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Puzzle games seem to be all the rage right now. You have titles like Puzzle quest and Planet Puzzle League which you can play on your DS. But for the Wii you were kind of left in the dust. The guys over at Empty Clip Studios have your back. Taking a page from the Lumines franchise, Groovin Blocks utilizes blocks with three different colors to which you can move about and work in different ways. Then when you get three of the same color in a row then it goes away and gives points. As an added bonus if you time it to work with the music you get an added bonus on top of that.

With a dearth of retail releases this week, the arcade comes to the forefront with the anticipated release of platformer, Braid on XBLA this Wednesday. This week's WiiWare title is Wild West Guns, a Gameloft game which features on rails shooting and duckhunt-esque moments. Also, available now on the Virtual Console are Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega Master System) and Splatterhouse 2 (Sega Genesis).

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Are you sick of BUZZ? Want something else to play with the family and friends? Like Disney? Well guess what, Disney Interactive Studios has got you covered. Get ready to make enemies as you and your pals battle it out to see who holds the crown in the knowledge of Disney titles. This will make for a fun party game much like the various Scene It! games were in the past year or so. So dont be suprised to see this hit the big consoles in the future, I have a feeling that this is just step one in the plan to make party style games the next craze.

As if the mere thought of another Rock Band so soon wasn't shock enough for you. How about the ability to have all the DLC added to your game as well as music from the original disc. This will push the set list for the game to an all time high, especially since Rock Band 2 will already have over 100 songs from an Unrivaled Blend of Classic, Developing and New Artists. This is big news for Harmonix and will definitely keep people happy since a lot of content was put on DLC for the first game. Also DLC will keep on flowing onto the market since they will be ported over to the next installment anyway, so don't expect them to slow down for one second on the albums and packs released on a weekly basis. Rock band 2 will also have an Upgraded World Tour, Battle of the Bands, Set Challenges and Drum Trainer which you should have know would have been added but the biggest addition is the ability to Compete Against Other Bands Online. This of course is a great inclusion to the franchise since last time around you could only play with others online, not compete head to head. I for one am truly excited to get a group of friends together to take on another set of people and rock their faces off.

There are a huge number of great downloadable games available for all three major platforms, but these titles are not as popular as traditional releases. Compared to retail products, there is little buzz for games on the Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Wii Channel. For example, with more than 12 million 360's sold this generation, it is astonishing how few downloads occur. Sales figures are not readily available, but for example, in the first week of sales, the top selling XBLA rhythm shooter, Rez, had only 25k downloads! Here are a few ideas to enhance the success of downloadable games:

1. Make the purchasing process painless: Microsoft point conversions confuse the consumer and do not have any benefit. Why can't Rock Band songs just be $1.99 instead of 250 points like they are on the PSN? A simple one-to-one conversion is the easiest way for consumers to make a well-informed purchase.

2. More advertising: Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony need to take it upon themselves and advertise downloadable games in magazines, online and television, similar to what we see with AAA releases like Halo, Metal Gear Solid and Super Smash Bros.

If you want to play a quick game of ping pong, Family Table Tennis will give you just that, and scarcely more. The game contains four characters, four stages, and a single-player campaign that can be worked through in less than ten minutes. A collection of three mildly enjoyable minigames will provide another five minutes of entertainment, after which you will have played through Family Table Tennis' single-player content in its entirety.

With such an extreme lack of variety, one would hope that Family Table Tennis plays a pretty damned good game of ping pong. The thing is, it totally does! It's a little rough around the edges, presentation-wise (characters rarely appear to make ball-to-paddle contact during a match), but in terms of gameplay, the consistent timing and accurate and sensitive motion controls provide a surprisingly convincing ping pong simulation. Gameplay wrinkles like staggers and super shots add a nice bit of strategy, and (perhaps most importantly) the game even provides an accurate reproduction of the little "thwok" sound effect of a ping pong ball bouncing off of a table.

This game is long since a classic, and all I can really comment upon is whether or not the new package makes it any better or worse than the NES cart I'm sure everyone reading this who was around in those days probably had.

Also, my Dr. Mario Online RX number is 4334 1405 0124. Poke me on AIM if you want a match. (Warning: I am not incredibly good, but neither am I incredibly bad.)

Doctor, Doctor

Dr. Mario was always second only to Tetris in the household hierarchy of Games Everyone Would Play. Nothing would convince grandma to take interest in Super Mario Bros. 3 or Dragon Warrior, but fire up Dr. Mario and she'd proceed to rampage on all contenders. Nintendo seems to have crafted Dr. Mario Online RX specifically to update that sort of bizarre intergenerational sense of competition for the new century.

Prepare for Trouble

My Pokémon Ranch is nothing like the Gameboy and Nintendo DS Pokémon games, and it bears little resemblance to previous spinoffs like Pokémon XD and Pokémon Colosseum. There's very little gameplay in My Pokémon Ranch at all, actually. The experience largely involves transferring Pokémon from your Nintendo DS Pokémon Diamond or Pokémon Pearl Pokédex and watching them frolic around as low-polygon Wii models at your Wii Pokémon ranch.

And...well, that's pretty much it. My Pokémon Ranch otherwise serves mostly as an extension to Pokémon Diamond or Pearl's gameplay. Hayley, the ranch's owner, will occasionally issue Pokémon bounties, and will reward you with items and Pokémon trades upon successfully finding, capturing, and transferring wanted Pokémon. Transferring more Pokémon to the ranch also raises the farm's level, allowing you to store more Pokémon and earn additional bonuses at the beginning of each new gameplay day.

Do you love Blackjack enough to pay seven dollars to play it? Given the choice, I'd decline before I even knew any further details. While Blackjack can be fun in small doses or as part of a larger collection of casino games, it's still a fairly simplistic card game that won't hold your interest for long. There's some element of strategy involved -- carefully weighing your hand against the dealer's opening card is key to winning -- but after a few hands, you'll be ready to head off to the craps table.

Thunder in Mr. Paradise

Honestly, I didn't count on the possibility that this would be a good game. I figured I'd play it for a few minutes, write a scathing and dismissive review, and be done with it. But no! As unlikely as it seems, this bubble-popping simulator's got some depth to it, and I'd even go so far as to say that it's worth your money.

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