The charm of the first game is beginning to dissipate, but VJ2 adds enough new stuff and has enough new levels and situations to keep it fresh and fun. The challenge level is great too.

Progress: Adults mode complete

Two years earlier, Metroid Prime was praised for its conversion of the classic 2D Metroid formula to a 3D, first-person format. The world was beautiful and full of wonder, and the items and enemies were more than just nostalgia; they allowed for a resurrection of tried and true gameplay mechanics. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes completes taking Metroid in a new direction.

Where Prime brought familiarity, Prime 2 brings new ideas. Where Prime preserved convention, Prime 2 reinvents. While MP2 bears more than a little resemblance to MP in how it's played and how to get around, it's somewhat further away from the original Metroid, for better or worse.

The plot of Echoes is at first quite compelling. Samus receives a distress call from a Federation craft, downed on a strange planet called Aether. When she goes to investigate, she gets caught in the planet's violent atmospheric storms, and crash-lands in an odd cave near the origin of the distress beacon; investigation tells the story of a stray Space Pirate frigate, the Federation giving chase, and a series of strange incidents involving the local wildlife.

Aether is a world split in two by a cataclysmic meteor impact. Light Aether, damaged by the rock but still fundamentally unchanged, is populated by the Luminoth, a highly advanced and enlightened people. Dark Aether spawned creatures the Luminoth came to call the 'Ing' whose motives were apparently no deeper than to consume and destroy, bringing the Luminoth near extinction. The meteor brought with it phazon, which in turn attracted the attention of the Space Pirates, who of course brought Metroids with them as power generators. The phazon also attracted a strange, new character - Dark Samus (who the Pirates had initially assumed to be Samus but with an odd penchant for the radioactive ore).

So the Luminoth and the Ing are at odds with one another, the Ing also keep attacking the Space Pirates, Dark Samus is attacking the Space Pirates, and the Federation tries to get involved but gets a little messed up. It sounds interesting enough; unfortunately, that's about as far as it gets. The storyline of Metroid Prime revolved around scanning Pirate logs and Chozo lore, and while Prime 2 does the same (replacing Chozo with Luminoth), within the first few hours all the Pirate logs are already done. After that, the only information left to scan is the lore, which does little but reexplain what's printed on the game box. And if you've played the first Prime (especially if you finished with 100% items), you already know what's up with Dark Samus - in fact, that's the only way to find out, as MP2 gives no further explanation of her. It's massively unfortunate that such a promising plot is completely stale for greater than a contiguous 70% of the game.

After exploring the Federation wreckage, and dispatching of some soldier zombies (and other strange locals), the real game begins when Samus finds the last remaining Luminoth, who's watching over the rest of his species in cryogenic stasis. He tells you of the Ing invasion, that the planet's "energy" was split in two, and that though the Luminoth planned to take energy from the Ing to destroy Dark Aether, the darklings reversed this plan and brought the insect-like Light beings to the brink. An enemy Samus destroys shortly before this point happened to be carrying the item the Luminoth devised to steal the Ing's energy (but which the Ing stole and used against them), so guess who gets to travel to Dark Aether and take the energy back?

The game world is split into four main areas: the central temple area (where Samus crash-lands and where the last remaining Luminoth is), and three tertiary temples. Samus must solve puzzles and defeat massive enemies in both light and dark versions of each temple to steal energy from the Ing, and return it to the Luminoth. Travel between the worlds is managed by portals, which are activated in a variety of ways. Retro hired on one of the key designers from the Super NES Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to help with the light/dark world duality, and it shows, through the sophisticated nature of world-oriented puzzles.

Unchanged from the first Metroid is the concept of gathering suit and armament upgrades throughout the game. Early on, Samus jumps into the middle of an Ing meeting in Dark Aether she wasn't invited to, and the ensuing melee removes from her a portion of her equipment - though she retains more than she did in the beginning of Metroid Prime, she's still missing some vital components. In addition to defeating enemies to get these upgrades back (Guardian enemies will actually use Samus's outfits against her, such as the Grapple Beam Guardian who tries to catch Samus like a fish, or the Boost Ball Guardian who zooms around the battlefield), she'll also find unique Luminoth upgrades to her power suit, including not only Dark and Light Beams for full offensive capacity, but also new suits and innovative outfits, like an underwater triple-jump/jetpack, and a missile upgrade capable of locking on to five targets at once.

Unfortunately, though the sense of power with these outfits is even greater than previous Metroids - the later upgrades make Samus almost godlike - the temple-oriented aspect of the game is depressingly formulaic. The game is paced well, but the core concept of each temple is to gather three keys with no explanation of what they were made for; a sad cliche for Metroid to come to. The final, fourth temple is also very unsurprising, requiring the gathering of ten additional keys, incredibly similar to the ten artifacts from Metroid Prime (in both games, one key/artifact is already at the gathering site).

Despite the unfortunate keys, however, the rest of the game shows great innovation, and that Retro has learned from and built upon what they did in Metroid Prime. Enemies are very well-designed, and have completely new ways of attacking: the Rezbit, for instance, will disrupt Samus's lock-on capability, and even hack her suit software. Bosses are a real life-or-death struggle, whether in the air, in the water, or towering three stories above Samus, almost filling a gigantic room. The level design is even better than before, with distinctly recognizable and fun-to-navigate desert badlands, swamps, sewers, and a mechanical, electric city in the sky.

The game's art direction is a great reflection of the drama inherent in this new, darker world. Cutscenes show Samus discovering strange new things, or raise new questions entirely. While using the morph ball to infiltrate a Space Pirate base, you can observe the Pirates running into a portal; when encountering a Dark Aether cliffside infested with Dark Metroids, you'll see them carry off hapless victims. Encounters with Dark Samus are the best by far - every time the two Hunters meet each other, it's like the rest of the world stops. Their stances go rigid when their sights meet. Both Samuses raise their arm cannons simultaneously. When you think you've dispatched Dark Samus, you'll backtrack through a corridor and notice that some phazon containers are now missing. In this respect, though the Pirates are put aside early on, the story of the struggle with Dark Samus continues to develop.

Metroid Prime 2 is, in no subtle form, more difficult in every way than its predecessor. While Metroid Prime began in a world full of intrigue and excitement, from the moment Samus's ship crash-lands in MP2, the game world seems dangerous and hell-bent on her destruction. Light world enemies are at about the level of Metroid Prime baddies; their Dark World versions are more like Prime's Hard mode. Being in the dark dimension is harmful by itself, too. The atmosphere is corrosive, and damages Samus if she leaves the protective bubbles of light crystals placed by the Luminoth during their war against the Ing. If you enjoyed clearing rooms of all their enemies in MP, you'll probably find yourself running haphazardly through clearings in MP2 to avoid teams of Dark Pirate Commandos.

Metroid Prime 2 is very complex and very suspenseful (despite the lack of plot through most of it). It also has a multiplayer mode which is neither of these. There are two modes of play, four arenas (two more unlockable after beating the game), and a bunch of weird upgrades, but it all really boils down to shooting the crap out of your friends. One wouldn't think that the forced concessions necessary for multiplayer Metroid Prime could be exceptionally good, but somehow it works, and while not deep by any means, it is surprisingly fun. And if that doesn't convince you, you can roll into a morph ball and launch yourself out of a cannon into other players.

Metroid Prime looked and sounded outstanding, and it wouldn't do for the sequel to be anything less. The environments are spectacularly detailed, everything from enemies to weapon effects look wonderful, sound effects are great, and the soundtrack is masterful (revisiting some classic Metroid series music that Metroid Prime didn't get to). There have been some visual tweaks, such as how the scan visor works, and the two new visors, Dark and Echo, look fantastic. The beauty of the game results in occasional loading stutters when leaving the pause menu, but it's a small price to pay.

One extraneous aspect of the game deserves special mention: the menu system. Metroid Prime 2's menus, both at the title and pause screens, are surprisingly impressive. The menus are three-dimensional, each menu option being a node branching out from the center of a web-like structure. The control stick rotates this structure, and the A button selects whichever option node is closest to the front of the screen. The menu actually has a slight learning curve of its own, but it's brilliant and amazing in its own right.

The replay value of Metroid Prime 2 is similar to that of the first game: unlockable image galleries, a hard mode, and different endings depending on percentage of items collected. There are a lot more galleries this time around, though, and the pause menus conveniently alert you to your overall scan percentage (and percentage in each subsection of scans, such as lore, or pirate logs in lore, or pirate logs in lore from a particular time cycle). And of course the multiplayer is fun to come back to long after the game is over. The length of the game is similar to the first's, ranging between 15 and 25 hours on average.

Metroid Prime 2 is an exhilarating game, and very satisfying in terms of gameplay. While the plot and collection stereotypes are disappointing, the core game is still a delight. It's difficult to rank Echoes in terms of what's classic anymore, but you probably won't be thinking of that during the action- and puzzle-packed game that still fills the Metroid shoes.

Progress: Complete

Space: the final frontier. There's no shortage of games that try to capture the thrill of jetting through the galaxy, or conquering it. Fast-paced space action sims are a dime a dozen. The Escape Velocity series, on the other hand, is rather unique.

Escape Velocity is an open-ended simulation. It has story, it has endings, it has action, adventure, strategy, stealth, humor. Escape Velocity Nova is the third iteration of this concept, and it's easy to see that these guys know what they're doing.

The basic premise of EVN is fairly bare - you are a starship captain setting out from home to broader horizons, and you're free to choose to make a living however you might like. You can trade commodities, go on ferrying or shipping missions, or take "special" jobs. The basic goal of the game is to make money to improve your ship (or buy a new ship), but there are also half a dozen major storylines you have the chance to get involved in, each of which will change the face of the galaxy before it's over. And, there are a bunch of smaller storylines with different rewards, like new ships, or using hypergates.

Though there are new features and abilities, the basic gameplay hasn't changed much since the original Escape Velocity. The game is played from an overhead perspective (as if the galaxy was on a horizontal plane), and you can adjust your ship's acceleration and steering with different controls. Fire primary and secondary weapons, order escorts or wingmen, communicate and dock with ships in space. You can use your hyperdrive to fly from system to system, and land on planets in a system to get or complete missions, or buy upgrades and ships. Random ship placement when you arrive in a system (depending on the state of the galaxy and the system's political standing) gives space travel a fair amount of risk, since you never know when you'll find yourself between two warring fleets, or in the crosshairs of a pirate.

Although still two-dimensional and not extremely sophisticated by today's standards, Nova has a good bit of eye candy and a gripping visual appeal, especially when flying your spacecraft around and watching its booster jets flare in and out. Sound effects are mostly unchanged from the first game so long ago, and there is no music, so you're best off playing some tunes of your own during your jaunts through the galaxy.

Escape Velocity has always been about replay. You can try to stick straight with the storylines, but it's easier, and more fun, to at least occasionally go on sidequest missions or just explore. The galaxy is big, and filled with mystery. And even when you've mapped the entire galaxy, even when you've finished a story, the game never ends: you have as much time as you want to keep earning money for that giant battleship, which you can use to conquer planets if you so desire. There's an endless amount of things to do in EVN, if you're up to it. Not to mention the game's expandability and modifiability through plug-ins.

As with its two predecessors, Nova is fun to play, and has a lasting factor hard to compete with. If you like open-ended games, you'll probably like EVN. It's free for a certain trial period (with some limitations), so you may as well give it a shot.

Progress: Complete

With its creation on the NES, and sequels on Game Boy and Super NES, the Metroid series has enjoyed a great deal of success for its conceptual genius: Samus Aran, intergalactic bounty hunter, is placed on a vast world and must work through it room by room, solving puzzles, upgrading her power suit, and defeating enemies. Several years had passed after the release of Super Metroid, and fans of the series anxiously awaited the announcement of another sequel; they got it with quite a bit of surprise.

The previous Metroids (as well as a fourth Metroid game, Metroid Fusion, made for the GBA) were 2D side-scrollers. Much of the gameplay relied on this concept. Metroid Prime, for the Gamecube, was not only to be three-dimensional, but also played from a first-person perspective. Fans were worried that it would make the game into a mindless FPS fragfest - luckily, they were mistaken. Metroid Prime is now the proud definition of the modern "First Person Adventure" genre.

Metroid Prime's plot is deep enough to keep a sense of mystique and intrigue about the game, but never so much that you can't understand what's going on. The plot is revealed not through cutscenes or dialogue (as there's really no one to talk to), but through Samus's Scan Visor, which can be used to download log information from computer consoles and other sources. From her start aboard the Space Pirate frigate Orpheon in orbit around Tallon IV, Samus will scan Pirate Logs, Chozo Lore, and other items to uncover some of the seedy mysteries of the planet, and even of herself.

Though it may look like it at first, Metroid Prime is not a first-person shooter (and if it were, it wouldn't be a very good one). Sure, there is shooting involved, but the strategic elements and puzzles greatly outweigh the enemies Samus is obligated to waste. She'll gather a number of upgrades to the power suit throughout the game, including more powerful and resilient suits (one allows her to survive in extreme temperatures; the next allows her to move better underwater), more armaments (including wave beam, ice beam, missiles, and bombs), and special abilities (such as a double-jump, a grappling beam, and rolling into the morph ball). The visor plays a big role in Metroid Prime: different view visors let you see things differently - the Thermal Visor sees heat, and the X-ray Visor can see some otherwise invisible things. These different ways of seeing the same level are used sometimes to detect enemies (or their weak points), but more often for finding critical puzzle elements, like a hidden electric switch.

The game's controls are a bit confusing at first, and definitely aren't what you'd find in an FPS (which is why many shooter fans are uncomfortable with Metroid Prime), but as the game progresses the movement, strafing, jumping, and lock-on mechanics become very intuitive. Which is good, because a mastery of the game's controls is necessary for not only defeating enemies and bosses, but also in puzzle solving and exploration, trying to solve the mysteries of a room and searching for hidden secrets in the game's massive, cohesive world.

Another of Prime's victories is visual presentation. The environments evoke the exact sense that they should, from a disgusting pool of poisoned water and plants, to the majesty of a great natural tower of ice, to the intrigue of an artificial Space Pirate research lab; and the graphical effects, from Samus's visor being hit by rain droplets to the explosive effects of different weapons and enemies, are perfectly executed. Sound effects fit the game like a glove, a complete sensory enhancement to the game. The musical ambience is a joy to listen to, through calm, exciting, or mysterious tracks.

The replay value of Metroid Prime is great; not only is the game of a fairly respectable length and size (easily over 20 hours for a first-timer), but there are a bunch of non-required items to collect. A number of upgrades you don't really need can affect your completion percentage (most notably, missile expansions and energy tanks). There are three different endings, depending on how many items you gathered before the final boss. The game has four image galleries packed in for the player to unlock, each with different requirements. After beating the game, you unlock a Hard mode, where you're twice as weak and enemies are twice as hard. And, there are connection bonuses with Metroid Fusion: beat Prime, and you can play it with the Fusion suit; beat Fusion, and you can play the original Metroid (for NES) on your Gamecube. The Fusion suit doesn't affect Prime's gameplay at all, but it does look neat.

Metroid Prime is a triumph of a game. Wonderfully presented, flawlessly executed, an exercise for both mind and thumbs; aimlessly exploring the game's incredible world is half the fun. Prime is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Progress: Complete

After the release of the Super NES smash hit Super Mario RPG, fans eagerly awaited some form of sequel. Rumors of Nintendo hiring people to work on SMRPG 2 fueled speculation and anxiety for years before Nintendo released Paper Mario for the N64.

It was far, far from what anyone expected. Paper Mario was a fun adventure, and had great innovation, but lacked a certain flair and charm. A lot of people had no trouble putting the game down halfway through and never returning. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door corrected this.

Super Mario RPG showed that a good Mario story didn't have to revolve around Bowser, and Paper Mario made it evident that this was in fact a good idea for anything but a twitch game. Paper Mario 2 has Bowser in it, and you do fight him, but the main villain is of another force entirely: the X-Nauts. The game begins with Princess Peach enjoying her vacation in the dingy town of Rogueport, purchasing a mystical item from a shady street vendor. Thus she comes into the possession of a map, said to lead to the greatest treasure in all the world. She sends for Mario to come to her aid in finding the treasure, but by the time he gets there, Peach is gone.

In Mario's quest to find Peach, he'll unravel the mysteries of the treasure, and collect mystical items known as the Crystal Stars which grant their owners great power. Mario will have to traverse a number of different areas (via sewer pipe), defeat great monsters, and contend with the X-Nauts to save her. The game is separated into eight chapters, inbetween which you'll play short segments as Peach (trapped in the X-Naut fortress) and Bowser (trying to catch up with Mario). The story development is solid, and you'll meet a number of interesting characters along the way. The humor in the story is great, especially when Luigi gets involved.

Thousand-Year Door plays just like Paper Mario, but with a few extra features. Outside of battle it's somewhat like a platformer, where you can run (with depth) and jump, enter buildings, climb staircases, and talk to non-player characters. Mario can use special paper powers, like turning sideways to go in narrow vertical passages, or folding into a plane to fly across a room. The battle system is turn-based, and highly timing-oriented, that is by doing actions at the right time attacks will do more damage or enemy hits can be deflected. This timing concept isn't as evident as it was in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, but it still manages to make battles interesting. Badges are also back, which Mario equips to make various enhancements in battle or gain new moves. When Mario levels up, he has the option to get more HP, more FP, or more BP (badges consume Badge Points by being equipped).

As in Paper Mario, your party in battle consists of two characters: Mario and a sidekick. The sidekick can be switched out midbattle, and there are over half a dozen of them which Mario will meet throughout the game. There are three attack dynamics: regular attacks, power attacks (which consume flower points), and special attacks (which consume star points). Star points are regenerated in battle through the biggest new addition to Thousand-Year Door, the audience. Impressive moves will wow the audience, whose applause increases your stars. Poor performance, like being hit without defending or doing a poorly-timed attack, will prompt people to leave the audience. It's an interesting method which can make for some really dramatic battles.

Despite the fact that all of Thousand-Year Door's characters are definitively two-dimensional, the game is very visually sophisticated. Buildings collapse when Mario enters them. Visual effects, like water, are breathtakingly beautiful. Sound effects are straight from the Mario sound archives. The soundtrack is great, all the music is very well-composed.

There are a handful of replay facets as well. Thousand-Year Door has a massive vault of badges to collect and use. There's one optional sidekick, and a bunch of optional stuff (from items to dialogue) to investigate, which you can do once you beat the final game (play can continue after this). And there's a casino with crazy minigames to play whenever you please.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is a brilliant game. Fairly long (easily greater than 30 hours), with a highly amusing story, and a fun battle system with its own share of difficulty, the game is a blast to play and one of the most fun quasi-RPGs to date.

Progress: Complete

Marvel's X-Men have long been some of the most famous comic book heroes, spawning an endless supply of merchandise over the years. Many games have been made with the X-Men before, but few cut the mustard. One notable exception was the arcade beat-em-up - you and up to three other players going medieval on the asses of Magneto's thugs.

Legends returns to that formula, adding in a more robust ability system, and an action RPG backbone to make your characters visibly more powerful over time. Having mutant powers was never quite so fun.

The story of X-Men Legends is a lot like the first X-Men movie: there's a girl with mutant powers (Alison, later known as Magma), Magneto and the Brotherhood of Mutants try to kidnap her, the X-Men save her, a series of investigations into suspicious activity from the Brotherhood reveals their true plans (for which Magneto wanted to use Magma), and the X-Men must stop them. The plot is somewhat different, and the storyline takes a number of departures from it, but the idea is nothing new. Most of the beginning of the story moves rather slow, but towards the end it's actually somewhat interesting.

Conceptually, X-Men Legends has a portal-like overworld and a mission-based gameplay system. However, the "overworld" is so trivial that it's really just a series of missions with short intermissions. After the initial level, every mission can be played by up to four players, each controlling a different X-Man. The game is playable by any lower number of people though; the extra guys are AI-controlled, and you can switch between them on the fly with the D-pad. The AI is capable in some situations, but dumb in others, so it's useful to manually guide them through some obstacles. The AI is partially customizable on a per-character basis; if someone's using too much mutant power or being too headstrong, you can adjust appropriately.

Each mutant has a punch attack, a kick attack, a grab/throw, and four special mutant powers (Iceman for instance has a straight freeze blast, an ice projectile attack, an ice armor, and a special move freezing nearby enemies). Each character gains experience from killing enemies. Experience is shared among the characters in play, and characters not in play receive experience at half this rate. When a character levels up, he/she gets a stat point and an ability point, which you use in a pause menu to increase the character's statistics (attack, speed/defense, health, and mutant energy) and abilities (which, aside from the four special moves, also include passive skills like more powerful regular attacks). Interspersed throughout levels are blue Extraction Points, at which you can save the game or switch your characters - you can have any four mutants on the field at once, but by the end there are over a dozen you can choose from.

The most impressive part of X-Men Legends is the environments. Almost everything is 100% destructible. Cars, phone booths, chairs, even walls can be pounded away. You can toss enemies into destructible objects to do more damage, and even pick up some objects and toss them at enemies. Colossus can pick up military transport trucks and hurl them like a child's plaything.

Legends is not however without flaws. Awkward beginning controls and unanticipated ramps in difficulty result in a lot of deaths through the first parts of the game, and death is fairly difficult to get over - the character is gone until you get to an extraction point, where you can either replace him or revive him at a cost (you collect a form of currency from downed enemies sometimes, which you can also use to buy useless items). There are also a lot of glitches, like chairs getting stuck in ceilings, or enemies becoming spontaneously invincible.

The game is good to look at. All the characters, enemies, and environments are well rendered, and effects and explosions light up the screen excellently. Sound effects can get on your nerves, but usually aren't too bad. You'll barely notice the music, as it's too muted and uninteresting to grab the player's attention.

X-Men Legends promises a fair amount of replay, in extras on beating the game and optional bonuses like comic book covers, but it's marred by the fact that you can't return to stages you previously beat. If not for that, it would be fun simply to go back and level up characters more, but, no.

In the end, Legends is a blast to play: beat people up, unleash awesome mutant powers, and wreak havoc on incredibly destructible environments, potentially with three of your friends along for the ride. But there are also flies in the ointment, like glitches and the inability to backtrack between stages. It's fun, but don't be surprised when you get frustrated at certain parts of the game.

Progress: Complete

Released to coincide with (and probably to leech popularity from) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy promised two inventive new games in one. Sphinx, the game's protagonist, is a sword-wielding warrior of ancient Egypt. The cursed mummy of Prince Tutankhamen, Sphinx's sidekick, takes advantage of death by using his invulnerable corpse to solve puzzles.

The half-action, half-puzzle combination sounded interesting - unfortunately, the actual product doesn't quite live up to those measurements. As a game, Sphinx succeeds at little, and fails at much.

The game is set in ancient Egypt, but not the one in our history books. This Egypt is populated with mystical creatures, magical artifacts, and arcane powers which rule the land. The story begins as Imhotep, sage denizen of Heliopolis, sends his disciples Sphinx and Horus on a dangerous mission. The apprentices are to recover the Blade of Osiris from its hiding place in the Uruk, a land overcome with darkness. In the process, Horus is lost (to become a plot device later), and Sphinx uncovers some strange goings-on. Meanwhile, Prince Tutankhamen is preparing for his birthday party, and is caught in a trap to destroy him - separating his (somehow mummified) body from his soul.

The culprit behind all of this is Set, lord of evil, and the ultimate goal of the game is to bring Set's plans of conquest to an end. The game makes a number of allusions to Egyptian culture, but usually in nothing more than name. It also gets into the mythology aspect a bit with an explanation of Ra, Osiris, and Set, but this doesn't happen until the game is nearly over anyway. On that note, Sphinx has possibly the worst ending of any video game, ever. The final dialogue is trite and boring, though most of the game isn't much better (it just sounds weird for the king of darkness to confront the hero with the phase "You! You're the one who's been annoying me lately!"), and there are sequel hints that make most Hollywood movies look subtle.

The gameplay of Sphinx is divided as its title suggests - part of the time you'll be playing as Sphinx, and the other part as the cursed mummy Tutankhamen. Unfortunately, Sphinx's sections (which make up not half, but closer to 75% of the game) are sloppy, often uninspired adventure segments throughout the land of Heliopolis to fetch certain powerful items. His quests are made into puzzles, simply by virtue of the destinations being so unclear that half the challenge is finding out what the challenge is supposed to be. This is not to say Sphinx is completely worthless: some of his levels have moments of genius. But shoddy controls and poor design ruin a lot of it.

The real fun is in the mummy segments. His levels take place inside Uruk castle, which itself is filled to the brim with not enemies, but traps and puzzles. The mummy solves these puzzles through the use of his own wrappings - since he's functionally invincible, he can be lit on fire, electrocuted, flattened, cut into pieces, even transmogrified into a bat. The mummy's levels are extremely dense, each room several puzzles in one. The dynamics and design of these levels are remarkably clever; the only downside is that there aren't more of them.

Graphically, Sphinx really brings nothing new to the table. Most modern 3D adventure games have visuals at least as polished. Sound effects aren't terribly surprising either, with a mixture of fitting and awkward. The production's real triumph, aside from the mummy, is its soundtrack. The score's composition is so exquisite, the sound so eloquent, it's a shame that the game's dynamic music blending suffers from so many glitches (those aren't the only bugs, either - in fact, there's a fatal flaw about halfway through the game, where if you save at a certain location, quit, and come back, the rest of the game is incompletable).

Sphinx can easily be beaten in around or under 15 hours, with only another one or two hours if you do all the "sidequests" (consisting almost entirely of an unrewarding museum monster-collection task). There are minigames to play, but most of them become boring halfway through the first round. And since the game is completely linear, there's really not much replay value at all.

It isn't a total failure. The mummy parts of the game are a joy to play, and the music is melodic and catchy, but one wonders if it's worth the effort. Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is a menagerie of ideas gone mostly wrong. If you want to submit yourself to the Sphinx levels for the sake of playing the mummy's puzzles, knock yourself out; but if you're looking for a well-rounded game, look elsewhere.

Progress: Complete

Namco's Tales series of games has its own set of unique trappings in the world of modern RPGs. The most prominent of these is its battle system: a real-time action-oriented brawl that puts menu-based RPGs in their place. Symphonia, however, is landmark among them for two of its own reasons. The first is that ToS is the first Tales game to use a 3D battle screen (which you'll hear more about later). The second is that only about half of the Tales series has been officially released in North America, and an American release of Tales of Symphonia had been promised from the start - and with the runaway success it's enjoyed so far, many are hoping that it's a sign of more to come.

Tales of Symphonia begins with a legend: long ago, there was a great tree of Mana, under which the world prospered. But then a terrible war caused the tree to wither and die. The great legendary hero, Mithos, made a sacrifice so that the world might live again, and the goddess Martel was so struck that she fell into slumber. Since then, it has been the goal of a Chosen one to reawaken Martel and regenerate the world.

This epic prologue is followed by a quaint classroom scene in the little town of Iselia that introduces the world of Sylvarant. The scene introduces the game's key characters: Lloyd, a lazy boy who isn't especially bright; Genis, an accomplished scholar (though still a child); Raine, the professor, as well as Genis's older sister; and Colette, the Chosen of Regeneration. Colette is exceptionally clumsy and, for lack of a better term, blond - yet it is her fate to save the world.

The entire scene paints a fairly goofy picture for the game, bringing the plot crashing down to earth from its previously lofty heights. But then the quest begins. Colette is called to the nearby chapel of Martel to receive an oracle from the heavens, divining her on the path of regeneration. The Desians, an oppressive organization of half-elves who herd humans for unknown tortures, sweep through Iselia and invade the chapel. The invaders are about to kill the Chosen when a mercenary appears, mysteriously skilled and knowledgeable, to help the group.

Colette and the others meet with the oracle, who tells them where the Chosen's quest shall take her first. The group returns to town, and Lloyd starts off for home - but is interrupted by a request from Genis, bringing the two to a nearby Human Ranch (which has a non-aggression treaty with Iselia). They run into some trouble, and before you know it, everyone's upset and Iselia is in flames. Monsters attack. Innocent people get caught in the crossfire. A Desian Grand Cardinal shows up. Lloyd and Genis are banished from Iselia forever. And that's just the first two hours.

From its humble start, Tales of Symphonia exhibits storytelling of the highest caliber. The plot is filled with heroism, deception, conspiracy, and strife; every party member (the playable cast eventually comes to nine characters) has his or her own backstory and unique personality. The writing is complete and interesting, and the pacing keeps players on the edges of their theoretical seats, with new surprises every minute, and two new questions for every answer. The story is told not only in in-game dialogue scenes, but also in "skits" (activated by the Z button at certain moments) - these skits are optional, but round out the characters and story excellently.

Of course, Symphonia's engrossing story is only half the Tale. The general mechanics of dungeon and town scenes are fairly predictable - a semi-fixed camera sees the party walk in 3D space; and traveling on the field is somewhat standard - a movable camera (it should be said that the control here can be slightly awkward) sees the party walk over plains, through forests, and around mountains. Both in the field and in dungeons, enemy encounters are almost wholly avoidable, as they have on-screen manifestations (ala Super Mario RPG, EarthBound, and other similar titles). But through its adaptation of the Tales battle system and several other elements all its own, Tales of Symphonia's combat is something truly never before seen.

The Tales series's Linear Motion Battle System (LMBS) has historically been its claim to fame. Once in a battle screen, both your party and the enemy party appear on the side-scrolling scene. There are no turns: all the action plays out in real time. You control the lead character, which you can change as desired, and the rest of the party is AI controlled (you also have the option of customizing their AI to make them more offensive or defensive, alter their moving behavior, specify what to do in certain situations, and more). You have an enemy targeted, and can change this target as you see fit - you can move toward or away from the target manually, and strike the target using a main action button. You can chain together button-presses and directional input to do multi-hit combos; in fact, the Tales battle system encourages combos and challenges players to see how many hits they can string together.

At any time, you can also bring up a control menu. This pauses the action, and allows you to do more advanced actions. You can order an AI party member to take a certain action (for instance, cast a healing spell), use items, even change equipment and AI configurations mid-battle. These actions aren't instant, though - they become queued up in battle, and add to the real-time brawl. Your own special techniques, magic spells and special moves, can be assigned to hotkey button combinations to use in real-time in the battle. All in all, it's a pretty brilliant system, combining the fast-paced action of a fighting game with the planning and strategy of a menu-based RPG. What's more, you can have additional human players plug in a controller and take control of the other party members manually.

Tales of Symphonia takes the LMBS to the next level. Its system, dubbed ML-LMBS (Multi-Line Linear Motion Battle System), preserves and extends LMBS into the third dimension. Essentially, when you target an enemy, the linear path between you and the enemy becomes the new "Linear Motion" paradigm - everything else plays out the same. In doing so, ML-LMBS also incorporates a number of three-dimensional proximity effects which can be used to your strategic advantage, e.g. doing a sideways sword swipe will damage not only the enemy in front of you, but also the enemy directly next to it. This also makes area-effect spells (like a circle in which party members enjoy gradual healing) both effective and impressive.

Moves themselves enjoy a number of complications. Each character has a different "type" - T for Technical or S for Strike, which determines what techniques the character will learn (based on using ones he already knows). The type can be altered by equipping EX Gems, which also add unique attributes, from increased statistics to a faster running speed. There are Unison Attacks, which string together a technique from each party member in one glorious strike. Each character also has a set of titles, some learned through the story and some through optional sidequests; depending which title is 'equipped', different statistics will increase by different amounts when a character levels up. The level of character customization in Tales of Symphonia is unprecedented.

Outside of the thrilling battle system, Symphonia has every gameplay device you'd expect and more. You can shop for and equip weapons, armor, and accessories, some pieces unique to each character. You can also use old equipment to craft new pieces, using raw materials instead of Gald (the game's currency). There are status effects, like paralysis, poison, and petrification. Consumable items follow predictable paths, though with another staple exception of the Tales series - instead of items which restore certain amounts of HP or TP ("Technical Points") and become obsolete as the game progresses, the Gel items restore percentages of HP or TP. An Apple Gel, for instance, restores 30% of a character's maximum HP, no matter how low or high that HP is. In this way, you don't have to worry about keeping up with the item treadmill, nor do all those items you bought in the last town become useless.

Another Tales gameplay device, put to use in the game's dungeons, is the Sorcerer's Ring. This ring can adopt new functions in new dungeons (depending on the design), and this function is used within the dungeon to open doors and solve puzzles. For instance, the default function of a small fireball can be used to stun enemy parties before encountering them, to burn small logs or drapes, to light torches. An alternate function can turn the fireball into a jolt of electricity, which can be used to activate electric generators. Yet another function lets you place bombs to blow up boulders. It can be used as a flashlight, an earthquake machine, a fan, and more. The ring adds a lot of depth to the dungeons.

Speaking of the dungeons, with the exception of a few towards the very end of the game, Symphonia's dungeons aren't labyrinthine mazes whose main challenge is finding where to go. The dungeons in ToS are short and to the point, using enemies and puzzles, not size, as difficulty. These puzzles are mostly of the block-pushing variety, but are fairly sophisticated for their roots, often involving holes in the floor, elevators, and other complicating obstacles. Symphonia's dungeon puzzles are, for an RPG, surprisingly deep.

There are a lot more gameplay elements to be found in Symphonia, too. Multiple methods of field transit; minigames which test your memory and attention; the Katz exploration team, which can be paid to pick up your slack by finding treasures and landmarks; Grade points, a unique statistic which can be used to purchase exceptionally rare valuables; even a system of cooking, with nearly two-dozen dishes. You can play through Tales of Symphonia all the way to the end, and barely scratch all it has to offer.

The game is a wonder to look at, too. The cel-shaded graphics are some of the best seen anywhere, and every area of the game looks beautiful. Characters are vibrant and full of energy; environments are picturesque and inspiring. There are even a few fully animated cutscenes - the only disappointment is that there aren't more of them. Symphonia also has it down in the audio department, using sound effects that fit perfectly with the actions on-screen, voice overs which are almost entirely well-acted, and a soundtrack that's well-composed and great to listen to. There are only a few tracks which can get on your nerves, but you'll outgrow them before long.

Though Namco claims a play time of 80 hours, it's more realistic to estimate 40-50 for a single play-through; but there's plenty to keep you coming back. Aside from the near-endless character customization, there are also a number of challenging and thrilling sidequests. Tales of Symphonia also uses possibly the greatest implementation of "New Game +" to date - once you're done, you can use the Grade points you've earned in battle to buy upgrades for a new game. Some of these will enhance the game (like experience and item modifiers), and some will actually allow you to carry your previous spoils on to the next game. And, since to get everything you'll need to play through multiple times, you'll probably get quite a use out of the Grade Shop options.

Tales of Symphonia is an incredibly deep game, and a true work of art. The story is well-written, the gameplay is exhilarating, and the extraneous offerings are plenty. Even if you're not interested in the story or character customization, you can skip the skits and leave battle settings on their defaults to just beat stuff up in armed combat. ToS is a classic in its own time.

Progress: Complete

Mario and Donkey Kong. Industry icons from Nintendo's earliest days - the franchise characters that started it all. Though more recently they've set their sights on new horizons, the duo used to be the greatest of enemies. At least, until Donkey Kong became smitten with Mario's new toy.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is partially inspired by the first Game Boy iteration of Donkey Kong (dubbed "Donkey Kong '94" for its year of release), but only in concept. MvDK is a hodge-podge of gameplay devices and innovations that makes it a really bright and fresh experience.

As the story goes (told through series of cinematic still-frames), Mario opens a toy factory to manufacture miniature replicas of himself. While channel surfing, Donkey Kong happens upon a commercial for these Mini-Marios, and simply must have one; but when he goes to the store, they're all sold out. His only alternative is to ransack the toy factory and steal the Mini-Marios. As should be obvious, Mario gives chase. DK leads Mario through six different areas of the world, all the while dropping Mini-Marios in surprisingly puzzle-like stages.

Yeah, MvDK is a puzzle game. It's no Tetris - there are definite platforming elements (Mario gets plenty of chances to show off his jumping prowess, and even handstands) - but each of the game's stages is structured as a puzzle. Each of the six areas (each one itself a different theme: in the factory, a jungle, a haunted house, etc) consists of eight stages. The first six are the bread and butter of MvDK, and contain two screens. On the first screen, Mario must get to a key, and bring it to a locked door. In the second screen, he must get to the Mini-Mario. Of course, it's not all that simple - there are obstacles, switches, conveyor belts, enemies, and all sorts of things to get in the way.

The seventh stage is somewhat reminiscent of Lemmings. The six Mini-Marios you previously rescued will follow Mario as best they can, and the stage's goal is to lead them into a toy box while solving more puzzles and keeping them from dying. You'll want to get as many as possible into the box, as each one you get will give you a health point for the eighth stage, a showdown with Donkey Kong. This battle is different in each area, though in every one you have to hit the monkey four times with whatever the stage provides.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a graphically well-polished game. It's fully 2-D, but every sprite is well-rendered to give the illusion of an extra dimension. Everything looks crisp and clear, and the environments in each area are distinctive and, well, cool. The game's music and sound effects are pretty respectable as well. Surprisingly, the game contains more Mario speech than any other to date, with a number of spoken lines like "Get back here ya' big monkey!" that add to the comic effect of the story.

One of the greatest things about MvDK is its level of replay. The basic game - six areas, eight stages per area (and an additional final battle stage) - is enough on its own to occupy a player for quite a while. Though it's not exactly long, it becomes very challenging, and later stages come to demand a near-perfection of play skill. But that's not all; when you beat the final DK stage, two whole new games open up. The first is similar in structure to the basic game, with six areas, each one following the same theme as before. However, there are seven "Plus" stages, not eight, and the first six Plus stages are a sort of hybrid of 1-7 from last time: you must find Mini-Mario, who's holding a key, and lead him to the locked door (the seventh Plus stage in each level is still a battle with the primate).

The second new game is made up of Expert stages. These are stages all their own, with no grand levels to tie them down, but they must be unlocked with stars from the basic and Plus stages. You get a star in a stage by beating the game's high score, which you can do by beating a stage quickly, getting all the present items, and defeating as many enemies as possible. As getting stars on later levels is a near-Herculean feat, and both the Plus and Expert stages are more difficult than the first game, MvDK offers plenty to keep a player busy.

It's fun, it's challenging, and it lasts. Mario vs. Donkey Kong is a well-crafted and well-delivered production, offering an almost completely new experience that will test your wits in the process. It's a title no puzzle fan should miss.

Progress: Complete

In the summer of 1985, Russian mathematician and programmer Alexei Pajitnov created a puzzle game which would come to be called Tetris. After licensing troubles, sequels, the fall of Soviet Communism, and over ten years, the Tetris name still managed to prove it had more steam in it yet.

Based on a Japanese game called Panel de Pon, Tetris Attack revived the heart and soul of Tetris - a simple but challenging (and fun) puzzle game - and became arguably one of the most addictive games ever made. While Tetris Attack was also ported to Game Boy, and even remade and rebranded as Pokémon Puzzle League for the Nintendo 64, the original Super NES version remains in many ways the greatest.

The premise: rainclouds hover over the lands of Yoshi's friends, making them brainwashed and evil. Yoshi, free from this curse, takes it upon himself to rescue his pals - by defeating them in Tetris Attack. This quest will bring the noble dinosaur to the Cave of Wickedness, fighting Koopa's minions and (depending on difficulty level) King Bowser himself - again, in Tetris Attack. Sound stupid? It is. But it's nothing more than an excuse to play one of gaming's most brilliant creations.

As with the Tetris we all know and love, the ultimate goal of Attack is to keep a stack of tiles from reaching the top of the screen; however, the gameplay similarities end there. Tetris Attack tiles appear from the bottom of the screen, and push your stack upwards. How do you get rid of them? Not by making a straight horizontal line, since that's how they appear, but by matching up tiles of like color. Your control over the tiles is limited to a two-tile-wide reticle, which you can move around the screen as you wish: when you push the A (or B) button, the tiles in either side of the reticle switch places. Using this switching method, you must line up at least three tiles of the same color - then they'll disappear.

You can also pull off combos by matching more than three tiles at once, and chains by having tiles drop into place sequentially (but save that for when you've become familiar with the game); every time you pull off a combo or chain, "garbage" blocks, large blocks with no inherent color, are dropped on your opponent's stack. There's also a special color of tile that always drops a garbage block, but that's all there is to the gameplay mechanics. The genius of Tetris Attack is that as the difficulty levels increase, the tiles move faster, and your enemies become smarter. Higher settings will require all the wits and adrenaline you have to spare. Of course, if this kind of mental strain isn't for you, you can also try Puzzle Mode, which challenges you to eliminate a set of tiles with a rationed number of moves.

Aside from some slowdown in the heat of an intense battle, nothing stands out as wrong with Tetris Attack's graphics. The colors are bright, crisp, and clean - perfect for the game's settings and play. Sound effects also fit the bill quite well. The music is crafted perfectly: most tracks start out with a peaceful melody, but become more urgent and fast-paced as the tiles rise.

Being of the puzzle genre, Tetris Attack has near-infinite replay value simply by virtue of besting yourself. The game offers such a wide range of difficulty levels and skill tests, there's virtually no limit to how good you can get. If you just want to complete stages, between a number of story mode difficulties, dozens of puzzle screens, and some other modes besides, it's hard to run out of things to do. And that's just by yourself (Tetris Attack also has a two-player versus mode).

Attack isn't just a fun puzzle game. It has the capacity to push you to the limit, to the very edge of your sanity - all for the sake of grouping colored tiles. Cocaine? Heroin? LSD? They got nothin' on Tetris Attack.

Progress: Complete