New games: Take your pick
From cutesy to sadistic
By Phil Villarreal
pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.27.2008
Video game publishers have saved some of their most intriguing virtual adventures for holiday releases. You can fight off zombies with allies, pit superheroes against one another in a fighting game, create a virtual life and relive World War II.
"Animal Crossing: City Folk"
(Wii, $50, Everyone) — A disappointing end-of-year release from Nintendo, "Animal Crossing: City Folk" is little more than the Wii version of the DS game "Animal Crossing: Wild World."
Both are cutesy simulation titles in which you play a character who's a newcomer in an adorable, talking-animal-inhabited town that you can name. Game play surrounds your getting a job, performing mini-game tasks to earn money and paying off your mortgage. You make friends and interact with fellow villagers, and you set up your home and yard just the way you like it.
"Animal Crossing" is an acquired taste that I've not managed to acquire. Devotees rave about the stress-reducing joy they get in watching their villages grow. I just find it boring. If you want to pay an extra $20, you get a microphone peripheral that lets you talk to friends when you're visiting their village.
"Call of Duty: World at War"
(360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS, $30-$60, Mature) — It's back to World War II for one of the top shooter series on the market, and even though the genre is threadbare, the new game is worth a play-through because it takes after last year's sublime "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare."
You alternate between the United States' campaign in the Pacific, coming across an awesome new flamethrower weapon, and Russian efforts to fight off Germans. One of the high points in the presentation is the flashy editing that goes into the lead-ins. Striking montages of old-time newsreel footage set the tone nicely.
As is usually the case with "Call of Duty," most of the fun can be had online. The game gives you reasons to come back again and again, giving you in-game perks and added rank the more skillful kills you rack up.
There also is a mode that lets you take on Nazi zombies, but a bizarre design decision forces you to play through the campaign before you can try it.
Hopefully a code or downloadable update will let you play the mode without having to relive World War II for the 100th time.
"Left 4 Dead"
(360, $60, Mature) — Join friends or strangers and face off against an unrelenting zombie horde in this multiplayer-focused orgy of gunfire, gore and survival-geared teamwork.
It's disappointing that the game comes with only four levels, each dubbed as a different zombie movie featuring the same four protagonists, but each level is infinitely replayable because the zombies attack from different areas every time you play.
The bad guys are split into a number of classes, including fat zombies that puke on you, shrieking, damage-dealing witches, smoke-emitting stalkers who snare you with their tongues and tough-to-bring-down "tank" characters who can absorb hundreds of bullets.
The game's got you covered from both angles. One mode lets you play as zombies and swarm after humans.
Be warned — the game is hardly any fun alone. But online, it's a blast: a socially oriented, we're-all-in-this-together phenomenon that's one of the most exuberant video game experiences of the year.
"Mortal Kombat vs. D.C. Universe"
(360, PS3, $60, Teen) — When the Joker and Sub-Zero battle, everyone wins.
The rock 'em, sock 'em fighting game pits gladiators in the long-standing sadistic franchise with squeaky-clean comic-book heroes and their tag-along villains. The pairing makes no sense but feels so right.
Finally, fans have a game that answers the age-old question of who would win in a tangle between Superman and Batman. Answer: Whoever's quicker at mashing buttons.
There's little strategy to the battles, but there's so much exuberance in the graphics and move sets that it hardly matters. Online play is solid and lag-free, making the game worth a buy rather than a rental, and one can dream that in the future other characters from both sides will be released in downloadable add-on packs.
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