The buildup to midnight on New Year's Eve is always fun, but once the champagne's been popped and the ball's been dropped, there's a letdown. Why not try something different this year: a little friendly competition on that game console you got for Christmas.
The best multiplayer games out now come from the music category -- guitar games like "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero III," karaoke games like "SingStar Pop," rhythm games like "Dance Dance Revolution." Shooters like "Halo 3" and fighting games like "Virtua Fighter 5" also offer entertaining multiplayer mayhem.
We've also seen some popular family games go digital this year. Microsoft led the way with the excellent "Scene It? Lights, Camera, Action," for the Xbox 360, and two more well-known party games have now made their way to Nintendo's Wii.
_"Cranium Kabookii" (Ubisoft, for the Wii, $49.99): "Cranium," which has become a family favorite over the last 10 years, is the Frankenstein's monster of board games, mixing art, trivia, language and performance in a way that lets players of different skill levels compete. The electronic version doesn't quite duplicate the cheerful chaos of the board game, but it's still amusing.
"Kabookii" offers a similar variety of 16 different activities. You may need to play a song, draw a picture, unscramble an anagram or find a country on a globe. Up to four teams of two or more players can join in, so you can entertain a big group without leaving anyone out.
The problems here come from the Wii remote. It's not precise enough to draw pictures in any detail, so anything more complicated than a circle comes out blotchy. And a challenge in which you have to mime activities with the remote simply feels broken, since the game often doesn't recognize the motions you're making. "Cranium Kabookii" won't match the popularity of its parent (for one thing, we miss the clay sculpting), but the formula could do well on the Wii with some tinkering. Two stars out of four.
_"Jenga World Tour" (Atari, for the Wii, $29.99): The physical version of "Jenga" is a stack of simple wooden blocks. To play, you remove one block from the middle of the pile on place it on top; you lose if the tower collapses during your turn.
In "Jenga World Tour" you use the Wii remote to select and move a block. It's a very simple game mechanic, but Atari has completely botched it. Sometimes it's easy to slide a block out of the pile, but most of the time you need to use exaggerated motions to get a block to budge -- which can just as easily cause the whole mass to fall over. And it's nearly impossible to place a block cleanly on top of the tower.
The only advantage of the virtual "Jenga" is that you don't have to clean up the mess afterward. The tactile sensations -- the ability to judge whether it's safe to move a block, the satisfying clatter when the tower falls -- are sorely missed. You're far better off with the real thing, which only costs $13. No stars.
_"Mario Party DS" (Nintendo, for the DS, $34.99): The "Mario Party" games, now up to their eighth installment, have thrived on Nintendo consoles, though they don't work quite as well on portable machines. To get the most out of "Mario Party DS," you need three friends with a DS -- although you only need one copy of the game.
As usual, you roll a die and move around a board. Certain spaces lead to arcade minigames in which all four players compete. There's a lot of variety, with more than 70 bite-size challenges, most requiring some degree of skill. The theme here is that Mario and his friends have all been shrunk to about an inch high, so you may need to dodge poker chips on a card table or keep your balance on a rotating slab of meat.
"Mario Party DS" isn't particularly inviting for spectators, so you might not want to drag it out on New Year's Eve. But it is a solid -- and at times riotous -- collection that's highly entertaining for smaller gatherings. Three stars.
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On the Net:
_"Cranium Kabookii": http://craniumkabookii.us.ubi.com/
_"Jenga World Tour": http://www.atari.com/us/jenga/
_"Mario Party DS": http://www.marioparty-ds.com/
