“The summer months are a traditionally barren time in gaming, with most publishers judging the average video game consumer is more likely to be going to be out in the sunshine or spending their money to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster than they are to be clamoring for something new to play.

The only service which continues to lag, for no apparent reason, is the Playstation Network. With 14 PS One ports released this month in Japan, that there’s only one port released in North America (one already released on Xbox 360) is another black mark against a system that really needs to try harder. “

Capsule reviews of Paper Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and Golden Axe, Bomberman Live and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (as it made an appearance on the PS3 this month.) Um, don’t bother to read if you’re annoyed by people who don’t worship Symphony of the Night. It really isn’t as good as the later titles in the series (and don’t get me started on Rondo of Blood, please.)

The last word on downloads this month: If you own a Wii you need Paper Mario. It’s absolutely amazing.

“There’s something very wrong about a game where I spent my time playing the Strikers Challenge mode just to unlock cheats that would allow me to turn off its special shots features when playing offline against an opponent. Doing so turns the game into a superb simulacrum of street hockey and it’s unfortunate that the single and online multiplayer modes don’t allow you the same options.”

So, looking at Metacritic, this is pretty much the least enthusiastic review of Mario Strikers Charged on the web. But every single other reviewer of this game was smoking crack. Mario Strikers Charged is an absolute mess of a game that is sporadically fun despite the majority of the design decisions. If someone could make it clear that Nintendo sports games don’t need to be completely and utterly random that would just be lovely.

Anyway, this is probably my most Canadian review yet – I reference hockey repeatedly!

“One of the most exasperating things about being a Canadian gamer has been the drastic change in value between the Canadian and American dollar. With the currencies due to reach parity any minute now, having to pay a $10 to $20 premium on any game purchased at retail (and that’s not even including provincial and government taxes) starts to sting pretty hard. Unsurprisingly, despite the distinct lack of physical constraints such as importing, shelf space, etc. downloadable titles also require that Canadian gamers pay a premium, generally costing roughly 20-25% more than they do for American gamers.”

Published a little late this month, due to the combination of E3 and some other factors, this is the first of a regular monthly column on downloadable titles for The Globe and Mail. This month covers June’s releases, looking at Pac-Man C.E., Carcassonne, F-Zero X and Super Stardust HD.

And yes, I started this column to justify purchasing Pac-Man C.E.! Anyone familiar with the Pac-Man back catalogue should be amused to see I call it the best Pac-Man title since the completely bonkers Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. If you haven’t played that, you absolutely must – maybe it’ll hit the Virtual Console?

“While many gamers may spend a lot of time crying ‘video games aren’t just for kids!’ it’s obvious that some games just are. While the creators of the latest Pixar film might slip in the odd sly joke for adults, there’s not a sliver of a doubt that the Pokémon series of games are titles designed entirely for, and enjoyed almost exclusively by, children.

In moderation, the games are colourful, friendly and fun, and a far better purchase than many other titles on store shelves, which range from tired, poorly made children’s franchise tie-ins (and while Pokémon may also be a franchise, the games are at least well made) to the violent Grand Theft Auto-a-likes the make the gamers who spend most of their time crying ‘video games aren’t just for kids!’ Most happy.”

I don’t mind that the Pokémon games are for kids, really. I’m sure many adult Pokémon players could spend quite a lot of time complaining about my appraisal of the titles, arguing about all these layers of hidden depth, and while that might be true, it’s unarguable that the games are intentionally simplistic in almost every way, right down to their complete lack of plot.

I am incredibly disappointed with Pokémon Diamond/Pearl in general, however. The move to DS has added nothing to the game other than some (admittedly lovely) online components, and taking the trip back to Pokemon LeafGreen made me realise that there’s just some kind of unexplainable “charm” that’s missing from the latest in the series. I’ll probably keep playing it, though; it’s still irritatingly addictive.

“One of the worst things a film critic can do to a movie is to walk out in the middle of it; it’s a condemnation of a work that they consider so awful that it’s not worth staying until the end to see, at least, if it gets any better.

It’s therefore an unfortunate probability that I’m going to have to ‘walk out’ on the game after a number of hours, without having seen it to the end. The question is, of course, is if I want to run back to it the minute the review is finished.”

The conundrum of how long you have to spend with a game before you can consider yourself to have seen enough of it to review it is one that I imagine most game reviewers struggle with. Are you only fit to review a game if you’ve seen every part of it, or can you stop early if it’s terrible or broken? What if you like it, but you’re play it so much in such a small amount of time you get bored of it?

Who knows? All I know is that it just seems to be a “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of situation; few reviewers reveal how long they spent with a game, and to play a hundred hour game to completion for one review would be slave labour, even if you’re having fun, unless you’re paid ridiculous wages (unlikely.)

I decided, after a number of hours (in double digits) with Rogue Galaxy that I liked it quite a bit, because by then I’d learned that the story was terrible, the world was cheerful but cliché, battles were clumsy fun, and I wanted to continue playing it. Seemed fair enough to me!

In other news: Radiohead’s Jonny thinks Dokutusu Monogatari is “a work of art.”

“While Wario Ware: Smooth Moves may well be astonishingly short and have some terrible design oversights in the multiplayer mode, it is, without a doubt, the most fun I’ve had on the Nintendo Wii so far, and shows off the machine’s potential remakably.

Perhaps it merely had to be over so quickly to maintain such a concentrated level of joy, I don’t know; but if you cherish quality over quantity, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves is essential.”

Before anyone starts on me, yes, I’m well aware that the Wario Ware titles are always really short, but Wario Ware: Smooth Moves was over in about 3 hours, and that’s disappointing, no matter what way you cut it. It’s really, really good though.

“It’s generally a given that the new year that we’ve just entered is 2007 A.D, but for Xbox 360 owners it looks like we’re going to have to come to terms with living in 1 A.G.: After Gears.

Announced at CES as having sold an astounding 2.7 million copies worldwide, there can be few Xbox 360 owners that haven’t played Gears of War at least once, and I sincerely doubt that there are many that, uninterested in its unusual take on the third-person shooter, would be hungry for Lost Planet, a new third-person shooter that joins a marketplace already crowded with other top quality titles such as Rainbow Six: Vegas.”

Lost Planet seems to be a sort of “love it or hate it” kind of game; people are loving it for really being “videogamey” or they’re hating it for being unrealistic.

Personally I don’t love it or hate it; I consider it a pretty bad missed opportunity, though. Like Capcom’s similarly flawed P.N.03, whoever designed the controls was clearly under the impression that they were clever, streamlined and comfortable to use, when they’re actually absurdly clunky and frustrating.

Oh well. At least you can run and shoot at the same time in Lost Planet.

“Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz has a single player mode with an incredibly pleasing control method, and it’s a real shame that Sega spent so long developing a massive range of party games that they forgot to make sure the single player levels were particularly interesting, or that any of the party games would stand out. If they’d limited themselves to perhaps 10 party games and really fleshed them out this could have been a superb package. As it is, it’s for Monkey Ball fans only.”

I think that had I written this review for anyone except the website of an internationally respected newspaper I might have ended it “Banana Blitz? Banana shits, more like.” But that’s probably a bit harsh. Super Monkey Ball’s single player mode is alright (but nothing special.) The party games, though, are a bit like blindly placing your hand in a bag that you know contains about 40 used heroin needles found in the bin of an AIDS clinic, but also 10 precious stones of an ho-hum value, and having a good old rummage.

“Rayman Raving Rabbids might be short, but it’s incredibly sweet, with the unique Gallic charm that has defined the series since Rayman’s appearance in 1992; in what other game could you imagine a reference being made to Les Choristes, the 2004 film about a chorus group at a French boarding school, as seen here in the genius minigame “Bunnies Have a Great Ear for Music”? This kind of attention to detail drenches the game; making it something special, and a hidden gem in the Wii line-up.”

Currently my favourite game in the Wii line-up due to the endless charm of the Rabbids, the one problem with this title is that it’s just so short. Oh, it also ends in a wildly unsatisfying way, as if they left it to the work experience boy to write and animate the finale, or something. The mini-games are fun in solo play or multiplay, but my favourite bits were the on-rails shooter section, which have informed me that I would pay a decent amount of money to Sega if they’d release a Sega Ages: Rail Chase compilation for the Wii.

Rail Chase… What a strange series of games to have fond memories of. As far as I can remember, they’re not even that good!

“That’s perhaps the crux of the problem with Excite Truck, even ignoring the flawed controls; there’s simply no excitement here. And as a launch title for a system that’s supposed to offer something special, something different, that is damning. In the end, there’s one more thing that Excite Truck has in common with Excite Bike other than the name: compared to other titles on the market today, it is simplistic, outdated, and forgettable.”

I didn’t like Excite Truck at all. I remain unconvinced that the Wii remote can work as a “wheel”; I hear that someone (Ubisoft?) created a steering wheel cradle for it to go with one of their games, but control difficulties aside, Excite Truck is just so… Not exciting.