Batman is the Rorschach test of superheroes. Artists, directors and actors have their own take on the Caped Crusader. He’s a different character to different people.

When it comes to TV, he was a campy crimefighter who had a thing for Eartha Kitt. Director Tim Burton created a darkly cartoonish world and a hero who fought villains with all the flexibility of a Greek statue. His Batmans were neither agile or swift, but they did have those wonderful toys.

Frank Miller introduced fans to an aging hero sick and tired of putting the Joker in jail that he ended up just offing him in The Dark Knight Returns.

When it comes video games, LEGO Batman is another iteration of the Caped Crusader. It’s not entirely influenced by the films nor does it owe its artistic vision to the TV show. Traveller’s Tales latest title forges its own path with its own distinct look and humor.

More Bat news and more Bat characters on the jump friends

For Monolith Productions, fear comes in two flavors. The first is the creepy psychological kind. It’s walking down a dark alley, lead pipe in hand, with a serial killer lurking around the corner. This is the fear in the Condemned franchise.

The other kind of fear is of the supernatural, of ghosts and telekenesis that can come at you for no reason at all. This is the fear in, well, F.E.A.R. It’s also the same type of scares in Project Origin, the sequel to the 2005 shooter.

The game takes place where the old one left off. But unlike the story, a few things have been tweaked in gameplay. First off, Monolith has gone with a regenerative health systems similar to what fans saw in Halo. It smooths out the flow of the flow of the game so players aren’t always scrounging around for health pickups, according to Monolith.

Fans will need the help because this time around the team improved the enemy AI. The foes in Project Origin know how to use the environment against players. If the protagonist takes cover behind the car, the enemies will fire at the car until it blows up.

Elsewhere, enemies who are running out of ammo will actually grab a weapon dropped by a fallen comrade.

More scary Project Origin news on the jump

Koji Igarashi, the man behind the current Castlevania series, doesn’t like it when fans call his latest title a fighting game. He prefers that Castlevania Judgment be referred to as an action title.

To me, this is a matter of semantics because from the look and the feel of the game, it does play like a spawn of Street Fighter II. Is there a life bar? You bet there is. Do you attack an opponent in a one-on-one contest? Definitely.

Castlevania Judgment is so much a fighting game that you couldn’t help but notice it at the character selection screen where only four characters were available — Simon Belmont, Dracula, Alucard and Maria Renard — out of a cast of 14.

Each character has a subweapon that they pick prior to the match. They’re the traditional Castlevania fare that includes holy water and crosses. Before each map, there’s a little intro before players both start at the same time.

From what I’ve played, the world is open and the fighters are detailed. (They’re done by famed manga artist Takeshi Obata, the man partly responsible for the Blue Dragon manga.)The characters move around using the analog stick on the nunchuk. There’s a block button. They can dodge with a shake of the nunchuk.

Players attack with a quick waggle and a stronger punch is activated by holding the B button. The A button activates the item, but players need to break open parts of the destructable environment and collect hearts to use them.

More on how waggle mashing is the new button mashing on the jump

I’m usually a big fan of retro gaming. I’m a believer in not messing with a good thing.

SimCity Creator may be the exception.

It is SimCity. That alone scores it points, SimCity is never all bad. But this tosses aside most of the advancements through more recent versions and reverts back to the original SimCity formula, not just in gameplay but also in large part in graphics. It feels dated, like something that’s been done better.

While I acknowledge that they’re trying to return the series to its original simplicity sometimes that’s not always best. Gamers are more sophisticated and expect more complexity.

I’ll withhold a final verdict until I get a chance to spend time with the full, final version, but for now it seems like another SimCity Societies and loses more ground to CitiesXL.

Spore is not just a PC game. In addition to the ambitious, expansive flagship title there are segments of it for a variety of other platforms.

The iPhone version recreates the Cell phase of the full game. You’re a customizable single-celled organism in the primordial soup, swimming around eating bits of plant life or other organisms. Since it is the iPhone you control the creature by tilting the phone in the direction you want it to go, something that feels very natural. It has none of the frustration of, for instance, Super Monkey Ball.

It’s a simple game, but it does have some nice touches. The graphics for example are amazing. It’s hard to believe a cell phone, even a multi-function phone, are capable of such smooth 3D graphics. It also keeps Spore’s hallmark customization. In addition to adding parts you can add and size textures, not just from the included texture library but from the camera. If you want a concrete cell just take a picture of the sidewalk.

It seems like a quick, simple diversion. It’s by no means deep but for what’s basically a high-end cell phone game it seems very solid. It will be released alongside the other versions of Spore in September.

The rock revolution in video games has benefited some genres more than others. Old rock stand-bys such as The Who are getting new life with titles like Rock Band.

But other areas of music have so far been ignored. There aren’t many games with turntables for instance. Meanwhile, the whole genre of techno and house have been ignored by the video game industry unless you count Dance Dance Revolution.

So it’s good to see the Korg DS-10 on the Nintendo DS. From the title, folks can probably tell that this isn’t exactly a video game. It’s more like a music tool a la Jam Sessions.

The Korg DS-10 is a synthesizer based off an old analog Korg MS-10 model. Players can lay down six tracks total. Two with the synthesizer and four drum beats. The music tool works with other DS and works fairly well despite the intimidating interface.

In bringing the synthesizer to the DS, XSeed wanted to create a authentic reproduction. I don’t care much for how the different knobs are presented. On the other hand, when it comes to making music, it’s easy to dive in and create your own tracks despite the intimidating interface.

The game provides you with a set of drum beats and players can work on a piano in two different modes to provide the melody. Although I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, I did manage to make a good tune in the 10 minutes I spent messing around the system.

More on ooh-aah, ooh-aah, ooh-aah of techno music on the jump

WiiMusic is not your typical music game.

There are no complex button combinations, no need for lightning quick fingers. In fact there’s no score at all. The point isn’t to master the game or to win, it’s simply to have fun. To get together with some friends and play music, to try to get in sync with them and make the product sound good.

It’s a lot more fun than it sounds, at least at first. And there’s so many instruments (reportedly over 50) with many of them requiring different motions that it will take a while to get good at everything included. I’m concerned about the replay value, however, as more than a novelty. When you’ve never done it before and you’ve got a group of people trying to play it’s fun, but what happens when everyone knows what they’re doing? It’s almost too simple. With so few ways to make a mistake eventually it might turn into tedium.

Fortunately WiiMusic has an ace up its sleeve: the drum simulator.

When I say drum simulator, I don’t mean like in Rock Band. First off this is a totally virtual, with the exception of your Wiimote and nunchuck as sticks and Balance Board as pedals, right half for the bass drum and left half for the cymbal. Second, it’s not a game, it’s a drum set. There’s no goal. It’s a cheaper and smaller alternative to a real drum set. It will even include drum lessons which will reportedly, after finishing them and practicing, let you sit down and play an actual physical drum set as well.

With no competition or hard goal I’m not sure if it will catch on as well as WiiSports or WiiFit but I’ve learned never to underestimate Nintendo. We’ll find out how much staying power when it’s released later this year.

Role playing games come in two flavors: It’s either the high fantasy of World of Warcraft or the dense science fiction of Mass Effect.

Few titles stray from those well-worn paths, so it’s refreshing to see Obsidian Entertainment take a chance with Alpha Protocol.

The espionage RPG puts players in the role of competent but green CIA field agent Michael Thornton as he tries to thwart some plot or another. The folks at Obsidian mention much about the plot.

The studio, which worked on Neverwinter Nights 2 and Knight of the Old Republic 2, has a history of creating solid RPGs, and it looks like Alpha Protocol will be no different.

There’s definitely an influence of Bioware and Mass Effect in the project. The combat is in third-person and its over the shoulder. There doesn’t seem to be many instance of Thornoton working with team members; Thornton works alone.

More on Alpha Protocol’s combat and leveling system on the jump

When Hannah Montana: Music Jam hit shelves last year, I was genuinely excited. I wasn’t a fan of Miley Cyrus. Despite my little sisters constant urgings, I haven’t seen the show. Nor was I an enthusiast of pop music. I like my tunes a little more emo.

But I did like the Music Jam’s gameplay. It was phenomenal. It borrows a little from Jam Sessions and a little from Elite Beat Agents to create a phenomenal experience on drums and guitar.

If Music Jam was an appetizer for what’s to come, then Ultimate Band for the Nintendo DS could be considered a first course. Fall Line Studios and Gorilla Systems Corps. expanded the concept immensely in ways I didn’t even expect.

Players start off as a musician fresh off the bus. Looking to make it big in Rockapolis, our hero forms a band, finds a manager and works different venues trying to win over the audience and city.

To do so, players will have to play up to four different instruments: lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums. There could possible be a fifth instrument (but I wasn’t able to see it in action.) They’ll play through 15 unlockable songs, which each use a voice recording.

The guitar gameplay consists of strumming and holding down the directional pad as a chord. As the notes start streaming down the frets a la Guitar Hero. The system works well and it doesn’t cramp your hand like other titles.

For the drums, players have to tap on a virtual drum set posted on the touch scree. To hit the right drum, circles will appear over each pad and players will have to strike it to continue the song. It works beautifully. If tapping isn’t your style, you can also press the face buttons or directional bad to bang the virtual drums.

Now that you know how to play, check out Ulimate Band’s extras on the jump

I don’t think I’ll have the energy to play High School Musical 3: Senior Year DANCE!, but I imagine there are thousands of tweens that will be bouncing off the walls to play the game. As the title implies, the latest Disney offering for the younger set is a dance game, but unlike Dance Dance Revolution, the Wii game doesn’t use a dance pad.

Instead. players move and shake their body using the Wii remote and nunchuk. They move their arms based on balls that float out of a center and hit one of six points around the body. When the ball reaches a certain area, players will have to move their limbs in that direction.

The whole gameplay style, including the poses, is lifted whole-heartedly from Sega’s Samba De Amigo. There are a few tweaks here and there. There is a Star Power-like mode that increases points. In addition, there are minigames to break up all that dancing.

Meanwhile, while playing each level, famous scenes from the movies are redone in polygons so tweens who have memorized every line can check the video game renditions and sing along.

As for the rest of the title, there’s your normal trimmings: Players will be able to get unlockable clothes and other items. On top of that, there are quizes that help fans determine which character they’re most liked.

Fans of the series can pick up the game around the time the movie released in October.