Eventually, the villagers discover outsourcing, so they’re free to work on building casinos. The WarChiefs expansion pack for the Age of Empires III real-time strategy game adds three new civilizations: the Iroquois Confederacy, the Sioux Nation, and the Aztec Empire. Each has a Tribal Council (similar to a Home City) and a powerful WarChief. The well-rounded Iroquois produce artillery and siege units. The speedy Sioux start the game with a full population that’s unable to build walls for their encampment. The Aztecs are focused only on a strong infantry, with their elite troops laying waste to buildings and cavalry alike.
Mars...needs...women! Wannabe movie moguls who idolize Carl Laemmle or Harvey Weinstein can carry out their Hollywood dreams in The Movies, which casts you as a studio executive, building a production house from silent-era beginnings to modern, big-budget times. While the game often lampoons the industry, The Movies follows a fairly linear simulation script where players churn out productions to succeed. But detailed movie-creation tools for user-generated videos twists the game more than an M. Night Shyamalan ending.
The Tankstick puts old-school controllers like those at left to shame, both in size and capabilities. You call yourself a serious gamer - but what are you doing fumbling with keyboard controls and a mouse? You can’t call yourself a serious gamer until you get a nice game controller. If you want to let everyone know you’re really serious, then get a Tankstick.
Didn't Leia have pigtails in Return of the Jedi? An idea that seems to have been more likely spawned at a late-night, beer-filled party than between two major corporate brands, Lego Star Wars II re-creates the original Star Wars trilogy with Lego characters playing the roles. Dozens of them are formed in the same basic plastic shape, and even spaceships and other items are built with the classic bricks, scattering apart when destroyed. Answering, “Why not?” to our dumbfounded, “Why?” this strange juxtaposition laughs at itself, creating a game that’s often funny as well as fun.
It’s been a while since the Mac has seen a new Age of Empires game, but the wait is over. MacSoft has finally completed its conversion, bringing the latest installment of the series to us - the strategy-starved Mac users. Age of Empires III takes you back to the conflict between the European powers fighting for their fair (or unfair) piece of the New World pie (North and South America for the historically disadvantaged reader). In this setting, you’ll have access to the magic of gunpowder from the get go - in stark contrast to its advanced technological status in the earlier games. Despite this shift in backdrop, the game plays very similarly to previous titles in the AoE series.
Shoot candies from the launcher to create strings of three. It's bad enough that we're addicted to sweets. Now we're addicted to Sweetopia too. In this fast-paced casual game, you pop different types of candy before quick-moving chains of confections hit each other and explode. If you've ever played the popular Zuma, you'll feel right at home.
Like sands through an hourglass, these are the chapters of your Sims' lives. Sims fanatics finally get a break from the continuous barrage of expansion packs in the form of The Sims Life Stories, a new stand-alone game for the Sims franchise. While the premise is the same as in other Sims games - you micromanage the lives of virtual people by making sure they eat, sleep, shower, and so on - it also features several changes that give new life to an aging premise. 
You can't miss in FizzBall, especially in kids' mode. FizzBall successfully puts new spin on the Breakout style of game, where the object is to eliminate brick walls with a bouncing ball. As Professor Fizzwizzle, you use a fizzball to capture and save cute little animals that have been abandoned on an island. Using a steampunk-style paddle, the professor swats the fizzball at animals, food, and more, but capturing the animals isn't easy -- numerous obstacles block the fizzball's path.
Lego Greedo can't be far away. Feral's Lego Star Wars II ($40, www.feral.co.uk) combines the classic Star Wars universe (from episodes IV to VI) with the lovable style of Lego building blocks, all wrapped up in platform/collection gameplay. Armed with a good blaster and these tips, win the game you will. 
We can't get enough of the graphic style. Explosions and dead enemies leave eraser scuffs on the background. SketchFighter 4000 Alpha brings so much style to an arcade shooter that it almost forgets to pack the substance. Instead of the latest glossy 3D graphics, SketchFighter animates scribbles from a teenager's math homework into a top-down, 2D arcade shooter - and the uneven, scribbled lines are as stunning as they are simple.
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