I wonder if Bob Kane knew that his creation, Batman, would reach such heights of pop culture significance and popularity. The Caped Crusader is as popular today as ever, after decades of comics, TV shows, toys, movies, and video games. The Batman video games have been everything from terrible to good over the years, but Rocksteady Studios and Eidos Interactives' newest, Batman: Arkham Asylum, is by far the best. Not only is Arkham Asylum the best Batman game, it's an incredible game all around that you absolutely should not miss.

Classic Hanna-Barbera in a regrettably not-so-classic videogame.

What was the first intuitive idea you thought of when Nintendo first announced its Dual Screen wonder, the Nintendo DS? Like many of you, I immediately imagined playing spinoffs of some of my favorite Real Time Strategy titles on a handheld and even fighting my friends using wireless internet. After giving developers a lengthy grace period there was no doubt in my mind that some company out there would be striking gold with their “first ever successful portable RTS.” 3 years later, we’re still waiting for Command & Conquer DS (wouldn’t that be awesome?) and my initial hopes have shifted into uncertainties. Sure, we’ve seen some attempts at RTS’s out there but when is a game studio going to get serious? Or will we ever experience quality RTS on the DS?

Do you remember Requiem – Avenging Angel? What a cool game, although it had numerous bugs. Games with battles between heaven and hell are always intriguing, but just having that premise as a backdrop to a game doesn’t make it great. In Infernal, a new third person action game, the struggle between heaven and hell is revisited again. Infernal has a pretty impressive presentation, which I’ll elaborate more on throughout this review, but it fails to pull together a really solid gaming experience. Instead I found it to consist of a lot of seemingly random ideas that don’t fit together very well to produce a game that is pretty fun for the first couple of hours, and a chore after that.

I remember the original Tomb Raider game on the PC back in 1996. It was cool, a real unique and standout game for the time. Since then another half dozen Tomb Raider games have come out, none of them really being as impressive as the first in my opinion, although most recently Legend was quite good. Even more recently, this month actually, Eidos Interactive and Crystal Dynamics teamed up to release Tomb Raider Anniversary. Anniversary takes the original Tomb Raider from eleven years ago, rebuilds it on the Legend engine, and makes a series of improvements to the original classic. It’s still not perfect, but for any fan of Tomb Raider, this is one you won’t want to miss.

Pocket Pool.  Now one could argue this is an appropriate title for a billiards game on a handheld.  Still, others might accept the modern interpretation, which urban dictionary defines as "to indescretely play with your balls."  Half naked women everywhere and a Mature rating from the ESRB seem to suggest this is slightly more than your standard pool title.  Indeed, it appears as if the developers/marketing team/whatever have employed a pun that lives and dies within the adolescent phase of every male's life.  Bravo, guys, that's just about on par with BMXXX.  Anyway, let's get on with the show so we can see if the strength of the gameplay measures up to such cunning wit!

Don't ever judge a book by it's cover.  It's a cardinal metaphor in the judgment process, be it food, literature, or, yes, even videogames.  On occasion, awesome games are blessed with awesome covers (think Shadow of the Colossus).  Sometimes, though, interactive works of art are fronted by a horrendous depiction of the game's alleged content (Final Fantasy XII).  That being said, when Diner Dash: Sizzle & Serve rolled in to the top my queue, it was met with a curious reaction; what the hell?  

Ah, light gun games. I miss them, I really do, and I hope the Wii brings them back in force. That said, I was pleased to receive Touch the Dead for the Nintendo DS in for review. While not really a light gun game, Touch the Dead will seem very familiar to anyone that has played any light gun game. Using the stylus as your light gun, Touch the Dead puts players in the role of Rob Steiner. You never learn much about Rob throughout the four chapters in the game, but what you do know right off is that he is a convict who wakes up and discovers that his jail cell is open and everyone has gone missing; in their place are now hundreds of very hungry zombies.