I've always enjoyed role-playing games, even ones that follow the same standard rules and stories as every other basic role-playing game. Every once in a while, though, one comes along that plays around with the norm.

"Odin Sphere" is one of those. It follows the story of Gwendolyn, a Valkyrie and the daughter of King Odin, who tries to earn his praise while avenging the death of her sister. Meanwhile, a prophecy predicts an ongoing war will end the world. After you've beaten the game with Gwendolyn, you unlock other characters with which to play, adding other perspectives to the story.

The presentation is the most obviously fantastic part of the game. The story takes place as if it's being read from a book, so the characters are two-dimensional sprites. But they're not at all flat; they're highly detailed and brightly colored.

The levels -- spanning icy mountains and fiery pits -- are arranged in circles. While Gwendolyn appears to be running in a line, she's really doing a loop until she gets back to the starting point. Meanwhile, the background scrolls behind her, and enemies appearing offscreen show as points in relation to her on a sort of minimap.

Each circular level is connected to other circular levels via access points, so an overall area map would show a group of circles with lines connecting them.

The active gameplay is relatively simple, using just one button to attack. Another button activates magic attacks, which use energy Gwendolyn gathers from defeated enemies.

Probably the biggest flaw in the game, though, comes during the battles. When there are a lot of enemies on the screen, the game churns nearly to a halt. That kind of slowdown can be deadly in a real-time battle system.

"Odin Sphere" also uses an interesting item system, despite cumbersome inventory mechanics. There never seems to be enough space to store everything, and using an item requires you to cycle through all your other items. I would have liked the ability to assign item shortcuts to a button. But while it's annoying, it doesn't break the game, and the many things you can do with the items help make up for it.

Seeds can be planted and grown into berries, which then can be eaten to regain health, or sold to a merchant. Eating food also gains you experience points, so you can actually level up just from eating. Items also can be combined and synthesized into other, more useful items.

The gameplay in "Odin Sphere" may seem a bit on the simple side, but it remedies that with a high degree of difficulty. Death can come at any moment, even on the easy setting, making it an edge-of-your-seat experience.

"Odin Sphere" has a colorful, fun presentation and gameplay that's unlike most RPGs available today. Fans of the genre definitely should check it out.

Stupid streets of 'Juarez'

I have to be honest: I didn't care for "Call of Juarez," a Western-themed shooter/stealth game. I've heard other people raving about it, but I just couldn't like it. It had potential, but there were things that frustrated me so much that it killed the game for me.

I do like that you play as two characters, switching back and forth from chapter to chapter. It's a good way to flesh out the story, and it gives you a chance to play with more than one gameplay style. The storyline and dialogue also are entertaining.

But I hated playing as Billy, a young man who has been falsely accused of killing his mother and stepfather after his search for the mythical gold of Juarez.

He gets the stealth missions for the most part, and both the level design and the controls work against it. You can hide in bushes, which is nice, but while you're in there you really can't see what's going on, and the layouts of the levels aren't always conducive to sneaking.

There also doesn't seem to be any realism involved in whether the enemy sees you or not. He could be on the other side of the map, but if you slip up just slightly, suddenly you're caught. They also seem to completely forget you were there if you run away and come back. Most of the time, I wished I could just whip out some guns and start shooting.

Billy also has a whip, which he can use as a weapon and as a rope to cross chasms, but the "jump across the chasm" mechanic is absolutely horrid. You have to attach to a branch at just the right spot and be standing in just the right place for it to work. I spent a good half-hour just trying to make it across a gap in the first chapter. Not fun.

The other character, Reverend Ray, is more enjoyable, both because he gets the shoot-'em-up action and because he's a more interesting character. He's crazy, spouting Bible verses left and right as he's shooting people who get in the way of his hunt for Billy. Ray can even use the Bible as a weapon, talking down his enemies.

He gets a special shooting mode called concentration mode, which slows down the action and lets him shoot a lot of people before they can kill him. I was much happier playing as Ray than as Billy.

But neither character can climb up on things more than two feet high without the help of a shorter box, which is just stupid.

And there's online multiplayer, but it's so laggy it's nearly unplayable.

Overall, "Call of Juarez" doesn't look bad, and it has nice music and decent voice acting, but I so frequently became angry at the game for stupid things that it wasn't much fun.