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Tonight I played Fable II for the first time; my wife and I went and picked it up, and after supper, I told myself I’d play about an hour and then start writing my blogs and videogame reviews up.

Only an hour very quickly turned into, like, four hours. That’s how addictive the game plays. The pacing is much improved this time out and, with plenty to do both in-town and out, the game is much better than the first Fable, which was a classic but not exactly as polished as this game is.

You can do just about anything in the game, from having sex to performing at a real work-a-day job, to getting married and whatnot. And the graphics, this time, are on par with the best Xbox 360 titles on the market. About the only thing you don’t get to do in the game is sell car insurance: mainly because there are no cars in the game.

Otherwise, I’m sure they would have thought of it.

Tales of Vesperia is the second major RPG release from Namco-Bandai to debut on the Xbox 360. Unlike last year’s innovative Eternal Sonata, however, Tales of Vesperia is a more to-formula release than Eternal Sonata was. That doesn’t mean the game is without its appeal, only that it’s less innovative and experimental.

Tales of Vesperia is the tenth main title in the Tales series, and is, to date, the most appealing of the series. The anime-style graphics have the right look and feel, and are relatively consistent throughout the title. The combat is smoother than usual and, like its predecessors, is an action-based RPG that keeps all the action on the main screen, rather than switching to a special “encounter” screen.

The story revolves around Yuri, a former member of the Imperial Knights who quit when he became unhappy with how the Empire treated its subjects. Accompanying him is his intelligent dog, Repede, and Estelle (Estellise, to be more formal), a successor to the royal throne who has never been outside of her castle walls and never known anything less comfortable than a modern sofa.

Their society revolves around an ancient technology called “blastia,” which has properties that can be used in a wide variety of ways, including enhancing battle skills, but also mundane tasks such as maintaining the water supply of a city. Blastia to the world of this game is pretty much what petroleum oil is to our real-world society: a lifeblood element. And viewed as a parable of our society’s dependence on oil, Tales of Vesperia takes on an extra level of unexpected depth.

As the story gets underway, a thief steals the aqua blastia responsible for the lower city’s water supply, and Yuri pursues the thief to the castle of the royal family. He is unable to capture the thief, but there runs into Estelle, who accompanies him, eventually joining his party.

The action-based battle system remains challenging throughout; it is one of those rare games that is balanced well enough that you actually have to use the defensive moves to limit your opponent’s damage on you, while still allowing you to get in some offensive maneuvers at the same time. Estelle’s entrance into the game as an ally is a particularly well-designed element early in the game; in a battle with your first boss-level character, you have to survive your encounter with him long enough to cut him down to about half of his unrevealed hit point total.

Once you get to that point, Estelle enters and provides some much-needed healing spells so you can attack your opponent a bit more freely. You’ll still need some defensive moves, but you can attack with less hesitancy and take your opponent down much more quickly than in the first half of the fight.

Using this as an example without revealing more spoilers, let’s just say that further boss-level encounters are similarly well-designed, making the experience all the more satisfying when you come out the victor.

In the end, Tales of Vesperia is much improved from previous series installments, but still has a way to go before it can be considered on-par with the top RPG offerings available today. As a second-tier RPG series, however, it delivers a satisfying experience that offers plenty to appreciate in between the bigger RPG releases.

2K Sports’ NHL 2K9 for the Xbox 360 is a rather ho-hum update to the annual professional hockey franchise. The game still lacks the cinematic flair experimented with in NHL 2K7 but went missing in action in last year’s NHL 2K8. While rosters have been updates, there are actually not that many noticeable tweaks between last year’s release and this edition of the game.

The hockey game, developed by Visual Concepts, does play host to some changes, however. Most notable is the new commentary team, made up of Randy Hahn, Drew Remenda, and John Shrader of the San Jose Sharks broadcast team. While this freshens up the commentary with new voices, they are too often stuck with the same too-brief script of tired clichés that the last commentary team used, limiting the appeal of the new voices behind the lines.

There are also some notable upgrades, including new stick handling moves, more superstar moves added to the list from 2K8, enhanced skating engine, enhanced checking, brand new fighting engine, hit by puck collisions, blocked shots, user-controlled Stanley Cup celebrations, playoff beards and more than 1,400 new gameplay animations. But it’s all just window dressing on a package that, in the end, is still more vanilla than it is rocky road.

The heartbeat of any pro hockey game is its franchise mode, and unfortunately, there have been some troubles with NHL 2K9 in that regard; it seems that some users have discovered that if they play through more than a couple months of the franchise mode in one sitting, the game has a tendency to freeze up and result in lost data.

Also, if one manually saves their franchise immediately after a game-controlled auto-save, some users have reported that their save file gets self-deleted by the game. Although these problems are said to be limited and rare in scope by 2K Sports, they can occur and certainly become a problem for those who experience them. So far, in my testing, I have not been able to duplicate these errors.

The skating physics are improved from last year’s model, and the feel of the game is solid. Once you learn the controls, it is possible to be competitive in most of the games you play, though the AI is smart enough to win some from you even if you’re a series veteran, especially on the higher difficulty settings where the game physics and AI amp up and start playing as smart as you, and allowing fewer flukey goals.

Still, there’s really not much new in the way of expanding the appeal and features found in franchise mode, and the online play options are pretty much the same as before. When you combine this relative lack of real change or improvement to the series, along with the annoying lack of the cinematic presentation flair on display in 2K7 but since abandoned, there’s not much to really recommend this year’s model. If you desire up-to-date rosters, this is a serviceable entry in the series, but those who loved the 2K7 version won’t find a suitable replacement in this year’s model.

Created by developer tri-Ace, the geniuses behind three (and soon, four) Star Ocean titles, as well as some other well-thought-of one-off titles, have unveiled their latest RPG masterpiece, Infinite Undiscovery, which at least for a while will be an Xbox 360 exclusive title from SquareEnix.

The good news is: it’s a good one! Infinite Undiscovery revolves around the tale of a world where the moon is, for mysterious reasons, chained to the earth and unable to move in rotation around the planet. A lone hero rises up to undo these chains and become the people’s hero and he – is not your main playable character in this game. Instead, in Prince and the Pauper fashion, your hero is someone who just happens to be the spittin’ image of this hero of the people.

Complication matters is the fact that Capell is a bit of a pacifist; he’d rather blow a flute than swing a sword, but fate pretty much won’t allow him the luxury of that option. As the game begins, he’s been imprisoned by some folks who believe Capell is Sigmund the Liberator, and soon he rescued from that cell by Aya, one of Sigmund’s followers. As is usually the case with such games, Capell eventually gets caught up in Sigmund’s mission, like it or not.

The whole affair takes place in a nice-looking world that is somewhat photorealistic, but only if you painted reality over with an airbrush. Think of it more as a very sharp-looking cartoon world … for grown-ups.

Like the Star Ocean games before them, and most other tri-Ace games, Infinite Undiscovery is an action RPG that retains an RPG feel more than an action-game feel, which should be a good fit for all longtime, multiplatform SquareEnix fans. The battle system at its core is rather simple, but is given depth and complexity as the game evolves without ever becoming hard to manage. Quite a feat.

The game also offers up more than the usual dungeon crawl; there are puzzles to solve and mysteries to unwind and secrets to reveal. Some of these are accomplished using a “link system” that allows Cappel to talk with folks he meets with different party members sort of “along for the ride. While it doesn’t work on everyone, each area has at least a couple people who will either tell you something extra, or given you something they’d have held back otherwise, simply because your fellow party-member is with you.

Like most other tri-Ace games, the simple world is a bit deceptive, in that there are loads of new systems introduced as the game progresses. Examples include the aforementioned in-town link system, as well as a battle link-system, an item creation interface, and much more.

In the end, the game is exactly the sort of thing the original Xbox era lacked; a top-notch exclusive RPG release from one of the top names in RPGs: SquareEnix. Infinite Undiscovery could become the basis for SquareEnix’s newest franchise, and based on the high quality on display here, there’s no reason it shouldn’t spawn sequels. 360 fans, rejoice: not only is the 360 “in the mix” of the next-gen RPG market, but as of now, they’re well ahead of Sony and the PS3. That’s because, like a sizable handful of RPGs released to the 360 recently, Infinite Undiscovery is a must-have for any true fan of RPGs.

Most folks are familiar with Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Or, more accurately, they are familiar with the family-friendly, Disney-fied versions of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that have been made into popular movies over the years.

Yet the Brothers Grimm, who originally wrote their dark fairy tales in German in the 19th century, had far darker visions than the versions traditionally passed down by Walt Disney and Company. In fact, most of them would seem like appropriate bedtime tales for Jack the Ripper and Adolph Hitler, rather than visitors to Disney World.

American McGee’s Grimm plays off both the dark origins of these tales, and their popularized, less-frightening versions. The game, which is being distributed in three seasons of eight episodes each, via GameTap, allows players to take control of Grimm, a dwarf who has the ability to bring darkness to everything around him. He uses this ability to transform Disney-fied fairy tales into their darker German counterparts, to effects that are at once both amusing and scary.

At its heart, American McGee’s Grimm is more or less a platform-style of game delivered in brief, half-hour bursts that keep the action flowing and are not allowed to drag, which heightens the overall entertainment value. The gameplay emphasized keeping Grimm moving and converting objects in the game to their darker versions; he does this by means of a butt-stomp kind of move, and doing it enough increases his “Dark-O-Meter,” which allows him to convert more and bigger objects.

American McGee, by the way, is better known as American James McGee, and is one of the original designers of the first two versions of both Doom and Quake. He worked for Electronic Arts for a while before going independent, and now works through his development house, Spicy Horse, which is using the Unreal Engine 3 in the making of Grimm. Still, the system requirements are not very high and even most notebook computers should be able to handle the game.

Aside from the platforming genre, Grimm generally falls under the growing new category of so-called “casual” gaming, a trend sparked in part by the Katamari games, to which Grimm compares in mostly-favorable ways. That means that Grimm is not a hardcore-gamers paradise, full of complex moves and keyboard combinations; instead, it is a relatively easy game to play, and the focus is more on experiencing the story than conquering difficult levels.

So far, American McGee’s Grimm is well on its way through its first season; episodes already released include A Boy Learns What Fear Is, Little Red Riding Hood, The Fisherman and His Wife, Puss in Boots, and The Girl Without Hands. Still to come are Godfather Death, The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs and Beauty and the Beast, which concludes Season One, and will be released on Thursdays between September 4-18.

The distribution model for Grimm is unique; each episode is available to play for free on GameTap for 24 hours each Thursday; after that, they must be purchased for a small fee, or continue to be available to paid GameTap subscribers. American McGee has also confirmed he is considering releasing Grimm to the Xbox 360 platform via Xbox Live; no mention of PS3 or Wii releases have been made to date.

The graphics are stylistic and fun; the gameplay is easy to pick up and enjoy; and the episodes are brief enough to hold one’s attention from beginning to end, without a break, since they only average about 30 minutes per episode anyway.

As a unique idea in the market, well-executed, American McGee’s Grimm is an enjoyable, if somewhat disturbing at times, offering. Currently unrated, the content is likely to eventually fall somewhere between E10 for everyone ages 10 and up, to perhaps T for Teen. The graphical charm, clever tales and unique concept make American McGee’s Grimm worth a look for most gamers.

Playing Zoids Assault is like fooling around with a girl who needs to use a lot of acne scars cream; you may get somewhere, but you won’t feel good about doing it. What this Atlus-published turn-based strategy RPG with a military flavor wants more than anything is to be the next Front Mission (SquareEnix’s storied military strat-RPG). Instead, it plays more like a less action-oriented version of some Mobile Suit Gundam game, only worse.

Now, I usually enjoy a good, solid Tactics-style RPG as much as anyone you could name; but that’s not what Zoids Assault is. It’s more of a turn-based military strategy game with RPG aspirations that never really pan out. The graphics, while attempting to be next-gen, simply don’t impress, especially since the horrid game camera frequently places your point of view to one of the least-complementary angles possible for each action following a turn choice.

The battle system is complex and never sufficiently explained; the game simply tosses you into the middle of an extremely challenging battle against aggressive AI foes who will probably finish you off a couple times before you find your way around and take out the enemy. Of course, only dedicated fans will possess that much patience for a game that has no tutorial mode, poor documentation and an imposing learning curve.

I mean, really, who wants to invest three or four hours in your first two or three battles, only to win once and never really come away from the experience knowing much about why you lost. Making matters worse is that the game offers no way to revive fallen units once they’ve been dispatched by enemy forces, which even in the first battle are frequently more powerful than yours.

It’s nice to see Xbox 360 getting some Atlus-love and building a respectable RPG library, but this sort of me-too-ware is a disappointment, rather than a must-have for any discerning RPG lover. It’s a bit too early in the new generation of hardware for garbageware to be tolerable, and unfortunately, that’s the category Zoids Assault falls into; if you can only choose one Atlus RPG on 360 this summer, skip this one and be sure to grab the impressive Spectral Force 3 instead.

I’ve played demos of Total Extreme Wrestling long before I was asked to review this title, and I must say that with this latest version, the game has improved considerably. While there is still room for growth, with this version Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 officially becomes “playable” in my book.

What were the problems with previous versions? Well, for one thing, the series seemed dead-set on including a graphical wrestling match simulator that simply never worked very well at all. The graphics were barely up to eight-bit standards and the keyboard commands were simplistic, frustrating, and largely undocumented. Even walking down to the ring was a chore too ugly to contemplate, let alone do regularly. (Or am I thinking of Wrestling Spirit, Adam’s other wrestling title? I think both had that ugly match simulator at one point…)

Fortunately, the series has taken a turn in a markedly positive direction. TEW 2008 seems to have abandoned the graphical match simulator entirely (Yay!) and settled firmly into the PC text-based sports management sim category. And if anyone is thinking that such games went out of vogue with PC tape drives, think again. The interface for this game is quite good, and a marked improvement from previous outings; the level of art design is also a significant step forward.

For anyone who’s wondering what this type of game is and how it would compare to, say, Smackdown vs. Raw 2009, I would say this: think about that mode where you get to book Raw or Smackdown, making matches and filling out storylines and feuds… only imagine a version of that that actually works and is far, far deeper. Start going along those lines and you’ll have an idea of what kind of game TEW2008 is; and it does hold some addictive gameplay appeal for all the wannabe wrestling bookers out there.

Developer Adam Ryland, who has a clear love for pro wrestling (as well as mixed martial arts, but that’s another game…) has been perfecting his formula for several years now, and this time out, the result is a playable game, but not one without a rather steep learning curve.

One of the difficult aspects of TEW2008 is that there’s not an in-game, step-by-step tutorial as you’re getting started. The mysteries of the many and deep options within the game remain mysteries except by trial and error. Of course, there is some scant “getting started” information in a Word document, if you hit the right Help option; and it’s enough to get you through booking your first TV event.

But as for strategy on how to play the game well and earn good results? Well, there’s not much to go on within the game. Part of the challenge is that, for legal reasons, TEW2008 can’t emulate any real wrestling organizations or personalities. Therefore, there is no WWE, no TNA, no New Japan in the game. There are organizations reminiscent of them, but that’s all.

The game, in fact, is set in a fictional world called the “Cornell-verse,” and so unless you’re a longtime fan of the series and know what the heck is going on, it’s easy to get lost. For example, I started a freestyle career as head booker for the game’s WWE-like organization, SWF. With a roster clocking in at around 52 wrestlers, including a few who are “in development,” though most are active, it’s hard to know who’s who and how to book them.

Were the game licensed and able to offer up real-world figures, it would be easier to follow. After all, if I’m in WWE booking Raw, it’s easy to know that Randy Orton vs. John Cena is a main event-caliber match, and one you might want to save for a PPV. However, in the SWF, despite some helpful tools like the “creative meeting” to rank who’s hot, who’s not, who’s a main eventer, etc., it’s just a mammoth task to familiarize yourself enough with the cast at your disposal in order to properly book a show.

For example, the current SWF champ with the game starts is Jack Bruce, who’s slightly like Jeff Hardy. He’s a main event face, so I quickly involved him in a “challenger steals championship belt” storyline against Remo – who turned out, upon further inspection, to be more like MVP than Batista. So even though he’s a main eventer, he wasn’t a top one and my first couple shows and first PPV did poorly.

All the booking elements you might be familiar with from Smackdown vs. Raw’s GM mode are present here, but much deeper. You are expected to have some main storylines running through your broadcast, but it’s never made clear how many storylines are ideal to manage at one time. I chose four, and it seemed perhaps a bit much as I had to fit in a lot of angle elements into my programming grid, and average only about four or five matches per 90-minute broadcast.

OK, maybe that’s WWE-standard. Trouble is, as I looked at other CPU-controlled feds who are out-performing me, they have more matches, fewer angles, and fewer overall segments and obtain better results. I programmed my first two shows like a current Raw broadcast, with interviews, video segments, skits and hype segments as well as matches. My average grade was a C+ and my PPV result was lower, which “hurt” the SWF’s overall popularity. I ran an average of 18 segments with about five matches per broadcast, mimicking the Raw formula to a T, and I get a lot of “Yuck!” as a response from the game.

So either I’m really needing to put in a lot more hours learning my roster – a considerable time commitment considering I’ve already spent over five hours reading bios and the like – or the game has some sort of winning formula that I just haven’t mastered yet. And again, it’s not like there’s a tutorial for this stuff.

Booking is the heart of this game, and it can be a real hoot; but knowing your roster is a real key, as if you don’t, you’ll get feedback like, “You used Randy Bumfhole too much in this broadcast.” OK, he’s the tag title holder along with his brother; I put him in a match at the PPV to place the straps on more popular wrestlers, and then made him the victim of a post-match beat-down by Vengeance to advance a storyline I have going with him. That’s too much? Ugh! How am I supposed to know this?

Now, on the upside, there is a whole mod support community over at publisher Grey Dog Software, who are hard at work on a “real world mod” that will replace this confusing, overpopulated fictional universe with recognizable wrestling feds and personalities, much like Wolverine Studios attracts for their college and pro basketball games. At this point, I’d have to say that a real-world mod would make TEW 2008 about 500-percent more accessible.

That being said, I do get the sense that TEW 2008 is like a huge, hibernating bear. There are a lot of powerful tools in here, and once you learn how to use them properly, you can obtain a game experience that roars. But there is still room for refinement.

For example, while it’s great that there are a ton of storylines available to choose from, what is really frustrating is searching through all of them to find one of the small handful of appropriate elements you need to advance a storyline. In my belt-stealing storyline, for example, the storyline outline told me my next segment had to be an “Escapes with Belt – So Close” element. I searched high and low and couldn’t find a Narrow Escape segment that specified “with a belt.” So I booked what I could find and my storyline didn’t advance. Ugh.

One way to improve TEW 2008, and hopefully it can be handled in an update rather than having to wait for TEW 2009, would be to have storyline steps dynamically linked so that if you click on “5. Escapes with Belt,” a short list of acceptable options would appear, rather than having to search a massive list, even if you narrow it down by broad categories like “Confrontation.” Linking storyline steps to acceptable segments to fulfill those steps would be a huge help, especially to newcomers.

It would also be nice to receive booking tips within the game that give you the option to click a couple buttons and have some necessary elements auto-filled. For example, let’s say you’ve booked your main event, a couple title defenses, and some angle segments that satisfy the three or four storylines you’re currently running, but you have 40 minutes remaining to book and about a dozen key stars who deserve some kind of appearance on the broadcast. In that event, it’d be nice to be able to click some key stars, maybe one or two other elements, and then hit an “auto-book” button that would fill out the rest of the schedule.

Or, if you’re putting together a storyline, it’d be nice to have a storyline-checker to remind you of key considerations. For example, I did a “three challengers” storyline for my Shooting Star title, and got that storyline started on my Tuesday broadcast. Next day, my email told me one of my wrestlers had been caught by drug-testing doing ‘roids and I felt he deserved a one-month suspension.

Turns out, he was involved in the “three challengers” storyline and I had to kill the entire storyline. It would have been nice to have a warning pop up saying, “Wrestler X is involved in Storyline 4,” and then be offered the chance to replace him in that storyline with another wrestler, or to choose a lighter punishment so as not to kill the storyline.

It may sound like inattentiveness on my part, but remember, my roster is 52-wrestlers strong, and I added five key free agents recently to bring that count to 57. It’s hard to keep 52 fictional wrestlers straight in your head, so some idiot-proof warnings and tools would be a huge help.

In the end, Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 is a powerful, deep and addictive title that finally brings this storied franchise to a level I consider playable; there are still key elements that could help make the game more newbie-friendly and lessen the steep learning curve involved, however, and until more of those are addressed, the game simply cannot be considered top-notch.

That said, it’s come a long way since the last couple versions, and the improvements do make the game quite appealing. With the support of a mod-community – a modern-day essential for games of this type – a real-world mod pack might make the game a bit easier to navigate, though improvements to the storyline-database interface and some idiot-proof options would also help.

The core product is quite good; Total Extreme Wrestling 2008 is quite playable, even if it is still unrefined. The point here is that the potential long present in this series is finally rising to the top and soon – perhaps through some game updates, or maybe by TEW 2009 – the current algebraic complexity and steep learning curve will be addressed so that TEW can become everything it should be. Until then, the game is still very good, but falls just short of world-class status.

Text-based sports management sims have come into their own heyday recently, and one of the franchises that’s been around since before they became cool again is the Out of the Park Baseball series by Out of the Park Developments and published by PISD Software. The latest iteration, OOTP 9, is a game that had a generously-sized development team for a game of this type – seven people.

That team includes two lead developers, three team members who did extra coding, an art designer and a product manager. Considering most games in this genre are a one- or two-developer labor of love, that’s a huge staff. Of course, modern PS3/360 platform sports videogames like Madden NFL 09 or MLB 2K9 probably have PR departments, motion-capture staffs and memberships in the wine of the month clubs that are considerably larger than that – but that’s not the sort of game this is.

As a PC-centric text-based sports management sim, the emphasis of Out of the Park Baseball 9 is not on bleeding-edge 256-bit HD graphics, but on statistically-solid, realistic gameplay. If that’s your kind of thing – and L-RD knows, baseball stats fans like their games realistic – then OOTP 9 might be the baseball sim for you.

It’s been more than one iteration since the last time I checked out OOTP, and one of the first things that jumped out at me is the interface improvements since the last time I played a demo of the game, back around OOTP Baseball 6.

The menu is large, clear and self-explanatory, and includes friendly options for those who are upgrading from previous versions of the franchise, so that they can at least try to continue their dynasties in the new version. As I didn’t have any old save files from a previous version, I wasn’t able to test this feature, but word on the chat boards seems to indicate that it’s been a relatively smooth transition, though not without some rare and minor issues.

Once you actually get started selecting your team and such, OOTP’s “manager home page” system is laid out in three-columns and is organized and self-explanatory enough to be both appealing and not a huge hurdle to accessibility. You’ll always know where your team stands, thanks to this handy layout, and while you are offered a “play today” option for games where the game can unfold pitch-by-pitch, there are also four auto-sim options that will soon become the way most folks will eventually navigate their way through a season.

The menus are all clearly defined and easy to understand, the sim-screen adds a fun visual 2D element, and if you play through a single game pitch-by-pitch, the 2D display is serviceably but never forgets that it’s a 2D, text-based, sports management sim. (That’s intended as a compliment.)

Full of stats galore, powerful player search tools, and plenty of ways to use the game as a basis for a multiplayer league, OOTP 9 is a solid entry in the series and sets a standard others in the genre will have to meet or exceed to be considered “in the game.” OOTP 9 is already a step ahead of Baseball Mogul in that it features a more flexible financial model that scales to the era appropriately; and it’s interface is superior to PureSim Baseball 2007, though Shaun Sullivan is now hard at work relaunching his franchise for Wolverine Studios under the Draft Day Sports: Baseball moniker.

But until that competitor emerges for comparison, it can be clearly stated that Out of the Park Baseball 9 is the clear standard-setting this summer when it comes to PC-based baseball management sims. With a great feature set, a superior interface and top-notch organization and design, as well as realistic results, it would be hard to name a currently-available competitor that is even … in the ballpark.

It’s been four years (wow!) since I reviewed the last version of this PC game, and in that time, although the political landscape has changed quite a bit, Political Machine 2008 has changed hardly at all. Sure, there’s a roster update, but the game itself, as well as its art and design, have hardly changed at all.

Intended as a quick-play title that brushes over the details, Political Machine 2008 lets you choose to play as either a GOP or Dem candidate and they tosses you in against a series of increasingly difficult-to-defeat opponents from the other side of the aisle.

The strengths of the game four years ago are still strengths today; the game is sharp and fast-paced and even displays some wit at times. It keeps its politics fun and breezy, like an MTV campaign ad, rather than a PBS documentary on the political process.

Unfortunately, the game is simply too simple to appeal to the deeper political thinker; with the right strategy, in this game, Jimmy Carter can win over Ronald Reagan in a landslide, and we all know how he fared historically. (Yup, Carter got beat so bad, he ended up wearing personalized baby clothes for the next decade.)

The game also still limits the number of actions a candidate can perform each week by a stamina rating; each action has a stamina cost and once you’ve used it up, you simply have to finish your turn, as no more can be done that week. That wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t seem like your opponent had twice as much stamina as you do, no matter what.

Many special events are still completely random, such as when you are given a chance to be on TV, on a popular show. Management of speeches and topics seems a bit more organizes this time out, but endorsements are still ill-thought-out. You see, in the game, there are various special interest groups you can win the approval of; parody versions of leftist and right-wing groups, such as the ACLU and the NRA.

Trouble is, the winning strategy is to win as many of these endorsements as possible, regardless of that group’s affiliation; there’s no negative penalty, for example, if a Democrat wins the NRA endorsement or a Republican wins the support of NOW. All you need to do is have enough points built up to buy that endorsement, and grab it before your opponent does.

Of course, we know reality doesn’t work this way; and that’s the main drawback of Political Machine 2008; just as it was four years ago, the game simply isn’t deep enough or realistic enough to satisfy real political junkies. I mean, heck, the game lets you run as Arnold Schwarzenegger, who isn’t even eligible, for crying out loud!

Folks who desire a more detailed political election sim may find what they’re looking for in TheorySpark’s President Forever; as for Political Machine 2008, it’s not a bad introductory title for the younger set, or as a party game, but there’s just not enough there to satisfy anyone looking for a deeper, more realistic political sim gaming experience.

In most Gran Turismo titles, about the only thing missing is car insurance. That’s because it’s not any simple “select a car, a track and start racing” formula racing title, but, as the series subtitle has often boasted, Gran Turismo is “the real automobile simulator.” An international obsession ever since its PSone debut, Gran Turismo has often been referred to as a CarPG, due to its RPG-like depth of play.

In the PS3 era, the series has kept up an almost constant, but not yet fully complete, presence on the platform. About a year ago, the PlayStation Network introduced a freebie download version that only had a handful of cars and, if I remember right, only one track. Now, Polyphony Digital and Sony have introduced Phase 2 of bringing Gran Turismo into the next generation of gaming: Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.

GT5P would, for most publishers, constitute a complete game experience. Stocked with around 70 cars and maybe a dozen tracks, however, GT5P is merely an appetizer. That’s because the last full version of the game, which appeared on PS2, contained over 700 cars and over 60 tracks. And rest assured, Polyphony Digital isn’t stopping with Prologue; in fact, the company has publicly admitted that the game, while satisfying in and of itself, is merely a test platform with which they intend to work out all the online racing bugs so that when the final version of Gran Turismo 5 is unveiled, it’ll be a true, deep mindblower of a title with at least as many cars and tracks as GT4 had on PS2.

In the meantime, what is GT5P like? Well, let’s start with the graphics; the game looks better than ever, especially on HD displays. The cars shine and gleam and, along with the backgrounds, are often nearly indistinguishable from live TV footage of car races. Of course, looks have always been a strong point of the series.

A traditional weak point, however, is still hanging in strong in GT5P, and we can only hope Polyphony Digital corrects it before they unleash the final version of Gran Turismo 5, and that’s opponent AI. In GT5P, once you pass an opponent and put him a little distance behind you, they never threaten you again, unless you goof up bad and lose a lot of time correcting your error. That means that if your car has a clear horse-power advantage, you’ll blow out your opponents in C-class races by quite a distance, not just a minor margin.

What would be truly satisfying is if each opponent were made as cagey and challenging to beat as a human opponent. Horsepower is on aspect of winning a race, but it shouldn’t be the only determining factor; too often, with as little as a 25-50 horsepower advantage, you can drive sloppy lines and endure minor miscues on turns and still finish well ahead of the pack. Similarly, if you’re at a horsepower disadvantage, unless you take advantage of the fact that there is no damage modeling in Gran Turismo and treat each race like the demolition derby on the early turns of the first lap, you’ll never get close to the lead cars that are way more powerful than yours.

The lack of damage modeling is once again a serious sticking point in GT5P, and considering that over on the Xbox 360, Forza Motorsport 2 is able to get many of the same car licenses AND an agreement to allow damage modeling, the failure so far of the Gran Turismo series to include this aspect of racing gameplay into the game is becoming an increasing drawback.

In fact, the challenge level (traditionally, Gran Turismo is excessively hard to succeed at) has been scaled way back for GT5P, and plays more like an arcade racer than a real driving simulator. Part of this is the ability to choose from standard and ultra-realistic driving physics, as well as a new ability, which is oversteer assistance. This feature can be enabled as a preference and seems mostly to be there for newbies, to make the game more playable in the early going. This assistance has three settings; off, which makes the game like previous installments, putting complete control of the car in your hands; mild, which only corrects your biggest oversteering errors; and strong, which can pretty much eliminate all but the biggest errors in oversteering.

Set on strong, the game becomes considerably less challenging to beat, especially due to the AI deficiencies already at work. This can rob series veterans of a good portion of the challenge, and so in online play, all drivers are made to use the same, identical setting for this, which is predetermined before the race begins. Intended to make the game more accessible for newbies, it can make experienced players almost as flawless as computer-controlled drivers, only more dangerous since the average human opponent drives way more competitively than the average AI opponent.

On the interface side, many elements are missing, such as posting times for all finishers at the end of a race. Also, front end boasts dealerships and garages, but lacks the Parts Centers that allow you to upgrade your care with after-market parts. Once you reach a certain level of achievement in the game, a Tune-Up shop is unlocked so gear-heads can tweak their cars for better performance, but for the non-mechanics who just like racing, that can become a bit challenging and the absence of Parts Centers is definitely felt.

While boasting a wide variety of car makers in GT5P, many of them only have one or two cars in the game, which is a disappointment; apparently Sony will be releasing more cars and perhaps even more tracks through expansion packs via the PlayStation Store in the near future, but for now, the 70 car roster has some favorites, but nowhere near as much depth as series fanatics are accustomed to enjoying.

Finally, online play is loads of fun, but does need some spit and polish to smooth out lag times, blips and clips. The potential is definitely there for online play to really push Gran Turismo to the next level, but I’m sure most of the kinks will be worked out by the time the full-release Gran Turismo 5 appears at last with a lot more cars and tracks than the current installment allows.

In the end, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is nowhere near as complete nor as satisfying as a full-on release and the much greater depth of play that 700+ cars and 60+ tracks can bring, so you’ll want to hold on to your copy of Gran Turismo 4 for PS2 for a while longer. But for series fans who can’t wait for the full release, just keep in mind that even in this current, abbreviated form, Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is still far deeper than 95 percent of full-release racing games currently on the market.

It wasn’t long ago that the videogame world had never even heard of an attorney simulation game, at least in the US market, but it hasn’t taken Capcom’s little series long to catch on and become a popular series on the Nintendo DS. Filled with all the intrigue of a mystery novel come to life, the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney games did well initially in Japan, where they appeared on the GameBoy Advance, before making their way to the US market via the DS.

The previous three games, Ace Attorney, Justice for All and Trials and Tribulations, all featured Phoenix Wright as the series’ main protagonist; Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney introduces an all-new protagonist and Phoenix Wright appears as a defendant accused of murder in the opening case of the new game.

Graphically, the game hasn’t changed much from its GBA origins. About the only improvements in the way the game looks is a mildly richer color palette and some smoother-looking textures; other than that, the signature art style of the series is largely unchanged. While the game looks fine by DS standards, however, it doesn’t look quite as nice as the Harvey Birdman attorney sim Capcom recently released on Sony’s PSP platform.

While the opening sequence that places rookie attorney Apollo Justice on the defense for Phoenix Wright is a shocker, the biggest changes to the series come in how one interacts with the game. Like the notorious fifth case on the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was built specifically for the Nintendo DS platform, rather than being ported up from GBA. As such, all the exciting investigative tools so enjoyed in that fifth case are now present and accounted for in all four cases that comprise the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney game.

That means the game takes full advantage of the DS’ microphone and touchscreen; you can once again rotate items via touchscreen to uncover concealed clues, or use the microphone to shout “Objection!” during the course of a trial. AJ:AA also features several new features.

One is the perceive system, which helps Apollo pinpoint nervous body language that helps him identify when a witness is being deceptive. A crime recreation mode is also introduced for the first time, and is utilized to help pinpoint new evidence. With all these new DeWalt tools in his arsenal, one might think it would be a snap for Apollo Justice (and gamers) to solve the four cases in front of them. However, it’s not quite so easy and gamers will need all these tools to get to the truth of the matter, since the Capcom scribes behind this game are quite good at plot twists, rabbit trails and big reveals, to keep things interesting.

As before, each case grows increasingly challenging, making solving the final case a significant achievement. More of an interactive novel than a true videogame, Apollo Justice may feature a brand new main character, but everything DS fans enjoyed about earlier Phoenix Wright games has returned – in spades.

The release of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney catches the US market up with the Japanese market. The future looks bright for the series, however. It is well-known that Capcom announced the fifth game in the series about a year ago, in May 2007; that game is expected to release next fall. Also, in February 2008, a spinoff title featuring life on the prosecution’s side of the courtroom, featuring Miles Edgeworth and Dick Gumshoe, was announced as under development by Capcom, so with at least two more games on the way, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney is definitely a new beginning not a final swan song, for games of this genre.

It’s a bit sad when a once-solid franchise falls behind the pace, and that the only way, really, to regard MLB 2K8. The game isn’t bad, but the problem is more one of coasting while others are revving ahead. For Sony gamers, there is an alternative in the company’s MLB 08 The Show, but for Wii and 360 owners, MLB 2K8 is pretty much the only game in town.

Much like having an exclusive lock on football titles has made EA Sports’ Madden series lazy and uninspired, so too has having a third-party exclusive on MLB titles made 2K Sports’ baseball titles seem lazy and uninspired. Not having any legitimate competition tends to do that.

The nihilism kicks off almost from the word go; the graphics seem barely touched from last year’s edition, which wasn’t that great to begin with. Even before the 2K8 edition, even before the PS3/360/Wii era had begun, the series was troubled by freezes, glitches and graphical dead space; that hasn’t changed and eventually one has to wonder if 2K Sports and developer Kush Games even care about fixing the game visually.

While Ben Brinkman of Kush has been quoted from several sources saying that 2K8 is the “middle act” of a three-year plan to make over the franchise, that does little to comfort gamers who are shelling out hard-earned bucks for this year’s version. The franchise needs a top-to-bottom graphic makeover using an all-new game engine to really deliver the goods, and that’s not a position 2K Games is in; under their exclusivity agreement with MLB, 2K Sports is obligated to deliver a new iteration every year, which shortens development time, making a complete makeover difficult.

Yet the progress this year seems merely incremental, not revolutionary, especially from a graphic perspective. The new Swing Stick interface is actually harder to time and master than last year’s version, and the all-new pitching system is very realistic, based on analog stick interaction, but also is quite difficult, especially for less experienced hardball gamers, and ultimately many folks will end up choosing an older, alternate control scheme – which, at least, 2K Sports had the courtesy to include several of within the game. Mastering the pitching control scheme is ultimately rewarding, but extremely hard, kind of like buying car insurance online.

On the 360, the graphics lack the fluid animations of other sports titles on the market and feel like they are chugging along; I’ve seen the PS3 version in action and it’s no better, so it’s not a platform issue, it’s a developer issue.

While the new pitching control is a highlight (if you can ever get the hang of it), it’s not the only aspect of the game that’s strong and praiseworthy. Responding to long-term criticism, support of minor league teams has been vastly expanded. The game features no less than 90 real-life minor league teams, as well as 20 authentic minor-league stadiums, with more periodically released over the course of the season via Xbox Live for the 360. Those minor league teams even have some of the real-life players on them, although this is limited to those players who have at least spent some time in the majors.

I also appreciated some of the refinements made – to my complete surprise, since I usually suck at fielding – to the fielding controls. Even baserunning has improved, thanks to smarter baserunning AI. These refinements are not major new features, but have long been needed and offer some much needed relief from a problem that has plagued the series for a long time.

In the end, though, the “room for improvement” areas are critical and more numerous than the nice improvements and new features. Sadly, since Microsoft long ago stopped developing their own first-party baseball game, there is no alternative for 360 owners looking for an MLB game this season. It’s not a terrible game, but it could and should have been a whole lot better. Here’s hoping 2K9, allegedly the year in which 2K Sports and Kush will complete their makeover of the franchise, will finally deliver the goods on all levels. At the moment, however, I’d suggest saving your shekels this year and keep on playing 2K7.