Shooting Stinkwads

Even though we're living in the age of Don't Let The Terrorists Win, video games continue to obsess over bigger, badder villains. After all these years, Nazis remain the ultimate, unredeemable stinkwads for gamers to shoot in the eyeballs.

Witness "Medal of Honor Vanguard." It's the -- wait, let me count; one, two, three -- yes, it's the zillionth World War II game ever made where you play as a soldier who parachutes into battle zones to machine-gun Nazis and Italian fascists.

Sounds like a good online game, right? Well, "Vanguard" is fairly entertaining when you play against the computer. But there's no option where you get to go online to beat up gamers nicknamed ImGonnaKillYou FromPortland or whatever.

When we hard-core gamers can't fight each other online, we feel limited to a few hours of offline adventure. Surprisingly, plenty of other new and recently released games also eschew the online world.

• You can't play "Burnout Dominator" online. Worse: unlike previous "Burnouts," you don't get to toy with a "Crash" mode, where you drive a car into an intersection then blow it up, setting other cars aflame in a destruction of points. (Fire!)

Even so, "Dominator" is still a fun and zippy racing tournament, laying down 88 tracks where you bump competitors off the road in slow-motion wrecks.

• "Full Auto 2: Battlelines," which came out way back in December, is similar to "Burnout," except you also shoot machine guns at competitor cars. "Full Auto 2" does let you play online. Unfortunately, a few Fridays ago, I went online with it, and there weren't enough gamers to start even a four-person race. That's a sad state of affairs for "Battlelines."

• "Test Drive Unlimited" lets you road-race cars online in Oahu, Hawaii, but something is missing in the new PS 2 edition. Compared to the lovely beast that came out for Xbox 360 last year, it's not as pretty.

And there's nothing to do but race; there are no missions other than losing traction around tight corners. I certainly don't like it when I come to a halt after I ram into trees and telephone poles. I've been spoiled with racing games where I knock that junk over. Objectively speaking, "Unlimited" is good. It's just not stupid enough for me. (It's too earnest and realistic.)

• A great racing game is "SSX Blur," which isn't even about cars. It's a lustrous and fast outing of extreme snowboarding over half pipes, where you do trick jumps and speed down trails. And? That's right. You cannot play it online. Geez.

• Meanwhile, "UEFA Champions League 2006-2007" is basically just another very good soccer game, but since it offers online matches, this makes it a fuller soccer experience.

"UEFA" also solves soccer's biggest problem. In other soccer games, just as I catch up to a soccer ball-dribbling opponent, suddenly the game makes me control some other bozo on my defense, many yards away. That does not happen so much in "UEFA." Hallelujah.

Now if only I weren't the worst soccer player in the online planet, everything would be hunky dory.

("Burnout Dominator" retails for $40 for PS 2, PSP -- Plays fun, but online competition isn't available. Looks very good. Difficult. Rated "E 10+" for violence. Three stars out of four.)

("Full Auto 2: Battlelines" retails for $60 for PS 3, $40 for PSP -- Plays fairly fun, but there aren't enough online gamers playing it. Looks very good. Difficult. Rated "T" for violence. Three stars.)

("Medal of Honor Vanguard" retails for $50 for Wii, $40 for PS 2 -- Plays fun, but the lack of online gaming makes it a relatively short game. Looks very good. Difficult. Rated "T" for blood, language, violence. Three stars.)

("SSX Blur" retails for $50 for Wii -- Plays very fun, but lacks online gaming. Looks very good. Difficult. Rated "E" for comic mischief. Three and one-half stars.)

("Test Drive Unlimited" retails for $40 for Xbox 360, PS 2, PSP -- Plays fun if you enjoy near-simulation racing, including online. Looks very good. Difficult. Rated "E 10+" for language, violence. Three stars.)

("UEFA Champions League 2006-2007" retails for $60 for Xbox 360, $30 for PS 2, $50 for PSP -- Plays fun, includes online gaming. Looks good. Difficult. Rated "E." Three stars.)