“Dead Island” was a decent co-op game and surely, the thinking went, the next one would be better.

Well, the next “Dead Island” is here, sort of, in the form of “Dead Island: Riptide,” and it isn’t any better.

The $50 “Riptide,” priced and marketed as something more than an expansion pack and something less than a true “Dead Island 2,” is a frustrating mess.

With “Riptide,” which takes the characters from the first game and drops them onto a different, zombie-infested island with one new companion, Techland has created a lifeless, shambling remix of the original “Dead Island.” Rather than improve upon what worked in “Dead Island,” the studio has apparently spent the past year and a half taking the meat of the first game, porting it over to a new, similar setting and grafting on a handful of new features, at least one of which feels half-broken.

As in “Dead Island,” you roam across a large, tropical paradise, fighting off undead as you learn about the origins of the plague, look for a way off the island and fulfill requests from various non-player characters. As you go, you’ll customize your character’s abilities, plus make upgrades to weapons and craft improvised equipment at various work benches.

At its best, the combat in “Dead Island: Riptide” is visceral and tense. From a programming standpoint, it can feel clunky, but the inelegant, imprecise hand-to-hand battles actually compensate for your foes’ brain-dead tactics, achieving a sort of perfectly balanced zen of incompetence.

It’s too bad the rest of the experience feels so lifeless. Structurewise, “Riptide” feels a lot like Gearbox’s “Borderlands” games, with quest givers and loot sprinkled liberally throughout the game world. Sadly, though, “Riptide” has little of “Borderlands’” oddball humor or over-the-top goofiness. Instead, the game aims for a desperate, even poignant emotional tone it’s incapable of hitting.

Like the first “Dead Island,” “Riptide” is also a glitchy mess. Before the game even launched, players online were using ridiculous, overpowered machine guns they’d hacked the game to get. (I’ll confess to using one that someone dropped in my game to power through the “Riptide’s” back stretch.)

One of “Riptide’s” new features, boats used to navigate the island’s numerous lagoons, is a great idea, but it’s beset by technical issues.

I encountered one such issue early in the game, when I was tasked with finding a boat to advance the plot line. I spent about 45 minutes carefully canvassing the green area highlighted on my mini-map, looking for any kind of boat, but nothing turned up. Eventually, I discovered that when I stood in one specific spot on one specific pier looking out into the water, a button prompt appeared. When I pressed “X,” my character commented that she’d found the boat, but that it needed an engine.

That’s right, I spent close to an hour searching for an invisible boat. With visions of my character skimming across the water in a sitting position, like Wonder Woman in her invisible jet, I went off and found the boat’s engine. When I returned, though, the icon representing the part of the invisible boat onto which I was supposed to install the engine was moving all over the screen. After 10 minutes of trial and error, I was able to place the engine into the invisible boat, at which point, all signs of the boat and the engine vanished.

Luckily, I did not have to start the game over. I was able to walk to an adjacent area and grab a perfectly functional boat from a marina. But the point remains: If I hadn’t felt obligated to soldier through the hunt for the invisible boat so that I could finish the game and write this review, I probably would have put down “Riptide” and never returned.

The invisible boat was not the only problem I had with water-borne travel. At another point, a boat I was piloting suddenly ended up jutting out of the water at a 75 degree angle and would no longer move. Many more times, I would die and the game would respawn me in some weird area that required me to slog through the water for several minutes in search of another vessel.

The trouble with video game bugs is that they’re like bugs in your home. When you see one, you get neurotic and imagine hundreds more lurking out of sight, ready to ruin your game.

For the rest of my “Riptide” playthrough following the invisible-boat episode, nagging doubts about the game’s creators burbled to the surface every time I was tasked with searching an area for an item and did not immediately find it. Was I missing something, or was I criss-crossing the map looking for something that wasn’t there?

Like its predecessor, “Riptide” has a solid enough foundation that Techland may yet have a truly great “Dead Island” game up its sleeve. But “Riptide” isn’t that game.

“Dead Island: Riptide,” rated M, costs $50 for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. For this review, I played a review copy provided by the publisher. I sampled online co-op play with a coworker who also had a publisher-provided copy, and also played online with members of the general public, pre- and post-launch.

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The violent first-person shooter takes players to the scientific and technological marvel of Columbia, an early-20th century city that floats among the clouds. Playing as Booker DeWitt, a former union infiltrator for the Pinkertons, you journey to Columbia to rescue a young woman named Elizabeth. If you bring her to New York, DeWitt’s copious gambling debts will be wiped out.

Upon arrival, DeWitt discovers the city is under the control of a zealot named Zachary Comstock. Calling himself, “The Prophet,” Comstock has imprisoned Elizabeth, a messiah figure, in a massive tower.

Even though video games are regrettably stocked with a seemingly endless supply of women who need rescuing, Elizabeth is far from helpless. Possessing the ability to see and interact with parallel universes, she’s arguably the world’s most powerful person as she tugs at tears in the space-time continuum. Her efforts serve mundane purposes, such as bringing in allies to fight alongside DeWitt, but they also drive the game’s story forward in ways I won’t spoil other than to say that they’re frequently astonishing.

Set in a different world with different characters, “BioShock Infinite” isn’t a sequel to “BioShock” or “BioShock 2” in the traditional sense, but the three games share a number of themes. Like the first two games, “Infinite” revolves around a conflict of ideologies, as a populist uprising in Columbia seeks to unseat Comstock’s city-state built on religious zealotry and rampant racism.

“BioShock Infinite” Creative Director Ken Levine, who oversaw the original “BioShock” but not the sequel, smartly adopts “BioShock 2’s” more character-oriented, drama-infused approach to storytelling. The tale of 20-year-old Elizabeth being freed from the yoke of captivity and becoming an independent person dovetails closely with the maturation of “BioShock 2’s” Eleanor, one of the best-written characters to grace a video game.

What makes “Infinite” the best story in the series, though, is the voice and personality that Levine, voice actor Troy Baker and the game’s writers give to DeWitt. Unlike the silent heroes of the first two “BioShocks,” DeWitt is a fleshed-out creation with his own personality and character arc, as opposed to some mute cipher onto which players are supposed to project themselves. He’s a man, not a power fantasy.

From the heady plot that spans alternate realities to frank, brutal depictions of early 20th-century racism, “BioShock Infinite” feels every bit like the mature, M-rated game it is. But it’s also that other kind of M-rated game, the kind where much of the gameplay revolves around genre staples like headshots, gruesome executions and incinerations.

DeWitt’s background as a war veteran and anti-union muscle justify the brutality well enough that it’s unfair to make “BioShock Infinite” the poster child for the argument that video games have become violent at the expense of being creative. At times, however, the game’s adherence to familiar video game trappings undermines its gripping story.

The gameplay in “BioShock Infinite” will feel familiar to anyone who played either “BioShock” game, as your right hand wields a firearm while you sling a form of metaphysical magic with your left arm. In “BioShock” and “BioShock 2,” these special abilities were known as “plasmids”; in “BioShock Infinite,” they’re called “vigors.” Though the eight vigors you can find aren’t carbon copies of the original plasmids, there’s enough similarity there that using vigors in combat is seamless and easy to get the hang of.

That level of familiarity extends to other interfaces, including virtually the same looting and health regeneration system from the original “BioShock.” Back in 2007, plenty of folks commented on how strange it was that “BioShock’s” main character journeyed through a flooding, underwater city whose floor was littered with syringes, all the while eating old potato chips found in garbage cans to regenerate health.

In “BioShock Infinite,” more than five years later, Booker DeWitt is eating hot dogs and cotton candy off of mutilated corpses. Couldn’t Irrational have come up with something different in the interim?

Now that we’re three games into what we’ll call the “BioShock” series, this level of familiarity with “Infinite’s” core combat means that a lot of the shooting parts feel somewhat routine — roadblocks that must be cleared to experience a wonderful story. While large set pieces where DeWitt and Elizabeth do battle against dozens of enemies are well-orchestrated, technically sound and “fun” in a video game sense, the game’s most memorable moments happen in the quiet interludes between gunbattles.

As someone who dislikes scripted TV, I’m ecstatic for selfish reasons that Irrational Games chose to bring its masterpiece to my go-to medium. But there’s a small part of me that wonders whether “BioShock Infinite’s” stunning narrative would have found a much larger, equally appreciative audience had its creators told it in a different medium.

Maybe, in a parallel universe, they did.

“BioShock Infinite,” rated M, costs $60 on PC, Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. For this review, I played a copy of the game purchased at retail.

You can reach Eric Wittmershaus at 521-5433 or eric.wittmershaus@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter as @gamewit.

By ERIC WITTMERSHAUS
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

What do you do when scary stops being scary?

After two excellent, legitimately unnerving video games in "Dead Space" and "Dead Space 2," Visceral Games smartly realized that a large part of what made those games successful was that they featured an enemy that was ruthless and lethal, but also unfamiliar.

The series' antagonist, an alien entity that subsumes all organic life and threatens to wipe out the human race, isn't terribly original. But the way that entity manifests itself as necromorphs -- lethal killing machines fashioned from dead tissue -- was unnerving and unpredictable, keeping gamers constantly on edge.

Necromorphs weren't going to stay interesting forever, leading to a more action-oriented approach to February's "Dead Space 3" (rated M, $60 on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3).

Set in 2514, "Dead Space 3" brings back psychologically damaged space engineer Isaac Clarke, whose mind holds the key to destroying "markers," massive monuments connected to the necromorph plague. After some frenetic, scripted action levels on Earth's moon that feel similar to Naughty Dog's popular "Uncharted" series, Isaac finds himself on and around a remote planet that's the key to unraveling the mystery behind the markers and necromorphs.

All the while, the head of the Church of Unitology, hell bent on submitting all of humanity to the necromorph plague, moves to thwart Isaac's every move.

As an action game that features online cooperative play, "Dead Space 3" is decent, if often unspectacular. As in past titles, you'll be using a variety of weapons to sever limbs from necromorphs as they race toward Isaac. The puzzles, streamlined for "Dead Space 2," are simpler than ever. The new gameplay style largely works, and the more bombastic, talky story fleshes out a rich game world the first "Dead Space" only hinted at. The work Visceral Games has put into establishing a "Dead Space" fiction is commendable, even if some of the newest game's interpersonal drama falls flat.

"Dead Space 3's" gameplay isn't a resounding success, thanks to many levels following the same basic pattern of presenting players a large problem to solve, then introducing broken equipment that needs to be repaired before the real problem can be dealt with. Logically, the level structure makes sense. Isaac is an engineer, after all. But after three games of hacking sequences, door switch bypasses and broken machinery, the formula is feeling a little shopworn.

Semi-frequent glitches and some new wrinkles that aren't quite as cool as they sounded in pre-release preview articles also hamper things.

The new feature that lets you build all sorts of weapons using parts you find scattered about the game world sounded great on paper. In reality, it made the game less challenging. Relatively early on, I designed a force gun that knocked enemies backward while setting them on fire. For most of what were supposed to be the game's tensest moments, the gun was brutally effective at keeping hordes of speedy, swarming necromorphs at bay. At times, I tried experimenting with alternate weapons, but there didn't seem to be much point to using any of them over the force gun. Past "Dead Space" games forced you to adapt your play style based on what type of ammunition you carried. But "Dead Space 3's" customizable weapon system means ammunition comes in a new, one-size-fits-all form, and it significantly reduces the tension inherent in realizing that all you have left is a bunch of crappy saw blades to take out a whole room full of bad guys.

Based on my playthrough, "Dead Space 3" contains more than its share of glitches for an action game. The second time I played, I was greeted with a cavalcade of "congratulations" messages for completing various modes of the game. I hadn't even put in three hours, and here I was unlocking rewards for beating the game's most strenuous challenges.

In the interest of keeping myself honest, I didn't use any of the cool stuff I unlocked, but when I finished the game (for real), I got messages telling me I unlocked a bunch of stuff I'd already had access to.

Glitches where the same audio clip would play twice, out of sync with itself, cropped up roughly a half-dozen times. If I hadn't played with subtitles turned on, I'd have had no idea what was being said at a few key points of the story.

Flaws aside, Isaac's latest adventure is perhaps the most narratively dense of the three "Dead Space" titles. If you've hung around for the first two "Dead Space" games, you'll learn much more about the origins of the mysterious markers, the causes of the necromorph outbreaks and Jacob Danik, the leader of the cultlike Church of Unitology.

Other than a few stumbles in the final couple of hours, "Dead Space 3" delivers the narrative goods and serves as a fitting final chapter for a three-act story about Isaac Clarke, the markers and necromorphs. Let's hope Electronic Arts and Visceral Games have the sense to let the story peter out.

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If history is any guide, there's a good chance the PlayStation 4 won't be defined by any of the things Sony showed off at its new console's public unveiling Wednesday.

Sure, a bunch of folks got up on stage and said stuff designed to get us hyped about plunking down somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 on a new video game machine. They showed off some sweet-looking trailers, some of which featured actual gameplay. But anyone who's bought new gaming hardware at launch can tell you that the best reason to line up at midnight on release day is just so that you can feel like an early adopter. It's not usually so that you can pick up some great games you'll be talking about for years to come.

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Even if "Infamous: Second Son" (above) looks pretty cool right now, there are plenty of historical reasons to be wary of spending hundreds of bucks on a new game system, plus $60 a pop for a couple of games.

While there are a few exceptions ("Super Mario Bros.," "Halo: Combat Evolved" and "Wii Sports," to name three), video games that launch alongside a  new system usually aren't very good. Do you fondly remember "ExciteTruck," "Kameo: Elements of Power" or "Genji: Days of the Blade?" Yeah, me neither. Furthermore, a bunch of the games Sony trotted out on Wednesday night will likely be delayed and fuzzily be described as releasing in the "launch window." As a guy who preordered an Xbox 360 because "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" was slated as a launch title, I speak from experience. (The Xbox 360 launched in November of 2006, while "Oblivion" came out four months later.)

If anything, hearing that Ubisoft's "Watch Dogs," a promising-looking title that had a bunch of folks drooling at E3 last summer, is going to launch alongside the PS4 made me slightly less excited for "Watch Dogs," not more excited for Sony's console. Launch titles, by their very nature, are developed in a relatively short amount of time, by developers who are working with unfamiliar hardware and who have to have the game ready to hit a specific release date not very far into the future. It's not a recipe for success.

Anyway, now that I've rained all over Sony's parade, it's time to talk about the stuff that Sony has done right, and things it'll likely do right with the PS4.

Sony has, in many ways, surpassed what Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold offers with its PlayStation Plus subscription program. PS3 owners who pay a yearly membership fee gain access to some fantastic sales that are generally better than the comparable offerings on the 360. What's more, the Instant Game Collection service that lets gamers download and play a number of titles for free so long as they keep their membership current ranks as one of downloadable gaming's greatest triumphs. I still haven't bit on PlayStation Plus, mostly because the majority of my friends play on the 360 and I love that console's cross-game chatting.

Everything Sony showed off Wednesday, though, pointed to a more "social" experience on the PS4 than the somewhat isolationist one we have on the PS3. With the option to spectate on friend's sessions, record and share gameplay video clips and just generally be involved with your friends the whole time you're online, it's clear Sony gets what a disadvantage they've had by not having an equivalent of Microsoft's party chat on the PS3. Expect Microsoft, in turn, to have to offer more online services to compete with Sony whenever it announces its console. This is an example of the video game console wars working in our favor. Now that Sony's announced all these cool features, you can bet Microsoft executives are looking at ways they can beef up their offerings. (Although Microsoft hasn't officially announced its successor to the Xbox 360, I expect it to launch virtually alongside the PS4 sometime this fall.)

The DualShock-style controller that Sony showed off with the system will no doubt please longtime PlayStation gamers, but disappoint those of us who think even Sony's current controllers feel a bit dated. Still, it's hard to judge a piece of plastic until you've held it in your hands and gamed with it for a couple of hours. I'll be interested to see if the new trigger-style L2 and R2 buttons are as ergonomic as the Xbox 360's. And I'm definitely looking forward to trying the touchpad.

While Sony hasn't announced much in the way of hardware specifications, it sounds like the system will launch with eight megabytes of RAM and a robust hard drive. The RAM is roughly equivalent to what I have in my halfway decent gaming PC, and the promises of a large hard drive show that Sony is serious about selling us downloadable games. (Remember, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launched with 20 GB and 60 GB hard drives, an amount of space that seems laughable in 2013.) With a game system likely soon to be announced by Microsoft, you can expect the two console manufacturers to play chicken on hardware specifications and price for as long as possible.

Until at least E3, probably, we'll be stuck watching videos like the one below, and drooling.

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Just don't get too carried away.

When I want to change things up, I turn to Japanese-style role-playing games. The subgenre featuring parties of adventurers, often kids or young adults, taking part in strategic battles against fantastical monsters has been a gaming staple for me going back to the original “Final Fantasy” and “Dragon Quest” games in the late 1980s. JRPGs, as they’re called, are my comfort food.

For the past two months, my go-to game has been “Persona 4 Golden,” a PlayStation Vita remake of a title many gamers likely missed out on, thanks to its launch on the PS2 two years after the PS3 hit stores.

For JRPG fans who haven’t played the original, “Persona 4 Golden” (rated M, $40) is a compelling, 100-hour title that stands among the best of its genre. For a certain subset of gamers, it may just justify the purchase of the spendy PlayStation Vita handheld on its own.

Set at a Japanese high school in an out-of-the-way town, “Persona 4 Golden” revolves around a group of students who investigate a string of murders and disappearances. In a plot device borrowed from C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the teens have the ability to enter a parallel universe through television sets, where they do battle against a variety of exotic monsters known as “shadows.”

The game takes much of its narrative cues from psychologist Carl Jung. To do battle in the TV world, each character must come to grips with his or her shadow, an alter-ego that represents the characters’ dark thoughts and insecurities.

In between navigating corridor-heavy levels that represent the subconscious minds of the game’s characters, you’ll do things a normal high school student does. The main character goes to school, takes tests, works part-time jobs, joins clubs and hangs out with his classmates. This between-dungeon gameplay is essential to advancing the game’s stories. As you meet ancillary characters and hang out with your fellow investigators, you’ll “rank up” your relationships. This bit of role-playing allows you to create more powerful personas for the main character to use. (In the “Persona” games, the main character can choose from among dozens of personas to wield, while other characters are limited to just one.)

The game starts a bit slowly, and some of the relationship stuff can get silly, particularly the cheesy, PG-13-rated date scenarios. But overall, the game’s character development and narrative arc resemble that of a well-done anime or sitcom. By the end of the 60- to 100-plus-hour game, you’ll be smiling along as the characters crack jokes at each others’ expense. (For those taken with the game’s world, there’s also a fighting game that came out last year, “Persona 4 Arena,” as well as two seasons’ worth of anime and a manga comic series.)

Several townfolk will also have optional errands for the main character to run, many of which involve going back into the TV world and replaying previously beaten levels in the hopes of encountering a specific enemy or object. While most JRPGs require a certain amount of level grinding before you can tackle more powerful enemies, “Persona 4’s” handling of this grind makes it less tedious.

In fact, there end up being so many optional, side activities to engage in, such as fishing, studying, building models and running errands, that you’re unlikely to see everything the game has to offer on your first play-through. To max out everyone’s social links and fulfill every request, you’ll need to start over after finishing the game, carrying over some of your stats from your first play-through.

“Persona 4 Golden” is one of the latest in a robust line of handheld games that gives the lie to the notion that developers don’t make them like they used to. With the 3DS set to receive new titles in the “Fire Emblem,” “Devil Summoner” and “Etrian Odyssey” series, fans of classic JRPGs looking for a change of pace have plenty of options.

A year ago, I realized I was tired of shooting things in video games. For as long as I could pull it off while writing a monthly column, I avoided games that revolved around firing a gun, only occasionally starting up a co-op game of “Left 4 Dead 2” with my regular group. It wasn’t any kind of statement; I was just looking for something different.

Even though “Dishonored,” my favorite game of 2012, looks and plays a lot like a first-person shooter, its stealth-oriented gameplay and payoff for those who play nonviolently made it feel fresh and essential.

The revenge tale earns as many style points for its setting as it does for its gameplay. The kingdom of Dunwall, an island city-state in the midst of a whale-oil-driven Industrial Revolution, teeters on the brink of collapse. A mysterious, rat-borne plague ravages the population, while an array of sinister forces take command in a power vacuum created by the assassination of the empress, Jessamine.

You play as Corvo Attano, the former royal protector who’s been framed for Jessamine’s murder. All you have to do is escape prison, free Jessamine’s daughter, Emily, and restore your good name. Thanks to the benevolence of a supernatural, godlike being known as the Outsider, you’ll do this with an array of powers, such as the ability to teleport short distances, or possess living things for a brief period of time.

Although “Dishonored” (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) has plenty of flaws, namely a predictable plot, silent hero and middling visuals, it’s a blast to play because its huge levels encourage experimentation with myriad pathways and tactics. You can bust into a building through the front door, firing your pistol, swinging your sword and summoning rats to devour your enemies. Or you can teleport across light poles and balconies, entering through a third-story window. Or maybe you’d like to possess a guard and walk right by everyone.

These choices also affect how the rest of the game plays out. If you’re able to refrain from killing, resisting the allure of the absolute power the game puts at your fingertips, the world of Dunwall will be better off for your actions, even if “Dishonored” does a poor job of explaining why this is so.

As someone who prefers “BioShock 2” to the original for its poignant, father-daughter-driven tale, I found that Corvo’s relationship with Emily struck the right tone. I wanted to do as much good as possible to set an example for the kid, and that’s why “Dishonored” is my Game of the Year for 2012.

2K’s strong year

2K Games is arguably the publisher of the year with a excellent offerings in “X-Com: Enemy Unknown” and “Borderlands 2” (both PC, Xbox 360, PS3).

“X-Com” proved there’s plenty of fun left in the largely forgotten turn-based strategy genre. Taking control of an agency devoted to fighting off an alien invasion proved immensely satisfying, thanks to an array of research options, chess-like tactical battles and the constant threat of some new alien menace lurking just beyond my soldiers’ field of vision. “Enemy Unknown” wasn’t marketed as a horror game, but early encounters with some of its advanced enemy types rank among gaming’s most tense moments.

The profane, silly “Borderlands 2” built on everything its predecessor did well, even if it didn’t fix every flaw. With tons of replayability and sharply written downloadable content still arriving, it’s a shooter I could play for a couple hundred hours before I got tired of it.

Hours and hours

Scaling back the number of columns I write has allowed me to sink more time into lengthy role-playing games.

This year, I sunk a couple hundred hours into BioWare’s massive multi-player online game, “Star Wars: The Old Republic” (PC). Because of its release at the end of December 2011, I held it out of Game of the Year consideration last go-round. This year, it’s up there with the much-maligned “Mass Effect 3” (PC, Xbox 360, PS3), the ending of which rubbed a lot of players the wrong way. Sure, Commander Shepard’s saga ended poorly, but BioWare’s biggest sin was revisiting the ending in the name of trying to please everyone.

Blogger's note: This actually ran in The Press Democrat in early January. Apologies for it making it to the blog so late!

For the first time since 2006, the holiday shopping season features a new gaming console in Nintendo’s Wii U, as well as a new handheld device, Sony’s PlayStation Vita. Even though these exciting, shiny new gadgets will generate excitement when unwrapped, the experiences aren’t where they need to be to justify the cost of entry, particularly in the case of the three-week-old Wii U.

Wii U

Launched less than three weeks ago, the Wii U is Nintendo’s successor to the popular Wii. While Nintendo’s 2006 console quickly established itself as a pop culture phenomenon, thanks in large part to “Wii Sports,” the Wii U lacks a similar breakout hit. While it offers an upgrade in horsepower over its predecessor, its games thus far are not a noticeable leap forward from what can be found on Microsoft and Sony’s consoles.

Many Wii U launch titles, such as “Mass Effect 3,” “Assassin’s Creed III” and “Batman: Arkham City” have been available for months on other machines, and “Nintendo Land,” included with the $350 Wii U box, is no “Wii Sports.” Similarly, exclusives such as “New Super Mario Bros. U” and “ZombiU,” while decent, will still be available six months from now, perhaps at a discount.

In fact, the Wii U’s optimal audience right now is typical gaming early adopters. Folks, like me, who have to have every new gadget because they’re fascinated with where the technology is headed will still get into the Wii U and its GamePad, a fusion of touch-screen tablet and traditional controller.

Families who fight over the living room TV will appreciate that the Wii U lets gamers play some titles on the GamePad’s 6.2-inch screen while someone else in the room watches TV. Yes, the GamePad has a headphone jack. The only sounds the TV watcher will hear will be those of the gamer’s cursing every time Mario falls to his death.

PlayStation Vita

Sony’s PlayStation Vita, available since February, doesn’t suffer from the same problem of lackluster software. Some of the handheld’s post-launch games, such as “LittleBigPlanet,” “Sound Shapes,” “Persona 4 Golden” and “Gravity Rush” are excellent. What’s hurting the Vita is the $250 or more price tag and the fact that, on top of that, players will also have to shell out money for overpriced memory cards. The 16 gigabyte card, the smallest size you should go for if you plan on downloading games, movies or add-ons, costs as much as $60.

Due to their ability to play games from older systems, the Wii U and Vita’s ideal audience at this point may be gamers who didn’t own a Wii or PlayStation Portable. Those gamers could buy the console and some cheap legacy software to play while they wait for price drops and better games. (Note: The Vita plays only downloadable PSP games, so don’t buy the gamer on your shopping list a Vita and a bunch of PSP game discs. They’ll be useless.)

Older devices

On the market since 2011, Nintendo’s 3DS handheld looks much more enticing this Christmas than it did a year ago. Though the 3DS’s glasses-free 3D turned out largely to be a gimmick, the platform has seen a raft of solid games, particularly in the downloadable space, and the handheld’s ability to play all DS-era games makes it an alluring buy at $170, or $80 less than the launch price. What’s more, it uses standard SD and SDHC memory cards for storage, which ends up being cheaper than the Vita’s proprietary cards.

While there’s less reason to buy a Wii at this point, other than the cheap price and large game library, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 remain great systems despite their ages. I’ve even been recommending the PS3 and Xbox 360 to nongamers looking to drop cable TV, thanks to their ability to perform the same functions as set-top boxes like the Apple TV and Roku. As an added bonus, both of these long-in-the-tooth consoles feature massive lineups of cheap, great games as well as the latest hits.

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This is kind of a spur-of-the-moment post, and I expect I’ll be adding more games (as well as images!) over the weekend. Feel free to suggest your own picks in the comments.

I’m steering clear of obvious blockbusters like “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” “Mass Effect 3” and “Halo 4” because millions upon millions of gamers already own those, and if they don’t already have them and want them, they’ll be sure to ask for them. What follows are great games that people might not realize they actually would love. Also, if you’re truly ignorant about games and are shopping for a gamer on your list, make sure you buy the games for the right video game system. Your cousin cannot play the new Mario game on his Xbox.

Some of these (“XCOM: Enemy Unknown,” “Dishonored) are games I’ve played and loved, while others (“Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward,” “SSX”) are on my own wish list.

For the player who seems to have everything: Downloadable games seem to get better every year, and those of us with a broadband Internet connection can always use more point cards that allow us to buy games on Steam, Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, Nintendo Network or the iTunes and Android stores. Virtual currencies for online stores hawking game downloads burn a hole in my pocket. Some retailers have whole kiosks full of prepaid cards if you’re not sure where to start.

For the gamer who loved “BioShock” and “Deus Ex: Human Revolution”: Arkane Studios’ “Dishonored,” rated M for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, feels like a synthesis of two of my favorite games of this console generation. It combines the otherworldly superpowers of Irrational Games’ “BioShock” with the sneaking around in Eidos Montreal’s “Deus Ex: Human Revolution.” The result is a satisfying, deep stealth game with enormous levels and dozens of ways to reach each objective. The violent game set in a seaside city-state afflicted by a rat-borne plague can be a tale of bloodthirsty revenge or humanely dispensed justice, depending on how you play.

For the sci-fi nerd who’s also an amateur military strategist: “XCOM: Enemy Unknown,” rated M for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, from the makers of the popular “Civilization” games, resurrects a long-dormant, classic PC series with great success. Players are put in charge of the XCOM project, a secret human bulwark against an impending alien invasion. When extra terrestrials start showing up on Earth, you alternate between doing battle against them and using the XCOM base to interrogate aliens, perform autopsies, research their technologies and ultimately divine their motives.

For folks who just want to go fast: Console exclusives “Mario Kart,” “Forza Motorsport” and “Gran Turismo” are the kings on the respective platforms, but Electronic Arts-owned Criterion Games put out another stunning multiplatform racer this fall with “Need for Speed: Most Wanted,” rated E10+. The latest from the folks behind “Burnout Paradise” and “Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit” blends the open-world, wreck-oriented racing of “Paradise” with the police chases from “Hot Pursuit.” Ever-present speed check locations, billboards and leaderboards constantly remind you of where you stand against your buddy. If you’re looking for something a bit more realistic, Codemasters has been cranking out top-notch racing games using the Formula One license for a few years now. “F1 2012” (rated E) is another in what’s becoming a terrific under-the-radar series. Well, it’s under the radar in the United States, at least.  Want to go fast but not drive a car? EA’s reboot of snowboarding franchise “SSX” (rated E) early this year delighted plenty of gamers and is on my own personal wish list.

For the PlayStation-only gamer who’s looking to give the family some peace and quiet: Sony sent me its $150 Pulse wireless gaming headset to consider reviewing, but I didn’t want to devote an entire monthly column to something that’s probably out of a lot of folks’ price range, so I’ll say it here: The Pulse headset is a fantastic piece of hardware. It works great as a set of headphones when I play my Vita and also has a built-in mic and array of customizable controls if I want to use it for online gaming on the PS3 or PC. It will also work as headphones for anything with a jack. That said, I do the bulk of my multiplayer gaming on the Xbox 360, and pretty much any cup-style headset hurts my ears after a couple of hours. (I’ve tried several and don’t think it’s an issue with any particular headset; I’m the problem.) As a result, I haven’t been a heavy user, but its sleek design and versatility has me cursing my pressure-sensitive ears.

For the puzzle fanatic with a warped world view: “Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward,” rated M for 3DS and PlayStation Vita, is a follow-up to cult hit “999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors” and follows a similar premise and structure. Both games are essentially interactive novels interspersed with puzzles. Nine individuals are kidnapped and locked inside a mysterious facility, forced to complete a series of bizarre puzzles as the threat of death looms over them. Various alliances you form result in a branching plot with 24 different endings, so there’s plenty of replayability. The Vita version gets a slight edge because of a save-file glitch that affects some 3DS players. That said, if your gift recipient owns a 3DS, toss in “999,” which retails for $20.

“Halo 4,” the first game in Microsoft’s series of space Marine shooters not developed by Bungie Studios, can feel like a giant compromise.

On the one hand, new steward 343 Industries no doubt has dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas to freshen up a series that’s on the cusp of feeling old-hat. But they also have to weigh the “Halo” series’ massive fanbase’s expectations of what makes a “Halo” game. 343’s unenviable task is to take the series in a new direction, but without upsetting anybody.

Given that balancing act, “Halo 4” is a strong first effort. The new, more personal focus of the game’s narrative humanizes Master Chief, making him feel like less of a cardboard cutout super soldier designed to appeal to kids.

The new class of Promethian enemies is far more sophisticated than the zombie-like Flood race it replaces, and the exotic Forerunner weaponry will subtly freshen up the series’ online multiplayer modes.

“Halo 4,” actually the sixth or seventh game in the series, depending on whether you count real-time strategy game "Halo Wars," is the first since 2007’s “Halo 3” to feature Master Chief, the largely mute star of the original trilogy who went into hibernation after saving humanity.

The game opens with the Chief being awakened by his artificial intelligence companion, Cortana, just before his damaged ship crashes onto Requiem, an undiscovered planet that once housed members of the franchise’s ancient Forerunner civilization. On the planet’s surface, players will contend with Promethians, ancient protectors created by the Forerunners, as well as the Covenant, the coalition of alien religious fanatics who have long served as the series’ main enemy.

While much of the plot evolves into standard, save-the-world fare, the best parts revolve around Master Chief’s relationship with Cortana, the holographic AI who’s been the voice in Master Chief’s head since 2001. While Master Chief’s been sleeping, Cortana has aged well beyond the lifetime of a typical AI and has started to deteriorate. As she explains, she’s literally thinking herself to death.

Journeying through the game with Cortana at times feels as heartbreaking as watching someone battle dementia. She’ll snap at you unexpectedly for no apparent reason, or suddenly lose her bearings at a critical point before apologizing. Master Chief’s patient, sympathetic responses to these episodes humanize him in a way typical video game tropes such as flashback sequences, journal entries or soliloquies could not.

Gameplay-wise, the campaign still looks and feels the way “Halo” fans expect it to. Though diverse, most of the levels are large and open, to help make room for the series’ tried-and-true blend of on-foot battles and vehicular mayhem. Campaign level design was never Bungie’s strong suit, and 343 Industries seems content in this first effort to get out of the way and give players large sandboxes in which to battle aliens.

As with all “Halo” games, “Halo 4” has lots to do once you finish the campaign. A new multiplayer mode, Spartan Ops, replaces the Firefight game type popularized by “Halo 3: ODST” and “Halo: Reach.” Playing as customizable soldiers who make up the crew of a ship called the UNSC Infinity, teams of up to four Spartan Marines complete episodes comprised of five brief missions.  There’s one episode on the disc, and nine more will be available on a weekly basis, free to players who buy the game new.

The mission structure and weaving together of Spartan Ops objectives into a loose narrative reminded me a bit of much-maligned first-person shooter “Brink,” a game I quite liked.

It’s hard to tell from one episode if the story will be worth keeping up with in the long run, but the effort to do something new is laudable, even if some of us will miss Firefight mode.

Other than Firefight, most of the “Halo” series’ popular multiplayer offerings return. Slayer, Capture the Flag, Griffball and Flood will be familiar to most veteran players.

A new Slayer-based game type, Regicide, awards more points when players kill the current leader, while Infinity Slayer riffs on “Call of Duty’s” popular kill streak system, doling out rewards to more skilled players who can stay alive longer while racking up kills.

With conflicting goals and expectations looming over 343’s first game, “Halo 4” was never going to be the best “Halo.” But it’s a worthy first effort, and one that should have franchise fans excited for the next game in what’s planned as a trilogy.

For this review, I played “Halo 4” (rated M, $60 for base Xbox 360 version) for two days in a controlled environment at a San Francisco hotel. I completed the campaign on Normal, played through all on-disc Spartan Ops scenarios and sampled other multiplayer modes. I also played a retail version of the game provided by Microsoft at home.

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Back in 2009, Gearbox Software’s “Borderlands” arrived with little fanfare. Released alongside such blockbusters as “Assassin’s Creed II,” “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” and “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves,” the game didn’t start to pick up buzz until a month or two after release.

All that’s changed for the sequel. “Borderlands 2” is the first big game of the fall, with a massive marketing budget, an eye-catching, live-action national TV ad and an appearance by its signature robot Claptrap on Fox’s Sunday football telecasts. It also arrives to a laundry list of expectations, and though it’s superior to its predecessor in virtually every way, Gearbox still has polishing to do for the inevitable “Borderlands 3.”

The game takes players back to the inhospitable mining colony planet of Pandora. Once again, you play the role of one of four "vault hunters," but this time you're trying to stop a psychotic madman from unleashing a fearsome, long-dormant warrior upon the world. Though the plot is similar to its predecessor, Gearbox has invested a lot of time crafting diverse, memorable levels that use the entire color palette. (The first game featured a lot of desert settings and drab grays and browns.)

Like its predecessor, “Borderlands 2” fuses first-person shooter gunplay with the sort of quest/mission structure and loot gathering you’re used to finding in role-playing games. You talk with secondary characters, who give you jobs to complete. You go complete the jobs and return to the quest giver for a reward.

As in role-playing games like “Diablo III,” virtually every enemy you kill drops some kind of reward as well, whether it’s a new gun, ammunition or cold, hard cash. With your character constantly gaining levels and finding new loot, there’s an addictive metagame of outfitting your character in optimal combinations of gear.

Adding up to three players to your game increases the difficulty level and results in better loot. It also helps paper over a few of the game’s minor flaws. You’re less likely to mind the backtracking some quests require if you’re bantering with buddies.

The “Borderlands” games’ true joy, though, comes from using each character’s unique power in combination with the game’s seemingly infinite number of guns and grenades. Each of the four playable characters features a different special ability, usable for a limited time. Finding ways to combine and optimize these abilities with the various weapons is what makes “Borderlands” memorable.

I played as Maya the Siren, a modified version of the Lilith character from "Borderlands." Typically, players chose to level up "Borderlands" characters largely along one of three trees, as the abilities at the ends of the trees are the most powerful. In "Borderlands 2," however, Gearbox has encouraged players to dabble in more than one path. Each features an unlockable ability about 40 percent of the way up the tree that requires one point to unlock. For my siren build, for example, I progressed up the Harmony tree just far enough to unlock the ability to revive my downed squadmates from afar, using Maya's action skill. Once that ability was within my grasp, I switched over to the Cataclysm tree to unlock abilities that did damage over time via elemental effects. The combination of damage over time and squad revival abilities allow me to feel more diversified than a straight-up combat medic, a role I rarely choose.

Despite everything it does right, “Borderlands 2” can occasionally feel like an extremely robust expansion of the first game. The secondary characters, enemies and the bulk of the game’s containers — lockers, chests, lockboxes, cardboard boxes, clothes dryers and refrigerators — look exactly as they did in 2009’s game. The gunplay and vehicle handling feel about the same, allowing “Borderlands” veterans to jump right in and feel instantly comfortable.

For the sequel, Gearbox has put more emphasis on the game’s story, dialogue and overall writing, and for the most part, “Borderlands 2” feels richer for it. Played solo, the original “Borderlands” often felt tedious and slow-paced; its world didn’t feel lived-in, even if it generated a few laughs. Not so with the sequel. The first game’s quartet of vault hunters serve as important secondary characters, and we finally get to learn more about Roland, Lilith, Mordecai and Brick as we complete missions for them.

Puzzlingly, though, the playable characters in the sequel are nearly as bland and personality-free as the original vault hunters were in the first game. With the exception of a few audio recordings, I know roughly as much about Maya as I did about Lilith in “Borderlands.”

Maybe we’ll find out more in downloadable content or the inevitable “Borderlands 3.”

Whereas “Borderlands” was mildly amusing, “Borderlands 2” is frequently hilarious. The game is packed with comedic video game and pop culture references, and the way in which secondary characters openly wear their derangement or pathos like a badge still generates laughs after a few dozen hours. My favorite? The psychopaths who yell, "I smell delicious!" as they slowly burn to death.

At times, though, “Borderlands 2” can fall into a bit of a comedic rut. Like the first game, it relies on midgets, nudie magazines and pizza for laughs. After awhile, it can feel a bit like listening to your friend who repeatedly recites the same quotes from “Monty Python” episodes or Will Ferrell movies.

"Borderlands 2's" biggest flaw is perhaps a returning problem from the first game: The first five levels before you unlock your character's action skill aren't very fun. You're generally playing a tutorial that goes on for way too long, and seasoned "Borderlands" players hoping to sample all four classes will quickly grow tired of playing the same introductory chapter, minus action skills or exotic weaponry, over and over. Failing to unlock the action skills from the get-go only underscores that the series' gunplay lacks the "oomph" of more action-oriented shooters. Yes, the pre-action skill portion of the game lasts maybe 30 to 60 minutes, but it feels like an eternity.

Still, on consoles, where it doesn’t have to compete with massively multiplayer online games, “Borderlands 2” is likely to go down as the best co-op game of the year. Despite a series of minor missteps, it’s a polished, deeply satisfying co-op game that’ll keep you and up to three friends occupied for a good 30 to 40 hours, minimum. Even then, that's only if you play the game once, then put it down. As with "Borderlands," finishing the game once unlocks a more difficult second playthrough.

The PC difference: In addition to the Xbox 360 copy of "Borderlands 2" that I picked up at retail, I have a PC copy provided by publisher 2K Games. I put in a few hours with the PC build and, overall, prefer the game on PC. The comic book-style cel-shaded visuals pop, even on my budget-priced gaming rig. Using Microsoft's wired, Xbox 360 controller on my PC essentially makes the game play as if it would on console, only prettier. And, of course, if you prefer the precision of keyboard and mouse, that's going to be a huge draw. My preference would be to play on PC, but most of the folks that I game with regularly are playing the game on Xbox 360. Once a buddy of mine catches up to me, I'll likely co-op the second playthrough on Microsoft's console.

“Borderlands 2,” rated M, costs $60 on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and $50 on PC.

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