Yeah, so it's pretty much Pikmin, but evil. I'd appreciate a map, a more useful fast-travel system, and less ADD-prone minions - but I'm already in love with this game. The gameplay is pretty solid, and the theme is just fantastic.

I am actually checking a guide to make sure I don't miss opportunities to be evil. How awesome is that? Man.

Progress: Found the Red Minions

Prototype is dull to start, shines brightly in the middle, then fades into needless frustration toward the end. There is some real fun here, like hijacking helicopters with a biological grappling hook (awesome), but it's seriously clouded by a generally boring overworld, terrible story, and questionable tuning in boss encounters.

I think the heart of the problem is, specifically, that you are a mutated super-man. Individual enemies pose no threat to you unless they're also hideously overpowered, or come in enormous numbers. And some design mis-steps in the way of uninterruptible attacks, and an indescribably bad targeting system, keep the playing field from ever really feeling even. When I wasn't slaughtering enemies without a second thought, I was being pounded by a downpour of bullets and rockets.

If you're really thirsting for open-world mayhem, Prototype has a sizeable amount of that, but having barely scratched the surface of side-missions and the Web of Intrigue I found them completely un-compelling. I would much rather hijack cars and drive them off bridges.

Progress: Finished Story on Normal

When Prototype gets hard, it gets absurdly difficult. I just spent two excruciating hours fighting one boss. I haven't yelled this loudly at a game in years.

The boss had three large (building-sized) tentacle-ish components coming out of the ground. Each of these had a small health meter, and when all three of them took enough damage, the main part of the boss would become vulnerable. Then after a short time the tentacles would recharge and shoot up again, and I'd have to repeat the weakening process.

A solid- and proven-enough mechanism, but:

• It shot a near-endless stream of green orbs that homed in on me, knocking me back on impact (making any kind of approach difficult)
• It also had a rock-spewing attack where a stream of debris would rape my health bar and push me back into last Tuesday (making a direct, ground approach completely impossible)
• It also had a shockwave attack that would push me forever away from it, and deal about half my health bar in damage (making it also impossible to stick around on top of it)
• And a host of other random attacks, like movement, would push me away from it even more
• Also, it continually spawned enemies that would attack me if I was on it, and hunt me if I ran (these enemies were a huge pain in the ass too, especially when I was already at low health)

I'm not above looking online for help, in the form of GameFAQs and YouTube game videos. Unfortunately, all of these were unhelpful, because they relied on upgrades I didn't have. I blew all my experience points on health regen upgrades instead - which sounds smart, right? but turned out to be borderline useless; the bar only regenerates up to about 40% of my max health!

I would happily have gone back to the overworld and farmed experience points to get more upgrades, but the game's autosave had put me right at the boss fight, and there was no way to exit the mission. Yes - I was trapped in the boss fight.

The game itself often advised me to use the military for help, e.g. steal tanks and helicopters. However, they didn't appear until I'd already taken off a third of the boss's health by myself. So until then I had to employ hit and run tactics, taking off little (or none) of the boss's HP at a time, and frequently retrying when I got caught by:

• A fucking dead-on rock spew as I ran away after one of the shockwave attacks
• The spawning monsters ganging up on me (they can interrupt my attacks, but I can't interrupt theirs!)
• Trying to climb a building, but getting stuck in an awning as shit continued to be thrown at me
• Accidentally leaving the mission area! A helicopter I was hijacking flew out of the mission range before I had any control over it, forcing me to retry

I don't feel proud or accomplished for having finished this boss fight. I feel pissed. There's no fucking reason why this part of the game should be a million times more difficult than anything that came before it. And if I'd gotten some better advice from the game on where to spend my upgrade points - or better yet, if the abilities I needed weren't so retardedly expensive - I would have been able to finish the fight in a tenth of the time.

That's the thing about Prototype; for all the stuff you can do in the game, all the upgrades you can get and tactics you can take on a mission, most of them are wrong. Every mission still has one or two golden paths. And they aren't always obvious, or even possible, depending on how you play the game.

I can only take solace in the fact that there aren't many missions left, and I would be incredibly surprised if anything else approached this ridiculous level of difficulty.

Progress: Shock and Awe

I've been slow to come back to Prototype, simply because what I'd observed of the game, though fun at times, wasn't terribly compelling. I'm glad I returned to it though, because - now that I'm halfway through the game - it's starting to make sense.

What makes Prototype worth something are its powers and upgrades. The thing is, there are a fuckton of upgrades, including stuff like running faster, jumping higher, and being able to body-surf on people. So it's easy to not even notice the potential effectiveness of upgrades for defensive capabilities, and different weapon forms (e.g. the shit that your arms turn into).

One mission I did earlier took about an hour of retrying, because there were so many fucking tanks and helicopters and rocket launchers firing on me all at once. It probably would have been easier if I'd had Hammerfist, which would allow me to punch tanks until they explode, or the Shield, which is, well, a shield.

Then again, this particular mission didn't allow me to use my powers. So nevermind - it was destined to be a clusterfuck anyway.

That's the rub about Prototype: there are some real fun things to do in here, but questionable design choices surround them. Why is there a whole swath of the game that locks out my powers? Why shouldn't I be able to hijack vehicles earlier? New upgrades become available as you progress through missions - why not sooner, so I can actually do the missions? Why are the side-missions so unrewarding and boring? And why is a boss, a guy in fatigues with a cattle prod and an RPG, so much tougher to kill than giant, mutated flesh monsters?

Nevertheless, I'm now looking forward to becoming more powerful in the game, which is something I wouldn't have said yesterday. I'm hooked - well, somewhat hooked, anyway.

I just wish the writing was a little better. The dialog in these cutscenes is downright insulting. What absolutely horrid storytelling.

Progress: First and Last Things

Stranglehold had a cool mechanic going - bullet-time jumps and dives - but there wasn't much else to the game. Wet feels like a real fleshing-out of this idea, complete with a sword, berserker mode, quick-time events, and a fantastic grindhouse-styled setting. It isn't especially deep, but it oozes style.

Also, the soundtrack is incredible.

Progress: Played the demo

Despite its gee-whiz graphics and 3D stylings, Shadow Complex feels very much like a Super NES game. And so its flaws - the questionable item pacing, the occasional glitches in aiming and movement, a few poor camera choices - are forgivable. Shadow Complex is a tightly-crafted Super Metroid clone, and I'm looking forward to how Chair builds on the formula (...assuming they do) in the inevitable follow-up.

Progress: 100% on Normal

A title update borked my save file (it kept my level, but my progress was gone!) - so I got to play the first few hours of the game all over again. The second time through, it was actually more fun. By virtue of its easy-to-understand mechanics, Shadow Complex revels in its details, as each new item and new passageway is a joy to find.

Despite not being especially new, Shadow Complex has really grown on me. Its occasional flaws (aiming, camera, pacing, saving) are no match for some good-old-fashioned game design.

Progress: 68% map, 44% items, Level 17

When I saw the case-tin that the Prime Trilogy comes in, I had to possess it. MPT's offering is straightforward - the trilogy of Metroid Prime titles, all redone in the Wii stylings of Prime 3 - and if you've missed any of them, this is one of the easiest purchasing decisions you'll make in your life. Having already enjoyed the hell out of all three games, I wasn't sure I'd ever bother opening the case; but now I'm glad to have an excuse for replaying some of the Gamecube's finest.

Actually, myself and some buddies have been playing through the first two games together, taking turns. Since we've all played them before, this allows us to each get our Metroid Prime fix without plodding through familiar ground for hours on end. As it turns out, these games are pretty cinematic, too, so watching is fun as well. (One of them hasn't played Prime 3 yet, which I'm really looking forward to watching again.)

Progress: Prime: Gravity Suit - Echoes: Dark Suit

When Trine works, it works great. Alone, it's a cerebral puzzle game in a fantastically physics-driven world. With friends, it's a madcap adventure, plus puzzle and action elements. It's also short enough to finish in a long evening, or two short ones.

When Trine doesn't work, though, it really frustrates. The engine works well for the most part, but occasionally inconsistent behavior and outright glitches can mar the experience - and they seemed to come up most often in the game's final levels, as puzzles became more precise and demanding, and death more likely.

Aside from the setup issues I've already noted, the problem with co-op is that the game wasn't really designed for it, at least not in full. It's great fun, to be sure, but some puzzles are made trivial by the fact that you have each character active simultaneously. And, some others are made more difficult, as they assume you only need to clear an obstacle with a single character.

This latter flaw comes to a head in the game's more difficult settings, especially in the final level. Trine's interpretation of "friendly fire" - characters getting in each others' way and, more frequently, the Wizard's conjured objects getting in the way - became a topic of much consternation among our band of heroes. I move a spike ball out of my way, and it accidentally falls onto the Thief. Whoops! Now the Warrior is slashing my platform, destroying it, and I fall down the tower. Normally this is fun, but the presence of lava (and hence, death) in the last few levels makes it eh, not so much.

There are some definite rough spots in Trine, but it's nevertheless a commendable game. Unfortunately, having gone through the whole affair in co-op, it's now ruined for me in single player - the mechanics are still fun, but, having already figured out and navigated the game's levels, a second go-around just isn't the same. (Also, some of these collectibles are super-hard to find. Where's my map?)

Progress: Finished in co-op, dabbled solo

Blizzard is finally doing what I've wanted since 2005 - expanding on the loose ends left over in WoW classic's original zones - and I'm really excited to see stuff like Gilneas, Uldum, Grim Batol, and Goblins at work. Hopefully, I'll still be excited whenever this actually comes out.