Platform: Wii
Price: R450
Verdict: Next-level Mario.

One of the best days of my life, as a kid, was being 10 years old and using saved up pocket money to buy a Famicom (Japanese NES) 8-bit console. I had enough cash to get two games with it and chose Goonies and Super Mario Brothers. I had played Atari and other early consoles but the NES was a milestone and Super Mario set the stage for a new era in console gaming. Anyone old enough to remember MacGyver, The A Team and Airwolf will likely also have some nostalgia attached to Mario. But you don’t have to be a child of the eighties to appreciate Super Mario Galaxy 2 which once again raises the bar for platform games.

This is the second in a 3D series of Mario games set in space, along with an amazing variety of power-ups and physics tricks. And it’s ridiculously fun.

The controls are a bit niggly at first, especially the irritating (to me) Wiimote-twist that you have to do to get Mario to spin up against things. This move is the same as in New Super Mario Bros. for Wii and I still can’t get the hang of it. I’m not a big fan of motion gaming in general but at least you can play Galaxy 2 without needing to be standing in front of the TV. You do need to point the controller at the set, however, to manipulate a star-cursor used to collect stars in the game that can also be fired as a weapon.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 requires the Nunchuck attachment for the Wii-remote and uses most of the buttons for specific jumps and moves. A second player can also join in with just a Wii-remote and control a little star that follows Mario around and helps him out. This is a neat feature, but not much fun for the second player.

So we’ve established that this game is fun, but it does also contain some of the frustration common to Super Mario titles. For example, dying will send you back to the beginning of a level and it can be highly annoying to play through again, especially if you were close to a save point before dying. There are also camera angles that sometimes make your movements difficult to judge, sending Mario flying off a planet, for example.

Those annoyances pale when compared to the storyline, however, that is as inane as they come. You can’t skip through the ridiculous dialogue about… like… candy-floss and mushrooms and stars, either. Luckily these sequences aren’t too long, but you have to wonder why Nintendo even bothers with a storyline for Mario games.

That said, the variety in Super Mario Galaxy 2 makes up for any shortcomings and will keep you busy with this game for ages. There are heaps of spherical, 3D worlds to run around on, 2D levels that set a new standard in platform gaming, gravity-reversed levels where you’re stuck to the ceiling and power-ups including a suit that lets Mario create clouds  in mid air to use as platforms and a bee suit for flying around in.

Yoshi, Mario’s dinosaur-friend is also back in this title and you can ride around on him, using his tongue to zap enemies.

If you have a Nintendo Wii this is a must-have title that will keep you busy for ages. You have to push through the first few levels before things really get going, so bear that in mind. It’s a good time. And it’s Mario.

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
Price: R400 – R600
Verdict: The best official FIFA title to date.

I’m  not big on sports games, but a good football title is a must for any gamer’s collection and 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa by EA is the one to own right now. The world cup is in South Africa for the first time and this game introduces some firsts too.

One of the new features is the Virtual Pro that allows you to customise a virtual player and then insert him into any team you want. This opens up a sort of career mode for you and there is a set of achievements linked to your Virtual Pro.

The game is also rich with features. For example, you can map out your own set-pieces for games and then have these played out by your team. There is also a Manager Mode for team and player management.

The amount of game modes and options is overwhelming, but it’s easy to ignore these and get on with things.

As for graphics and animation this is the best looking FIFA game ever and player movement has reached a new degree of realism.

But as good as this game is it’s hard to find much to say about it without boringly listing features. It’s a soccer game, after all, even if it is one of the best I’ve seen. And it’s fun, especially in multiplayer mode.

If you’re looking for a game to satisfy the soccer fever that currently grips the globe then you won’t be disappointed with this title, which is also reasonably priced.

Red Dead Redemption is easily the best game I’ve played this year. It features cowboys, guns, horses and hot chicks – the ingredients of a good time.  The title was developed by Rockstar Games, makers of the Grand Theft Auto series and features the same sandbox-style, go-anywhere-do-anything gameplay of its stable partner.

The game is the nearest thing to perfect I’ve experienced on a console. Your character is former outlaw John Marston. You can ride horses and carriages, hunt animals, pick herbs, have gun battles, lasso and tame wild stallions, hogtie bandits and shoot people in the face.

The storyline is captivating and engrossing, but you can put it on hold at any time to roam the wild west, help or rob characters in-game and cause general mayhem.

The game environment features rich, beautiful graphics and no end of mini-quests, enemies and other encounters to keep you busy with. As with Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption is one of those titles you can kill hours with, just running around and causing kak. It also features a similar ‘wanted’ system whereby you can get on the wrong side of the law, forcing you to evade arrest, and a system for saving your game at specific safe areas where your character can ‘sleep’. In RDR, however, you can also set up camp while in the wilderness and use this to save your game or teleport to parts of the map you have already visited, saving time otherwise spent traveling.

The game did seem a bit buggy in parts and some of the quests feature clumsy combinations of actions that can be frustrating. These are few and far between, however.

The gameplay is rich with everything from being able to whistle for your horse to having choices between killing wanted bandits or tying them up, participating with the law or getting on the wrong side of it and dozens of mini-games including poker, horseshoe-toss and others. You can also hunt and skin animals to earn currency.

If you’re looking for a console game there is no other new title more worthy of your money. Red Dead Redemption offers a perfect balance of fun and challenge and won’t leave you short-changed as it features hours and hours of endless gameplay that is highly re-playable. Rockstar has delivered another winner and its hard to imagine any of its competitors coming up with anything better this year.