Limbo

No color. No cheerful soundtrack music. No storyline, creative characters, weapons, or victories. Just the feeling of hanging in the balance - of being in limbo - and sheer problem solving intelligence means the difference between survival and gory death.

You experience Limbo as a little boy with no identifying features other than bright white eyes, who faces one deadly obstacle after another in a 2D linear left to right black and white haze of shadows and debris. This boy has no weapons and no special abilities; the only trick up his sleeve is your intelligence.

As you progress through the game you come into dangerous situations, or are attacked by predators, and you must solve the puzzle of how to resourcefully evade sudden painful death. Each challenge is unique and requires an original solution. The satisfaction of resolving the danger is immensely gratifying. And, although death lurks around every corner, the game is not stressful or full of suspense. The character dies a shocking death and the game continues again from the last check point, which is rarely more than a few paces from where the last fatal encounter began. This minimizes the stress of backtracking. You mess up, die, and immediately get back to work discovering the solution.

All in all, the game places a calm and sobering demand on your brain power, and is a pleasure to play. Its only flaw is that it ends abruptly - when the obstacles run out.

FIFA 11

You can almost smell the sweat, feel the cool grass, and hear the fans roaring. The newest FIFA has upped the game by making the soccer experience that much more real.

The same shots are no longer played repeatedly, and players literally fight for the ball. The physical interaction between players, the impact of footedness, positioning, and environmental factors such as rain, and the improved goalies all come together to present a greater more realistic challenge.

Although the difference between FIFA 10 and FIFA 11 is not overtly obvious, the improvements can't be missed as you begin to play. For any serious soccer gamer, the upgrade is well worth the investment.

Mario Galaxy 2

The 3 dimensional genius continues with Mario Galaxy 2 - thus moving the bar up a few notches so the rest of the 3D platformers can catch up. The bright array of colors, optimistic soundtrack, fun engaging characters, and vivid 3D experience more than make up for the same old boring story line - Mario leaves his plumbing work and enters Mushroom Kingdom to rescue the princess from Bowser - that has accompanied Mario for decades. Despite the newness and cutting edge effect in Mario Galaxy, much of the same concepts and elements have been carried over from the original Marios, thus gracefully bridging the gap.

A great sequel to a great game. To paraphrase the well-known saying, the best get better.

Tumble

It's back to building blocks. You might not know this, but playing with building blocks is neither juvenile or boring; at least not when you're playing Tumble. This game revives the challenge and satisfaction you felt as a little kid in adult form.

While early levels challenge you to build the highest towers, using the most blocks, more advanced levels will really put your spacial skills to work. Tumble challenges you with blocks of different shapes, sizes, weights, and grips, and then compounds the challenge with downright confrontational building environments.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Back in the pre-school day, building was only half the fun, and so it is here. A game of building blocks is never complete without a fair amount of demolition. And so, Tumble brings you the challenge of trying to effectively obliterate some of the sturdiest structures by strategically placing as few mines as possible.

And, just like you practiced your sharing skills as a little 'tot' during your building excursions, you can invite a second player to enjoy Tumble with you - either as a cooperative endeavor, or as competition.

Scribblenauts

Your imagination is the only limit in this game. In Scribblenauts you conjure up imaginative creatures, characters, tools, or concepts in order to reach your goal in the most creative way possible.

There are 2 types of levels - the puzzles in which your are given a specific puzzle to solve with the tools that you imagine up on the screen, or the action levels in which you traverse the linear environment of obstacles, again with the tools that you imagine up. There is no limit to the fun and delight in coming up with the most wacky, bizarre and creative solutions to the problems you come across.

There are a few shortcomings in the game, though. Namely, the instructions are not always clear, thus making the objective sometimes obscure. And although the on-screen manipulation makes fanciful creation that much more fun, it also makes it harder to be precise and the margin of error (and unwarranted deaths) that much greater. Also, while the sky may be the limit, there is nothing that pushes you to reach for the stars in many levels. In other words, to get the most out of this game the player should have to invent an original imaginative solution in order to negotiate a body of lava, but he could also complete the level by simply conjuring up an airplane and flying to the end.