Some reviews (and official press pieces) have thrown around the phrase "best Zelda ever" for Skyward Sword, but for my money, no -- it doesn't really come close. While there are some aspects of this adventure that really stand out, I feel that overall - and crucially, in the areas I would consider most important to the Zelda franchise - Skyward Sword feels pretty lacking. It's still a good game for sure, so long as you're willing to forgive its more obvious faults for the eventual payoff; but to me, this installment is less triumphant than it is an opportunity to learn.

Regarding what it does right, I will remark that this is the greatest inventory Link has assembled so far. Although I might argue with the sensibility of leaving the hookshot and bow items until so late in the game, there is an impressive collection of kit here, from the fly-by-wire beetle, to a magic whip that Indiana Jones would tip his hat to, to an oddball air-blowing bellows that's surprisingly useful throughout the adventure. Splitting consumables and other temporary items off into a separate inventory is a great organizational improvement, and the loadout mechanic that comes with Link's limited pack space (should you take more bomb bags, or more potions?) adds a dash of equipment strategy as well.

The controls generally work well, although I confess that horizontal slashes, and especially straight stabs, continued to stymie me right up to the end. While they aren't perfect, these are certainly the best motion controls yet to be seen in an action game. A perfectly-timed shield block is immensely satisfying, and the different ways you can deploy bombs (tossing, dropping, or rolling) open up some cool new puzzle opportunities.

The plot, too, is pretty good, with a suitably epic backstory, some fine characters, and an ultimate villain who really manages to impress despite (spoilers?) not being Ganon for once. But here is where I'm going to veer into "complaint" territory -- the storytelling is some of the worst in the series. For the first 70%-or-so of the game, you'll be chasing the princess, but with little in the way of carrots to tease you along; just sticks, forcing you down the golden path. Every once in a while, the sword-spirit Fi will mention that you've gotta save Zelda, but the rest of the time she and the rest of the NPCs around her are concerned only with the immediate goal: find this item, unlock this door, help this person, kill this whatever.

Ghirahim is a very interesting villain, but he barely appears until the finale, and his strong, discomforting personality feels almost completely wasted. Some other supporting characters, too, feel like they don't get the screen-time they really deserve (although there is one sidekick in particular who develops spectacularly well).

With little in the way of narrative motivation to keep Link plodding along his quest, you're left to rely on the strength of the level design and individual encounters to stay engaged with the game world; but by and large, these are fairly mediocre. The forest area is navigable but not much else; the volcano area is consistently a big pain in the ass to visit; and the desert area, while very cool, is the last area. The sky never really "opened up" like I expected, and instead, most of the game tasks you with returning to the three regions you've already visited -- either to open up a little new terrain and go to a new dungeon, or in some cases, just to re-tread the same ground in a different way.

The effect is only frustrating in a few particular instances, but the heavy-handed asset reuse smacks of lazy design. It's also excruciatingly linear, not only because you must do the dungeons in a specific order, but also because you must do the bullshit around them in a specific order. There's only one point in the game - collecting the Song of the Hero - where more than one objective is available to you at a time (and of course, this is the point where, if you choose the wrong order, your game save is worthless).

Aside from those three regions, you've got the Skyloft town Link starts in, and, that's about it. There is one other island vital to the plot, and there are three more involved in some sidequests (two of which only have one NPC on them apiece); the rest of the rocks floating in the air are just homes to locked treasure chests, unlocked by finding Goddess Blocks on the surface. It's a lot like the treasure maps from Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, but less interesting because the chests mark themselves on your map as soon as you unlock them.

So by and large, Skyward Sword's sky acts less like an overworld and more like a menu. There are almost no diversions or obstacles. What should be an awesome, epic part of the game - flying around on a giant bird - ends up being a simple point-A-to-B travel mechanism. (And while the orchestrated music sounds great, it doesn't feel like there is enough of it; particularly the flying theme, which repeats more frequently than is welcome.)

As for sidequests, they start out pretty weak (meaning, basically none of them are open) until later in the game, but while ultimately there is a healthy number of extra tasks you can do, few of them really seem worth doing, since at that point Link is already chock-full of money and heart containers. There is a fun diversion in unraveling a love-triangle drama among Link's peers at the Knight Academy, but the conflict ends abruptly, and unsatisfyingly.

Finally, the meat and potatoes of any Zelda - dungeons and bosses - are pretty middling. I would only consider two of the game's seven dungeons really memorable (including the last one), and only one or two of the dungeon bosses genuinely entertaining. The next-to-last boss of the game is a real challenge, although the necessity for stabbing motions dulls its appeal for me; and the last boss is, finally, a thrilling battle that tops the Ganondorf showdowns from Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. But otherwise, the bosses are unfulfilling -- trivially difficult, or recycled throughout the game, or both.

In spite of the paragraphs of complaints I've lodged against it, I wouldn't call Skyward Sword a bad game -- even a bad Zelda is pretty good. But it's far from the strongest in the series. It does do pretty well for itself in raw game mechanics, and I can't help but respect that. But by what seems like either sloth or oversimplification - between the tiring bullshit that interrupts dungeon treks, the largely-unremarkable dungeons themselves, the absolutely underwhelming world map, and the disappointing lack of ongoing narrative - it falls short of precisely what I expect most from a Zelda game.

Skyward Sword is good; but not as good as it should be.

Better than: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)
Basically as good as: Darksiders

Progress: Saved Zelda, AGAIN.

I'm lukewarm on Metal Gear, and the reveal of Platinum Games being behind this is slightly intriguing, but what's really got me interested is how much the VGA reveal trailer reminds me of No More Heroes. At least, the villain is channeling Travis Touchdown in his hardass nihilistic attitude, and the trailer is cut in the same way Goichi Suda emulates Quentin Tarantino.

If the rest of the game is like this, I might be able to put up with some overlong cutscenes of it; and hopefully, the slice-and-dice gameplay is at least as well-implemented as Vanquish.

When the game told me I could re-do the final mission and take the "other" choice (in an obvious binary decision) for an alternate ending, I didn't anticipate how different it would actually be. Rather than saving my friends and going on to do a parody mission on a TV-set Mars, I snapped a gang leader's neck, and proceeded to fight back against a citywide invasion of sci-fi SWAT. While the Mars ending was more in line with SR3's outlandish zaniness, the Daedalus ending is a more natural conclusion to the "story," and still manages to be awesomely over the top. Plus, I unlocked some cool new equipment out of it (black VTOL!).

I've spent more than a few hours recently filling in the rest of my progress in Steelport -- finding hidden items, doing assassination missions, stealing wanted vehicles. The latter still posed some challenge despite the fact that I've upgraded myself into invincibility, since I had to actually get the vehicles to buyers without them blowing up. At this point I've done everything the game has to offer aside from some of the achievement-like "Challenges" (such as accumulated wheelie distance, or taking N hostages), and while I'm pretty satisfied with what Saints Row has given me, I thirst for more.

I really hope that this time, Volition delivers some worthwhile DLC, although based on past experience I don't have a whole lot of confidence.

Progress: 100%

Like everyone else, I've been looking forward to Fez since its first showing, however many centuries ago that was. And although the independent game scene has grown quite a bit around it in the intervening time, it still looks pretty interesting. But, as it currently stands, I won't plan to buy Fez when it comes out -- because I can no longer trust Xbox Live Arcade. Permit me to editorialize.

A few months ago reports started to come out about a rash of Xbox Live account thefts, strangely linked by the accounts being used to buy FIFA and its DLC. A buddy of mine actually got caught by this; fortunately his credit card company noticed something was amiss, and he didn't lose any money from the ordeal, but he did lose access to his Xbox Live (Gold) account for about a month while Microsoft "investigated" the theft. Since he actually played multiplayer games quite frequently, this was no trivial thing for him.

What was most unusual about his experience is that, after the account theft occurred, he had to recover his gamertag to sign in again. And when he did this, the gamertag he recovered was someone else's. There was no information in this new account, that is, it looked like it may have been set-up explicitly as a dummy account. But his own gamertag - which still existed, as we could check its current activity online - had effectively been swapped out with this one.

Fast forward a few months, and I decide to pop in GTA4 on an Xbox at work, to while away some time. And I have to recover my gamertag. It worked, eventually, but when I checked my account status online all of my Microsoft Points were gone -- spent on FIFA DLC. (Fortunately, and since I never bothered with a Gold account, I didn't keep any credit card information on my account; so my losses were limited to Points.) What I found odd about my incident, was that none of my account information was changed: my password was the same, my email address was the same, my security settings were the same. Someone had just logged in to my account, spent its Points balance on multiple copies of the same FIFA DLC packs, and then left, without attempting to get anything more or even cover their tracks.

I changed my password as a precaution, and as it is, I can still use the account just fine. The net effect is that I lost around $25 worth of points that were sitting around, waiting for something like Fez.

What's bothersome about this whole series of events is:

• They are not isolated. Tons of people have been hit by account thieves with this same MO: just buying a bunch of FIFA stuff. It is technically possible for them to gift these purchases to other accounts, but based on the sheer volume, it seems more like they're just doing it because they can.
• My buddy's account was not a simple hack. They changed account information that, as far as I know, can't be changed manually on the Xbox Live website. They needed to either enlist a customer support rep (which shouldn't have worked, since they couldn't prove ownership of the account), or have some more direct access to Microsoft's internal information.
• My account was less than a simple hack. Generally, if you're going to steal someone's account, you need to work around the password; meaning that you need to change it to actually log-in. But my password was unchanged, which either means that they already knew it (and chose not to change it, which is pretty indicative of sloppy script-kiddy methods), or that they were able to access my account without my password.

The nail in the coffin, though, is Microsoft's laissez-faire attitude about the whole situation. Even discounting my personal experiences, just from reading the news around the Internet it should be obvious that this is an Xbox Live problem: if not an actual technical issue on their part, then at least someone specifically targeting them. Yet Microsoft has refused to acknowledge it.

As for their treatment of specific cases, taking my buddy's account offline for a month is not acceptable for a paid, real-time service. And when I emailed Xbox Support about my incident, the reply was that they're "unable to discuss [account theft] over email for security and confidentiality purposes" -- so, they did nothing. And based on my friend's experience, I know that if I were to call Microsoft about this, I would have to supply them with a bunch of Xbox serial numbers (for all the machines I've used the account with), verify my personal information with them (which I don't even want to have listed on my account in the first place), and then wait a month for them to do nothing.

I'm pretty sure this is a whole bunch of bullshit, and Microsoft is just writing off the losses so far as less costly than doing a real investigation. But I digress. Ultimately I just decided to accept the Points loss, rather than go through a bunch of a rigmarole on the phone and lose access to my account for a month. And I certainly don't feel like trusting Xbox Live with any more money.

Hopefully this will come out on Steam, sooner or later. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't get me started.)

Progress: Gave Up

Skyward Sword is a bit of a trip and a stumble down memory lane -- simultaneously a nostalgic reminder of how long it's been since you've played a Zelda game with a controller, and a somewhat harsher notice of how far the rest of the industry has come in the meantime. Twilight Princess was criticized by some for not playing enough with the series' long-running tropes, and while Skyward Sword does mix it up in some interesting ways, they feel like drops in the bucket of a mostly-unchanged sea.

Since Ocarina of Time, what we've come to know as a 3D Zelda has evolved aesthetically and narratively, if not so much mechanically; but Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and now Skyward Sword could be (rightly) accused of getting slow and ponderous when Link is in-between dungeons. Traversing the world map to talk to key NPCs, and scouring an outdoor area for hidden items, are all well and good when the mood strikes -- but having to bother with these tasks, just to make the next dungeon open up, can feel unwelcome when you really just want to solve puzzles and fight a boss.

In an era where other games offer high-pitched, nonstop action, or the freedom to tackle objectives in whatever order, this style of slavish linearity just seems antiquated. And so as the required time investment increases and the number of sidequests decreases, I fear that it won't be too many more years before this game structure follows the JRPG and the point-and-click adventure into the realm of "forgotten niche."

Now, all that having been said, Zelda is still a master class in its genre, and given the series' expectations I have yet to be disappointed by it. The intro was a little long, but easily established the naive innocence of its protagonists, and the charming magic of Skyloft. Fi, the computer-like magic spirit that lives in Link's sword - like Navi, but with legs - acts as a welcome straight-man to Link's emotional expressiveness and to the sometimes cartoonish world he's placed in. The villain is still a mystery in large part, but I'm anxious to learn more.

Items and general play mechanics are a straightforward iteration from Twilight Princess, with a few welcome changes: you can invest in wallet-size upgrades from the beginning, radial menus allow you to access Link's entire inventory without pausing, and there's a pretty cool "crafting" system which allows you to turn cash and randomly-dropped or -found materials into equipment upgrades. I haven't gotten anything other than stronger shields so far, but if I had the goods, I would be able to make my slingshot fire scatter-shot, and I can only wonder what further upgrades to more interesting items might do. The stamina meter is another nice touch, and gives new depth to block-pushing and wall-climbing (not to mention sprinting).

My one gripe with the motion controls is that the game sometimes expects you to hold the remote perfectly horizontal, and that this is stupid when you're sitting down. Otherwise, the motion controls work very admirably: using the gyroscope to steer birds and beetles, snapping the remote to throw bombs, and actual 1:1 sword control is in general a real treat. Although there are plenty of gimmicks early on that require distinction between vertical and horizontal strikes, the first boss battle really shows some sophistication in arbitrary sword movement, wherein Link must lead the enemy's attack and effectively parry himself.

The between-dungeon slowness is still sullying my opinion of Skyward Sword a bit, and so I'm not having as easy a time sitting down and turning the game on as I would like. But I think my attitude will change once I get more involved in the game's plot, and/or once more of the sky opens up to explore.

Progress: Just entered the Earth Temple

What's most surprising about Arkham City is how it doesn't fall short of the bar set by Arkham Asylum. There are certainly some imperfections in the sequel, and the new features are arguably hit-or-miss -- but despite trading in its linearity for an open-world structure, Arkham City doesn't sacrifice the strengths of its predecessor. This is still a superbly-executed action game with a gripping narrative and spectacular production values. And - while it isn't perfect - the fact that it adds to Arkham Asylum's formula makes it an undeniably superior game.

I can enumerate its issues in pretty short order:

• Arkham City assumes that you've played Asylum, and recently. You'll start with many of the gadgets that Batman acquired throughout the first game, and much of the tutorial for these is simply left out. It can take a while to re-learn.
• Especially at first, there are too many enemies in combat encounters. This becomes more bearable with upgrades, but so long as you have a limited move set, it can be a little repetitive.
• The story is not paced as well as it could have been. There is a huge stretch in the middle of the campaign with little involvement from the Joker; no involvement whatsoever from intriguing new villain, Hugo Strange; and no Catwoman sequences, either. Then in the story's final hours, you're locked into the story completely, and the game won't permit you to take a few minutes off for side-questing.
• Relatedly, the Catwoman content is totally forgettable. She doesn't have as many or as powerful abilities as Batman, she barely comes up throughout Batman's campaign, and her personal story just isn't interesting. If you buy a used copy of Arkham City for console, don't worry about missing this stuff.
• On the other hand, the amount of items and clues you need to scavenge to complete the Riddler sidequest is absurd: ultimately, you need 400 things, between trophies and riddles and other minor challenges. This number is so great, in fact, that if you find all of the trophies and riddles that Batman can solve, it still isn't enough; you need to add some combination of combat/stealth challenges (which are largely trite and stupid), and/or Catwoman trophies. So, if it wasn't for Catwoman, I might not have finished the Riddler sidequest.

So those are my gripes. And I can detail them at some length, because they stand out from an otherwise fantastic game. When the pacing isn't off, the story is just as strong as in Arkham Asylum, even though you can (usually) take arbitrary breaks to search for hidden items and track down sidequest clues. Arkham City isn't as dense with activity as a Saints Row, or as fun to traverse as a Grand Theft Auto, but the individual pieces of content throughout the city are strong and meaningful.

And the combat is an improvement over Asylum's, although I still wouldn't enjoy it enough on its own merits to bother with the standalone combat challenges. There are new gadgets and new combos, but arguably the best new feature is (after upgrades) an enhanced focus in ongoing free-flow combos -- slowing down time around the Batman, while increasing his ability to jump between thugs, which is indispensible in encounters with large groups.

There are a few clear missteps, but Arkham City is still a step forward from Arkham Asylum, which was already a masterpiece. It's unfortunate that the extra content (Catwoman, and the thus-far released DLC) is so insubstantial, because this game is going to be a tough act to follow.

Better than: Batman: Arkham Asylum
Not as good as: Saints Row: The Third (in open-world terms, obviously)
The Riddler sidequest conclusion was a bit disappointing: given the ludicrous amount of time I sunk into it. But I guess I would have wanted to collect all the trophies anyway.

Progress: Finished the story and all sidequests on Normal

I've absolutely lost interest in this.

Progress: Gave Up -- Still level 80

Saints Row: The Third has a stupid, nonsensical story. There is no central villain (except the player character) -- the evil Belgian crimelord from the intro dies after a few missions; his replacement is shortly overshadowed by an overzealous military police force; and even they are discarded relatively quickly. There's no overarching goal or conflict, there's no moral, or lesson. Really, the story exists as an excuse: to introduce ludicrous amounts of gang violence, to have mission objectives that span from fighting in a TRON-inspired cyberspace to professional wrestling, to give you laser-powered military hardware, to blow up zombies, and to be doing it as a favor to Mayor Burt Reynolds.

It's an interesting setup, because while it's not uncommon for this kind of game to use its campaign as a vehicle for introducing new mechanics and items, Saints Row 3 has basically all of its bullet-point features from the beginning. After the intro mission, you can take over the entire city without doing any of the campaign. SR3 flips on its head the modern GTA idea, that the open world's activities and features should feed into or enhance the storyline. This game is all about the extra stuff. Buying property, upgrading vehicles and weapons, doing madcap side-missions (like shooting costumed thugs in a TV game show), and of course blowing up street gangs, all in the name of gaining influence over Steelport.

It's a beautiful dance of money and power, at least for the most part. You take over some districts, you get more income, you use that income to upgrade your abilities: you can upgrade everything from your sprinting duration and your allies' health, to reload speed and damage resistance. As you use cash to become more powerful and capable, you use that newfound ability to do progressively more difficult challenges, taking on increasingly ludicrous amounts and arrangements of rivals. By the end, assuming you've paid in to the system, you can have infinite ammo on all your weapons, which don't ever have to reload, and you won't take damage from anything.

The fly in the ointment is that the income formula is pretty disparate; you earn much more from buying factories and stores than you do from completing activities that involve real gameplay. If you go about the game in the wrong order, it could make for a tough time. So just make sure that you start out by doing the Business Tycoon thing. No problemo.

While the vehicle upgrade system is a little weak - the upgrades themselves don't really feel substantial, and if they did, it would be irritating how they're tied to particular car models - the rest of the upgrades really enhance how the game is played. With increased health, health regen, and resistance to bullets, you can charge into a gunfight with no worries. With a pistol upgrade for explosive rounds, you can blow oncoming foes right out of your way. With reduced reload time on an SMG, you can unleash a practically infinite stream of bullets into a crowd. And as you use these to conquer Steelport's tougher opponents, like bullet-sponge brutes with miniguns, schoolgirls with rocket-skates and energy hammers, and tanks with fucking laser cannons, you'll feel proud of yourself for using economics as a weapon to upgrade and defeat them.

The driving mechanics still don't feel right, in that the collisions aren't very elastic, and the showy drifting ignores so much momentum. And, no matter how many rockets you fire at them, the buildings will never fall apart. But while Saints Row: The Third doesn't have the same attributes that make GTA4 or Red Faction: Guerrilla so fun, it's finally found one all its own: taking over a city, and becoming a crime god. Because while many games put you in the position of gaining notoriety in their worlds, SR3 is the only one that ultimately allows you to take off an experimental hover-jet from your penthouse helipad, and rain energy missiles on luchadores while Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction" plays on your radio.

Better than: Saints Row 2
Not as good as: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
The final mission is on a fake Mars: and includes one of the cheesiest lines from Red Faction

Progress: Own the city, finished the story, 92%

Saints Row: The Third doesn't have the raw destructivity or explosivity of Red Faction: Guerrilla. It doesn't have the fishtailing car physics or the narrative gravitas of Grand Theft Auto IV. It doesn't have the Nazis of The Saboteur.

What it does have is a predilection, nay, a thirst for raw, intense chaos. Dive-tackle a rival gangster, use him as a human shield, then leap through the window of his car and speed off into the sunset. That's what Saints Row 3 brings to the table.

In its third iteration, Saints Row has optimized a lot of its gameplay mechanics, and it's really for the better. You don't need to gather Respect to do story missions; rather, Respect acts as experience points, and higher levels open up new abilities for purchase. As for the purchasing itself, that's done with cold, hard cash -- cash which you earn by doing missions, by completing activities, and periodically by virtue of owning property. While buying and profiting off of the city was sort-of a sidequest in Saints Row 2, here it's front and center: if you want to buy new abilities, safehouses, weapons and upgrades, you've got to prime the money-pump with some real estate investment.

If there's any "point" to Saints Row: The Third, this is it -- taking over the city, not just figuratively, but financially. It's a neat objective, albeit vague, and feels more like a refinement on the previous installment than a new, marquee feature. You're not - as far as I know - at risk of your investments being taken away by your rivals, nor is it really a challenge to prioritize your acquisitions: higher cost = higher reward. So the formula, as it were, for taking over Steelport is pretty straightforward.

But you get to wreak absolute havoc along the way, and that counts for a lot.

Progress: 19%

I would've felt pretty cheated if I'd bought this at full price. The Path to War DLC includes three segments -- one reprise of a neat, but underwhelming flying-vehicle mission from the main game's campaign; one tank segment that, while explosive, isn't as good as the rest of the game's vehicle missions; and one on-foot sequence with a couple new weapons, which are, again, neat but not terribly satisfying.

Each of the missions is presented as a preface to Armageddon's terraformer prologue, so the narrative holds no surprises whatsoever, and they're not bound together in any meaningful way. It comes across as more tech demo than game content. But its "demo" is overshadowed by what was already in the main game. What's the point?

Red Faction: Armageddon taught me that Volition can make a good PC game, and can make it well -- which made me a lot less worried about Saints Row: The Third. But Path to War has taught me that they still don't understand how to make substantial DLC, which has me a little worried again.

Better than: Demons of the Badlands
Not as good as: Red Faction: Armageddon
Admittedly, the Shard Gun: is one of the industry's cooler Gravity Gun rip-offs, since it can tear buildings apart

Progress: Finished on Normal