The 3^rd episode of the Tales Of Monkey Island was recently released and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Tales Of Monkey Island: Lair of the Leviathan from Telltale games is another excellent installment in the classic puzzle game series. If you are a fan of classic style puzzle games and you have not yet bought the subscription to this series I highly recommend you head over to Steam (store.steampowered.com) and get yourself the subscription for this fantastically fun and entertaining game. In the latest installment we find our hero eaten by a giant manatee and Pinocchio style must find his way out of the belly of the beast.

If arthouse developer Vanillaware is known for anything, it's creating games that can aptly be described as ornate, both in the visual and tangible sense.  Among the studio's creations, Muramasa the Demon Blade stands out as perhaps the most beautiful and sensible.  Even if it doesn't completely escape the flaws of Vanillaware's brand of game design, the title ultimately prevails to fit the designation "action RPG" perhaps more than any other game I've seen.

For those not familiar with Vanillaware, they are most famously responsible for Odin Sphere - a 2007 PS2 action RPG that showed us what 2D sprites could look like on modern hardware, but was also pretty zany in its design.  A lush recreation of Richard Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen, the game dragged players down a timeline of five intersecting stories over 60+ hours while making them study complicated role playing systems.

Now we get Muramasa for the Wii - a chronicle of two warriors' quests across fairytale Japan that has players gather up 108 swords.  In its core game design, Muramasa is quite tame compared to Odin Sphere, going for a more even balance between action and RPG, but it maintains the baroque presentation of its predecessors.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (published by Activision) brings back a pack of Marvel super heroes out to save the world once again from the clutches of evil. With super powers of all shapes and sizes you create your ultimate team of heroes to take on the world and all the bad guys you can shake a stick at!

Graphics

Adelle – The first thing that really jumped out to me about this game are the character models! While the in game models are great the detailed models in the selection menu are fantastic! They look great, the textures are fantastic, and I love the costume choices. The graphics in general look very good. While not everything is perfect there are no huge flaws to gripe about. If anything I think the overall tone in the first parts are too dark which makes it difficult to keep track of your character but thats nothing that a little gamma adjustment won't fix. Overall I like the look of this latest installment. I especially love the look of the super powers!

In the notepad, you can write anything you can think of! However, there are a few rules to what objects you can write. First, it must be a real-life physical object. Additionally, it cannot be: a place, proper name, suggestive material, shape, Latin or Greek root word, alcohol, race or culture, vulgarity, or copyrighted.

That is the explanation found in a tutorial level of Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS. I assure you that if those stipulation seem limiting they are not. Here are a few things that Maxwell -- the main character -- can create that I didn't even know about before playing Scribblenauts: Ahool, xun, and verger. All of those things are in the game. Not only are they in the game, but just about everything behaves and interacts as it should. Give a fireman a hose and he'll put out fires. It works and it works surprisingly well. That leaves us with the game bit, which is a split between Donkey Kong '94 type "action" levels and logic-testing "puzzle" levels. No one can argue that the mechanics behind scribblenauts are not fun, but does it work as a game?

Contra is generally considered the father of the run-and-gun genre. Konami's Contra ReBirth, released through Nintendo's WiiWare service, is an attempt to carry on the series' pedigree. Unfortunately, it ends up being more of a lateral move than an improvement on a beloved classic.

ReBirth's ridiculously self-aware plot, involving time travel, Galactic Presidents and cross-dressing guerrillas, is just an excuse to shoot some aliens. Players take control of Bill Rizer and partner Yagyu Genbei (controlled by a second player) to run, jump and shoot through the game's levels, which range from a space station to a highway and some ruins. In a nod to the casual nature of WiiWare titles, ReBirth can be played with a sideways Wiimote with simplified controls. This is serviceable, but thankfully, Classic Controller support provides an optimized alternative for series vets.