It 
might be considered a family game, but Skylanders Trap Team is something of a homewrecker.
My daughter is completely in love with it and gets upset if I play without her, which poses a problem when you happen to review games for a living. My wife is in charge of paying the bills each month; at some point, she’s going to notice the hefty assortment of Toys ‘R’ Us charges on our credit card statement. The “it’s a write off!” excuse might not fly.
Nintendo is one of the few, refreshing companies 
that constantly surprises you.
As Apple was mounting its assault on the portable gaming space, the Kyoto-based company threw gamers a curve, announcing plans for a new handheld system that would allow users to see images in stereoscopic 3D without the need for special glasses. It was a risky move, but it seems to be one that will pay off.
DanceMasters is an incredibly fun game that puts 
no pressure on players to learn complicated moves. The point is less about nailing routines as it is about scoring points and moving. There’s plenty of flailing about, but that’s half the fun. The song selection likely won’t be familiar to people who don’t go to dance clubs, though, so you won’t be able to dance to songs you’re familiar with — and only 20 of the game’s 31 songs are initially available. (You have to unlock the others and DanceMasters isn’t real clear about how to go about doing that.) Downloadable digital content will seemingly broaden the catalog, but we would have liked to have seen one or two familiar songs.
For all the media attention and fanfare, you might
think Microsoft was launching a new console today. And given what the company is spending on marketing its latest peripheral, you wouldn’t be that far off.
Kinect, a motion sensor device that allows users to play games simply by using gestures and voice commands, hit shelves today – and is predicted by many to become one of this year’s “must have” holiday gifts. Microsoft is so confident in the device that is has raised its internal sales predictions for calendar 2010 from 3 million to 5 million.
But is it any good?
While there’s nothing new about hidden object games,
Little Things brings a sense of freshness to the genre by tucking those objects inside clever collages. The hundreds of tiny objects on screen will force you to slow down and be methodical in your search, though you’re rewarded for speed with puzzle pieces that unlock new collages. It’s a fun combination of incentives. What’s best about the game, though, is it is infinitely replayable. There are a limited number of collages, but the search list is randomly generated and each collage is made up of so many items that you may never run out of puzzles.
Madden fans are a diverse bunch. Some want absolute realism 
in the game, while others simply want a fun football arcade game. Madden NFL 11 for iPad offers both. It’s a gorgeous game that’s fairly easy to control, but some of the included gameplay modes, like GameFlow (which calls the plays for you) could aggravate players. (The mode can be turned off, though.) It’s not the same as the console version of the game — and there are a number of holes, such as the missing (but forthcoming) multiplayer mode and franchise mode — but with the extra screen size of the iPad, it’s the best mobile version of the game.
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Chris Morris: Journalist 