Well, against my efforts to break up with Star Wars and avoid MMOs, I've started Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star Wars meets World of Warcraft. That can't possibly be a life-destroying game. I've gotten to level 5, so I can't offer a full, or even remotely thorough review, but I can give my first impressions. No PVP, no advanced classes, no vehicles, just the bare basics of what the game is and how it looks.

For starters, this really is Star Wars meets World of Warcraft. The zone layout, the flow, the combat mechanics, the class selection, the quests, they all call back to the MMO I quit three years ago and is still crushing gamers' souls. There are melee, ranged, healing, and magic classes, with different quirks to make things interesting.

I was pleasantly surprised by the smuggler, who uses a cover-based mechanic to jump behind objects to enable other skills. It's a small twist that makes the guns-and-bombs-using smuggler feel distinct against more traditional classes. The Jedi consular is much more of a mage/priest with some melee skills, using their powers to throw debris at enemies and create shock waves to loosen them up before moving in to kill. They both play differently, and as they get more skills they branch out into even more unique styles, with two more advanced classes for each class at level 10. The Bounty Hunter mixes things up even more, taking what could have been a swap of the smuggler and making it much more heavy weapons and armor-based instead of pistols and tricks.

The classes and races are inexplicably limited, with certain classes not getting certain races. The races don't seem to make much of a difference in gameplay, so this is disappointing. I'd love to be a Chiss smuggler, but they're Sith-only.

The opening zones at split into four areas, with one for every two classes (Jedi Knight/Consular, Smuggler/Trooper, Sith Warrior/Inquisitor, and Bounty Hunter/Imperial Agent). The action in these areas seems similar for the pairs of classes, but you actually get slightly different "stories," with different quest areas limited to just one of the two classes. The quest scenes are all voiced, giving the game a cut scene feel and making you actually pay attention to why you're doing what you're doing instead of scrolling down to the bottom and finding the objective. These scenes even have conversation choices that let you actually role play what your character is doing. It's a great way to make you feel connected with your character and not think of him as just a loot magnet.

The graphics are good for an MMO, but not very impressive. Character models are attractive and locations are interesting and fairly detailed, but it doesn't have the depth or scope of Mass Effect and Dragon Age's worlds. There are lots of zones, but they're MMO zones, so don't expect everything to be packed tight with interesting things. There are plenty of side quests to get in every area, but it follows the WoW pattern. The presentation is good, but The Old Republic is still paced like an MMO, and it doesn't try to do a lot beyond that.

I need to play to level 10 to unlock the more specialized classes (Sage/Shadow for Consular and Gunslinger/Scoundrel for Smuggler), and I'll need to go beyond that to get my ship and companions. However, so far this looks like a very strong outing. The big issue is whether the endgame content will be as compelling, once players are done with their plots. We'll see how that goes, and whether The Old Republic can dig into the MMO market and make a lasting impression (and not fizzle, cough, sputter, and go out like Star Wars Galaxies).

Mario Kart is now on the 3DS, adding to the growing pile of games that actually justify buying the system. Mario Kart 7 is exactly what you'd expect in a new Mario Kart game. That's its biggest strength, and that's it's biggest weakness. It's the same Mario Kart you've been playing for years, and whether that means it's a fun romp through new and old tracks or a stale retread of a formula that's been unchanged for almost two decades is a matter of opinion.

That said, let's at least try to review this thing.

Mario Kart 7 uses the same formula as Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart Wii. There are four four-track circuits with new tracks, and another four with classic tracks from older Mario Kart games. The new tracks range from the uninspired to the surprisingly fresh, with stand-outs including the Wii Music-themed Melody Motorway (yes, someone actually remembered the Wii Music flop) and the re-imagined Rainbow Road. The classic tracks run the entire Mario Kart series, but I found myself enjoying the oldest entries (SNES Rainbow Road and GBA Bowser's Castle) and newest ones (DS Airship Fortress, DS Luigi's Mansion) more than the N64 and GameCube tracks, probably because the DS and Wii games already took the good tracks from those games.

Gameplay is identical to the past Mario Karts, with only a few small tweaks. The emphasis is still on power sliding and using items to get to the front, and rubber banding is as brutal and frustrating as ever. If you're in front, you will be hit by a blue shell. You can count on it. The new gameplay elements come from gliding and underwater segments, where your kart springs a glider or propeller. Unfortunately, they're only superficial changes. The gliding amounts to long, controlled jumps that you can steer for short times and get to different paths, and the underwater driving amounts to a slightly slower drive; if you expected dogfighting or submarine action, you're going to be disappointed. At most, they feel like a way to add new elements to the tracks, instead of changing gameplay in any significant way. There are also a few new items: the Tanuku leaf, the Fire Flower, and the 7 power-up. The Tanuki leaf gives your kart a tail that lets you spin to crash nearby racers or bat away red and green shells, and the Fire Flower lets you throw fireballs forward or backward for a short time, acting like shorter range green shells. A special 7 pickup gives you 7 different Mario Kart powerups floating around you, letting you go through-them at your leisure and giving opponents chances to steal them. They're small changes that don't add much to the established series.

You can customize your karts now with a slot machine view that lets you change the body, wheels, and glider of your kart. You start with a handful of parts, but as you collect coins at up to 10 per race you unlock other parts. The parts you unlock are randomized, and you won't unlock all of them until you collect at least 5,500 coins, so there's no strategy to building the kart you want. A store would have been nicer, since you're already dealing with coins, but Nintendo clearly wanted to make the customization aspect as simple as possible.

The graphics are up there with Mario Kart Wii, but since it's Mario Kart that isn't saying much. It looks great and the 3D really pops out, keeping the cartoony Mario look the series has had since the beginning. The re-imagined Super Nintendo and Game Boy Advance tracks are surprisingly fun to play on the 3DS, with the completely flat tracks and tiled patterns translating into an enjoyable, retro racing experience. The newer, more complicated tracks have their own visual appeal, with Rainbow Road's fluctuating track and the surprise race on the surface of the moon showing what the 3DS can do.

Battle Mode is back, and it's as chaotic and nonsensical as ever. There are only six battle mode tracks, but they're varied enough to provide plenty of fun if you can get three other 3DS users in the area. They're party game modes for a party kart racer, and if you want balanced or deep competitive action you need to find another game.

This is the same Mario Kart we've learned to love, and it's still plenty of fun to play. Unfortunately, it's also a bit stale, with only a few token changes adding little to the decade-old formula. If you still love Mario Kart, get this game. If you still like Mario Kart but don't want to spend $40 on the same game, get (or keep) Mario Kart DS. If you want something new, why are you looking at a Mario Kart game?

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the best games of the year. It's also one of the most imperfect, buggy, and flawed games of the year. Since this is a Bethesda Softworks game, neither of these things should be surprising to you.

Skyrim takes place 200 years after Oblivion, and Tamriel has changed. It's now the Fourth Era, and the Empire has weakened. The Septim bloodline is gone, and the Empire has survived a bloody war with the Thalmor, an alliance of elves that broke away. Now they have  peace agreement that keeps the Empire under some rules, including banning the worship of Talos, the first Emperor and the Ninth Divine. The people of Skyrim aren't happy about that, so Ulfric Stormcloak killed the High King of Skyrim and started a bloody civil war in the region. Also, dragons are back, and no one knows why. You start as a prisoner who escapes and has to find out why he has the power to speak in the words of dragons and absorb their souls. Begin the game.

If you've played an Elder Scrolls game, Fallout 3, or Fallout: New Vegas, you know the deal. It's a first-person RPG that puts you in the middle of a big world and sends you on a vague quest you might or might not eventually get around to. It's a lot of freedom, little direction, and an absurd amount of things to do. The main quest is a small fraction of the content, which includes taking a side in the civil war, rising through different guilds and groups (the Mage Guild is gone, but the College of Winterhold serves as the mage guild quest line), finding shrines and ruins, getting famous and becoming nobility in the different parts of the game, and killing lots of things. We've talked about this before. If you want hand-holding and a single path through the whole world, pick up a Final Fantasy game. In Skyrim, you can go anywhere you want.

Of course, that's not always a good idea. While enemies grow with you and get better equipment and powers, the curve is much less linked than it was in Oblivion and Morrowind. In Skyrim, if you're a low level and you find a saber cat, an ice troll, or a hagraven without preparation, you're probably going to die. The combat feels more frustrating because of this less equal curve, but it also feels more rewarding, because the challenge is there and you get a real sense of power and growth as you play.

The character system has gotten an overhaul, with only three attributes (Magicka, Health, and Stamina) defining your character and everything else controlled by your skills and the perks in your skills. You get directly better at things as you do them, and the higher your skills go the more points you can put into their perk trees, which unlock very useful things. You can learn to cast destruction magic with both hands at once to make spells more powerful, make your favorite type of armor weigh nothing when you wear it, let you smith magical items, and brew more useful potions and poisons. If you want a class-specific benefit, you can look for the different Guardian Stones, which give you star sign powers, like turning invisible once a day or boosting your combat/stealth/magic experience rate. It lets you play the way you want and create your class while you do it, instead of pigeonholing you in a specific role and forcing you to put much more work into your off-class skills.

Crafting has become much more useful. You can still enchant items and brew potions, but now you can also smith your own items. More importantly, you can improve the equipment you already have based on your smithing skill, turning a good blade into a great one. It adds a new level of interactivity, giving you reason to search mines and toil at forges. When you have a (Superior) or (Legendary) piece of armor, it's something you didn't just find in a dungeon. It's something you made your own. Like all Elder Scrolls crafting systems, this is easily abused with an alchemy enchantment-smithing potion cycle that lets you build up your smithing very high and create overpowered weapons. You shouldn't do this, because it takes the fun out of the game. It's also not something the game forces upon you, so even though it's present it's not something that automatically makes the game too easy. If you want to break the game, it's your choice, and it's not pushed on you.

The world is huge, with several dozen caves, ruins, and keeps that you can explore. There are nine Holds in Skyrim, each with their own town, so there's plenty of urban adventure even if there aren't any cities as large as Imperial City or Vivec. Several groups have their own lengthy quest lines, and you're never more than a few minutes from a new lead on what to do. The Radiant Story system even nudges you towards parts of Skyrim you haven't explored, by giving you random quests based on where you've been and how you play. Most importantly, the different places you can explore feel different, and I didn't get any sense of the copy and paste repetition of caves and ruins I felt in Oblivion and Morrowind.

I talked about this before, but the story takes a back seat to the adventure in Skyrim, like most western RPGs. The story with the dragons is interesting, but it doesn't rise above the war between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks, the intrigue of the College of Winterhold, or the secret of the Companions. There's less a "main quest" and more a "quest you should probably get through to say you 'beat' the game as you play dozens of other interesting quests." Unfortunately, most quests boil down to dungeon crawling and finding an item, but there's enough variety to keep things fun.

The biggest problem with the game is the menu system. It doesn't feel right for PC or consoles. While Morrowind's menus were clearly PC-oriented, and Oblivion's were console-oriented, Skyrim's menus seem to be a strange compromise that relies mostly on text, partitioned into arbitrary columns on the screen. Items, magic, skills, and the map are separated by directions, meaning you have to either leave the menu screen completely and come back or jump up through several levels of tabs through which you've sorted your spells and items to find something else. There are no tabs, except in the quest screen (which is puzzlingly not even part of the main menu, and instead tucked away with statistics and save and load screens). A favorites menu lets you bring up your most commonly used spells and items, but it still feels like a convoluted mess. A patch that returns Skyrim to Oblivion's menu system would be very welcome, even if Oblivion's wasn't particularly good.

Then there are the bugs. This is an Elder Scrolls game, so of course there are bugs. Lots of them. Quest triggers can sometimes fail to happen, NPCs can act confused, companions can act stupid, and Skyrim can sometimes simply freeze. It's not perfect, and you will have to save often (at 5 MB a save).

Skyrim is an immensely rewarding game if you can push through the awkward menus and numerous bugs. You're going to have to go through sections of dungeons more than once. You're going to have to reload. You're going to have to dive into menus more often than you should. Despite all of this, you're going to keep coming back if you like even a tiny bit of the western RPG genre. There's so much to do and so much to see in Skyrim that it's a great game, even with its flaws. And there are many, many flaws.

I reviewed the PlayStation 3 version, but if you have a computer that can handle it, pick up the PC version. You can mod and adjust the game to be visually spectacular beyond the consoles' abilities to show, and the inevitable mods from the community will add a lot of value to the game.

Angry Birds needs to stop. It's become a Simpsons-in-early-90s-level fad. Or tamagotchi-in-late-90s-level fad. Or pogs-for-that-one-week-in-the-mid-90s-level fad. It's not just a casual game that became popular like Bejeweled, Peggle, or your-Zynga-game-of-choice. It's a multimedia phenomenon. And I'm getting freaking sick of it. At Best Buy, they have Angry Birds iPhone cases, headphones, and speakers. At Toys R Us, they have giant plush Angry Birds. And at Forbidden Planet (and stores normal people shop at), they have Angry Birds Fruit Gummis. I'm getting tired of Angry Birds, but I love a good gummi candy, so I got a box.

These Angry Birds Fruit Gummis are made by Healthy Food Brands, manufactured in Mexico, and put in four collectible Angry Birds boxes with birds or a pig cut-out. The gummis themselves are red (cherry), red (strawberry), yellow (lemon), blue (raspberry), green (apple), and black (grape), all shaped like a different Angry Birds character. You get a generous handful in the $2 candy box.

I was going to describe each candy and give it a review, but I can't, because they all taste pretty much the same. These are the blandest gummi candies I've ever eaten. I'm not making a joke about casual gaming; these are genuinely bland. Each candy is just vaguely sweet with a slight aftertaste of the flavor it's supposed to be, or the color related to the flavor it's supposed to be. The apple gummi tastes like a holistically diluted shot of Pucker, the lemon candy tastes like a slightly lemony bit of rubber cement, and I thought the blue gummi was a somewhat recognizable candy blueberry until I looked at the box and saw that it was raspberry. These gummis are made with real fruit juice like Chef Boyardee has a full serving of vegetables in each can. It might be technically true based on our loose standards, but it's fundamentally wrong.

I usually love gummi candies, but these I didn't feel like finishing. Give me some Haribo gold bears, give me some Sour Patch Kids, give me generic drug store gummi worms, but at least they all have some kind of flavor. There's just nothing to the Angry Birds gummis besides the brand recognition.

Saints Row: The Third isn't a sandbox crime game. You don't play a criminal. You don't run around committing crimes. You play a freaking supervillain. This isn't an exaggeration.

By the time I got through the game, I lived in a nuclear plant, had an attack helicopter, an army of ninjas, and dressed in a green waistcoat and top hat like a steampunk Riddler.

How am I not a supervillain?

Like Saints Row 2 threw out the gang drama and most serious subjects in favor of sheer destruction, Saints Row: The Third further steps away from reality. There are clones. There's virtual reality. There are paramilitary forces with their own supercarrier. There are zombies. This isn't a game about just running around and capturing neighborhoods anymore. You're trying to get the entire city of Steelport in your insane iron grip, and you get a lot of toys to do it.

It's basically the same game as Saints Row 2, but in a different city. You can upgrade your weapons in addition to your vehicles, and you can also pay money for perks instead of earning them just through doing all of one type of mission. You can get a few bonuses for doing all the activities, but most bonuses come from getting levels through respect points and paying money for things like extra ammo or nitro on all cars. Running around, driving, shooting, all of that's pretty much the same. It's definitely worth saving up to completely max out your pistols, because dual-wielded, fully-upgraded 45's can cut through even armored enemies with ease.

There are plenty of activities for making money, getting respect, and taking control of neighborhoods. There are the classics from Saints Row 2 like Snatch and Trail Blazer, plus a few new ones. Unfortunately, the best activity from Saints Row 2, Septic Avenger, is nowhere to be seen. There better be some poo-spraying DLC in the future, Volition! Professor Genki's Ethical Reality Climax is the biggest new activity, and unfortunately it's not that unique. There are enemies in funny costumes and pop-up animal targets, but it amounts to just a series of shooting gallery gauntlets, where you have to earn money by shooting people and then get to the end of the maze. That's it, and it's unfortunately not as fun as it sounds and doesn't reach the levels of wackiness shown in the commercials for the game or implied by the very nature of Japanese game shows. It's just another run-and-gun activity, like the game's missions.

Fortunately, what craziness the Professor Genki bits lack the rest of the game has in spades. You can beat people to death with a four-foot dildo or giant fists that make them explode. You can shoot people with a mega buster or a sonic boom weapon that makes them pop like water balloons. You can drive around in a neon green voxel tank that fires cubes or a light cycle. You can fly a fighter jet or a high-tech VTOL motorcycle. You can dress like a furry or a spaceman. There's a lot of weird shit out there you can enjoy.

Steelport isn't much of a change from Stilwater, but Stilwater felt like it had more distinct neighborhoods. Besides the military base, nuclear plant, and airport, the city of Steelport kind of blurs together into an indistinct urban mass. It's unfortunate, because a game with this much personality needs a setting with personality, and Steelport doesn't deliver. It's a functional sandbox, but compared to Stilwater, San Andreas, and Liberty City, it feels a bit bland. The Saints' strongholds look great and the mission settings have a lot of interesting appeal, but the city just doesn't seem that interesting.

Saints Row: The Third isn't a deep or engrossing game, but it doesn't try to be. It knows it's there to fulfill our desire for insanity and violence, and provides a loose structure that lets you do it. It knows what it wants, and it gives it to you without pretenses. If you loved Saints Row 2, if you felt bored or stifled by the drama of Grand Theft Auto 4, and if you like the idea of flying around a cardboard city, mowing down crowds of people with various weapons, Saints Row: The Third is your game.

We don't usually review music, but in the spirit of Halloween I want to share with you one of the most horrifying things you can ever hear, one of the most disgusting, frightening aural atrocities in the history of bass drums, one of the cosmic abominations seeping out of the seams of the universe that brings gibbering madness with its perception. I want to share with you Lulu, by Lou Reed and Metallica.

This year, Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground and Metallica collaborated on an album based on two turn-of-the-century plays by German playwright Frank Wedekind. It's exactly as pretentious and uninteresting as it sounds. Before I heard about Lulu, I thought Lou Reed was dead. Now that I've heard Lulu, I kind of wish he was.

Simply put, Lulu doesn't sound like a collaboration between music legends Lou Reed and Metallica. It sounds like a collaboration between a high school poetry nerd and a crappy Stone Temple Pilots cover band. I could do a track-by-track analysis, but I'm not a music reviewer, and this isn't a music site. Instead, behold the wonder of this horrible album on the web page, where you can listen to it for free.

You're welcome.

The word "meta," or at least the modern, popular use of it, seems to be the best word to describe Pokemon Rumble Blast for the Nintendo 3DS. It takes Pokemon, the game series that spawned tons of cartoons, cards, toys, and other things, makes up a new Pokemon toy line based on the series, then makes a game based on the made-up toy line. From a storytelling perspective, it's the Pokemon Centipede. It's not bad, but its concept is very bizarre for a game that's basically Gauntlet with Pokemon.

Fortunately, you don't have to think about the game concept. Or, at least, you wouldn't if it didn't bring up the toy aspect all the time. Toy Pokemon are like the Pokemon in the Pokemon Mysterious Dungeon series: cute, intelligent creatures that can talk and have societies. They're also toys in a toy store you power up by turning their Wonder Key. This isn't just a bookend plot point you see outside of the game, either. Every time you pick a new Toy Pokemon, you see the key wind to activate them. If you want the different legendary Pokemon, you need to go into the Toy Shop as your Mii to invite other players and spend Play Coins from your 3DS to bring customers in to get money. For use in the game's machines. Which are in the towns of the game. Which are on the table of a toy store. Which are in an autistic boys snow globe, next to a tiny hospital.

Putting the concept to the side, Pokemon Rumble Blast is basically a collect-and-brawl arcade game. You start with a single Pikachu, but by running through linear levels where you get attacked by hordes of Pokemon, you can collect hundreds of the little toys. It's a very simplified Gauntlet-style game, with an overhead perspective and two buttons to activate the Pokemon's two powers. Run around, mash buttons, beat level. You can switch out any of your eventually hundreds of Pokemon at any time in most levels, but it takes a few seconds to wind them up, and if your current Pokemon gets hit while you're winding, the switch doesn't happen. If your Pokemon are knocked out three times between them in a level, you have to start again (but you keep the Pokemon and money you got up tot hat point).

Each Pokemon plays differently, even those of the same type of Pokemon. When you pick up a new one (by hitting them really hard), they can have any of a handful of different skills, including close-range attacks, long-range attacks, area attacks, and support moves. Each Pokemon can only have two skills at once, and stats are limited to hit points, power level, and a simple start-based attack and defense rating. Special attributes for some Pokemon add a little more variety, but basically each Pokemon is a much less complicated version of the Pokemon from the main games. There is no leveling up, no evolution, and no learning new moves as you fight. If you get a new Pokemon, that's what it's going to be like through the game unless you spend money on random and specific move machines that can give them a little more power. Considering the format of the game, the simplified version of the Pokemon stats work well.

While it doesn't seel like there's much for the RPG fan or strategist, there is tons of stuff for the obsessive-compulsive 100% completion collector. Every level has about a dozen Pokemon you can capture, and you won't get all of them for each playthrough. Besides the random Pokemon through the level, you can also capture each boss, which is usually a higher evolution form of the Pokemon in the level, plus a bunch of special Pokemon that only come out under certain circumstances, like unlocking them by spending play coins to get customers in the toy store. There are 600 different Pokemon, and considering you can get different strengths and moves for each Pokemon you catch, that's a lot of collecting.

Is Pokemon Rumble Blast a deep game? No. Is this a fun game? Yes, if you like button mashing and collecting over strategy and character growth. It has a strange premise, but it doesn't really get in the way. If you want a Pokemon game that lets you turn your mind off and not worry about things like EV and trading evolutions, pick up this game.

Although this has been bugging me: I'm not a huge toy collector (shut up, everyone I know), but where are these toy Pokemon? Why make a game based on a toy based on a game when you don't make the toy based on the game? I want wind-up, fighting Pokemon!

Tower defense has become its own genre, and in most cases it's already pretty played out. There just isn't much more that can be done with the idea of setting up obstacles to stop waves of enemies from getting to your base. Fortunately, there's still some fun to be had out of the formula, and enough fun to justify paying $15 for it. One of the best new examples of this is Robot Entertainment's Orcs Must Die.

There's some backstory about having to guard portals and being trained by an old wizard and stuff like that, but the main concept of Orcs Must Die is on its name: orcs are trying to get to your big glowing thing, and you have to stop them. The action takes place from the perspective of your character in the third person, and setting traps and placing soldiers involves actually moving to where you want them to go and pretting the button. This perspective is important because you can also directly fight the mob of enemies with your crossbow and sword, along with several other useful toys like bracers that let you throw enemies around and a gauntlet that lets you throw fireballs.

This two-pronged approach is one of the most important and fun aspects of the game, but it's also one of the most frustrating. You can't win by just laying traps or fighting, but have to diligently balance both. Lay your traps between waves and fight them off as they attack. If you didn't set up your traps well enough, the horde will overwhelm you and kill you, giving you a 5-point penalty at best and swarm your portal at worst. If you don't fight them personally with your various toys, the horde will overwhelm your defenses and rush past, getting enough enemies to swarm your portal and defeat you. Of course, this means you can't just enjoy trap placement or hack-and-shoot action. You need to juggle them both.

Fortunately, your repertoire of traps and weapons expands as you play through the campaign. You start with just a crossbow, a sword, and some humble arrow wall traps and spike floor traps, but you can eventually get archers, springboards, fans, and other wacky tools. Traps can be upgraded through points you earn with each map, ranging from 1 for a terrible attempt to 5 for not getting any enemies past your defenses and not dying. You can also get access to "Weavers," two upgrade trees that can enhance either your traps or your weapons in a given map. This, combined with a limited but growing number of slots for traps and weapons, makes for a lot of strategic options. Fortunately, the choice doesn't ever feel too overwhelming, and you'll likely find a handful of go-to items you'll use in most maps.

The traps aren't exactly balanced, due to both limited use for many of them and the unusual expense of several. The wall of blades is extremely expensive compared to other traps, and has a limited range compared to the much cheaper arrow wall. The barricade, a vital item for crowd control, is almost as expensive while being far, far more useful, potentially more than any other trap. It's clear Robot Entertainment wants you to play the maps exactly as they designed them, without much corralling with barricades. Fortunately, most of the maps work well.

Some maps aren't, however, and they tend to be so open and have so many different entrances and portals that defending everything feels less like tower defense and more like playing tag with a limp. These maps really show how useful the barricades could be if they weren't so expensive to build. Fortunately, most maps are fun and satisfying enough for you to forgive the few chore maps.

Graphics look very good, with slightly cartoonish character and setting designs and a polished, complete look without any noticeable bugs in rendering or gameplay. It isn't a CryTek shooter, but it isn't a minimalist, low-budget indie game that abandons any attempt at 3D graphics of any quality. The music is repetitive and the character dialog is irritating, but they don't get in the way of the game.

There isn't any multiplayer, but the leaderboard integrates seamlessly with Steam to show you how well you did on each map compared to your friends. Cooperative multiplayer for the larger, more open maps would have been a great touch. Of course, tower defense isn't really conducive to multiplayer, so it's not that much of a flaw. There are still enough maps, upgrade points, and difficulty settings to get plenty of enjoyment from the game.

Orcs Must Die is one of the more fun indie games I've grabbed on Steam, and worth the $15 to download it. If you like tower defense, give this game a try.

The Warhammer 40,000 universe is a grimdark place, where a corrupt, crumbling empire rules over millions of worlds, endlessly warring with aliens, demons, and other nightmarish creatures (and said empire is the only "good" faction, save for the psychic space elves of the Eldar). Life is short, brutal, and often meaningless except as fuel for the for the Imperial war machine. Few aspects of this setting are as emblematic as the Space Marines: immortal, genetically enhanced, psychotically xenophobic super warriors clad in power armor and charged with defending humanity from terrible threats both without and within. As such, it's no surprise that an action title featuring Space Marines prominently would appear at some point, especially after nearly every sci-fi shooter since Doom has effectively involved less badass versions of them. Relic and THQ's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is the game fans have been waiting for, since it finally puts them in the power armor of an actual Space Marine.

Space Marine is a third person action title that follows Captain Titus of the Ultramarines as he attempts to secure a valuable strategic asset on a world ravaged by Orks. The greenskin horde has shattered the planetary defenses and what few defenders are left are fighting a desperate, losing battle for survival. Players are immediately thrust into the action with little exposition, starting with Titus' arrival to Forge World Graia.Space Marine is unequivocally and unapologetically an action game. It doesn't have any puzzles, or dialog choice sequences. It doesn't allow for exploration, it doesn't offer more than the pretense of drama, and it doesn't involve any character leveling, gear tinkering, skill trees, or work benches. What it does offer is an orgy of bone crunching and enjoyable combat with a variety of satisfying weapons in a beautifully rendered world that perfectly captures the feel of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Combat is both brutal and fun, capturing the sort of carnage that only a genetically engineered, immortal killing machine could unleash. Melee and ranged combat play an equal roll, and the game allows you to seamlessly switch between the two as the fight demands. Enemies are plentiful and often come in large waves that Titus wades through with gusto. Titus feels extremely responsive, letting the character dodge, shoot, stab, and blast his way through the hordes of enemies in his way with ease.

The weaponry in Space Marine includes a wide variety of both ranged and melee options. Even Titus' initial compliment, a bolt pistol and a combat knife, feel powerful in his hands, and that feeling only increases as he acquires more tools of destruction. All of the melee weapons are excellent, with the over-the-top, silly ultraviolence of the chainsword particularly noteworthy. The ranged weapons fair almost as well, and are representative of the usual assortment of weapon types found in 3rd person action games. The bolter fills the role of the assault rifle, but with a lot more punch. The meltagun serves admirably as a close range area burst weapon, turning its victims into cinders. The lascannon serves as the sniper rifle,firing through objects to kill whatever's hiding behind. Only a grenade launcher seems superfluous, having no counterpart within the setting and feeling a little sluggish in comparison with the rest of the arsenal.

Despite the blood-spattered nature of the game, it often looks beautiful, perfectly capturing the horror and the grandeur of the Imperium of Man. The massive edifices and sprawling vistas are one of the strongest points of Space Marine. The characters themselves are also beautifully rendered, with the Space Marines and the other characters perfectly in keeping with the source material. Any fan looking for a visual representation of the Warhammer 40,000 universe is certain to get a treat out of the gorgeous sights, and even players unfamiliar with the setting are likely to enjoy the visuals.

Space Marine's campaign is not without its flaws, however. The campaign is short, and while paced reasonably well it slows down in the middle. The game's plot is little more than a pretense for the action to take place and isn't particularly interesting. The character's are flat and the dialog is often stilted and forced. Titus is well-represented, but his fellow Space Marines and most of the other supporting characters are little more than cardboard cut outs. While there are a few moments that work extremely well within the confines of the story, most of it leaves little impact.

Space Marine's multiplayer is entertaining but shallow, with only a few modes of play. While the character customization options are a ton of fun, they can't add enough to extend the longevity of the multiplayer experience. Certain die hard aficionados are likely to enjoy it for a long time, but most players will lose interest quickly.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine offers an excellent experience that captures the feel what we can imagine Space Marine combat to resemble. The combat is fun and deeply satisfying, the setting is beautifully realized, and many of the environments are astounding. While the campaign has a few issues it's still an utter blast, and the multiplayer offers a pleasant diversion. Space Marine is definitely worth it for any fan of the setting or the genre, and will offer a solid play experience for everyone else. It's too bad it doesn't have enough meat to it to be worth much more than a rental.

Did you know there's a new Tetris game out for the 3DS? Tetris Axis is the newest Tetris game available, and it brings 3D graphics to the block-dropping series. I know, when you think of 3D and Tetris, you think of those horrible 3D Tetris games that were hard to control on the PC. Well, don't worry. The 3D isn't a game-crippling change of perspective that shows why Tetris only works on a two-dimensional plane, it's only an incredible unnecessary effect that shows why Tetris only works on a two-dimensional plane.

Tetris Axis is a decent compilation of Tetris game types developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo, but compared to the stellar (and actually Nintendo-themed) Tetris DS, it falls flat. The two best things I can say about Tetris Axis is that it has regular Tetris and that's always fun, and it's only $30.

The standard Tetris game mode is the main feature in the game, with endless and marathon modes to keep the bricks dropping. It works well enough, but at this point Tetris should be a downloadable game, or even included on the freaking system. The only reason to get a physical copy of Tetris is for any extra content, and at this Tetrix Axis doesn't make the case. The two draws besides the standard Tetris game are extra modes and the 3D effect.

Unfortunately, the extra game modes are generally boring. The only one really worthwhile is CPU Battle, which puts you head to head against a series of 10 opponents, most of them Bomberman-themed. It's the standard get-more-lines-and-send-them-to-the-opponent's-screen mode found on every block-dropping puzzle game these days, and it's unfortunately the only particularly entertaining one.

The other modes are a handful of "party" games with only minor novelty value, like dropping blocks into an outline to form a picture, racing a Tetris piece through a "track" of blocks (clever, but less fun than it sounds), and the thoroughly boring "Climber," where you lay bricks to get a figure to climb a tower. There are also two AR games where you put the 3DS AR card on a table and play over the card. Unfortunately, one of the modes is Climber, and the other is a very, very small Tetris mode. Also unfortunately, it only serves to make the games nearly unplayable, forcing you to walk around the card to drop blocks in Climber and making it hard to keep the well in frame in the Tetris mode. Compare these to Tetris DS' handful of other modes, which offered unique and entertaining spins on the Tetris formula. Fever and Climber modes in Tetris Axis don't come close to being as entertaining as the Push and Touch modes in Tetris DS.

Another reason Tetris DS worked so well was its Nintendo-themed graphics. As you played through the main Tetris mode, the theme changed through the Mario games and then through the other classic Nintendo games. It was a great touch of nostalgia that didn't get in the way of the game. Sadly, all Tetris Axis offers if your Mii dancing in the bottom of the screen and the occasional Bomberman reference. Yes, it has 3D graphics, but only in the sense that the Tetris wells stand out from the background. It's Tetris. 3D doesn't really help.

Tetris Axis isn't bad, just incredibly unnecessary. The 3D doesn't make the game any better, and the lack of the excellent content in Tetris DS seriously hurts it. It's strange that a game published by Nintendo and outsourced to Hudson is inferior to... the same game Nintendo itself made a few years ago. If you really want Tetris on your DS (and it's understandable if you do), track down a copy of Tetris DS. Tetris Axis, even at its $30 price, isn't worth it.