Four hours later, the credits roll. So I'd estimate about 6-10 depending on how fast you swing, and how much you care about the hidden collectibles (hint: you don't, unless you are desperate for gamerscore). Not bad, for what is now a budget game - but the pacing is, unsurprisingly, all wrong. The game's story goes from zero to 60 in the last hour, and you'll swear it's about to end twice (and be wrong both times) before it actually does.

Also, the ending shows a hidden message in morse code. What the fuck? Translated, per the Interweb, it not-so-subtly implies that Grin was planning on a sequel before they went under.

Notwithstanding the shoddy story, and some of the worst dialog this side of an Uwe Boll movie, the gameplay can also be somewhat uneven. I've mentioned the deadly water and magic radiation clouds already, which become less common as the game proceeds, but still pop up every now and then. Similarly, I didn't have a problem with the game's checkpoints most of the time, but I did encounter a couple more instances in which I was forced to repeat myself, due to them being way too far apart.

But when the game isn't killing you inexplicably, or assaulting you with its ridiculous excuse for a plot, it can actually be quite fun. Combat against tougher enemies gets rather hectic; throwing things around with the bionic arm is a blast; and at its best, the arm-swinging makes Bionic Commando feel like Prince of Persia with a grappling hook. Awesome.

Somehow I haven't yet mentioned the game's music, which is great. I'm not a big fan of the slow piano theme at the title screen, but the rest of the soundtrack is tense, high-energy stuff that really enhances the fuck-shit-up feeling of combat and arm-swinging. And the graphics are mostly great, but fall short in a few areas (characters can look dumb close-up, explosions look like a quick photoshop job).

All in all, Bionic Commando does its main job well, and is pretty good for what it is. But it has enough gameplay quirks to keep it from being an all-around good game, and the story makes me wish they just hadn't bothered writing one at all.

Progress: Finished on Normal

Here's a sampling of the protagonist's catchphrases.

• "Chew on that!"
• "Hole in one!"
• "I'll send ya' the bill later!"

Each of these phrases - and more, including a wolf howl - can be triggered when you kill someone, regardless of how they were killed. (The last one is my favorite.)

So there have been two main developments in my last three hours of playing Bionic Commando:

• The story has become more retarded. There was a cutscene somewhere in the 30-40% range, where ... you know, I don't feel like I can appropriately describe it. The game's writing is just fucking awful.
• The gameplay has become more challenging, and hence, generally, more fun. It was one thing when I was just blithely swinging around and zip-lining into guys; but now that enemies are putting up more of a fight (killer robots!!), and I'm getting more moves, the game is actually starting to make a case for itself.

The exception to this last point is that some of the new difficulty I'm encountering is, well, stupid. Nathan will die if he stays underwater or in radiation clouds for more than a few seconds - so if you fall in head-deep water, and there isn't a grapple point nearby, you're toast. Meanwhile, the radiation clouds are damn near invisible sometimes, especially when they're above you, because they're the same color as the sky.

Of course, unexpected deaths are made more bothersome by the sometimes infuriating placement (or lack thereof) of checkpoints. There was one 10-15 minute segment I had to near-fully replay three times over.

At this point though, I'm comfortable saying that the pure fun of being a bionic commando is making up for the game's other shortcomings. Not that it's great, but, at least something more than mediocre.

Progress: 52%

After wrapping up Raising Hell, I had a little time to kill before turning in for the night. So I put an hour, maybe hour-and-a-half into Bionic Commando. Saved and quit to main menu, and now the game is telling me that I'm 26% done, already. Eesh.

The intro cinematic is pretty good, up until it gets to the game's characters. And there's a wealth of dossier information in the pause menu about those characters, and settings and gadgets - but English was clearly not the copy editor's first language. A tutorial early in the game shows you how to do moves that you won't unlock until later on (I still don't have most of them!).

The real fun of the game is in swinging around, and man, it is actually fun. After a few awkward minutes of learning the controls (HOLD the L trigger!), you'll be able to swing your bionic commando around the ruins of Ascension City with ease. Combat can even be fairly entertaining, as you can jump into dudes and then shoot them as you fly away.

But there are a lot of little problems - poorly placed environmental hazards, a stupid ammo system, absolutely retarded voiced catchphrases - that bring the experience down to earth. And between the copious-but-irrelevant background info, the humongous cityscape that you don't see most of, and the checkpoint-to-checkpoint story, it's evident that most of what Grin wanted to accomplish with Bionic Commando was left on the cutting room floor.

Kudos to them for nailing the swinging mechanic, but it is a lonely victory in an otherwise shallow game. At least so far.

Progress: 26%

Not to sound wishy-washy about the Raising Hell expansion - because I definitely am - but the last level brought my opinion of it back down to "meh." More confusing level design and arbitrary puzzles, culminating with a boss fight that is basically impossible until you discover what you're actually supposed to be doing (or, look it up in a guide).

As I've said before, the humor is great; plus, the final scene of the expansion sets the stage for Overlord II's diminutive overlord. So if you're in love with the Overlord mythos, Raising Hell is a good way to spend a few hours. But it doesn't offer anything of substance that you can't already find in the main game.

Progress: Complete

The Heaven's Peak Abyss - in which William the Paladin, who succumbed to Lust in the original game, was made to do housework for a gaggle of conniving housewives - was a return to confusing and disjointed level design. But it was brief, at least, and pretty funny.

In the Golden Abyss, the dwarf king Goldo - who in the original game was overcome with Greed - had turned into a golden statue. The gameplay device was to collect gold sacks from around the level, to lure dwarves to Goldo, who was then slowly mined and picked down to nothing. As with the Evernight Abyss theater stage, I thought this level worked well because of its centerpiece area; though some of the adjacent paths got a little confusing, the level was generally straightforward.

With one Abyss left to go, I'm no longer disappointed in my Raising Hell purchase, although I still feel that it doesn't offer much more than the core Overlord game; just more of it.

Progress: Conquered Golden Abyss

Not only was the Evernight Abyss more fun than the Mellow Hills Abyss, it also takes the cake for my favorite Overlord level so far. I know exactly why, too (and it's not just because the wimpy elves are the butt of all the game's jokes).

In the Mellow Hills Abyss, Overlord's first boss - Melvin, the glutton - was doomed to repeatedly gorge himself to the point of explosion. In the Evernight Abyss, Oberon, the sloth, was doomed to watching and re-watching a theater re-enactment of the elves being slaughtered, as a result of his inaction.

Anyway, the reason this level is a winner is because it's so highly structured. The goal is to work your way to the back of the stage, defeating enemies and solving puzzles to proceed. And since the center of the level is the stage itself, it's always a cinch to find your bearings and figure out roughly where you need to go next.

There were still some unnecessary ambiguities in proceeding through the level, but in general it's a great structure because it's so intuitive. Most of the levels in the main game, as well as the first Abyss, quickly got disorienting and labyrinthine because of winding paths and corridors, and the lack of a map. In the Evernight Abyss, I never had to ask myself where the fuck I was and where I needed to go; just how to get there, which is what the actual gameplay is about.

Hopefully, the remaining three Abysses can live up to this excellent level design.

Progress: Conquered Evernight Abyss

I really liked Final Fantasy VII, and VI after the fact. I even went back to V and IV to give those a whirl. But I saw other people play enough of Final Fantasy VIII, IX, X and XI - and it wasn't much, in each case - to have absolutely no interest in playing them. So XII is my first attempt to jump back into numbered Final Fantasies. Thus far, I feel like I haven't missed much.

I still remember the previews from before FFXII came out, and it painted a pretty bleak picture for me: basically, an MMORPG without the online component. Combat looked and sounded incredibly dull. The environments didn't appear very compelling. And the setting, well, standard RPG shit.

But I had a college roommate who was all about Final Fantasy, and when I watched him play FF12, I actually started to get interested in it. Visually imaginative, bizarre moves? Check. Action-rich pacing with little downtime bullshit? Check. A thorough eviction of the random encounter? Check. Straightforward but deep character configuration? Check. So when the game hit $20, I stored it away in my backlog, and waited until I'd have the free time to set up gambits of my own.

The other weekend I finally decided to jump in. And, well, I haven't played it again since. For all the sophistication of the game, and the thought put into the combat system, actually playing it hasn't lit my fire yet. It may look like there's a lot going on on-screen, but actually controlling a battle feels very Ron Popeil. I pick an enemy to attack, and wait for it to die. I almost fell asleep - not even kidding - on my way to a mission objective.

I'm only about two hours into the game, so there's plenty of time for it to warm up on me. So far, though, it's really failing to draw me in.

Progress: Garamsythe Waterway

Mother Brain was a bitch and a half. It's one of Zero Mission's few reminders of how masochistic NES games could be. The update does a great job, though, of showing how the basic Metroid design philosophy hasn't changed all that much in the past 30 years - add a map and a loose narrative, and it becomes thematically and mechanically indistinguishable from Samus's newer outings.

The biggest addition in Zero Mission is actually after Mother Brain. There's an entirely new level, in which Samus crash-lands on Chozodia and needs to infiltrate a Space Pirate mothership to get back into space. The twist here is that she starts out without her power suit - at first, you play the level as a stealth game, avoiding and running from enemies. Then, after regaining her suit and getting a couple new upgrades, Samus escapes yet another self-destruct sequence to roll the ending credits.

This last level is interesting, although it does clash dramatically with everything in the rest of the game; if you didn't know that Zero Mission was a remake and that this level was new, you'd still be pretty sure that the pre- and post-Mother Brain games were made by two different teams. And in general I wasn't really wild about the sneaking around, nor about the action-driven portion of Chozodia after Samus gets her suit back (in stark contrast to the slower-paced exploration typical of Metroid). But, it was fun for what it was.

Zero Mission is the first time I'm not really feeling like going back to collect all the items. It's a good game, to be sure, but the world just isn't as compelling as that of newer games, and I don't really feel like going back to it. I'm satisfied with 65%.

Progress: Finished with 65% items

Style, Wet has. But the gameplay never evolves beyond what you see in the demo; it just gets more frustrating. The bullet-time mechanic wears out its welcome pretty quickly, extra weapons never have enough ammo to keep things interesting, and new abilities are scant. Not to mention, when it comes time to spend upgrade points, you'll always have to make a choice between getting those new abilities, or keeping up with the difficulty curve instead, by getting more health and higher damage.

It's not exactly long, but Wet is too long, for what it is. The last several levels just drag on. And maybe the terrible final boss and ending is a surprise complement to the grindhouse theme, but it comes across as a sloppy, rushed conclusion.

Play the demo - it's fun, and it shows that the concept has legs. Unfortunately the full game never goes anywhere interesting with it.

I gotta give props to the music, though, which fits the theme of the game perfectly.

Progress: Finished on Hired Gun (normal)

The buddy I was playing this with has been caught up in schoolwork since September, so opportunities to trade controllers with him have basically disappeared. Ah well, fun while it lasted.

All three of these games are still awesome.

Progress: Gave Up -- Prime: Gravity Suit - Echoes: Dark Suit