This game takes you back to the classic Super Mario Brothers with it’s side scrolling and all.  The graphics are great! It’s old school with a little modern updating to it. There are the classic Mario themes on every level, the usual mushrooms, turtles and other characters as well.  There are many new things also. Mario has four sizes now – mini, small, large, and giant. Giant Mario is a lot of fun. Nothing gets in his way. Mini Mario can become frustrating because he moves so slow, your timing has to be perfect on some areas. In typical Super Mario Bros fashion there are secrets throughout the game. The worlds can be tough, especially the water and ice worlds. Water, which like the original, you just can’t move fast enough or control him accurately. Ice causes Mario to slip and slide to his death to often.

There is one little thing I need to mention that will cause extreme frustration and pain while playing this game. The worlds are non-linear. When you finish with world 2 you do not proceed to world 3, instead you have to find the “warp” to world 5 and world 5 to world 8. Worlds 4 and 7 are secrets and you will have to find the ways there by yourself! This game is definitely addicting.  You could spend hours on it and not realize it.  Fun for the whole family.

The game also comes packed with minigames – Action, Puzzle, Table and Variety. A total of 18 mingames. The use of the stylus comes into play on a number of the minigames and proves Nintendo did not go wrong with this feature. Lots of fun.

Music games have a tendency to be great fun for parties, but usually don’t strike a chord with its players. Guitar Hero is not one of those games, it is much more. The graphics are average and simple but effective. Gameplay is as straightforward as you cant get. Your goal is to hit the various colored notes which corresponds to one of the buttons on the guitar. Each colored note represents a note from the song ( sort of ).The learning curve is small and you will be axing like Hendrix before you know it. While you have the ability to free play at any difficulty it is best to play it once through on Career mode. With a total of 47 songs to choose from, the selection is great. You have everything from Ozzy  and Hendrix to Pantera. Only downside is that these are covers and not the actual artists. Hopefully that will change in later releases. Guitar Hero succeeds because it took a simple idea and executed it perfectly.Replay is high.

This game takes you straight into the movie. The adventure begins when the kids are “eaten” by the house. They all get separated throughout the house. You start off as the main character, DJ and go through a tutorial on how to aim at things and use your weapons (which range from water guns, water balloons, sling shots, cameras, super soakers and your usual kicking and smashing).  As you complete levels, you alternate between being DJ, Jenny, and Chowder. Your enemies? Haunted chairs, flying vases, toy air planes, steam emitting machines and my personal favorite the haunted tree branches that come out and snatch you when you’re least expecting it.  The sound effects are pretty much on.  Steam, creaking floors, rusty pipes.  Makes you feel like you’re in an old haunted house.

The Game play is average, somewhat like the Harry Potter series. One of the first things I have to say I dislike is the point of view is fish eyed. It’s a little nauseating.  The direction you’re facing is basically your aim.  When you come to a point in the game when you have to fight off a lot of enemies, sometimes you get locked onto one specific enemy and it’s hard to unlock yourself.  The level bosses are decent, nothing to hard.  One of the parts that bothered me a lot is when you are walking down a hall or trail of some sort a haunted tree bursts out of the blue through a window or wall and your instructed to rapidly hit a button, which is never the same.  Sometimes you get lucky enough to start hitting the correct button and get away and sometimes you don’t, which leads me to the “saving” areas.  Definitely not enough saving areas! You automatically save when you come to a rest room or beat a boss.  Well there are entirely too few rest rooms.

This game is definitely not for a seasoned gamer.  It is a fairly easy game but definitely not boring. You always want to see what’s coming next. One of the coolest things of the game is a secret you unlock. You get to play “Thou Art Dead”, which is a video game that one of the other characters in the movie plays.  It’s old school, very basic, a mixture of “Golden Axe” and “Ghosts and Goblins”. Very cool if you want to take a break from being snatched by a haunted tree and its branches. Highly recommended for fans of the movie and anyone not scared too easily.

Historically, Nintendo has been successful with launch titles and packaged games and Wii Sports is no different. Graphically the game is nothing special but its aim is not to be. I call them “happy” graphics – Space Invaders is “happy” also – so you get the point. You have 5 sports to choose from – bowling, baseball, tennis, golf and boxing. All are easy enough for anyone to pick up and play. Controls are easy enough for even grandma and that is exactly who this game seems to be targeted at. Sound, which is minimal, is decent. This is the first of many “party” games from Nintendo and still holds its own. Replay is high.

Call of duty 4 breathes new life into the dead horse that is first person shooters. Graphics are absolutely amazing. Textures, colors, etc are perfect. The campaign is short but with the different difficulty levels you can go back and test how badass you think you are. The controls are perfectly laid out. Does not require a heap of button combinations to get the job done. The dialogue is smart and sound puts you right in the middle of a combat zone. Multiplayer is like no other and will keep you playing months, even years. Replay is high