Last week you heard me on SiriusXM; this week I'll be on radio shows across the nation.  Here are some of the products I'll be talking about:

What separates one dance game from another?  I've looked at five new titles for the Kinect (supplied by their publishers) launched for the 2011 holiday season and found that while all had something to offer - none were complete bombs - many suffer from what I call Macromediocrity.

Dragon Age may self-identify, in name at least, as a sequel. Yet every aspect of this disappointing game feels like a throw-back to an earlier generation of less interesting, less capable games that hadn't experienced the demands, compelling story-telling, and ground breaking game play of the original Dragon Age.

The creative arc of the Dragon Age series seems to be taking its cues from the plot of Benjamin Button. Instead of maturing, each game seems to be less capable, less well executed, and less deep than the previous.

To say "Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions is the best Spider-Man game yet for Xbox 360" is to damn it with faint praise; the previous Xbox 360 titles in the franchise haven't set the bar very high. Overall, Shattered Dimensions (provided by the manufacturer for review) is a decent game containing a few moments of greatness. Unfortunately, the program suffers from many of the same problems that give the series a wash of mediocrity. Instead of pushing the boundaries of what a comic book based video game can do (as Spiderman did in print form), the designers slavishly have adhered to a predictable, thread-worn model that lacks imagination and depth.

By Adam Weinstein, Contributing Editor

To understand how great I think the two latest installments in the Pokémon series are you need to know a little about me. 

I am child of the Pokémon era, complete with the accent mark above the “e”. When the original Pokémon games, Red & Blue, were released in the US in 1998, my 9-year old mind was blown. It seemed as if all of my friends had embarked on their very own journeys and, together, were in on something bigger than I could comprehend. When I clamored to my parents that I wanted a Gameboy and a Pokémon game of my own to play, I told them that I was feeling left out at school simply because I couldn't play. I'm not sure if I convinced them, but when they went into parent-teacher conferences and had my plight confirmed by my 4th grade professor, I too entered the world of Pokémon.

The Pokémon games were always a huge part of my childhood. To that add all of the movies, TV shows, cards, and collectables that became part of who I was in grade school, high school and, well, actually I still play the games today – two months short of college graduation. I played through the all the rehashes, the remakes of old games, and, to be honest, the lazy money-grab games that saw very few changes in the series. For me, nostalgia was definitely a factor in why I played games like Fire Red (a remake of the original Red version), Soul Silver (a remake of the later Silver version), and the like.

That being said, Pokémon Black & White far surpass the “great game if you haven't already played Pokémon” trope. This Pokémon is a big deal.

There was a time when Konami was the Tony Manero of all dance games. Their Dance Dance Revolution kept ramping up the ante of what a videogame could be. It could be argued that Konami's use of the dance pad as an alternate controller set the stage for Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Kinect. But it wasn't Konami's dance game that was a launch title for Kinect, that honor went to Harmonix (creators of Rock Band) with Dance Central. Now, in the first wave of Kinect games since launch, Konami's Dance Masters seeks to regain the dance floor crown.

The hit against the otherwise lauded Rock Band franchise has been that (with the exception of the drum kit) it doesn't teach you how to play an instrument.   The big news this year is that Rock Band 3 has real instruments and can be used to transfer video gaming skills to real world instrumental proficiency.

The first six titles for Kinect demonstrate clearly that the new "controlerless" interface can work very well.  While some are better than others, as an opening salvo across the bow of the Wii and Move, these show that family gaming can still pack a lot of punch.  Here are our picks for the ones to get and the ones to skip.  You know how to skip on the Kinect, don't you?  Just jump, one leg in front of the next.

Grease is so bad it should come with Liquid Plumber.  Never before has a game that tried to do it all (Dancing, track, racing, singing) failed so completely to do anything worthwhile.  Love the movie?  You won't find the original voices here.  Nor the likenesses of the characters, either. 

If you're looking for a more-or-less harmless game to play with the family at the holidays, and you keep the remote control by your side at all times to keep the music under control, this game for kids and casual gamers might be what you're looking for.  On the other hand, you might want to ask yourself these questions before investing:

Do you need another party game full of mini-activities?  Do you have a taste for music that may make your ears bleed?  Do you not really care that you've played most of these ideas before in countless games.