Braid (Xbox360)

Have you ever wondered how the princess locked away in the castle must feel? Or what's going through the head of the eager hero--the valiant young man who gladly leapt over treacherous pits and onto the heads of dangerous foes--after receiving a cursory kiss on the cheek for risking his hide? The motivations of these archetypical characters are rarely explored, but Braid tries to answer these oft-ignored questions. It serves as the contemplative companion to the typical Mario adventure while embracing the unbridled fun found in the best platformers. Clever gameplay mechanics are the driving force, pushing you toward your inevitable confrontation with the woman you've lost, but it's the engrossing story that cements this as something really special.

Braid is the rare game that will make you rack your brain trying to solve puzzles one minute while challenging you to come to terms with its mature tale the next. The plot is succinctly summarized before you enter the first world: Tim, the hero, has made a mistake that cost him his love; now, he has to rescue his lost princess from an evil monster. The story, told through books before each of the six worlds, chronicles Tim's ruminations on the subjects eating away at him. These could be labeled poetic or sappy--depending on your level of cynicism--but they add powerful context to the running and jumping action that follows.

Tim's thoughts often drift toward changing the past, which ties in nicely with the time-shifting mechanics you'll be employing throughout the entire adventure. Your standard ability allows you to rewind time with the push of a button. The most basic use of this is simply pushing back time to avoid being killed by an enemy or reattempting a mistimed jump, but it goes much deeper than replaying failed opportunities. However, there are green objects and enemies in the world that are unaffected by your time changing powers. So if you unlock a green door and rewind time, it will remain open. Your ability to control time is used in many unexpected and often brilliant ways, making you use parts of your brain that are rarely tapped during most puzzle games.

Later levels retain this basic mechanic but add unique twists that ensure every world feels completely different. Which time manipulation tool you are given depends on what world you're currently exploring. In the fourth world, you control time simply by walking. Every step forward pushes objects and enemies forward in time, while moving backward takes them into the past with you. Because these levels have enemies and items that move in direct relation to you, they have been meticulously constructed to make navigation possible. In another world, you make a copy of yourself every time you rewind time. Your shadow can jump on enemy heads, pull switches, and unlock doors; you just have to perform the action yourself first. The different solutions built around these powers vary widely, so you have to figure out the extent of your powers before you happen upon the always logical solution. Though the puzzles are formidable, Braid never frustrates.

Each of the first five worlds in Braid has 12 different puzzle pieces to collect. The levels are actually extremely short, so if you wanted, you could run through most of the game in little more than 15 minutes, but you'll have to collect all 60 of the deviously placed pieces if you want to see the poignant conclusion. The entire game should take more than six hours to finish, depending on your puzzle-solving acumen. It may seem unfair to ask you to collect every little piece to see the thrilling ending, but by encouraging you to tackle the most challenging puzzles, the game is ultimately much more rewarding than it would have been otherwise. Though the game only forces you to backtrack during one very early puzzle, it's unlikely that you'll be able to nab every piece the first time you play through the worlds. It is only after mastering your abilities and learning your limitations that you'll be able to conquer the puzzles that seemed impossible your first time through.

Most of the puzzles in Braid emphasize clever thinking over quick reflexes. The actions you're required to pull off should be second nature if you've ever jumped on goomba heads in the past. Braid certainly realizes that its running and jumping encounters feel an awful lot like Super Mario Bros.--there are clever references to the venerable plumber throughout the game. From the dangerous plants coming out of pipes to the flag pole that greets you at the end of every world, there are constant reminders of Braid's progenitor. Like the musings from Tim's books before each level, these homages tie into the overarching story of the wounded hero's subconscious longings.

The subtle visuals are eye-catching but never distracting. The world looks like it was composed with pastel watercolors, swirling blends that create a very distinct look. The characters themselves--Tim, his enemies, and the princess--stand out prominently against the serene, multilayered backdrop. They're like flat, cardboard cutouts colored by markers. The score is elegant and mild--quiet songs that mirror the deliberate pacing. The music bends with the time, racing forward and backward along with your actions. Braid's presentation is uniformly impressive, and serves to complement the gameplay rather than draw focus away it.

It is impossible to ignore Braid's price point. At 1,200 Microsoft points ($15), it is one of the most expensive games for the Xbox Live Arcade service. But do not let a few extra dollars deter you from an exemplary experience that can rival many full-price, retail games. Braid is worth every penny. The captivating ending sequence, which makes use of your rewind ability in a jaw-dropping new way, provides the exclamation point on this remarkable game, but the adventure is consistently engaging throughout the entire ride. The clever puzzles alone are enough to make this an adventure worth taking. Braid's deep and mesmerizing tale is evergreen: it is outside of and beyond time. It will never get old.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (Xbox360)

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was one of the premier games for the Xbox 360 launch. It established low-cost downloadable games as a worthy alternative to full-priced, big-budget fare and made leaderboard races between friends a reason to keep playing through the night. But with such a simple mechanic, the idea of a full-fledged sequel being able to capture the same addictive nature of the original seemed like a pipe dream, especially after the subsequent sequels came and went without causing a stir. More than two years after Retro Evolved ushered in the next generation of gaming, developer Bizzare Creations has devised a game that doesn't just top the original, it blows it away. With five new modes that require unique strategies and cutthroat multiplayer competition that is among the best for any XBLA game, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 is the new standard for frantic downloadable games.

From a gameplay perspective, the biggest difference between Retro Evolved 2 and the original is the addition of geoms. These tiny green gems are the key to racking up ridiculous scores. Instead of raising your multiplier by shooting enemies, you have to collect the goodies that they drop. The original game put a 10x cap on your multiplier, but in the sequel you're limited only by your reckless desire to collect more geoms. Your multiplier will no longer reset when you die, so your best efforts from the XBLA original will seem like puny nothings now. Furthermore, you no longer need to worry about being stuck with the shoddy weapon while being surrounded by those dastardly snake creatures; there are no weapon upgrades, and your standard gun is more than enough to keep those evil shapes at bay.

The most divergent of the five new modes introduced in Retro Evolved 2 is Pacifism. As the name implies, you won't actually be shooting enemies. Instead, the level is loaded with slalom-type gates that explode when you fly through the center. However, if you accidentally bump into the orange edges that hold this contraption together, you will be the one who explodes. The idea of playing Geometry Wars without a gun may seem impossible, but you face off against lemming-like blue diamonds that dutifully follow as you lead them down death's trail. It is incredibly satisfying to get a huge fleet of these troopers to follow you as you burst through multiple gates, destroying the platoon in a massive explosion.

Other new modes don't stray quite as far from the standard GeoWars formula, but they are every bit as engaging. Waves returns from its stint as a Project Gotham Racing 4 unlockable. A wall of orange missiles will emerge from one of the four sides every few seconds, making you constantly watch your back as another massive fleet closes in on you. King mode places three circular safe zones around the map that are the only places from which you can fire. Since these havens will disappear soon after you enter them, you'll have to constantly swoop around the battlefield, collecting geoms while you desperately try to find a new home where you can hide and safely destroy enemies again. Sequence is the only mode that has an actual ending, but only expert players will ever be able to reach it. Here you'll blast through 20 levels that have the same enemy placement every time. Memory won't be enough to ensure victory because the rooms are near to bursting with enemies, which makes survival seem like a crazy fantasy. It's exhausting but extremely rewarding, even if you never make it to the end.

The remaining two modes are tweaked versions of the traditional free-for-all. Though Evolved mode is structurally the same as the original, the addition of geoms changes the strategy of battle. You'll have to constantly circle back on enemies that you've destroyed if you want to extend your multiplier, which makes the risk/reward dynamic all the more satisfying. Deadline limits the carnage to just three minutes, which makes collecting geoms your number-one priority. Both of these modes should satisfy Evolved veterans looking for more traditional shooting action.

Retro Evolved 2's visuals are definitely a step up from those in the first game. The screen is bursting with even more colors now, and every explosion fills half the screen with gorgeous lights. The enemies are much more distinct, too, and their brighter colors make it easier to identify them and work out a contingency plan. The sound is also much improved from the original. Every mode has its own music track, which gives each the tone that it needs. Pacifist offers a much more subdued feel, whereas Waves is just bursting with chaos. The explosions are extremely sharp and punctuate the music with bursts of energy.

The multiplayer mode takes the whole experience to another level of crazy fun. You can quadruple your firepower with cooperative mode, though it doesn't make the game any easier because keeping track of everything onscreen adds another layer of depth in an already frantic game. Copilot is utterly ridiculous: In this mode, one player steers while another shoots, so you place your fate in your friend's hands. Competitive mode is even tastier. Fighting for geoms while trying to stay alive longer than your friends is a teeth-baring treat that should keep you coming back for more. There are even scattered power-ups here that upgrade your weapon, freeze your friends, or turn you into a geom magnet, among other things. It's a shame that this mode is offline only, but it serves to make an already great game almost impossible to put down.

Retro Evolved 2 is a shockingly good sequel. The only problem is the lack of an online multiplayer mode. Everything else on display here is a drastic improvement over the original. Every new mode is extremely fun to play and requires a totally different play style to master. The geoms put upgrading fully in your hands; you have to decide if you want to risk your life for a couple of green gems or if you want to focus on staying alive. Even little tweaks--such as including your closest friend's highest score in the upper right corner of your screen to constantly give you a new goal to strive for--raise the addiction level. At only 800 MS points ($10), this is not only a great value but also one of the best games on XBLA.

Soulcalibur IV (Xbox360)

When Soul Calibur was released for the Dreamcast in 1999, it set a new standard for fighting games on home consoles. Subsequent entries in the series have changed very little as far as the weapon-based fighting mechanics are concerned, and have introduced new features and gameplay modes with varying success. Soulcalibur IV is no different in that respect; the series-first online play is a great addition, but though the visuals have improved and the gameplay has undoubtedly evolved, it still feels very familiar. And that's no bad thing.

The majority of the characters on Soulcalibur IV's roster will also be familiar if you're a fan of the series, though only around half of the 30-plus combatants are available at the outset, including Yoda on the Xbox 360 and Darth Vader on the PlayStation 3. Others are unlocked by defeating them in the single-player Story and Arcade modes, and by purchasing them with the gold that you're awarded for winning fights. There's more than enough variety on the roster to ensure that you can enjoy playing as at least a handful of different characters, and a robust customization system gives you the freedom both to edit their appearances and to create your own fighters from scratch.

Regardless of who you play as, Soulcalibur IV is accessible enough that even first-time players will have no trouble performing some powerful and great-looking moves. Rather than memorizing lengthy combo attacks and knowing how to attack your opponent, the challenge here comes from knowing when to attack, when to block, and when to sidestep around the arena. That's not to say that the combatants in Soulcalibur IV don't have impressively large repertoires of moves, because they do, it's just that very few of them are tough to pull off.

Your goal in Soulcalibur IV, of course, is to defeat your opponent by depleting his or her health bar. Alternately, you can win by knocking your opponent out of the "ring," which is possible in almost all of the game's beautifully realized arenas. New to the series--though reminiscent of a feature in 1997's Soul Blade--is the soul-gauge system, which appears alongside the health bar and changes color if you spend too much of your time blocking attacks and not retaliating with your own. When the gauge turns red and your health bar starts flashing, you're just an attack or two away from entering a defenseless "soul crush" state, at which point your opponent can perform a one-hit-kill critical-finish move. It takes a long time for that to happen, so the soul gauge isn't always an effective deterrent as far as overly defensive players are concerned, but it at least discourages online players from trying to score cheap victories simply by landing a couple of blows and then blocking until the time runs out.

Online play is where Soulcalibur IV really shines, though there aren't many different modes of play available. The action is fast-paced and free of lag for the most part, though if you have a slow Internet connection, you might find that your character takes a split-second longer to respond to your inputs than you're used to, which can prove fatal against a skilled opponent. You can choose to play ranked battles online against random opponents or join up to three other players in an unranked lobby, in which the winner of each round gets to stay in the fight as spectators get their turn in the ring. Both Arcade and Special modes of play are available online, the difference being that in Special mode all of the characters' move lists are augmented by special skills bestowed on them in part by weapon and clothing choices. Disappointingly absent from Soulcalibur IV, both online and offline, is an option to pit teams of fighters against one another. Team battles have appeared in the series previously, and given that the tagging mechanic is present in the single-player Tower of Lost Souls mode, its omission is baffling.

Considering that Arcade mode does nothing new and Story mode is really short and text-heavy, the new Tower of Lost Souls mode is where you'll find the majority of Soulcalibur IV's compelling single-player content. Taking control of one to three fighters, you must ascend (and later descend) the tower one floor at a time by defeating multiple groups of enemies without ever having your health replenished. Variety comes courtesy of opponents with carefully tailored skill sets, as well as battle-specific challenges that can be completed to unlock treasure chests containing new armor and weapons. For example, you might have to defeat three fighters who all have the ability to leech health from you, or who are impossible to force out of the ring. Optional challenges during these fights can be completed by meeting very specific conditions, such as landing the final blow as the timer ticks down to zero, performing four or more counter hits, or for defeating all opponents by knocking them out of the ring. As you ascend the tower, the difficulty level can ramp up pretty quickly, and you might find that you have to revisit the character-customization mode to prepare your chosen combatant for certain challenges.

How you go about customizing or creating a character for Soulcalibur IV depends on the use that you have in mind for the character. For Arcade mode, the only thing you need to concern yourself with is how your character looks, and you'll find that the number of armor pieces and weapons available for you to choose from increases quite dramatically as you spend time playing. For other modes, you'll have to consider the pros and cons of everything that you equip, even if that means ending up with a character who looks like he or she has just stepped out of a medieval thrift store. That's because just about every item has an impact, not only on your basic attack, defense, and health attributes, but also on the distribution of skill points, which fall into five distinct categories labeled power, impact, boost, gauge, and special. For example, equipping an executioner's breastplate will give you 30 power skill points to spend and will boost your attack and defense attributes, but at the expense of health points. There are dozens of items to choose from, and they're balanced so that it's possible for you to make more specialized fighters but not to gain an unfair advantage. Even skills such as temporary invisibility, unblockable attacks, and health recovery--which on paper sound like they'd break the game--are kept in check because to get any real benefit from them you have to forgo spending skill points in other areas. It's worth mentioning that more powerful (and costly) skills can be used only if you've played your character enough to reach a certain "style level," but reaching the level-nine cap doesn't take very long.

Style is something that Soulcalibur IV certainly has no shortage of. The nicely detailed character models look even better when the flamboyant animation kicks in, and the sheer variety that's on show in the arena locales can't fail to impress. The orchestral soundtrack ends up feeling a little too epic for its own good in places, but that's largely because it's paired with cheesy character dialog and an announcer who delivers his melodramatic lines without even a hint of irony. Fortunately, this isn't a game that's ever in danger of taking itself too seriously, as evidenced by the presence of Star Wars characters, animal costumes, novelty weapons, and plenty of amusing arena details.

Perhaps the most amusing, or at least laughable feature of Soulcalibur IV is that Yoda, Vader, and The Apprentice from LucasArts' upcoming Force Unleashed game all have stories that attempt to explain their sudden presence in the Soulcalibur universe. In terms of gameplay, none of the aforementioned fighters from a galaxy far, far away are a great fit with the rest of the roster, but they're certainly not so far removed that they ruin the game or anything like that. Some Force powers aside, Vader actually isn't radically different from some of the other members of the cast. The Apprentice uses the force a lot more liberally and, at least until you figure out how to fight against him, he can feel like a really cheap opponent when he throws lightning bolts and even his lightsaber across the screen at you. Given his diminutive stature, it's no surprise that Yoda feels very different from any other character in the game. He's impossible to throw and, considering that he spends most of his time jumping around very acrobatically, he can also be tough to hit. He doesn't use the Force a lot, though, and he moves around the arena relatively slowly, so he's not so much overpowered as just tricky.

The fact that Yoda and Vader are exclusive to the 360 and the PS3 respectively is easily the most pronounced difference between the two versions, but given that both games have an empty box on the Star Wars row of the character-select screen, it seems reasonable to assume that it'll no longer be an issue once downloadable content starts coming. The only other noteworthy difference between the two games is that the PS3 version offers an optional install to make the load times between fights shorter. Depending on how seriously you take your fighting games, the controllers that you use to play Soulcalibur IV might also be a consideration The PS3 controller's D pad is superior to the Xbox 360's on this occasion, but the latter's analog sticks fare a lot better. The question, then, isn't whether or not you should play Soulcalibur IV, it's which version you should play.