Battlefield: Bad Company (Xbox360)

In Battlefield: Bad Company, no one is safe. Not a sniper hiding inside a tower. Not a soldier driving a massive tank. And definitely not you, as you bob and weave across a fiery sandbox of destruction. If you thought the action of the Battlefield franchise was intense before, you haven't seen anything yet. Thanks to a fleshed-out single-player campaign, Battlefield's trademark multiplayer action, and a new level of destructibility, Bad Company is quite simply one of the most fun shooters released this year.

With its Frostbite engine, Dice has created a warzone that is almost completely destructible. Nooks and crannies that were once a safe haven in other shooters can be reduced to rubble with a well-placed tank shell or mortar strike. Is a quaint Russian home standing between you and an objective? Blow a hole in a wall and walk right through. The system is not perfect since not all buildings can be completely destroyed. Some materials like brick may crumble to dust, but wood crates will often withstand whole missile strikes. Frostbite has its foibles, but Bad Company still gives new meaning to breaking and entering.

A good place for new players to enter is Bad Company's single-player campaign. That's right, a Battlefield game has a bona fide single-player campaign and not a collection of multiplayer maps littered with AI bots. You play as Private Preston Marlowe, recently reassigned to the 222nd Battalion, B Company, which is a collection of misfits and castoffs that the Army likes to send into battle first. B Company, in short, is expendable. You complete a four-man squad composed of Sergeant Redford, a grizzled veteran who volunteered for B Company so he could retire early; Sweetwater signed on to take advantage of a college scholarship without realizing he may actually have to fight; and Haggard is a country bumpkin and demolitions expert who loves to blow stuff up. Together, you'll fight your way into Russian territory and take out a number of well-guarded installations. When the Army leaves you stranded behind enemy lines--something about plausible deniability--the squad goes AWOL in search of mercenary gold. Along the way you'll rescue a flamboyant dictator that resembles Saddam Hussein on ecstasy, and then make your escape in a pimped-out gold chopper. No, the story isn't exactly the stuff of Stephen Ambrose, but the tongue-in-cheek humor and numerous unlockables scattered throughout the campaign make it worth fighting.

Marlowe is a jack of all trades and can handle any of the weapons and vehicles in Bad Company. Often he'll be in control of a mortar strike or laser designator that can lay waste to entire villages. The designator is meant to be used on heavy armor, but it's hard to resist dropping 50-ton bombs on lone troops just for the heck of it. There's a short recharge time so you don't inadvertently start World War III here, but you'll never get tired of unleashing explosive mortar strikes on our foes.

Your squadmates are full of friendly chatter during the campaign, but they never die and don't work together very well at times. Whereas multiplayer requires you to coordinate with your teammates, single-player feels as if you're truly playing alone, with three characters in the background that only list new objectives and provide a little comic relief. They'll take out a few enemies, man turrets and take cover, but you're doing the bulk of the work. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if friends could jump online for a little co-op, but there's no option to do so unfortunately.

Enemy soldiers are not exactly the sharpest bunch and some have no problem standing in the open, waiting for their own demise. Luckily there are so many enemies and objectives that the game never feels easy, but the firefights would be even more intense if enemies more frequently made use of cover, if only so you could blow it up. Marlowe comes equipped with an automatic health injector that refills your life bar and can be used over and over again after a short recharge. Is stabbing yourself in the heart with this panacea any more unrealistic than regenerating health as seen in Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas? Not really. But it certainly feels cheap plunging that needle into your chest every 20 seconds during an intense battle, something you'll surely do toward the campaign's final few missions that border on ridiculousness. You would think that four Army oddballs versus an entire mercenary force and Russian army equipped with tanks and attack choppers wouldn't stand a chance, but you would be wrong, thanks to the handy health injector.

When you've got the hang of the weapons and gadgets of the single-player campaign, jump into Bad Company's excellent online multiplayer mode. It's called Gold Rush, but it's really just a basic attack and defend mode in which an attacking team tries to blow up crates of gold. If you're successful, a larger portion of the map opens and the attackers push forward to do it all over again. This has been done before in other games, but no one does it better than Bad Company, thanks to absolutely massive maps that support 24 players, a vehicle list that includes tanks, jeeps, choppers, boats, and Humvees, as well as laser-guided rocket turrets and artillery cannons. There are five character classes in multiplayer and each has its own special abilities and unlockable extras that will make you giddy. The specialist can lace enemy vehicles for demolitions experts--their rockets will automatically hone in on tagged targets. The sniper can utilize the laser designator to nullify tanks, and the specialist can drop med kits, repair vehicles, and call in mortar strikes.

It's strange that the conquest mode in which teams vie for points on the map and drain enemy tickets, a mainstay of the Battlefield franchise, is absent. The mode will purportedly be made available as a free download at some point, but it should've been in the game right out of the box. That said, you're not likely to get bored of Gold Rush anytime soon. The maps are perfectly balanced with defensive turrets and offensive weaponry, and often matches are decided by the smallest of margins. This is the kind of game where you call your friends to let them know you somehow sniped an enemy chopper pilot or dropped a missile on the final gold crate on a map for the win. The game would've benefited from more vehicles; there aren't nearly as many on each map as you find in Battlefield 2, so teammates will often fight over fun toys such as choppers. But with its persistent ranking system and unlockable weapons, Bad Company is surely the most addicting multiplayer shooter since Call of Duty 4.

Be sure to crank the volume up to 11--Bad Company has some of the finest sound design out there. A sniper shot echoes perfectly through the mountains, while indoor firefights are so loud you may want earplugs. Visually the game does not fare as well. While it's by no means ugly, there is a strange graininess on each texture. Even looking into the clear blue sky in the first scene of the game, you'll be amazed at how fuzzy it looks. Of course, the destructible environments and exciting explosions make up for any graphical shortcomings.

Battlefield Bad Company is the most fun, addictive shooter released so far this year. While far from perfect, the intense sandbox warfare is something that you have to experience. Dice calls it tactical destruction. We call it explosive fun.

Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath (PC)

Last year's Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars featured a horde of freaky alien units, hammy acting, and lots and lots of explosions. With Kane's Wrath, Electronic Arts provides freakier aliens, hammier acting, and bigger explosions, and mixes them into an expansion pack that doesn't improve the core game in any meaningful way. Of course, it gives us more ways to experience the terrific gameplay, and for that we can be grateful. Nevertheless, Kane's Wrath misses the mark in many ways and comes across as a wasted opportunity.

The story, such as it is, fills a number of gaps in Command & Conquer history, jumping around like a jackrabbit on speed. For example, the first act takes place between the second and third Tiberium Wars, whereas the second act jumps to events that took place during C&C3. As a result, when Kane and other characters address you during the live-action cutscenes, you're not even the same character each time. Joe Kucan as Kane, God bless him, almost saves this scattershot structure with his usual superb mix of spittled monologues and ominous glares. As Alexa, though, actress Natasha Henstridge misses the whole point by misunderstanding the difference between histrionics and plain bad acting. Her bouncy hairdo is more energetic than she is. We expect cheese in a Command & Conquer campaign, but its taste is altogether overpowering here. With the third act, Kane's Wrath starts hitting the right notes and then comes to a halt, leaving the promise of yet another expansion...the same promise Tiberium Wars left with us. Let's hope that the inevitable second expansion pack makes good on them.

Once you take command of the battlefield, things pick up, but not in the ways you might expect from an expansion pack. You play as the Nod faction through the whole of the 13-mission campaign, which is fine, but it fails to capitalize on the pitifully brief Scrin campaign of Tiberium Wars. Nevertheless, this is at heart the same gameplay that made last year's game such a success. It's fast-paced, fun, and eminently playable. When the game emphasizes these strengths, such as in a mission where you have to capture a GDI researcher, the gameplay soars. Other missions just speak to overlooked possibilities. For instance, in one scenario, you're teased with the possibility of experiencing one of Tiberium Wars' best missions from the perspective of a different commander. But rather than delivering on the promise of a heart-pounding battle, the game whips the rug out from under you, and you get stuck using a commando and saboteur--and then a dinky attack bike. Talk about an anticlimax.

Thankfully, all of the issues that the campaign presents are mostly offset by the variety of new toys available. Many of them come courtesy of the subfactions in Kane's Wrath. You can still play skirmishes against other players and the AI as the standard GDI, Nod, and Scrin factions, and they've seen some minor changes. However, you should check out the subfactions if you want access to the best goodies. For the most part, the subfactions aren't radically different from their vanilla counterparts, but they bring some subtle and interesting additions and changes to the battlefield nonetheless. For example, the Nod subfaction called the Black Hand replaces the avatar warmech with a flame-spewing monstrosity called the purifier. The Black Hand has no flying units, though, so this isn't the faction for you if you like to spam venoms. Other tweaks have very little impact, such as the addition of shields to harvesters of the Reaper-17 Scrin subfaction, though such small changes undoubtedly have effects on the overall balance.

Some of the new units are available to the main faction and subfactions alike. For example, all GDI players get the hammerhead helicopter, which is invaluable for troop transport and can stay aloft for a while without having to refuel. The Scrin mechapede is a particular (and slightly overpowered) favorite, given that you can extend its length by adding pods to it, and there are four different types of pods you can use. This flexibility makes the mechapede one of the most versatile units in the game, but in the spirit of the Scrin, it requires a healthy amount of micromanagement. The most superficially dramatic units are the new epic units. Each faction and its subfactions get access to a new powerful unit: the MARV tank in the case of the GDI, the redeemer for the Nod, and the eradicator hexapod for the Scrin. How important they are to your strategy depends on how long your matches draw out, which is always a crapshoot in the rush-heavy Command & Conquer. However, should you get to the point where you can create one, you'll enjoy the additional help it provides on the battlefield. They have powerful attacks (even more powerful if infantry is garrisoned inside), but their other abilities can be helpful as well. For example, if you need extra credits, just drive your MARV over some Tiberium, and it will be added to your coffers instantly.

And in a sign that Electronic Arts kept throwing different things at Command & Conquer 3 to see what would stick, they've introduced Global Conquest, which is a Risk-inspired turn-based mode similar to the ones in Rise of Nations or Dawn of War. In it, you create strike forces that let you expand across the globe to crush your enemies while exerting influence on cities. It's an interesting diversion, but it's esoteric without having the depth to match. Not only is the gameplay diluted compared to other turn-based games, but the world map isn't separated into distinct areas, which diminishes the thrill of expansion. It feels as if you're trying to take over vast tracts of empty land, and without the geographic and visual divisions you'd expect, you never get that "just...one...more...turn..." compulsion.

There are more than 25 new maps to skirmish on, too, against either other players or the AI. All these additions--new units, a new mode, and so on--add more ways to play, but they don't add up to an essential expansion pack. It all makes for a broader package, but not necessarily a better one. Sure, the new subfactions give you more variety, but not every addition is significant, and in some cases, they're underwhelming (Steel Talon subfaction, this means you). Throw in a competent campaign, and you have a good expansion that should have been much, much better.

Crysis (PC)

It was hard not to be completely impressed when the first images and videos of Crysis appeared about 18 months ago. Scenes of lush jungles and towering alien war machines looked light-years beyond what seemed possible. Of course, the two questions that revolved around Crysis since its announcement were whether it would deliver on those visuals and whether it would deliver a game worthy of those fancy graphics. It turns out that the answer to both those questions is a resounding yes, as Germany's Crytek has proven that its 2004 hit Far Cry was no fluke. In fact, it was just the beginning from this studio. With its sophomore effort, Crytek has managed to deliver an incredibly advanced and exciting first-person shooter that practically rewrites the rules for the entire genre.

Crysis is an alien invasion game set in the year 2020. An archeological team on a remote Pacific island is captured by an invasion force of North Koreans, and your US Special Forces team is dispatched to investigate and rescue the scientists. Clad in high-tech nanosuits capable of boosting your strength, speed, and armor, as well as cloaking you temporarily to the enemy, you're parachuted into a tropical paradise that's crawling with intelligent enemies and something else that's tearing both the North Koreans and US forces to shreds.

Like Far Cry, the first half of Crysis is essentially a "sandbox" game where you're put in the middle of incredibly large levels and tasked with an objective. How you get the job done is pretty much entirely up to you, which is part of the brilliance of the game's design. For instance, the environments are big enough to give you a wide range of latitude. Do you have to get to a certain point on the map? You can take a meandering route that avoids patrols and go stealthy, or try the up-front approach and try to blast your way through, with the danger of enemy reinforcements showing up. Need to infiltrate a North Korean-held village? You can try the front gate, or maybe explore and find a quieter way in.

Couple these huge environments with the powers of the nanosuit, and you have a ton more options. You can play like the eponymous character from the movie Predator and use your cloaking abilities to stalk North Korean patrols, picking them off one by one and watching the survivors react in confusion. That could be via a silenced rifle, or simply coming up from behind a guard and grabbing him by the throat and hurling him off a cliff, or through the roof of a building, or against a tree, or whatever catches your fancy. Enhanced speed and strength give you an amazing amount of mobility, so you can vault atop buildings and come down behind someone, or run up against a North Korean vehicle next to a cliff and push it over the side. In a heartbeat you can switch between different roles, from stealthy assassin to seemingly unstoppable death dealer. It's a game that makes you feel like a superhero, though not an invincible one, because you simply can't run roughshod over the enemy. Crysis rewards smart, fast thinking.

It helps that the game features a high degree of advanced physics and destructibility in a highly dynamic world. Getting caught in a firefight in the jungle is a cinematic treat, thanks to the way the bullets will chop down trees, while branches sway from impacts. This isn't just a visual effect, either, as falling timber can kill if it lands on someone. There's all sorts of emergent behavior like that throughout the game, events that spring up completely unintended or unforeseen. In one instance, the flaming wreckage of a chopper landed on a hut, crushing it and killing all those inside.

Meanwhile, the gunplay and ballistics modeling make this shooter feel as if you're handling real weapons. Trying to hit a target at long engagement ranges is challenging thanks to weapon recoil and other factors. The North Koreans are encased in body armor, so they take some time to gun down, unless you aim for the head, which usually puts them on the ground. At your disposal is a variety of firearms, like shotguns and assault rifles. One of the neat aspects of the game is that you can fix up your weapons on the fly, adding scopes, silencers, and grenade launchers, provided you've found them. There are trade-offs for each add-on. Silencers let you take down guys quietly, though they reduce bullet damage, meaning you've got to make every shot count. Or flashlights mounted on your weapons might help you out in dark levels, but will give you away.

Crysis gives you all of these toys and ratchets the action higher and higher the deeper you get into it. The first level of the game introduces you to the sandbox combat and the nanosuit. From then on, the battles become larger and more intense as the action escalates. You'll storm North Korean-held villages and bases; encounter their counter to your nanosuit; take part in a chaotic assault on a North Korean harbor; and from there the game accelerates. Next is a wild tank battle in a tropical mountain valley, with helicopters and jet fighters roaring overhead. There's a sheer rush as your tank plows through vegetation and knocks down trees as missiles and tank fire erupt all around you. Meanwhile, the vehicle explosions are convincing, right down to the way ammunition cooks off and sends spirals of smoke outward. It's visual poetry of destruction. You're not confined to your tank the entire time, either. You can jump out at any time and use your suit powers and rifle to take on enemy infantry. When they're dead, pick up their dropped rocket launchers and engage vehicles in a cat-and-mouse-style game.

As events in the game continue to ramp up, you'll find yourself inside the alien ship, the zero-gravity environment delivers a visually strange and yet wondrous setting. As you navigate through the environment and engage the aliens you have to figure out your way through the level. Escape the alien ship and you're tossed into a frozen environment against the alien foe. After the alien vessel, the game becomes less free form and more linear, but it also amps up the action along the way, reflecting the way that the stakes are being raised. Now you're trying to fight your way out of the alien sphere, which means dodging war machines that look like something from The Matrix. There are a few more surprises in store from that point before you get to the ultimate showdown.

The one criticism that can be leveled on the story is that it leaves you screaming for more. While there's an adrenaline-packed finale, you still don't want the game to end on the note that it does. The single-player campaign is around eight to 10 hours long, which is a healthy amount for a shooter. There's a lot of replay here, too, as you can experiment with a multitude of different approaches. Plus, it's fun to go back and try out the large, set-piece battles again and again, since they can unfold in different ways thanks to the dynamic nature of the combat and the artificial intelligence.

Speaking of which, the AI is generally excellent in a fight, as enemy soldiers use cover and concealment effectively. They also know how to lay down suppressing fire and are great at tossing grenades to flush you out of hiding. Getting in a firefight in the jungle with these guys is always fun, because they'll make you work for it at the default normal difficulty setting. (However, the AI can suffer from the same problem all shooters seem to have; mainly that bad guys sometimes don't know what's going on down the road from them.) When you take damage, find cover and your armor and health will regenerate. If you die, you reload to the last checkpoint or quick save. Meanwhile, Crysis includes a special hard mode called delta, which is a lot of fun, because rather than making the game tougher by cheating and giving the bad guys more powerful weapons, delta takes away some of the gameplay crutches that help you at lower difficulty levels. For instance, incoming grenades are no longer highlighted, so you've got to pay attention now, and your health regeneration is slower. And the best part about delta is that all enemy soldiers speak fully in Korean, so unless you understand Korean, you're going to have a much harder time trying to figure out what they're planning to do.

The single-player game is a considerable accomplishment by itself, but Crytek has also included a full-featured multiplayer mode called power struggle that combines the best of the Battlefield games and Counter-Strike. The goal in power struggle is that each 16-man team (for 32 players total) must destroy the opposing team's base, but to do so they have to construct alien weaponry at a central prototype facility. To power the prototype facility, though, both teams need to seize and hold power stations throughout the map. In addition, there are bunkers and factories that can be captured; capturing a bunker allows your team to spawn in forward positions, while capturing a factory allows you to purchase vehicles that can help your side. Whenever you help your team by killing the enemy or seizing an objective, you gain points that can be used to purchase more advanced weapons, vehicles, and gear. It's an excellent multiplayer mode, and it comes with five large maps to support it. Keep in mind that everyone has their suit powers as well, so in addition to all the running and gunning and vehicle driving, there's plenty of leaping and speed running and cloaking going on.

Then there's instant action, which is essentially deathmatch with nanosuit powers. This is a chaotic mode set in some stunning levels, including what feels like a fully modeled Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. You can run around the flight deck, a good chunk of the hanger deck, and many of the corridors. Weapons are strewn about everywhere in instant action, so it's just a crazy melee of shotguns, snipers, rocket launchers, or nanosuit-enhanced fists. However, a team deathmatch mode is missing, which seems odd. Team deathmatch would have been a welcome addition, since it would have instilled some kind of teamwork into an otherwise free-for-all frenzy. Finally, Crysis multiplayer features built-in voice support, which means that all you need is a microphone to talk to your fellow players and teammates in power struggle.

Graphically, Crysis looks photorealistic at times--it's that amazing. Crytek has managed to achieve a visual fidelity that blows away anything seen to date, and there are countless moments when you'll just stop and gape at what you're seeing. Sometimes it's just the ordinary, like the setting sun casting all sorts of shadows and rays through the jungle canopy. Other times, it's something epic, like watching a huge alien war machine stomping toward you. The impressive aspect of the graphics is just how it manages to render huge, open, dynamic, interactive levels. Everything looks amazing up close or far away. Interacting with your squadmates lets you gaze upon the mechanical sinews of their nanosuit, or the incredible facial animation that brings them to life. They're capable of the subtlest of facial gestures to help convey emotion. Then you can sit on a ridge and peer down using binoculars to a village a kilometer away, scouting the location of the patrolling guards and machine gun posts. The sheer fact that many of the trees and buildings are destructible just adds a level of realism that's staggering.

You'll need a fairly high-end system to make the game look its best. In that regard, Crysis really does embody everything that's both exciting and daunting about PC gaming. A dual-core CPU and the latest generation of video card can run the game at maximum detail settings capably, though you have to lower the resolution a bit to do so. It's doubtful that a system has been built yet that can run the game at ultra-high resolutions with all the graphical sliders maxed out. Dial down the detail settings to high, which is the next-lower setting, and Crysis still blows contemporary games out of the water. Results are a bit mixed at medium and low settings, though. At the lowest detail settings, objects pop in and out with a fair degree of consistency. It's annoying at best and frustrating at worst, as it can impact gameplay. Crysis does support both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10, though the latter requires you run the game using Windows Vista. The visuals in DX9 are impressive, but they really come to life in DX10, provided you have the hardware.

The game also sounds fantastic, from the primordial "moans" that the island periodically releases, the soft crunch of dirt and branches under your feet, and all the background sounds that you'd expect in the middle of the jungle. Turn on your suit's cloak, and everything sounds muffled. The music, by composer Inon Zur, feels inspired by the scores from epic Hollywood action movies, while the voice acting is also excellent, helping to deliver some distinct characters and even a little humor.

If you put it all together, Crysis is just remarkable. This is a game that pushes the envelope in terms of both technology and gameplay and does so with aplomb. Crysis raises the expectations for every shooter to follow when it comes to graphics, interactivity, environments, immersiveness, AI, and gameplay. Quite simply, Crysis represents the first-person shooter at its finest, most evolved form.

Skate (PS3)

Plenty of skateboarding games have come and gone in the years since the long-running Tony Hawk franchise reinvented the genre. Most failed because they simply attempted to duplicate the arcadelike, fast-moving gameplay of Activision's series. After running unopposed for years, Activision's got some new competition in the form of Skate from Electronic Arts. At times, this simulation-style skating game feels as though it was built from the ground up to be the anti-Tony Hawk, and aside from both games taking place on skateboards, the two don't have a whole lot in common. This is largely thanks to Skate's very cool control system, which puts all of the meaningful controls on the controller's two analog sticks and triggers. It's an awesome system that makes tricks feel more involved and entertaining. Unfortunately, you'll be applying this control scheme to a series of challenges and goals that aren't quite as good, and an extremely unstable frame rate certainly doesn't help, either.

Skate puts your skater movement onto the left analog stick. The right analog stick controls how you move and flip your skateboard to do tricks. For a simple ollie, you hold down on the stick to crouch then snap it up to jump into the air. Kickflips and heelflips are accomplished if you come up slightly left or right of center. Shuvits happen when you hit down to crouch, then roll the stick around to the side and up to the top. These are the basic tricks, but they get significantly more complicated. The triggers are used for your left and right hands, so when you're in the air, you can use these buttons to perform grabs. Once you've grabbed onto the board, you can tweak it around with the right stick for different types of grabs. It's an instantly intuitive system with the depth to keep you going for some time, but it isn't perfect. A lot of the tricks are done in extremely similar ways. So when some goals call for specific tricks, like a nollie 360 flip, you might find yourself attempting the trick again and again, only to have some other trick come out. This gets totally frustrating in spots, especially in S.K.A.T.E. competitions, where you have to duplicate someone else's trick exactly to stay in the game.

Grinding in Skate is as simple as lining yourself up with a rail or curb, getting airborne, and landing on the grindable edge. Well, it sounds simple on paper, anyway. In practice, you'll have to really work to line yourself up because the default camera is a low, off-to-the-side angle meant to duplicate the look of a dude following you on his own board, holding a video camera the whole time. Your skater is large on the screen, meaning he'll block a lot of your view--he doesn't seem to become transparent often enough to let you get a clear view of the action at all times. Also, Skate is very big on timing. The height of your ollies or other tricks is dependent on how long you crouch and how fast you snap the stick up. It'll take some time before you're hitting every rail, flipping in and out, or landing in manuals all over the place. The whole system is also purely skill-based. You don't receive skater statistic boosts, unlock new tricks, or the like. Everything is available right off the bat. The only stat that increases is your own personal skill with the sticks.

There's a loose story to Skate's career mode. It opens with you getting slammed by a bus and going in for surgery. This justifies the way you can reconfigure your skater's face and body type in the typical EA style of analog sliders. Once you're back on your feet, you're out to get noticed, so it's time to start recording footage and winning events. The different goals in the game give you some variety, but you'll have to get good at all of them if you want to get to the top. Because you're trying to get covered by two different skateboarding magazines, you'll have to complete a lot of photo goals, which ask you to perform specific tasks on specific objects. Some of the tasks are simple, like reaching certain point scores, while others will demand that you pull off longer grinds, flip specific tricks into grinds, or land in manuals. You'll also encounter multiskater competitions, such as timed battles for the most points, best trick contests, or slalomlike downhill races. There are also free-form footage goals, where you're given a set of tasks that must be performed within 30 seconds. The catch is that you can do these anywhere, so half of the process is figuring out which part of the city is conducive to your task. Some of them require you to skate in no-skate zones, which are patrolled by security guards who will push you over if they catch you. Some require you to do huge grinds, do a lot of spins, remain in the air for 10 seconds, and so on. The film goals are probably the trickiest ones in the entire game.

As you make your way through the game, you'll open up additional skate spots within the city, including such indoor locations as the Plan B Warehouse and the X Games Stadium. Aside from entering these indoor locations, you can skate around the city without seeing a loading screen. But if you decide to warp right to a location, you'll see some lengthy load screens. The distance that you can warp without loading also seems a little random. Some goals have you skate long rails or cover what doesn't seem like that much ground, but if you try to warp back to the other side of the goal, it'll stop and load. When you're stuck on a goal and trying it again and again, the loading becomes really grating, as do the unskippable menu animations that pop up when you fail a film goal. This all sounds like small stuff, but it really gets magnified when you're stuck trying the same thing over and over.

In addition to the career mode, you can play several multiplayer events, such as jam, which is a timed session that is won by the highest scorer. For these events, the city gets broken down into smaller areas. A couple of jam locations are in fairly small areas, like residential-sized pools. When the game sticks you into these spots and there are four players in the game, it just becomes chaos. This is because there isn't enough room to skate and you're left constantly bumping into other skaters, which isn't much fun at all. You can also play S.K.A.T.E., get into best trick contests, races, and so on. The online performance can be a little spotty and seems to really depend on the connection speeds of the other players, as well as your own. This means that one player with a slow connection speed can bring the whole game down. In a game that's so focused on accurate timing, it's pretty lame to randomly drop into slow motion. But when it's all working, it's decent.

The differences between the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Skate are a bit of give and take. The PS3 version has slightly better control, solely because its looser analog sticks are more conducive to fast trick snapping. The game has motion control support, which lets you steer by tilting the controller instead of using the left analog stick. It's disabled by default for a reason, as the huge dead zone and imprecise motion makes playing the game practically impossible with it turned on. Skate is also limited to four players online, as opposed to six on the Xbox 360, which can be a bummer in some spots; but considering how crowded some of the areas can get with six skaters, this can be a blessing in disguise. But any points the PS3 version earns are totally negated by its awful frame rate. Whether you're playing alone or online, the game drops frames all over the place when anything starts moving quickly. This is a very timing-oriented game, and having a frame rate this bad really hurts the gameplay.

There is also a community aspect to Skate. You can use a replay editor to capture video footage of your performances or snap screenshots at any point and share them publicly. These can then be viewed through a menu in the game or through the game's Web site, which is nice because the person you want to show your skating exploits to doesn't need a copy of the game to see them. These items can be rated and commented on, which is a sharp idea that expands on the sorts of things that EA has done in the past with Burnout or some of its sports games. The only catch is that, as of this writing, the Web site is sluggish and pretty buggy, making it hard to navigate, as well as see the best footage.

Visually, Skate has a realistic look to it that fits with the overall atmosphere of the game. The skaters look good and the animation is great when it's running smoothly, though a few of the up-close talking segments that show polygonal versions of real-life skaters look a little weird.

Like other sports games, Skate is filled with plenty of sponsored equipment and other product placement. For the most part, it feels fine; getting sponsored by board and shoe companies is an integral part of the game's career mode, and that part never feels too aggressive. But it crosses the line in a few spots, like whenever you meet a pro skater. It shows that skater skating a line and doing some nice tricks, but then it zooms up to give you a very deliberate view of his skateboard, trucks, wheels, and shoes, flashing the sponsor logos on the screen all the while. Also, there's a weird bit of reverse product placement in the game because EA and Adidas teamed up to produce some limited-edition shoes. These are introduced and advertised in the game, complete with promotion codes that get you $50 off them when you beat the skaters who endorse them. It's awfully blatant, but it's actually pretty unique. It helps that the shoes are sort of rad. The game also downloads new ads for billboards and other surfaces as you play, though there aren't enough ads, resulting in some cases where you'll see the same stupid billboard 10 times as you skate up a single street.

The soundtrack is a really weird mix of music that doesn't actually play through most of the game. On the default settings, music is ambient. This means that whenever you get close to a skate-friendly spot where skaters might gather and actually have a radio, you'll start to faintly hear music coming from the direction of the spot. If you like, you can set it to directly play the music, but most of the soundtrack is a little sketchy, and the way the game opens with Booker T & The MG's "Green Onions" every single time you load it up makes you feel like you're turning on some awful Jim Belushi movie rather than getting ready to play a realistic skateboarding game.

Aside from the weird soundtrack, the in-game audio is really great. There are lots of great skateboarding noises, especially the way the wheels skid when you do powerslides or land hard and turn. The game also has something like color commentary, which comes from the invisible kid who's "holding" the in-game camera. He'll call out to other pros as you pass by, congratulate you on good trick lines, comment when you stack and break some bones, or impatiently whine when you set the controller down then walk away. His presence is pretty good and gives the game some personality.

While Skate has a handful of issues that hold it back, it has a ton of potential. It's a solid first start for what hopefully will become a regular franchise. With some more refinement and a few more things to do, this could probably be the best skateboarding game around. It's definitely worth playing, if only to get your hands on the trick system; but if you're stingy with your money, you could probably get enough out of it with a rental.

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.