The plot was laughable, and the final boss encounter was trivialized by our overpowered weaponry -- my co-op buddy and I agreed to let each other get the maximum point rewards in the last couple levels, leaving me with a Rail Gun that one-shotted almost everything, and him with a Golden Shotgun that pretty much obliterated the whole screen at once.

Still, the game was fun throughout, with combat that never got too intense or too boring, and platform/puzzle segments that were frequently quite challenging. And it all worked surprisingly well, aside from a few nightmarish engine glitches (one time we clipped through a dungeon wall and apparently fell onto the reward platform in a hidden puzzle chamber).

I really hope Square-Eidos puts more muscle behind this "Lara Croft" spinoff franchise, as I'd love to see a more polished iteration of this game, maybe with more characters and/or simultaneous players.

Better than: The Lost Vikings (SFAM, SNES)
Not as good as: Trine
There are annoying skeleton warriors: you have to kill them and then blow up their corpses

Progress: Finished co-op on normal

It was tremendously hard for me to get back into this. While I was playing it, Other M felt good enough -- the action is competent, if shallow, and the basic gameplay works well enough. When it's paced right (more on that in a bit), the game can be pretty engaging. But being away from it even for a few hours - let alone a whole week - made me pretty apathetic. The lavish cutscenes can't really make up for their shoddy writing and acting; and the plot, underneath all the melodrama, is nothing new for the Metroid series. It's downright confusing how so much effort was spent on the cutscenes, and yet the rest of Other M's dramatic execution is just so lackluster.

Back to the pacing: the first third of the game, not counting an excessive amount of cutscene at the beginning, makes a good first impression. The action mechanics are just capable enough to make Samus feel like a badass, and the lush vegetative levels are actually somewhat interesting to look at. But as I mentioned, it sets aside the unguided, lonesome exploration that is, arguably, the main theme of the Metroid franchise.

In that sense, the middle third is sort-of a return to form, as Adam's orders were surprisingly unhelpful (and sometimes contradictory) in figuring out what the hell I was supposed to be doing, and I got lost pretty often. Unfortunately Other M's level design and combat gameplay simply can't support this -- aside from a few particular rooms, most of the map is made of utterly unremarkable space-station corridors, and difficult enemies really just become a matter of chain-dodging and firing charged shots into their backs.

The final third is where I felt the game came into its own, again by eschewing many classic Metroid conventions. Frequent boss fights mixed up the enemy patterns, and rapid movement from objective to objective kept my head in the game. Then there were more excessive cutscenes, and the ending was pretty lame; but up to that point, it really felt fun again.

Also, there is a short gameplay segment after the ending, where you fight a real final boss, and finally do a Metroid-trademark escape-the-self-destruct sequence.

Of its three apparent ambitions - a gripping narrative, solid action, and a classic Metroid adventure - Other M doesn't really excel at any of them. The first isn't a complete disaster, but comes pretty close; the second is competent, not a lot more; and the third I'd barely even consider, except for a few moments of series nostalgia. The game lives up to more than the sum of its parts, in that it was able to string me along just well enough to feel satisfied at the end -- no doubt due to the monumental effort that went into making its questionable control scheme, the majority of the time, work pretty well. Ultimately, as a game, I think it succeeds, if just barely.

But as an experiment, I can only consider this a failure. I don't care about the remaining pickups, and I don't care about how it fits into the Metroid story timeline. I would call it my least favorite game in the series, if I hadn't completely forgotten that Hunters had a campaign mode.

This is as far as I can imagine Team Ninja could have gone with their initial premise. Next time, start with a nunchuk. And for the love of Gunpei, never, ever put hidden-object segments in a first-tier franchise game.

Better than: Metroid Prime Hunters
Not as good as: Metroid Prime
I still think the "authorization" upgrade-unlock schtick: is stupid. I'm a goddamn intergalactic mercenary. Fuck the Federation. I play by my own rules.

Progress: Got Adam's helmet, 38%

I haven't played any Tomb Raider game for more than ten minutes; the franchise is meaningless to me. But I heard that Guardian of Light was a neat little co-op title, and upon further investigation, it is!

It has qualities in common with Trine -- specifically, that each player (though there are only two) has unique abilities that must be used to progress through the level, and which can also be used for hilarious griefing. It also has qualities in common with a two-stick shooter, since that's basically how the combat works; there are no melee attacks, just guns (plus a throwing spear for Totec) and remote-detonated mines. There are also some RPG-ish elements, as each player equips guns and enhancement items found in the level, or earned by completing skill challenges.

The challenges are an interesting twist on the otherwise (generally) simple level design: collecting hidden items, finishing an area in a certain time limit, reaching a certain high score (although this is broken in co-op, as it only counts one player's score, even though by necessity two players work against each others' scores), or even more esoteric things like crossing a river without touching the water. The game always makes the goal fairly clear, and the plot isn't really interesting at all, so interrupting it to follow a wacky, optional on-screen prompt is actually a lot of fun.

It's longer than I expected, and probably longer than it needs to be; I feel like we reached the full depth of the game's mechanics several levels ago. But what is here is pretty satisfying, from a chase scene with falling platforms, to boss fights against dinosaurs, to a Zelda-esque dungeon where we had to do puzzles to collect eight key items. And the basic gameplay mechanics that Lara and Totec use to cooperatively solve puzzles are just cool.

Progress: Level 12 (co-op)

Winning formula for a co-op game mode:

• Don't explain the game controls or mechanics at all. Rely on one or more of the players already knowing what he's doing. (Given the game's controls are already completely different from any other third-person shooter.)
• Don't bother fixing obvious engine faults that get in the way of two simultaneous players, like not being able to re-use an environmental action (like climbing out of a window) until unreasonably long after the first player does it.
• Fall back to the game's worst mechanic in the second level.
• Throw in an impossibly cliched story about some black market nuclear warheads or something.

Progress: Finished on Normal -- got to level 2 in co-op

MadWorld was a fun, if insubstantial, experiment; Bayonetta did nothing for me. So the Platinum Games pedigree didn't necessarily endear Vanquish to me. But the demo is, uh, pretty impressive.

At first blush, you might think that a shooter combined with a twitch action game would just be one of those at its core, with slight influences of the other. But Vanquish really feels like a legitimate hybrid of two powerful genres. I can take cover behind blockades, and speed-boost out to take pot-shots. I can slow down time, Viewtiful Joe style, to shoot missiles out of the air. And I have a shotgun! Nice.

The bright effects and sci-fi aesthetic really help, too. Despite the (intentionally?) cheesy dialog, the Vanquish demo totally succeeded in making me take it seriously. As long as the full game doesn't grant/restrict character upgrades based on a performance score, I'll be pretty excited about it.

Progress: Finished the demo

Though DeathSpank reviewed well, I was a little concerned about it being yet another single-player Diablo clone. Fortunately, it has a flavor all its own, even putting aside the thick, deadpan humor (and absolutely amazing voice acting, at least for the hero himself). DeathSpank is really more action than anything else, and while the pause menu makes the RPG mechanics look deep, treating them like a side dish to the button-mashy main course felt surprisingly good.

I'll definitely get this, at some point. Pretty sure it'll end up on Steam eventually.

Progress: Killed a whole mess of Greems (?) in the demo

The brilliance of Dead Rising 2: Case Zero - aside from being a way to charge people for a pre-release demo - is that it itself has a demo, per Xbox Live Arcade rules and regs. Unfortunately, I spent more time watching cutscenes and loading screens than I did actually playing the game -- so the small glimpse of Dead Rising 2 it afforded me wasn't very substantial.

The weapon combo mechanic is an awesome idea, marred somewhat by the challenge of getting a useful weapon back to a work bench without consuming it. Fragile weaponry still seems more like a balance patch than a real gameplay mechanic. That said, the few weapons I did get to pick up lasted a little longer than I expected them to. But, the zombies weren't all that dense; and many weapons were still borderline useless. (I guess the drill could be pretty neat in some combos, but by itself it's just a great way to get attacked from behind.)

That the zombie attack mechanism still takes away health before giving me a chance to escape, is my biggest concern. This, to me, was a very clear error in Dead Rising's game design. That the sequel preserves it suggests that it may not do much to allay my many other concerns about the first game.

Then again, the aiming controls work much better. Not just better-than-awful, but about as good as you could possibly expect from a game that isn't primarily a shooter. There's a targeting reticle and everything!

So, after playing the demo of the demo, I'm still on the fence about Dead Rising 2. Great.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played the demo (the free demo of the paid demo)

It's plainly evident from spending even a few minutes with Other M that this isn't a full-blooded Nintendo game. Nintendo first-parties absolutely can't release a game until it's polished to a blinding sheen, even if it means a shallow general experience. Other M, on the other hand, is a risky proposition: the ambitious storytelling, voice acting, and franchise-changing action gameplay make it unlike any game Nintendo would ever make on its own. The result is, well, imperfect, and could very well be underwhelming depending on your expectations.

In its first hour, Other M suffers from overlong cutscenes, filled with hit-or-miss writing and acting (literally, while some lines work great, others are shamefully bad). It aims to make Samus more believable as a character, and while it succeeds in making her impossible life story more relatable, the cutscenes are simply too lengthy and uneven to be consistently satisfying. Fortunately, they dissolve as the game moves on, and it becomes more about some fast-paced action that... well, takes some getting used to.

First thing's first: holding the Wii remote sideways like an NES controller is not comfortable. It never has been. While this set-up can be tolerable if the game suits it, having to navigate a 3D environment with a D-pad isn't exactly a perfect fit. To its credit, Team Ninja has implemented an impressively functional control system, that auto-aims at all the right moments; but at a very basic level, it still doesn't feel right.

I could say the same of the game's general design. Other M puts Samus aboard a surprisingly big space station with a substantial map to navigate, but exploration is, at least as far as I've played, a non-issue: this game doesn't just guide you to your next objective, it forces you there. In general, you can go forward, or backward. Sometimes, not backward. The optional upgrades (yes, there are still energy tanks and missile expansions) feel more like bonus items than like organic parts of the game.

But I don't want to sell Other M short. While it's easy to pick out ways in which it falls short, and somewhat obvious solvable problems (I won't even go into the point-to-first-person thing), it still gets an impressive number of things right. A recharge-anytime mechanic means that the game can be difficult moment-to-moment, without punishing you for making a mistake here or there. A generous checkpoint system mitigates the frustration even further. And like I said, despite the fundamental weirdness of using a four-directional pad to move in three dimensions, and not being able to move while aiming in first-person, the gameplay works more often than it doesn't -- in fact, I would say, most of the time.

If you're coming at this game from an action-game standpoint, i.e. a fan of Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry, you'll probably be somewhat disappointed. By action standards, Other M's gameplay isn't very deep; and it doesn't bring enough of the Metroid franchise formula with it to feel substantially different. But if you're nothing more than a Metroid fan, like myself, then Other M is an interesting twist on the series with some refreshingly new (again, to the franchise) mechanics.

Progress: Killed a weird tree monster thing

StarCraft II's multiplayer match-making is complete garbage. At least, as far as I can tell. Not that I mind terribly -- being neither great nor terrible at StarCraft, I'm fine with winning against awful players and losing to skilled ones. But it's extremely clear from examining my competitors' rankings that Battle.net isn't trying very hard to find comparably-ranked opponents for me.

This is probably because, at a fundamental level, the ranking system is broken. Your initial rank is determined by five "placement" matches, and you have individual rankings in the 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 categories. But the rub is, you also have separate rankings for each team configuration you play in. If you play 2v2 teamed with Friend A four times, then play 2v2 teamed with Friend B four times, you still won't have a 2v2 ranking, period.

This makes sense from a precision standpoint: the ranking applies to your team's collective ability. But it also means that, unless you have a dedicated regular team, your ranking is basically meaningless. Not to mention, requiring five games in the same team set-up before getting any kind of ranking means that casual players will probably never get one at all.

Like I said, it's fine for me because I feel like I'm pretty much in the middle of the ability spectrum. And it's probably also fine for serious competitive players, assuming that they have high rankings, because they play enough to be placed against foes of similar standing. But if Blizzard wanted the random matchmaking system to be accessible to everyone, I'm pretty sure they failed.

Anyway. It's still a super-fun strategy game, even when I'm losing. Unless it's to a cannon rush. In which case: fuck you.

Progress: Finished the campaign on Normal

Adventure games have a tendency to implement at least a handful of puzzle solutions that only make sense to the game designer. It's an unavoidable dilemma that his outside-the-box thinking isn't the same as yours. Modern adventure games sometimes tackle this with robust hint systems, but Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People takes another route -- using the narrative strength of protagonist Strong Bad, any absurdity can make sense in the right context. Frequently, a puzzle's solution is more evident by the available items, and the perceived result, than by the actual premise of the puzzle.

Which is not to say it wholly eschews hints, either. For example: one puzzle that gave me trouble required me to place a plunger on a wall-mounted drain, and after a few failures, Strong Bad made a clever remark about suffering "drain bamage." At any rate, I never had to check a walkthrough, and still didn't feel frustrated by the game, which is a major victory for an adventure game.

The downside to this sense-through-nonsense approach is that the larger plot isn't very cohesive. The overall "goal" of this episode was to beat up Homestar Runner, which didn't actually come into play until the final minute or so; and every time I stepped away from the game and came back, I completely forgot what I was supposed to do. The puzzle architecture ensured that I could get going again without any downtime, just by exploring what was open to me, but it didn't do much for my sense of motivation.

Homestar Ruiner looks good, sounds good, and is written very well: the Homestar/Strong Bad world is consistently hilarious, and doesn't feel at all diluted in game form. And I wouldn't say that the mini-games (like Snake Boxer or Teen Girl Squad) are a primary draw, but they are fun distractions to try once or twice.

As long as the other episodes can keep up this caliber of writing and design, Strong Bad's got a real winner on his hands.

Better than: Time Gentlemen, Please!
Not as good as: The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
I wonder if the other episodes will: carry over my info from this one, because I may have totally screwed up the game map

Progress: Complete