfully exaggerated rock poses.

All told, Rock Band turns in an absolutely stellar performance. And much like any real band worth its salt, it's not just because of one or two things that it does well while the rest fall by the wayside. Each individual component of the game is good on its own, but it's when you put those things together into a collective whole that the game truly shines. Ultimately, the $170 investment is bound to be a sticking point for some, especially those who don't have readily available friends who can come over and rock whenever the itch needs to be scratched. But even with that caveat in mind, Rock Band is easily one of the most ambitious music games ever produced, and that it is so successful in its ambition makes it something really special.

warhawk (PS3)

Warhawk is a 32-player, multiplayer-only shooter from Sony. It has ties back to another Warhawk, an early game for the original PlayStation that focused on the warhawk itself, a fighter jet that can convert to hover mode and back again. You probably don't remember it, which hardly matters, because the multiplayer focus of the PlayStation 3 Warhawk game leaves it with no real story and no real sense of the war you're fighting. This game has a stripped-down feel, but the exciting gameplay certainly makes up for those feelings. This is blue versus red across multiple modes and maps, in the land or in the air. And it's excellent fun.

The real story of Warhawk isn't about the epic conflict between two opposing sides. It's about how this game has been made available. If you want it immediately, it's a downloadable purchase from the PlayStation Store for $39.99. If you're desperately in need of more things to put on shelves, or if you want a voice-chat device, you can buy the game in stores for the standard $59.99 in a package that comes with a wireless headset, some behind-the-scenes video, and a full manual. There's no functional difference between the two games, so it really comes down to personal preference. The downloadable version does not come with instructions at all, which is sort of messed up. Other games on the PlayStation 3 have had Web browser links built in to load up offsite manuals and things like that, but Warhawk has none. So the only way you'd know that you need to push the L3 button to talk or find out about the zones mode is to fumble around for yourself or go to Sony's site, where it has a downloadable manual available. But even that manual, which comes in the box with the retail version, doesn't explain everything, such as some of the terms used in the ranking screen.

It's a good thing, then, that most of Warhawk is incredibly straightforward. It's easy to jump right into a game using the game's server browser, and there seem to already be plenty of people playing at all hours. If you've ever played something like Battlefield 2 or Star Wars: Battlefront, you'll probably take to Warhawk's brand of team-based multiplayer shooting quickly, as it's a simplified take on that experience. The maps have bases strewn about that your team can capture. Capturing them gives you a place to spawn, or if you're playing in the zones mode, it'll help you earn points toward winning the game. You spawn on foot, with nothing but a lowly pistol and a couple of grenades. But at bases and spawn points, you can usually find a host of weapons. These include an assault rifle, flamethrower, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and binoculars, some of which you can use to call in air strikes. You'll also find plenty of vehicles, such as jeeps, tanks, and the warhawk itself. And in some fortified areas, you'll find turrets that shoot flak or homing missiles, which are very, very effective against incoming aircraft. All of this balances out nicely because the ground troops can take out vehicles with the homing rockets from the rocket launcher, the turrets can defend base positions against air--but not as well against other vehicles--and the tanks are usually sitting ducks for warhawks to plink away at with swarm missiles or cluster bombs.

One of the major gameplay differences between Warhawk and other similar shooters is that you'll find a ton of aircraft on most of the maps. Sometimes you'll feel as if half of the game's 32-player limit is buzzing around, dogfighting overhead, or attempting to strafe ground targets. This gives it a unique feel, and it's a lot of fun. Warhawk controls well regardless of what you're piloting too. You can play around with controller sensitivity to get things just right, and, if you like, you can fly the warhawk using the tilt sensing of the Sixaxis controller. However, the tilt support never feels responsive enough to be useful in tense situations.

Warhawk comes with five different maps. Before you get all up in arms about how low that number looks, each map can be configured for different game sizes, so there are configurations for small, medium, and large-sized games. Each map also has a dogfight configuration, giving you more warhawks to use. The different configurations make the maps feel totally different, giving you different strategies to work with and so on. This means that playing in an eight-player game can be just as thrilling as a 32-player fracas. There are also multiple modes. Team deathmatch works as you would expect, with control-point captures giving you new places to spawn but no real points benefit. Capture the flag is a standard two-flag CTF mode that puts flags in each team's main base. Zones mode creates colored circles around each base, and the goal is to earn points faster than the other guys by holding more zones than the other team. The zones link together if you hold the right ones and level up your control over them to make the colored circles bigger, which brings in even more points. Lastly, there's a deathmatch mode, which can be fun for dogfights, but this is very much a team-based game, so playing with no team to back you up isn't as much fun. You can also play online with a split-screen, which allows multiple players to play online from the same machine. On top of playing on the Internet, the game has support for LAN games.

Outside of the game, you can chart your progress to look at your rank and medals. You'll earn ribbons for a variety of round-specific accomplishments, such as finishing first on the winning team, getting 10 antiair kills, not shooting your teammates, and so on. Badges and medals also take your global counts into consideration, giving you awards, such as a meritorious service medal. You'll get this award for capturing the flag 100 times, defending 100 zones, capturing 500 zones, and then getting two flag captures in the same game. That's sort of steep, but it certainly gives you something to shoot for as you play. As you rise in rank, you'll unlock additional head, shirt, and pants types for your soldiers, giving you a clear way on the battlefield to see if someone's totally raw or a honed online killing machine.

Warhawk will run in 480p, 720p, or 1080i, and the game looks really nice overall. Its greatest visual feature is that you have a very long draw distance, giving you a clear view of things that are really far away. For example, on one map, which is made up of a series of high islands, you can sit in your base and see turrets moving in bases far, far in the distance. Armed with a sniper rifle, you can practically reach across the entire map and knock fools out. The equipment looks good, and it also blasts apart really well. Exploding warhawks cause burning hunks of metal to fall out of the sky, and it looks great. The game sound is also effective, with good weapon noises and explosions. Warhawk, unlike most online PlayStation 3 games, has voice chat, which comes in handy.

Regardless of how you get it, Warhawk is a great multiplayer shooter and one of the first of its kind to land on the still-new PlayStation 3. It offers just enough content to justify its price tag, but more importantly, it plays well, with just the right mix of tactical considerations and finger-on-the-trigger action. With hooks in there for additional map downloads, it'll be interesting to see how this one develops from here.

Picross DS (DS)

Picross, short for picture crossword, is a puzzle not entirely unlike Sudoku, in that it forces you to use logic to deduce the particulars of the puzzle. But rather than focusing solely on numbers, Picross has you using numbers to determine which boxes in a grid get punched out to eventually form a picture or a pattern. With a ton of puzzles to keep veterans busy and a helpful tutorial mode to get new players up to speed, Picross DS is the sort of game that will keep you staring at your Nintendo DS long into the night.

The grids vary in size, starting with very simple 5x5 grids. Numbers mark each row and column, and they tell you how many blocks, in a row, are part of the puzzle. So in the starting small grid, seeing a "5" next to a row or column would mean that each block needs to be punched. Seeing a "3" means only three, and seeing something like "1 3" would mean that there's one block, followed by one or more blank spaces, then three more connected blocks. By seeing how the numbers form up and deducing which spots must absolutely be punched for the hints to make sense, you eventually work your way around the grid and complete the puzzle. Those small grids get larger as you play, eventually leading you to huge 25x20 grids. The game's normal mode runs on a timer, giving you 60 minutes to complete each puzzle. That's usually more than enough time, but as you make mistakes, penalty minutes are packed onto your time. There's also a free mode, which runs without a time limit, but it also doesn't let you know when you've made a mistake, only when you've completed the entire puzzle. These, as you might expect, get tricky fast.

The game's a natural fit for the DS touch-screen controls, but unfortunately they start to become very cumbersome as the grid size increases. You'll eventually have to deal with zooming in and out to better see parts of the larger grids, which isn't ideal. For the later, larger puzzles, playing with the control pad and buttons might actually be faster.

In addition to playing the single-player mode, you can go in and create your own puzzles, which can be sent to other players locally. There's also an online mode where you can download additional puzzles (though none are available as of this writing), and a head-to-head mode where two players try to solve two 10x10 grids. The fastest player wins, and if you can't finish two 10x10 puzzles in two or three minutes, chances are you're going to lose. It takes what can be a very casual puzzle experience and makes it totally hectic, and also a great deal of fun. There aren't any leaderboards, but your own personal win/loss record is kept, and you earn different ranks as you play. Locally, you can play with up to five players using only one cart. You can also send demo puzzles to other nearby players without a copy of the game.

By offering a ton of puzzles to play alone and the constant challenge of online play, Picross DS is a long-lasting puzzle game and an awesome value at $19.99. If you're already a fan of logic puzzles like Sudoku, this might just be your next brain-teasing habit.

Marathon: Durandal (Xbox360)

A lot of people have never heard of Marathon, and there's a reason for that. Long described as the Mac's answer to Doom, Marathon was released in 1994 and featured excellent single-player and multiplayer gameplay. Not many noticed, though, since the series was almost exclusive to Apple's Macintosh platform. But the release of Marathon: Durandal for Xbox Live Arcade is sure to be of interest to more than just a few middle-aged Marathon fans, because arguably, without Marathon there would have never been a Halo. That's because Marathon was the breakout game that put a tiny Mac developer called Bungie on the map.

It's a bit strange that Durandal was the Marathon game ported to Xbox Live Arcade. Its original title was Marathon 2: Durandal, as it was the middle chapter of Bungie's trilogy, so you'll jump into the middle of the overarching story, though some text-only narrative will get you up to speed quickly. While the series has no official ties to the Halo universe, it's hard not to play Durandal without seeing the kernel of many of the ideas that would later go into Bungie's most famous franchise. For instance, you play as a lone human security officer who, aided by an artificial intelligence construct, must battle an incredibly powerful alien menace that's looking to invade Earth.

If you jump into Durandal, keep in mind that it was originally released in 1995, and it is a first-person shooter that is very much a product of its times. This is a game from the cusp of the shooter era, so it uses a blend of 3D environments and 2D bitmaps for enemies and objects. Be careful, though, as the motion and swaying while you're running around the game might make you nauseous. The Xbox Live Arcade version of Durandal at least offers high-resolution textures, which is good news if you've tried to play the original game on a modern system and got migraines from the incredibly pixelated look. At the same time, though, the new art has boosted the size of the game to 135MB, which is absolutely huge for an Xbox Live Arcade game, and a magnitude larger than the original Mac version.

The gameplay itself hasn't changed a bit, which is both good and bad. If you're an old-school Marathon fan looking for a nostalgic ride, then you'll probably feel quickly at home. But if you've never played an early first-person shooter, you might be turned off by the relative crudeness of the graphics and the gameplay. Sure, Durandal was a good game when it was released in 1995, but the standard for shooters has evolved considerably since then. The story is also more than a bit dense. It's told mainly through cryptic computer-terminal entries, and in many ways it's hard to figure out what you're doing. For instance, there's not a lot of handholding or structure to the levels, so you'll run around trying to figure out what to do. It gets a bit more confusing when you realize that some doors won't activate until you step on the right spot, so a seemingly dead end will have you running around in circles, and then, suddenly, the way is open. The controls are also a bit clumsy, as actions such as swimming involve the clicking of the joysticks, and there's no way to jump or reload.

Durandal had some of the best multiplayer for its era, but it feels small and constrained today. The levels aren't very large, and the level design itself is fairly rudimentary. At least there's no shortage of modes, including cooperative and competitive ones. "Kill the guy with the ball" features a skull for the ball, which is a forebear of the Halo mode oddball. You can do up to four-player split-screen on a single Xbox 360, as well as System Link and Xbox Live, with support for up to eight players. Unfortunately, we couldn't find a single public or ranked match over the course of two days, which seems to indicate that there isn't a large multiplayer following.

Marathon: Durandal's value is mainly that of a cultural artifact of an earlier age--one that comes in at 800 points ($10). At the same time, it's also a bit startling to realize just how little the genre has evolved since the days of the original Marathon. The advancements introduced by Marathon are numerous. It was the first shooter to feature dual-wielding weapons as well as a real-time map; and, of course, it was the spiritual predecessor to Halo. As a game, though, it really shows its age, and it proves to be an interesting, though not exactly engaging, experience.

Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (PS2)

You knew this day would come, the day when Guitar Hero went the way of other popular rhythm game franchises, releasing pseudo-sequels and expansions that are really just batches of new songs with little to nothing in the way of gameplay or feature upgrades. Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s is the first for the series, an expansion of sorts to Guitar Hero II that offers up 30 new tracks with a decidedly 1980s bent. Everything else is basically how you remember it from GHII, including most of the same characters, venues, and modes, but now everything's been tinted neon to indicate that, yes, this is very much the '80s. In theory, such an expansion could be an extremely welcome addition to any Guitar Hero fan's library, but Rocks the 80s doesn't quite deliver on its promise. There's a good chunk of significant '80s hits on here, as well as a few inspired, lesser-known choices, but at a price tag of $50, 30 mostly solid songs doesn't sound like such a great deal.

Getting right into the soundtrack, Rocks the 80s deserves credit for not just going the easy route and churning out nothing but cheesy hair metal tracks. Certainly there's plenty of that on there, with big-time hits like Ratt's "Round and Round," Poison's "Nothin' But a Good Time," Winger's "Seventeen," and Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock" all on hand. But then you also get lighter rock tracks, like Asia's "Heat of the Moment", pop rock tunes like The Romantics' "What I Like About You," and new wave classics like The Vapors' "Turning Japanese" and Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran." You'll even get some neat choices from the underbelly of '80s rockitude that might not be immediately familiar but are a lot of fun to play, like Oingo Boingo's "Only a Lad," The Police's "Synchronicity II," and .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely."

Of course, it's not all good stuff. Roughly two-thirds of the tracklist could be considered fun either because it's a cool song to play, or just because it's a big hit with a memorable riff. The rest scrapes the bottom of the '80s barrel like a fourth run of I Love the '80s. Does anyone besides those who spent the entirety of the decade inside seedy metal bars even remember who Faster Pussycat is, let alone the song "Bathroom Wall"? "Radar Love" is a heck of a song, but seriously, the White Lion version of it? Not the one you really want to be playing. And while the inclusion of a faux-80s song from joke-band Limozeen is mildly amusing, it's the sort of thing that would have just been a throwaway bonus song in another Guitar Hero game.

At least most of the covers are quite good, and there are even several original master tracks, including "Round and Round" and "I Ran." "I Wanna Rock" is also a master, though it's from a much later Twisted Sister release. It sounds a little like Dee Snyder at the front of a Twisted Sister cover band, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Those flaws aside, the tracklist is ultimately pretty solid. It's as eclectic a mix of songs as you'll find in any of the Guitar Hero games. The real trouble is that there's just a lot less to it. Thirty songs for what basically amounts to an expansion sounds about right, but $50 for those 30 songs is pretty much a rip-off, especially when you consider that both the original Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II (sans included guitar) had way more songs, and cost just as much. It doesn't help that there's no new supplementary content in this version, and in fact, some of the content from Guitar Hero II has been out-and-out removed. There are fewer characters to choose from, the Stonehenge stage has been cut, and there are no bonus songs of any kind to unlock past the core 30 tracks. On the plus side, you do still get all the same multiplayer modes for the new songs, as well as the excellent practice mode.

Presentation has been altered a bit as well. The characters and venues, as well as all the menu systems, are holdovers from Guitar Hero II, but everything's been tinted with neon and pastel colors, and the playable characters (the other guys on stage are completely unaltered) have been dressed up to look definitively '80s. But no amount of Flava Flav clocks, sweatbands, and pink tank tops can change the fact that this stuff all belongs to Guitar Hero II, and is just being recycled here.

Ultimately, Rocks the 80s is for Guitar Hero diehards only. There are some excellent songs in here, to be sure, and the gameplay is as fun as ever. But with such a decisive lack of content compared with other GH releases, not to mention the slightly insane price tag, Rocks the 80s feels like a quick-and-dirty cash-in. It's one you'll probably still have a good time with, but it's dirty all the same.

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (PC)

There's a reason why the Civilization series is one of the oldest and most beloved strategy game dynasties you can find on computers today. The addictive turn-based games draw on real-world history and offer open-ended gameplay that lets you conquer the world as a warlord, diplomat, or scientist. They also have a disturbing tendency to keep you up late into the night taking "just one more turn." Civilization IV was an award-winning new chapter in the series in 2005, and last year's Warlords expansion pack helped make a good thing even better. And now, the Beyond the Sword expansion brings even more improvements to a solid foundation. The new game adds plenty of features that breathe new life into the core Civilization gameplay, and also tosses in lots of new content in the form of new modifications ("mods") and custom scenarios to play through. Not all of the expansion's additions are clear-cut improvements, but if you're a Civ fan, you'll find that Beyond the Sword will give you plenty of reasons to get hooked all over again.

The core game of Civilization IV starts you out with a national world leader who possesses a few advantageous "traits" in various specializations (military, scientific, economic, or cultural) and starts you off at a specific era in history to conquer the world through force, science, economy, or culture. Beyond the Sword adds new world leaders to play as, as well as new leader traits that help expand certain strategies, such as the "protective" trait, whose defensive properties aid players who seek to conquer the world using scientific research to win the space race, and the "imperialistic" trait, which greatly speeds the production of "settler" units that can be used to stake new claims in uncharted territory by building new cities.

The expansion also offers new options to create customized games to your liking, such as the handy "advanced game" mode, which starts you in a game about 10 turns in, unmolested. This helps get you into the game's truly interesting action (beyond just building your first city) faster. You can also opt to use the expansion's new events system, which randomly triggers various events that take place throughout the game. Many of these events aren't all that important, but some can have farther-reaching consequences, such as changing your standing with a rival nation. If nothing else, they add some welcome variety to the usual turn-based Civilization pace, and they can be toggled off if you don't care to use them in a custom game.

Beyond the Sword's more significant in-game features are espionage and corporations, which are interesting additions that bring even more variety to the game, though they aren't always practical or all that useful. Corporations essentially act like late-game religions; that is, just like with Civ IV's original religion system that let you spread religion from city to city, the expansion's corporations can spread around the world--though in this case, they focus on various economic specialties like cereal mills, mining companies, or even a chain of sushi restaurants. When used properly, they can provide powerful economic advantages, but they're balanced out by their substantial maintenance costs, even though these can only be accessed much later in the game.

Espionage, on the other hand, doesn't figure quite as prominently into the average game of Civ IV. This new feature was supposed to give you exciting new options with the new spy units, which can scout out other nations and perform undercover operations like gathering additional info on your rivals or stealing their technologies. Unfortunately, spies don't provide enough advantages to justify constantly pumping them out and sending them to the four corners of the world, since they frequently get discovered and captured before they can even get to enemy territory. In many cases, you may find yourself just skipping out on the turns it would take you to research espionage improvements to focus on your scientific research or military might. Fortunately, the expansion offers plenty of other accoutrements for the game's core strategies, including a fistful of new units, new combat tweaks to better balance siege combat, and an expanded space-race game for technophiles that makes a space-race victory not just a matter of who builds a shuttle first, but who builds the best and fastest one.

If that weren't enough, Beyond the Sword also packs in six new one-off scenarios plus five playable mods created by both in-house Firaxis developers and the fan community. Not all of the content is stellar--some, like the futuristic zombie-hunting scenario "Afterworld," don't quite hold up, though others, like the epic "Rhye's and Fall of Civilizations" fan-created mod, are excellent and provide a fresh new coat of paint to the core Civilization gameplay. Even though some of the mod content has been available publicly for some time, it's definitely convenient to have everything wrapped up in one place, and all the extra content will keep you busy for a good, long while--as you'd probably expect from the second expansion pack to a game that's infamous for stealing your free time.

Beyond the Sword's additions are primarily to Civ IV's core gameplay, so the expansion doesn't make a huge leap forward in terms of graphics or sound. But that's just fine, since the game's thematic, instrumental score continues to work well with the game, and the new graphics (in the form of new mod units and movies, as well as new leaders with new animations) fit into the game without a hitch. Unfortunately, Beyond the Sword doesn't address the somewhat cluttered interface that Civ IV had; in fact, it adds a bit more clutter with the event system, which pops up windows in the upper-right corner and logs them in a scrolling box at the top-center of your screen. Some of the clutter may still seem intimidating to beginners, but this expansion isn't necessarily for people who have never played Civ. And if you have, you shouldn't have many problems picking up the nuances of the interface, and you'll probably be too busy trying out all the new gameplay features that fundamentally change, and in some cases, revitalize, an already-classic game. Though not all of the additions in the expansion are perfect, there's plenty of new stuff in Beyond the Sword for Civ fans to play with, and plenty of reasons to dive back into the game and start taking "just one more turn" all over again.

Colin McRae- DiRT

Fans of Codemasters' Colin McRae rally racing series are in for a surprise with the publisher's newest title, DiRT. DiRT has more in common with Digital Illusions' Rallisport Challenge series than the Colin McRae games of old, putting a greater emphasis on a variety of off-road racing disciplines, as opposed to sticking hard and fast to traditional rally racing. That's not to say that rally fans will be disappointed with the game. DiRT veers a good bit further into arcade territory than earlier games in the series, but it is still a blast to drive, and absolutely stunning to look at.

Let's just address that elephant in the room right off. There have been plenty of driving games of late that have been visually impressive, but very few live up to the visual fidelity displayed by DiRT. This game is a technical achievement in car design, track design, and damage modeling. To begin with, the cars are beautifully rendered, highly detailed models that are as fantastic to look at as they are to destroy. Damage modeling is one of the most impressive aspects of the game; you can lose bumpers or doors, break glass, tear up the paintjob, and roll your ride into a crushed, deformed mess. Tracks are equally beautiful and destructible. From the rain-slick tarmac tracks of Japan and the dusty backroads of Italy to the muddy, gravelly countryside of the UK, DiRT nails every environment wonderfully. The game also uses lighting to fantastic effect, not just to emphasize how shiny and reflective the cars are, but to give each track an individual atmosphere. Driving around desert mountains in the washed-out haze of late day is an amazing sight to behold, for sure. And if you feel like tearing up these tracks, you can bust through fences, barriers, bushes, and anything else not held to the ground with concrete. All the while, dirt, mud, or gravel will kick up against and often stick to your car, making the game's namesake seem entirely appropriate.

As amazing as the game looks, all that detail comes at a bit of a price. Performance is not always up to snuff, especially in races with multiple cars on the track. The frame rate is a little choppy during single-car rallies, but once you get a group of other cars racing with you, the game practically turns into stop-motion animation, especially if all the other cars happen to be bunched up with you. This is more of a consistent issue on the 360 version, though the PC version is highly taxing even on high-end hardware, so you're likely to run into some performance problems unless you're running a top of the line machine. Longer-than-average load times also tend to rear their ugly head (primarily in the 360 version). Even still, the game never becomes unplayable because of the crummy frame rate or lengthy loads, and at worst, these are merely annoyances.

The quality of the presentation doesn't begin and end with the in-game graphics either. Even the menu system is immaculately built. It's hard to describe it, except to call it a bunch of floating boxes with selectable options that zoom in and out as you select them. Even the loading screens are cool because they display real-time statistics on your game, such as your favorite tracks or vehicles, your average speed, and even your favorite driving surface. Menus are usually a forgotten element of a game unless they're specifically bad, so the fact that DiRT's are notable for how good they are says something.

Audio is not quite as immediately impressive as the visuals, but it is great all the same. Engine noise is probably the best aspect because each car has a definitive and unique sound to it that feels just right. Crashes and other racing effects are also excellently produced. The soundtrack isn't licensed, but the instrumentals that play over the various menus and replays are quite solid. The only damper on the category is your codriver, an obnoxious, bro-sounding dolt whose dialogue sounds like it was written by a nonnative English speaker and whose only reference for the language was reruns of Saved By the Bell. Lines like "Smooth and steady; I'm Mr. Smooth, and you're Mr. Steady," and "Yeah! We won the championship! I'm so stoked!" are funny once, but then they're annoying from there on out. At least he gives you some good info on the tracks before you race.

Once you've snapped out of the trance that DiRT's fantastic presentation tends to lull you into, you might remember that this is a racing game and that you do actually have to play it. It's a good thing it's a fun one. The game includes six different racing disciplines, which consist of rally, rallycross, hillclimb, CORR, crossover, and rally raid varieties. If you don't know what half of those are, don't fret. The game does a good job of easing you into the game's style of racing, with both some rather simple early races, as well as an explanatory narration by extreme sports maven and current Rally America champion Travis Pastrana.

Granted, even if you've never jumped into a CORR race in your life, DiRT isn't exactly a difficult game to grasp. You're racing down a course by yourself, trying to get the best time possible, or racing against other cars, buggies, or trucks on dirt and tarmac tracks. Most of the differences in gameplay come from how the various vehicles handle. There is obviously a big difference between driving a speedy Mitsubishi FTO and a massive racing big rig (yes, they actually have those). But even with all the differences among disciplines, the racing is always easy to pick up and play. DiRT has a decidedly arcade-driving sensibility that makes all the vehicles relatively easy to race with from the outset. Once you've gotten a feel for how all the different cars and tracks feel, you can simply crank up the difficulty, which in turn makes your opponent racers much more adept, and also leaves your car far more open to terminal damage. On the highest setting, all it takes is one good front-end collision to send you packing.

As realistic as the damage incurrence can be, the rest of the game definitely maintains an arcade mentality. Nearly all the vehicles have a decidedly floaty feel to them, one that seems to overcompensate for nearly every minute turn of the analog stick (if you're playing the PC version, you will need a dual analog controller of some fashion to play the game properly). It's not unmanageable or anything, but it's far from realistic. By the same token, the game's physics are often a bit silly, especially in wrecks. That's not an insult by any means because the exaggerated physics lead to some absolutely spectacular wrecks in many cases. But there are some eye-roll-worthy moments where you'll see a car tilt from lying on its side all the way back upright for no good reason or drive sideways up a cliff to land back on four wheels.

Floaty feel and wonky physics aside, DiRT is still a great deal of fun to play. Once you get a feel for the controls and up the difficulty a bit, the racing can be intensely challenging, addictive, and immersive. It's especially immersive if you happen to take in one of the game's two exceptionally good cockpit camera views. There's a zoomed-in view and a view that's a bit further back. Both views give you a great sense of being in the driver's seat, even going so far as to let you look around inside the car via the right analog stick. Not enough racers do the cockpit camera that well, and DiRT is worth lauding for doing it especially well.

As fun as the racing can be, it wouldn't be worth much if DiRT didn't offer up plenty of ways to experience it. Fortunately, it does the job. Apart from being able to take part in single races and events, as well as a series of championships, consisting of multiple races each, DiRT also has a lengthy, involving career mode that has you working your way up a literal pyramid of events. Winning races earns you points, which unlock new tiers of the career mode and cash, which you can use to buy new vehicles or liveries for said vehicles. With more than 60 career events, nearly 50 vehicles to unlock, and more than 180 liveries to buy for those vehicles, that ought to keep you busy.

The one feature that DiRT skimps badly on is multiplayer support. There is multiplayer, but just barely. Only two disciplines--rally and hillclimb--are available to play in multiplayer. But wait, aren't those the two disciplines that don't have you competing directly against other cars? You bet. Essentially, you're dumped into a lobby with potentially dozens of other players, and from there, you vote on which track you want to play. The available list to vote on is always random, and there's no option to pick a different car or even search for a lobby with specific cars/tracks available. Once you're in a race, it's merely a time trial against all the other players. You can see how you're doing in the real-time standings, but that's all. While the Colin McRae series has never been known for great multiplayer support, the total lack of online racing in a game that debuts several wheel-to-wheel racing types is a gigantic tease and really disappointing.

That said, the multiplayer support is really the only thing about DiRT you can call truly disappointing. On every other front, DiRT delivers a racing experience that's a lot of fun to play and visuals that are such a joy to watch that you can even bring yourself to forgive the shoddy frame rate. All around, DiRT is a class act, and it belongs in any racing fan's library.

Overlord (PC)

While most genre-bending games are content to dissemble just one convention, Overlord takes on two. Not only does it attempt to subvert how you perceive Tolkien-esque high fantasy by essentially putting you in the role of the dark lord Sauron, but the game also plays like a real-time strategy game masquerading as a third-person action RPG. It's all very promising, since real-time strategy games can be such slaves to convention; and it's rare for a game to focus so exclusively on encouraging you to explore your darker impulses. Though the game's controls take some getting used to, and its exploration of evil could use a little more bite, it's generally pretty successful.

As the titular overlord, you begin the game having just been resurrected by your minions, and your dark kingdom is in shambles. Your dark tower is a ruinous mess, you've got but a handful of subservient followers, and the local villagers are cowering in fear of forces other than yourself. This simply will not do. Powerful practitioner of might and magic that you are, you could go the hands-on route in rebuilding your tower and crushing the wills of the peasants; but then, what's the point of being the overlord if you've got to do everything yourself?

This is why you have minions, the scampering, mischievous little gremlins that are the heart and soul of Overlord. Though the game presents itself as a third-person action RPG where you control the overlord, it's more of a real-time strategy game. Either way, it's a very good-looking game, with the kinds of soft lighting and quaint high-fantasy settings that characterized Fable, though once you get past the aesthetics, it proves to have more in common with Nintendo's Pikmin games for the GameCube. Though you can perform some basic magic and melee attacks as the overlord, it's your minions that will be doing all your heavy lifting. The control scheme for Overlord is a little unusual, since you'll be controlling the overlord's movement as well as the minions'. The PC version offers both mouse-and-keyboard and dual-analog gamepad control schemes, and they're both totally useable, but they've both got their fair share of quirks.

Thankfully, the minions are generally pretty smart. They'll follow you around diligently, and if you take a route that they're unable to follow you on, they'll either stop in their tracks rather than commit hara-kiri, or find an alternate route. You can control your minions' movement directly by sweeping them around using either the right analog stick or the mouse, depending on which control scheme you've chosen. Alternately, you can lock onto certain objects, or simply point in a general direction, and your minions will head over there and perform the appropriate action. If the object can be smashed, they'll smash it. If it's an enemy, they'll attack it. If it's something they can use, such as a weapon or a piece of armor, they'll equip it. If it's gold, or a potion that restores health or mana, they'll bring it back to you. You'll also find lots of quest-specific items that require a team of minions to carry to specific locations, as well as various path-blocking obstacles. You can also command your minions to stay in a specific position, effectively guarding it.

Death doesn't even seem to bother them too much--nor should it, since they're pretty easy to replace. Every time you kill something in Overlord, be it man or beast, it leaves behind a little piece of life essence, which you can collect and store. For every piece of life essence you have, you can summon another minion, though there's a limit to the number of minions you can have at your command at one time. Simply watching the minions carry out your will can be fun, because you get the sense that they really love their job. They scream and cackle gleefully as they latch onto an enemy, and they beam with pride when they return to you with found treasure. Though you'll hear many of the same exclamations from your minions over and over again, the voice work brings a lot of personality to your swarming horde, and to the game in general. Watching your minions wreak havoc can be so satisfying that it makes up for a lot of the problems that the game develops.

Overlord starts out strong, and the first few hours offer some light and easy fun as you sweep your horde of minions across the countryside, slaughtering sheep and peasants and pillaging anything that appears even remotely pillageable. There are some RPG trappings to the game, in that you can upgrade or buy new weapons and armor, learn new spells, and increase your capacity for health and mana, as well as the number of minions that you can control at once. Still, the story is pretty linear. You might have more than one quest available to you at a time, but usually you'll find that one of those quests cannot actually be started until you finish another quest. As the shadow you cast over the land continues to grow, you'll face halflings, elves, bloodthirsty unicorns, an undead horde, dwarves, and more. In addition to the all-purpose brown minions you start off with, you'll earn the ability to summon more specialized types of minions. Red minions are fire adept, green minions are impervious to poison and have some minor stealth abilities, and blue minions can travel through water, are strong against magical enemies, and can revive fallen minions.

The game takes its time introducing the different types of minions, and you'll be several hours into the game before the strategy elements of the game start getting complicated. The tightly designed environments of Overlord are very deliberate in their layout, often requiring you to direct a single type of minion. It's not difficult to alternate between controlling one type of minion and another when you're not under the gun, but there are certainly moments where it'll feel like you're struggling against the controls as you're juggling multiple groups of minions and trying to issue a series of specific commands. Luckily it's not hard to toggle the camera from a behind-the-back third-person perspective to a pulled-back overhead perspective, both of which prove useful in different situations. It's certainly satisfying when you're able to get past one of the game's involved boss fights, even if it's partially out of relief that you won't have to deal with that again.

As much as the game likes to cast your character as a ruthless and malevolent overlord who cares for nothing but power and chaos, your capacity for true, genuine evil feels a little limited. Motivations aside, the nature of the quests you take on aren't that different from what a high-fantasy hero would be up to. Yes, you can choose whether certain characters live or die, and there are situations that can be resolved with varying degrees of bloodshed, but the choices you make have little impact on the course of the game. Good and evil are subjective concepts, and if there are no real negative consequences, there's no way to determine if your actions qualify.

Overlord is an enjoyably mischievous experience that blends real-time strategy and RPG elements to unique ends. The satisfaction of running amok with your legion of wickedly enthusiastic minions is what makes Overlord worth playing, and it's plenty compensation for controls that you'll occasionally struggle against and the limitations on just how evil you can really be.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (PC)

The Harry Potter series of books has captured both the minds of children and adults alike. The movies haven't disappointed either and are amongst the highest grossing films of all time. For some reason, the video games that have been released alongside the movies haven't been able to reach the same level of quality that the movies and books have achieved. The latest game, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, continues that trend. There's a faithful re-creation of the Hogwarts campus to explore, but once you've seen the sights, there's not much else to do. Even the most diehard Potter fans will grow tired of seeing the grand staircase as they return from their umpteenth fetch quest.

Order of the Phoenix follows the story of the book and the movie of the same name. After narrowly avoiding expulsion for using magic in front of a muggle, Harry finds that Hogwarts' new defense against the dark arts teacher seems to have it out for him. To make matters worse, Voldemort is threatening to rear his ugly mug again, and Harry fears that the school will be unable to defend itself. With the help of Ron and Hermione, Harry rallies the students together to form Dumbledore's Army in an effort to ready them for a fight against the dark lord. This all makes perfect sense if you've read the book, but the story's exceedingly difficult to follow if you haven't read it because vast segments of the story are told via brief full-motion video cutscenes and newspaper clippings. It's easy to understand how a three-hour movie might have to leave bits and pieces out, but it's puzzling that an eight-hour game can't tell even the most basic aspect of the story.

Though the game's box says you'll get to play as Sirius Black and Dumbledore, you do so for less than five minutes, so you'll spend nearly the entire game controlling Harry. Ron and Hermione will be by your side the whole time offering hints on where to go or what to do next. You'll also encounter every recognizable character from the Harry Potter universe along your journey. The game starts off with a tutorial where you'll learn basic spells like wingardium leviosa (levitation), reparo (repair an object), accio (pull an object toward you), and depulso (push an object away) by helping people fix broken dishes, pack their suitcases, and move furniture--not exactly riveting stuff. On the PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, 3, and Xbox 360, you cast spells by pressing a button to point your wand and moving the right analog stick in a specific pattern. Rotating the stick clockwise will cast reparo, pressing down twice will cast accio, and pushing forward twice will cast depulso. You can also use the keyboard and mouse on the PC and this works fine. On the Wii, you'll hold the remote vertically then tilt it forward to cast depulso. To perform wingardium leviosa, you'll raise both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk to lift the object then move the controllers around to maneuver the object. This works surprisingly well, and it makes it feel as if you are actually casting spells, which goes a long way toward making the game more enjoyable. The PS3 does use the Sixaxis' motion controls, but tilting and twisting the controller as you hold it in your lap doesn't add much to the experience.

Later in the game, you'll learn combat spells. These are cast in the same way as noncombat spells and mostly use the same patterns. But there will only be a few instances where you'll need to perform these combat spells because there's hardly any dueling in the game. This is probably a good thing because the combat isn't very good, and it's tough to tell if you're actually hitting someone. Even during the last fight, you just stand there casting the same spell over, waiting for a cutscene to signify the end of the battle.

Once you've learned some basic spells, it's off to Hogwarts, which is faithfully re-created in a game for the first time. The Hogwarts campus is absolutely huge, which is both a blessing and a curse. Fans should really get a kick out of seeing the grand staircase in motion and candles floating above the tables in the great hall, as well as sneaking into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But traversing back and forth across such a large area quickly becomes tiresome. Once you find the proper passwords, you can use the passages behind paintings as shortcuts, but they don't cut that much time off the journey. Another problem is the in-game navigation system. You're given a map that lists all of the different areas on campus, as well as the location of each person you need to find. Once you've highlighted the person or place you're looking for, footprints will appear on the ground to lead the way. Unfortunately, the footprints are black, so they're difficult to see; they don't appear far enough in front of you, so you're constantly forced to stop to wait for them to appear; and the camera will often switch angle midstride, so you don't know which way you're facing.

You've got a huge campus and healthy number of spells at your disposal, so you'll no doubt be doing all sorts of awesome things in incredible, mystical places, right? No. You spend most of the game running around trying to inform everyone as to the whereabouts of the room of requirement. You'll pick a character on the map, follow the footprints, and then tell people about the meeting place. In almost every single case, they'll have a reason for why they can't go. Of course, you've got to help them. This means you'll run all over Hogwarts collecting items, moving benches, fixing things, and helping people with their homework. This is how you spend the entire game. It's literally one fetch quest after another. Being able to pick the quest you want gives the illusion that you've got the freedom to do what you want, but the game is extremely linear in that there's only one way to accomplish any given objective. And sometimes you'll be performing the same exact task over again, such as when you're helping to disable the school's intercom by moving benches then pouring a potion into the speakers. You do this, not once, not twice, but five or six times; each time in a different room.

Performing one menial task after another would be bad enough on its own, but other issues conspire to make it worse. The game does a decent job of showing you where people and places are, but once you've met with someone, you're quite often on your own when it comes to figuring out how to help him or her. For example, at one point in the game, you must help a kid find five talking gargoyles. Now, you've encountered several talking gargoyles to this point, but for some reason, you can't tell the kid this and you must find the gargoyles again. Not only are you doing something you've already done, but the map doesn't show you where these gargoyles are, so you're forced to scour the entire campus in an effort to locate them.

When you're not playing the role of messenger boy, you'll spend much of your time cleaning up Hogwarts by putting statues, paintings, and urns back together. You can also search behind curtains for giant chess pieces, move blocks to find hidden plaques, light torches, and even sweep floors. These tasks are actually pleasant diversions for a short while, and you can unlock extras by performing them. But the tasks speak poorly for the game as a whole when sweeping the floor is a highlight. Another way to pass the time is to play chess, exploding snap, and gobstones. Gobstones (think marbles) and exploding snap (pick out matching pairs of cards) are simple but fun. Chess plays similar to Battle Chess and is actually quite engaging--if you've played chess before. The game will show you the moves that each piece can make, but there's no tutorial mode, which may leave many younger players clueless.

Visually, Order of the Phoenix is all over the place. Many areas of Hogwarts, such as the grand staircase or great hall, look spectacular and are very detailed. However, many of the hallways look the same and are largely empty. Combat spells look really cool when you cast them, but there are so few duels that you'll rarely get to enjoy seeing the spells in action. At first glance, character models look just like their movie counterparts and are quite nice. But once you see them in motion, you'll notice that they all look kind of like zombies. Things are even worse in the cutscenes that utilize the in-game engine. Characters stare blankly off into the distance, they face the wrong way, their mouths often don't move when they talk, and they'll appear then disappear from view for no apparent reason. The PS3, 360, and PC versions look the best. Other than lower quality in-game cutscenes and some nasty aliasing, the PS2 and Wii versions hold their own, though the PS2's frame rate is pretty iffy at times. Having the actors from the films voice their characters in the game goes a long way toward immersing you in the experience, even with the shoddy cutscenes and script. The familiar musical score is here and suits the game perfectly, which kind of makes you wonder why it was used so little.

It's hard to imagine that the video game version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will appeal to anyone. Older fans of Harry Potter will enjoy exploring Hogwarts for a while, but they'll soon be bored to tears by the low level of difficulty and the tedious objectives. The younger set will also get a kick out of seeing the sights and will appreciate the forgiving difficulty, as well as the simplicity of the tasks at hand. But they'll quickly grow tired of using their favorite character to perform a seemingly endless parade of chores. If being the most famous wizard in the world were this boring, there wouldn't have been more than one book.

TrackMania United (PC)

Slot car fantasies come to life in TrackMania United, the latest addition to the zaniest, most addictive arcade racing franchise to ever hit the PC. French developer Nadeo may stick a little too close to the original TrackMania and its sequel TrackMania Sunrise, but the concepts introduced in those games have been refined to near-perfection here. Dozens of insanely catchy tracks, fantastic online support, and a few new gameplay hooks will have you craving the next race the second you finish the last one.

If you decide to download this game from Steam (the only place it's available in the US), be aware that this a racing-game throwback--not the usual hardcore sim with a capital "S" that you tend to get on the PC. Ripping around and having a blast is the point here, not running telemetry until you can blow the doors off everyone at Daytona. Vehicle types here come with loose physics and a slidey feel more fitting of toy cars than of real hunks of metal and plastic. Cars even bounce when they fall from great heights, whether they hit pavement or water when they come down. Tracks are even more fantastic, typically featuring insane jumps, hoops hovering in midair, snowboard-style half-pipes, precipices high above desert canyons, and tropical-island highways that come to abrupt dead ends. And if you can think of a design even nuttier, you can make it yourself with the powerful, easy-to-use track editor.

All of this speedy craziness is experienced in three modes of play. Race is the most down-to-earth option. Like in Sunrise, you run time trials alone or against gold, silver, and bronze pace cars. However, opponents are just ghost cars to push you to better times, as you can't collide with them. Races take place in seven different track categories that unlock as you collect a requisite number of gold and silver finishes. Categories offer different scenery and racing styles. Stadium, for example, sees you guiding formula one-style cars around racetracks in concrete domes, while Desert features trucks on dirt roads. Rally boasts rally cars on grass in windmill-laden pastoral Europe, and Snow takes you to the mountains on ATVs.

Repetition is a bit of an issue when racing, despite the dozens and dozens of tracks included in the game. Each map type repeats the same scenic elements, only varying the time of day and adding glitz like red sunsets and neon nights. Still, you don't spend enough time on any one track to get bored. Tracks range from 10-second drags in the opening stages to slightly more winding treks that take a minute or two to complete. Also, the challenge is strong enough that you can find yourself running a race a couple-dozen times in a row to try to catch the perfect performance of the gold car. Just the slightest mistake puts you in second place, so don't underestimate the toughness of what looks to be a shiny, happy arcade game.

Racing can also be taken online. TrackMania United boasts an awesome online community in both Europe and North America, which lets you hook up with a race day or night. Lag is a slight problem at times, although typically only when loading and starting races. Once you get going, everything smoothes out. Nadeo keeps online leaderboards for different tracks, and also allows you to check your times against others by running official races in the solo mode. So if the basic gameplay doesn't keep you playing, trying to hit the top of the charts likely will. There seem to be thousands of different tracks available over the Net as well, testimony to the game's European fan base and the usability of the editor. These tracks can be downloaded and installed on the fly, although you need to purchase them in solo gaming with coppers earned from activities like posting good official race times.

But while races and the challenge of besting online times will hook you, platform mode will keep you coming back for more. This fiendishly addictive game (a revamped take on Sunrise's ramps tracks) challenges you to simply make it from start to finish without hitting a checkpoint restart too many times, but that's easier said than done when you have to deal with jumps that don't line up, holes that drop you into watery graves, tunnels that whip you around like a pinball, and outrageous one-after-the-other leaps to floating platforms suspended in midair. These tracks beautifully balance learning with driving skill. Even after you've run through a track a few times and memorized its pitfalls, funky driving is still required in order to stay on the road. This means a lot of trial and error...along with a lot of laughing as you continuously miss turns and cinematically sail off ramps to plummet hundreds of feet into the drink in front of gorgeous sunsets. Swearing alternates with the laughter, though, as getting a gold medal requires perfection, and perfection is gamepad-throwingly hard to come by.

Compared to the above, the puzzle mode of play is a big letdown. As in Sunrise, this option sees you building tracks from a top-down perspective. It's an interesting concept, though it seems as out of place with the other two modes as pizza does with rice, and solutions rarely seem logical. As the other options are such pure fun, puzzle really isn't worth much of your time.

But while puzzle makes you question what the developers were thinking, the visuals make you ask how the heck they managed to make a game look this good and run this fast. Frame rates fly on even a low-end machine, and tracks load in seconds (restarts are instantaneous), even though the appearance of the game hasn't been compromised at all. Tracks are designed around postcard vistas like tropical beaches, historic countrysides, and snowy cliffs. Big jumps often trigger the camera switching to a panoramic view of the action, further emphasizing the attractiveness of the backdrops and adding a Fall Guy feel. In-game advertising is the only sore point. When you're logged in online, the scenery is marred by billboards. It's not like tracks are clogged with signage, though, and the ads are region-specific (in Canada, for instance, you get billboards for Rogers and those irritating Bell Canada beavers), so you might see something of interest. Still, having to endure commercials in a retail game is every bit as galling as having to sit through ads in movie theaters.

Audio quality almost makes you forget about the annoying sales pitches, at least. Atmospheric effects are dialed way down for what should be an over-the-top arcade game with lots of squeals and smashes, although the selection of great tunes on the soundtrack mitigates this minor issue. Each song matches its setting, so you get a nifty country honky-tonk in desert races, a scratchy hip-hop beat in the city, and so on.

Overall, TrackMania United has a dreamy, fantasy vibe that could fulfill a kid's slot-car dream. Veterans of the previous two games in the series might find it too much of a been-there, done-that sequel, but it's perfect for anyone who appreciates speed, imaginative track design, and a definitively offbeat take on running cars around in circles.

Call of Juarez (PC)

We know about the genre known as the spaghetti western, but is there such a thing as a pierogi western? There is now, thanks to Polish developer Techland's Call of Juarez. An Old West-themed first-person shooter, Call of Juarez fits snugly into the solid little niche that games like Gun and Red Dead Revolver have already taken up residence in. The game is similarly hard-boiled and filled with gunslinging, horseback riding, train robbery, and all the other staples of the western genre that you might have already gotten your fill of. Still, for as few risks as Call of Juarez takes across the board, it's a well-made genre exercise that's more often entertaining than not.

The game puts you into the boots of two distinct characters. Billy Candle is a half-white, half-Mexican drifter of sorts who had been on the hunt for the legendary Lost Gold of Juarez, a treasure trove of gold buried somewhere within the titular town. Unable to find it, Billy decides to come home to the town of Hope to visit his mother and stepfather--only to find them murdered upon his arrival. The other character is Reverend Ray, Billy's step-uncle and the town preacher. Ray's a reformed gunslinger now dedicated to spreading the Lord's word, but when he hears of the ruckus going on at his brother's farm and arrives to see a panicked Billy running away from the bloody corpses of his brother and sister-in-law, Ray vows vengeance, and begins tracking his step-nephew until he can satisfy it.

The dynamic of having two playable characters would be more interesting if there weren't such a distinct separation of quality between them. The more entertaining of the two, both in story and gameplay, is easily Ray. Voiced by an actor who seems to be equally channeling Sam Elliott and the creepy priest from Poltergeist II, Ray's sequences are filled with enough amazing, self-righteous bible quoting immediately followed by heavy amounts of murdering that you almost wish they'd gotten Samuel L. Jackson for this role. Heck, Ray's even got what we'll affectionately refer to as a "bible button." One of the weapons he can hold is a bible, and if you press the fire button while he's holding it, he'll start reading random passages to any nearby enemies, who will then stop for a second to listen, at which point you can shoot them in their stupid faces. That's either genius or awful--or possibly both.

Apart from using the gospel as a weapon, you spend most of your time as him running around, shooting various hombres, rustlers, outlaws, and other unsavory individuals. His primary weapon is a pair of six-shooters, which he can actually use to bust into a slow-motion "concentration mode" when he draws them from their holsters. Doing this gives you a pair of targeting reticles you can guide toward any nearby enemies and then unload upon them. Ray also gets to engage in some straight-up gun duels against other gunslinging baddies. These are essentially the bulk of the game's boss fights, though they're very quick. In these fights, a counter ticks down, and when you get to the end, you quickly pull back and then press forward on the right control stick to draw. Once you do, your reticle pops up and the scene goes into slow motion again, though the reticle is a little off-kilter, as you did draw rather quickly. It's up to you to aim and shoot before the other guy offs you. You can't call these sequences brilliant, or even especially original (Red Dead Revolver had some similar mechanics), but they're fun all the same.

Less fun and generally more irritating are Billy's sequences. Billy can fire the occasional pistol, and even exclusively use both a bow and arrow and a whip, but nearly all of the scenarios he finds himself in revolve more around bad first-person platforming and overlong stealth sequences than any form of real action. The stealth stuff isn't bad, exactly. Billy can find shadowy or otherwise dark areas to hide in, as well as use bushes and boxes to hide behind, and that all works pretty much as advertised. The issue is that all the stealth bits take way, way too long. Waiting for your enemies to slowly wander through their patrols so you can move from shrub to shrub is about as fun as it sounds. In a few cases you can run and gun it if you want, but you're rarely ever properly armed for these types of situations, and as you are without uncle Ray's concentration ability, Billy just isn't quite as useful for gunfights. So instead, you're stuck spending 15 minutes just trying to navigate one camp full of bandits.

Less tolerable are the bouts of climbing and swinging. First-person platforming has never been a good idea, yet for some reason developers keep trotting it out in these sorts of games. It doesn't work here, either. Billy can climb up short ledges, use his whip to grab onto branches and other elongated protrusions, and then swing from one ledge to the next. The main problem here is perspective--when you're jumping around in the first-person, it's sometimes difficult to gauge the distance of jumps, so you end up trial-and-erroring it until you get just the right amount of distance. The whip-swinging thing seems neat at first, but it can be tough to get the right amount of swing momentum to hit certain ledges. Again, it's a trial-and-error process to figure out how much you need to climb up the whip to get the proper angle. And like the stealth bits, these scenes are just overly protracted. There's one obnoxious fetch quest in the middle of the game where you have to climb up a giant mountain for nearly a half-hour (counting time needed to die and start over), just to grab an eagle feather for some cranky old Indian, only to have to spend another several minutes jumping your way down. Creating a degree of separation between the two playable characters wasn't a bad idea, but this was perhaps not the ideal way to go about it.

Horseback riding pops up now and again for both characters, and it's an enjoyable distraction from the usual trudging around that you do. Controlling the horse is initially a bit of a pain, but once you get used to it, it's both a quick way to get places and a fun way to engage in combat. There are a couple of scenes where you'll find yourself blasting away at other bandits on horseback. Aiming while on a horse is tough, but that makes sense.

Controls on the PC version of Call of Juarez are, as you might expect, significantly different than the 360 version's. Aiming is certainly simpler with the use of the mouse, and whip swinging is actually a little easier as well, as you don't have to fumble around with analog sticks. However, other mechanics are made a bit clumsier by this control scheme. Ray's concentration mode now requires you to press two buttons at once to holster his weapons, and horseback riding, which was already unwieldy to control, is even tougher to deal with on the PC. The crouch mechanic also needs some key remapping to be useful, as the key has to be held down while you move, and default setting of the CTRL key just isn't comfortable.

Another key difference between the PC and 360 versions of Call of Juarez is content. None of the extra missions or gun duels that the 360 version has as separate modes are present in the PC version. At least you still get the same 8- to 10-hour campaign, as well as the same multiplayer mode. LAN and online versions of the multiplayer are available, too. The multiplayer is pretty typical class-based FPS-style action. You can play as either a rifleman, a gunslinger, a sniper, or a miner, and there is a variety of modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, VIP, and so on. The four classes are reasonably well balanced (though in skirmish modes, snipers seem to rule the roost), and there are enough different modes to keep the action interesting for a while. It helps that the game isn't kneecapped by bad weapons, as some historical FPSes tend to be in the multiplayer arena. All the weapons pack a nice punch, though each class is only assigned a pair of specific weapons, a primary and a secondary. There are no weapon pickups on the various maps. All told, the multiplayer isn't remarkable, but it can be fun.

In terms of presentation, Call of Juarez is all over the map, especially as far as graphics go. Environments are definitely the high point. As you wander around the game, you'll see tons of attractive Old West scenery, from mountain vistas to desert plains. It's great-looking stuff that's made better by some nice lighting effects and solid texture work (save for a few occasional ugly spots). On the other side of the coin are the character models. The people you encounter all have that sort of Doom 3 overly shiny thing going on, and they even look a bit mutated to boot. Animations tend to be stiff, clipping issues pop up quite often, and any time you catch a glimpse of what your own character model is doing, either in a reflection or a shadow, or just by looking down, you'd think you were controlling an animatronic robot from some ghost town tourist trap. Still, the problems are mostly outweighed by the positives, and the game as a whole looks good.

It looks noticeably better if you happen to have a video card that supports DirectX 10. On the higher resolutions, environmental details and grass/foliage are much denser and cleaner looking. Lighting and shadows are also more impressive. At the same time, even on a high-end PC, the game chugs a bit while running on the higher resolutions. It's nothing game breaking, but the frame rate drops quite a bit. It's also worth noting that on multiple test PCs, loading times for each chapter and multiplayer map were over the top.

Audio is less scattershot. Apart from some great sound effects and a soundtrack that nicely captures the atmosphere of the era, the game has mostly solid, if slightly hammy voice acting for nearly all the characters. Billy is the only one who didn't fare very well, as the actor who plays him sound like he's in as big a rush as possible to get out of the recording booth, but pretty much everyone else is on their game and delivers an entertaining performance.

As ham-fisted and generic as Call of Juarez can be at times, it does enough right to transcend its various issues and turn in a pleasing shooter. It does the Old West motif well, the gunslinging (and bible slinging) are a lot of fun, and the capable multiplayer modes have enough going for them to give the game a bit of staying power. It doesn't quite rise past the ceiling established by other recent western shooters, but it's good, solid fun all around. That said, if you have the choice, you should probably look to the Xbox 360 version. The PC iteration is good, but its lack of content for its price tag and slightly dodgy DX10 support prevent it from being the ideal choice.