Retro Game Challenge

(Xseed; US: 10 Feb 2009)

If there’s a definitive theme to 2009’s games, it’s one of refinement. All of the major titles used familiar game designs and honed them to perfection. One DS game, Retro Game Challenge, took that theme and really created something new with it. You play a person whose been sucked back in time to the ‘80s, playing old Nintendo games until you can win your way back home. To do this you hang out at a friend’s house, reading through old magazines for tips, counting the days until games come out, and playing out new challenges. You play through eight careful parodies of old Nintendo games, all perfectly designed to be both easier to play but challenging if you want them to be. With so many games channeling the familiar at players this year, it’s refreshing to see one do this in such a unique way. By recreating the magazines and sleep-over culture of playing games in the 1980’s, Retro Game Challenge makes you into a kid again.

—L.B. Jeffries

If a “History of the World According to Video Games” textbook ever existed, the biggest chapter would be for World War II, the source of countless first-person and third-person shooters. Why there aren’t more games based on other time periods or wars is a bit of a mystery, but in the meantime, Call of Duty: World at War is the best of a crowded genre. It helps that World at War doesn’t serve up a Normandy and D-Day rehash for the billionth time; instead the game covers the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific as well as Russia’s reversal of the tide at Stalingrad all the way to the Fall of Berlin. It also helps that the game features quality voice acting from Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman, an extremely fun four-player cooperative campaign, addicting multiplayer similar to Call of Duty 4‘s, and a bonus Nazi zombie mode that unlocks when you finish the campaign.

AMAZON

—Ryan Smith

These nearly microscopic cards hold 1GB of music, liner art, photos, videos and whatever other little extras artists may want to include with their albums. The players are very inexpensive at only $19.99 ($34.99 for the artist editions like the nifty Abba one I have) and make quite affordable gifts. They also don’t require a computer to either buy the music or play it. None of this would matter if you could only use these mini music cards on the player itself. The music needs to be transferable, and it is. The card contains unrestricted MP3s with very good sound quality that you can put on your phone if it has a slot or easily transfer to a computer with a USB adapter that comes with the player. I had those Abba tracks from the card blasting from my stereo speakers mere moments after popping the card in my computer. So, you can make playlists with the music you purchase this way and unlike music bought from iTunes or eMusic, you get host of extras with releases even beyond what appears on most CDs.

SANSA

—Sarah Zupko

You honestly can’t go wrong with Telltale games’ offerings this holiday season. Spanning a tremendous range of prices and formats, Telltale’s throwback adventure games are always welcome respite from the shooters, sports, and music games that sell so many copies throughout the year. What makes these games appealing is that they are highly passive gaming experiences; you play these as much to watch a story (one that’ll make you laugh, of course) as you do to play a game. If you want a surreal, chaotic experience, you go for Sam & Max. If you want a highly meta, sarcastic experience, you go for Strong Bad. Both have their merits, both stand up well as episodic adventures, and both will make you laugh. You really can’t go wrong with either of Telltale’s adventures, and even if you don’t want to commit to a whole game, you can buy each series one episode at a time, under $10 for a solid 5 hours of play.  Even if you weren’t gaming back when LucasArts was synonymous for quality point ‘n’ click adventuring, you owe it to yourself as a gamer to give at least one of these two a look.

Sam & Max: Season One

—Mike Schiller

With a few notable exceptions, the cooperative mode tends to be neglected in creating a gaming experience. It’s often tacked on, misguided or ignored completely in favor of single-player campaigns or multiplayer deathmatches. Left 4 Dead, however, may have singlehandedly changed all that. While the single player mode is pretty standard Zombie-Apocalpyse-Shooter, joining with three of your friends to play online via Xbox Live turns Left 4 Dead into the most fun you can have on a console this year. Left 4 Dead‘s story device also feels fresh. Instead of one long story, there are several hour and a half-ish episodes, each ending in a dramatic escape. You and your survivor comrades must wander dark sewers, abandoned hospital halls, and a destroyed airport, fending off zombies the whole time. If you don’t have Xbox Live, you could easily pass on Valve’s latest, but it’s a must buy for those with zombie-hating friends and internet connections.

AMAZON

—Ryan Smith

When you’re shopping for the perfect gift, you’re often looking for a gift that someone would love but would never purchase for themselves. If money is no object, just such a gift for the traveler in your life is the HEADPLAY Personal Cinema System, a portable headset that hooks up to any input to give the user the appearance of big screen viewing in a tiny little package. At first, it feels a little like watching a movie or playing a videogame on one of those ViewMaster 3D slideshow gadgets that we loved as kids, but you eventually realize it’s better than that the first time you swing your head around to try to look behind you. Hook a decent pair of headphones into it and you have a surprisingly immersive cinematic experience, whether for watching a movie, playing a videogame, or viewing a slideshow of pictures from your most recent trip abroad. It’s not cheap, but for a certain subset of frequent traveler, it might be just the ticket to making all of those trips just a little bit more pleasurable.

—Mike Schiller