Venturing deep beneath the waves to explore lush aquatic worlds teeming with life and mystery in Endless Ocean was a completely different experience from what most players had previously encountered on the Wii. The ultrarelaxed atmosphere along with the open-ended, go-at-your-own-pace deep sea diving journey proved to be soothing and engrossing. However, it didn’t pack much punch in the way of solid direction or a compelling plot. Considering the original concept was such a neat idea in the first place, it’s great to see that developer Arika took much of the criticism leveled at the game to heart in crafting Endless Ocean: Blue World. This impressive sequel is loaded with many small but truly effective improvements and a few major additions that give it some sturdy sea legs. It also strikes a much stronger balance between experimentation and structure to deliver a tighter, more focused underwater adventure without dampening the fun.

Blue World’s story starts off in the South Pacific and sends you on a winding oceanic trek across the globe in search of ancient treasure. As a university student with an interest in folklore, you decide to take a break from school and join up with the L&L Diving Service to pursue the legendary Song of Dragons. It turns out the owner of L&L–a grizzled old deep sea veteran named Jean-Eric Louvier–lost his son in a freak accident 15 years prior while they were attempting to uncover the mystery behind the Song of Dragons. Pitching in with the diving business, you soon get swept up in a wild quest to help Jean-Eric’s young granddaughter, Oceana, find the truth behind the legend her father so desperately sought to unveil. The fully developed tale is actually quite interesting once it gets going. It does a great job of providing some solid momentum to contrast with the game’s sandbox-style elements. You’re also free to tackle the story-progression missions–and any of the game’s other activities–entirely at your own pace. Even if you decide to plow straight through the adventure, which takes quite a few hours to accomplish, you can still go back after the credits roll to continue playing around with all the extra diversions and unfinished business you left behind.

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BioShock 2 is a beautiful and disturbing return to Rapture.

When the city of Rapture was first unveiled, it was an underwater dystopia ravaged by civil war and self-destructive genetic manipulation. This strange and unforgettable world was also one of awe and wonder. Set nearly a decade after the events of its precursor, BioShock 2′s Rapture is just as haunting and atmospheric the second time around (and perhaps even more so), but the sunken tomb of Rapture has lost much of the mystery that made it so memorable. Everything seems a bit too familiar, and the story that accompanies your journey is not as impressive or shocking as the original. Despite this, BioShock 2 plays host to several enhancements over the first, including an expanded set of moral dilemmas, improved shooter mechanics, and a surprisingly fun and engaging multiplayer mode. Whether or not you’ve experienced Rapture before, BioShock 2 is an all at once beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking experience that stays with you after you’ve shut it off.

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon.” Scrawled across the wall above a board covered with photographs, these words greet you in the waterlogged, decaying opulence of Adonis Spa after you awaken. Ten years have passed since the surprising events of BioShock 2′s opening cinematic, and you’re a man with a mission: to find your Little Sister. As Subject Delta, one of the original Big Daddy protectors first introduced in BioShock, you were pair-bonded with a Little Sister named Eleanor Lamb through a love that could literally kill you. Your mutual desire is to be reunited, but Eleanor is now being held captive by her mother, Sofia Lamb, the new master of Rapture. As an altruist and collectivist, Lamb is the diametric opposite of Andrew Ryan, the wealthy industrialist who founded Rapture as a place where mankind could be unfettered by petty morals, the hand of government, or the word of God. As an antagonist, she lacks Ryan’s charisma and larger-than-life presence, but her personal philosophy and particular brand of madness nonetheless provides an interesting, if heavy-handed, alternative to his.

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The space combat is short-lived fun, but everything else about this online role-playing game is bland and shallow.

Star Trek Online doesn’t boldly go where no one’s gone before. Instead, it mildly coasts along without much drama or excitement. Developer Cryptic Studios’ latest online role-playing game is a “bare minimum” kind of experience, doing just enough to get by, but doing so without an ounce of flair and without the anything-can-happen-in-space buzz that makes the television shows and films such a delight. The game falls into a predictable rut quickly, relying almost solely on spaceship battles for entertainment and falling short almost everywhere else. Luckily, that combat can be fun, and in the best and biggest battles, your screen will light up with phasers and torpedoes, momentarily capturing the thrill of interstellar adventure. Unfortunately, those moments of epic wonder are mostly extinguished by underwhelming cookie-cutter missions, clumsy and unfulfilling ground combat, and shallow exploration that fails to capture the wonder and beauty of deep space. Star Trek Online is light, easy, and shallow, and those may not be qualities you’re seeking from your next virtual universe.

The game may be disappointing, but character creation is a delight. As in Cryptic’s previous games (Champions Online, City of Heroes), the toolset is highly flexible. It not only offers a healthy number of races from the Star Trek universe, but it also lets you create your own alien being from scratch. While you run about the game’s space stations, you might see relatively normal-looking humans of the Captain Kirk variety, Vulcans sporting the pointiest ears you could hope for, or even odd monstrosities born of the player’s creativity. When you first begin, you’re stuck with the United Federation of Planets, though after you earn a few levels, you unlock the chance to join the Klingon Empire. If you were hoping to live and die with honor with the Klingons, however, you’ll discover that the associated content is bare and unfinished. Missions drop off quickly, and you’re stuck with player-versus-player content to fill in the enormous gaps.

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This return to a beloved series is brutal enough, but it doesn’t pack the punch of its forebears.

When three mediocre games are jammed into a single package, the result is still mediocre. That’s unfortunate, because Aliens vs. Predator is a game you want to love. It comes from the developer of the beloved first game in the AVP series, and like that game, it features three distinct campaigns with three somewhat differing styles of play. And of course there is the undeniable fact that predators and aliens are awesome, and the idea of controlling them in a game is just as awesome. But concept and nostalgia aren’t enough to make Aliens vs. Predator worth playing, though certain moments will make you squirm in delight in spite of the game’s noteworthy flaws. Sadly, the sight of the predator as he rips the spine out of his human victims is a short-lived joy because of the general clumsiness that invades almost every aspect of developer Rebellion’s newest addition to the franchise. The recycled levels are poorly designed, control issues make playing as the alien a chore rather than a pleasure, and numerous minor defects weigh the whole experience down. Most importantly, Aliens vs. Predator’s campaigns just aren’t much fun, and while the multiplayer is somewhat better, it’s unlikely to be your go-to online shooter.

Aside from its storied history, Aliens vs. Predator’s main appeal is its three disparate campaigns, in which you respectively take control of a marine, an alien, and a predator. Each campaign has its strengths and starts well enough. The first two levels of the marine story, which plays as a fairly typical first-person shooter, are dark and creepy, making good use of atmospheric lighting to enhance the tension. Your first encounter with a creepy-crawly xenomorph is properly nerve-racking and will have you searching about in the dark, using your handy motion tracker to try to figure out exactly where it is (while trying to bear with the tracker’s incessant beeping). Playing as the alien, your escape from the confines of a laboratory features some good old-fashioned bloody head-chomping, and there is some short-lived fun in crawling all over the walls and ceilings. And the predator offers his own delights. It can be fun to leap from surface to surface while you gaze down at hapless marines as they stroll underneath and you prepare for a gloriously disgusting kill.

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