A Cross Between Courtney Love and Peter Pan

Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday is milquetoast compared to BLITZ: THE LEAGUE, and so is Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer's brutal "Instant Replay." The thing that those two offerings have that BLITZ doesn't, sadly, is a compelling, decently-written story. While the game play in the satirical BLITZ is humorous, it's complex enough. In fact, with repetitive cutscenes during gameplay, it can be banal. Now, here's a game that thrives on the idea of titillation: Cheerleaders as whores and violence on the field as the golden rule. While the violence often works as good satire, the cheerleaders as ho's thing falls apart just like the story. When THE HELL are we going to get great writing AS A STANDARD in video games?

The girl's gonna have a ball: that's what's great about METROID PRIME PINBALL, the pinball game for the DS that stars sci-fi icon Samus Aran, who's morphed into a ball and into our hearts for decades. Here's a synapse-splitting game with lots of different playfields, the right ball physics and appearances by Samus (battling bosses galore between levels.) If you crave pinball in a world that just doesn't have enough pinball machines in bars anymore, then you'll love this one.

And yet, it's not as amazing as MILE-HIGH PINBALL for the Nokia N-Gage. With 83 playfields that play up and up and up into the heavens (hence, the title), it's perfect for a cell phone screen. It feels like Pachinko on steroids with its choose-a-ball system which has everything from pinballs that fly to pinballs that bomb. You can also create your own pinball playfield. It's a very surprising dark horse for the N-Gage, whose games keep getting better and better.