Spider-Man has starred in plenty of games over the past few years, thanks largely to the three mostly-excellent movies that have been littering theaters in his name.  Unfortunately, most of them suffer from the movie-tie-in affliction of rushed end product and underdeveloped gameplay.  Perhaps that’s why Spider-Man: Friend or Foe is so appealing.  For one, while it does offer hints that its raison d’être is the hawking of a not-yet-released cartoon version of the webbed wonder, it doesn’t have a movie to aspire to, so there are no predefined standards that are going to be crushed by a less-than-stellar experience.  For two, it doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and finding a Spider-Man game with such a whimsical sense of humor is quite refreshing.  Finally, its premise, that of a world in which Spidey fights alongside both his most precious allies and his most bitter enemies, is practically begging to be played with more than one person.  You can square off against your buddies, or you can fight cooperatively in the game’s main story mode.  The vaguely exaggerated, cartoony graphic style goes perfectly with the humor and the outlandish premise, and, perhaps best of all, you get all of this for a bargain price.  Even if Spidey’s burned you in the past with his video game outings, give Spider-Man: Friend or Foe a try.  He finally got it right.

—Mike Schiller

Do you have a high-end PC? Not like a high-end PC that you bought a year or two ago, but something from this year that you bought with all of the bells and whistles and the high-end graphics card and the extra eight gigs of ram and the Vista? Looking for a piece of software with which to show it off? EA has your game. Crysis, developed by the minds who brought us Far Cry, is bar none the most visually impressive game, well, ever. Crysis outdoes everything that any of the consoles have to offer in the graphics department, offering an utter feast for the eyes in terms of landscape visuals and human/alien models. The even better news about Crysis is that even with the obvious concentration on the visual side of things, the gameplay is fantastic as well. Crysis is a well-paced, beautifully executed first-person shooter that every PC gamer with a killer machine circa 2007 or later should absolutely get a hold of.

—Mike Schiller

Almost exactly one year after the Wii’s launch, the system finally has its Mario game… and what a game it is. Super Mario Galaxy is huge, it’s beautiful, and it evokes the same constant sense of wonder that playing Super Mario Bros. did more than 20 years ago. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Super Mario Galaxy is how quickly it makes you forget that, graphically, the Wii as a system is nearly five years behind its contemporaries.  Or, perhaps, it’s the way the remote and nunchuk become extensions of your hands, with a control scheme that is both responsive and utterly natural to anyone who has played one of the previous 3-dimensional Mario games. Or it could be a story which, while still secondary to the gameplay, actually evokes something like emotion in the player as it develops. Regardless of what makes Super Mario Galaxy great, there is no question that it is great, a serious contender not just for Wii game of the year (a competition in which its primary adversaries are currently cringing), but for video game of the year. If you have a Wii and don’t own Super Mario Galaxy, sell it. The game is that good.

—Mike Schiller

Have you got a friend who acts like the biggest sports know-it-all? The one who claims to know every stat in the book and who wields this knowledge like an intimidating weapon, or wears it with a sense of gleeful self-importance? Call their bluff with this new board game from ESPN. This is Trivial Pursuit for sports geeks of the first order. With a 24-second shot clock counting down on answering questions, the pressure is on, as players must answer all manner of question from “rookie” to “pro” level. The “rookie” questions are more like the sort you may encounter in Trivial Pursuit, so beware those “pro” questions, or spring them on the know-it-all to bring them down a peg or two.

—Sarah Zupko

It’s not often that first person shooters combine elements of pulpy 1950’s science fiction, 1920’s art deco design, and the fiction of Ayn Rand, but Bioshock is an Xbox 360 game like no other. The “shoot everything in sight” style action may be standard stuff, but what sets 2K Games’ masterpiece apart from the rest of the crowded genre is the stunning graphics, fascinating setting and a plot that resembles an Aldous Huxley cautionary tale about a utopian society gone wild. Bioshock is set in an underwater city called Rapture. There, a scheming industrialist named Andrew Ryan has created a libertarian paradise that goes horribly wrong when gene technology that allowed people to change their genetic code begins to drive people mad. The substance called ADAM may have been bad for the now murderous people of Rapture, but on the other hand, it grants you superpowers like the ability to shoot fire or lightning out of your fingertips. Bioshock may not quite deserve the breathless hype it’s received by the media, but if you can look past the fact that it’s probably not the best game ever made, it’s an epic sci-fi/horror/first-person shooter you don’t want to miss.

—Ryan Smith

Be ready to be humbled, because your opponents in Quake Wars: Enemy Territory are ready to humiliate you. Whether you sign in to one of the supposed n00b servers hoping to slaughter some fresh meat or you sign in to an expert, ranked server thinking you can hang with the big boys, you’d best be prepared to eat a little bit of crow before you start displaying anything approaching proficiency.  Think you found a quiet little route to a capture-the-flag style goal? There’s a sniper who’s thrilled you’re dumb enough to try it. Think you can just go in, guns blazing and blow everyone away? Well, anyone who tries that needs to be knocked down to earth. Are you more of a pacifist, ready to take on the role of the medic, stealthily providing your team with much needed health and resucitation? Get ready for your team to get pissed at you once you die off too many times. And do you know what the best part is? You’ll keep coming back for more, because the first time you mow down an enemy grunt, it’s thrilling. The first time you manage to be instrumental to your team in achieving one of the many objectives of a given campaign, it’s thrilling. Hell, it’s even worth a laugh to see your name pop up time and again as the “least accurate” shooter. Something about the intricate, expansive maps and the importance of team playmakes Quake Wars: Enemy Territory a team-based first-person shooter you want to come back to again and again… no matter how many times you get fragged. [Amazon]

—Mike Schiller