LA Noire's game world is big. Way too big. End to end, the city very easily takes longer to traverse than Liberty City, or the entire region of New Austin and Mexico. Driving from scene to scene usually takes an excruciatingly long time, with nothing going on in-between except dialog with your partner. Driving itself isn't really fun, and since there isn't anything more to do on the way - no spontaneous crimes, no optional content, no good side-missions to speak of - it's really just a cutscene with steering.

Now, to say there are no side missions would be incorrect: while you're driving around the city, there is a random chance of a radio message coming in to trigger an optional Street Mission. The mission will pop up somewhere on the map, and once you get there, you could get involved in anything from a high-speed chase, to an on-foot pursuit, to a shootout, to a hostage situation. These little cases take just a few minutes, and offer a reasonably bite-sized portion of LA Noire gameplay, that tends to lack the investigation and interrogation portions I'm so disappointed in.

If these missions were done in the style of GTA, dotting the landscape instead of appearing randomly and infrequently, I'd be a lot happier about having to drive all the way across town for the next mission objective. Or, if they were in the style of Red Faction: Guerrilla's random proximity missions, where the missions pop up when I'm driving nearby -- that would be cool. Instead, since the game map is too goddamn big, the street missions will invariably appear somewhere completely out of the way; in the opposite direction of, or exceedingly beyond, the mission location I'm on my way to. The scope of the street missions is perfect for a minor distraction, but as it is I end up ignoring most of them simply because I don't feel like doing more tedious driving just to get there.

Apparently, once I complete a crime desk (a series of missions in a particular position at the PD), I have the option to go into a free-roam mode to do the street missions available at that desk. So I may explore that option later on. When the street missions are commingled with the tightly linear story missions, though, they simply aren't enticing enough for me to bother.

Progress: Solved the case of the Golden Butterfly

Calling a Rockstar game overhyped is like saying the Pope's shit stinks. Nobody really likes to mention it, but, yeah, everybody knows it. For LA Noire, Rockstar's press and promo guys did a pretty good job of talking down the drive-and-shoot gameplay, and talking up the detective work and storytelling -- so it sucks that the cars handle like bricks, the collision physics clearly weren't well-tested, and the gunplay is somewhere between Red Dead Redemption and Dead Rising; but this is all somewhat expected. What's disappointing is that the detective work is insipid, and that the deficiencies of interrogation and decision-making really take away from the game's narrative heft.

LA Noire takes place in a sprawling city, and is full of street- and foot-traffic, but this is no GTA: the game is completely linear. Within a case there are some options as to what order you tackle leads in (and you can sometimes leapfrop leads altogether), but you go from case A to B to C, et al, with only cutscenes inbetween. For that matter, the choices within a case are... well, they aren't inconsequential. They can change how the case plays out. But it's hard to care when every situation that affords me multiple dialog options results in at least one out-of-order response -- that is, the witness or suspect, or even my character, says something that only has relevance to a question I haven't asked yet.

In Mass Effect I accept this because I can also shoot aliens with laser guns. In LA Noire, this is supposed to be, like, the thing. And it's a rookie implementation. Alpha Protocol does better at it. Seriously.

Speaking of Mass Effect, the dialog options in LA Noire are also frustratingly vague and/or misleading. When a person of interest responds to a question, you have the option to accept their answer, doubt it (like Phoenix Wright's "press"), or straight-up accuse them of lying and present evidence to prove it. Generally the distinction between the doubt and lie options is flaky at best, and frequently the accept option leads to an exchange that seems more like doubt. Choosing a "wrong" option costs you information, which can usually be worked around with alternate leads; but it's incredibly irritating to be docked performance points, not for failing to understand the case and its participants, but for failing to understand the precise instruction the game wants you to input.

Investigation, the part in which you find clues, is basically a non-thing. More often than not, interactive objects are visually indistinct from the environment, and most of those objects aren't relevant to the investigation. So you're just walking around the crime scene, waiting for the controller to rumble, and pressing A to see if it's worthwhile. I'd hesitate to call it an annoyance, since it's such a simple system, but it's definitely not a meaningful feature.

So those things - the investigation and interrogation - are what I expected LA Noire to really "wow" me with, and they absolutely haven't. The mechanics are still very playable, and not particularly subpar. But not what they should be, when they're the main selling points of a triple-A game that's seven years in development. Not even close.

As for the facial expressions: eh. In the right light, with the right expression, they can look very convincing. In other circumstances, they can look very awkward. Lips, in particular, tend to be jarring in motion, and body movement is no better than it was in GTA 4. Bondi's facial capture system is technologically impressive, and it does a good job of showing the characters' facial cues, but it's definitely several generations away from something that will really convince you the characters are real people.

Speaking of which, I think casting TV actors in so many key roles might have been a misstep. Cole Phelps is pretty good, and many of the other performances are great too, but there's more than a fair amount of phoning in; actors who clearly don't understand, or care, about the disassociative manner in which their lines will be played in the game.

So yeah. I can complain a lot about LA Noire. It simply doesn't live up to my expectations at all -- later, I'll elaborate about the visual performance, and the lackluster side-missions. That doesn't mean it isn't playable, nor that it's completely without merit: the premise of rising in the ranks of the LAPD, and the eventual process of unraveling each case's mysteries, are fairly satisfying. But I'm still waiting to be really impressed by the game.

Progress: Closed the Fallen Idol case

So there's no PC demo. Doesn't build confidence in the readiness of the PC version -- whatever. Not a huge surprise, and not my biggest worry about how GTA on Mars is being sequelized.

Actually, the demo was somewhat reassuring about the general quality of gameplay: Armageddon controls well, has some cool weapons, neat new gimmicks (the Repair ability is far from a one-off, even within the brief demo level), and is sufficiently destructive to differentiate it from other third-person shooters. I even climbed into a powered armor suit and punched the shit out of some alien monsters.

My big concern though, is that, given this game takes place underground, I may not be able to drive through buildings. Even if Armageddon is a more finely-tuned shooter than its predecessor, ...well, especially if it's more finely-tuned, my favorite parts of Guerrilla - the Michael Bay levels of unbelievable chaos and destruction - simply won't be possible. I'll wait and see how this one turns out.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played the (Xbox 360) demo

Tried it again, got to the evac point, tried walling myself inbetween the rocks and a constant stream of napalm strikes but it just wasn't enough. The final area is just too big and full of enemies for one player, which is pretty irritating since the rest of the mission up to that point (~20 minutes depending on how thorough you are with side-objectives) is absolutely doable solo, and asking your friends to shell out $5 for a single mission isn't very cool.

I digress, though. Magicka: Vietnam is worth buying only if you feel like you owe Arrowhead and Paradox more money for Magicka. By itself, it simply isn't worth it.

Better than: that other DLC pack that just came out
Not as good as: a real expansion, or real improvements to the game
But: it's still Magicka, so there's that, at least

Progress: Gave Up -- Died at the end, again

Dwarfs!? isn't the first game to try to make Dwarf Fortress into something playable, and it certainly won't be the last. For its part, Dwarfs does a fair job of it -- the production values are obviously low, and its mechanics are relatively simple, but the package is basically fun. At least, it can be fun, in the right circumstances.

Unfortunately, Dwarfs is (deliberately) designed not to emphasize planning and construction, but instead to challenge your reactivity to dangers like water, lava, and enemies. It is possible to micro-manage your dwarves in such a way that they judiciously go after valuable minerals, and to tackle potential threats in an organized manner, but ordering dwarves to move in a particular way (and avoid particular things) costs money; way more money that you earn in the normal course of play. The in-game guide somewhat correctly compares it to Lemmings, in the sense that you mostly leave the dwarves to their own devices, intervening when and as necessary. This whac-a-mole approach to tunnel digging just isn't what I wanted out of it.

If Dwarfs is updated in the future to lean more toward my tastes (which it might be?), then I'll definitely take another look, because the game is otherwise well put-together and very approachable.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played the tutorial and a few demo rounds

Despite some gorgeous portal and gel effects, the Source engine is (still) showing its age in a few particular ways, like fire and explosions. The single-player story's pacing isn't perfect: each of the game's three acts start strong, but peter out as they proceed. And loading screens seem unduly long and frequent. But this is the worst I can say for Portal 2. It's a triumph that exceeds the brilliance of the first game, and - with new mechanics and a new co-op mode - greatly expands the concept's potential. I look forward to even more from the Portal franchise.

Better than: Portal
Not as good as: Braid, mechanically (though Portal is much funnier)
Stephen Merchant: congratulations on outperforming GLaDOS

Progress: Finished single-player and co-op

In evaluating Portal 2, it's easy to separate the game into its two modes - single-player and co-op - and, simply enough, both are great. Just in distinct ways.

Portal was a grand experiment, short and sweet, expertly exploring its sole puzzle gimmick in clever ways, while garnishing the narrative with Strangelove-ian black comedy. Portal 2's co-op mode inherits all of that, but feels similarly experimental and wild. The two-player campaign is brief, and, as with Portal, uses GLaDOS to enhance its strange, unique flavor; but with its impeccable puzzle/level design, and some ingenious innovations (I'd primarily cite holding Tab to see your teammate's perspective in real-time), is fantastically entertaining, while showing amazing potential for even more. It's a fair bet that Portal 3 will push the multiplayer envelope even further, using the groundwork that's been set here.

While Portal 2's co-op is evocative of its predecessor's spunk and spirit, the single-player campaign is an overall evolution of the first game's promise. I'll be honest -- in my short visits with Half Life and HL2, I was unimpressed by Valve's infamous in-game storytelling. Frankly, the story wasn't interesting enough, and the telling didn't feel like it was driving my experience. But Portal 2 takes Portal's antagonistic narration and expository ambience, and runs with it -- runs with it hard. I'm not completely on-board with the pacing so far - Stephen Merchant's delightful sidekickery is depressingly absent in the first few chapters, and I haven't even met JK Simmons yet - but the pre-existing rapport between GLaDOS and Chell really expands the story's potential, and GLaDOS exploits it, hilariously, at every turn. The witty voice-overs, the detailed setting, and the jarring in-game events conspire beautifully to really sell the story.

Of course, this is all not to mention the game's new mechanical gimmicks: vortices, light bridges, bouncy and hyperspeed paint, and perhaps more that I haven't encountered yet. Portal challenged the limits of its formula, and Portal 2 shows that there's always more to add.

The single-player is a near-perfection of the original game, and the co-op is a two-player experience that will invoke the same feelings you had playing Portal for the first time. Also, your co-op robot can high-five your partner robot. Or hug him. Or fight him! They're robots. Awesome.

Progress: Single-player: chapter 5, Co-op: finished

It's more Magicka, with more guns! And I would say that this is the end of the story, but to be truthful I'm actually overselling it. The Vietnam "expansion" adds a total of two Challenges to the game, one of which is just another wave-based survival arena. The other is the Vietnam mission, where your goal is to shoot some goblin-cong, destroy ammo caches, rescue POWs, and ultimately defend an extraction point until a rescue chopper rolls in. It isn't integrated into the game's campaign mode, and other than a paragraph-long introduction from Vlad, isn't narrated or at all embellished with Magicka's game-industry satire. I mean, not counting the fact that this is a Vietnam expansion.

There's a new magick in the form of an aerial napalm strike, which is awesome, but since the Vietnam mission is a challenge instead of a story mission, your other magicks (meteor storm, lightning, et al) are all unavailable. Magic in general is harder to use, since all the enemies have guns, and, like the annoying bow-and-arrow assholes in the main campaign, keep interrupting your shit all the time. That said, the gun selection that you can use - from the main game's M60 and other automatics, to bolt-action and burst rifles, and an RPG launcher - does put an interesting twist on the core gameplay.

It is more Magicka, but not very much more. It's easy to say that $5 is a rip-off for what amounts to a single mission. On the other hand, and this is a two-fingered hand, 1) the main game was already really cheap and 2) it's still only five bucks.

Progress: Died at the end (too many mortars!)

I play a lot of bad games. Why isn't important -- I know a lot about them. Bad video games are almost always developed with the following two requirements:

1) Cheap as hell to develop; and
2) Needs exactly one reason for anyone to be interested in buying it.

Basing a game on an existing franchise gets you halfway to both of these, by exploiting existing lore and assets, and by exploiting an existing fanbase. But usually, a bad video game needs to push this formula further by cutting development corners, while also doing something to pique the interest of that fanbase.

In rare cases, this could be a single facet of the gameplay that actually works well. More frequently, it's creating some original story within the franchise, given a very loose definition of the word "original." But, in the case of a movie tie-in, this hook is simply the fact that it is associated with a film that is coming out at the same time; a film that has its own massive marketing machine, which the game can piggyback onto. Thus, the movie tie-in game has absolutely no reason to apply any effort beyond being playable, and purchasable.

By those standards, Tron: Evolution lives up to its expectations.

Evolution is written as a prequel to Legacy, despite a completely nonsensical timeline between the films and the game. In theory, this gave Evolution some liberty to explore new plot points, foreign to the films; but in practice, it makes the same mistakes as the Star Wars prequel trilogy, where all it tries to do is explain the events leading up to Legacy. The game's protagonist is a program named Anon, and true to his namesake, he has no voice or personality -- all he does is follow Olivia Wilde around. Evolution's plot covers the same backstory that, in Legacy, The Dude explains in about three minutes.

The front-heavy cutscenes, while intensely uninteresting from a narrative perspective, could at least have afforded to be flashy and vivid. But the lavish production values of the film simply weren't applied to the game. Cutscene events are flat and dull, and the character models of Quorra, Flynn, et al appear barely reminiscent of their actors. This is the first game in a long time where I ended up skipping many of the cutscenes outright.

This dismal storytelling could be forgiven if the gameplay was good, but I struggle to describe Evolution's formula as anything more than inadequate. There are three kinds of gameplay mechanics: Prince of Persia-style platforming, button-mashy combat, and vehicle segments; and each one is, on the whole, not good.

The platforming is somewhat reminiscent of Prince of Persia 2008, in that Anon does a lot of leaping across large gaps, and running between parallel walls; a primary difference being that Evolution's controls are shoddy. The control scheme actually borrows more from Assassin's Creed: you hold the right trigger to run, and most acrobatic moves are triggered simply by running at something. Of course, this means that they're frequently triggered by accident, or alternately, that they fail to occur because of a glitch in the level collision. The camera also does its best to kill you by sometimes moving itself automatically, causing your perfectly-lined-up jump to end up going in completely the wrong direction. The coup de grace to all this is that the platforming level design is endlessly repetitive, since, unlike Prince of Persia, there is no effort to distinguish one area of the game from another. Every platforming segment looks and plays the same.

As for combat, Anon can throw his identity disc as a projectile weapon, has a short-range melee punch, and can mix in some special attacks with different powers depending on the currently-equipped disc type. Fighting is also somewhat acrobatic, as you can blend running and jumping with disc-throwing and other moves. There are glimpses of a cool combat engine here, but as with the platforming, the controls and camera simply aren't good enough to support it. And Evolution's combat segments are even more repetitive than the platforming is: inbetween platform segments, you'll run into a room (sometimes populated by civilian programs, which will immediately flee), then a wave of bad guys will come out, and once you kill them, another wave, and then another, and usually a fourth wave before you can finally move on to the next part of the platform-combat-platform-combat pattern.

I also want to rant quickly about an obvious design flaw in the combat: when most enemies also have discs to throw at you (note: discs are homing), and these discs can do heavy damage to you, and the dodging/evasion control simply doesn't allow you to move in the way that you'd like (such as, toward something that can heal you), some encounters can become extremely frustrating. You can go from full health to dead in a split second simply because all of the enemies threw their discs at you at once. Then you get to start the fight again from the first wave!

Finally, the vehicle segments were clearly included only to put a bullet point on the back of the box. The light-cycle levels can't help but disappoint you, as, rather than engage in a TRON-style grid battle, you're just trying to race along a linear track and avoid obstacles at high speed. Faring only marginally better are the tank levels, where you hop into an extremely slow tank, and fire on enemies (mostly, other tanks) until they die. It's nice that these levels break up the absolute tedium of the alternating platforming and combat segments, but they are themselves astonishingly boring.

There's also an upgrade system that I've forgotten to mention, because it's all but irrelevant in the game itself. You level up and gain upgrade points (megabytes) from killing dudes, and you can use these at upgrade stations for ... hmm. There are dozens of upgrades available, but almost all of them are for multiplayer only. Tron: Evolution has some competitive multiplayer modes, which I absolutely don't care about, but which apparently share your character profile from the single-player mode; and you can buy new abilities and attributes using your level-up points from either. But the only upgrades that apply to the single-player at all are slightly increased health, slightly increased special-attack energy, and slightly increased rates of regeneration on both of those.

Even the soundtrack is lackluster: while Legacy's Daft Punk score is thrilling and evocative of the franchise, Evolution's soundtrack is mostly a cheap knock-off of it. The story is throwaway and the gameplay is barely playable. Granted, it is playable, which does put it ahead of many other movie tie-in games. But that's really the best I can say for it.

Better than: Jumper: Griffin's Story
Not as good as: Tron 2.0 (granted, my experience with 2.0 wasn't great either)
Most expensive part of the game: almost definitely Olivia Wilde's voice work, which is baffling because the movie's bubbly and adorable Quorra has been transformed in the game into a gruff and businesslike plot device

Progress: Finished on Normal

It did, but I've absolutely lost interest in the game by now.

Progress: Gave Up