Gamers

Alex Mercer has become a monster in "Prototype," and he wants to find out how and why.

A dozen or so older adults at the Folsom Senior Center erupt in cheers and clapping as Elsie Offner, a 91-year-old resident of Folsom, bowls a strike.

"The Legendary Starfy," starring the starfish prince of Pufftop Kingdom, is a mostly underwater adventure with a cute cast, crisp visuals and game play that doesn't feel like a rehash of other side-scrolling mascot adventures.

MYSIMS RACING

"Red Faction" was a decent shooter with an awesome gimmick.

Nintendo's "Punch-Out!!" boxing games date back to the mid-1980s with the original arcade version, but most gamers are probably more familiar with the 1987 home version for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

One minute, Cole MacGrath is on a courier run with a strange package; the next, he's the only survivor of an explosion that's taken out several blocks of Empire City.

The new "Bionic Commando" continues the story begun in the Nintendo Entertainment System game of the 1980s and last year's stellar remake, "Bionic Commando: Rearmed."

"LocoRoco 2" and "Patapon 2" are ideal sequels. Both are instantly playable for anyone who spent time with the original games, and both add a number of new features into the mix without losing what made the games work in the first place.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wednesday they are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take a look at a lower court ruling that threw out the state's law banning the sale of violent video games to children.

Two elements nearly always go hand in hand in a "Resident Evil" game: hordes of zombies and limited mobility.

"Demigod" is nothing short of a supernatural smackdown.

The Nintendo DS has quietly turned into the best platform for role-playing games, from remakes of "Final Fantasy IV" and "Dragon Quest V" to original fare such as "Suikoden Tierkreis" and "Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume."

A year ago, "Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates" entered the scene as an able continuation of the multiplayer action of this Square Enix subseries, but it was missing something important: online play.

"Grand Theft Auto" is branching out, with the series' first big chunk of downloadable content and its first DS game released in rapid succession.

"Empire: Total War" moves the time frame of the series from the medieval to the colonial era and introduces a host of changes.

"MadWorld" is as intense an M-rated video game as one is likely to come across, especially for the Wii.

"Killzone" was an ambitious shooter hobbled a bit by the technical limitations of the PlayStation 2 – and even then, it was among the best shooters on that system.

Developer Relic has taken the innovations of its World War II-era strategy game "Company of Heroes" and applied them to the "Warhammer" universe. But this isn't "Company of Heroes" with a "Warhammer" skin.

"Street Fighter IV" is not a revolution. But it is a great fighting game.

"First Encounter Assault Recon" was a solid shooter bolstered by cunning enemy artificial intelligence.

"Halo" was originally planned as a real-time strategy game, but series creator Bungie didn't make "Halo Wars," the first non-shooter in the series. Instead, it was developed by strategy veterans Ensemble Studios, the company behind Microsoft's "Age of Empires" and "Age of Mythologies" games.

"Afro Samurai," based on the anime series of the same name, has a few things going for it.

"Rise of the Argonauts" is ambitious in its retelling of Jason's hunt for the Golden Fleece, but it's a title whose reach exceeds its grasp.

As the release of the prequel "Star Ocean: The Last Hope" draws near, Square Enix continues its revival of the series with "Star Ocean: Second Evolution," an enhanced re-release of the second game, which was the first released in the United States.

Pandemic, the developer behind the "Star Wars: Battlefront" games, tries its hand here at applying the same formula to Peter Jackson's films of the J.R.R. Tolkien classic fantasy trilogy.

"Star Ocean" is a Japanese RPG series whose first game wasn't released in the United States until now. And now that it's here, it stands as one of the better role-playing games on the PSP.