Catchy mixes, impressive visuals, and a much improved career mode make DJ Hero 2 worth checking out.

The Wii version has online play as well.

Whatever travails Psychonauts endured throughout its development history, the end result is a gem. It's a brilliant debut for Double Fine, and here's hoping it's just the start of what we can expect to see from them.

The multiplayer is easier to jump into than Rock Band, but the game's more intense difficulty settings still provide a challenge for the plastic-instrument elitist. The franchise still has a long way to go to catch up to Rock Band's mind-bogglingly large library of downloadable songs, but, on the software side, GH5 is the current feature leader.

It's solid, pretty good-looking, and packs a thoroughly decent single-player campaign, too.

Football fundamentals matter now. Successful plays come from knowing the situation, calling the right play, making a good pre-snap read, and then executing -- the same criteria that determines the outcome in a real game.

Part of what makes this game so fantastic is that it has the same joyful resonance as those mid-'90s NHL classics. The good times are back.

A whole lot like the game before it, except better in just about every way.

OK, so Shivering Isles doesn't reinvent the fireball. But the impeccable design and construction of the original game breathes life into this expansion -- not, as you might assume, the other way around.

It is far and away the most cerebral sports title ever released, forcing both the offensive and defensive coordination to methodically attack each other in order to achieve their respective goals. Careful and well thought out strategy is the name of the game, much more so than relying on frantic, on the field playmaking.

Historia may not have the panache or cachet of this season's other RPG releases, but behind its humble surface is an engaging role-playing game that deserves a chance.

This is a beautiful, substantial, classic-style game, and it's a great deal to boot.

All the focus on the game's details comes at the expense of its questionable design and overall lack of cohesion. It's here that the latest Castlevania comes up short.

Conviction's stylish presentation and intuitive cover mechanics prove that Ubisoft can make a highly polished product, but for the amount of game you get, the price seems sorely inflated.

Its "arcade mode" is remarkably well-structured, and far more developed than the lazy "put a cool car on any track" approach that we usually see these days.

The big new addition is Tokyo. Fortunately, the developers have made the city available by default right on the menu screen, so for those of you worried that you might have to play through the original three cities to get to the new stuff, worry not.

Part of what makes this game so fantastic is that it has the same joyful resonance as those mid-'90s NHL classics. The good times are back.

What's here is basically the best of both worlds -- an easy to pick up, yet deep fighting engine mixed with a substantial career mode and online features.

Although some areas of the game were frustrating (beware the last boss), The Two Thrones features a classic interactive ending sequence and epilogue that nicely wraps up the whole trilogy and does the seemingly impossible -- that is, it makes you forgive and forget the lost years represented by The Warrior Within, and lets you to judge the trilogy on the whole.

It's not the best-looking of the football titles out there, but it's the most fun to play and compete with. Maybe next year they'll nail the visual category as well, but as long as the game keeps playing as well as it does, there's no reason to really trip over it.

The mud-caked Slop Bowls, bustling sidelines, and significantly varied player physiques mean that Madden 09's finally lived up to EA's next-gen target video from three years ago that -- for three years -- looked way better than the games themselves.

The second way the songs are better is how they're played. The notes and chords are laid out in natural and engaging patterns that make sense musically and with the way your hands are moving.

TVC, while a fun game, isn't the best in the Versus series. It's definitely better than Marvel Superheroes vs. Street Fighter, but it trails behind Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

Sure, it doesn't do anything new with the gameplay (do any of the episodes?), but What's New, Beelzebub? is a fitting wrap-up to Season 2, and it's arguably the most enjoyable episode since season-starter "Ice Station Santa."

For this season, consider it the way you would a September game with your team already eliminated from the chase: If you're the type that wants to check out the young prospects called up, you'll probably be right at home. If you've already been watching preseason football for a few weeks and are enjoying the first NFL games, it might not be your ticket.

Therein lies the paradox of Fight Night Champion: it both points the way forward for sports gaming with a smart, surprising new approach to the genre, and serves to remind us of the tired conventions that make that new direction necessary in the first place.

While it doesn't elevate Rainbow Six back to the genre-defining franchise it once was, it's still a solid, fun game; plus, thanks to Unreal Engine 3, it looks great.

While the game manages to capture a surprising amount of content and features from the console/arcade versions, it's still hamstrung by control methods that aren't entirely up to the task.