[October 22, 2009] This week's video game reviews Tweet Oct 22, 2009 (The Arizona Daily Star - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- "Demon's Souls" (PS3, $60, Mature) An unforgiving yet immensely rewarding action role-playing game set in a medieval fantasy world, "Demon's Souls" is one of the PS3's best-kept secrets. You customize and name your character, then set off on a dark journey in which you're forced to combat evil by harvesting demonic souls, as well as doing battle with enormous creatures via magic and strategic hand-to-hand combat. There's little hand-holding here. An opening tutorial forces you to find semi-hidden messages that teach you basic movements -- admittedly, the same info is available in the instruction booklet -- and it only gets tougher from there. Just about any battle you fight can end in your swift death, so you can't go barreling into bad situations without due diligence. The difficulty can be a positive or a negative, depending on your mettle. "Forza Motorsport 3" (360, $60, Everyone) The knocks on the ultra-realistic "Forza Motorsport" racing series has always been that it was too monotonous, lacked personality and was impenetrable to all but the hard-core. The third edition, due out Tuesday, doesn't exactly let its hair down, but it ups the fun factor in several ways. For starters, the racing is more forgiving and in tune with reducing unnecessary frustration. That doesn't mean the computer opponents go any easier on you. Rather, the game gives you the tools you need to spend less time retrying races you lose because of flukes. A helpful rewind feature lets you undo crashes and rash moves that lead to precious lost seconds, and an optional on-track guide helps you find the quickest racing lines and tips you off when to ease up on the gas. The career mode is spectacularly designed, coaxing you along a well-paced career with varied racing types, letting you earn credits to buy better vehicles. There's also a hefty community online. You can race, sell car-tuning setups and upload replay videos. You can't ask for much more from a racer than what "Forza Motorsport 3" offers. "Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days" (DS, $35, Everyone 10+) DS players finally get to sample the bizarre yet engaging pairing of Final Fantasy and Disney characters. The action-oriented, story-heavy, role-playing game takes you through a timeline-skipping story that's just about impossible to explain in a short place. With stunning animation for a DS game -- the game could nearly pass for a PlayStation 2 effort -- "Kingdom Hearts" slips its hooks into you and tugs you along on an adventure that incorporates tons of Disney characters and locations, including Wonderland, Neverland, the "Beauty and the Beast" castle and Halloween Town from "The Nightmare Before Christmas." Offline multiplayer is a nice addition, but not particularly useful given the genre. "Mushroom Wars" (PS3, $10, Everyone) The simple, cutesy real-time strategy game focuses on warring factions of mini mushroom-people who invade one another's mushroom-shaped homes on a battlefield. The goal is to work as quickly and efficiently as possible, transforming your enemy's homes into your own and managing your resources with skill to avoid sending too many or not enough troops out to a specific location at a time. There are many other RTS options out there, but the download-only "Mushroom Wars" is among the cheapest and most accessible. "Sam & Max Season Two: Beyond Time and Space" (360, $20, Teen) The downloadable point-and-click adventure seems pricey, but is actually a solid deal because of the amount of content that comes with the game, which was released episodically on computers. You guide a wisecracking dog and rabbit detective duo through a number of occasionally riotous situations, including tangles with giant robots, zombies and demons. Some of the humor is lame, but overall the second season of "Sam & Max" is superior to the first. As is usually the case with the series, it's common to get stuck with no idea what to do next. Thankfully there are plenty of walk-throughs on the Internet to help you out. "Thexder NEO" (PSP, $10, Everyone) Playing as a laser-shooting robot who can transform into an aircraft, you blast away armies of easily disposable enemies, hulking bosses and icons that turn into power-ups. The downloadable game is "Gradius" with a touch of "Transformers." "Thexder NEO" is best used as a comforting, unchallenging cup of coffee and pie to settle you down after a big meal of a more serious game. The $10 price tag isn't a deal-breaker, but probably a little too expensive given the thin, repetitive gameplay. But if you don't already own 10 other games like this, it's worth a look. To see more of The Arizona Daily Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.azstarnet.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]