I'd been looking forward to Dark Void for a while. It seems to hit all the vital points of a simple formula: science fiction + robots + lasers + jetpacks = awesome. But the demo, I don't know - it just didn't feel awesome. The controls were a little loose, which is one thing, but also the game's environments, the acting, the pace of the brief demo set-piece... I don't know. It just seemed bland, and insignificant.

It's completely possible that the real, full game is better-scripted and -designed than this demo, and that my concerns are for nothing. But the demo left me with a bad feeling, and Dark Void is no longer on my most-wanted list.

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished the demo

Wow! This game is frustrating.

I think we can all agree that Kane & Lynch has a great premise - a squad-based shooter, in the context of bank robbery and other high-action crimes, would be a fantastic experience. And if it was bolstered by a gritty, Hollywood-style story, even better! Unfortunately Dead Men delivers on none of this.

The first thing you'll notice about the game, and arguably its greatest failure, is the controls. It's just damn near impossible to do anything in Kane & Lynch. Movement is shoddy; aiming is terrible. The auto-cover system never works when you want it, and always gets in your way when you don't want it. Checkpoints and goal locations are rarely as easy to get to as the mini-map has you believe. And AI is absolute shit, which compensates for your inability to shoot effectively, but makes the set pieces fairly dull and disappointing.

This much I pretty much knew going in, but I at least expected the story and dialog to make the game seem worthwhile. Nope! The background plot might be good, but I have trouble saying for sure, because the game is having a hell of a hard time telling it. Characters refer matter-of-factly to their dark pasts, almost never mentioning any interesting details. I can make inferences about what's happened to them, but the game script does nothing to make me feel engaged or intrigued. Kane, Lynch, and everyone else only really seem to care about the immediate present - which amounts to nothing more than terrible shooting.

My buddy and I got halfway through the game in a (short) sitting, so we owe it to ourselves to finish it off. But it's going to have to work pretty goddamn hard for any sort of redemption.

Progress: Breaking some assholes out of prison

Mercenaries is a good game, and I had quite a bit of fun with it. But Red Faction: Guerrilla did most of what Mercs does, better (technical hiccups aside) - so it is hard to go back to it, now.

I may return to Mercenaries at some point, if I run out of open-world destruction games to play, but that's seeming less and less likely anymore.

Progress: Gave Up -- Captured the Ace of Clubs

During my previously-glogged playthrough of Red Faction: Guerrilla, I had my graphics settings near (but not at) their highest. I thought the game looked great, but could run better in certain circumstances - especially during occasions of heavy on-screen activity. Well, I just plugged in a new graphics card, and turned the graphics all the way up, after which, the game had a periodic stutter making it mostly unplayable.

The Internet suggested that I turn off Ambient Occlusion, so I did that, and now it runs too fast. Not just fast enough to make me think it was slow, before; fast enough to be unreasonably fast. In fact, this'll happen if I lower any graphics settings at all. It seems like the game just isn't designed to throttle itself correctly.

This is apparently a known issue running RF:G (and Saints Row 2?) in Win7, and Volition has no intention of fixing it. Thanks, assholes.

I also had a ton of difficulty getting the game to run in the first place - there is a whole rigamarole to go through in applying a patch, thanks to Games for Windows LIVE - but I was willing to write that off as a fluke. I guess the free DLC was to make up for not doing due diligence in debugging the PC version.

It's a shame to say, because the game is stupid fun and plays great with a mouse, but maybe you are better off with a console version.

Progress: Liberated Mars

Demons of the Badlands is - well. It's typical to expect "more of the same" from downloadable campaign content, but I can only really describe this pack as less of the same.

It excises the concept of salvage, which Red Faction: Guerrilla used as a currency reward for destruction, opting instead to unlock items based purely on how many missions you complete. And the mission types I really liked (assaulting and protecting areas, using mechs to destroy EDF stuff, rail-shooting segments with a rocket launcher) barely exist, here; most of the Guerrilla Marauder missions are retrieving vehicles, or destruction puzzles, which are ... fine, but not my favorites.

Furthermore, the entire thing only has three story missions, and you'll need to destroy most of the EDF property in the sector in order to unlock the final one. So by the end - two, maybe three hours, tops - there's almost nothing left to do, anyway.

Demons of the Badlands is simple, destructive fun; but it lacks the variety, the scope, and the satisfaction of any one of the original campaign's sectors. As much as I liked the core game, this DLC pack is entirely skippable.

I'm glad it came free with the PC version, because if I paid for this, I might be harsher on it.

Better than: horse armor
Not as good as: Overlord: Raising Hell
Red Faction's story sucks: so a prequel is kind of stupid

Progress: Finished the story missions

In the final missions, there were so many explosions that I literally could not see anything. Red Faction: Guerrilla likes ramping up the difficulty by throwing more dudes at you, which is sometimes a nuisance. But then you find the tank, or the missile walker, and everything is peachy-keen again. So although this continuous arms race develops to a somewhat ridiculous extent, it does a great job of making every mission feel more epic than the last.

As I expected, the Marauders ended up being slightly (very slightly) more than meets the eye. There is a retarded plot twist near the end, and you enlist their help in the final battle against the EDF. I don't consider this a spoiler because the game's story is stupid. It's a good thing, then, that completely ignoring the plot is easy and fun. Sure, RF:G might have been better with a gripping narrative, but it's a fantastically entertaining game even without one.

Once the main story is wrapped up, all the game's guerrilla missions (regardless of whether or not you completed them) unlock again, and the entirety of Mars becomes your playground. This is awesome! and I'm seriously considering doing missions I skipped and finding collectibles I missed. But my urge to blow shit up is almost fully satisfied, and I still have to play through the DLC missions.

Better than: Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
Not as good as: story-wise, Grand Theft Auto IV
More explosions than: everything else, combined

Progress: Liberated Mars

There are some features of Red Faction: Guerrilla that make for easy comparison with other recent games. Guerrilla missions, for instance, are functionally similar to recon missions in Assassin's Creed - the difference being that Red Faction has a lot of mission types, almost all of which are fun. And the free-roaming nature of collecting salvage to upgrade is not unlike Crackdown's power-up orbs, although Alec Mason is upgraded more through his weapons than through his personal attributes. (Also, Michael McConnohie is the voice of your commander in both Crackdown and RF:G. Interesting!)

Red Faction may share ideas with some other sandbox titles, but the amount of fun I'm having is difficult to compare to. It's rare to find a game where failure is enjoyable, but when I fail a mission in Red Faction, I am almost invariably looking forward to trying it again. It really nails the simple pleasures of destroying things.

Back when RF:G was new, there was a popular critical opinion that the default game difficulty was too high, and that optimal fun could be found in Easy. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm having no qualms about Normal. Recently I had been feeling pretty fragile in the game's tougher firefights; and then, a new armor upgrade opened up. Of course, death is expected, and in certain missions, frequent - but like I said, I still have fun doing these missions the umpteenth time. I'm not opposed to the idea of switching to Easy to find fun in a difficult game. I'm just saying, for Red Faction, I don't see this as significant.

As for the narrative, it's showing some signs of, uh, trying to do something; I'm still not impressed. There are these Marauders, basically Mad Max rejects wandering out in the Martian desert, who appear to just be hyperviolent savages but may hint at a deeper secret. All I know is, beating them to death with my sledgehammer is great fun.

Progress: Liberated Badlands sector

Corollary: playing Red Faction: Guerrilla while drinking is amazing. The low penalty for dying (you restart at a safehouse with full ammo), and the fact that death is usually spectacular (e.g. a tower falling on you), conspire into something that's really incredible with even just a bit of artificial suspension-of-disbelief.

Progress: Just walked through a building in a mecha suit. Whoa!

"GTA4 on Mars" isn't an unfair assessment of Red Faction: Guerrilla. But what RF:G lacks in narrative strength - and it does lack: Alec Mason makes Tommy Vercetti look like Citizen Kane - it makes up for with sheer, destructible bliss. Driving a truck into someone is fun; driving it through a building is awesome.

Almost everything on Mars can be dismantled and blown up, and what's more, Salvage (debris) is a collectible currency! By blowing shit up, and also by completing missions for the Red Faction, you'll be able to buy new weapons, weapon upgrades, and other sundries, in order to blow shit up even better. New areas, in which to blow new shit up, are opened by pushing back the Earth Defense Force (EDF) - which is largely accomplished by blowing their shit up.

The EDF make for more convenient aggressors than GTA's police, because there is no semblance of doubt or hesitation in killing them: the EDF are the Nazis of Mars. Drawing them into a firefight is all too fun. Speaking of which! - as a representative of a grassroots rebellion, Alec is liable to spontaneously attract the help of working class schmucks. So on top of being able to level buildings, there's also the constant possibility to spark (and take part in) a real-time, full-scale conflict between the EDF and the workers. How's that for emergent gameplay?

The biggest failure of Red Faction: Guerrilla is that, since there's not much of a plot to go on, you are really driven only by your own desire for destruction - which is great, until you get bored of driving around looking for things to destroy. While the game doesn't completely overcome this, it does have a brilliant countermeasure, in the form of Guerrilla Missions: in certain general areas, you'll get a radio message indicating that some shit is going down, be it an attack on a Red Faction base, or an EDF convoy, or an EDF courier en route. You'll then have the option to immediately switch to this mission, and go take care of business. No tracking down map icons; no cutscenes or transitions. It's all seamless.

The real-time nature of Guerrilla's world is expertly executed, and the destruction physics are a blast, pun fully intended. Aside from some minor, somewhat expected issues (trouble walking through rubble, friendly AIs being pretty retarded), I'd say the only thing it could do better is having a real story.

Progress: Liberated Parker sector

I concluded the game's story, unraveling its final mysteries (well, except a few I had to check the interweb for) - and I did it all without being terribly frustrated. Granted, I did have to do several boss fights on Easy to get by; but TWEWY never outright stopped me from going on, just because I wasn't good enough, and I really admire the game's design for that.

My own shortcomings aside, there are things about the battle system that could be improved. When enemies can shoot me from off-screen, but I can neither see them, nor hurt them with full-screen attacks, I feel slightly cheated. Touch-screen maneuvering (moving and dodging) can be sketchy, as the game struggles to properly recognize gesture input. Not to mention several pins activated by gestures, which, naturally, fail to register at the worst possible moments.

As for the partner battles on the top screen, I never did delve too deeply into that system; I had my hands full with Neku. Brad commented on how this is supposed to work, I guess, but splitting my focus never worked for me - the AI didn't do a great job, but when I left Neku alone, all he could do was take damage. At any rate, ignoring the top screen worked for me. And like I mentioned before, when the game wasn't kicking me in the junk (or failing to pick up my touch input), the combat was pretty fun.

Well, aside from a few fights where the enemy was able to dodge 90% of the time, and couldn't be stunned. That was pretty lame. But, hey, Easy made it work.

TWEWY's "message" comes off a little strong, but isn't as whiny or saccharine as Kingdom Hearts'. This game's keyword is "imagination," and aside from some bad first impressions on Neku's part, the themes, characters, and plot help make that message seem genuinely meaningful. The hidden reports get into some dubious metaphysics, but as supporting text for the main story, they help everything come together.

Somehow, I haven't yet mentioned the game's music. I like it - for the most part. Some tunes are great; others, not so much. Most of them are catchy, at least. It grew on me once I was able to get over the often-jarring vocal tracks (though I'm sure the "I always dress in rags!" lyric will haunt me in my nightmares).

So I ended up liking it. My problems with the game - superfluous item management, and the overcomplicated combat system - could all be mitigated with no real negative consequence. The story was good, and I'm glad to have seen it through. That being said, if Square-Enix and Jupiter want to sell me on a sequel, they'd do well to polish up the touch input, and cut some of the fat out of the item system. I wouldn't miss the clothing items at all.

Better than: Lunar Knights
Not as good as: Contact
Hard to compare with: Pretty much everything

Progress: Finished the main story (some bosses on Easy)