So every once in a while, we here at the Mercury run a videogame column called Geek Out. This week we didn’t have room for it (LAME!), but Ubisoft was kind enough to send us two of their big games for review. And hey, we like playing videogames! And we like reviewing them, too! So even though they didn’t make it into print, here are a few game reviews. The games: Rayman: Raving Rabbids for the Nintendo Wii, and Star Wars: Lethal Alliance for the Nintendo DS. Hit the jump for the reviews!

So you're Rayman, and you’re having a picnic one day with some friends, right? You’re minding your own business when all of a sudden some huge, robotic bunny kidnaps you. The next thing you know, you wake up inside a big stadium filled with creatures that look like the result of a zombie bunny mating with one of those Ugly Dolls you find in all the trendy toy boutiques. So what do you do? You try to fight your way to freedom, of course! And you do so by passing a series of over 70 mini-games referred to as “trials.”

Welcome to Rayman: Raving Rabbids, where you’ll spend most of your time conquering said trials, fighting your way to freedom from… bunnies. Sometimes you’ll be locking bunnies in bathroom stalls. Sometimes you’ll be shooting them with your plunger gun. And sometimes--well, sometimes you’ll be guiding marbles out of their brains, labyrinth-style. The variation in the trials--and the way the Wii’s remote is used differently for each--really makes Rabbids a lot of fun, but it also makes it extremely difficult and frustrating to play on your own.

This is the type of game to be played with a group of friends--and not necessarily as a party game. While the game does have a multiplayer mode, I found that working together and sharing tasks was much more enjoyable. Think about it this way: Each person in your group will have a natural talent. Some people--usually the musicians--are the best at rhythm games. Those who have a steady hand are great at the shooting and balancing games. And, the people who spend a lot of masturbating (I fall into this category) are best at the games that require vigorous shaking of the Wii remote for long periods of time. So when everyone works together, Rayman gains his freedom from the rabbids faster--and everyone feels special. Okay, so maybe nobody feels special, but I guarantee you’ll have a good time. CHRISTINE S. BLYSTONE

I’ll admit it: If it has the Star Wars logo on it, I’ll play/watch/read it. I’m not proud of this fact. This weakness of character has sucked away more hours of my life than I care to tally, and almost all of them--movies aside--have been crappy hours. Or, at best, marginally tolerable hours. Hours I should spend thinking about philosophy, or volunteering with the homeless, or, really, doing anything other than feeding an already ridiculous devotion to George Lucas’ fantasy universe. But I don’t, and I’m hardly alone--there are millions of other Star Wars geeks out there, and Lucas and Ubisoft know it. Which pretty much explains why they can get away with putting out games like Star Wars: Lethal Alliance, a game developed for Nintendo’s DS and Sony’s PlayStation Portable.

First, the good: Yes. The game does have the Star Wars logo on it. Right on the cover. So that settles that.

Then, the rest: Man, this game is ugly. And I mean really, really ugly--if videogames had proms, Lethal Alliance would be the fat, lonely sad one, sobbing to itself at home while everybody else that didn't look like shit prommed it up. The DS isn’t the most powerful piece of hardware, but it can dole out some pretty great graphics. But Lethal Alliance is just lazy, full of blocky, sloppy colors, jagged geometry, uninspired design. Pair it up with underwhelming sound, and you’d swear the DS was incapable of supporting good looking and sounding games. But it’s not. Lethal Alliance just can't be bothered with good looks or sounds.

But okay--I'm being superficial. Ugly games can still have good personalities, right? But Lethal Alliance, uh, doesn’t have that either. A bland storyline smooshed between Episodes III and VI has you controlling a mercenary and her robot pal; crammed with forgettable characters and missions, you’ll likely skip through cut scenes as fast as possible and forget your objectives.

But okay--it’s all about gameplay, right? Yeah! That’s what games are all about! So let’s see… you can control this mercenary chick (well, sort of, using the D-pad feels clunky and imprecise), and every once in a while you get to play as her not-so-helpful droid, too… problem is, you don’t get to do anything that interesting. Since the game auto-targets all your enemies, shooting merely consists of tapping the same button over and over, while the occasional puzzles aren’t exactly that puzzling. Teamwork between your characters does factor in, and in short, too-rare bursts, the game can be fun--but when the fun parts are surrounded by so much bland platforming, mindless shooting, and frustrating boss fights, you’ll be hard-pressed to care. Overall, this alliance is more "marginally tolerable" than "lethal," and yeah, okay, looking back, that was probably to be expected. But this is the last rushed, half-assed Star Wars game I play, though. Seriously. For real. I mean it this time. ERIK HENRIKSEN