Let's get this part out of the way: this Prince looks weird. Something is wrong with his face. There's a very, I don't know, chimpanzee quality about it. But anyway.

Forgotten Sands makes the ending of Sands of Time seem exceptionally ironic, because this is basically the same game. Same art style; same voice actor; same composer; same enemies; same time-rewinding power; same basic plot. Sands of Time was a great game -- in 2003. This many years on, I expect a little more, not to mention some sense of newness. So what makes Forgotten Sands different from Sands of Time?

For one thing, the combat is worse than ever. Now, SoT was known for having workable, if slightly awkward, combat mechanics; while Warrior Within exacerbated its problems, and Two Thrones had no choice but to work around them with instant kill moves. And the 2008 iteration had an interesting new combat engine, that just wasn't executed quite right. So the Prince of Persia team has had plenty of chances to learn from its mistakes, here.

Forgotten Sands implements some outsourced component called the TAG Fighting Engine, and I can't say whether the engine or the integration is at fault, but the execution is terrible. Until you get magic fighting powers, it's nothing but mashing the X button, and sometimes the B button to dodge; once you get magic fighting powers (specifically the instant-win Whirlwind power), you'll mash the X button inbetween using those. The mechanics just aren't deep enough to be even slightly interesting, and the hordes of enemies thrown at the Prince are tedious rather than difficult.

Another difference is, as above, the magic fighting powers. But I've already described just about all there is to those. There are four, one for each element, and on the whole they're pretty uninteresting. (The upgrade system for unlocking them, though, can also be used for other things - such as a larger health bar - which is a plus.)

One legitimately new and interesting concept in Forgotten Sands is power over water. Once the Prince attains this power (in a story cutscene), he can stop flowing water in place, and incorporate it into his acrobatics. Since the power has a time-limit, it generally serves the purpose of forcing the Prince to move swiftly, which is when the game is at its most fun. Sometimes, it's used to create scenarios where the Prince needs to time very carefully - stopping, re-starting, and re-stopping water at specific intervals to avoid plummeting to his death - which adds an interesting twist of challenge to the established Sands of Time formula.

Unfortunately, the last major difference between Forgotten Sands and Sands of Time is that the story just isn't very engaging. The acting isn't half-bad, and the Prince's idle chatter is as amusing as always; but the story scenes are dull, formulaic, and seem like they were written over a weekend. The ending might surprise me, but frankly, I don't expect much.

Forgotten Sands is a fun game, and feels like it fits in perfectly with the Sands of Time trilogy. But that's just its problem -- those are old. If this had come out in 2004 in place of Warrior Within, everyone would have been a lot happier; but six years on, it isn't that impressive. And given that PoP 2008 was a refreshing reboot for the series - even if you didn't love it like I did, you must admit it showed amazing potential - it's baffling that this new franchise entry eschews that completely.

Progress: Jumping around the observatory

BioShock had sufficient breadth and depth that it could mean different things to different people. For me, it was about power. I wanted to explore the map, to collect gene and weapon upgrades, to hack devices, to unravel each audio diary's mysteries, to gain the allegiance of those empty-eyed girl monsters. I wanted to conquer Rapture. That this was impossible, due to respawning enemies, was a mere fly in the ointment; BioShock offered such freedom that my total conquest of the city felt nigh reachable.

BioShock 2 takes a few steps away from this formula. The inability to backtrack between levels, the omission of a game-pausing weapon select screen, the real-time hacking and auto-hack tools, and the Little Sister defense routines all speak to one goal: combat. Every hour I spend walking around the map to see what I've missed, I feel like I'm defying 2K Marin's wishes. And I'm okay with that -- but the crux of their offering, that of madcap Splicer melee, is not quite as appealing to me as the rest of the game.

What bothers me most about BioShock 2's combat is that it doesn't really become any good until chapter four (of nine). The first three weapons you get are the drill, which isn't very effective; a rivet gun, which is slow and has low ammo capacity; and a hacking dart gun, which is quite useless against live foes. Chapter three introduces a machine gun, which is satisfying, but terribly inaccurate. Not until chapter four's shotgun did I feel like my arsenal was legitimately sufficient.

I digress. Once it gets going, BioShock 2's combat is fun -- but as in the first game, it isn't really enough to make the game great. What made the first game great was the freshness and mystique of its atmosphere, which simply can't be bottled up and re-released.

As for the story, there are some new questions coming up about this Lamb character, but the game is determined to drip-feed them to me. Maybe, if I wasn't so intent on exploring the entire game map - and instead tore through it, following the magical arrow from start to finish - it would seem better-paced. But the plot so far isn't interesting enough to make me consider changing my playstyle.

Progress: Dionysus Park

Once I'd picked up the hookshot, it was clear to me that Vigil's wholesale copying of the Zelda formula was 100% intentional. Which is why I was so thrown off when my next item turned out to be the gun from Portal.

Darksiders does a lot, but none of it could really be called its own. For the most part - excepting a general lack of sidequests, the sometimes-repetitive combat, an underimplemented world map, and the way-too-fucking-long Black Throne dungeon - it's fairly well-executed, if extremely familiar.

The one thing that Darksiders can really lay claim to is its story and mythos, although it could have been done much better -- past the intro cinematics, and getting to know the NPCs, it pretty much puts storytelling on hold until the last hour or so, where the whole plot comes out in a confusing whirlwind.

Through the versatility of its engine, and the obvious thought put into its backstory, the Darksiders concept has a lot of potential. I hope the inevitable sequel(s) mix things up a bit more, though.

Better than: your average Zelda clone
Not as good as: a real Zelda
Your mileage will vary: depending on how much you like hitting demons with swords

Progress: Finished on Normal

I have three problems with Darksiders. One is that the jump button isn't responsive enough. The jump button. It's an important button. I mean, it's pretty good -- but it could be better. My second problem is that, in certain instances, the game's performance is not very good. Fog and haze and explosion and transparency effects all going on at once, some frames get lost, and it's a bit of a shame. (Basically, these are almost-trivial problems.)

My third problem is that there's too much combat. Especially early on, the game can get downright dull as wave after wave of brainless bags of demon blood come marching into your sword. Within the action-adventure genre, Darksiders definitely leans more toward action than adventure.

It's not a bad thing, since the combat is well done, at least once more moves and weapons arrive. I just prefer more adventure.

The story and theme is a lot more prevalent than I expected, which is good! The premise is genuinely interesting, and the voice work really sells it. (Thanks Mark Hamill!) The game's gorgeous art style and slick graphics do a great job too, performance notwithstanding.

Progress: Got the horse!

Alright, I take that back: Brütal Legend might have needed two more years in the studio. Despite having finished the story in under seven hours, I got pretty bored of the game's sidequests; which is much to its detriment, because the good writing and killer soundtrack can just barely compensate for the core gameplay.

I threw in the towel and dropped down to "Gentle" (easy) in the third-to-last stage battle, because I wasn't good enough at the game to get anywhere, and I didn't care to get better. I don't know if I needed more upgrades, or different tactics, or to work faster, or what -- I really have no idea. For all the complexity of its stage battle sequences, Brütal Legend does a really poor job of explaining them.

So, let's recap:

• A mini-map with pathfinding and sidequest tracking
• More sidequests, and more unique types of them
• A fuller story (I never even saw huge swaths of the game's world map)
• A more gradual and complete stage battle tutorial
• Real, honest-to-Ormagoden rebalancing; stage battle combat is too hard
• I shouldn't have to buy the radio (even for free), it should be in from the beginning
• Try for a solid frame-rate
• Fix the annoyingly visible bug where an old subtitle shows up briefly before being replaced by a new one

Then this game would be awesome.

As it is, Brütal Legend is a short, interesting, sometimes fun, but ultimately mediocre experiment.

Better than: CIMA: The Enemy
Not as good as: Pikmin
I wish: real radio was as good as this game's

Progress: Slew Tim Curry (on Gentle)

After getting to know the map and mechanics a little better, Brütal Legend has grown on me. The RTS parts of the game are pretty silly to start out, but once you apply some basic strategic technique - namely, stealing the enemy's resource nodes, and maintaining a front line - they aren't too bad. The controls are pretty weird, but I think I'm finally getting used to them.

Brütal Legend tries to do a lot -- an ambition prone to failure. Luckily, Tim Schafer has ensured that the characters and dialog are witty and charming enough to hold everything up. But the core design decision to generally remove a visual UI has me frustrated; the overworld needs heads-up display elements to more usefully indicate where I can go and what I can do. Mini-maps aren't a new thing, guys. As it is, I really doubt I'll bother with the majority of Brütal Legend's assload of unlockables.

Those aside, the game is pretty short, which is a bit distressing. After four-and-a-half hours of playtime - which includes some amount of sidequesting and tooling around - I'm about three-quarters of the way through the campaign. Actually, given the size of the game world, I get the impression that a much longer story was planned, but largely scrapped.

You've got to cut the cord eventually; but I think Brütal Legend could really have benefited from one more year of development, and some intensive QA feedback, to polish up its many diverse elements.

As a side note, once I found out where to buy upgrades (which took entirely too long), I discovered the most important upgrade in the game: the radio. Brütal Legend has a stupid huge soundtrack, and banging around the surrealistic countryside with some rocking tunes is pretty awesome.

Progress: Re-rebuilt the bridge with a cubic buttload of scaffolding

BioShock didn't have much of a story in the traditional sense - other than Atlas, and some business with Andrew Ryan, it was more of a Metroid Prime affair: unraveling the mystery of Rapture. Forensic, really. The story was the setting, and it worked great. But BioShock 2 has the same setting.

As such, it invents a new main antagonist to try and re-focus the story, but Lamb really can't compete with Rapture, and I already know all about Rapture. Not that this is a bad thing, exactly. Rapture is as moody and atmospheric as ever. The formula still works.

BioShock was a good game, and BioShock 2 is more of it. It's also, at least starting off, surprisingly challenging (on Normal). So far I don't like the Big Daddy's drill and rivet-gun armaments as much as I would real guns; but the game is introducing new stuff to me at a good pace, so maybe something better will come along soon.

Progress: Atlantic Express Depot

Brütal Legend is set in a charmingly imaginative world, and is filled with great writing and funny character interactions. The presentation suits it well, with facial animations that are very human, just exaggerated enough for dramatic and comedic effect. And it's remarkable how well the voice acting works, especially when it includes real luminaries of metal and rock music. It's kind of a shame, though, that the gameplay doesn't measure up.

Solo play is fun enough -- as I saw in the demo, the simple combo system is fresh enough to be interesting, but also familiar enough to easily get into. Driving doesn't work as well as I remember it, but is workable, and there's plenty of wildlife to decimate with the Druid Plow. The overworld map, though, is a bit too scenic for its own good; you can set a waypoint, but the game isn't very helpful in getting you there (turn signals on the car are a neat aesthetic touch, but extremely unclear from a navigational standpoint).

And where it really gets awkward is in the army command mechanics. I'd be happy to just slay stuff with my own axe and magic powers, but the legion of headbangers that follows me around the field is a little difficult to manage properly -- and it's hard to tell when they're actually being effective, or when they're dying in droves. I worry that I may be forced to rely more heavily on these jokers later on, and the controls and HUD really aren't up to it.

Nevertheless, as long as Brütal Legend doesn't get frustratingly difficult, I intend to see it through just for the story and writing's sake.

Progress: Slew the chrome spider queen

Moonbase Alpha is part of a NASA effort to make people (notably, young people) more excited about space exploration and development. If you ask me, it's an utter failure. You've never seen the moon as boring as it is here.

Being Unreal-based, it looks and controls a little better than you might expect from a game developed under government contract; still not as good as a real video game, but, hey, better than Rogue Warrior. The gameplay, though, is about as uninteresting as you can get. Per Wikipedia:

As a meteor strike damages an outpost near the moon's South Pole, the player must take control of a member of the outpost's research team and repair the outpost in order to save the 12 years of research accomplished there.

So the entire game consists of moon-jogging very slowly to different parts of a map, picking up equipment (one piece at a time), repairing parts, and fiddling with other doodads. I admit that I don't have a full impression of the gameplay flow in my head, because as I was trying to explore the map, I "deactivated" my equipment case and it disappeared, leaving my only equipment resupply several minutes of slow-jogging away.

I have to give Moonbase Alpha a little respect for its awkward movement and tedious mechanics -- being an astronaut isn't all ice cream and blowjobs, and much of what the game simulates is probably well-researched and realistic (with the exception of some solder-bypass puzzles ala Mass Effect 2). But this is exactly why it doesn't work as a NASA recruitment tool. Who would want to do this in real life?

If NASA wants to get kids excited about space travel, they should focus on the awesome results - like exploring distant worlds, and incredible photographs - instead of on the hard, boring work it takes getting there.

Better than: losing a $300-million probe
Not as good as: making real progress
Instead, watch: Moon, When We Left Earth, Apollo 13, Planetes

Progress: Gave Up -- Accidentally despawned my equipment after ~10 minutes

There's a lot to say about AC2, just as there was for its predecessor.

Suffice it to say, AC2 tries to do a lot - combat, parkour, stealth, exploration, collection, puzzles, platforming, storytelling - and succeeds at almost none of it. In fact, its mechanics have barely improved since the first game: aside from slightly less terrible combat controls, and hireable groups to distract guards for sneaking around, AC1's problems are still here. Some of them have become magnified, in fact, due to AC2's more avant-garde design: combat may be less unbearable, but there's a lot more of it, which is a net loss; and running across rooftops is substantially less fun, since now there are archers everywhere.

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but the story is awful.

The beginning of the game is absurdly boring and uninteresting, up until the point where its working mechanics (the Villa Auditore, and free-running across town) become accessible. Then it's fun, for a while, until all of that gets old and dull. And in the end, the game - again - forces you to engage in not-fun, frustrating combat against a boss you really don't care about. Followed by a cutscene. And spoiler alert, there's gameplay during the credits; like, yeah, half the screen is obscured by scrolling names, there's no HUD, and you still have to beat dudes up. And then the ending cliffhanger is retarded.

The new part of the game that I actually enjoyed was the collection aspect. Collecting Assassin Seals and Codex Pages was pretty fun, although it would have been better if it wasn't, apparently, required for finishing the game. Collecting the hidden symbols actually resulted in a pretty neat reward, but the in-game map was utterly unhelpful for finding them, and the puzzle-solving associated with them was stupid, and on occasion, unnecessarily obtuse. Collecting other stuff to invest in the Villa Auditore was fun at first, until I realized that even if I hadn't done any of it, I would never've been in any danger of ever running out of money.

AC2 is fun at parts, but ultimately disappointing. Instead of working on issues from the first game, Ubisoft added more half-baked features for its sequel. (So the news of an imminent spinoff has me suspecting more of the same.) In a way, it reminds me of the Grand Theft Auto series for PS2 -- but Rockstar, as they cut their teeth on features, and developed their own engine for next-generation hardware, had the luxury of inventing a new premise for GTA4. Even if Ubisoft ends up reinventing the Assassin's Creed franchise later on, they can't work around the fucking terrible story.

I also can't help but compare AC2 to The Saboteur, which is basically better in every way. Sean Devlin could see his enemies' line of sight; Sean Devlin could shoot guns; Sean Devlin could drive a car; Sean Devlin killed Nazis. Ezio Auditore can do none of these things.

Oh, and the game has 14 chapters, but chapters 12 and 13 aren't in the game. They're paid DLC. Once I finished chapter 11, my asshole British operator explained to me what would have happened in those chapters, had I paid for them. Classy move, Ubisoft. Real classy.

Better than: nothing
Not as good as: it should be
Pretty much just as good (and bad) as: Assassin's Creed, but this time, I expected more

Progress: Beat up the Pope