In one sense - actually, in most senses - Missing Link is more of the same from Human Revolution. You can sneak around a facility, knock dudes out and/or unload lead into them, hack employee terminals, punch through walls, upgrade stuff, buy stuff, et cetera. There are a few key differences though, chief among them, that the 4-8 hour-long campaign is completely linear. (You can also do a stealth takedown on the final boss, which is pretty awesome.)

Much like the full game, Missing Link starts pretty rough, with no useful augments or items. Fortunately, once you weather the introductory segment, the experience levels and praxis kits start flowing in like, uh, some kind of electric gravy. And there's even a store in the form of one dude with an underground market -- and he has sidequests! It quickly builds back up into the same Deus Ex experience you grew to like in Human Revolution.

I do want to complain about the biometric scanning chambers, though. I assume they're used to conceal level loading time, because all they do is gate your progress for a minute or so with the same animated effect each time. And since there is a significant amount of back-and-forth in the DLC campaign, you'll be forced to sit through the effect far more times than is welcome.

Missing Link is like a snack-sized Human Revolution. If there's any real disappointment to be had here (other than how awkwardly it fits into the existing Human Revolution storyline), it's that the DLC's "game world," as it is, has no depth or meat to it. But if you liked Human Revolution's gameplay, you'll like this just fine.

Better than: Red Faction: Armageddon Path to War
Not as good as: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Also, most of the voice acting is terrible: except for the underground shopkeeper, who is extremely Scottish

Progress: Finished on Normal

Like its predecessor, Mini-Land Mayhem introduces a new theme and mechanic for each of its eight worlds. Unfortunately, most of these mechanics aren't very interesting; the whole game leans pretty heavily on the first world's beam-placing elements, and the conveyor belts are the only other pieces that can really measure up to that. Hell, several of the puzzle elements are barely used, even in their worlds of origin.

Unlike March of the Minis, this MvDK installment doesn't have much of a sliding scale of success in each level; you have to rescue all the Minis, or you fail. In the game's more intricate later levels, this supports a satisfying difficulty level -- but since most of it is pretty easy, this generally makes the puzzles feel narrow and dull. The only dimension of freedom is collecting extra coins - which I guess are used in the Construction Zone? - and face cards in each level. Collectibles? Ehhh.

Mini-Land Mayhem isn't a bad puzzle game. The Lemmings-lite formula still feels relatively unique, and overall the design is pretty good. But too many of the puzzles feel watered down. There is a New Game Plus mode that adds Minis to each level, which I suppose would offer some more challenge, but I don't really have any compulsion to play through these levels a second time.

Better than: Exit DS
Not as good as: Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis
I guess this is: pretty much the same as Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again?

Progress: Finished the first playthrough, got all the bonus cards

Alright, now - at 135 hours - I think I'm really done. I restored the Thieves' Guild to its former glory, I joined the Dark Brotherhood (and also restored them to glory), championed the crazy causes of all the Daedric princes, broke level 50, and now I have a full suit of jester armor. (Not what I normally wear.)

I'm not sure if I made this point effectively in my last post, but Skyrim is not a perfect game. Setting aside its technological issues (and the aforementioned unplayability of melee combat), I'm also disappointed by the damage-to-magicka ratio of the higher-level Destruction spells, annoyed by the vast meandering Dwemer ruin dungeons, and irritated by the frequent appearance of a random dragon just when I was in the middle of something. The genius of Skyrim is that it's so vast and robust, that its shortcomings have no problem being overshadowed by the other content you can take part in.

I wouldn't be surprised if, a few months from now, I find myself back in my save file -- running more errands for the towns in which I'm not yet eminently trusted. Then what's to stop me from going on a killing spree, assassinating all those gullible idiots? And that's when things will really get interesting.

Progress: Level 50 winner of everything

I've slaughtered bears, necromancers, vampires, and dragons. I've learned to hurl blazing fire from a distance, and to sneak silently close before slitting my enemy's throat. I've toppled governments -- both local, and regional. I've forged armor, mixed potions, and enchanted weapons with the souls of my enemies. I've sprinted over grasslands, across frozen waters, up snowy peaks; I've delved deep into the ruins of ancient civilization. I've filled my home with books, gemstones, rare artifacts, and dragon bones. I've entered into pacts with demon lords from another plane of existence. I've logged over 110 hours in the world of Skyrim; and I still have more to do.

The amount of content in this game is simply staggering. And what it does best is continually surprising the player with new quests and points of interest, seemingly out of nowhere. This is how I took over a hundred hours doing what "can" be done in about two: getting requests from NPCs, happening upon suspicious notes, stumbling into some ancient ruins, and always spiraling out into more and more quests. So I ended up running countless errands and championing dozens of other causes, instead of doing that whole save-the-world thing.

Around the 70-hour mark, I decided to stop intentionally taking new quests, and took another 20 or 30 working through most of the remainders, before finally getting back on track with the main questline. But even after spending more time with Skyrim than I have with (almost) any other game, I still have more work to do with the Thieves' Guild, an unfulfilled date with the Dark Brotherhood, and entire cities I've barely visited (actually, I never visited Falkreath at all!) -- which is all not to mention the seven more experience levels I need to get to 50, the handful of Daedra lords I have yet to meet, and the level-100 Destruction spells, which I've learned but don't have enough Magicka to cast yet!

And I dare not dream of all the content that's popping up on Steam Workshop.

I never used to understand how people got hooked on Bethesda games before, but I think I finally get it, now. They can appear boring to watch because the immense reach and density of content seamlessly integrates you into the game world, such that even tedious and commonplace activities are all part of the adventure. And by being immersed in this world, continually distracted by quests and events, it becomes surprisingly easy to overlook, and even forgive, their games' technical issues.

It should be a foregone conclusion that basically everyone already knows this by now, but: you should play Skyrim. If you want melee combat in your RPG, you should probably look into Kingdoms of Amalur instead -- otherwise, pick up your bow or your spell tome, clear out your calendar for the next few months, and fall head-first into what may be the most engrossing virtual world ever created.

Oh, and always keep a finger over the quicksave button (F5). When a boss unexpectedly kills you and the last automatic save was an hour ago, you'll be glad you did.

Better than: basically any other role-playing or open-world game
Not as good as: I'm still partial to GTA4, but all bets are off if Bethesda figures out how to put guns and cars in Tamriel
Now I want to try Oblivion: buuut I'm pretty much all RPG-ed out for a while

Progress: Level 43 Dovahkiin, Harbinger, Arch-Mage, Nightingale, Storm-Blade

Following up on a quest objective, I found myself at the opening of a cave. I heard the adventurers, as they heard me -- I crept behind a rock, and saw a human and a lizard-dude split up, looking for the source of the noise. I assumed they were hostile (most things in Skyrim are), so I opened up some lightning on the lizardman; he shot some lightning back at me, and destroyed me utterly.

Reload. This time I tried walking up to them, just to see if they were friendly. They were! As it turns out, they wanted to go into the same cave I was going to, but they wanted some help. Me, "helping" the people who had just proven that they were able to annihilate me handily. So we went into the cave, and they charged ahead of me, blowing up spiders and slicing apart viking mummies faster than I could see them. Eventually we made it to the boss, who killed us all.

Reload. I loosed arrows and magic at the boss and his minions, ran around the room trying to avoid getting smashed to bits, chugged potions to keep my bars from running out. Eventually we defeated the boss. I started collecting some loot, and noticed a word of power gleaming at the end of the room. Then the lizardman thanked me for my help, and announced that he was about to kill me for a blood sacrifice. He did so.

Reload. This time I hid in the corners, letting the boss tear down the lizardman first -- then I finished the boss off. I collected my loot, exited the dungeon, and saw some errant ruins. When I investigated, a pair of ice sprites ripped me apart.

Eventually, and with some judicious quick-saving, I made it through. (Also, a dragon started attacking me after that last part.) And aside from one time when I got stuck in the terrain and couldn't evade my foes, it never felt frustrating or tiring. I just wanted to try again, to prove that I was better than the viking mummy boss, and the lizardman, and the dragon. To earn my spoils, even though I ended up selling most of them. And to mark another dungeon on my map as "cleared."

What makes Skyrim amazing - in spite of its fairly messy controls, and its depressing technical issues - is the incredible breadth and quality of its content (well, not counting the voice acting). More than just being an open world to explore, Skyrim offers a new adventure at every turn -- where the path between where you are and where you're going is always full of unexpected diversions and mysteries.

Forgiving the game's tech is damn hard, sometimes. But surprisingly, not impossible.

Progress: Finally made it to Winterhold

I would like the idea of a hacking-simulator game -- even when the superficially-realistic mechanics are in most cases simplified to the point of "crack" and "decrypt" commands. There's something magical about playing a game whose only input is a text console, and not having to imagine caves, or ogres, or whatever. It's a computer, and my enemies are other computers. It's perfect.

But I lost patience with Hacker Evolution pretty quickly, and not because of its shallow reflection of real server tools, or even because of its just-adequate-for-an-indie lack of polish. It's because, although the game promises an extensive hardware upgrade path - faster CPUs for better decryption, stronger firewalls for better trace blocking, etc. - the economy doesn't support it. Your trace level (think: inverse health points) carries over from mission to mission, and you'll need to spend most of your money just bribing your traces down in order to continue on. I made the mistake of saving up for a high-powered CPU to make sure my hacks outran the traces, but just the passive trace hits from pinging and logging into servers add up to an unavoidable nuisance.

I'm more than willing to try out its sequel, in the hopes that this balance has been tweaked to be more favorable to "character" growth. But with the trace-level-stick practically mashing the hardware-upgrade-carrot into oblivion, I don't really see the point.

Progress: Gave Up -- Got to level 2?

The tower defense segments are clearly unfinished, and the assassin recruit system, while improved from Brotherhood, could still use some work to really polish it up. But Revelations gets what props I give it, mainly because it finally iterates on what I would consider the really important part of Assassin's Creed -- that is, assassination, by way of infiltrating Templar lairs. And it actually culls a lot of the garbage that's accumulated in the franchise, like the retarded Subject 16 puzzles.

Of course, nothing can fix how ridiculous the series storyline is -- except perhaps the real-life passage of 2012, which will hopefully force a reboot after this year's quintilogy conclusion. But Revelations also comes out looking relatively good here, because it does such a fantastic job of utterly ignoring the plot. The vast majority of the campaign focuses on Ezio's story, which is of limited interest but is at least inoffensive. The Desmond content accumulates to about ten minutes, and the Altair flashbacks - although they sometimes awkwardly squish his backstory into exaggerated melodrama - are mercifully brief.

There's still plenty to improve on, like the overcrowded controller map, some missions which fail instantly when you're detected, and generally terrible writing. But this is the most promising sequel to Assassin's Creed yet.

Better than: any previous Assassin's Creed game
Not as good as: Batman: Arkham City
Please, please Ubisoft: finish the series this year, and then make it something better for the next one

Progress: Complete

Requires Origin? That's unfortunate. Admittedly, I haven't had any personal experience with EA's new-ish game marketplace/platform -- because of all the people I know who have dealt with it, none of them have had anything nice, or even tolerable to say about it. Battlefield 3's PC version UI is a well-documented clusterfuck. And Star Wars: The Old Republic, apparently, requires registration and authentication on Origin even though the game itself has no presence on or functional link with it.

It sounds trite to say that Steam availability is a deal-maker or -breaker; they have their own DRM, and Gunpei knows that the Steam client software isn't perfect (take its download manager -- please!). But if I'm paying anything close to full-price for a PC game, I want to know that the DRM won't infect the rest of my system, and that I can re-download said game, as I please, in effective perpituity. Valve is a stable entity, and has earned my trust: I have no reason not to believe that they will allow me to continue playing Steam-purchased software, even if Steam ceases to exist. EA, on the other hand, has never faltered at an opportunity to screw its customers, and so I have little confidence in the return on any money I might give to their download service.

Which is a really roundabout way of saying, if it isn't on Steam, I'll probably just wait for it to be a $5 download from Amazon.

My absolute first impression was not favorable -- the Kingdoms of Amalur demo requires you to have, and sign in with, an EA account. I imagine this is vital for (among EA's other marketing purposes) the advertised item unlocks, particularly those that'll apply to Mass Effect 3, but even in today's era of always-online fuck-you DRM, it's still typical to allow an Offline/No-Signin mode. Kind of a letdown, here.

Anyway, the next surprise waiting for me was the game's overall aesthetic. The trailers I've watched looked a bit exaggerated, maybe, but the game itself looks cartoonish. Actually, it seems deliberately styled to resemble World of Warcraft, and the nerdy gnomes in the starting area certainly don't dissuade that comparison.

The quests I saw in the demo were also highly reminiscent of WoW, or more specifically, of my earlier experiences with WoW -- before the game became so diluted and streamlined. Listening to an NPC explain his plight, and then venturing out into the wilderness to find who/whatever he needs, before returning and picking up the next link of the quest chain; it's refreshing, although familiar at the same time. I was engaged enough during my demo time, but I do wonder if this content can continue to be interesting for more than a couple hours.

Pleasantly, there does seem to be a lot of content. The starting area was rich with lore and interactive objects, and the town immediately outside, daunting with available quests -- and then I took a look at the world map, of which this region is a relatively insignificant part. And then of course is the depth of character customization, which - between the multiple weapon and armor slots, D&D-style skill points, WoW-style talent trees, and "Fate cards" which can change your passive, class-like bonuses - is both engrossing and satisfying.

But another surprise was how unpolished some of the story content seemed. A primary NPC I spoke to early in the game, had recorded lines which sounded like they were directed contrary to how they were written -- awkward emphasis and word substitution, which didn't really make sense in context. And even in my relatively brief time with the game, I encountered a number of times where an NPC or quest marker didn't react as it was supposed to. While it's certainly playable, it's striking to me how unfinished it seems, and unless this is a pre-release build (the game comes out in a few weeks!), that doesn't really bode well.

Kingdoms of Amalur invites comparison to World of Warcraft and to Skyrim, and while it may be more personalized than the former and more technologically stable than the latter, it remains to be seen if it can match the long-term intrigue of either. I had fun with this demo, but I'll need to hear some more in-depth critiques before making a purchasing decision.

Progress: Played through the demo

Last week I opined that Assassin's Creed Brotherhood represented a further step along its predecessor's path of adding half-baked features, neglecting the core game, and generally ignoring subtlety and meaning in favor of bullet points. In that light, what's surprised me most about Assassin's Creed Revelations so far is that it actually attempts to extend the free-running and sneaking gameplay that's barely seen any refinement since the first game -- and that it succeeds.

Which isn't to say that Revelations has finally turned the franchise into something really respectable. In fact, even given that the Assassin/Templar plot has been laughable since the final moments of the first game, this one manages to reach a new low from the outset: Desmond is in a coma. While the second and third games at least made a token effort to frame the modern-day story with basic NPC dialog, this time around you're stuck, alone, in a computer-generated purgatory ("Animus Island"); you'll very-rarely overhear some conversations happening outside, but these are all weakly delivered. They do foreshadow some plot, uh, revelations, but they do it with the subtlety of a Mack truck.

The retarded little hidden-puzzle segments are gone, replaced with collectible items that unlock bonus levels on the Island. These levels are, somewhat inexplicably, first-person platform-puzzlers, like Portal but without any of the interesting parts. Desmond reminisces about his past - growing up at the Assassin training ranch - while doing these levels, but there is no other narrative involved; and the puzzles have only begun to get engaging in the third of five levels. If the challenge continues to ramp up, that may at least feel like a significant addition to the game, but so far - between having more dumb little collectibles, and the utter insignificance of these levels - it certainly doesn't seem any better than the (again, retarded) puzzles.

(As a side note-- at least on the PC version, when you enter one of these bonus levels, the game closes and then reopens in the level; finishing the bonus level again exits, and reopens the main game. I can think of no rational explanation for this, save my assumption that the bonus levels were done by a development studio completely independent of the core game, and that they could not be integrated into the main framework in time for launch. I wonder how well this works in the console versions?)

With that said, Revelations is deadly-focused on Ezio's adventures in Constantinople, and while his story still isn't very interesting, it is at least making a better effort than last time. Where Brotherhood was content to recycle AC2's characters, Revelations introduces new ones, granted that there aren't very many so far. What's particularly notable is that when you take over an area - in a mechanic that is at first identical to the last game's Borgia Towers, but I'll explain more in a bit - you can assign a recruited assassin to be in charge of it, and some missions proceed to open up involving this random character. Since the game's real story missions weren't very well-written to begin with, these optional missions with interchangeable characters have no problem coming up to their par.

Constantinople feels less dense with activities than Rome was, but at the same time, these activities feel more involved and meaningful. The city still begins as mostly taken over by Templars; you'll have to infiltrate a stronghold and take out a Templar captain, then light a signal fire, to clear the rest of the Templar agents out. But unlike the miniscule tower areas in Brotherhood, the strongholds in Revelations are of such a size (and possessing enough enemies) that you'll actually need to use subtlety mechanics like sneaking, blending, and distraction to make it to the captain. Frequently (and this is true both of missions and of stronghold infiltration), you'll also need to really make use of Eagle Vision to tail and identify the target. Not to oversell it, but this genuinely feels like a return to form for Assassin's Creed.

Once the Templars are gone, the area becomes property of the Assassins, and you can take care of guild business there (e.g. send recruits out on missions). But if Ezio becomes notorious, from killing dudes, buying property, or being spotted in restricted areas - keeping in mind that you'll be fully notorious immediately after taking a stronghold from the Templars - an Assassin stronghold may become contested, and you'll have to go defend it. The defense itself is handled in a poorly-implemented tower defense minigame, which is pretty dumb, but the fact that there is a need for defense is pretty cool.

I've managed to come a long way without mentioning the Hookblade, which is a welcome addition to Ezio's toolset. While I could take or leave its combat moves, it extends acrobatic reach even further by allowing Ezio to pull himself up far-off ledges, and can also hook onto some ziplines scattered around the city. Yeah, ziplines.

I still have complaints about these games, most significantly that the story is god-awful and the core missions aren't very fun. But I feel like Revelations is finally making some real progress.

Progress: Sequence 4