New VIDEO GAMES: Football, fighting, and a famous fedora

What can we expect from Jake Locker this football season as he leads UW's Huskies for his final school year? Well, my attempts to simulate the Huskies' 2010-11 run have come mostly from this week's biggest game release, NCAA Football 2011 (Xbox 360, PS3), and based on this year's edition, Locker is going to run all of the time. So, like, invest in some Dr. Scholl's gel dealies. Running backs (and dash-happy QBs like Locker) have more high-speed maneuvers at their disposal in the latest NCAA game, as players can use both control sticks to wiggle and zip through defenders. Or they can ignore the second stick and weave around just fine. Either way, it's a big tweak for a series that usually gets shadowed by the bigger NFL games; even better is the special franchise mode that works both on your Xbox and your web browser. Go ahead, burn that worktime productivity on opportunities to recruit fictional high school athletes to your fictional university (go, go, gooooo PCU!).

Also new to Scarecrow this week is Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues (Wii). Three words: nuke the fridge. In LEGO. Er, that's five. Anyway, this game mostly focuses on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with a few choice action scenes from the original trilogy mixed in. Since the game's developers, Traveller's Tales, choice not to render LEGO monkey brains, I can't give this game my total endorsement, but it's a good excuse for Indy fans to tear through the classics (and with two people at the same time, no less).

Since it's a slow games week, that's it for new stuff, so allow me to revisit one of the best sleepers of this year. Even better, it's the weirdest, most explodey fighting game on the Wii: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars. It's a rare gaming mash-up. Gamers know Capcom for stuff like Street Fighter, Mega Man, Resident Evil, and a bunch of other classic Japanese video games. Not as many gamers are as familiar with Tatsunoko, the Japanese manga/anime production studio, but savvy Scarecrow fans will certainly recognize its crazy superhero characters from our anime racks. If you like fighting games with elaborate combos and nicely balanced rosters, this game is tuned to your expectations, steeped in Capcom's fighting game pedigree. If those words scare you, and you prefer fighting games where you smack buttons and hope something cool happens, you're in luck too; TvC only has three buttons, compared to most fighting games' six or so, and the game's over-the-top fighters are tuned for anime-style color-'splosions of kick and punch. Easy to enjoy, with a nice learning curve tucked in once you're hooked.