Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon
Square Enix | Wii | Crawlin' Through Dungeons
Hi kids! Parish here. Rei was feeling sick today, so I'm going to forgive him for not picking a game of the week... and for snubbing Chocobo's Dungeon. But since he's, like, dead or something, I'm using my godlike wiki-editing powers to name it this week's selection. It's quality! If you like roguelikes. Which you do, 'cause you're reading this site.

Civilization Revolution
2K Games and Maxis | Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo DS | World Conquest Lite
No, CivRev (that's what all the cool kids are calling it!) isn't as hardcore as the PC version. No, there isn't a "play another turn" option after you beat it.

But like it or not, PC fans, this is the best way to introduce new faces to the wonderful world of Civilization. Because that game is com-pli-ca-ted.

Unreal Tournament III
Midway | Xbox 360 | Fast-paced FPS
You should know what this is by now. Unreal is the real ultimate tournament shooter, and it's finally coming at long last to the Xbox 360. Several months after the PS3 release. Weird. Didn't they hear that the 360 is the premiere console for shooters? Oh, but it looks like this version's not just late, it's gimped: You don't get to download user-created content, because Microsoft is paranoid about player-generated stuff. Remember N+? Game 2.0, Ballmer. Learn it. Love it.

XBLA: Schizoid
Microsoft | Xbox 360 | Co-op ship-checking
The first game created using XNA Game Studio Express looks sort of like a mix of Ikaruga and, I dunno, Joust, or some other game where simple contact is an attack. Hydlide, maybe. Schizoid is based on tight teamwork: There are two ships (one controlled by the computer in the event of no second player); one's gold and one's blue, and swarms of enemies are the same two colors. Each ship can destroy enemies of its own color but dies if it takes a hit from enemies of the opposite color. Sounds pretty neat, if a bit U-of-Michigan-biased.

XBLA: Golf: Tee It Up!
Activision | Xbox 360 | Arcade golf
A pretty standard-looking arcade golf game. From the screenshots it appears to be a complete knockoff of the Hot Shots Golf games. Shameless, but there are worse inspirations out there.

VC: King of the Monsters
SNK | Neo Geo via Wii | They have a fight, Triangle wins
King of the Monsters was a game that seemed pretty amazing in the early '90s. But this is not the early '90s! Now it looks clunky and dated, and from what I remember from when I subscribed to GameTap, it plays that way too. My advice? Track down a copy of the totally awesome and quite underappreciated War of the Monsters for the PS2 and play that instead.

P.S.: Hey, could someone release something on VC that's not an old SNK game? Seriously, there's lots of great stuff for SNES that's still MIA.

WiiWare: SPOGS Racing
D2C Games | Wii | Is "suck" a genre?
This game features a bunch of pog-looking things rolling around race tracks inside of tires, which is not nearly as cool as that one dude in Twisted Metal who did about the same thing and wore his feet down to bloody stubs in the process. This looks like total crapware, and is a sad testament to Nintendo's refusal to implement any sort of quality control. All signs point to AVOID.

Talk about how crappy these games are!