A familiar formation

IF you have the only NFL game coming out this year, how creative do you really have to get? After all, should gamers want to play a football game with this year’s real NFL players and teams, their only choice is your title, Madden NFL ’06. (“You” being Electronic Arts, which purchased the exclusive rights to NFL video games for the next five years, effectively ending the cheaper and more innovative ESPN series.) Crank out a slightly updated version with a couple of new features and a new NFL star on the cover and they’ll have to buy it, right?

Of the new stuff, the “create a superstar” mode is actually pretty interesting. Select a player with a set of parents of your choosing (complete with an occupation and IQ for each that create the perfect quarterback, for instance), get drafted to a team, and work to become a commercial-doing, contract-signing, trade-demanding superstar.

Another new wrinkle this year is the vision and precision passing function, meaning your QB has to be looking at his targeted receiver across the field. That means no more “drop back and chuck it” plays.

And that’s about it. The rest is the same Madden they always give us. For better or worse.

Details: All platforms; $49.99; rated Everyone.

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Ghost-town setting

Darkwatch is what would have happened if a spaghetti western ever featured flesh-eating zombies. It’s as if they filmed the gory Wesley Snipes vampire-hunter movie “Blade” at the Ghost Town area of Knott’s Berry Farm.

In this incredibly well polished first-person shooter, players control Jericho Cross as he battles the undead in a lawless Old West setting. The graphics and game-play are flawless, reflecting how much time the makers spent on this title. (A nearly completed version was shown back at 2004’s E3 convention.)

Details: Xbox and PlayStation 2 platforms; $49.99; rated Mature (blood and gore, intense violence, language, sexual themes).

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Gaming, circa 1993

Delta Force: Black Hawk Down is set during the Somalian conflict of 1993. Unfortunately, the graphics and controls are very similar to those of games released in 1993. Uh oh. Add marginally fun game-play and no automatic checkpoints during the rather large levels (gamers must save their own progress, it says on Page 26 of the manual), and these soldiers get left behind, right? Well, not so fast: During online Xbox Live play, Black Hawk features up to 50 players a match. Rent this for its great online play, but buy the new Rainbow Six to see how a war game should be.

Details: Xbox and PlayStation 2 platforms; $49.99; rated Teen (blood, violence, language).

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A driver as projectile

Hope you don’t mind repetition. Hope you don’t mind repetition. When playing the strangely entertaining driver destruction bonus levels of the racing game FlatOut, be prepared to sit through the same lame song over and over as you try to throw your driver around like a rag doll.

In these original (and truly bizarre) mini competitions, the object is to propel your driver through the windshield and into targets such as a bull’s-eye and bowling pins. Though FlatOut’s racing levels are pretty pedestrian, watching you car’s pilot land in a limp heap after soaring 80 yards is a sick treat.

Details: Xbox and PlayStation 2 platforms; $49.99; rated teen (Violence).

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Rise of the machines

OK, these aren’t video games. But we really wanted to reenact a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion-animation monster battle with Robosapien and his little dinosaur buddy, Roboraptor. It was a struggle to do so. The controls aren’t as easy or responsive as we’d hoped, but the robots do move around well and are some of the coolest-looking toys around.

Details: Robosapien retails for $99; Roboraptor, $119. Check www.robosapienonline.comor www.roboraptoronline.com for stores.

For more video game coverage, see latimes.com/videogames.

For previous columns, or to e-mail Pete Metzger, visit latimes.com/gotgame.