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CHICAGO – I like to think most everyone fondly remembers the golden age (roughly 1987 - 1991) of arcade-y side-scrolling beat em’ ups. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “The Simpsons”, “X-Men”, “Golden Axe”, “Double Dragon”, “Streets of Rage”, “Maximum Carnage”, and about a half dozen other games had the nation’s youth punching, kicking, jumping, and special attacking through quarter after quarter in the arcade, and continue after continue on their home consoles.

CHICAGO – “From Dust” is such a unique, unusual experience that it’s tempting to recommend it based purely on its originality. It stands out from the crowd and, for that fact alone, deserves a look for those of you with credit to burn and in need of something refreshing. Ambition needs to be matched by execution though and there are frustrating elements of “From Dust” that can’t be ignored.

CHICAGO – It’s almost as if someone got halfway through post-production on “Battle: Los Angeles,” the awful alien attack movie currently playing in theaters, and it suddenly dawned on them that they hadn’t hired anyone to create the video game tie-in. How else to explain this unusually brief, repetitive, and boring downloadable game, one that will be forgotten as soon as you get over the feeling you’ve been ripped off?

CHICAGO – One of the most anticipated games of the next several months has to be EA’s sequel “Dead Space 2,” a title that promises more incredible action and sci-fi scares. To prime audiences for that title, EA has released a DLC prologue to the game called “Dead Space Ignition” that can be purchased or activated with a pre-order of the January title. An odd mini-game, “Ignition” feels only loosely-related to the “Dead Space” universe and a missed opportunity at something that would truly remind players knee-deep in mega-titles of the season like “Fallout: New Vegas” and “Fable III” that there’s another great game coming soon.

CHICAGO – Everything old is new again. It’s fall 2010 and there are millions of gamers playing a new incarnation of “Castlevania” (review here), a reboot of “Medal of Honor” (review coming soon) and yet another variation on another of the most legendary franchises in gaming history in “Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light,” an immensely-enjoyable downloadable title now available on both the Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

CHICAGO – The incredible world of “Red Dead Redemption” gets a bit bigger today with the release of “Legends and Killers Pack,” a downloadable expansion for the multiplayer portion of the game of the year.