The PC-and-console version of Call of Duty 4 rocks as much as expected. But at a recent hands-on session, the DS take also impressed. The 3D graphics look surprisingly good; after a few minutes of settling in, I stopped scrutinizing textures and focused on the gameplay. And that gameplay carries the title.

COD4 switches between FPS sequences, helicopter-gunner modes, bomb-disarming moments, and AC-130 gunship sections. The DS version feels full of care and craft, from thought put into controls, to the segmented sessions that play well on a handheld.

One of the most interesting, and certainly most unique video games coming to the PlayStation 3 this year is Sony and SCE Studios Japan's Eye of Judgment, which combines elements of a physical collectible card game with that of a traditional video game for an experience that is, if anything, wholly its own.

While the influence of card games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon has long been felt in video games, Eye of Judgment represents the first time to our recollection that the marriage of the two mediums has evolved beyond gameplay to take on a more literal meaning. With real cards you hold in your hand, and a playing mat unfolded on the table, it's entirely possible to play Eye of Judgment with no PS3 involvement whatsoever, and even have a good deal of fun doing so. However, as the game comes bundled with the PS3's new PlayStation Eye camera, it seems a shame to leave such shiny new hardware ignored, so when the game showed up at Joystiq proper, we were inclined to put the new device through the wringer.

The dancing-puppet game, Boogie, launches on the DS this "holiday" season. The portable version of the title has more game in it (read: objectives and losing conditions). But after briefly playing, it still seems aimed close at the casual market Boogie (Wii) courted; rhythm fans might want to pass.

Boogie (DS) copies rhythm game techniques, but it comes off as a casual, unfocused Elite Beat Agents. Maybe after hours of playing -- or a better fit with a gamer who's never tried a rhythm title -- it would feel more unique.

I recently got sucked into Burnout Paradise, playing about a half-hour of the racing game due for release this Winter. While a half-hour may not seem like much, at hands-on gaming events, we writers rarely have the time or interest to play more than about fifteen minutes of a title before moving to the next.

Criterion creative director, Alex Ward chatted while I raced through the realistic city; he was clearly proud and excited by the game's deviation from previous Burnout franchise titles. And I was also impressed.

Admittedly, a half-hour isn't enough time to make a complete assessment of a game. But I'm optimistic that the new version of the title will be a smash even if it breaks Burnout traditions.

With Halo 3 arriving in reviewers' hands just yesterday (yeah, Saturday) and matchmaking servers yet to be online, Joystiq's review is still pending further analysis of the game. We did get a chance to make a hurried run through Halo 3's (Heroic) campaign two weeks ago at a Microsoft-sponsored review event, spending a blistering 11 hours perched on chair's edge in a dark conference room. It's not the ideal setting to enjoy what we predict will soon be heralded as a masterwork (a true "Halo killer"), but it did give us a chance to make an initial assessment of Bungie's so-called Spartan-117 finale.

As a single-player experience, Halo 3 plays like a retelling of the first Halo, bringing together elements of the first two games that had both succeeded and failed. The scale is grander, but not on the level proposed by the recent ad campaign. Bungie avoids doing its best Call of Duty impression; instead presenting the most well paced and plotted Halo ever. Gameplay is still mostly consumed by small pockets of self-contained battle, open to interpretation (be that a head-on assault, patient warfare, or the run-on-by tactic), but Bungie has finally mastered timing, switching up environment and swapping from first-person shooter to third-person-vehicle play at just the right moments. Instead of dragging out a particular sequence -- as in the original Halo -- you'll often be thrust into a new scenario wanting just a little bit more of the last.

Where Halo 3 is likely to be criticized is in its distinct Haloness. This is not the Xbox 360's graphical showcase, falling short of benchmarks set by Gears of War last year, and more recently Bioshock. Bungie has never (overtly) shot for this goal, but as the top billing in this year's remarkably rich end-of-year games lineup, mainstream consumerism is always going to judge prettiness first, performance second.

With a projected late-September U.S. release, Wii-only Victorious Boxers: Revolution dukes it out for the best Wii sports title. I recently played a nearly complete localization of the June-released Japanese original, and Victorious Boxers is clearly different than Wii Sports Boxing. While Americans may think the manga art-style should appeal mostly to kids, the animation and physicality are viciously pitched to an older crowd. You're not trying to bowl over your opponent with kindness after all.

The boxing mechanics were harder to gauge than the catchy art. I relied on the two-fisted, motion-only control scheme, although the game offers five other ways to play. After a lot of wild flailing, I felt like I had a general sense of my character. But I never felt like my swings were perfectly interpreted. Hopefully, after an hour or two, players will learn how to move. But while Victorious Boxers easily held my interest, I couldn't predict if this will be a perfect translation between physical moves and game action. At some point, I wonder if the Wii controllers can handle one-to-one motion mapping for fast games.

Throughout the '90s many of our favorite PC gaming experiences were point-and-click adventures: Discworld, Monkey Island, King's Quest VI, Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max, to name a few. Sadly, with the development of 3D graphics the old 2D point-and-click gameplay mechanic was left behind. Grim Fandango is the only game, in our opinion, to successfully carry over the formula into 3D.

Enter Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, the out-of-left-field hit which promises to resurrect the point-and-click gameplay of yesteryear. Tucked away in the back corner of Nintendo's press-only booth stood a single Zack & Wiki display kiosk to which no one was paying any attention (having to walk past various Pokémon, Mario and Metroid stands to get there might have something to do with it). This worked in our favor, however, as we had time to play a few levels before anyone else turned up.

The stylus controls work ... really well. Last week we wrapped our fingers around the plastic pen and pushed Link around Melka Island, impressed with how stimulating the touch-based interaction was. There are a few quirks, like the tiny circles you must draw at the screen's edges to produce a roll, but for the most part Phantom Hourglass is the best kind of gimmick -- one without the icky undertone of shallowness. This is an honest sequel to Wind Waker, and a game that will reinvigorate the DS's software dry spell.

Like most Zelda titles, Phantom Hourglass (and the E3 demo) begins with the basics, coaxing newcomers into the franchise. These routines can be tiresome for experienced players, but the new control system was different enough to make the tutorial sequences enjoyable, and frequent cut scenes helped to draw our attention into the narrative -- and brought out some of DS's less celebrated hardware potentials. But again, it was the touch screen that truly impressed; the satisfaction of commanding Link with stylus strokes, and the ability to do so as we go about our mobile routines.

Having been released in Japan nearly a month ago, Phantom Hourglass is already complete (save for the localization efforts) and earning praise. There's little we can add to what information is already available about the game. But, if you're looking for our assurance, Phantom Hourglass is still a must-play, now more than ever.

Dungeon Hero's title is supposed to be a bit ironic. See, the thing in Dungeon Hero is that you're a a human, but you're not actually good, and the dungeon isn't bad. Through a fantastic opening sequence (found after the break) you'll get the premise of what's going on. A dungeon is just another home with various types of creatures trying to live their lives. Although the set-up sounds like developer Firefly is making Stronghold for the Dungeon Keeper fans, it's actually an action RPG title.

The game won't be released until Q1 of 2009 so there is still a long journey to go before we can accurately say anything about this game. The premise is that the dungeon is at war, it's not a place where gold is just laying around and enemies aren't just hanging around for the adventurer to show up. The idea is to twist the conventions of dungeon games like Diablo which have become the norm. Players will level up and choose different easily deployable combat moves, kind of like what Molyneux is talking about for the upcoming Fable 2. The developers have hired an artist to tell the story through Max Payne style cutscenes, but with animation added. If Dungeon Hero keeps its sense of irony, heaps on some solid gameplay, we'll definitely be looking forward to it, despite it sounding originally like another dungeon crawl game. The only thing Dungeon Hero has to worry about is becoming the thing it is struggling against becoming -- the path which the remake of The Bard's Tale stumbled into.

If you've stood up to a bully and told him he was gonna get a beating, a clever response from him would be "Oh yeah? You and what army?" If you'd responded, "Um ... me and this guy," you probably would have been laughed into oblivion.

In Army of Two, that's all you get ... you and a buddy as private military contractors. The game is completely built around co-op, which the developers frequently found themselves enjoying in games like Halo and Contra (shout out, old school style!) so why not make a game that's all about co-op gameplay? Your buddy can be sitting next to you, via splitscreen, or they can be sitting in Sydney, Australia, via the online co-op. Two's company, three's a crowd.

Legendary: The Box is quite possibly the worst name given to a game with a massive amount of potential. They could have called it Pandora and used one perfect word to describe this first-person shooter in a nutshell -- but they didn't. Thankfully, developer Spark has till Spring of 2008 to change the name. Pandora Legendary: The Box starts with a thief being hired to break into a museum to steal a box. Oops, turns out it's Pandora's box which the thief accidentally activates and all hell breaks loose -- literally. In an incredibly intense scene reminiscent of a Call of Duty or Medal of Honor sequence (coincidentally that's what the developers from Spark worked on previously), the world just plunges into chaos. You'll watch the whole thing happen in real time. From the moment the box is opened you'll attempt to escape the crumbling museum, avoid the griffins, try your best to soak in the insanity that ensues around you, and run away from a golem created from cars and building parts. If your character stops, he'll die.

A later piece of the game takes place in an English cathedral infested with werewolves. Yes, the developers are quite aware the issue there and are looking to tweak it. The controls are your standard FPS stuff and the weapons we saw are based on modern weaponry. You get ammo off the fallen soldiers belonging to the private army of the man who hired you to "steal" the box. Also, the box infuses you with the power to suck life force from fallen beasts to recover health. The game uses the Unreal Engine 3 and considering we're still a little under a year from seeing the final product, the game is already looking fantastic. The developers say where they invested time was in enemy recognition of objects and surroundings so that the experience is never the same twice. The werewolves don't take the same path to a target every time and they'll crawl walls, drop from the ceiling, jump over boxes and the only way they'll stay dead is by shooting off their heads.

The developers also said that multiplayer will be different, utilizing the creatures into various multiplayer types. Humans vs. creatures already sounds like a good and obvious multiplayer experience. We're excited to see more of this game as it comes along. It's still way too early to tell if the game will be any type of good, but a game that utilizes Call of Duty intensity with a modern tale of Pandora's box sounds very cool. Now somebody please change the name of this game to accurately convey how great this title could be when it releases.

Mushroom Men is still many moons away from being done and what we saw was mostly still concept art. There was some in-game footage to show the game is real, but it was a video and not a demo. The thing is that developers Red Fly are on a path at the moment, but where that path leads is anyone's guess. Mushroom Men will release as a 3D platformer on the Wii in the fall of 2008 and as a 2D platformer on DS in spring of 2008 (there were no images of the DS version). The concept of Mushroom Men is that a comet has passed over the planet and the dust left behind has given consciousness to the fungus. The Mushroom Men evolved and are now at war with other fungus, all of this isn't noticed by the humans.

One of the interesting concepts that we couldn't see implemented is the "Scav" system, short for scavenger. You'll collect trash and put it together to form weaponry. For the Wii version they're still working on eight different control schemes and attempting at all costs to have players do battle without feeling like they are doing battle through "waggle." There is a chance for an Xbox and/or PS3 version of the game if it does well on the Wii. The high-res models they showed of the characters in their video clearly can not be done on the Wii and will need to be scaled back. In an interesting aside, the reason the game is being designed for Wii and DS is due to the install base and the fact that it costs half as much as if they were developing it for the more powerful systems. This reasoning may rear its head by many independent developers who just can't afford the $20 million price tags surrounding full featured Xbox and PS3 games.

There's really not much we can say about Mushroom Men. Conceptually it sounds fine, beyond that there wasn't much to show of the game. From the artist concept drawings though we hope the game does do well so we can see the beauty of this title come through on the Xbox 360 and PS3. We also look forward to seeing how the game comes across on the Nintendo DS soon, especially considering spring is only 9 months away -- start incubating those spores now!

Will Ubisoft's My Word Coach, a more linguistically-oriented Brain Age, find an audience? We hope so; as edugaming titles go, this was certainly one of the more enjoyable entries.

The differences between the DS and Wii versions are minimal: the DS has two extra "recreational" games, whereas five of Wii's minigames support multiplayer (the DS only has two). There are six "core" (i.e. education-centric) games of three difficulty levels apiece. The recreational games are also beneficial, as exposure to words helps retention, according to senior designer Peter Yang.

The first thing to came to our minds when we saw Commanders: Attack! is Nintendo's turn-based strategy series Advance Wars. It's not a bad comparison, but it does give you an accurate description of how the game is played: two sides taking turns, moving troops, capturing buildings and entering attack / counter-attack combat with other troops.

Where it differs from the game, most obviously, is the high-definition visuals. Also, while each Commanding Officer has special stat bonuses and abilities, troops cannot enjoy the bonus unless they are within the officer's sphere of influence. The art style of the troops is inspired by what people in the 1930s thought the future might look like.

A fog of war is set for all maps. All in all, there are 15 campaign missions and six maps for the four-player multiplayer modes. Alongside the currently-available Band of Bugs, it's good to see quality strategy titles invade the Xbox Live Arcade. Commanders: Attack! is due out by the end of this year for both the XBLA and the PC.

It's the age-old story of a ball trying to find its home, retold in high-definition visuals for the Xbox 360 and PC. Our two-level demo for Switchball had us traversing over wooden planks, building bridges out of crates, and plowing into metal boxes with our metalball upgrade. It's a simple "get from point A to point B" title with simple controls but still a fun, casual game.

What impressed us most is the physics of the game, particularly in one area where we had to roll on a hanging piece of cloth. There are six levels spanning five worlds, for a total of 30. We were told there will be multiplayer options for up to 8 players, both co-op and competitive modes. Switchball is already out on PC and due out in August for Xbox Live Arcade.