By Daniel Dumas (associate Editor at Wired)
Stunning. Just stunning.XBOX 360
FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS
The common role-playing-game experience goes a little something like this: hit the A button to attack, the B button to defend. Repeat roughly 50 million times, beat game and live with the shame of knowing those hours will never be recovered. Not in New Vegas, where victory means implementing complex tactics over super-smart mutant baddies and difficulty ranges from engrossing to impossible.
DANCE CENTRAL
Embarrassing yourself at a club full of strangers? Sucktastic. Embarrassing yourself in a living room surrounding by friends? That's more like it! The raison d'être for Dance Central isn't to spotlight your running man "prowess." Rather, this Kinect exclusive pits you in heated dance battles against yourself or—better yet—against your pals.
MASS EFFECT 2
Games where you blow enemies away with a rifle are typically heavy on action, light on storyline. Not ME2 where the immersive plot takes more dramatic turns than an episode of "All My Children" (seriously, over 25,000 lines of dialogue were recorded) and in-game decisions, no matter how small, have huge consequences on the game's outcome. Don't worry about things becoming boring; there's a huge list of downloadable weapons meaning you won't be hard pressed to find new ways to kill alien bad guys.
PLAYSTATION 3
GRAN TURISMO 5
Most of us will never know the simple pleasures of piloting a multimillion-dollar sports car hundreds of miles per hour and crashing it in a spectacular explosion of burning petroleum and twisting metal. The closest thing we can hope for is Gran Turismo 5, a game that should really be called Catnip for Gearheads. With over a thousand highly customizable cars, a dozen tracks to zip around on and realistic physics (bonk your front end and the alignment will start to drift), the only thing missing is speeding tickets.
SUPER STREETFIGHTER 4
Chances are you or someone you know pumped quarter after quarter into the original classic Street Fighter. Think of this sequel as a grown up version that's here to entertain you for hours, not steal your parking meter money. Game play is refined and you're never alone—a world-wide network of Street Fighter fans means you can find a match anywhere you have a broadband connection.
GOD OF WAR III
Can't remember someone named Kratos from classics class? Don't worry about it—you've definitely heard of whom he fights in the third installment of the God of War series. Beings with names like Poseidon, Ares and Zeus are all on a bloody "to do list" and it's up to you to kick immortal ass.
NINTENDO WII
GOLDENEYE 007
If you nearly flunked out of college (guilty!) for playing the last GoldenEye, prepare for another assignment of intense first-person shooting with a handy Wiimote instead of a clunky controller. Oh, and good news: Pierce Brosnan's smug mug has been swapped for Daniel Craig's. Finally a Bond who looks like he could legitimately take you to bed and break your kneecaps.
TIGER WOODS PGA TOUR 11
Tiger may have failed to win a title last year, but the games fronting his name still play like champs. Especially on the Wii where, using the ultra-sensitive Motion Plus controller, you get two new swing modes, a 1:1 first-person view and the ability to scan the map and make changes to your stroke on the fly.
STAR WARS THE FORCE UNLEASHED II
Star Wars games, unlike Star Wars prequels, actually can be awesome. They have top-shelf action, coherent story writing and no sign of Jar Jar anywhere. In Force Unleashed II you play as a former secret apprentice of Darth Vader hell-bent on brutally destroying the Empire. (Good luck with that!) Sure the title is available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation but the Wii is where it's at—flicking a Wiimote around like it's a lightsaber is the closest thing most of us will ever get to being a Jedi.
