Intense rivalries, a cocksure protagonist, and hoverboard racing...yep, Sonic Free Riders may as well be called Back to the Future 2.

Video Blips:

• Use that snazzy new Kinect peripheral you bought to zoom down the raceways in Sonic Free Riders. I hope the game accounts for the physical handicap of not having a hedgehog/echidna/bird/cat-shaped body.

Continue after the break for a sleep-robbing Dead Space 2 trailer, the chase-friendly streets of Seacrest County in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and the details on Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom's character relationships.

• Thanks a lot, Dead Space 2. Your tendency to turn harmless childrens' songs into the stuff of nightmares makes me want to curl up in a corner somewhere. It also makes me really want this game. [GameSpot]

• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit's idyllic Seacrest County offers the perfect roads for racing and evading the police. I'd really like to know how a police department had the audacity (and the funds) to supply its officers with zillion-dollar sports cars.

• The folks from Namco Bandai and Game Republic detail the bonds formed between your character and a big chocolate-colored ogre thing in Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. At least his name isn't "Cuddles."