PlayStation 3

Video Game Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Vin Diesel should stick to making video games. After headlining last month’s “Wheelman” and this month’s “The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena,” I have to admit that I like the actor more as a video game hero than I do as a movie star. “Athena” gives fans the most bang for their buck of anything the actor has been involved with in years.

Video Game Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Even part-time game players have a movie tie-in horror story to share. Show me one blockbuster that produced a quality video game companion and I’ll show you ten that failed to do so. So no one’s more surprised than this writer at how enjoyable Activision’s “Monsters vs. Aliens” is from start and nearly to finish.

CHICAGO – All good summer movies come with video game tie-ins and Activision sent over a new vignette from their summer offering, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” which will ship to retail stores in June for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS, and PC.

CHICAGO – Midway’s “Wheelman” is my guilty pleasure game of the season. I know the game has some serious design flaws, but like an action movie you watch over and over again, the flaws are easier to forgive in the name of old-fashioned fun.

CHICAGO – Activision recently released a teaser trailer for their movie tie-in, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” video game.

Video Game Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Some games are easy to pick up and put down when you’ve got a small window of time. “The Godfather II” is not one of those games. Like being willing to watch Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Trilogy” in one sitting, the game loosely based on the second film will take not just minutes or hours but days of your life.

Video Game Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – “Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard” has so many deep, unacceptable, gameplay flaws that it couldn’t possibly merit a traditional recommendation, but the game nearly succeeds in the same way that an Ed Wood or Uwe Boll movie has fans. Have you heard the phrase “so bad it’s good”? Can it be applied to a video game?

Video Game Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – If you’re like most people who own a television, you’ve probably seen “American Idol” at least once in its near-decade of ratings dominance and thought that you could do better than the pop star wannabe on the stage. Now you can try and achieve “AI” dominance on your own with “Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2”. Practice your Mariah Carey note runs.

Video Game Rating: 4.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Some games are designed to take the edge off the day, to relax you from the stress of the real world. Play the excellent downloadable game “Flower” for a good example of one those. Don’t play “Killzone 2,” a fantastic shooter, one of the best in a long time, but also a stressful, sometimes terrifying ride through an alien war zone.

Video Game Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – What if you could play one of your favorite games for two more hours? And what if it was a game that ended on a cliffhanger? That’s what you get with “Prince of Persia: Epilogue,” a two-hour add-on for Ubisoft’s excellent “Prince of Persia” that is now available for download for $9.99.