Stories by: Aaron Koehn

The Legend of Zelda franchise has been a gaming staple for decades, starting with Link's glorious debut on the NES, and though the culture of gaming has undergone dramatic changes over the years, it has managed to remain relevant by staying true to its core values of epic storytelling, interesting characters and vibrant worlds.

Here's a recipe for all you crazy Cooking Mama fanatics: Add one part Mama who speaks ridiculously poor English, combine with banal WarioWare-esque mini-games, add a hint of uninspired new content, and you'll make one bland serving of Cooking Mama 3: Shop and Chop.

Rabbids Go Home is a very special game, and when I say special, I mean special like that kid in your second grade class who frequently took his pants off and was always eating paste. It's a game that, much like the creatures who star in it, is very difficult to characterise, but it is that uniqueness that allows for this mascot-based platformer to feel totally distinctive.

It's common knowledge that ex-criminals make the best cops (or C.O.P.s, which is an acronym never totally explained by the game). So when street racer Dan Miles gets arrested for, you guessed it, racing in the streets, the local police force makes a wise decision and instantly hires him to be an armed officer of the law. And so begins one hardened ex-racer's quest for justice in a tough city that looks and feels like present-day New York.

For those of you unfamiliar with the character whose name graces this video game tie-in, Astro Boy is a robot who has been imbued with the soul of a child, and who then longs to be a flesh-and-blood youth. If you're thinking that sounds awfully similar to a soul-imbued puppet who talked to crickets and lied through his teeth, then I have two words for you: butt cannon. That's right, this 21st century Pinocchio is no pushover, and as the game explains, when man casts this boy-wonder aside, he doesn't mope, sing a song, and then get swallowed by a whale. No, he starts throwing haymakers and shooting bullets out his pooper.

More of a tech demo than a fully finished sports simulation compilation, reviewer Aaron Koehn saw Hudson's Deca Sports 2 as an excuse for the publisher to make a quick buck on the back of Nintendo's insanely popular Wii Sports franchise. Still, if you're a hardcore petanque player, where else are you going to get your fix?

If there's one gaming area where the DS's technology lends itself well, it's the puzzle genre. Due to Nintendo's touch-sensitive handheld, the genre has seen a massive resurgence, and no longer are gamers exclusively forced to listen to a Russian folk tune while spinning various blocks if they want to puzzle-it-up. However, gamers can only manipulate colored forms for so long before they start craving some action, and it's with that notion that Ubisoft created Clash of Heroes.

There are few grizzled, old gamers who don't look back fondly at the beat-'em-ups of yore. If you cite classics such as Streets of Rage and Double Dragon as favourites, you shouldn't be any stranger to roaming the streets as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

A Boy and His Blob is widely considered to be a classic but there's no denying that the gameplay was a little unwieldy and disjointed. The concept had tantalising potential though and though it took almost twenty years, it's finally being realized with this fantastic remake.

At some point in our lives, the majority of us have flirted with the fantasy of being a rock star or musician, and when our TVs show us the low calibre of contemporary musicians, it only serves to embolden our misplaced delusions (I mean, if this guy can do it, why can't I?)