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Spectraball

Spectraball is a marble platformer with some puzzle elements. Basically, you’re a marble and you have to roll around to get to the finish line. There are plenty of moving platforms, bridges, falling rocks, giant leaps and narrow ledges between you and victory. The game also touts PhysX technology, meaning some of the obstacles must be overcome by breaking through them or pushing them over.

Ultimately, if you like playing games for points, high scores and achievements, then Spectraball is a good choice. The game controls well and looks beautiful. The soundtrack is also very enjoyable.

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F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate

Perseus Mandate is not as good as the original installment of F.E.A.R., though it has it’s moments. The fourth chapter and certain parts of the following chapters are the best that F.E.A.R. has ever been. The ending does bring a bit of closure to the storyline of the series, but ultimately I found the ending to be underwhelming. The two or three boss-like encounters are tense and visceral experiences that should please any fan of the F.E.A.R. series.

While its good parts outweigh its bad parts, the problem is that all the bad stuff is right up front, starting with the opening in-game cinematic. Ultimately, if you can find Perseus Mandate for around $10, then it’s certainly worth your time. If budget thrills aren’t your style and you’d like a bit more substance with your scares, then perhaps you should skip Perseus Mandate and wait for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, which is coming out in 2009.

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Dead Space

While many new games try and rip off the highly-acclaimed games of the past in an attempt to be as popular as them, the knockoffs typically end up failing, regardless of how similar they are to the source material. Dead Space has a lot of this derivation going on…from the game design to the story, it’s all very familiar. That said though, as absurd as it may be, Dead Space still feels fresh and interesting.

Ultimately, Dead Space looks fantastic and kept me interested the whole way through with the diversity of the areas and the frantic nature of the gameplay. While the story is nothing groundbreaking and a lot of what’s happening has been done before, I still found Dead Space to be interesting and fun to play. The enemies are fast and menacing, the sound design is top notch and the “strategic dismemberment” of enemies is very satisfying. I highly suggest picking up Dead Space – it’s definitely one of my favorite games released this year.

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World of Goo

While World of Goo starts off as a straight-forward puzzle game where you need to build a tower or a bridge out of cute balls of goo to reach the end of the level, the sheer cleverness and diversity of the subsequent scenarios is what make World of Goo so great. Immediately after the first level, World of Goo will begin to introduce you to several new “species” of goo, which all have very unique properties. Every level will throw some sort of new game mechanic at you. Not to mention, all of this is carried along by an endearing story with some genuinely funny humor. Overall, World of Goo is the full package with great music, visual design and gameplay.

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Peggle Deluxe

To all of you who haven’t played Peggle yet: What’s the hold up? Are you scared of “casual” games? Some have said that there is no strategy in Peggle beyond shooting the ball in any direction and hoping that something good happens, but they are wrong. Peggle is an incredibly simple pachinko-style game, yet still I have found it to be quite engrossing and fun to play. Once you’ve played it for 10 or 20 minutes, I think you will agree, Peggle is really addictive and pretty damn good.

Gravitron 2

Gravitron 2 is a retro styled arcade gravity shooter in which you must pilot a spaceship around with the goal of destroying a reactor core and then escaping in to the atmosphere before the reactor explodes. Ultimately, Gravitron 2 is a lot of fun and frustration, but you’ll need a truckload of patience to make any progress through it as the difficulty ramps up to 11 almost immediately.

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