GAME ON

Here's a game geek cocktail: Mix Norse mythology with futuristic technology and create one hell of a mash-up game. The first installment in a planned trilogy, Too Human follows the plight of Baldur, the Norse god responsible for protecting humanity against robots gone wild. To stop the bloodthirsty machines you'll choose between relying on humanistic traits or piling on the technology. The game play blends the hack-and-slash combat of action games with the depth of a role-playing game to create a hybrid that is equal parts Devil May Cry and Diablo. Overrun with robots? Play Too Human's special blend of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots with three other people simultaneously online. —Matt Bertz

Time to get your war on. The Brothers in Arms series rejoins Staff Sergeant Matt Baker of the 101st Airborne as his squad fights to stay out of body bags during Operation Market Garden, the worst Allied defeat of World War II. Behind enemy lines in the Netherlands, Baker's squad must wrestle control of strategically important bridges, hold off the Nazi counterattack, and pray for reinforcements. This gritty story ditches heroics for the camaraderie formed by your squad during frantic firefights, exhilarating escapes, and painful losses. As the leader, your tactical decision-making spells the difference between a celebratory shot of scotch at a rally point or digging graves for your assault team.

Sundays wouldn't be the same without everyone's favorite mush-mouthed fat man John Madden drooling all over the Telestrator during football games. The same goes for pigskin video games, where Madden NFL has flattened all comers for 20 years. For the game's anniversary, the creators finally fulfilled the wishes of the rabid fan base and added 32-player online league play, so you can round up 31 friends, assign everyone a team, and play an entire NFL season. New controls let players break out of spin and juke moves to avoid going out of bounds or to dodge tackles. New announcers Cris Collinsworth and Tom Hammond are there to point out just where your running back fumbled.

The Force is with this classic fighting game. To spice up the action, the latest installment of Soulcalibur comes injected with a heavy dose of Star Wars; PlayStation 3 owners can wield the deadly powers of Darth Vader, while Xbox 360 owners get access to the little green badass Yoda. Traditionalists can stick to characters that aren't from a galaxy far, far away and play 20 classic characters or one of four new fighters. Staying true to the series' legacy, the game looks stunning, and Soulcalibur's hand-to-hand and weapon-based fighting, which still kicks ass, now lets you break down your enemy's armor to deliver replay-worthy brutal finishes that would make Darth Maul smile.

Most ninjas sneak into your house in the middle of the night and slit your throat before you even have a chance to make a break for it in your pajamas. Not Ryu Hayabusa. This masked badass busts through doors, dodges gunfire, and unsheathes one of his instruments of death to behead everyone in the room. In Ninja Gaiden 2, the bloodshed has been upped to flood levels as Hayabusa fights to avenge his clan. The first Ninja Gaiden on Xbox was known for its ridiculous difficulty, so this version includes a sliding scale of difficulty to help clumsy ninjas. Also, Hayabusa has new tools for tearing up his foes: a scythe and the Wolverine-like metal claws. Cue the severed limbs. —Matt Bertz

The Battlefield franchise has always been schizophrenic. The PC versions featured some of the best multiplayer battles in gaming, while the console versions have better served as beer coasters. Bad Company is the first uniformly solid game in the series and it’s about bloody time. The Three Kings plot puts you and the rest of B Company in the middle of the good fight, but when you come across crates of gold in an abandoned building, your squad goes rogue and grabs the stash. To get out with the treasure, you’ll have to think smart. Rocket a building to send the rubble crashing down on foes or blow a hole in the wall to set up a sniper position. Practice, then jump in the fantastic multiplayer modes. It’s gold.

Apparently there’s no retirement home for action heroes. In the past year, an HGH-fueled Rambo, wrinkled Indiana Jones, and aging John McClane all returned to foil one more villain. Now an old and grizzled Solid Snake is gearing up again. As the biggest military contractor in the world, Liquid Ocelot now wields an army equal to that of the United States. Uncle Sam won’t stand for it, so Snake’s final mission is to sneak through war-torn regions, track down Ocelot, and assassinate him with extreme prejudice. Snake still uses slick weapons and sneaky stealth moves to eliminate foes, even if he has to crack the arthritis in his knuckles before snapping their necks. This is classic Metal Gear.

Relive the glory days of Aerosmith before Steven Tyler started looking like a lady, dude. Like a playable Behind the Music without the drugs and booze, this ode to all things Aerosmith starts at the beginning—a gig at Nipmuc Regional High School in Massachusetts—and follows the band’s rise from small-time Boston bar band to arena-rocking icons who birth hot daughters. Along the way you’ll gig at the historic venues where Aerosmith rocked themselves to stardom with classics such as “Sweet Emotion,” “Walk This Way,” and “Dream On.” The game also includes music from Aerosmith tour mates Mott the Hoople, The Kinks, The Clash, Joan Jett, Cheap Trick, and the New York Dolls. It’s an Aerosmith overdose!

The first rule of The Club—a gladiatorial arena battler featuring mercenaries hunting each other with shotguns, grenades, and small arms throughout seedy urban environments—is that you don’t talk about its blood sport leanings. The second rule of The Club is that you don’t mention how, despite decent controls and rousing shoot-outs, the too-open-ended setup (focusing on speed, accuracy, and continued strings of kills) bores quickly. Playing more like a mindless run-and-gun outing, less a moody, present-day take on The Most Dangerous Game, the emphasis here is purely on improving your trigger-squeezing skills, not novel features or eye candy.

Handheld action epics typically get short shrift when it comes to quality control and production values. Not so in this gloriously over-the-top, high-velocity crime fighter, which sends your crew of law-bending bruisers speeding after futuristic criminals. Piloting jet skis, hovercraft, buses, and more, you’ll race toward and ram targets, unload clips at shot-popping robbers and high-tech pirates, and hop atop foes’ vehicles for action-film-type sequences. Outlandish boss missions, a variety of playable characters, and several multiplayer modes—including head-to-head showdowns and drive-to-survive gauntlets—guarantee a good time, even if realism and modesty aren’t strong points.

Take a pinch of Saw, add a hint of Se7en, season with just a touch of Hellraiser. Voilà—it’s the perfect recipe for terror in this morbid adventure, viewed through the eyes of hero Ethan Thomas (a former FBI agent turned homeless alcoholic). Wandering crack houses and mental wards filled with flickering lights and discarded wheelchairs, you’ll find your missing partner while battling basso-voiced maniacs, snarling dogs, and black-veined cadavers that explode into slimy goo on contact. Incredibly atmospheric, the tale’s superb storytelling is matched only by its multiplayer support and brutal, two-fisted close combat system. Hooray for makeshift weapons: Crowbar or prosthetic arm, anyone?

Make war, not love, in this balls-out, modern-era blaster that renders you part of a ragtag squad of heavily armed and exceptionally chatty commandos. While the Battlefield series is known for multiplayer showdowns where combatants grab dozens of weapons (machine gun, rocket launcher, etc.) and control jeeps, tanks, and helicopters, this is the first to deliver an equally engaging solo thrill. Drawing inspiration from films like Three Kings, this release will allow you to perforate walls and shred foliage in photorealistic environments that are as destructible as they are huge. Corny wisecracks and formulaic approach aside, explosive delivery ensures this is one suicide mission worth enlisting for.

More Battlestar Galactica than Battlefield Earth, the latest from role-playing impresario BioWare (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire) scores with its epic script and galaxy-spanning ambition. This is no mere sci-fi dungeon hack; players traverse archaeological sites and stunning alien worlds flush with quirky characters and emotionally gripping scenarios, with every action affecting the tale’s outcome. Equally notable for ethically ambiguous choices and furious real-time battles, genre innovation is plentiful. Dork cred strictly optional here—with humanity’s fate yours to decide, even those who can’t tell Drs. Phil from Who will still be in high-tech heaven. —Scott Steinberg

Gritty, Hollywood-style drama gets top billing in this engaging crime thriller from the creators of the best-selling Hitman. Controlling ex-mercenary Kane, players enjoy intense, squad-based gunplay alongside computer- or buddy-controlled ally Lynch, a schizophrenic nutcase. Think Ocean’s Eleven meets The Odd Couple: rappelling along towering skyscrapers and airing out crowded nightclubs with a spray of gunfire; sparking frantic chases; and executing high-stakes heists. A coarse vibe, stark visuals, and even cruder dialogue prove immediate draws, but it’s the trigger-happy co-op mode where the title really shines. Corrupt a friend into participating, and you’ll see why it’s number one with a bullet.

Way back when (13 years ago for those counting, gramps), this rubber-burning off-road racing series was the shiznit in arcades. Now, after a nearly decade long pit-stop, it shifts back into high gear on home systems, delivering a solid, if unspectacular look at mud-spraying four-wheeled mayhem. Handling like a long-lost quarter-munching classic, expect wild physics, scrotum-shriveling powerslides, and deformable terrain that noticeably affects handling the more muck gets churned. Unfortunately, there are also the familiar downsides, like repetitive action, a small selection of linear tracks, and ruthless AI opponents. Guess that proves the more things change, yeah, the more they play the same.

Lacking the essential components (say, musical talent) needed to start your own club-thrashing garage act? Just cop this guaranteed party-starter from Guitar Hero’s inventors. It lets wannabe headliners caterwaul along on a USB mic or jam together in person and online using guitar, bass, and drum peripherals. Punk, grunge, alternative, every imaginable chord-shredding genre is represented, with dozens of chart-toppers like Nirvana’s “In Bloom” and Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” fueling the ultimate headbanger’s ball. Optional downloads featuring artists like The Who and Metallica only provide added incentive to squeeze into those neon-tinged Spandex tights.

So you hated the cliffhanger ending during your fi rst trip to Vegas with Team Rainbow? So did we. Our trigger-finger has been itching to head back to Sin City since. While this shooter sticks close to the original playbook—tango takedowns, snakecam shenanigans, and blistering online play—you’ll notice a few changes. First off, your teammates are back, but you aren’t, as main man Logan Keller has been replaced by a customizable badass named Bishop. The missions parallel the original’s and hit a variety of environments. Like us, you probably know the multiplayer maps better than your apartment after hours of online play. Rejoice! RSV2 includes over 11 new maps and two new game modes. —Casey Lynch

Sometimes we just feel sorry for Kratos, the ashy anti-hero of the God of War series; the guy just can’t seem to get a break to enjoy being a Greek god. Called to serve in the PS2 series’ fi rst appearance on the PSP, Kratos is waging war during the 10-year period he spent in servitude to the gods of Olympus. Using the Blades of Chaos, he slices and dices his way through monsters, soldiers, and mythological beings. The controls transfer over to the PSP fairly well, and the graphics look great. As always there are a ton of puzzles and treacherous platforming sections, although the puzzles aren’t as head-scratchingly tough, which will probably save us from swearing out loud on the subway.

Ever since Sony took its long-running MLB series to the minors we’ve been as happy as a kid at game seven of the World Series. Road to the Show mode lets you lace up the cleats of a player that you create and work your way from benchwarmer up to the Big Leagues. The highlight of this mode is the position specific game play; if you’re a shortstop, you play defense in your position instead of controlling the entire team, which serves to put you in the game like few other games have managed to do. Hitting mechanics have been overhauled with the same performance-based system used for last year’s pitching: you’ll be rewarded for taking it to the fence and dinged for batting like a 12-year-old.

Like a buddy-cop movie gone ballistic, this shooter revolves around a pair of armor-plated psychos and ape-shit gonzo fi refi ghts. Playing as Salem and Rios, two Army Rangers gone mercenary, you’ll use a full arsenal to put the hurt on a stream of baddies in two-player co-op battles. Aggro Mode makes one player “invisible” while the other draws the enemy’s attention. That armor plating doesn’t equal invincibility though, so if your partner goes down it’s up to you to drag him to safety and “revive” him by providing CPR through random, God of War-type button taps or by using a tampon to plug up the wind-sucking bullet wound. We’ll never look at feminine-hygiene products the same again.