Imagine GTA3 set in North Korea - instead of rival gangs vying for control of a city, you have rival governments vying for control of a battlefield. This is Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, and it's basically just as fun as it sounds.

As a mercenary (you can choose between three merc characters, each with a unique special ability), your ultimate goal is to capture or kill General Song, who's taken over North Korea in a military coup and threatens the world with nuclear arms. But to get to him, you'll need some intel; and to gather it, you'll need to work with the armed forces already set up around Pyongyang.

Your merc can play the field between the Allied Nations, South Korea, China, and the Russian Mafia in order to get closer to Song. Meanwhile you'll be capturing various other North Korean big-wigs from the Deck of 52, each one assigned a playing card 'rank' according to importance - and hence, bounty. Your cash reserve (from completing contracts as well as from Deck captures and kills) features prominently in the on-screen HUD, serving not only as a sort of score, but also as a resource for support items like C4 and air-drops.

It's a great premise that's great fun to play out, and really benefits from some smart world design: the game map is small and dense, so finding a new mission is always super-easy. The big fly in the ointment, though, is controls - they are pretty terrible. Several button-map conventions are illogically changed (Circle button to jump? Really?), moving at any speed slower than a full run is all but impossible, and there's no good setting for aiming sensitivity, which is almost as bad as Dead Rising's.

I'm getting used to the controls, though. And while a single mercenary waging war on North Korea isn't the most realistic of settings, the game world is impressively immersive, due in large part to some great voice acting (awful fake accents notwithstanding) and a sweeping orchestral score, LucasArts-style.

Plus, there is an unlockable cheat to play as Han Solo. Fuck yes!

Progress: Captured the Jack of Clubs

Thank goodness. My completion estimate from yesterday was on the high side; and like magic, the remaining half-or-so of Spirit Tracks (including an additional dungeon after the Fire Temple, plus some absurdly difficult final floors in the Tower of Spirits) was everything I could hope for from a great Zelda game. Thrilling boss fights; devilish dungeons; even the story picked up quite a bit. I'm still hesitant to chugga-chugga-chug along for the game's sidequests, but who knows, maybe I'll come back later.

It's pretty clear to me what made the difference in ST's latter half: more dungeon, less train. I could go on; but it would only belabor my point from yesterday. Not to rain on Aonuma's parade, but trains pretty much stopped being the coolest thing ever when I was ten. Although I won't deny there is a certain fun factor to pulling the whistle.

Anyway! The last several dungeons and other gameplay sequences more-or-less redeem the menial parts of the game's first half. So while it doesn't end up being one of my favorite Zeldas, I'm glad I stuck it through.

Better than: Ōkami
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
I wish I could: Just get off the train and walk

P.S. Spirit Tracks does a bit of gap-tying between Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass and the rest of the series. Don't expect anything significant, though.

P.P.S. This is the third Zelda in a row where one of the final battles is with the floating, possessed body of the princess. What's up with that?

Progress: Defeated Malladus

Maybe it's my fault, that even going into this game with tempered expectations, so far I've been disappointed. Or maybe it's the last few Zelda games' fault, for being so goddamned good. In any event - Spirit Tracks is not living up to what I expect from a modern Zelda game.

The train stuff is just as boring and painful as I feared it'd be. Traveling in Phantom Hourglass (and likewise, Wind Waker) could take some time, but there were always surprises along the way: ships, islands, squids, and other miscellany, that you could spot on the horizon and set sail for at your pleasure. Travel in Spirit Tracks always goes from point A to point B, with nothing inbetween but stretches of uninteresting track, and semi-random enemies to tap on.

Nineteen times out of 20, the only surprises along the way are emergency detours, to avoid crashing into, uh, evil trains. Thus making the trip even longer. Meanwhile, you can shoot bombs at rocks. Sometimes a rabbit will pop out and you can catch it for a sidequest. That's about it.

In general, there's no sense of adventure. The game so far - I estimate myself at around 70%, now - is all but entirely linear. Opportunities to go anywhere I haven't been directed, are rare exceptions. Now that I've got a freight car on my train, and a whip for getting past big holes in the ground, some more are opening up; but just getting around is such a pain, that I've all but given up on sidequests at all.

Meanwhile, the rest of the game is following Zelda tropes a little too closely. The first treasure, the Whirlwind (blow into the microphone to shoot a gust of wind), is of extremely limited utility; after that I found the Boomerang, and Bombs, which work just as they did in PH. This game's musical instrument is a flute, which is neat because you actually blow into the mic to play it, but the thing is almost never used at all. It wasn't until the Whip that any of the items felt new. (Plus, it allows me to pretend that Link is Indiana Jones, which is pretty cool.)

Tragically, the dungeons have also been extremely underwhelming. The first and second temples were maybe 10-20 minute affairs; the third one, length- and difficulty-wise, felt more appropriate for an introductory dungeon. Meanwhile, the Tower of Spirits apes PH's Temple of the Ocean King - multiple floors of Phantom-dodging, which you return to after each Temple to push forward a little farther. The Tower has some inventive puzzles that revolve around using Link and Zelda (possessing a Phantom armor suit) simultaneously, but these are all too brief compared to the rest of the game, and it wasn't any sort of challenging until the last few levels I was in.

And I still don't like the controls. I'd argue that matters have actually gotten worse since Phantom Hourglass, since now while you're shooting at something from the train, or trying to pan the camera, it's possible to accidentally switch the tracks or stop, which is bad.

What do I actually enjoy about Spirit Tracks? The story, though largely disposable so far, has more than a few nods to characters and elements from Phantom Hourglass - I'm interested to see if these come together in the end. When Zelda participates in the dialog (which is only slightly more often than trips to the Tower of Spirits), she's amusing and fun. The soundtrack is excellent; the full-speed train theme might be one of my favorite pieces of music from the series. And really, even if it's bad for a Zelda game, in general Spirit Tracks is better than the average action-adventure.

To be honest, though, I wasn't excited about it at all until the last dungeon. That's several hours of routine, average adventuring. If it wasn't a Zelda game, I probably wouldn't have kept going.

Progress: Opened the Fire Temple

This game looks fucking hilarious. So I was immensely pleased to see a demo on Xbox Live! But immensely disappointed when I found that the demo's only playable component is a 'survival' challenge, where you have to shoot dinosaurs to protect a fort. No retarded story or hackneyed dialog or anything.

Shame, I guess. I'd love to drink my way through the campaign once this gets cheap.

Progress: Gave Up

There's a secret world, where levels are unlocked by collecting all the star coins in the previous 8 worlds. There is no way in hell that our four-player team would be able to pull this off; just finishing World 8 practically took all night by itself, to say nothing of the elusive star coins. But I'm chomping at the bit to try this on my own.

Progress: Beat Bowser (Co-op)

Yeah, no. Fuck this. FF12 is a grindfest in sheep's clothing.

It shares major flaws with old Final Fantasies: for instance, I just very nearly defeated a boss who was able to more-or-less devastate each half of my party in a single move. I had no gauge of difficulty before the encounter, other than pushover regular enemies; and my death resulted in the loss of several levels, because someone neglected to put a save point near him. It is difficult, anymore, for me to play a game that has no concept of checkpoints, and I have no sympathy for something made as recently as 2006.

I would be more forgiving of FF12's archaic design if it was anything more than boring half the time, but it isn't - by and large it is chore-like. My favorite moments were when I started really branching out on the License Point grid, earning my party members new potential abilities; but most of these, e.g. purchasable magic spells and weapons, never materialized anyway. Having to unlock the ability to use something, and then buy that something as well - its availability being locked by story progression, of course - is just as dumb as it seems.

I'm done. Not wasting more of my life on this crap.

Progress: Gave Up -- Died at Belias

I was just starting to have fun with FF12, and then that giant fucking bird had to show up.

This boss (the aforementioned fucking bird) was tearing each of my party members a new asshole; there was simply no way I could keep anyone alive long enough to kill it. I checked the interweb to see if there was some sort of trick, and sure enough, I was supposed to have collected some item from an NPC - in the middle of this endless goddamn desert - to deal super damage to the bird. Grievance: Final Fantasy 12 mystifyingly resurrects the old RPG trope of being completely helpless against a boss, unless you know exactly how to exploit his obscure weakness, or have spent half a dozen hours just wandering around the entire map.

Also, the bird could only be targeted by magic or ranged weapons, which makes sense; but I only had two characters who know how to use ranged weapons because up to this point they've been pretty useless. Grievance: there are way too many different options in the License Points system - part of the game I was actually having fun with - for there to be a "right" way to configure your party. (Also, you have six party members, but an active party of three, and only your active members earn experience - so if you need to swap in a character who's been left behind the level curve, good luck!)

So I backtracked through half the goddamn desert, twice, since the first time I thought I'd found a shortcut but it actually took me somewhere else entirely. I got the item and went back to the boss to fight it. I travelled the same parts of the map I'd already been to, killed dozens of the same enemies, and collected more of the same low-priced loot. Grievance: there is way too much walking around and pointless combat inbetween significant story events, even without backtracking. If the field sections of the game, and the corresponding level requirements, had been cut in half, I think the experience would benefit greatly.

Also, I don't have nearly enough money to buy all the weapons and armor and spells I'd like to have. I'd probably be better-off financially if I was doing any of the Hunting side-quests, but those are so far out of the way I'm not even seriously considering it.

I like that FF12 brings some new (to console RPG) ideas to the table, but the cracks in Square Enix's old-school design chops are beginning to show. I don't know if I'll make it all the way through this one.

Progress: The Tomb of Raithwall

Now I'm losing track of time as I play. Damn.

Progress: The Tomb of Raithwall

FF12 is finally managing to get more than my passing attention. After eventually extricating myself from aforementioned tunnels*, I was able to purchase new gambit settings, making the combat bearable; re-equip my characters, making the RPG part of this game seem real; and begin to understand the game's plot, which is, well, nice. I'm not quite prepared to forgive those first several hours of unnecessarily aimless gameplay, though.

In those early hours, I found myself playing FF12 not unlike a real-time strategy game with a pause button - setting all my party members, even my party leader, to use gambits for keeping up a level of automated offense. I'd jump in when necessary to use items or do preventative healing, or for other forms of course-correction, but most of the micro-management took care of itself, quite happily. As of my last encounters though, that approach is looking less viable: I fought a flood of enemies that was difficult to get away from, and a boss that was tough to keep up with even through constant intervention. Originally I thought I was wussing out by setting the game to pause in menus, but now I don't think I'd be able to survive, otherwise.

As for the story, it's beginning to approach comprehensible, although I'm not holding out hope that this'll last the rest of the game. I assume it'll follow the standard Square-Enix Path to Bullshit: series of seemingly random events -> a party brought together to unseat the evil empire (I'm here) -> deeper mysteries uncovered -> something about gods and magic -> fucking bullshit.

• In a mark of particularly evil genius, some asshole decided to make the next dungeon in a mine on a floating island. Yes, an above-ground tunnel. Dick!

Progress: Bhujerba

I'd forgotten to mention Conan's weapon-changing system, and there's a reason for that - it's very forgettable. Defeated enemies drop their weapons, which Conan can then pick up and use, in four different combinations: a one-handed weapon, this plus a shield, two one-handers, or a two-handed weapon. Each configuration has its own advantages and disadvantages (power and reach vs. defense and speed), and its own set of combos. But different weapons within these parameters don't make any difference, as far as I can tell; and since you don't really get to choose what weapons are made available to you anyway, it's pretty much a moot point.

As with most beat-em-ups, Conan is least fun when you're surrounded and stunlocked, dying while unable to counterattack or even evade. This comes to a head in the final boss battle, which is the most upset I've been with a video game since Prototype's giant cancerous penis boss. Fortunately, Conan's final boss has some mid-battle checkpoints thrown in, which just about makes up for its unnecessary quick-time events.

Other than this infuriating encounter, Conan is a thoroughly mediocre 6-7 hour experience. It's a triumph for Ron Perlman's voice acting, and possibly a worthwhile piece of merch for a die-hard Conan fan, but has too many minor flaws (and not enough core competency) to be a good game.

Better than: Golden Axe: Beast Rider
Not as good as: God of War
Unique selling point: Rescuing topless maidens, who ask you to "Crush me with your love!" (Unfortunately, there is no "Crush w/ Love" move.)

Progress: Finished on Normal