When I ordered Rogue Warrior on sale (more to come on this one!), GoGamer threw in a copy of Maelstrom for free. I only got a few minutes into it before I realized that the unintentional hilarity wasn't worth the effort.

The writing, the voice acting, the animation, the graphics, the sound quality - this game's presentation is abysmal. Come on, 2007, you can do better than this! As for the game itself, all I saw was a mediocre squad-based RTS with useless AI and baffling controls.

I'd say this is the worst game to have installed SecuROM on my computer, but....

Progress: Gave Up -- Hahaha!

Torchlight is the game architecture and mechanics of Diablo, plus some features and enhancements from Diablo II, with the art style of World of Warcraft - but without the multiplayer capability of any of these.

Calling Torchlight "derivative" would be an understatement. There is a dungeon with a few dozen levels, separated into several "sections" like mines and a crypt. Above it is a small town of quest-giving NPCs and merchants. Magical items are useless until you uncover their attributes with a Scroll of Identify, and you can get to town instantly with a Scroll of Town Portal. Even the fucking sound effects are pitch-perfectly identical.

That it so intimately imitates Diablo isn't really a bad thing; the formula is good, and Torchlight tunes the experience (e.g. through item drop rates) such that the stick holding the carrot is just in front of your face. But the game's scant additional features really don't make it feel different enough. I played this game ten years ago.

Which is startlingly like another game I recently bought - but while the 2010 version of Perfect Dark added online multiplayer, this 2010 2009 version of Diablo removed it. Huh? As what is apparently an engine proof for a real multiplayer game, Torchlight is pretty good - and you can do worse with $5 - but as an actual game I find it hard to recommend. Even if WoW is the closest you've ever come to Diablo II, you're really better off getting Blizzard's version, so that you can play it with friends.

Better than: Diablo
Not as good as: Diablo II
Not worth $20: good thing it's almost always on sale

Progress: Gave Up -- Level 10-ish

This game sucks, and you should never play it.

Alright, I'll elaborate.

There is a core game, in Red Steel, that is not awful. It isn't great, but it's competent: make tactical weapon choices, take advantage of the level layout to survive, aim at dudes' heads with the Wiimote. And there are even a few clever moments, like analog zooming on the sniper rifle by pushing and pulling the remote. But it's so weighed down by complete shit that this core game is absolutely impossible to enjoy.

I stopped playing in a stage, not quite halfway through the game, where Red Steel stopped being laughably terrible and started being retardedly frustrating. I kept running into three kinds of enemy encounter-

1. Room is filled with dudes with shotguns, who are amazingly great shots; I cannot turn quickly enough to shoot them, and cover is insufficient to keep me from rapidly dying.
2. Room is huge, and multiple dudes with sniper rifles attack me. Sniper shots take away half of my health bar each. I die quickly.
3. Sword fights. Defensive moves do not work. I end up just flailing the remote around and waiting for the fight to end.

Everything about this game is poorly executed, from the shoddy movement controls to the farcical swordfighting, from the boring level designs to the baffling enemy balance, from the half-baked story to the lackluster graphics and nonsensical music.

Really, it's just terrible. Never play it. I claim (below) that Red Steel is better than Kane & Lynch, but that's a tough call, because at least Kane & Lynch allowed me to share my suffering with a co-op partner.

Better than: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (PC, PS3, X360) (guh)
Not as good as: The Conduit (blegh!)
This game sucks: and you should never play it

Progress: Gave Up -- Gave up in the dinosaur egg room (??)

Red Steel 2's release is imminent, so I figured it was about time to catch up. Hearing about Red Steel's faults, though, and actually playing them, are two different matters.

Red Steel's problems aren't limited to the terrible controls that everyone already knows about. And boy are they terrible! The aiming dead zone is way too big, and the target/zoom function is just abysmal. But like I was saying - there are plenty of other problems, too, like laughable AI and unfair health/damage balancing (the Yakuza has snipers, and they're not afraid to use them!). The sword-fighting - which is to say, the "steel" part of the Red Steel title - is a joke, nothing more than an insipid mini-game that periodically interrupts the shooting action.

The menu system is easily the worst I've ever seen in anything, game or otherwise; it requires you to drag-and-drop options to select them. Loading times are shockingly long, and the game visibly hangs between almost every encounter, for seconds at a time, to auto-save the checkpoint. To top it off, the storytelling is dumb, the cutscenes are awful (like someone put them together from stock photos and clip-art over a weekend), the graphics are shoddy, and the music is an absolutely nonsensical blend of grunge rock and J-pop.

The one thing this game does right is the weapon variety. Even early on, the guns are satisfyingly differentiated and all fun to use (when the aiming isn't getting in the way).

At least, in this regard, Red Steel beats Kane & Lynch. So far.

Progress: Just got to Tokyo

So I've been playing through the campaign on my own in Agent (easy) difficulty, and co-op with a buddy in Special Agent (medium). Both have been frustratingly difficult - primarily because mission objectives are stupidly unclear, and the levels are somewhat labyrinthine. Ten minutes in, we'll discover that we've failed an objective because of something we did that... well, we really have no idea. I guess I underestimated how much of my previous success was reliant on the Players' Guide.

The multiplayer is still wicked fun, though, especially since it can actually run at a decent framerate. I wish there was an easier way to unlock all the weapons for it.

To reiterate: the "Game" settings allow you to prohibit auto-aim in local or private XBL matches, but not in a "Quick" match (Game settings don't exist in that mode). So much for quick play on XBL.

Progress: Saving the President

Yeah, I'm done with this. It didn't take long for the game to start to challenge me, and frankly, I'm not motivated enough to see it through. The story just isn't interesting enough. Parts of it seemed goofy, which I guess is the writing's fault, but there were also moments where I'm almost positive that the English localization wasn't giving me the correct impression.

Not for me.

Progress: Gave Up -- Chapter 1-5

I started playing this the other weekend, but uh, something else got in the way. Not that it had a difficult time doing so - Radiant Dawn, at least so far, has really failed to ignite my interest.

Granted, I am definitely not a series fan. I played Path of Radiance on Easy just to see the story, and go through the motions of the basic mechanics. But comparatively, Radiant Dawn's narrative is really underwhelming; all the characters seem pulled straight out of the Big Book of Japanese RPG Tropes.

The gameplay is also boring me, not that that's the game's fault - since not only did I set it to Easy again, but I also imported my Path of Radiance save data, which gives a few characters in my party stupidly high stats. They could play this game by themselves, if they wanted.

Progress: Chapter 1-5

It helps that 4J Studios has seen fit to acquire and implement higher-resolution textures and character models than what could be afforded a decade ago. I wish they had done something about the sound quality, too. But regardless - this game is still good. I flailed around for a while because the controls are a bit different, but a couple missions later it all started coming back to me, and I felt just like I was holding an N64 controller (aside from, you know, the retarded shape of it).

The biggest failing of PD for XBLA, and this is a big one, is that there is an auto-aim setting, which is

1) on by default,
2) hideously effective, and
3) valid in online multiplayer.

Time was, if your opponents had auto-aim on, you could reach over a few feet and smack 'em upside the head. But with the advent of The Internet, this is significantly harder.

So, until/unless someone fixes this, random online multiplayer can't really be taken seriously. But it still does split-screen, and you can do private games with your Xbox Live buddies - not to mention keep a steady framerate - so overall it's a better experience than the original was. Hell, in many ways, it's better than modern shooter games. Three words: Laptop sentry gun.

Progress: Chicago streets - worst mission ever!

The final mission pissed me off a little - in part six (of seven), the game told me to fly my helicopter low and shoot at the target, which only got me killed. In fact, I just had to stay alive long enough for the next part of the mission to start. But whereas this kind of shit was commonplace in earlier GTAs, it's the exception, here. So I'm not terribly put out by it.

It's been a while since a game kept me up all night playing, and GTA4 did it twice. Of my 30 hours with this guy's story missions, I'd say at least 28 of them were an absolute blast.

This is the engine - and caliber of storytelling - that GTA3 deserved.

Better than: all previous Grand Theft Auto games
Not as good as: in some ways, Red Faction: Guerrilla, but mostly it's better
I'm more curious than ever about: GTA4 on a horse

Progress: Finished with 67.58% completion

Vice City Stories tickled my GTA itch, and GTA4 has been scratching it thoroughly. While my previous forays with the game have been mostly limited to dicking around and blowing up police cruisers, this time I'm actually doing the missions, and I'm surprised at how fun they are. Where many previous GTA missions felt like they were fighting the engine the whole way, this time they're harmoniously integrated. Read: I'm not dying all the fucking time. (And when I do die, I keep all my weapons and ammo! Nice.)

I landed in Hove Beach last weekend, and have been playing it at every opportunity since - finally, I'm pleased with Rockstar's delivery on the GTA adventure formula. It may not do much for the little things like earlier installments did, but GTA4 gets it right where it counts. And would you believe that Niko actually has a compelling story on him? Neat, right?

So far my three biggest complaints are:

• Cell phone conversations are easily interrupted, and they usually don't call back (thank you, game script!)
• No trip skip (mission retries are easy, but some trips are still really long)
• I cannot understand what the fuck Little Jacob is talking about

Which are not super-huge complaints, really. I'd complain about the targeting system being a little wonky, but for once, it's actually good enough to convince me that dying is my own damn fault. And a lot of the little extras, like in-game TV and bowling, are a total waste of time and/or pain in the ass - but they're always fully skippable.

This engine and storytelling, in Vice City? Yeah, I could dig that.

Progress: Robbed a bank! Yes!