After years of the LEGO games being pretty much edutainment garbage and the Star Wars games showing up with far more misses than hits, somehow a combination of the two became the year's sleeper hit. The power of positive buzz.

This game hits on a lot of important notes: simple controls, great chibi look, easy drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, and a fantastic use of license (TWO licenses, incredibly). This is the kind of thing I'll fall for every time, particularly when it comes to co-op games, which are blindingly rare. You have to hope that LEGO Star Wars' sales opened the doors for other clever and accessible multiplayer titles... you know, where it isn't just frag this and explode that. Great little game.

The flip side is that LEGO Star Wars has some serious flaws, all of which were overlooked by critics. If the game had not delivered such an overall fun and silly experience, it would have been slammed facefirst in somebody's empty cement in-ground pool for the floaty camera and confusing multiplayer glitches.

Memory Score: Best use of the Prequel Trilogy ever

Terribly overrated.

What it does, it does well: Intense, fast combat with impressive waning-PS2-era graphics. But it aspires to nothing greater, even if it continually receives credit for such.

The story is barely there and depressingly predictable. The character designs are like something scribbled on an art school dropout's notebook. The "deep" combat relies on button combos that you'll never bother to master. There's only three boss fights and a rather small list of enemy characters.

There's this terribly childish feel to the entire package... the buckets of blood, the nearly-naked women, the tribal tattoos and spiked armor. It's the game that you would have made in 10th grade study hall, if only you had a sweet development deal with Sony of America. And when you watch the DVD-style behind-the-scenes extras on the disk, you'll find that you are indeed seeing a bunch of guys who never mentally made it out of high school.

God of War's chief addition to the gaming universe is producer David Jaffe, who, prior to doing God of War, made the first few Twisted Metal games. (Makes sense. That was cars + gore, and this is public domain IP + gore.) And nothing else. Jaffe has since been lifted up as a gaming demigod, despite his paltry spike-laden resume, where his every drunken ramble is lauded by Sony as a message from the future. Jaffe is classically unprepared for his godhood; he lacks the media savvy of a Fils-Aimes, the geeky exuberance of a Miyamoto, or even the earnest chutzpah of a Major Nelson. He's self-hating, paranoid and conflicted, disgusted by his profession and burned out after a mere handful of games. And I think he knows it... so when he does red-faced interviews from the Playboy Mansion grotto, and whines on his weblog about what he hates about the industry, he knows he's in over his head and has just stopped caring. But Sony was desperate for a superstar of their own, preferably American and ugly, so Jaffe was pushed out over the cliff.

A certain section of the audience goes for that... seeing Jaffe as this troubled auteur, willing to dis the evil master for his art. Unfortunately, Jaffe's art has yet to be seen. His vision, as yet revealed, amounts to the KISS costume closet. God of War is sturdy and sparkly, but it is all surface.

Memory Score: Not interested in the sequel at all

This was pretty quick to call out a follow-up to 2004's critical darling, Katamari Damacy, but we'll friggin' take it.

There was a real danger that Namco would bone this and deliver a sequel that felt lifeless. After all, the ending of the first game made it pretty clear that there wasn't much you could do to top it. But WLK delivered, matching (and besting, in most cases) the amazing soundtrack and offering some much-needed goal variety to the levels, while still maintaining the ridiculous worldview and bizarre pop-Japan imagery.

The game's story is sublimely meta-textual... creator Keita Takahashi did not want to make another Katamari game, but was pressured by Namco to take the lead. So WLK becomes a game about how much better the first one was, even as it itself adds to the legend.

You can definitely place this one on the Gotta Have It list for the PS2.

And even though Takahashi has since officially walked away from Katamari (the lackluster PSP edition was made without his involvement), I hope like hell that Namco brings this game into the new generation. We need more games like this, even if it's just more Katamari games.

Memory Score: No eternal levels!?!?!!?

Next time: two completely different games from the same guy show up in the same month, both from franchises I adore... and I finally jump into Big Boss's shoes.