Ezio is not the only leading man in this ongoing tale. He’s an ancestor of Desmond Miles, the near-future bartender who has remained a series constant. You play Desmond in several terrific sequences, the final of which concludes with a moment so staggering it rivals Assassin’s Creed II’s ending for pure shock value. It’s unfortunate that Ezio’s part of the story isn’t as memorable as Desmond’s, or indeed, as memorable as his previous journey. The setup is simple: After a battle at the family’s villa in Monteriggioni, Ezio’s nemesis, Cesare Borgia, steals the all-important artifact known as the Apple of Eden. With the help of Caterina and other old friends, Ezio heads to Rome to retrieve the Apple and rid the city of Borgia influence. There’s a bit of drama when an associate is accused of betrayal, but for the most part, Brotherhood’s straightforward plot doesn’t have much emotional impact, and because Ezio exhibits little personal growth, there’s the slightest hint of staleness to his escapades.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t special story moments to savor, however. One set of side missions is a series of heartfelt flashbacks that put you in the shoes of a younger Ezio, and they let him show off that old charm that he rarely exudes in Brotherhood. Other indelible moments come by way of your glimpses of Lucrezia Borgia, who has a complicated relationship with Cesare. She knows what she wants, and she isn’t afraid to test the boundaries of human decency in the pursuit of power. Lucrezia aside, few of the important players are new, but they’re all voiced by a great cast that gives further gravitas to a story and world that are presented without the slightest hint of irony. Furthermore, certain story elements are given poignancy by way of their presentation. For instance, spying on a scheming Cesare and Lucrezia through a palace window makes their dialogue seem even more devious.

While Brotherhood’s story falls just short of series standards, its sense of place and time is as impeccable as fans could possibly hope for. You spend the majority of the time in Rome, and while you may miss exploring multiple cities, the city is nevertheless huge and gorgeous, brimming with so much visual variety and exquisite detail that Brotherhood feels as consequential as its forebears. You might roam into a cathedral to discover a palatial view punctuated by red tapestries and golden candelabras. Citizens wandering the streets munch on apples, carry lanterns in the evening, and flirt with each other behind pillars. It is all rendered with amazing detail and lit beautifully, undercut only occasionally by visual blemishes that will be familiar to fans of the series. There is some texture fade-in, and you’ll glimpse citizens popping in here and there. More notable for PlayStation 3 owners is the obvious screen tearing and less consistent frame rate. Regardless of your chosen platform, the soundtrack enhances the atmosphere with operatic soprano warbles and French horn melodies. Large portions of the soundtrack are lifted from last year’s game, which is mildly disappointing; how nice would it have been to hear a new theme when synchronizing the map from atop a high perch? Regardless, the music is a graceful complement to the splendid visuals.

Within this grand world is a ton of stuff to do. The staples of the series–rooftop platforming, blending with crowds, silent assassinations, rhythmic swordplay–have all returned, and most have been enhanced or adjusted in some way. It’s as joyous as ever to bound across roofs and climb to the tops of towers. Lifts that rapidly fling you to a rooftop are a great new addition and provide a second of high-speed thrills, though the movement mechanics are generally the same as before–it’s the architecture and level design that have been altered for the better. As in Assassin’s Creed II, you may search for glyphs hidden on walls and on rooftops, and they are perceptible only when you activate eagle vision. Finding one allows you to solve a puzzle, which in turn unlocks a small hint of a larger mystery. While most of these glyphs took only a modicum of effort to find before, they are now often hidden on sizable landmarks with tons of nooks and crannies to explore. Expect to put in more effort if you hope to uncover more of the conspiracy that drives the series. Luckily, it isn’t wasted effort: ledges and outcroppings are carefully and intelligently placed, which makes it a pleasure to climb these structures.

Many towers you climb don’t allow you to simply ascend with little care; they require more conscientious navigation. In fact, numerous towers not only require climbing, but must be burned to the ground as well. The Borgias have spread their influence around Rome, and to undermine their rule, you destroy their edifices. Before you can do that, you must assassinate a commander in the vicinity. Often, your target will flee if you directly engage the guards that surround him, so you will want to approach carefully. In many cases, this gives you a chance to put a new weapon, the crossbow, to good use. Not only is it handy for picking off one of these key figures, but it’s also useful should a number of enemies charge you on horseback. In any case, once you have offed the key officer, you may climb to the top of the nearby tower and torch it. Afterward, you automatically take a leap of faith into a hay bale or wagon of leaves conveniently placed beneath, while melodramatic organ chords signal the importance of your endeavor.

Eliminating Borgia influence is important because you then gain access to local vendors, though this access isn’t immediate. The economy, an interesting but messy feature in last year’s installment, has been fleshed out in smart ways. As before, you must spend money to make money, but Brotherhood’s catalog contains a lot of big-ticket items. If you want access to blacksmiths, doctors, tailors, and so on, you first must purchase and renovate their shops. Not only does renovating an empty storefront give you access to supplies, but it also begins to generate income. As you bring in money, you eventually purchase landmarks, which cost a tidy sum. In many cases this is only so you can add to your periodic bank deposits, though there are gameplay benefits as well. For example, you might be able to climb to a particular synchronization perch only after you renovate a portion of the aqueducts. Shop quests are another nice economic tweak. When you loot corpses, tackle escaping pickpockets, and empty scattered treasure chests, you may discover special items, such as prayer beads and jars of leeches. These items can be offered to designated vendors in return for high-quality weapons, tougher armor, and the like.

There’s little talk of Templars in Brotherhood’s campaign, but there is a new group of enemies to contend with: the followers of Romulus. Most of your contact with these beastly, fur-clad zealots is in their lairs, which take the place of Assassin’s Creed II’s tombs. Lairs are improvements over the tombs, however, in part because time limits are no longer so central to completing them. There is also a lot more design variety to them. In one, fires erupt beneath you, and you must leap from pillar to pillar to avoid falling into the flames. In another, you leap across great heights and use your crossbow in creative ways to cause an enormous chandelier to crash into a column. One fascinating lair is an expansive abandoned residence, which is a nice visual change of pace from the darker, more structured tomb architecture.

Many of the standard missions should be familiar to series fans: tail your target by slinking from one group of citizens to the next (it’s nice that they engage in conversation with each other when you do this now, rather than remain silent); fend off a series of attackers; or navigate to specific locations so you may eavesdrop on important conversations. But even within these assignments, there is a great deal of diversity. In one case, you must infiltrate a Passion play and determine the appropriate target before he can poison your contact. In another, you must kidnap and imprison a key figure who puts up quite a fuss in the process. The missions surrounding da Vinci’s inventions are perhaps the most memorable, however. They recall the flying machine mission and carriage escapes in Assassin’s Creed II, but this time, you get even more impressive toys to play with and more thrilling scripted sequences. Some tasks don’t quite rise to the same level. Assassin’s Creed’s loose movement mechanics are wonderfully suited to its free-form climbing and so-called social stealth, but are less ideal for traditional sneaking and hiding. This can lead to frustration in missions that automatically fail if you are spotted. Fortunately, these are infrequent exceptions; on the whole, Brotherhood’s mission structure is inspired.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood’s most noteworthy new feature isn’t introduced until you’re several hours in. In a callback to the original Assassin’s Creed, distressed citizens might be under attack by Borgia’s loyal soldiers. Rescuing one makes him or her loyal to your cause. From here, you control this underling’s fate, sending him on various missions around the region, and even calling for his assistance in battle. These missions are handled via menus when you visit a pigeon coop. You select a contract and choose a recruit or recruits to assign, and they hopefully succeed. By completing missions, the recruits level up, and you can then improve their armor or weaponry. Eventually, they become full-fledged assassins and even celebrate their newfound status in a ceremony. Provided you haven’t sent the whole cache of recruits on missions, you can call upon a few in battle, at which point they either rain down arrows from an unseen vantage point, leap out of haystacks, or charge in on horseback and engage their targets.

This aspect of Brotherhood is another way of giving you something to do in a game already full of content. At the very least, it’s fun to call upon your brothers and sisters and watch them do their dirty work on your behalf. Ultimately, however, this aspect feels unnecessary and contrived. This is due in part to the combat’s lack of challenge. Swordplay has been tweaked for the better, but a move that lets you string together one-slash kills keeps it from ever being so challenging that you need to call on your fellow assassins to gain a strategic advantage. More importantly, there’s never any payoff for spending time improving your subordinates. The very existence of an ever-growing group of murder machines hints at an overall purpose–a grand final battle or some sort of reward for putting together the most powerful brotherhood possible. But no such reward exists, which makes the entire process feel like busywork. Granted, it’s entertaining busywork, and it implies that Ezio is the full leader of a growing order. However, the feature lacks direction; it’s as if you spent hours leveling up in a role-playing game, only for it to end without a climactic standoff.

You may never have thought that Assassin’s Creed begged for a multiplayer component, but Brotherhood introduces one nevertheless. There are several modes, but they are all variations on the same theme: you hunt an assigned target (alone, or in a team) while simultaneously trying to avoid the player assigned to assassinate you. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. You get a general indication of your target’s location, and you know what your target looks like. But then again, many of the non-player characters look exactly the same; if you’re smart, you’ll move slowly and stay close to your look-alikes to throw your hunter off your trail while keeping your eyes open for the telltale signs of another player. To further complicate matters, you can level up and earn special powers, such as temporarily disguising yourself, or using eagle vision to spot your victim. Matches aren’t packed with action, but they can be incredibly intense. You might discover your target and give chase across rooftops, only to lose the assassination contract when he escapes. Or you might leap onto your target and plunge your blade into his throat, only to give yourself away to your own pursuer. The measured tempo won’t be appealing to those who thrive on ceaseless thrills, but Brotherhood’s tense tug-of-war pacing makes it an appealing alternative that rewards you for careful and clever assassinations.

You may run into a few glitches here and there, such as those moments when you walk forward, only for Ezio to bend forward as if he’s on a ledge, even though you are on continuously flat terrain. In addition, we fell through the world geometry and into the waters far beneath on several occasions, which required a restart. But these are uncommon occasions in a refined and sophisticated adventure. Almost every aspect of the series has seen enhancements in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, from travel (you can whistle for a horse and ride it almost anywhere) to value (you can now replay any completed memory). There is joy in leaping across the Roman rooftops, taking in the grand sights in front of you and realizing that it is all your own playground. Stealing a combatant’s spear from him and impaling him on it is a brutal pleasure. And the little touches–the way Claudia meets Ezio’s stare with one of her own, or the fluid animations that characterize your agile maneuvers–are constant reminders of what makes these games so enchanting. This may not be Assassin’s Creed III, but like Ezio’s smirk, Brotherhood is too irresistible to ignore.

The concept is unchanged from the original release in the early ’90s: two-on-two basketball with exaggerated physics and few rules. You do have to be mindful of the shot clock, and goaltending is a serious faux pas, but most of the violations from the real NBA have been swept neatly under the rug. Each of the 30 teams from the association is represented here, and you have an initial assortment of three players from each to choose from, though more can be unlocked as you play through the game. It doesn’t matter if you select the stacked Heat or undermanned Pacers as your team of choice, though, because high-flying antics take priority over fundamental basketball. Dunks from beyond the free-throw line, fadeaway 30 footers, and backboard-shattering alley-oops are all the rage, and stringing a bevy of jaw-dropping offensive moves together is just as likely to elicit an excited yell from spectators as the enthusiastic announcer. Responsive controls ensure every leap, pass, and shove is dished out at the precise moment you need, laying the foundation for a spirited experience that never wants for excitement.

The most eye-catching aspect of NBA Jam is the gravity-defying dunks you can pull off at a moment’s notice, but if you want any chance of actually winning against a high-level CPU opponent or talented friend, you need to embrace the simple pleasure of hard-fought defense. It may sound strange to preach the wonders of stopping your foe from scoring rather than creating your own highlights, but a strong defensive presence is paramount to winning and especially satisfying. Shoving is the most brutal of your defensive tactics. You can push your opponent to the court whenever you have a hankering for dishing out floor burns, and it’s handy when you need to stop a dunk and unmitigated violence is your only choice. But the defensive abilities in NBA Jam go beyond feral lunges. A well-timed swipe can key a fast break in a hurry, and jumping at the perfect moment lets you send a feeble shot attempt right back at your opponent’s face. Clamping down to play formidable defense is just as exciting as well-executed offense; thus, no matter which end of the court you’re on, NBA Jam is a blast.

Sadly, the thrill in NBA Jam doesn’t stretch on forever. The lure comes from the simple, immediately gratifying action, but that lack of depth is a double-edged sword. You can see just about every offensive and defensive permutation in your first match, which strips away any chance of being blindsided by shockingly awesome sequences in subsequent matchups. And once the anticipation of seeing something new dissipates, you’re left with a flashy but shallow game. That’s not to say the fun fades away completely, but that initial frenzy does settle into a comfortable lull before too long. This downward momentum is mitigated somewhat by bringing in a few friends. NBA Jam is at its best when all four players are being controlled by a group of fun-loving buddies because it’s so much more exciting to nail a key three-pointer and let loose some wholesome trash-talking to your downtrodden pals. If you don’t have any friends nearby, you can hop online and strut your stuff in lag-free competition. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 3 version has connection issues. We were unable to invite a friend to our game or accept an invitation in Jam Party, the competitive mode. Cooperative play suffered no such issue, though. Ranked matches still worked fine, however, and both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions provide a lot of fun once the game begins.

There are at least a few unique modes to mix up the core action, though none of them are as fun as the traditional offering. Classic Campaign is the most engaging of all of the tournament options. Here, you select your team and go around the league to play against progressively more difficult opponents. There are seven matchups against vintage stars as well, so you have to take on the Bad Boy Pistons between games against the modern-day Raptors and Spurs. Even though the core action in NBA Jam becomes predictable before long, this is still the best of the modes. There are no gimmicks to distract you from your goal, so you have to be smart on offense, fierce on defense, and never too cocky when you build a lead. It’s too bad the other options aren’t nearly as engaging. There are two half-court modes, 21 and Domination, but they feel confining compared to the baseline-to-baseline blur that encompasses the standard fare. Boss Battles are aggravating. Your Hall of Fame foes are imbued with special powers, so Larry Bird is perpetually on fire, which is just annoying, and you have to rely on luck as much as skill to come out on top. In Smash mode, only dunks count, which makes a game that already struggles with sameness even less dynamic. Each of these modes can be fun once in a while, but they aren’t nearly as interesting as the real thing.

NBA Jam doesn’t have much depth, but there are at least hidden goodies to search for that extend the replay value. Unlockable players include Hall of Famers, such as Julius Erving, injury-ravaged could-have-beens like Danny Manning, and even relative unknowns like Kenny Anderson. But controllable players stretch beyond the roster of NBA veterans. You can play a game as a sports host, mascot, or even some of the more athletic politicians if you want. And these wacky extras do a great job of exemplifying the core appeal of this venerable franchise. What NBA Jam lacks in depth, it makes up for in unbridled excitement that is just as fun now as it was almost two decades ago. It’s a shame the new modes are little more than distractions, but the fast-paced action is overflowing with arcade charm. NBA Jam doesn’t tinker one bit with the classic formula, but fun like this doesn’t have an expiration date.

The game provides two modes of difficulty–Training and Realistic–to accommodate your level of helicopter expertise. Designed for the player who doesn’t know his pitch from his yaw, Training mode applies several movement assists to make flying a more manageable process. This allows new players to focus on the combat and lends an arcade feel to the action. Should you get shot down as you litter the battlefield with bullet holes and rocket blasts, you’ll be respawned right where you left off so you can continue with the carnage.

What Training mode grants in stability, however, it detracts in mobility. With only limited control over your aircraft, the helicopters feel slow and sluggish compared with the freedom allowed in Realistic mode. Sometimes even the simplest of tasks, such as gaining altitude or moving forward, takes the effort of moving mountains–especially when it comes to air-to-air combat. In the skies above, both enemies and allies whiz past, exchanging volleys of fire while you slowly climb to reach their heights.

Realistic mode does a good job of re-creating what it must be like to maneuver a giant steel box through the air. Naturally, it’s a bit unwieldy at first. In this mode the entire pace of the game changes. Now, you’re fighting not only your enemies, but also working to keep your craft aloft. If you turn too sharply, you might find yourself barrel rolling into the side of a mountain. Thankfully, a handy auto-hover function can help straighten you out in a pinch. And once you get the swing of things, you’ll be able to perform winding corkscrews and other nimble maneuvers you can’t pull off in Training mode.

Combat is also a more calculated challenge in Realistic mode. Reading the battlefield and planning out which units you’ll hit with your limited heat-seeking missiles while not burning though all of your rockets on the first volley is a must. Enemy combatants, especially helicopters, will be more spot-on with their projectiles, so you need to develop a few evasive tricks to stay in the air. Once you’ve blasted your way through the campaign on Realistic mode, you’re awarded with Veteran mode. Assuming you’re a glutton for punishment, Veteran mode stacks on some additional restrictions, which includes limiting your lives (to just one) and your ammunition.

Mastering both the Realistic and Veteran modes is a feat that will take more time and practice than many players will give. This is compounded by the game’s too brief tutorial, which neglects to mention a few key points about helicopter warfare. Chief among these is the fact that you can land at various helipads, marked with a blue H on your radar, to repair and rearm your helicopter. An in-game encyclopedia helps fill in some of the gaps, but crucial information–such as the fact that your flares will deploy automatically to redirect incoming enemy missiles–is not something you should have to hunt to find.

In addition to re-creating the feel, Apache: Air Assault puts a lot of effort into capturing the look of these war birds. Each of the helicopters has been lovingly modeled to include the finer details of its real-life counterparts. Even the instruments inside the cockpit are designed after the real thing (they can even help you fly, provided you can read them). But while the helicopters all look, feel, and even sound great, the world they inhabit falls flat. Speeding past beneath your blades are some of the most uninspired forests, mountains, and deserts you’ll encounter. And while these natural arenas serve their function, before long, you’ll feel a sense of deja vu as you revisit the same areas again and again.

The plot is sadly resigned to the back burner as well and does nothing more than provide a thin framework for the destruction. It jumps around among three sets of helicopter pilots caught in a tailspin of drug cartels, narco-terrorists, and maybe something about the end of the world. While this all sounds fun and exciting, the game does a poor job of establishing who’s who. So while the different voices prattle on about dictators and enemy forces, you’re left trying to decipher which one is Hallows, which one is Riker, and what in the world a Trident-6 is.

Luckily, a cooperative mode helps alleviate some of the tedium, but it should be reserved for only the most dedicated of friends. Here two players fill the roles of pilot and copilot gunner both operating the same aircraft. It helps if both players are familiar with the other’s role so that they understand and appreciate the limitations of each. While the gunner is in control of the helicopter’s weapon systems, his field of fire is restricted by where the pilot is pointing the helicopter. Having an actual human in the gunner’s seat is a plus, however, because the AI-controlled gunner will often develop a digital soft spot for a particular transportation truck or mobile missile platform as it’s trying to shoot you out of the sky. At other times, the AI gunner will simply withhold fire altogether until you’re right on top of the enemy. In single-player, you can wrench away control from the AI at any time, but that just adds another layer of complexity.

Once you and a friend have your coordination down, you can take your Apache skills online or to the game’s highly customizable Mission mode (or you can hit them solo). These modes inject a little more variety into the simple go-here, kill-this formula found throughout the campaign. High-flying helicopter races and a mission where you scout ahead to paint targets for your Apache allies in a tiny scout helicopter help to mix things up. You can also create a custom skirmish match and modify the details down to the ground forces and weapon loadouts on either side. Ultimately, Apache: Air Assault delivers on just about everything for which an enthusiast could ask. While it may not convert many new players into pilots, a keen attention to detail and a good number of customization options help keep things feeling fresh.

Though things improve later on, Gran Turismo 5 doesn’t make a good first impression. Lengthy load and install times, unwieldy menus, and music that should be swapped out for a custom soundtrack as soon as possible are early disappointments, and sadly things don’t get much better when you enter the GT Life career mode. You’re told to buy your first car on a budget that more or less forces you to check out the used-car lot, rather than one of the game’s many dealerships, only to find that most of the rides there look incredibly rough. That’s not because GT5 features faded paintwork, rust spots, or bumpers that look like they’ve seen some action, but rather because the vast majority of the game’s 1,000-plus cars don’t look significantly different than they did when they appeared on the PlayStation 2. These poorly textured, jaggy-edged “standard” cars also lack the interiors of the vastly superior “premium” models, so when you drive them there’s no option to do so using GT5’s new cockpit view. Climb into a premium car, on the other hand, and the attention to detail both inside and out is staggering. The cockpit view is ruined somewhat by nasty-looking shadows that move across the dashboard as you drive, but they’re not overly distracting, and the exteriors on these cars are so stunning that you need to take them into Photo mode to truly appreciate them.

Although the used-car dealer invariably has dozens of cars in stock, your purchases are limited not only by your available funds, but also by your driver level, which starts out at zero. You earn experience points toward your next level every time you complete a challenge or race, and as you gain levels you unlock additional events as well as the option to buy more powerful cars. You might think that being prevented from buying the most powerful cars at the outset keeps those early events competitive, but as in previous games, it’s all too easy to win most races simply by entering in a car that’s significantly more powerful than the rest of the field. The 45 different race series that make up the A-Spec (drive yourself) and B-Spec (give instructions to an AI driver) portions of your career all place restrictions on the kinds of vehicles that can enter, but they’re rarely stringent. The result is that you end up winning races easily, which, while rewarding financially, isn’t particularly satisfying. Even race series that restrict you to using certain car models aren’t competitive unless you go out of your way to make sure that they are, because there are no rules in place to prevent you from upgrading that car in the impressively comprehensive and easy-to-use tuning shop. On the flip side, it’s also possible to unwittingly enter races in cars that are hopelessly underpowered, in which case you’re likely to quit before you even finish the first lap.

It’s unfortunate that the lax restrictions make competitive racing the exception rather than the rule in A-Spec and B-Spec events, because on those rare occasions that you find yourself driving in close proximity with AI opponents, it can be fun to jostle for position with them. AI drivers rarely stray far from the racing line, but they at least attempt to overtake each other in a somewhat believable fashion and occasionally get something wrong and end up spinning their car or driving off the track. It’s good to see other drivers getting it wrong from time to time, not only because it’s realistic, but also because it makes you feel a little better about the mistakes you inevitably make yourself.

Gran Turismo 5 is quick to punish you if you do something wrong, though you’ll be dozens of hours into GT Life mode before the damage to your vehicles becomes anything more than superficial. A number of the game’s driving aids (traction control and driving line, for example) are turned on by default, but while these certainly make staying on the track at speed much easier, they by no means guarantee that you’re going to do well. These driving aids are nothing that hasn’t been seen in racing games before, but what’s especially great about Gran Turismo 5 is how scalable the assist options are. If you’re a newcomer to simulation-style driving, you can augment the driving aids with a “skid recovery force” option that automatically gives your wheels extra grip anytime they start to slip. You still have to make some attempt to drive believably, because this option can cause understeer if you try to corner too quickly, but it’s a huge help if you’re finding the game too difficult, and there’s no penalty for using it. If you’re a veteran of simulation-style driving, on the other hand, you can turn all of GT5’s aids off and enjoy a significantly more realistic and challenging drive with wholly believable vehicle handling and physics.

It’s certainly very satisfying to win races in which you feel you’ve had to fight for every position without the benefit of any driving aids, but by the same token it can be incredibly frustrating to see your chances of winning dashed after a seemingly minor mistake sends you spinning off the track. You might occasionally get to blame such incidents on AI opponents that seem oblivious to your presence alongside them, but more often than not in GT5 your mistakes are your own. The game gives you more than enough information with which to make your decisions on the track, but if you choose to ignore the screeching of your tires, the rumbling of your DualShock controller, the resistance of your force feedback wheel, or the fact that you’re racing in wet conditions that make the track surface much more slippery, you have only yourself to blame.

Regardless of your skill level, you’d do well to complete GT5’s license tests, which, unlike those in previous games, are completely optional. These tests do a great job of familiarizing you with various cornering techniques and the like, and also afford you an opportunity to get a feel for how different types of cars handle. When you reach the final series of tests, you’re challenged to overtake cars on a full lap of a circuit without ever straying from the track or making contact with the other vehicles. These tests are among the most satisfying that GT5 has to offer, along with some of those that fall into the special events area of the career mode.

Special events run the gamut, from races around the BBC’s Top Gear test track and multistage rallies, to go-kart competitions and NASCAR challenges. Like the license tests, these challenges don’t give you an opportunity to choose or customize your car, which makes them a far better test of your driving prowess than many events elsewhere in the game. Taking the twitchy controls of a kart makes for a welcome change of pace, though it’s unfortunate that your AI opponents in this particular motorsport don’t pose much of a challenge. Still, racing around in these diminutive open-wheelers is both a lot of fun and a great way to start honing your race craft on a level playing field. Similarly, the NASCAR challenges that are presented to you by an awkward-looking likeness of driver Jeff Gordon do a good job of preparing you for the oval races and NASCAR series of events that you unlock toward the end of your GT5 career. Other highlights in the special events include the AMG Driving Academy’s wet weather time trials at the Nurburgring and Sebastien Loeb’s fiendishly tricky rally challenges.

Outside of the GT Life mode, where you can participate only in events that both you and at least one of your cars are eligible for, you can set up custom events in Arcade mode that include both solo and two-player (with no AI opponents) split-screen races, time trials, and drift trials. There are more than 75 different tracks to choose from if you include those that can be raced at different times of day or in wet weather, though for some reason wet conditions are unavailable if you’re playing split-screen. Regardless, it’s a great selection, and after you’ve decided where you want to race, you’re presented with an equally impressive array of vehicles to choose from. More than 50 premium cars spanning the game’s entire garage are available for use in Arcade mode. In addition to those, you can nominate up to 100 of your GT Life cars as favorites so that they appear here, and you can import up to 50 cars from your Gran Turismo PSP garage as well. When racing in Arcade mode, you can set the difficulty level of your AI opponents to beginner, intermediate, or professional, though as in career events, tougher opponents don’t necessarily equal smarter opponents; they’re just faster.

To find smarter opponents, at least in theory, you need to head online. Gran Turismo 5 supports up to 16 players simultaneously without any noticeable lag, and it smartly deals with those who think it’s hilarious to drive backward or to park their cars across the track by making them translucent and possible for others to pass through unscathed. Furthermore, as the host of an online session, you have numerous options with which to customize your races, including one that temporarily reduces power to the engines of anyone who collides with other racers or ends up riding rails around corners rather than slowing down for them. It’s true that you might occasionally be penalized for minor and accidental collisions, but that’s a small price to pay for encouraging everybody to race clean. As the host, you also get to decide which cars are permitted in races, and although you’re free to let players use cars from their own garages, the more interesting option is to have everyone be allocated comparable cars at random, with an additional option to make sure that the winner of the previous race gets the slowest car.

It’s a lot of fun to race online in Gran Turismo 5, and provided the host of the session you’re playing in allows the use of driving aids, there’s no reason you can’t enjoy close contests with players of very different skill levels. You don’t even need to race if you don’t want to; in the online free run mode, a group of you can just drive laps of your chosen circuit as if you’re at a track day, while the game keeps a note of who has recorded the fastest times. The only major weakness of GT5’s online suite is that it’s not nearly as easy as it should be to find sessions that you want to join.

There’s no automatic matchmaking in GT5 whatsoever, so the only way to find a game assuming none of your friends are already playing is to pull up a list of lobbies that aren’t already full, determine which of them offer the best connection speeds for you, and then hope that the lobby names typed in by the hosts give you a clear indication of what sorts of races they’re running. Sadly, there’s no good way to filter your search by, for example, the maximum power or level of the cars being used. The only search filters you get are the course being raced (which is likely to change after a race or two anyway), the region that the host is playing in (which defaults to your own), and whether the host has disallowed the use of the skid recovery force option (though not whether the host has chosen to allow it since your search options are “off” or “all”). Furthermore, there’s no easy way to invite friends into sessions that you’re playing in or even hosting. Friends can join the game you’re playing in by visiting your in-game profile, but there’s no quick way for you to send them an invite that they can simply choose to accept. Each room is also assigned a unique 20-digit code that you can distribute to anyone who isn’t on your friends list via forums and such, which is a functional if inelegant way to get people into your room, and a necessary evil given the lack of matchmaking.

When you’re not behind the wheel or looking for online races, you might find that you spend a lot of time checking the used-car lot for rare or favorite vehicles. Among the 1,000-plus vehicles on GT5’s roster are some real gems: one-of-a-kind prototypes, classic racecars, modern supercars, and all manner of historically relevant models from mainstream manufacturers. There are also an awful lot of vehicles that bring very little of worth to the game; for every car you ever contemplated putting a poster of on your wall as a kid, there are several that look more like something you were probably dropped off at school in. There’s something to be said for the novelty of racing in a station wagon, or for trying to score points drifting in an underpowered antique, but there are a large number of cars in GT5 that aren’t useful for a single event. And even if you get a kick out of trying to collect as many of the game’s cars as possible, do you really want more than 25 variants of either Honda’s S2000 or Mazda’s MX-5?

You can try to ignore cars that you have no interest in, of course, just as you can do your best to drive only premium vehicles, but less desirable and standard rides are everywhere. Even if you avoid buying them when there’s nothing else at the used-car lot, you end up racing against them. It’s not just the standard cars that disappoint visually; many of the tracks in the game are also recognizable from earlier games, and while they clearly look a lot better in GT5, they’re still not up to the standards being set elsewhere in the genre. Taking advantage of GT5’s 3D functionality doesn’t help matters either; not only does it add little to the experience and occasionally cause noticeable drops in the frame rate, but it’s tricky to calibrate correctly because you don’t get to see what effect your changes are having as you mess with the parallax and convergence settings. Just as they don’t look as impressive as premium cars, many of the standard cars don’t sound great, and when the soundtrack jarringly switches between forgettable rock and forgettable jazz, it’s hard not to wonder if so much attention was paid to the premium cars during development that other aspects of the game were neglected.

Regardless, if you’ve ever fantasized about a Ferrari or dreamed of driving at Daytona, Gran Turismo 5 is a game that you’re sure to get a lot out of. This is simultaneously the most accessible GT game yet and the most uncompromisingly realistic driving game on a console to date. It’s unfortunate that much of what makes Gran Turismo 5 so great is under the hood rather than on display for everyone to see, but a powerful engine trumps a perfect paintjob every time.

Persona 4 begins when your main character–a silent protagonist whom you name–is sent to live with his uncle in the sleepy village of Inaba. After experiencing some difficulty adjusting to your new school life thanks to a nightmarish homeroom teacher, you make fast friends with Yosuke, another big-city transplant like yourself; Yukiko, the daughter of a family famous for running a traditional local inn; and Chie, a hyperactive girl obsessed with martial arts movies. Things seem to be going well, until one morning shortly after your arrival an unnaturally thick fog sets in and leaves behind a body hung upside down from a power line. With the local police seemingly unable to even determine a cause of death, and faith in them waning thanks to a second, eerily similar case, you discover that you may be the only person who can put an end to the killings. For some reason, you possess the ability to travel into the Midnight Channel–a rumored show said to appear and reveal your soul mate if you stare into a TV on a rainy night–where victims are trapped before they meet their fatal end, and provided you make it in time, you can set them free and thwart the killer.

It is there, inside the Midnight Channel, that you discover your second power, the ability to summon forth personae–reflections of your true self aligned with one of the major arcana of the tarot deck. With this innate talent, you can defeat the monstrous shadows that roam the TV world and help your friends to confront their own inner shadows, allowing them to unleash their own personae. Together, you investigate a series of dungeons crafted around the victims’ insecurities or darkest fears, which range from the mundane (a castle for a princess waiting for a prince to take her away) to the retro (an 8-bit game complete with pixelated fire) to the twisted (a men’s bathhouse for a young teenage punk unsure of his sexuality). Each dungeon is randomly generated, but unlike the 200+ floor Tartarus from Persona 3, they tend to be only about a dozen floors deep, keeping them fresher and more interesting. You no longer have to worry about your party becoming fatigued, and you can explore to your heart’s content, though you will often find that the rarity of spirit (magic) point restoring items will limit the amount of progress you can make in a single trip.

Like its predecessor, Persona 4 takes place over the course of a complete year that you work your way though one day at a time, but unlike in previous Shin Megami Tensei games, major events are not tied to the moon phases. Instead, your investigations into the Midnight Channel are ruled by the weather–occasionally someone will be trapped inside, and if you don’t rescue that person by the time the fog returns after a heavy rainfall, he or she will die, forcing you to restart. It’s not all about dungeon crawling though, because you must balance your secret life as a supernatural detective with your everyday existence as a student. Friendships and relationships need to be forged and maintained because your ability to create new personae is limited by the strength of these bonds, called social links. By spending time with a friend or love interest in often hilarious or touching events, you can strengthen your social links–which are tied to an arcana as personae are–and you can unlock new powers in allies such as the ability to defend you from a mortal attack in combat. On top of that, you also need to worry about your own personal growth–your character has five attributes that can affect everything from how well you do in your tests to whether you have the guts to ask that cute girl for her phone number. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to raise these skills, such as studying in the library, reading a book, attending school clubs, or even working part-time jobs for extra cash and social links. Just be sure to keep an eye on the weather reports, because your time is limited.

Fans of Persona 3’s battle system will be pleased to know that it is almost entirely intact with several tweaks and improvements. Shadows still appear as amorphous blobs when you’re running around a dungeon, and combat is initiated by either making physical contact or attacking them with your weapon. Attacks are divided into seven types, which both you and your enemies are weak against to some degree, and striking a shadow’s weak spot will knock it down and award you with another turn. Downed enemies can be struck again to beat them dizzy and cost them a turn, and if they’re all knocked down, your party can bum-rush them in an all-out attack for massive damage. Enemy weaknesses can be discovered only by trial and error, and though you’ve always got an ally on support to keep track of the ones you’ve already found for later reference, you still have to deal with their annoyingly obvious narration of your fights. Two other notable changes are the absence of the controversial pistol-like evokers used to summon personae via mock suicide (your inner self is evoked by shattering a tarot card this time) and your ability to directly control party member actions rather than being forced to rely on their AI behaviors. While the former is purely aesthetic, the latter is perhaps the best change to occur in the game because your teammates will sometimes perform inexplicable (and inappropriate) deeds in the middle of a heated fight if left to their own devices.

Visually, Persona 4 shares a number of similarities with its predecessor, including a realistic modern-day setting, an outrageously stylish presentation, and, unfortunately, a lot of reused art assets and a poor camera system that makes navigating the twists and turns of dungeons difficult. The music is heavily inspired by J-pop and J-rock and is extremely catchy, so despite the number of times you may hear the battle theme throughout your entire journey, it never gets old. The majority of the game is voice-acted by a mostly stellar cast, though there are some awkward stretches of text in social-link events and side quests that for whatever reason do not have spoken dialogue, even though some of it does.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 is an excellent sequel that builds upon an already successful formula by improving it in nearly every way. With a down-to-earth cast of likable characters, an intriguing story further realizes its cast by highlighting their psychological complexities and making them seem that much more real, and an engaging and fun combat system, it’s sure to keep your attention for the duration. Whether you’re a fan of the dark and bizarre Shin Megami Tensei series or a first time shadow fighter, Persona 4 is a superb role-playing adventure with something to offer to everyone.

The most notable improvements are in the single-player realm. The lackluster 24/7 mode has been ditched in favor of a lengthy Career mode and the scripted Road to Wrestlemania. In the Career mode, you choose a superstar (existing or created) and enter a bracket to make a bid for the title belt. Each bracket has five opponents, including the current champion, and you’ll have to earn stars by winning matches to get a shot at the title. You win up to five stars for each match by earning points in three areas: match results, technical, and excitement. These categories encourage you to get into the WWE superstar mindset by rewarding you for both pummeling and mocking your opponent. At the end of each match, your attributes will increase, and your health will replenish automatically based on how the match went–no micromanagement here. You’ll also earn amusing awards for things such as striking your opponent 35 times or breaking a barbed-wire-wrapped plank over his or her back. It takes only a handful of successful matches to earn you a title shot, which is great because it keeps your career moving along at a good clip. This action-packed Career mode is the perfect complement to the Create a Superstar mode, and winning belt after belt as you bulk up your created character is satisfying and fun.

The other single-player mode, Road to Wrestlemania, features six unique story arcs that let you play as various WWE superstars (including Chris Jericho and Triple H) and defeat numerous foes (and a few nemeses) on your quest for Wrestlemania glory. Matches are interspersed with story scenes packed with typical WWE action and voiced by actual WWE superstars, so fans of outrageous melodrama will be pleased. In keeping with traditional SmackDown vs. Raw strengths, the superstar models and entrances are excellent. Although the character animations are good (despite occasional clipping problems), the wrestlers still lack fluidity when maneuvering around the ring. This feels like a result of staying too true to the source material; though WWE wrestlers do often move slowly, it’s not very exciting to actually plod around the ring in a video game. The muted audio only further detracts from the excitement factor. It dampens the supposedly hard-hitting action, and though the once-dismal announcers from years past have been improved, the sound design is in serious need of a shot in the arm.

Despite how it may sound, the action is indeed hard-hitting. It’s easy to perform powerful moves using the analog stick and a few buttons, and the breadth of things you can do in and out of the ring is impressive. From removing the turnbuckle cover to slamming your opponent through a burning table, there’s no shortage of satisfying ways to deal damage. Specific match types have their own nasty additions, from rubbing your opponent’s face against the elimination chamber to the powerful hot tag, which allows a tag team partner to build up momentum so that, when tagged in, he or she will get the quick-time chance to unleash two unblockable attacks followed by a finisher. Enabling such a wide variety of moves is one of SmackDown vs. Raw 2009’s chief strengths. Like previous games in the series, it too relies on relative position to increase your repertoire, and your wrestler is still prone to miscues as a result. However, missing a move because you aren’t quite in the correct position is less frustrating than missing one because your opponent is in an uninterruptible animation. This usually crops up in matches with three or more players when one player is performing a move on another. In these realistic-to-a-fault situations, you get a good feeling for just how exciting it is to stand passively aside while other wrestlers battle it out.

In addition to the Career and Road to Wrestlemania modes, the competent AI and unique wrestler abilities make playing single-player much more appealing in SmackDown vs. Raw 2009. No longer content to stand around drooling, computer opponents will actively attack you, tag their partners (you included), and use environmental elements reasonably well. Though the Road to Wrestlemania and early stages of the Career mode will seem easy to experienced players, it won’t feel like you’re playing against brainless apes. Last year’s fighting-style system has been removed, and in its place are unique wrestler abilities that existing superstars have and created superstars can earn. The effects range from attribute boosts (the ability to remove your belt in a ladder match more quickly) to enhanced abilities (the ability to regenerate a small amount of health). Although these abilities aren’t particularly powerful, they can come in handy during tight matches.

Of course, SmackDown vs. Raw wouldn’t be SmackDown vs. Raw without the still-impressive Create a Superstar tool. Once again, with a little time and a lot of patience (this mode is hampered by juddering slowdowns), you can create almost anyone you like, from famous celebrities to hideous abominations. You can then customize your character’s move set to craft a fighting style, choreograph your ring entrance, and even create a finisher to decide how he or she (or it) will finish off opponents. The Create a Finisher tool lets you choose from a huge list of move parts and chain up to 10 of them together to create a finisher as quick and brutal or as long and painful as you want. You’ll get a constantly updating preview of the move while you design it so you can easily tweak it to your liking. It’s fun to experiment with all of the different move combinations, and this feature rounds off a formidable suite of customization tools.

WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 benefits greatly by restraining its scope. You can still edit rosters in Career mode, but other than that, the menu-heavy GM mode has been fully dropped. The result is a game completely focused on action and on letting you customize and enjoy that action. Although some elements still need improvement, SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 is ultimately successful because it embraces the dramatic fights and outrageous showmanship that are the heart and soul of the WWE.

How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love? This is the central question of Heavy Rain and one that the protagonist, Ethan Mars, is compelled to answer. After Ethan’s son goes missing and is presumed to be the latest victim of the mysterious Origami Killer, he vows to do whatever it takes to rescue his boy. Besides Ethan, you also take control of three other seemingly unrelated individuals that have been drawn into the case: private investigator Scott Shelby, FBI criminal profiler Norman Jayden, and insomniac Madison Paige.

Though it takes a little while to pick up, Heavy Rain is an immersive interactive drama that sucks you in and doesn’t let go. As you control each of the four characters, onscreen prompts have you press buttons in sequence, move the right analog stick in specific directions, shake the controller, and more to interact with the scenes. Each input is proportionally difficult to the task being performed, and when a character is scared or stressed, the floating prompts tremble accordingly. This unconventional control scheme does a fantastic job of grounding you to the characters and their emotional states. Your actions approximate theirs, and the often short amount of time you have to react to new situations mirrors their own reaction time. There is plenty of action to be found in the form of brutal and violent brawls, heart-pounding chases, and deadly gunfights, but even such mundane tasks as brushing your teeth or rocking a baby to sleep are surprisingly engaging, and help to strengthen your bond with the characters.

Unlike other games that make extensive use of quick-time events, Heavy Rain does not track your progress in terms of success and failure. There is no right or wrong way to play; thus, no matter what your outcome is, the game will move forward and adapt to the consequences of your actions or lack thereof. Though the overall narrative framework is unyielding, your performance throughout the game can have a variety of effects, ranging from subtle changes in how a scene plays out to much bigger adjustments. Entire events may not occur because your actions and choices caused the plot to branch in a different direction. It’s even possible for key characters to die, thus eliminating any subsequent contributions to the story that they might have made. No matter what happens in your play-through, the adaptive plot of Heavy Rain becomes a deeply personal sum of your experiences.

Though Heavy Rain’s involving story is its greatest strength, it is also somewhat of a weakness in terms of the game’s replayability. Clocking in at an intensely satisfying eight to 10 hours, Heavy Rain is full of branching plot points and permutations, but it’s hard to actually go back and play through the game differently once you’ve completed it. Your story–the one that you got so caught up and invested in–has already been told; thus, the characters you bonded so closely with won’t be the same if you do things differently. A chapter-select screen allows you to smartly play through some of these “what if” scenarios if you like, but scenes are rarely as impactful the second time. Minor issues with replayability aside, Heavy Rain is not a flawless narrative experience–it suffers from some bigger problems as well.

Scene to scene, the game does a fantastic job of drawing you into the action and the minds of its characters. However, there are a number of plot holes and inconsistencies that work against this immersion. For example, there are several obvious leads and key pieces of evidence in the case of the Origami Killer, which the police department seems completely unaware of. And a major plot point that haunts Ethan throughout a number of early scenes is never explained in the slightest. Depending on how you play through the game, you may be left scratching your head wondering what happened or how characters that never seemed to meet know each other. The story also features a number of over-the-top or cliche villains that seem out of place in the realistic setting, including an overly-aggressive detective and a super-sleazy nightclub owner.

Heavy Rain’s problems aren’t strictly limited to the plot either–there are a number of other flaws as well. You move your character forward by pulling the R2 trigger and alter the direction he or she is facing by moving the left analog stick. On paper, this is a sound system, but in practice, it is clumsy and imprecise. The frame rate is inconsistent, screen tearing is frequent, and noticeable texture pop-in occurs almost every time something is closely examined. Rare immersion-breaking glitches can also occur, including audio that doesn’t match what’s happening onscreen, and textures failing to load and leaving you with either an all-black environment or a silhouetted character.

These technical issues are particularly unfortunate, because Heavy Rain is generally a beautiful and fantastic-looking game. The visual design of the various environments is outstanding, and whether you’re visiting a dirty double-wide or an intensely creepy room filled with webcams streaming live video to nearby TVs, the painstaking amount of detail that went into constructing each locale is incredible. Character models are hyperrealistic–particularly in how they move and interact–and in many ways, they emote just as well as any real person. Occasionally, a stiff or awkward animation will crop up such as a robot-like march upstairs, but for the most part, characters move extremely well. Finally, an excellent orchestral score stirs up your emotions in just the right way, and the mostly great voice acting completes the human element to round out the experience.

Though it suffers from its share of plot and technical problems, Heavy Rain is nonetheless a bold and visionary step forward in the medium of interactive storytelling. Part adventure game and part psychological thriller, Heavy Rain is far from the quick-time-event-powered movie that it may appear to be at first glance. Every action you perform or decision you make–from the simple and mundane to the dark and disturbing–brings you closer to the flawed but realistic characters you manipulate. Their stories become your story, and their hardships become obstacles that you feel compelled to overcome with them. No matter how your adventure plays out, Heavy Rain is a profoundly personal experience that should not be missed.