BAAAAAAD COMPANY - till the day I die

No, this isn't the same Bad Company that put out such hits as "Feel Like Makin' Love," "Shooting Star," and...well, that's pretty much all worth mentioning. Just to put it out there.

Anyway. To say Battlefield: Bad Company isn't the greatest shooter of all time is a bit unfair. After all, if you come into this expecting it to be, you're not being very fair to any game entitled Halo or Call of Duty. So don't plan on this going down as the best there ever was. Instead, Bad Company is a fun enough game to pick up and blast away with. It's funnier than CoD: Modern Warfare and uses destructible environments as well as any game I've ever played to push the action up.

You play as Preston Marlowe, transferred into the so-called "Bad Company" for...well, doing things you shouldn't have done. This is the unit where all the bad eggs in the army get put, and they're always the ones who take point on everything, casualties be damned. As you'll see as you apparently fight a war by your lonesome. Well, not entirely - you have three wisecracking soldier buddies backing you up. Plotwise, there's also gold. I think that about sums it up.

It's an interesting shooter. As others have in the past, it involves a life meter, so you cannot take infinite hits - but there are no life packs, per se. The only way to get yourself back to full health is to inject yourself with a nifty little gadget which looks like an epi-pen. And since you always have one on your person, and it never runs out, you can bring yourself back to full health anytime. If that makes it sound like you'll be able to breeze through the game in no time, without dying, guess again. You will be shot, several times, and sometimes you won't have time to reach for the injector. Trust me - you'll die. Especially if you make the mistake of using cover too much.

Other shooters allow you to hide behind brick walls, behind doors, etc., and withstand a hail of gunfire. Not here. Here, it can all get blown up. Which means the wall you were standing behind a second ago has been demolished by a tank shell, and you really need to move somewhere else. Of course, you can use this to your advantage - to take out enemy cover, to create alternate entrances to buildings, or to just eliminate a pesky sniper position. Be wary, though, because other players will use it against you. This is why the combat in Bad Company is such a refreshing change - it truly requires you to think on your feet.

The controls, however, can feel sluggish now and then, and it never feels like this game is a fantastic one - just a great one, if great is a step down. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, because if you like a game which doesn't take itself too seriously, you'll like this.

Take a vacation from...well, from the last one.

The original Wii Sports came bundled with each and every Wii, and it only carried five sports, so you could be forgiven for thinking it was one of those games not worth playing (even though it was). Try not to make the same mistake with Wii Sports Resort. For one thing, it's packing twelve sports, not five, most of which have multiple modes of play. For another, something comes bundled with this game, not the other way around - a little gadget called MotionPlus, which may seem like a gimmick but isn't. For another...well, let's face it, you were getting a little tired of baseball, weren't you?

Apart from golf and bowling, the only two holdovers, it's a completely new experience. Some sports you might expect (basketball, canoeing), while others you might not (jetskiing, wakeboarding). There's a lot of emphasis on air sports, which involves either flying a plane or jumping out of one - which is the first thing you do, as a matter of fact, at least after you sit through a three-minute video on how to use the MotionPlus (most of which a six year old could figure out).

I was wary of this little plastic gadget - how much more real is this going to make things? Turns out, a fair bit. With Wii Sports bowling, I was constantly trying to make the bowling ball spin. With Wii Sports Resort bowling, I was always making the ball spin, even when I didn't want to. Without sounding like I'm trying to come up with slogans for these guys, you could feel the difference. I haven't yet tried it out with any other games, but who knows what it could do with something like, say, Red Steel?

I mention Red Steel because it's great what this game does with swordfighting, easily the best sport of the bunch. You can either spar with a friend or bot in a best of three match, or play through a mode called "Showdown," which involves you fighting your way through waves of bots. Addictive? Sure is. (Other top choices include archery, basketball, and table tennis, which is sure to please you fans of Wii Sports' tennis.)

All the sports have their moments, and some are better than others. But all of them have one thing in common, not just with each other but with their Wii Sports brethren - they only last so long. If you're a gaming hermit like me, who doesn't spend all his time in multiplayer lobbies, that's a problem. Obviously, any decent game can have years added on if you've got willing friends, and the same applies here, but that's only if you have friends who want to try it out. (Once they do, they'll like it.) One thing I would have liked is for them to have added something like softball in place of baseball (throw underhand, not over), and maybe karate in place of boxing. It would add some more variety, while not boring anyone to tears. (Speaking of which, can we please not see golf ever again?)

But if, as seems to be Nintendo's hope, this MotionPlus thing catches on the way Sixaxis...well, didn't, you'll be glad to have one. And besides, this game is just as much fun - no, scratch that, more fun - than its predecessor, and everybody loved that one.

Dead Men Walking Here!

Hey, I love a good zombie slaughter-fest as much as anyone else. What could be more fun than beating the crap out of some dudes who shouldn't be able to defend themselves? (Ask my grade-school bully - he knows.) And hey, a game like "Dead Rising" seems like the perfect kind of game for that. Within the first ten, fifteen minutes, I was (literally) mowing down zombies with - yeah, you guessed it - a lawnmower.

And yet, I was feeling distinctly upset about it. Why? Well, for some reason, pressing the control stick left made the mower go right, and vice versa. Plus, you know, sometimes it didn't stop when you let go. By the time I figured that out, I had gotten myself killed. And back to the last save point to try it all again. What should have been a gleefully gory moment was frustrating. And so it goes with "Dead Rising." What should have been a great game turns out to be, well, not.

It's not that the game steals its premise from old-time zombie movies. Zombies attacking humans in a mall - yeah, like I've never heard that one before, but never with a guy who's "covered wars, you know." That would be Frank West, easily one of the least engaging protagonists I can remember in any video game.

But this ain't about the hero. If games were, Halo would have sucked, right? Let's see how this plays out, I tell myself. Turns out, it played out pretty badly. This is due in large part - ah, forget it; this is the reason the game is getting three stars rather than five - to the controls. One thing that sticks out for me is the gunplay. Of course, you'd think getting a gun would be a good thing, but it's too hard to use. Using any weapon requires pressing the X button; aiming a weapon, like a gun, is done with the right trigger. Putting aside the fact that this is not how any good shooter does it, you cannot imagine how infuriating it was when I pressed down the right trigger to aim my not-so-trusty sidearm, only to have Frank the photog aim in a completely different direction than what I wanted, leaving me disoriented and open to zombie bite marks. The gun is a weapon you want to use as little as possible; when I wanted a zombie dead, I grabbed a baseball bat, lead pipe, or nightstick (I do like the nightstick) and button mashed my way to victory. Maybe I wasn't exploring the game's possibilities, but when that's how the basics play, you ask what there is that can turn it around.

Plus, there's the photo aspect, which feels like an even bigger waste of time. I mean, I get it, Frank's a photographer, but come on - am I really going to snap a pic of the oncoming horde when I should be working on running AWAY from them? Not to mention that aiming the camera is a tiresome, difficult process which takes about as much time as aiming the gun. That I could have done without.

I really wanted to love this game - I got it because I kept hearing how awesome it was. All I have to say is, "ugggggggggh uuuuuunnnnnhhhhhh?" Which is, I think, zombie for "what the hell?"

Just When I Think I'm Out...

Show of hands. Who was a little disappointed when, after the success of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare," the folks at Treyarch decided to head back to World War II for the next installment of the series? I know I was. Yes, CoD is arguably the best WWII franchise out there, and there's plenty of competition, but seriously, are we still interested in playing games about this war? Well, first off, they're doing something that doesn't get done much - they have you play in the Pacific theater for some of this game, which is a welcome change. But forget that. For a series that has always gotten gamers' adrenaline flowing, "Call of Duty: World at War" takes it to a whole new level. Suffice it to say, if you loved "Modern Warfare," you won't mind so much that this is a WWII game.

As with previous games in the series, you play as multiple people. As U.S. Marine Miller - having one name is so badass - you fight against the Empire of Japan in such real-world battles as Peleliu and Okinawa, including the storming of Shuri Castle. And as Soviet "comrade" Petrenko, you fight in that dreary old European front, pushing the Germans out of Stalingrad and back to Berlin. (Apparently, since the level "Death From Above" in "Modern Warfare" was so much fun, there's also a level where you play as a gunner on one of the "Black Cat" planes, shooting down enemy Zeroes and rescuing American sailors.)

From the very first scene, you know this ain't your daddy's Call of Duty. The first scene is disturbingly realistic and violent, and you haven't even had the chance to kill anyone yet. From there on out, it doesn't let up. There's blood, limbs getting blown off - conspicuously absent from all previous games, even "Modern Warfare" - burning corpses, bayonets. I could go on and on. All of this is rendered beautifully, using the same engine from "Modern Warfare," which means all the controls also work the same. The Nazis you'll face also play more or less the same as they did in previous installments - even the voice acting is the same.

The Japanese, meanwhile, are totally different. Sometimes, they'll play like their Nazi counterparts, taking cover and only peeking out to fire off a couple of rounds. Other times, they'll take cover in trees and snipe at you. And sometimes, they'll rush you in a banzai charge, trying to stab you with bayonets. The first time this happens to you, it'll make you freak a little bit, even though it's not that difficult to deal with. It does, however, make you reexamine your FPS skills. Usually, enemies don't come after you with such gusto - and I mean in any game. Unfortunately, your friendly AI counterparts aren't usually a huge help. Most of the time, they're not great shots, and they're often most useful as point men. Of course, one or two are always invulnerable, as per all CoD games, so you'll never go it alone.

One thing I will say is that this game is a lot of fun to play, even in the single-player mode. The pacing of the game works well - you get eased into the first mission, which is not really difficult, and then you work your way up to more difficult fare, learning such valuable techniques as how to use a flamethrower (hint: don't let it "overheat"). It's truly addictive. The one problem I have with this game is that there's not enough single-player stuff. I have the Xbox version, but not Xbox Live, so I'll end up playing this solo most, if not all, of the time. If I had Xbox Live, that would be different, since all the stuff you liked from "Modern Warfare" - perks and whatnot - are back. There's nothing like fragging a few friends - you get a totally different experience from fragging pixelated AI creations. Without online stuff, though, there's only so much to do - apart from the Nazi Zombies mode. (Yeah, you read that right.)

Still, I'm crazy about this game, and I suspect I'll be playing it through a lot. Maybe I'll get a chance to do the deathmatch. I need to practice.

Get Out Of My Sandbox!

You've gotta hand it to Pandemic. With some of their previous efforts - namely, Destroy All Humans! and its sequel, and now Mercenaries 2: World in Flames - they've shown they have this whole sandbox genre down. With a Venezuela that makes Liberty City look like a stroll to the corner mailbox, Mercenaries 2 offers plenty of opportunities to blow stuff up. Sure, it's not the most polished game out there, and there are issues which make it miss the mark slightly, but it's pretty fun anyway.

Playing as one of the three mercs from the first game, you pull a job in Venezuela - where Hugo Chavez apparently isn't Mr. Popular anymore - and rescue an Army general at the behest of an oil tycoon, who promptly not only refuses to pay you, but also shoots you in the butt. You swear revenge - because, you know, you got shot and not paid - and set off to destabilize the country and kill said oil tycoon. If that story doesn't sound award-worthy, well, it's not. Were you expecting something else?

Obviously, since you have a lot of ground to cover, people to meet (and in many cases, kill), jobs to do, and stuff to blow up, you won't ever find yourself without something to do. You can blow up buildings, assassinate people, or, if you absolutely must follow the main storyline, you can do that too and hunt down the oil tycoon. It's up to you how fast or slow you proceed. You can also make acquaintances with several factions in the game, and perform a delicate balancing act of keeping those relations solid. (It is a balancing act - did I mention that some of those assassinations are offered by one faction against another? You have to be careful to avoid word getting out about your actions. Or you can bribe a faction to be your best buddies, but come on, that's just embarrassing.)

Unfortunately, although you will always have stuff you can do, the first time you blow up a building is definitely the most fun. After that, the thrill isn't quite there anymore. Oh, sure, watching the building collapse into rubble brings a smile to my face, and probably will to yours, but not as big a smile as the first time. It doesn't help that you're not dealing with well-trained enemies. One job you'll work has you destroying a castle that one faction is using as a base. Sounds like a tough job, and at the beginning, you're shown a lot of materials you should buy to get through the job alive. I skipped those. I basically fought my way up to the front door. And I won. Yes, it took a long time to get through everyone, and I almost died a couple of times, but I killed everyone and destroyed everything. Obviously, you're not intended to walk all over your competition like that, but it's so easy. It doesn't kill the game by any means, and indeed, in some ways, it makes it more fun. But it just doesn't feel right.

For the record, I give this game a 4.25. It's a solid, fun game which will last for a long time, and even has some potential for replayability value - finished with one merc? Play as the others. They actually have different characteristics, so it works. It's not the best-looking game out there, but hey, GTA IV certainly had its problems. Consider this a common man's GTA IV.