Of the Saints Row: The Third main DLC trilogy - Genkibowl VII, this guy, and The Trouble with Clones - this is the one I was most looking forward to, for obvious reasons: aliens, lasers, and spaceships. Right!? As it turns out, the DLC is themed completely around making a movie, so there aren't real aliens, and the lasers and spaceships seem a bit out-of-place. They are cool, but nevertheless, the whole sci-fi parody premise feels more forced than funny.

Parts of the DLC's mini-campaign feel a bit overlong -- even though the whole package is still quite short. You do have the opportunity of replaying the series of missions once you're done, although why you would want to is anyone's guess. And the spaceship? Not as fun to fly as the VTOL aircraft from the main game.

Not really worth $7, but as part of its three-pack - itself at a substantial discount - not a bad deal.

Better than: Red Faction: Guerrilla - Demons of the Badlands
Not as good as: Saints Row: The Third - Genkibowl VII
So has Volition learned to make meaningful DLC yet?: still nope.

Progress: Finished the 'story'

At first blush, Genkibowl VII appears to be the least interesting of Saints Row: The Third's big-ticket DLC trilogy (along with Gangstas in Space and The Trouble with Clones). But, like SR3 itself, Genkibowl is perfectly willing to sacrifice integrity and wit for the sake of pure, stupid fun. In this DLC pack you'll drive into pedestrians to please Professor Genki; you'll go through an amped-up version of the Prof's obstacle courses from the main game; and you'll play a destructive mini-game with a giant ball of yarn, blowing up rival mascots.

Beyond the DLC's snack-sized campaign, the obstacle course and yarn-ball events have standalone versions that can be done just for fun, plus extra vehicles and so on. But the content as a whole is pretty brief -- and yeah, doesn't have much thematic cohesion.

Not really worth $7, but as part of its three-pack - itself at a substantial discount - not a bad deal.

Better than: Red Faction: Guerrilla - Demons of the Badlands
Not as good as: Red Faction: Armageddon - Path to War
So has Volition learned to make meaningful DLC yet?: nope!

Progress: Finished the 'story'

I stand by my assertion that Torchlight is basically pointless, with more polish but less function than its Blizzard forebear. And that's why I had always figured, if Torchlight II wasn't going to come out before Diablo III, it would be pointless as well. But now that I've been somewhat underwhelmed by Blizzard's follow-up, I've become genuinely interested in Torchlight II.

Actually, when I saw that a four-pack of Torchlight II is the same price as one copy of Diablo III, I went ahead and pre-ordered it.

Obviously I'm interested in the offline and LAN play, if for no other reason than to not feel tethered to Battle.net. I did verify that TL2 has unique drops for each player, easily the most important mechanical innovation from Diablo III. And while I don't know if I should expect creative and original content, I know that it can't possibly be less original than D3.

Anyway, at these prices, the discussion is moot -- whenever Torchlight II ends up coming out, we'll find out how good it really is.

I still have something of a love-hate relationship with Diablo III. When I'm in the groove of playing it, the slick skill system and super-cool abilities allow me to handily ignore the utter lack of creativity in monster and level design. But then I go back to town to empty my pack, and find items like Barbarian weapons with intelligence bonuses, or bows with strength bonuses -- in other words, items that are useful only to classes that don't exist. I want to upgrade my blacksmith's crafting level, but to do that I need some items from the Auction House, items which haven't been searchable for days. I enter an event portal, and a network hiccup causes the fight to freeze-frame at precisely the worst possible time.

Again: this is a great game when you're playing it. But it's distressing how much of the game surrounding that core feels lazy, or broken, or exploitative.

I've played all five classes through Normal mode now, seeing most of their unique abilities, and I generally enjoyed each of them. I never really "got" the Witch Doctor, and the Demon Hunter strikes me as requiring too much micromanagement to stay alive, but I really enjoyed the Wizard's ability to crowd-control, and the Monk and Barbarian's survivability. I plan to experiment with those guys in Nightmare to some extent, although I don't know how much longer these modes will string me along.

Progress: Finished Normal and passed level 30 with all classes

I'm not going to harp on about the always-online requirement, because there's no way that any sane or rational person could see it as anything other than complete bullshit. If you want to see a game that had both online-authenticated player and item data, and offline and LAN play (not to mention the freedom to cheat by yourself if you really wanted to), you can look at Diablo fucking Two. That's all I have to say on that.

At any rate. As I've mentioned, by liberally up-ending the character-growth foundations of its forebears, Diablo III is surprisingly accessible (and re-roll friendly) without really sacrificing significant depth in the process. Practically speaking, losing the ability to arbitrarily invest stat points from leveling up just means that you can no longer create broken character builds; and translating dozens of different talents per class into just a handful with different rune options, means that - since most of those dozens of talents weren't very useful anyway - players will really enjoy more gameplay variety than they did before. It's still a little hard to get over the appearance of being shallower than Diablo II's character builds, but in execution, the Diablo III system really is an all-around improvement.

Like I suspected from the beta, the cinematic cutscenes Blizzard's delivered in the final game are suitably gorgeous and epic, setting the bar for visual fidelity in the same way they did back in 2000. But they haven't made the cinematics any more important than they were 12 years ago -- they still only occur between Acts, and they still exist in a sort of symbiotic dysfunction with the in-game dialog and events, neither of which fully agree on what's important in the game's developing story. This guy complains about the missed emotional significance of a brief scene in the game's first 20 minutes, but I shudder to think of how he'll feel about Act I's generally ambiguous objective and slapdash pacing.

It's a shame, because the plot abstract for Diablo III is actually quite interesting, and satisfyingly ties up the loose ends left from Diablo II (at least until Blizzard decides to make a D3 expansion pack). But in-game, the story is always in un-subtle service of the level design. Go through the uniquely beautiful grassy plains area and find your way through the spider-cave passage, because you have to find, uh, X. Seek out the portal to Hell and go kill a thing that represents, uh, a bad something. There's nothing wrong with this pragmatic game design, per se, except that it's exactly what I was playing 12 years ago.

Speaking of which, it is more than a little distressing how much of Diablo III's content is really just an updated form of Diablo II's. Act I has zombies in dark grasslands, a ruined old Tristram, and goatmen in highlands, plus the aforementioned spider cave borrowed from Kurast. Act II's town is a carbon copy of Lut Gholein; its outdoor environment is the exact same desert, with the exact same annoying vultures, insects, and tiger-people; and its sub-areas are the same sewers, bug caverns, and arcane realms. Act III is the most original, with a lot of content in a sieged fortress, but later areas delve directly into Hell (ala D2's Act IV). And while Act IV takes place in Heaven, it is really just a white-and-glowy version of D2's Hell, all the way down to the swarming enemies and abbreviated number of quests. Again, all of these design themes and elements work fine, but they seem lifted from Diablo II as a template, rather than originally designed from its inspiration.

There is a short but sweet list of mechanical innovations - the dynamic skill-and-rune system, equipment crafting, unique loot drops for each player in a game, really fantastic art and sound - that make Diablo III a clear victory. But there are other, equally significant ways in which it seems like a game stuck in the past, or even stumbling backward: no offline options; only four simultaneous players (D2 had eight!); not many meaningful connections between the story and game scenes; much of the same level and enemy design as its predecessor. What's generally disappointing about Diablo III is that it feels two or three years ahead of Diablo II, rather than twelve. By now, I feel like we should have a much better game.

Don't get me wrong -- it's still a blast to play. The character options are great fun to analyze and toy around with. I hunger for more powerful equipment to pimp out my stats. And I think I'll really enjoy playing the higher-difficulty modes, not to mention trying out the other character classes.

Diablo III nails the essence of its combat and character gameplay. But the rest of the game is just Diablo II with a facelift.

Better than: Diablo II, see above
Not as good as: Diablo II, see above
Now I'm actually curious about: Torchlight II

Progress: Finished Normal with a Monk

Man, I just don't know about this Amalur business. It's certainly not a bad game - and I know that I can enjoy games which are mostly borrowed - but it just fails to engage me in the moment-to-moment. The game world and play mechanics aren't just familiar, they're exceedingly familiar, to the extent that the Tolkien-styled fantasy setting, and the loose, button-mashy combat feel uninspired and stale.

It's a shame, because it's very evident that an immense amount of care and effort has gone into this production. The writing and voice acting, the artistic detail, the complexity of character stats and equipment, all speak to and realize a grand vision. But that vision just isn't very interesting.

I dunno though; it's not that it's bad. I might come back to Amalur during a particularly slow season. It's just, man ... I don't care about this game world, at all.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played through the demo

So, a few more play sessions got me through the eight worlds (with a surprise-but-not-much-really extra couple levels at the end of World 8), and I was generally happy but not ecstatic about Mario 3D Land. There really weren't a whole lot of power-ups, and although there was a fair number of stages, each one was generally so short that it didn't feel like there was much game overall; which, aside from a few pretty challenging bonus coins, are also fairly easy. Fun game, but not really deep or complex enough to stake a claim against other modern Marios.

But! While I knew to expect some extra bonus stages at the end - I actually expected a special world like the ones in Super Mario World and New Super Mario Bros. Wii - I was surprised to find that there are a whole other game's worth of special bonus levels. They aren't just dark-world versions of the main game's levels, either -- these are new, more stages. And even in the first stage, I already found a new power-up!

I still feel like 3D Land is a good-but-not-great entry in Mario's franchise, but the special worlds might hold more surprises for me yet.

Progress: Special World 1

I was immensely disappointed when I found out that Arkham City's DLC packs for Nightwing and Robin didn't contain any story content, but were really just challenge maps with new characters. But I'm relatively sure that this one is going to actually extend the campaign, in which case, of course I'll buy it.

Five bucks, thirty bucks, whatever. I had a hankering for some sci-fi and, to put it simply, Mass Effect 3 delivered. As in the franchise's last installment, it's not without its flaws - you may have heard of a bit of a dust-up over the ending - but personally I came away from it very satisfied.

I was worried at first, though. Mass Effect 3 does not put its best foot forward; when the story begins, as the Reapers come to Earth, what should be a both emotional and bombastic scene is instead a hand-holding tutorial. And the next several sequences continue to hold your hand through heavily linear plot points, none of which are particularly interesting or relevant. But in time, ME3 does develop a much more open-ended structure, similar to ME2, where enough optional (yet still meaningful and engaging) side-quests are sprinkled between plot events to keep the galaxy from feeling too claustrophobic.

Gameplay-wise, if there are differences between the ME2 and ME3 experiences, I wasn't able to pick up on them. (So if you hated ME2's departure from the classic-RPG complexities of the first game, you'll find no solace here.) There are new enemies, some of which are really fun to fight, and some of which are the most annoying things in the history of forever; but by and large, it's the same deal as last time, which is pretty good. Personally I've never wanted to play as anything other than the sniper (Infiltrator) class, and headshotting alien dudes from across the map is as awesome now as it's ever been.

And then there's the, uh, Multiplayer. What's surprising about this isn't how it feels relevant to the campaign (it doesn't), or how it respects the player's time and money (it doesn't), but how it isn't terrible. There is actually some fun to be had here, in the same way that any other recent game's Horde Mode can be entertaining for a few minutes at a time. I can't see how anyone would care enough about it to put real money into randomized character bonuses, or even to play it long enough to get the full Galactic Readiness bonus out of it (which deteriorates over time!?). But I played enough matches to get tired of it, and still got a pretty good Readiness boost out of it, so I won't harbor any particularly ill will toward the feature.

One aspect in which ME3 definitely falls short of ME2 is its cast. Given that the second game was all about assembling a rag-tag team of ass-kickers, the third game's crew has relatively few shining stars. There's really only one new crew member I would call "awesome," and it's a bit disappointing that, at least for my tastes, none of my favorite fighters from the last game are even able to join the crew. It's not a bad assembly, especially with classic standbys like Garrus and Tali, but it's just not as good as last time.

I've always criticized Mass Effect for its half-assed choices: dialog options don't sync up with what actually happens (let alone what you wanted to happen), and often the consequences make it feel like you really didn't have much of a choice to begin with. Well, ME3 still isn't perfect in this regard - not to mention the ending (which I'll get to in a bit) - but I felt like this time, my choices had more meaningful consequences than ever before. Choosing between crewmates, and between civilizations, for the ultimate goal of liberating the galaxy; the premises of most of the game's big decision points really built up my sense of the game's stakes, and made me feel like I had a real, significant impact in them. Granted, I looked up the plot points later and found that the potential outcomes were not actually that different, but at the time it really felt like my Commander Shepard was orchestrating the salvation of the galaxy.

Now, about that ending -- there are some really legitimate complaints to lodge against it. In many ways, with its random-ass contrivances and the multiple endings' utter lack of variety, it does feel like something that someone whipped up in ten minutes. Analytically: it's pretty stupid. But holistically, as I felt my dozens of hours of preparation leading up to this one conclusion, it did feel very powerful to me. Hell, maybe it was just the music (which does reach an emotional swell in the game's finale). And, yeah, it's pretty arbitrary and dumb. But I didn't feel as upset about its shortcomings, as I felt happy to see Shepard's three-game story come to a end. I'm pretty curious what that Extended Cut DLC will attempt to do from here.

Fun, engaging, but imperfect. Mass Effect 3 is definitely worth playing, as long as you didn't hate the second game. And for what it's worth, my Origin experience was actually very pleasant. Kudos to BioWare for wrapping up this trilogy on what I would call a good note.

Better than: Mass Effect
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham City, I guess (hard to come up with a good comparison)
Basically as good as: Mass Effect 2

Progress: Finished on Normal

Having dumped even more time into the beta, I have developed even more thoughts regarding it.

Story: it's voiced and written well, and I can already tell that it's got that heartwarming Diablo feel to it, with ancient Hell lore ravaging the already-quite-ravaged lands of Sanctuary. I'm curious to see what trouble Deckard Cain and his cute little adoptive niece Leah will get up to. What really felt missing from the beta were some of Blizzard's classically-epic cutscenes, but I assume that's just because of, you know, beta.

Classes: I tried out each of the game's five classes through the beta quests, and the Monk was my favorite by a mile, although this could easily be an accident of the limited number of skills available at lower levels. The game's three physical classes (Barbarian, Demon Hunter, and Monk) all have a cool seesaw dynamic with their ability meters, but I felt like the Monk had the best balance of left- and right-clicking. I also got a Rune upgrade that made my punch move teleport to the enemy, which was awesome. Anyway, I'm super interested in how later-game abilities will mix up the classes even more.

Mechanics: I was a little disappointed to see the complete disappearance of stat points and talent trees, and the streamlining of the ability hotbar - no longer a freeform amalgam of your favorite abilities, but now one ability and Rune combination choice from each of six categories - took some getting used to. It's definitely a step down from Diablo II in terms of customization and complexity; on the other hand, you can change your loadout whenever you want (even in the middle of a battle), which is way better than never. And the abilities in general are fun enough to make up for the relative inflexibility.

Online: online activation DRM, for better or worse, is a fact of modern PC gaming. But I find it pretty disturbing that there's no offline mode at all, and the beta weekend was a perfect demonstration of why: server instability. Maybe you can get over the client-side connection requirement -- but what happens during the game's launch week, when server stability and capacity issues make it difficult for you to sign in to what is, very likely, a single-player game session? And what about when servers have to be restarted for regular maintenance, making it impossible to play? This isn't an MMO, and having the stringent connection requirements of one just seems wildly inappropriate.

Like I said, most of this bile is from the access issues during the beta weekend, which is honestly somewhat expected. Blizzard has built up a fairly good stability record with StarCraft II's backend, as far as I know, so it's not necessarily going to be a thing. But if it is a thing, it's going to be a pretty goddamn frustrating one.