What’s the biggest mistake that so many theater designers make these days? It isn’t improper speaker placement. It isn’t improper display calibration. Nor is it subpar acoustics. No, the biggest mistake I see so many theater or media room designers make is the relegation of video game systems to the kids’ room.

Today’s gaming systems are taking high-definition video to new heights. They’re turning surround sound from something that happens to you into something you’re involved in creating. They’ve turned the passive experience of home theater into an interactive spectacle that’s more akin to Bourne Ultimatum than Bomberman. Try out any of these titles to see what I mean. Just don’t be surprised if gaming takes center stage in your home theater as a result.

Mass Effect (Xbox 360)
If you want a taste of why video games are slowly but surely robbing market share from the movie industry, look no further than this engaging sci-fi roleplaying epic. Rather than offering an alternative experience to the megaplex, as most games do, Mass Effect challenges Hollywood on its home turf, and beats the big studios handily, with an engrossing storyline, engaging characters, and an unforgettable cinematic experience.

Of course, plot points and personal growth don’t really get the saliva flowing, do they? What really sells the game are its gorgeous outer-space cut scenes—great, gleaming, gargantuan ships soaring through the pitch blackness of space, complete with roaring sound to boot—and the beauty of its expositional scenes. Think the talky bits of roleplaying games are boring? Think again. Thanks to the power of the Xbox 360, character close-ups have an undeniable Norma Desmond quality about them—every wrinkle, every laugh line, every whisker and large pore is displayed unabashedly—and every scene is framed with camera angles that would have made Sven Nykvist proud. It’s all rendered so beautifully that you’ll gladly sit through forty-plus hours of the game’s amazing story and find yourself begging for more. Not even Peter Jackson could pull that off.

Assassin’s Creed (PS3, Xbox 360)
Of course, a game doesn’t have to mimic Hollywood to provide an engrossing experience. Rather than showing you a world, Assassin’s Creed creates one around you, dropping you into right into the midst of the Holy Land at the end of the twelfth century, smack dab in the middle of the Third Crusade. And since you won’t have to concentrate on fussy, esoteric button-combinations—you’re given a button for your head, one for your feet, and one each for your hands, keeping things slick and intuitive—you’ll have plenty of time to soak up the sights.

In fact, don’t be surprised if you find yourself doing more sightseeing than assassinating. The streets of Damascus and Jerusalem are rife with minute detail, from the rough texture of the cobblestone streets and the cloud of dust that hovers above them to the finely woven tapestries that litter the walls. Even the way the cloth of your robes clings to the back of your legs as you sneak through the crowded streets is a sight unto itself.

But by far the best vista of all is the one from above. Find a tower, scale it, and survey the city below, and I guarantee the last thing you’ll be thinking about is processors and polygons. But those geeky underpinnings will nonetheless be working thankless overtime inside your PS3 or 360 to generate the most gorgeous images to grace your screen in ages.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3)

Of course, there is more than one way to skin a wire frame. Drake’s Fortune eschews the photorealism of Assassin’s Creed in lieu of a more stylized, animated look, but its environments are no less engrossing, they feel no less authentic, thanks to the game’s disturbingly realistic sound design. In fact, the game’s commitment to audio is evidenced by its wealth of format choices: standard stereo, Dolby surround, DTS, and even full uncompressed digital surround sound, the likes of which graces the best of Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. All of the requisites are here—whizzing bullets, kabooming explosions, hair-raising score music—but Drake’s Fortune takes it up a notch with subtle nuances that few games bother with. The superb voice acting dulls in the thick of the jungle and echoes indoors; waves of water ripple off of walls and shorelines, slapping back against themselves to build walls (or create vacuums) of sound; even the dull drone of chirping birds and cicadas are placed with such precision as to create a bubble of reality around you. You don’t just see the world around you; you feel it. If only you had the ears of Blues Brothers-era Ray Charles, you could navigate through the tombs and thugs and thickets without even turning on your display. (cont...)

Call of Duty 4 (PS3, Xbox 360)
Taken on their own, the graphics for Call of Duty 4 fall just shy of Assassin’s Creed’s greatness. And its sound design is merely a 10 to Drake’s Fortune’s 11. (That’s one more, isn’t it?) But together, the audio and video of this modern-day shooter combine to make one raucous, rip-roaring bundle of sensory overload.

Check out the prologue mission “Crew Expendable” for the perfect combination of audible and ocular mayhem. You’re infiltrating an enemy freighter in the dead of night. Only the constant flicker of lightning sprinkles the inky blackness of undulating waves with harsh light. Rain streaks your vision. Even the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire can’t overcome the deafening thunder. You beg for the quiet of the indoors.

Be careful what you wish for. Inside, the metallic halls echo and reverberate with the sounds of war. And as the freighter is sacrificed, ripped to shreds by an airstrike, you’ll find your senses clinging for clarity like a rambunctious puppy scrambling for footing on a newly waxed floor—your eyes blurred by in-pouring saltwater, blinded by flashes of light; your ears overwhelmed by the groaning of thousands of tons of metal being ripped apart around you; your body screaming for balance as the ship rocks to and fro. Yet somehow, this cacophonic chaos manages to be ridiculously entertaining.

Rock Band (PS3, Xbox 360)

Rock Band is, without question, the greatest party game ever made. And by “party game,” I don’t simply mean that you’ll pull it out at gatherings. I mean that gatherings will spontaneously erupt around it. Prepare to discover just how many friends you really have.

And be prepared to crank the sound, because if any game ever deserved to be played over the finest of sound systems, it’s this one. Rock Band combines the reasonable facsimile of guitar playing we’ve all come to know and love from the Guitar Hero series (its creators were responsible for the first two GH games), and adds a real—if scaled-down—drum kit, as well as a rocking karaoke component. And unlike most music games from the past, nearly all of the songs are the original master recordings, so you and up to three of your guests will be rocking out to the actual “Foreplay/Long Time” and “Celebrity Skin” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” all remixed in glorious, rump-shaking 5.1-channel surround sound. And best of all, the vocals and guitar pouring out of your front speakers? The bass and drums rattling your subwoofer? Yeah, that’s you and your guests. And the screams ripping through your rear channels? They’re all for you, you sexy rock star, you.