Games to stuff stockings

As the holiday season kicks into high gear and two new consoles battle it out for world… As the holiday season kicks into high gear and two new consoles battle it out for world supremacy, it might seem impossible to unravel and separate the good games from the bad.

So instead of studying for finals and spending your time not paying attention to what your professor is saying, take a look at some of the new games that will make your holiday experience a much more frustrating one.

From some new looks at old franchises to completely original creations, this December will be filled with not only holiday cheer, but a large assortment of electronic entertainment.

Star Trek: Legacy Release Date: Yesterday Platform: PC Genre: Real-time Strategy

The newest in a long-standing (and hopefully not part of the long-disappointing) line of Star Trek games, “Star Trek: Legacy” in particular promises its fans enough content to allow them to avoid women for days at a time.

The game spans a time ranging from the beginning of the Star Trek universe as explored in the show “Enterprise” to the bald-headed explorations of Patrick Stewart (Professor X) in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

The player can eventually control ships from four different factions: The Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans and the infamous half-person, half-machine and 100-percent-evil Borg.

Players can control all different types of ships: in the Federation, these range from models such as the Constitution class ship to the Galaxy class ship. For the Borg, this ranges from the “Cube” to the much more innovative “Tactical Cube” – that looks much like the aforementioned cube, only covered in aluminum foil.

The graphics look a bit like the massively multiplayer online role-playing game “Eve.” There are neat-looking planets and some good-looking particle effects. The makers of the game, Bethesda Softworks, claim that “Star Trek: Legacy” will offer an immersion of the sort fans have not seen before. They promise lasers, phasers and much more that will cause explosions galore.

For many, this will be the best chance they will get at being able to partially disrupt an inverse tackion field using a partially hydrogenated monosodium glutamate beam emitted from the coils of the main deflector relay system on board the sub-secondary processor array. And who can argue with that? Not I, and certainly not you.

And while many of you might have been disappointed in Star Trek games such as “Star Trek: Armada,” “Star Trek: Armada II,” “Star Trek: Shattered Universe,” “Star Trek: Encounters,” “Star Trek: Klingon Academy,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Dominion Wars,” “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” “Star Trek: New Worlds,” “Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force” and “Star Trek: Away Team,” you might actually be able to get your hopes up just a little bit for this one.

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII PS3 Release Date: Dec. 12 (Already released for other systems) Platform: Xbox, Xbox 360, PS3 Genre: Flight Simulator

For the nine of you who bought the Playstation 3 and did NOT immediately sell it for immense personal gain, “Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII” is everything you didn’t want in this new system. Sure, the graphics are clean and pretty cool – you get to fly around Europe and it looks a lot like Europe – but that’s pretty much it.

The new PS3 controller (It’s exactly the same as the old ones!) allows the player to control the tilts, turns and tribulations of the plane in flight. If only there was something that would allow a player to do just that, only in an easier way – right, a joystick.

In essence, the player gets to fly around Europe completing objectives, bombing this and fighting that, while he keeps his team around him. This is the squadron they are referring to in the game title. How original.

In fact, this game isn’t what you would call the latest innovation in gaming experience. What is the opposite of innovation? Oh right, “Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII.”

Elebits Release Date: Dec. 19 Platform: Nintendo Wii Genre: Adventure

In this anticipated Wii release from Konami, your job as the player is to hunt down Elebits: creatures that look like a crack-addicted cross between the animals from “Where the Wild Things Are” and some of the weirder stuff from “The Wizard of Oz.”

Apparently, Elebits are creatures that produce light and energy, and they have decided to no longer work for humanity, which means no one’s electronics work. A child has decided to restore power in his house by shooting the Elebits with some sort of beam gun and forcing them to work again.

Basically, “Elebits” combines the worst aspects of cleaning your room with the incredibly questionable ethics of European imperial colonialism.

The game has a few more than 20 levels that correspond to different areas of the house, and players use the gun to open doors, look under trash on the floor and everywhere else: Those Elebits can be hiding anywhere. As they are found and shot with the gun, the total energy in the room increases, turning on lights and restoring technology to mankind.

The graphics are kind of cartoony, but that’s to be expected from a game of this type. What is disappointing is that there isn’t much movement required from the Wii controller. There is little slashing and much more work of a delicate nature that requires players to be careful in their movements.

But all in all, the intriguing game is definitely worth a second look. So try it out, you might find that you like it just Elebit.

Other games to watch for: This month will be a busy season for games for all the platforms. “State of War: Warmonger” will come out on Friday, while “Far Cry Vengeance” for the Nintendo Wii was just released. Movie-themed games such as “The Ant Bully” and “Ice Age: The Meltdown” will appear on the Wii as well. Watch for “Star Wars: Lethal Alliance” on the Nintendo DS and “Blitz: Overtime” on the PSP.