Every Christmas, Santa delivers millions of video games to eager young gamers. But how does he made sure that kids are getting the right games? Games that they will enjoy, and that parents will enjoy them playing? We’ve got an inside source at Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole, and he sent us these tips to help you buy console and handheld games for your kids.

Now, keep in mind, every parent and every family are different. So these tips aren’t a guarantee for success, but should help you get pointed in the right direction, so that you and Santa put the right games for your family under the tree.

1) Do your research

What do you kids want? What don’t they like? What kinds of games do they like to play? What kind of games do you want them to be playing? These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself before buying games, to make sure you understand what’s important to your kids, and what’s important to you. If you do your research, you’ll avoid the chances of being completely lost when looking at the wall of games at your local store, and hopefully you’ll avoid being the worst parent ever on Christmas morning. Reading this article is a good start!

2) Check the reviews

Once you have an idea what kinds of games your kids want, check out sites like GameStats.com, GameRankings.com and Metacritic.com. These aggregate sites collect review scores from dozens of other websites, giving you a good sense of which games are good and which are bad. Unfortunately, these sites aren’t that helpful if you are trying to look at all the games in a genre, but otherwise, you can never go wrong doublechecking their overall scores. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been at the store checking one of these sites on my Blackberry before making a purchase.

3) Always check the ESRB rating

See that letter on the bottom left of the game’s package? That’s the ESRB rating, and its a very valuable tool. From E for Everyone to M for Mature, they are a helpful indicator of how appropriate that game in your hand is for your family, and what questionable content you might find inside.

4) If that ESRB rating is M, put it back

Speaking of the M rating, don’t be the parent that gives your 12 year-old an M rated title, and then reacts in horror when you walk in on them bloodily decapitating zombies. There are too many stories each year, and here at GamerPops, we’d rather you weren’t contributing to that statistic.

5) How do you feel about the Internet?

Some games are best enjoyed with an internet connection, and some are borderline useless if you aren’t playing online multiplayer. If you have concerns over your children playing games online, give this some consideration, particularly with the XBox 360 or the PS3′s more robust online offerings. For Wii games, with its much more restricted on-line offerings, you have a less to worry about.

6) Quality over quantity

This is more Wii-centric, but there are a wealth of minigame collections throwing ideas like “30 games!” or “100 games!” or other nonsense at you. While there are some good, worthwhile minigame collections out there, most of them, unfortunately, are garbage and it’s very easy to pick up a bad one. Look for a game that does one thing right, rather than a title that fails to do 30 games decently.

7) If this price is cheap, the game might be cheap too

Don’t be fooled by a low price. There are some great games with legitimately low prices because they’ve been out for a while or part of Greatest Hits Collections, but there is a lot of garbage and “shovelware” out there, particularly on the Wii. Again, do your research and read the reviews, and understand that sometimes games are cheap for a reason.

Good luck buying for girls

While the Wii and DS have opened up a whole new world of games for girls, you aren’t going to find the depth of reviews and information about those titles. Of course, that’s something we here at GamerPops are going to do our part to improve upon, but right now, its a bit of a wasteland.

9) Expect the unexpected

Just because you did you research and made a smart choice for your 12 year old doesn’t mean Uncle Bryan isn’t going to mess everything up by getting him Modern Warfare 2. What is your plan if that happens, and how will you respond to that 12 year’s disappointment when your instinct is to take the game away?

10) LEGO is your friend.

When in doubt, there are some tried and true franchises that are good fallback option. As a general rule, any of the recent LEGO games (Batman, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, the upcoming Harry Potter) are a safe option for fun, kid-friendly platforming that are equally fun for adults. And Nintendo’s Mario titles, touching on every genre from adventure to role playing to sports to party games, aren’t always perfect, but they are usually amongst the best and most consistent offerings in their genres on the Wii and the DS.

Good luck with your game buying, and we hope these tips come in handy!