Sony's detestable Lair seems to be heading into this as an underdog, positioned against one of juggernaut Nintendo's Blue Ocean non-games... the Wii edition of Big Brain Academy. But don't count Lair out yet, as it was a mere $15 clearance compared to BBA's relatively beefy sale price of $30 (both courtesy Target).

CONCEPT: Lair sounds like a winner on paper. Epic medieval battles with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and ballista, with you riding herd over the whole scene atop a giant dragon. Shame it arrived several years too late to truly ride Lord of the Rings hype. Plus, it comes from Factor 5, a team with some serious experience in action-flight games... the Rogue Squadron series. 7 points.

Big Brain Academy, a first-party DS hit following in the shadows of Nintendo's own Brain Age series, was an early Wii release... with an emphasis on family multiplayer and Wii features integration (Miis, Remote tricks, sending challenges to Wii Friends). Several play modes frame a collection of brain teaser-themed minigames. 5 points.

GAMEPLAY: Lair is unplayable. And it's unamusingly cheesy.

The problems started with a forced SIXAXIS motion control scheme (thanks, Sony!), and a highly delayed analog patch didn't even fix it. It's like Factor 5 forgot everything they ever knew about flying in three dimensions. Dragons will arc unexpectedly away from cliff walls a half mile away. The graphics are inconsistent and glitchy. The story is a joke, poorly told.

1 point, and only because I like the mid-air combat where your dragon can beat the piss out of another.

If you try Big Brain Academy single-player, you would be forgiven for thinking the thing has about six minigames total. And although most of them are indeed fun, it gets incredibly repetitive. Despite that, I do like the individual test mode, which ends in the game "weighing" your brain, assigning you a crazy grade like "BAB+" and suggesting a career path.

Some of the most interesting minigames - the example I always point to is one where you have to listen to something via the Remote speaker and then find that onscreen - are frustratingly not available to play in single-player! And yet, even with the added games, multiplayer still feels like the same games over and over again. I'M COUNTING RED BALLS AGAIN, JOY. It also has that classic Mario Party problem where some of the multiplayer modes just take too long to play. 5 points. Pretty uneven stuff.

VALUE: $15 from $60 is far cooler than $30 from $50, mathematically. But by the same token, $15 is still too much to spend on a game like Lair. 8 points for Lair and 4 points for BBA. For what you get out of BBA, $50 is crazy.

TIMELINESS: There is no reason to ever play Lair. Sure, it's the only dragon-based flying action high-def game out there, but anything it does is done better somewhere else. Warhawk, for one. 1 point.

Big Brain Academy has decent replay value, mainly because it's one of those anyone-can-play titles you can trot out when all the non-gamers show up. But it's not going to create hours of fun these days and about a dozen other minigame games eat its lunch. 5 points.

FINAL: Whoa, did you see that!? 17 for Lair and 19 for Big Brain! Future combatants take note... this is what you risk by not having a good enough sale price! BBA just almost lost to Lair, for crissake.

Big Brain Academy moves on to round two, nearly beaten but unbowed!