Assassin's Creed got a justifiably mixed response when it was released in 2007. I loved it for its free-running style in a giant open-world setting and its perspective on religious history, but I also loathed it because of the repetitive missions and the lack of combat AI. With the newly released sequel, the developers go a long way toward fulfilling their promise to address players' complaints about the original.

Tim Schafer has made some cult-classic video games over the past decade, with amazing creativity and humor in his catalog: Grim Fandango (consisting of a mystery in a society of grim reapers), The Secret of Monkey Island (a hilarious pirate-themed adventure), and the award-winning Psychonauts (a summer camp involving psychic powers and a plot to take over the world), even though none of those was a big seller upon release. Four years after the hilarious and highly praised Psychonauts, fans are treated to Schafer's latest project: Brutal Legend, a game set in a fantasy land inspired by heavy metal. Yet despite a vast mythology, a great soundtrack, and hilarious dialogue featuring Jack Black, the overall game delivers more annoyance than enjoyment.

Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS is a rare breed of game that can accurately be labeled "innovative." Most games set in stone the way you play and solve them, but Scribblenauts allows players to employ a tool that kids of all ages know how to use: imagination.

Scribblenauts is a puzzle game with more than 200 challenges based on the goal of capturing a trophy called a "starite." Some puzzles test logic -- such as helping a farmer pick animals for his barn -- while others are action-based, such as finding a way over a shark-filled lake. Type in words to create the items with which you want to solve the puzzle. The game's slogan is concise: "Write anything, solve everything."

In the early '90s, Batman video games based on Tim Burton's movies were bright spots for Nintendo and Super Nintendo, with easy controls and simple combat. But the games based on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin suffered from the same deficiencies as their filmed sources: They lacked the elements that made their predecessors good. Sadly, the handful of games since then haven't improved much. But the new Batman: Arkham Asylum shatters any generalizations about the games with an all-new story based on the comic mythos, a fantastic presentation, and an amazing combat system that leaves you coming back for more.