Ghost Rider purportedly features a storyline penned by Marvel writers Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti, but the story feels less like a fully fleshed-out piece of comic fiction and more like leftover table scraps. The story doesn’t even do a good job of tying in to the movie. It’s told through some comic-paned cutscenes that feature just-different-enough-to-not- quite-look-like-real-actors drawings of all the major characters from the movie. A soundalike of Sam Elliott (apparently channeling his Big Lebowski character, with a spookier edge) narrates a few opening sequences just to get you up to speed, and eventually you figure out that the demon Mephisto needs Ghost Rider to head up to earth to stop his son, Blackheart, and his army of demons from getting their apocalypse on. It’s a middling tale that’s disjointed in its delivery and does a weak job of shoving in some familiar Marvel personalities (like Blade) just because it can. It also doesn’t help that the audio mix on the cutscenes is so awful that you’ll have to turn the volume on your TV way, way up just to hear what’s going on, only to be brutally assaulted with the screechy in-game sound effects and soundtrack at much-too-high volume seconds later. Once you settle into the gameplay, you’ll find an unholy combination of God of War’s whip-heavy combat and Devil May Cry’s ranking system. The game is all about you killing Blackheart’s demonic forces with as much style and variety as possible, and to its credit, it does provide a decent number of combos to work with. You start out with almost none, but then, through a direct rip of God of War’s upgrade system (right down to the sound effect it uses to fill up your various upgradeable meters), you can use souls you’ve collected to buy new combos and up your abilities.

Though it features an all-new subtitle, Mortal Kombat: Unchained for the PlayStation Portable is basically a straight port of 2004′s Mortal Kombat: Deception for the PlayStation 2, with longer loading times and without the online play. Contrary to what you might expect, it’s not based on this fall’s

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, though it does throw in a few of that installment’s added characters. Seeing as there’s so little new content in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, it’s difficult to recommend to Mortal Kombat fans, unless they really want a version of Deception to have on the go.

Given that Unchained is based on Deception, it includes most of the same relative strengths and weaknesses of that game. So, in addition to the one-on-one fighting game at the heart of the experience, you get a couple of quirky extras in the form of chess kombat and puzzle kombat. The former adds a basic strategic layer on top of the one-on-one fighting, in a nod to the classic computer game Archon. The latter is a competitive puzzle game inspired by the great Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. These were exciting extras in 2004, but their novelty outweighed their quality or lasting appeal, and by now, the appeal will be long gone for anyone who’s played these modes before. Unchained also packs in a story-driven mode called “konquest,” which gets into a lot of the elaborate, long-winded fiction of the Mortal Kombat universe, with numbingly bad pacing and voice acting, plus tons of pedantic tutorials. Noticeably long loading times bog down these extras as well as the one-on-one fighting, in which you’re stuck waiting about 20 seconds in between a typical bout. Thankfully, there’s a new endurance mode that lets you take on successive opponents without much interruption, and that about does it for this game’s new content.

he roster gains a few additional characters not found in Deception, though you might have seen them in Armageddon. Jax, Kitana, Frost, Blaze, Goro, and Shao Kahn are available in this installment, along with series favorites like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, and Raiden.

God of War: Chains of Olympus’ story takes place before the first God of War game on the PlayStation 2, which is a little confusing because you find yourself trying to remember just what had and hadn’t happened in Kratos’ twisted life at the time of the first game. At this particular point in the God of War timeline, Kratos is a general whose sole purpose is to serve the gods of Olympus. During the course of Chains of Olympus, the gods’ orders create a certain moral dilemma for Kratos, and he finds himself faced with the decision of whether or not to do the bidding of his gods or do what is best for him. The story doesn’t play a prominent role here, but this is God of War, so all you really need to know is why Kratos is pissed off so you can go off and slaughter mythical creatures with reckless abandon.

With few exceptions, the combat in Chains of Olympus is just as you’ve come to know and love. The controls are tight and in general quite good. Learning to evade attacks requires a bit of an adjustment, given that you need to hold both of the shoulder buttons and then move the analog stick, but you get used to it and it works fine. Kratos can make light and heavy attacks using his blades of chaos, and you can perform combos by pressing specific, simple button patterns. Eventually you’ll get your hands on a second weapon, the Gauntlet of Zeus, which is essentially a giant glove that Kratos can use to pummel his foes. It’s a great addition to Kratos’ armament and a ton of fun to use. It’s just too bad that it’s the only alternate weapon in the game. Magic is a bit limited as well, but you’ll eventually acquire a few other abilities. Most useful to us was the first one you get, the efreet, which damaged all nearby enemies; the other abilities were of little use. For every successful kill, you’re rewarded with red orbs that can be used to learn new attacks as well as upgrade weapons and magic. Once again you can find hidden treasure chests that contain red orbs, as well as others that offer gorgon eyes and phoenix feathers.