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If there's one thing that 2KGames wants you to know about NHL 2K9, it's that the game is going to be accessible. Are you a casual hockey fan who wants to get into the game, skate, and score? 2K9 has you covered. A hardcore hockey fan who can't master the arcane, knuckle-busting control schemes of years gone by? 2K9 will take care of you. Want to manage a team through an entire season and win the Stanley Cup? Want to play online with all of your buddies in a variety of game modes? Want to analyze hockey games and create highlight clips of your exploits? All of these things have a home in NHL 2K9. 2KGames thinks it's a safe bet to say that if you're a hockey fan, no matter what you love about hockey will have a foothold in this year's edition.

I really used to enjoy pinball in my not-really misspent youth. I wasn’t the greatest player in the world, so I didn’t generally earn extra balls, and my quarters only stretched so far. I was excited about getting some pinball action on the Wii where I could play as long as I want and not go broke in the process.

Admittedly, my wrestling knowledge begins and ends with those wonderful Slim Jim commercials. My television is dominated by Netflix movies and bad cable. However, Midway is making strides to ensure gaming enjoyment for both TNA aficionados and clueless chumps like me in TNA iMPACT!.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a game based on the movie of the same name. The movie is based on a set of books of the same name. I haven't read the books, so I'm not sure how close any of this is to the source material, but the game is extremely close to the movie (at least so far).

Pinball games are hard to review. Or at least, this is true for me. They tend to be good for a quick, fun, yet uneventful romp through the imagination. The game's physics and layout tend to vary from pinball game to pinball game, and the lack of those two things can quickly kill it. Ultimately, they tend to be accessible games for everyone. I personally do not really get pinball games because it requires lightning-fast reflexes and a mind that can handle college-level physics. It is the latter that confuses me no end. Imagine my surprise when I was sent a copy of Dream Pinball 3D. And I must say, I somewhat enjoyed it for several hours.

I have an 11-year old son who believes if he goes more than 2 days without playing a strategy game he becomes distressed. I'd like to argue with him except if I go more than 2 days without reading a book I become distressed so, he may be right. This is not to complain; I'm told that his analytical skills far exceed those of his peers, his organizational skills are exceptional; and he has an infuriating tendency to read instructions and prepare overmuch. I'm not trying to sound like a mother bragging; but the gamer in me knows where he learned his skills. Defendin' the Penguin is the first Wii title specifically designed as a strategy game for for children.

Major Minor's Majestic March is an odd little game. I use the word little intentionally because it's a bit of a one-trick pony: you play as a drum major who marches through town inspiring the townsfolk to join up and follow you lead. I guess you could say you're The Music Man only a lot more honest.

I feel like a dweeb (is dweeb still a word in common use?) when I tell someone just how cool it is to be a mushroom in Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. I don't drink, yet everyone I know seems to have a breathalyzer on them and starts measuring my blood alcohol level when I mention the various factions: the Shiitake, the Morel, the Boletus... See, you're making that face!

Sega had their newest Sonic adventure displaying at E3, and as an old-school Sonic fan I had to grab a look. What I discovered was a nice-looking title with some surprise mechanics from the old games, as well as an interesting new game type. Sonic: Unleashed is divided into “day” and “night” games, so I'll provide a look and some thoughts about each of these segments.

Konami had a trio of Dance Dance Revolution games on display at E3 this year, with a slightly different model representing the various console platforms. Here's what each has to offer!

One of the things that amused me at E3 was watching people who were unfamiliar with the Brothers in Arms series pick up the controller for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and try to play it like most other first person shooters. Usually they were fairly quickly dispatched by the relentless German fire and they would wander away from the game, annoyed. That would be because they don't realize how realistic the third incarnation of the Brothers in Arms series can be.

The son of a CEO, Aidan and his pet lemur monkey Hobo, find themselves marooned on a desert island. It's up to him to decide whether or not he wants to explore or try to escape from the island.

To a certain degree, all sports are influenced by swings in momentum. Some, more than others, are also affected by atmosphere, and EA believes that these factors should be examined in NCAA Football '09. This game includes new mechanics that give prominence to momentum, atmosphere, and experience - emphasizing intangibles that have gone largely unnoticed to this point. These changes manifest on both sides of the ball, and while the concept is largely the same, the specific causes, effects, and recovery processes differ to a significant degree.

Brave: A Warrior's Tale is a charmingly atmospheric platformer. By that, I don't mean it takes place in the clouds, I mean that everything about the game is based on Native American themes and mythos.

The latest flagship game in the Castlevania series is not a traditional Castlevania platformer at all. It is, in fact, a traditional single combat game that focuses on the characters that have developed within the Castlevania universe and mythos. Why is this? They're not even all around at the same TIME! How can we have a random assortment of good guys battling in various locations throughout the Castlevania universe with no regard for when they existed in the timeline? This is a travesty!

Please! Take a deep breath, and relax!

I have children: boys, ages 9 and 11. As they've grown there have been few constants in our lives other than video games (I am their mom), bathroom humor, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Harry has been an integral part of my children's development; the stories, films and games are a huge influence on their sense of wonder. I am in debt to J.K. Rowling for this. We have never not played the games over the years — the good and the bad, the console titles for the older children and the PC titles for the younger. The latest offering from the franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, learned many lessons from last year's less than stellar installment, and is already quite a lot of fun!

Let the record show that one of my favorite games of all time is NFL Street. It was a 7 on 7 football game that required real football knowledge to succeed at the more difficult challenges, it had players playing both sides of the ball, it had entertaining and unusual arenas, and it provided quality arcade fun through powerups and other sensational plays — making it fun to play over and over. Backyard Football reminds me a lot of that game, as it has all of the positive attributes that I just mentioned, wrapped in a wholesome, family-friendly package that's fit for sport-minded kids everywhere.

The hook that set me on Monster Lab can be paraphrased as, "Do you remember your chemistry sets when you were little? Don't you remember combining stuff, but nothing good ever happened, because nothing in there could possibly blow up? Monster Lab tries to revive that chemistry set, and let you experiment with things that COULD blow up!" Obviously, this caught my attention. I enjoy the blowing up of things, largely when I am responsible for it, but this isn't really necessary, as destructive fun is — generally speaking — a hoot. But what, specifically, could a very cool-looking (if oddly cute) cartoon game with junior mad scientists have to offer in that field? More than you'd expect, really, with a host of other features to create an appealing game for kids and adults, alike.

It's not often I lead a piece with an impression, but I feel I should do so here; NBA Live was impressive, and I am left wanting to see more of it. The big news for this game was a statistical system called "Dynamic DNA," which is applied on both the individual and the team level. Dynamic DNA examines real NBA games, and tracks player behaviors and tendencies with the ball. These tendencies translate into strengths for players in NBA Live, which means that if the real Kevin Garnett tends to drop a fallaway jumper from the baseline when he gets the ball on the left low box? Your NBA Live Kevin Garnett is strongest when shooting the fallaway jumper, should he happen to get the ball on the left low box. Virtual reality will reflect NBA reality as accurately as EA can manage

Horror is a difficult genre to do well. Too many directors and writers focus on the gore element instead of balancing it with psychological horror. Think about it. Every new horror movie released has more "realistic" gore than the last movie in order to disturb people. This probably has to do with the cult classic Dawn of the Dead. But what about likable characters that the viewer can identify with? What about an adventure that feels like one is watching a person delve inside himself, and ultimately ourselves?

Ah, memories childhood summers in the back yard... sun, hotdogs straight off the grill, sipping lemonade made from fresh squeezed lemons fresh off the tree, and competitive games of lawn darts, bocce ball and croquet. Don't sit there staring at the words on the screen, you know you kicked grandma's behind at badminton. It's not quite the way I remember it, but I do remember elementary school recess and some blistering games of tetherball and more than a few vicious volleyball matches through high school. Lawn Games from developer Mock Science, will help each of us relive those titular moments on the backyard green.

My husband and I are fans of the Olympic games. We watch our favorite sports in both the Summer and Winter games. We have even been known to record events that we particularly want to see if we aren't going to be home. I thought the idea of Olympic games for the Wii sounded good. I did not realize it was going to be tied to these summer games.

Some of the scariest moments in my video-game history have been within the Resident Evil series. It's credited with defining the survival horror genre and taking it to new heights in popularity. From the monsters, locations and camera angles all the way down to the surprisingly entertaining character narrative, the series has made good on providing gamers with excellently memorable moments. In fact, some of the only black marks on the series' long-standing record are when the franchise was trying to root the same kind of atmosphere in the first-person shooter arena and fall flat on its face to deliver.

I think stating that I'm not a big pinball enthusiast is as easy as saying that I grew up in the 90s. I don't know if I would call the game of pinball a fad, but it was definitely a tool of entertainment at the time that it was popular. Video games we're on there rise to fame as I was born, so my loyalties lie with them. My fondest memories of pinball are limited to killing time in pizza parlors or as little distractions on vacations when I would leave my GameBoy in a hotel room. So, when I received Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection it was weird to have that feeling of, "Oh, Pinball, How you doin'?" My only other thought was, "Well, at least this game has an excuse not to innovate with the Wii-mote." And this time it didn't turn out to be a bad thing.

This will date me quite a bit, but And Then There Were None really brings back memories of the original Zork. You know, the Zork that had no graphics. It was a text adventure. I had it for my Apple ][e. I was horrible at Zork. I was forever getting eaten by a Grue. There were so many dark places and I never seemed to have a good light source. Anyway, if the culprit in this game were a Grue, I would have been eaten the first night of the game.

While the Wii continues its crusade of offering to anyone with some spare cash and the know-how to find one easy fun, the games themselves still seem to be trying to achieve some level of "innovation legitimacy" by using the Wii-mote in all manners possible. The mini-game has been overdone and we're quite aware how easy it is to morph the Wii-mote into a make shift firearm, the final obvious controller surrogate is as a fishing pole Sega Bass Fishing tries to offer what seems like a straightforward idea with an aquatic twist

Having had some uncertain experiences with some of Nintendo's long-lived franchises as of late, my one constant was the thrill of a new Mario Kart. I've been with the series for some 15 years now, and that kind of longevity is hard to shake. While I was lucky enough always to have a new console, whichever one I ended up owning, my friend had its rival. In this way during the 16-bit era, I never found the kind of split-screen chaos that resonated with me on the Sega Genesis (though there were a few games that came close) as on my friends Super Nintendo with Super Mario Kart. One after another, Mario Kart's come, and it's added to my repertoire of boomerang game experiences that always make me come right on back no matter how many other video games may distance me. So the time has finally arrived: did Mario Kart survive the ringer to come out clean and recognizable?

EA Playground harkens back to a less litigious time in our American history — when dodgeball and tetherball were played freely on our nation’s playgrounds. Well, you won’t find those games on a public playground anytime soon, so you may as well pop in the disk to EA Playground and enjoy these games and more — all without risk of lawsuit, lost teeth, bruising or road rash.

No, not really.

Furu Furu Park is a collection of 30 Japanese-style mini-games. While there are Japanese movies I appreciate - such as the works of Hayao Miyazaki, this is not my typical gaming genre. Keep that in mind as you read my take on this collection.

The titles that are released on the Wii never cease to amaze me. The titles that are released on the Wii that are fun amaze me even more. When NamcoBandai announced We Cheer, a cheerleading simulation game at Gamer Day, I was one of several in the audience who sat silent and dumbfounded. Cheerleading?