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It's not often that a game is worth buying twice, but Atlus has made a second bite easier to swallow with Persona 3: FES. A special edition of last year's hybrid RPG, Persona 3, FES contains a dearth of new content and the entire original game with new elements and all for an easy $30. While some of the new content doesn't quite live up to the impact of the original release, FES represents a great value and is a must-play for RPG fans who looked it over the first time.



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The bulk of the content on the disc is the original 80+ hour Persona 3 game, dubbed "The Journey" in FES. You play as a transfer student who quickly discovers that his school is the epicenter of a phenomenon known as the Dark Hour, a "25th hour" during the day where time stops for the unaware and a huge tower named Tartarus erupts from the school, the source of an evil plague of beings known as Shadows. Only once you realize you harness the ability to wield the titular entities called personas do you join a crew of your fellow persona-wielding classmates to climb Tartarus and cleanse it of the Shadows over the course of a school year.

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A simple glance at the cute-yet-frightening boxart of Plushees for the Nintendo DS and you might be tempted to group it with the multitude of low quality kids' games that have suffocated Nintendo handhelds for years. However, despite its appearance as a stuffed animal themed minigame collection, it manages to overturn poor expectations with simple and light goal-oriented gameplay. Plushees, despite its inadvertently unsettling exterior, is actually a solid choice for the right age group and may very well captivate budding gamers of the eight-and-below set.

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Plushees' premise is simple: through the power of imagination or dark magic, stuffed animals have come alive and are naturally in need of love and companionship that only you can provide. To do this you must purchase plushees carnival-style with tickets earned from the game's two main modes, Arcade and Plushee Play. It will take a lot of play, as the 25 plushees you can purchase in the Plushee Store cost anywhere between 200 and 1000 tickets and run the gamut from monkeys to dragons.

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One Piece: Unlimited Adventure is a Nintendo Wii exclusive action-adventure game following the exploits of the Straw Hat Pirates of the popular manga and anime series, One Piece. The overall gameplay of this lengthy journey might not be solid enough to hold its own, but fans of the manga and anime will mine a decent amount of enjoyment out of the title. Though some errant attributes keep it from being generally recommended, it plays surprisingly well for a licensed game, but that's not saying much.

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After some misdeeds on the high seas, the Straw Hat Pirates' captain and One Piece's main character, Luffy, is forced to fish aboard their ship as penance for wasting food. He hooks a mysterious orb instead of catching a meal, and this orb causes an island to emerge from under the ship. When the crew comes to, they decide to do what any pirate gang would do and see what treasure the island has to plunder. The absurdity of the plot may only resonate with series fans, but luckily the characters themselves offer some much needed levity in the form of personality, though their at times over-animated nature might put off a few people.

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Sega Bass Fishing for the Nintendo Wii is a port of the arcade and Dreamcast title of the same name, only with the obvious addition of Wii Remote controls. The game wears its arcade heritage on its sleeve with the relative simplicity of the gameplay and its non-simulation style. But more obvious than its roots are the flaws made apparent by plucking this fish out of its 1999 waters and dumping it upstream onto a current game console in 2008.



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Sega Bass Fishing services Wii anglers with a standard variety of modes. Arcade mode naturally features arcade style stage by stage play – catch a bass of a minimum size within a certain period of time or you're out of luck. Tournament mode plays somewhat differently, requiring prolonged competition with other anglers. Nature trip mode loses the restraints of other modes and allows you to fish at your own pace. Actually catching a fish is surprisingly simple and within a minute or two in any mode you'll be able to reel in a bass, even though it might not be the big one.

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Ubisoft announced today a playable demo for its upcoming FPS, Haze. As the game is a PS3 exclusive, the demo will see release on the PlayStation Network in early May, according to Ubisoft. The demo will contain a portion of the single-player campaign as well as four-person co-op multiplayer.

Haze was developed by Free Radical, the British developers known for their TimeSplitters series but probably more famous for comprising key members of the development team of Rare's N64 opus, Goldeneye 007. The pedigree seems to be in Haze's favor.

Haze releases to retail on May 20, 2008.

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A multitude of variables including dozens of Nintendo-themed stages, endless supplies of rule-changing items, and the best character roster in the series yet adds great depth and longevity to Super Smash Bros. Brawl's gameplay. The online component works well despite some omissions, and with fun inclusions like the story mode, sticker and trophy collecting, and custom stage-building, there is nearly a bottomless well of activities in Brawl. It's needless to say that the game will be played feverously up until the next title in the series and anyone who was even remotely touched by Nintendo in their lifetime would find something to enjoy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.



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Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series presents an interesting juxtaposition. As a casual fighter featuring some of Nintendo's biggest and best-selling franchises, it's ironic that Smash Bros's popularity can overshadow even the characters represented in it. Though the situation may seem strange, its appeal to the Nintendo faithful is anything but. The roughly six years since Super Smash Bros. Melee have done nothing but keep anticipation and expectations high for the next installment and the result--Super Smash Bros. Brawl--will not disappoint. 

Super Smash Bros. Brawl can be compressed to a single rule: to knock your opponents off the sides of the screen. You accomplish this by beating your opponents to a pulp to raise their damage percentage. The higher their percentage, the farther they fly, best done with the namesake smash attack. It's really that simple. But just because the concept is simple doesn't mean it's simple in practice.

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Kneel. Place hands on either side of the ceramic-like object. Wait. A sudden urge takes you, spewing the remains of a previous ingestion. You glance at what was just created; between the remains of what were once good ideas you see those extra things you tacked on that seemed like a quick fix at the time but ultimately caused their own regurgitation. You lament at the pain you caused yourself, but deep down you can feel that the pain is still there.

So what have you been eating? Or in this case, what have various developers been feeding the ceramic bowl in question, the Wii? Their own regurgitation, that's what - and a little bit of Nintendo's own leftovers for good measure. The Wii is the one that's sick, suffering from delirious spells of minigame collections, shoddy ports, forced motion control schemes, and God knows what else.

A little examination is in order. Five case studies have been prepared, each a different opinion of how Wii software appears. Some of it isn't too pretty – but fear not, we might even discover a cure. So lean back, relax, and try not to throw that Wii remote into the tv.

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With new consoles come the promise of new experiences - or at least, that's the assumption one can make with the coming of the latest and greatest technology. More power - or a disruptive peripheral - can be exploited to make a familiar experience better and the old (seemingly) irrelevant. One of the first generations where this was truly evident was the advent of the Super NES. Games like Pilotwings and F-Zero exploited the newfound strength of the Super NES (notably its Mode 7 scaling effect) to truly show us that hey, technology (in this case, the ubiquity of the NES) does wither in obsolescence.

But while those games dazzled and impressed with their graphical effects, where was the truly epic game that was able to build on the previous generation's cornerstone without relying on technology's unfortunate excesses? Final Fantasy IV's crew of Cecil, Kain and co. had something to say about that. Square released Final Fantasy IV in 1991 and to this date it remains a dividing line between the simplistic console RPGs of the Dragon Quest vein and the more modern (some would say mired in an eternal rut), flashy approach taken by most Japanese RPGs since Final Fantasy VII.

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More St. Elsewhere than Scrubs (with a touch of the X-Files thrown in), Atlus's Wii surgical simulation series gets a shot to the arm today as Trauma Center: New Blood ships to stores.

The first original title in the series since 2005's Trauma Center: Under the Knife (of which last year's Trauma Center: Second Opinion was a remake), New Blood focuses on two new doctors named Valerie Blaylock and Markus Vaughn, for good reason - the game adds in co-op gameplay, a substantial new feature it offers over its predecessors.

Instead of taking turns cutting a poor patient's heart to pieces, you and a friend can now do it together! Trauma Center: New Blood should be available widely in stores tomorrow.

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There's no doubt about it - Super Mario Galaxy is the finest Mario game in years. It's easily the best out of the current three 3D Mario platformers, evolving beyond the genre-defining nature of Super Mario 64 and the uh...water-spurting innovations of Super Mario Sunshine. However, the game pays tribute to more than just Mario's 3D outings.

The first time a third Mario game was the best of its series happened way back in 1988, with the release of Super Mario Bros. 3. Yes, 1988 - it's not often known that the game was originally released that year in Japan. Americans likely had to wait due to Nintendo not wanting to cannabalize sales of the then newly-localized Super Mario Bros. 2, released the same year. After the seminal preview in 1989's abysmally cheesy cult film The Wizard, Mario 3 finally hit US stores in February 1990. It was worth the wait. Featuring huge stages and innovations, like the ability to fly, Super Mario Bros. 3 was all a pre-pubescent mind could hope for - and more.

My memories of Mario 3 fresh in my mind due to the Mario high I achieved from Galaxy, I decided to revisit this nearly two-decade old title to see just how well it held up. While the game has seen resuscitation on the Wii's Virtual Console, I already had my Super NES hooked up so I settled for my old Super Mario All-Stars cart - you know, the one with Super NES enhanced ports of Marios 1-3 and the suicide-inducing Lost Levels. Once I found the cart in a bin amidst the gutter trash of my Super NES collection (the Beethoven movie game? seriously?) I popped it in my 16-year-old console and flipped the switch. Nothing happened. I calmly removed the cartridge and gave its pin connectors the long and hard blow usually reserved for NES carts. Worked like magic. I selected SMB 3 with haste, my only lament being that I didn't have the original SMB 3 Nintendo Power Strategy Guide at my side like I would have if I were still that fat nine-year-old kid.

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