Mario Kart Wii (Wii)

One may wonder why Nintendo would add motorcycles and dirt bikes to the game series that popularized, if not invented, the genre of weapons-based go-kart racing. If you're one of the fans who balked at the inclusion of two-wheeled vehicles, a midair stunt system, and motion controls, rest assured that despite these changes, Mario Kart Wii is still very much the game that you have come to love over the years. But even if you haven't been on the receiving end of a blue shell before, the extensive multiplayer options, deeply integrated online functionality, multitude of controller schemes available, and simple gameplay make this latest Mario Kart great fun and quite possibly the most accessible one ever.

The main event of Mario Kart is the Grand Prix mode, which in this version pits you against 11 other computer-controlled competitors in a race to the finish on a four-course cup event. Grand Prix lets you select from three different engine sizes/difficulty settings, and there are initially four cups available, with four more that are unlockable by conquering their predecessors. This makes for a total of 32 different courses, of which half are brand-new for the Wii and the rest remastered versions of classic stages from previous games. This combination of both new and old provides a solid mix of novelty and nostalgia, but overall, the stylistic differences highlight two of the game's greatest flaws.

One of the major new features is the midair stunt system, which is activated by flicking the Wii Remote at the very moment you leave the ground from a ramp-assisted jump, making your racer perform an extreme-sports-style trick, such as a 360-degree spin, which upon landing rewards you with a considerable speed boost. To facilitate this new mechanic, most new tracks include huge half-pipes, rampant ramps, a multitude of moguls, and a plethora of pits, all of which are deliberately placed to encourage extensive stunt work. While this new system itself isn't flawed and in fact injects a great deal of fun and new strategy into the gameplay, its influence on course design has made certain items even deadlier, as you're that much more likely to be blasted uncontrollably into lava or other hazards due to how much time you spend in the air.

The second major track-related issue is that the classic courses, while they've never looked better, are much less engaging than their counterparts. While the newer tracks are wild, crazy, and may even change dynamically as Grumble Volcano or Dry Dry Ruins do, the older courses are their polar opposite and are with few exceptions flat, empty, wide-open, and pit-free. Though you may find the occasional ramp or half-pipe haphazardly bolted on to make it play a teeny bit better with the stunt system, it generally seems like Nintendo deliberately decided to make you choose which was more important: stunts or a slightly better item balance. This dichotomy of level design creates a tenuous balance of play styles and is inelegant at best.

Mario Kart Wii includes the standard batch of items that players have come to expect, including mushrooms, starmen, fake item boxes, shells, and more. New items include the thunder cloud, which will automatically shrink you after several seconds unless you ram someone to pass it off onto them; the POW block, which temporarily stuns everyone ahead of you and makes them drop their items; and the mega mushroom, which makes you grow super large for a time to flatten other racers beneath your tires. While it's pretty much a guarantee of the Mario Kart experience that no one can stay in first forever, some of the more powerful items such as the blue shell, lightning bolt, and POW block appear absurdly often. It's not uncommon to be hit by several of them in a row or even simultaneously if you're in first place.

Much like Super Smash Bros. Brawl before it, Mario Kart Wii includes support for every possible controller configuration under the sun. The game comes packaged with a steering wheel controller shell that allows you to take full advantage of the Wii's motion-sensing abilities for what is perhaps the best purely tilt-driven control scheme available on the market. Though it does take quite a bit of time to get used to, the steering wheel feels quite natural and is very responsive. However, if you're not exactly up to the task or prefer the touch of an analog stick, the Wii Remote with Nunchuk, Classic Controller, or GameCube Controller schemes work just as well, with the directional pads on the more traditional controllers nicely substituting for remote-waggling.

Though the fundamental Mario Kart experience has remained generally the same, there are several changes that can greatly impact gameplay. Drifting mechanics in particular have changed dramatically, both to make it easier to perform for beginners and as a countermeasure against the controversial technique known as snaking (continuously mini-turbo boosting on a straightaway). Mini-turbo boosts are no longer performed by wiggling the analog stick. They are instead determined by the amount of time spent in a drift, and in fact can't be done at all in automatic mode. The type of vehicle you select also affects how drifting works, as go-karts have the ability to super mini-turbo boost by drifting around a turn a bit longer than normal. Motorcycles can't do this, but they can pop wheelies for extra speed on straightaways at the cost of impaired turning and increased susceptibility to ramming attacks. It is worth mentioning that while snaking is still possible to perform--especially on wide and open avenues-- it is no longer as viable or even as helpful as it once was.

Besides Grand Prix, Mario Kart Wii also includes Balloon Battle and Coin Runners battle modes, which take place on 10 separate arenalike tracks, five of which are new and the rest brought out of retirement. Both of these modes have been changed to two team-only events, which is a disappointment to say the least, but they are still fun and entertaining alternatives to standard racing. Split-screen multiplayer allows up to three friends to join you in Grand Prix or battle. Using Nintendo Wi-Fi Connect, you can play online matches with up to 12 total players with a maximum of two per system.

Online integration is deeper than most other games on the Wii, and you can join matches of any game type with friends as well as strangers from your local region or across the world. You have a persistent score, which is either increased or decreased by your performances, and when seeking out matches you're automatically place with like-skilled opponents revealed on a representation of Earth that uses Miis to show the approximate locations of the competition. In the event that you join a game already in progress, you will automatically be placed in a spectator mode until the round finishes and it's go time. Communication between players online is still virtually nonexistent, but while the ability to smack talk is a vital element of local multiplayer, it's not necessary for facilitating matches.

The most interesting online feature of Mario Kart Wii is the Mario Kart Channel, which can either be launched from within the game or saved directly into your Wii dashboard. Using WiiConnect24, you can compare your best lap times against your friends' and the rest of the region or the world. You can also download ghost replays to see firsthand how the top players pull off their times and send your own ghosts to friends as a challenge, and if this channel has been installed in the Wii menu, you can even do all of this without having your Mario Kart disc in the system.

Mario Kart Wii features a cast of 25 characters, over half of which must be unlocked through various accomplishments in single- or multiplayer modes. The ability to race as one of your Miis is perhaps the most notable new feature, but as great as putting Chuck Norris or Dr. Gregory House behind the wheel is, some of the newcomers like Baby Daisy and Dry Bowser are underwhelming and disappointing. Unlike Mario Kart: Double Dash, characters don't have items specific to them, but they do have up to 12 personalized motorcycles and go-karts to select from to determine racing stats.

Graphically, there isn't very much of a leap between this latest Mario Kart and its predecessor on the GameCube, but there are a lot of little details that add to the experience. Crowds of onlookers are populated by your Miis, and posters or statues throughout the levels can feature them as well. Lighting is vastly improved, and there are a number of nice environmental effects. Electricity crackles around you after you've been blasted by a lightning bolt. However, there is a considerable degradation of graphical quality in split-screen multiplayer--especially with four players--and character models are unnaturally shiny.

The musical selections, just like the tracks, are a mixture of old and new, and item sound effects are just as they have always been. Characters, as typical of Nintendo games, only say about four or five different phrases, but these become incredibly grating over time because they say them more often than ever before thanks to midair tricks.

Super Mario Kart may have originated way back in 1992, but 16 years later, Mario Kart Wii proves that the franchise is just as relevant and fun as ever. The all-new stunt system, simplified drifting mechanics, natural motion controls, and expansive online integration all come together in a single package that, despite a few hiccups, is one of the best and most accessible experiences available on the Nintendo Wii.

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)

Here is the game that Wii owners have been pining for, a game that has tons of appeal for both the less experienced player and the longtime gamer. A game that deftly combines accessibility and challenge, all wrapped up in a package that's both deep and addictive. Super Mario Galaxy is all of this and more. It is simultaneously one of Mario's best adventures and a game that doesn't require fandom of the portly plumber's previous engagements to appreciate. The sheer quality of Mario Galaxy's wonderful level designs, tight controls, and brilliant presentation is the sort of thing that just about anyone who loves gaming should be able to appreciate, and that many will fall head-over-heels for.

The premise for Mario Galaxy begins in fairly well-worn territory. Mario receives a note from his beloved Peach to come to the castle, for she has a special "gift" for him. He arrives, only to walk straight into chaos as Bowser and son arrive in a fleet of airships and use a giant UFO to pluck the Princess' castle right out of the ground. Mario gives chase, but is unable to rescue her before the fearsome twosome jet off into space. This all certainly sounds par for the course, but it's where Mario ends up that gives Mario Galaxy its own flavor. Mario eventually hooks up with a creature called a luma, from a race that looks like some kind of cross between an invincibility star and a headless chicken. The lumas are led by an enigmatic woman named Rosalina, who lives with them on a crazy spaceship called the comet observatory. Mario learns that Bowser has made off with a gaggle of power stars used to power the observatory. To reach Bowser's hideout, Mario has to travel to all the various galaxies in the universe to collect as many power stars as he can in order to power the ship back up, fly to the center of the universe, rescue the princess, and set everything right again.

Mario 64, anyone? If you played that seminal game, Mario Galaxy's star hunt progression probably sounds familiar to you. But apart from that basic structuring, you can hardly call Mario Galaxy a Mario 64 rehash. If anything, Mario Galaxy simply takes the basics of what made Mario 64 such a dynamite game, and turns them completely crazy.

The definition of crazy here has a lot to do with gravity and physics. Each galaxy contains a series of little worlds that can't even really be called planets so much as they are floating puzzles. In many of these worlds, Mario can walk just about anywhere. When he lands on a sphere, he can walk all over it, going sideways and upside down in the process. Sometimes you'll simply jump in one area and end up gravitating toward the ceiling or walls or even another nearby planetoid without even realizing it. Often Mario will need to track down launch stars, which, when you shake the Wii Remote while standing near or inside one, will send you flying to a whole new, previously inaccessible area. There are even sections where you'll be floating through space, using specialized pull stars to hop from area to area, all while floating through the spatial void.

Practically every galaxy you explore is an absolute joy to experience. The level designs here are top flight in every regard, with tons of clever and sometimes dastardly traps and puzzles for Mario to navigate. The difficulty doesn't start off terribly high, but as time goes on, the game ramps up nicely, building the challenge steadily until the final areas, which, though perhaps a bit frustrating to inexperienced players, provides the exact sort of tough workout you've come to expect from a Mario adventure. But even aside from the challenge level, simply exploring all these various galaxies is half the fun. Whether you're floating from land mass to land mass on a giant spinning flower, running frantically around a giant series of platforms that shrink to nothing the first time you touch them, or taking on one of several terrific 2D side-scrolling areas reminiscent of New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, you won't be wanting for variety while playing through Galaxy's dozens of levels.

In a sort of nod to the suit-happy gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 3, Mario can don a number of different costumes that give him new abilities. For instance, in several levels, Mario can take on the abilities of a bee, buzzing around through the air via his new pair of wings, and wall-climbing specific honeycombed areas of the environment. With others, Mario can freeze water to walk over it, launch fireballs (natch), fly, wrap himself in a Mario-sized spring and jump to great heights, turn invincible (natch, again) and even turn into one of those pesky boos, allowing him to float around and pass through some solid walls. In most cases, the game takes great advantage of these abilities in the context of each level. A few involving the bee suit are a bit frustrating (given that you lose the suit when you touch water) and the spring suit is kind of a pain to control given Mario's perpetual bounciness, but otherwise, these abilities add a great dimension to the already excellent gameplay.

Apart from the screwiness of the spring suit, there's very little issue to be taken with Mario Galaxy's controls. At its core, it controls much as Mario 64 did, but with a couple of Wii-centric twists. For one, Mario's primary attack is a basic spin move (the same spin move you use to activate launch stars). Simply shaking the Wii Remote engages the spin, and it's an extremely responsive mechanic. The one trick to it is that you have to wait a second before spinning again, so you want to make sure you're able to get away from whatever bad guy is nearby if you happen to miss.

The other key change is the addition of the Wii Remote as a pointer. Simply by pointing at them on the screen you'll collect star bits, which can be found just about everywhere and serve as both Super Mario Galaxy's currency and as a weapon. Firing star bits is as simple as aiming the Wii Remote at an enemy and pressing B to launch. But you don't want to fire off too many of those, as they come in handy for unlocking new stages later on. Only in a few specific cases does the game really dabble in true motion control, such as sections where you're surfing on a manta ray or walking on a boulder. But even these few divergences from the standard gameplay formula are largely successful and quite fun.

Mario Galaxy's journey is scattered and epic all at once. There isn't much of a thread tying together all these disparate worlds, apart from the fact that they have power stars hidden within them somewhere. And yet, at the same time, the lack of cohesion in what you're doing never really gets in the way of your enjoyment of it. Because each level is so much an island unto itself, it actually makes each one stand out all the more.

It helps that practically every stage in the game has a great deal of replayability purely on its own merits. These levels are just inherently fun to go back to again and again, and that the game gives you plenty of reason to is even better. Once you complete an area, you can go back and engage in a specialized version of it in certain cases. Essentially, comets will enter orbit in some of these galaxies, and thus change the way you play in some bizarre way. Whether it's speeding up all the enemies in an area, putting you on a timed run, or having you race against a doppelganger Mario, there's a nice variety of change-ups to experience. The adventure probably won't take you more than 12 to 15 hours if you just collect the minimum number of stars necessary to get to the end level, but you can certainly tack on a great deal more to that if you're into going back and collecting all the stars. And if you want to unlock the game's neat end surprise, you'll need to get all of them.

There is even a multiplayer component to the game, albeit a limited one. Another player can point their Wii Remote at the screen and take part in some of the basic fun, like collecting star bits, shooting star bits, and the like. You can even directly assist Mario by pointing at him and pressing A at the same time as your friend to make him do a super jump, and stop certain enemies from attacking by highlighting them with the pointer. It's not the most involved co-op mode you'll ever experience, but it can be fun if you've got someone enthusiastic alongside you.

As wonderful as Mario Galaxy's gameplay is, its graphics are even better. There simply isn't a better-looking Wii game available. A great deal of credit is due to the art design, which is simply phenomenal. The character designs, level details, animations, all of it is incredibly colorful and vibrant, and just a joy to look at. The technical engine does its part as well, keeping the frame rate drops to minor, infrequent bouts. One area especially worth noting is the game's camera, which takes a largely cinematic perspective, albeit with a limited amount of player control. You can adjust it right or left in certain areas, and go to a first-person view if you just want to look around. There are a few areas where the camera prevents you from seeing things perfectly, but mostly it does an excellent job of framing the action, especially considering all the kooky perspective shifting the game does as you run around these oddball environments. The only thing that's kind of a bummer is that you'll undoubtedly wish at some point while playing that the Wii could support resolutions higher than 480p; but even with the limited resolution, the game just looks beautiful.

Audio is also excellent, thanks largely to the top-notch soundtrack. Much of the music is made up of classic Mario tunes from a wide variety of different games, and it's all modernized and orchestrated. These are some of the best renditions of these tracks since the originals, and you're sure to be humming along as you play. There's little voice work in the game, but the few voice samples that are there are used to nice effect. It's probably better to just hear Bowser snarling than it is to hear him being a chatty Cathy, anyway. The sound effects are a touch on the shrill side at times, but the bulk of them fit the vibe of each stage nicely.

When all is said and done, the thing that really makes Super Mario Galaxy such a standout game isn't the fact that it's another Mario game, but the fact that it doesn't even need to be a Mario game to be successful. Sure, it's got all the nostalgic flavor Mario fans would want, with the updated soundtrack, familiar foes, and various other Mario-related bric-a-brac scattered throughout the adventure, but the game never leans on these nostalgic aspects as a crutch. It instead puts the whole of its focus on its gameplay design, and with good reason. You could probably swap in just about any other characters from practically any other franchise, and this would still be a phenomenally fun game. That it layers all these memorable characters and components on top of that phenomenal design just makes it all the sweeter. If ever there were a must-own Wii game, Super Mario Galaxy is it.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo DS)

It's kind of shocking when you think about it, but despite the Nintendo DS's nearly three-year lifespan, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is the first Zelda game to hit the system. The good news is that it was worth the wait. Phantom Hourglass is essentially a sequel to the GameCube Zelda adventure The Wind Waker. It retains the art style, surrounding world, and plot of that game, but it revamps the mechanics for DS use. The result is a game that is unmistakably Zelda, with its perilous dungeons, tricky puzzles, and engaging boss battles; at the same time, Phantom Hourglass is a unique and innovative entry in the series due largely to its exclusively touch-screen-based control scheme. Everything you do in the game involves taps and swipes of the stylus, from traditional fights and puzzles, to new and specialized functions that really change the way you think about playing a Zelda game.

Phantom Hourglass picks up almost directly where Wind Waker left off. Link is sailing the high seas with his pirate pals, including Tetra, who has forsaken her Zelda namesake and returned to her roguish ways. At the moment, the crew is on the hunt for a fabled ghost ship, one that purportedly contains a great treasure but also has a nasty habit of making people disappear. Of course, the ship magically appears, and Tetra bounds off to search it. Unfortunately, a shrill scream signals that something's gone wrong, and the ghost ship departs into a thicket of fog. Link leaps after it but ends up in the drink, and he eventually washes up on the shore of a populated island. This is how the game explains away the absence of Link's abilities and items, despite the fact that the game takes place just after Wind Waker chronologically.

Upon awakening on the island, you're greeted by an amnesiac fairy who takes you to a kindly old man who explains a thing or two regarding the ghost ship. Though he warns you away from getting into such business, minutes later you've got a sword in your hand and you're learning the basics of combat. Not that there's a ton to learn, mind you. To make a Zelda game on the DS work, the control mechanics have been simplified to rely only on taps and movements via the stylus on the touch screen. Moving Link requires you to simply drag the stylus in the direction you want to go. You tap an enemy to lunge at it with a slash, do a quick swiping movement to execute a broader slash, and draw circles around Link to perform the spin attack. You also have the ability to roll by drawing small circles at the opposite end of the screen. All of this sounds pretty simple and works about as well as you'd hope, apart from a few moments when you may roll in the wrong direction (and off a cliff), or accidentally slash something when you're just trying to turn around. However, most of these small gaffes are relatively harmless, and by and large, the responsiveness of the controls is spot-on.

The game probably wouldn't be very interesting if all you did was run around and tap on bad guys to kill them. Fortunately, there's a great deal more to it than that. Apart from your basic sword combat, you'll also find yourself messing around with some other DS-centric mechanics, like blowing or shouting into the microphone for various reasons. Additionally, you will pick up many of Link's trademark items throughout the game--such as bombs, bombchus (which are little mobile bombs that scurry around), the bow and arrow, the boomerang, and the hookshot--and you'll often have to use them to set up various enemies for the kill. These items behave just as you remember them, though with a number of DS-specific mechanical twists that give them whole new life. For instance, with the boomerang, you can now draw with the stylus the path you want it to take. The same goes for bombchus, who will follow your exact drawn path to any target. The hookshot can be used like normal to help Link leap across open crevices, as a tightrope to walk between two ledges, and as a slingshot to launch Link across wide gaps or repel enemy fire.

These items all tie directly into the game's dungeon and puzzle design. Though not as markedly complex as some of Link's previous adventures, Phantom Hourglass contains several challenging and fun dungeons to traipse through, all of which contain a number of tricky puzzles that require some creative item usage. Experienced Zelda fans may find Phantom Hourglass' dungeons to be less of an endeavor than other games in the series, simply because these dungeons don't rely as heavily on elaborate bouts of backtracking and generally aren't enormous in size. That doesn't mean the dungeons aren't fun to solve, mind you. They might not be quite as epic as other Zelda games, but there are plenty of engaging and periodically perplexing puzzles to solve along the way, as well as some truly exciting boss battles that often make stellar use of both screens on the DS.

Dungeons would probably be even tougher to deal with if it weren't for the fact that you can now write notes and draw pathways on your dungeon maps. It sounds like a small addition at first, but as you play, you'll discover it's actually one of the most revolutionary features in a Zelda game since, well, ever. Simply being able to sketch pathways over invisible platforms and keep a detailed track of which doors you've hit, which switches need to be hit in what order, and the like, is a huge boon and eliminates a lot of aimless wandering from the equation.

Interestingly enough, you get your dungeon and island maps from the very moment you step foot in or on them, though you do have to track down sea charts to open up new areas of the world. Given that this is a Wind Waker sequel, you will be doing a fair amount of sailing from island to island, but unlike Wind Waker, it's not quite as involved a process. You simply draw a route on your map, and the ship sails there automatically. Over time you'll gain a cannon to fight off sea creatures and pirates (and the occasional sea monster boss) as well as a grappling arm to salvage treasure. Picking up treasure is actually a minigame in itself, in that you have to guide the arm down to the depths and back again without hitting mines that are scattered about.

Sailing was the big thing that some folks felt dragged down Wind Waker significantly. It's much easier and less time-consuming here, so that issue is pretty much nonexistent. However, that doesn't mean the game is totally devoid of pacing problems. The main culprit is the Temple of the Ocean King, the very first dungeon you enter, and one that you will have to come back to several times throughout the game. It's not a bad dungeon by itself, and in fact is probably the most overtly challenging of them all due to the fact that the phantoms that walk its halls are invincible and the temple itself will literally suck the life out of you. To make it through, you need to stand in a safe spot or have the Phantom Hourglass handy (an item that protects you for as long as there is sand at the top of the glass).

The problem is that each time you come back, you have to bust through the same levels you beat the previous time around to get to the next section of the temple. Items you acquire later in the game, such as bombs and the hookshot, make getting around a bit easier on subsequent visits, and at the halfway mark of the game, you do get a save point that lets you bypass the first half of the temple and skip down to the second half. Regardless, you'll still be replaying those later levels as the game goes on. It's just one of those tedious things that feel like artificial lengthening of the game more than anything else.

Nevertheless, apart from that one fault, Phantom Hourglass' main quest is a deeply engaging adventure that gives you plenty to do throughout. You can probably finish the quest in about 14-15 hours if you don't hunt around for all the various uncharted islands and sunken treasure chests scattered about the world, but you should, because there's some neat stuff to find.

Once you're done with the game, there is actually a multiplayer mode you can check out. If you ever played Pac-Man vs. on the GameCube (or, more recently, on the DS in Namco Museum DS), this mode might seem slightly familiar to you. One player controls Link, and the opponent has control over several phantoms that can be guided by drawing paths for them with the stylus. Link has to try to collect as many triforce shards as he can and bring them to his base, though he slows down considerably while carrying shards. If a phantom reaches him, his turn is up, but if he reaches a safe zone, the phantoms lose sight of him. This goes back and forth with players taking turns on each side for multiple rounds, and the player with the most shards at the end wins. It's not a spectacular mode by any means, but it's amusing enough as a distraction, and it can be played online against players worldwide. In the few games we tried against mostly Japanese players, performance seemed quite solid, with no noticeable lag.

The graphics, on the other hand, are extremely noticeable. It might be hard to believe that Nintendo would be able to shrink down a game as gorgeous-looking as The Wind Waker, but that's just what it has done here for the DS. Of course, some sacrifices have been made. Character models aren't quite as sharp or colorful, and the world itself isn't nearly as large. But you still inhabit a sizeable world, and everything in it looks spectacular. From the goofy animations and facial expressions of the characters, to the beautiful scenery as you sail around the ocean, this is top-tier work as far as graphics and artistic design on the DS are concerned. One thing to note is that when you're wandering through islands and dungeons, everything is handled with a sort of top-down perspective, not unlike some of the older Zelda games. All the characters and environments are 3D, but the fixed camera angle does a great job of framing the action.

There isn't any voice acting in Phantom Hourglass, but you do get plenty of funny and enjoyable text dialogue to read through. There are lots of memorable characters in the game, and the lack of voice samples isn't much of a hindrance because the expressions on their faces and the great dialogue get the point across. The soundtrack isn't exactly the most memorable of all Zelda scores, but there are plenty of familiar-sounding tunes to accompany each sequence that fans are sure to appreciate.

Ultimately, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a superb effort and pretty much what you would want from a first entry in the series on the DS. It's got a few pacing problems, and those who demand traditional control schemes will probably be turned off by this game's control methodology. But really, even if you're convinced you hate the notion of touch-screen controls, you owe it to yourself to give this game a try. Phantom Hourglass implements its control mechanics so seamlessly into the standard Zelda game design that it's hard to imagine anyone not appreciating it on some level. There are few games on the DS that take advantage of the touch-screen technology as well as Phantom Hourglass does. It's a must-play for any DS owner.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)

If you expected Metroid Prime 3: Corruption to be a high-quality continuation of the series, you'd be right. And yes, the Wii controls are terrific and intuitive, so if you hoped that controlling bounty hunter Samus Aran would be a dream, that wish has been granted, too. All told, even though Corruption's easier battles and conservative design sometimes seems like less of a sprawling Metroid adventure and more of a straightforward first-person shooter, it's still a great action game that does exactly what you expect it to do, no more and no less.

Of course, the five years that have elapsed between the original Metroid Prime and the trilogy's final hurrah is an eternity in gaming, so even with its smooth, Wii-specific controls, there is a strong sense of familiarity here. While Metroid Prime spectacularly ushered Metroid gameplay into a 3D vision, Corruption is content to be a solid successor. Yet you shouldn't let some spurts of predictability dissuade you from checking it out, particularly if you are a Metroid enthusiast. Corruption offers its own formula tweaks while staying true to its roots, and like the previous games in the Prime series, it sends you on an atmospheric journey of discovery and enjoyable boss fights.

This sequel is aptly named. Samus and her fellow bounty hunters are struggling to repair an organic computer that has been infected by a mysterious virus. As always, these things are never what they seem, but rather than risk spoiling any sensitive plot points, we would rather safely say that the ensuing adventure sends Samus across a number of lush alien worlds and bizarre landscapes. (Not that the Prime games have ever strived to set standards for gaming fiction.) There is a plot here, but it's never been about the destination: It's about the voyage. As before, there is a ton of written backstory to discover, all dispersed among strange, imaginative worlds. You'll also meet up with a number of old acquaintances, friend and foe alike.

But all that is part and parcel of a terrific series. The obvious change here is in the controls, and Corruption leaves behind the methodical maneuvering of its GameCube brethren with an intuitive and configurable scheme that sets the standard for first-person shooting controls on the Wii, despite Corruption's battles not being all that challenging. (More on that later.) All of your aiming and turning is done with the remote, while moving and strafing is handled by the Nunchuk. It's been done before, of course, but not to this degree of success. Almost any player will be at home with the "advanced" scheme, where moving the remote moves your targeting reticle but also turns your point of view as it approaches the edge of the screen. The other schemes require your reticle to hit the screen's edge before turning commences, which is more than a bit annoying. You aren't stuck free-aiming at your enemies, though, since the Z button allows you to lock on to your target.

Suffice it to say, Metroid Prime 3 takes on characteristics more akin to a standard first-person shooter than its predecessors did. The good news is that moving about is less frustrating and plodding than before. Your enemies fall faster, boss encounters require less controller fumbling, and there is an overall ease to travel and movement that the series lacked before. It's a double-edged sword, however, because while most Metroid Prime hallmarks--object scanning, careful exploration, complex puzzle-solving--remain, Corruption feels less like a probing adventure than a regular shooter.

But a highly enjoyable shooter nevertheless. When it comes to blasting stuff, Retro Studios kept things simple this time. Samus begins with the trusty arm cannon and soon gains the use of homing missiles. These are, more or less, the weapons you will keep for the duration, though not as you are given them. As you progress through Corruption's 20-hour campaign, you'll earn cumulative upgrades, so the standard fire becomes plasma fire, which evolves again come the next power-up, and so on. You never lose any abilities with a new upgrade, so once you've earned the ability to melt through ice, you aren't in danger of losing it later. But don't expect a barrage of constant enemies; nor should you expect much of a challenge from the standard foes. Yet even without a sense of challenge, shooting feels great in Corruption. A lot of this has to do with the smooth controls, but even more of it is due to the good variety of alien and mechanical monstrosities you do battle with.

The biggest addition to the shooting is that of the Phazon Enhancement Device. The PED allows you to enter hypermode by holding the plus button. In this mode, Samus' attacks do outrageous damage. But she has limited phazon in her reserves, so once it's all gone, all you can do is wait for it to replenish. You've got to pay attention, since entering hypermode depletes Samus' energy, and you also run the risk of overloading her with too much phazon and being forced to fire it all away lest she bite the dust. Another new element is the nova beam, which is a great cannon upgrade in and of itself, but is also used in conjunction with the x-ray visor to shoot at enemies and objects through solid walls.

But this is Metroid, so of course you'll need to use your wits as much as you use weapons that turn alien scum into goo. Environmental puzzles are generally as good in Corruption as they've ever been, and you'll need to survey your surroundings carefully to find the path to your next goal. Yes, the scanning visor is back, so be prepared to study objects frequently to best know their purpose and potential uses as puzzle solutions. It's easier to switch visors than ever--all you have to do is hold the minus button and flick the remote toward the visor you wish to switch to--so while it makes the scanning mechanic seem less central than before, it also makes it simpler to survey the objects in question and move on.

Corruption truly shines when these mechanics work in tandem, making for smooth, seamless puzzle-solving and occasionally bringing new dimensions into the combat as well. Samus still has a grappling hook, though this time, you'll grab objects (and occasionally, enemies or their shields) by flicking the Nunchuk forward, and rip the thing away by pulling it back. It works and feels great, both in puzzles and in combat, particularly when used in tandem with other activities. Samus can still transform into the morph ball, too, and it's fun to discover new places to squeeze her into, though morphing has its unique uses in battle as well. The context-sensitive actions aren't quite as successful. There are times when you need to push the remote forward and twist it to unlock doors or perform other tasks, and while you can always manage to make it happen, it's usually awkward and doesn't feel the way you think it should.

Undoubtedly, Corruption's finest moments are its boss battles, which may not be quite the challenge they've been in the previous Prime games, but will still manage to impress you by the sheer variety that goes into winning them. A single boss battle may involve using morph ball techniques, the screw attack, entering hypermode, and firing both missiles and beams--often requiring pinpoint precision. Most of these battles are an absolute blast, and most of them have real meaning in context of the story.

If this all sounds like a lot of fun, it's because it is. Yet Corruption's focus on refined FPS mechanics and general sense of familiarity keep it from being as special as the other Prime titles. Just like Resident Evil 4 would have felt different--and arguably worse--had its controls been stripped down to a simple FPS scheme, Corruption loses some of its sense of wonder and strangeness on the Wii. Rather than being a true action adventure, it's hard to lose the sense that it's merely an FPS with trimmings. Its core control scheme is a revelation, but the resulting tempo adjustment and streamlining is missing some of the careful pacing that made Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 so superb. Still, any fan ought to enjoy this outing in spite of those quibbles, thanks to a good number of awesome, involved environmental puzzles and delightful (albeit fairly easy) boss fights.

The exotic worlds of Corruption will excite series fans, and for good reason. Like its predecessors, Corruption features superb art direction, so every level is even more incredible to explore than the last. While it isn't a huge step over Metroid Prime 2 in terms of sheer graphical quality, there are plenty of elements that will catch your eye, such as Samus' visor reflections, or the detailed, complex machinery that brings some of the environmental puzzles to brilliant life. The biggest surprise in the production values is the addition of a good deal of voice acting, at least toward the beginning of the game. You'll still spend most of your time exploring in relative silence, and the eerie, great soundtrack keeps you in just the right mood. But occasionally you'll interact with bounty hunters and other characters, and their lines are mostly spoken. The voice acting is fine, though its presence does reinforce just how effective the ghostly silence was in the first two Prime games.

If you're a Metroid fan, there's no need to convince you to play Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It's got exactly what you would expect from the last in an acclaimed trilogy of titles: great boss battles, involved environmental puzzles, and a smooth control scheme that cements exactly how FPS controls should work on the platform. It'll also keep you busy for a while, since you can earn tokens for completing various tasks and use them to purchase unlockable goodies like concept art and bumper stickers for Samus' ship. While the lack of multiplayer is disappointing, the single-player campaign won't leave you wanting. In the end, you may not be able to shake the feeling that you've done all this before, but it will still make you grateful for how great it is at its core.

Wave Race 64 (Wii)

Various companies have produced Jet Ski racing games over the years, but few of those games have made as big of an impact as Nintendo's Wave Race 64. Ever since the game was originally published for the fledgling Nintendo 64 in the fall of 1996, person after person has been captivated by its blazing sense of speed, gorgeous wave modeling, and realistic "bouncy" physics. Now, you can download this wet wonder from the Wii's Virtual Console shop for 1,000 Wii points, which is a reasonable cost considering that time has done little to tarnish the game's beauty or fun.

The nuts and bolts of Wave Race 64 aren't much different from any other arcade-style racing game. In the championship mode, you race Jet Skis around circuits on a variety of water courses. Staying within the buoys will give you a speed boost and keep you from being disqualified, you can use jump ramps to leap over obstacles and to discover secret shortcuts, and the controls make it easy to glide through a turn or spin 180 on a dime with a simple yank on the analog stick. You can also perform a small selection of tricks, which are mainly useful for setting high scores in the stunt mode. Other play modes include the standard time-trial mode, as well as a two-player mode that splits the screen in half and lets you compete against another human opponent.

What makes the game so much fun, and the main reason why it still holds up today, is that it conveys the exhilaration of being out there on the water in a manner that's both visceral and accessible. Sharp turns and experienced CPU opponents keep you on your toes, ramps will send you flying through the air, and, because you're racing on water, you're constantly bouncing around. Waves rise and fall like they do in the real world, and that motion causes floating obstacles to shift, occasionally exposing sunken posts and shipwrecks that were safely underwater on previous laps. All the while, the controls make it easy to steer, perform sharp turns, lean forward and backward, and execute tricks, usually just by yanking or twirling the analog stick. The physics and wave modeling are very realistic, to the extent that you'll soon find yourself instinctively tilting the analog stick to land quicker and hit waves at a good angle.

A decent number of polygons went into the riders and their Jet Skis, and they react to every bounce and jolt in realistic fashion. The 3D island courses generally look nice. Some of the textures look blocky up close (mainly large rocks), but the shorelines, ramps, and course obstacles are crisp and well defined. The tropical color schemes are appropriate and appealing, as are the periodic appearances of dolphins and orcas in the water. Speaking of water, the waves in Wave Race 64 are still some of the nicest ever modeled in a video game. Thanks to the lifelike physics and splashy sound effects, you actually get a good sense of what it would be like to take a Jet Ski for a joyride around a tropical island.

For the most part, the game looks just like it originally did on the Nintendo 64. However, the frame rate is steadier, and the Kawasaki advertising banners have been replaced by ads for the Nintendo 64, Wii, and DS Lite. Thankfully, the new banners aren't distracting at all. Practically speaking, the only change of negative consequence to afflict the Wii's version of the game is that you can't race against your time-trial ghosts anymore. The original game required an add-on memory pak for that feature, and the Virtual Console doesn't emulate that functionality. All things considered, being able to follow the action easier thanks to the improved frame rate more than makes up for the ability to see your ghost during time-trial runs.

Wave Race 64 is a testament to what happens when developers come up with a solid design and pour their hearts and souls into making their creation a reality. The game's brand of bouncy Jet Ski racing is just as fun today as it was a decade ago, and its gorgeous wet visuals still pack quite a punch.

Glory Days 2 (Nintendo DS)

Glory Days 2, the sequel to a Game Boy Advance game that was released here in the US as Super Army War, whips together a light blend of 2D side-scrolling shooter action, tactical combat, and modern real-time strategy convention into something that feels simultaneously unique and familiar. For the most part, the action and the strategy are never terribly taxing, but the constant juggle between deploying units, capturing bunkers, rescuing civilians, and raining death from above onto enemy forces keeps the game constantly engaging.

The loose narrative, which sees you fighting as a procession of pilots fighting different wars during different eras, is driven by written correspondence between your soldier and his loved ones back home. There's a natural quality to the writing in the letters, which see the characters go through a range of emotions as they progress from mission to mission. They share feelings of dread, longing for home, a steeled determination to do what's right, and anecdotes about their day-to-day lives and their comrades. There are occasions of overly politicized heavy-handedness over the cost of war and the relative value of the opinions of those who aren't on the frontlines, but for the most part it's a disarmingly effective device.

Though you'll fight across sandy beaches, snowy mountains, the sun-bleached desert, lush plains, and city streets, the battlefield in Glory Days 2 is invariably a long, flat, horizontal stretch of road. At either end, you'll find your base, as well as your enemy's base. In between you'll find bunkers, gunner positions, and civilians caught in the middle of your military quagmire. Depending on the mission, you have direct control over either a plane or a helicopter, and which one you're given has a significant impact on the feel of the mission. Both have air-to-air artillery and air-to-ground payloads. The planes benefit from speed and a certain maneuverability, while the choppers can change direction more easily, can be landed in the middle of the battlefield to rescue civilians, and can be used to pick up soldiers at your base and deploy them in the field. Their relative flexibility end up making the chopper missions inherently more fun.

Rescuing civilians--be it by chopper or ambulance--and deploying troops on the battlefield are important, because civilians that you're able to pluck from the field and shepherd to safety translate directly into cash, and troops can take up position inside empty bunkers, which provide a regular revenue stream. All of this cash is then used to deploy troops, tanks, antiaircraft jeeps, and ambulances, and your ground forces are key to victory. While you're flying overhead, bombing enemy-held bunkers and the never-ending procession of enemy vehicles, your ground forces are marching along, engaging whatever enemy forces happen to be coming from the opposite direction. You're essentially fighting a huge, militarized game of tug-of-war, and victory is invariably had by pushing enemy forces all the way back to their base on the other side of the field, and destroying it.

Though you'll be focusing on the air unit that you have direct control over on the top screen, you've got several good tools to keep you abreast of the situation elsewhere on the battlefield. A distilled map of the battlefield makes it easy to figure out, at a glance, your forces' progress on the battlefield, your current position, and which bunkers are controlled by which army, while the lower screen tracks whatever units are on your frontlines. It's easy to deploy units on the fly, and once they're on the ground, you don't really need to worry about them again. They'll just truck along, doing what they're programmed to do. The game will also deploy troops and vehicles for you automatically, should you get too caught up in the action, though if you neglect any one part of the game for too long, you will invariably find yourself overwhelmed. When you know the strengths and weaknesses of your units, you'll find specific deployment patters that help increase their survival rates. Even then, a huge percentage of your units invariably end up as cannon fodder, and it's not uncommon to deploy several hundred units over the course of a mission.

As you progress through the game, you'll gain access to special attacks like air strikes, as well as more advanced military hardware. At the same time, your enemy's units will get stronger, faster, and smarter, and while it can be a challenge, it never really becomes unmanageable. The biggest shortcoming in Glory Days 2 is the relative brevity of the campaign, which can be torn through in a few hours. There are other ways to play, including a skirmish mode where you can define an incredible number of variables, and a local multiplayer mode that supports up to eight players at once, but it's hard not to wish the campaign would keep going for at least a little while longer.

There are shades of Advance Wars to the presentation in Glory Days 2, specifically in the way it depicts anime-style soldiers fighting in a violent but oddly bloodless war, but the overall tone here is much more somber and serious. The soundtrack consists of just a few huge, sweepingly righteous orchestral compositions that bring an unflinching grandeur to your constant march toward victory. The look of the units errs toward realistic, though the generally zoomed-out camera perspective keeps you from seeing too much detail. Where the visuals really shine are in the environments, which are packed with detail and a number of scrolling background layers that provide a level of depth that almost rivals actual 3D graphics. Touches like the way you can see wind whipping past you as you speed across the battlefield, nice-looking weather effects, and the odd scan-line flicker of night vision when you're fighting in the dark bring a sense of heightened realism to the visuals.

As commonplace as the components are, Glory Days 2 adroitly assembles them into something pretty rare. It's lamentable that the campaign is as short as it is, but it's not enough to keep the rest of the game's unique charms from shining through.

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.

Mario Strikers Charged (Wii)

Mario sports games are always crazy, but it could be said that the pudgy plumber's first foray into the world of traditional football in 2005's Super Mario Strikers for the GameCube wasn't quite crazy enough. As goofy a game as it was, the dearth of the true Mario brand of wacky was apparent, and the game suffered for it. Mario Strikers Charged for the Wii is essentially a sequel to that game, and its first and foremost goal seems to be to amp up the crazy factor. Developer Next Level Games has certainly succeeded in this area, though the final product ultimately resembles less the game of soccer and more some kind of psychotic episode of flaming balls, thunderous hits, and flying shells coming from every which way. Sometimes this chaotic gameplay gets a bit messy, and some of the gameplay elements, like tackles and the artificial intelligence in single-player, aren't perfect. Still, if you can get a grip on the action, you'll find Charged to be an addictive multiplayer game, especially if you plan to take it online.

Much like the original Strikers, players begin by selecting a team captain from primary Mario characters such as Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Daisy, Wario, and, of course, Mario himself. There are 12 captains in all, each with unique stats in movement, shooting, passing, and defense. Once you've got your captain, you then select three teammates from the lexicon of lesser Mario characters (Shy Guy, Monty Mole, Birdo, and the like). For those who played the original Mario Strikers, you'll note that this is different from the team selection in the last game, where you could only pick one type of teammate. Here, you get to choose three different ones, and they're every bit as varied as the team captains. They even get their own unique megastrike shots, the big power shots that goaltenders tend to have a difficult time with, which you can pull off by holding down the B button.

Of course, they're not quite as powerful as the captains' shots. While someone like, say, Boo can essentially go transparent and try to fly his way past the goaltender, and the Hammer Brothers can toss a gaggle of hammers at the goalie before eventually kicking the ball, these shots are not guaranteed to go in. But the captains' shots are a whole different ballgame. When you hold down the B button long enough with a captain, a golf-swing meter pops up that begins by counting up toward the number six. This actually determines how many balls you're going to fire at the goaltender in rapid succession. The meter then swings backward, and depending on how well you time the button press on that return swing, it'll be more or less difficult to stop the forthcoming shots. Once all meters are set, your captain leaps into the air and starts firing off shots like some kind of Dragon Ball Z castoff.

Against the artificial intelligence, you're practically guaranteed at least one goal out of the proceedings (though you often end up landing more), but when you're playing against another player, or you're forced to stop one of these shots yourself, a little goaltending minigame pops up. You simply point the Wii Remote at the screen, and as balls come flying, you aim the onscreen reticle at each one and press A to try to stop all the shots. It can get pretty hectic, but it's actually a fun and clever way to handle the perspective of the goaltender in these situations.

Of course, that pales in comparison to how hectic the action can get during normal gameplay. Knowing how to do a megastrike shot and actually pulling one out are two entirely different things. If it's not some random opponent running up behind you and shoulder-checking you into the pitch before you can pull out the shot, it's a gigantic red shell or a chain chomp running amok across the field, slamming into you and everything else. Weapon power-ups don't come constantly, thankfully, but many of the different fields have their own pitfalls that lend toward even more chaos, like electric bolts that move up and down the pitch, and huge balls of magma that lay waste to anything in their path. Frankly, the game would be crazy enough if all you could do was check your opponents. All you have to do to knock an opponent silly is quickly wag the remote back and forth while standing near an opponent. It's the only significant bit of motion control in the game, and it works well--perhaps too well. You can usually get shots off against the weaker AI settings, but on higher settings, and against live opponents, prepare to get checked, and checked often.

Even with that prospect in mind, Mario Strikers Charged is a game best played in multiplayer. The single-player modes don't extend beyond a standard versus mode, a challenge mode where you're presented with a series of different scenarios (making a comeback from a three-goal deficit, maintaining a shutout, and so on), and the road to the striker cup, where you choose a team and compete for a variety of different cups in round-robin-style tournaments. The mode selection is solid, but playing against the AI tends to be either too easy, or obnoxiously difficult, as catch-up AI tends to be a big factor on the higher settings.

Not so in multiplayer matches, which is a big part of why the multiplayer is just inherently more fun. Up to four players can play both offline and online. The online play is obviously the big draw here, and we're pleased to say that it's pretty much what makes the game worth owning. Though you still have to go through the silly song and dance of getting game-specific friend codes for all your buddies if you want to play against them specifically, you can play in ranked matches against random opponents and bypass all that nonsense. You can engage in four-player play online, but it's with a limit of two players per console. There are also leaderboards that track daily stats as well as cumulative records. Though lag popped up in spots during our time with the game, practically every match we played with a good latency rating worked seamlessly. It's a shame there's no communication options online, but that issue aside, the online works nicely.

The one area where Mario Strikers Charged still lacks is presentation. The in-game graphics are certainly a step up from the original, with better-looking character models, far more crazy crap happening onscreen, and a frame rate that stays steady throughout. But smaller details are decidedly lacking. The megastrike shots, while neat-looking, also feel kind of generic, specifically the captains' shots. Each captain has a unique personal flavor, but all the shots just kind of look like cheesy anime fighting-game posing. Interestingly, the new shots for the sidekick players are arguably a lot more interesting and unique than the captains' shots. Cutscenes are sharp looking, but not much goes on in them. You get the same shot of one of the captains skydiving into the arena before every match, and that whole sequence feels kind of silly and out of place to begin with. The menus and the soundtrack are also pretty dull, and while there's a bit of voice acting from the various on-field characters, as well as some amusing chants from the crowd, there's no announcer in this game, so you don't get the big "GOOOOAAAAAAL" exclamation whenever you score.

Presentational quibbles and single-player opposition issues notwithstanding, anyone who enjoyed the last Mario Strikers game will certainly find Strikers Charged to be an improvement, and those who took issue with the previous game will find some of their complaints properly addressed here. That this is the first Wii game to do online play and do it well is a huge bonus. Those looking for a deep and consistently entertaining single-player experience won't necessarily find it here, but anyone out for some good, solid multiplayer fun, either offline or online, would do well to check out Mario Strikers Charged.

Pokemon Pearl (DS)

Much to the delight of Pokémaniacs the world over, Nintendo and Game Freak have finally brought a proper Pokémon game to the Nintendo DS with Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and it delivers much of what a fan would desire—a richer, more detailed presentation, the ability to battle and trade Pokémon over the Internet, and of course, more than 100 brand-new Pokémon to collect. Like any of the core Pokémon games released since the original Red and Blue hit in 1999, Diamond and Pearl offer some nice upgrades, but if you didn't like Pokémon then, you probably won't care for it now. That said, it's a little surprising how well the formula holds up in Diamond and Pearl, which is a testament to the strong fundamentals of the series as well as the quality of the execution.

Sticking to the script, Diamond and Pearl start out the same as any other Pokémon game, and though the specifics are different, the story plays out in a familiar fashion. Playing as either a young boy or girl living in the out-of-the-way hamlet of Twinleaf Town in the Sinnoh region, you and your highly competitive best friend are sent into the world by Professor Rowan to collect as much data on the Pokémon that inhabit the region as is possible, which you do by capturing and fighting. During your travels, you will battle plenty of wild Pokémon and other Pokémon trainers like yourself, as well as face off with the leaders of eight different Pokémon gyms spread across Sinnoh. And, in the tradition of the nefarious Team Rocket, Diamond and Pearl introduce the shadowy and oddly self-righteous Team Galactic, a new Pokémon-obsessed organization for you to square off with. The plot doesn't tread much new ground for the series, and it generally keeps things real light and breezy. They won't dazzle you with the complexity or originality of their storytelling, but Diamond and Pearl are still packed with lots of sharp writing. There are hundreds of people for you to meet, and though they don't always offer lengthy conversations, they all have something to say.

The story is ultimately in the service of the gameplay, which fans and newcomers should be able to leap right into without much fuss. You start off with a single Pokémon companion by your side, which serves as your proxy in battle—you might be calling the shots in a fight, but it's your Pokémon that do all the heavy lifting. As you wander through forests, fields of tall grass, underground caves, and a myriad of other locations, you'll regularly be attacked by wild Pokémon, which, if you're able to wear down their health without defeating them entirely, can be captured in a Pokéball, effectively taming them and turning them into companions. You can have up to six Pokémon with you at once, and each of your Pokémon can learn up to four different abilities. These abilities can come naturally as they earn experience in battle, or you can teach them new tricks using technical machines and hidden machines, which can be earned in a number of different ways. As they grow stronger, many Pokémon can also evolve, effectively turning them into an entirely new and more powerful Pokémon.

The combat is turn based, and it's mostly about the rock-paper-scissors nature of the different types of Pokémon. The only difference between Diamond and Pearl is the Pokémon contained within each game. With the addition of 107 brand-new Pokémon, Diamond and Pearl raise the grand total of Pokémon to capture to well over 480. Every single one of them can be categorized by type. Some of these types are defined by elements, such as water-type Pokémon and fire-type Pokémon, while others are determined by more specific, functional differences, such as fight-type Pokémon and poison-type Pokémon. Each type of Pokémon is inherently weak to the attacks of another, so the key to combat is having a well-balanced team of Pokémon with you that will be able to handle whatever types of Pokémon get thrown at you. It's a simple enough concept to grasp, but there are enough different types of Pokémon out there that you'll find yourself constantly tweaking your roster of active Pokémon and laboring over which abilities you should be giving to which of your Pokémon. The fact that you're constantly running in to, and thus capturing, new Pokémon makes the process that much more involved. And that's just the basics. Aside from wandering around the Sinnoh region and getting into countless Pokémon battles, you'll fish, harvest and plant berries, cook up special treats for your Pokémon, enter your Pokémon in a pageant, set up a secret hideout, and more. These games are long, with the main stories clocking in at well over 40 hours, and those intent on hunting down the rarer Pokémon will spend far more than that.

The bulk of the activities in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl aren't new to the series, so what separates these two from the Pokémon games that appeared on the Game Boy Advance? For starters, the presentation has been improved to take advantage of the superior DS hardware. Though the game is mostly still presented in 2D, there's improved detail to the 2D and you'll notice lots of nice polygonal touches. For example, buildings and windmills are rendered in 3D, and it's enough to give the 2D world a little depth. The game also has a bright, highly saturated color palette that makes it a pleasure to look at. When in battle, the Pokémon are still static 2D sprites—much of which appears to have been recycled from the Pokémon games on the GBA—but in general, the 2D art still looks sharp. The dynamic battle transitions look great, as do the numerous attack effects. Diamond and Pearl also feature some catchy music, and there's a whole lot of it, with a special theme for virtually every location or activity. As clean and upbeat as the music is, though, some of the sound effects from the Pokémon themselves sound screechy and lo-fi. It's out of place, considering how great the rest of the game looks and sounds.

There's also a little touch-screen support in Diamond and Pearl, letting you use the stylus to select menus during battle and play a few simple, rather forgettable minigames that crop up. During most of your travels, the lower screen on the DS is occupied by your Pokémon watch (Pokétch for short). In addition to telling the time, you can install a number of applications, some more useful than others, on your Pokétch. There's a calculator, a pedometer, a status screen for your Pokémon, a metal detector of sorts, and more.

What's probably the most significant new feature in Diamond and Pearl is online play, which lets you battle, trade, and chat with other players over the Internet. The trading system is surprisingly robust, letting you put any of your Pokémon up for trade on a global market, while specifying which Pokémon you'll trade it for. Once you define the terms of the trade, the Pokémon is transferred to a server, and you can set it and forget it. Your DS doesn't even need to be turned on for someone to agree to your terms and complete the transaction. The online battle options aren't as immediately accessible. Early on, you'll need the game-specific friend code for anyone that you want to battle online, and it will take dozens of hours of single-player action before you'll be able to battle with random strangers. The game also supports voice chat using the newly released DS headset, but you can only use it with other players whose friend codes you've already registered. Of course, you can also still battle and trade with other people through a local Wi-Fi connection. Diamond and Pearl also promise connectivity to the upcoming Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Nintendo Wii, purportedly letting you use your DS as a controller and take the Pokémon you've collected on the DS into battle on your TV.

Between the 100-plus new Pokémon, the improved presentation, and the online play, this is a must-have game for established fans. The new features also make this the most well-rounded Pokémon game to date, and if you've never dabbled in the world of Pokémon before, there's no better game to start with.

Bonk's Revenge (Wii)

Now that Bonk's Revenge is available alongside Bonk's Adventure in the TurboGrafx-16 section of the Wii's Virtual Console shopping channel, people are bound to ask if Bonk's Revenge is better than its predecessor, especially those who spent 600 points ($6) on Bonk's Adventure and found it to be nothing special. In most regards, yes, it is. Once again, you have to guide the titular cavedude through a number of 2D platforming stages and use his thick forehead to bash whatever enemies and obstacles get in the way. However, this second game is much more extravagant than the first one was. Bonk has a couple of new abilities, enemies are more plentiful, the stages are larger and more inspired than those in the first game, and the graphics and audio better represent what the TurboGrafx-16 hardware is capable of.

Like its predecessor, Bonk's Revenge is a run-to-the-right 2D platformer that's not so much about jumping over bottomless pits as it is getting through the scads of enemies in each stage. Bonk's health bar still has three hearts, his main attack of choice is still the head-bash, and you can still make him spin through the air by pressing the attack button rapidly after a jump. Unlike in Bonk's Adventure, though, you can't just spin through entire stages in Bonk's Revenge. One reason for that is the stages are no longer linear and tend to involve backtracking, climbing, and the occasional swim. Some feature optional paths that diverge from the main route and rejoin it later. Another reason you can't just waltz through stages anymore is that enemies are more plentiful. They also do a much better job of making use of their axes and rocks than the enemies in the first game did. To balance things out, the developers made food items and extra lives easier to come by in this game, both as items you can grab within stages and as rewards for getting through the new bonus stages that are peppered liberally throughout each world. The meat power-up has been changed so that eating one piece lets you spit toxic breath and cause earthquakes that stun enemies, while eating two pieces transforms Bonk into an invincible monster with a forehead conspicuously shaped like a butt. Bonk's head-bash has also been modified, such that you can now use it to bounce between walls and climb upward, similar to how Samus' triangle-jump works in the Metroid games. In general, Bonk's Revenge is livelier, more involved, and somewhat more challenging than its predecessor.

In terms of overall length, Bonk's Revenge clocks in with seven worlds containing multiple stages and caps off each world with a boss fight. Unlike Bonk's Adventure, which had a couple of single-stage worlds, Bonk's Revenge contains at least three stages in each world. The boss fights involve the same strategy of dodging and bashing that the boss encounters in the first game did. The bosses in Bonk's Revenge are larger and more visually impressive than the bosses in Bonk's Adventure are. Instead of one dinosaur after another, you'll face off against a giant pirate with an extensible hook and a possessed ballerina who spins like a tornado, and you'll engage in a rematch against the pirate after he attaches his lower half to a space battleship that looks very similar to the Yamato from the Star Blazers cartoon. You should be able to work through the entire game in two or three hours. While that's not much more time than the span required to get through Bonk's Adventure, all of the alternate routes and crazy enemy encounters make Bonk's Revenge one of those games that you'll feel the urge to play through again.

Stylistically, Bonk's Revenge exudes the same sort of Flintstones-inspired charm as its predecessor. Bonk is a goofy little caveman, his enemies are a menagerie of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, and the backgrounds are comical renditions of the jungles and volcanoes that we typically imagine when we think of Earth a million years ago. Bonk's Adventure gets by on its charm alone. By contrast, Bonk's Revenge actually coaxes some decent graphics and audio out of the TG-16 hardware. The characters have more animations, the backgrounds are more detailed and have more layers, and there's a lot more going on. The volcanoes that erupt in the background are neat to watch, especially when they toss molten rocks into the foreground that you subsequently have to dodge. You may not be impressed by the sound effects, but they are at least whimsical. The music, on the other hand, is a collection of intricate compositions that will have you bopping your head from time to time, unlike the bland melodies that were the hallmark of the first game's soundtrack. The Virtual Console's emulation of the game is accurate to the original.

Bonk's Revenge is easy to recommend to anyone looking for a platformer that is consistently charming and does more than simply emulate the Mario or Sonic formulas. Furthermore, since Bonk's Revenge is snazzier and more involved than its predecessor, the 600 Wii points ($6) purchase price seems appropriate.