Initial impression: it's pretty alright.

Set in a Running Man-esque kill-or-be-killed game, and drenched in a monochromatic (plus blood) Sin City aesthetic, MadWorld has a lot of style to live up to - at this point, I'm not sure that I'd say it succeeds. Just in the introduction, the story is already showing signs of inappropriate melodrama; not that this kind of game needs a good story, or can be ruined by a bad one, but in MadWorld's case it would be a missed opportunity.

On the other hand, the non-plot-related writing is superb. The ongoing color commentators (Bender! and that one guy from Whose Line!) are brilliant. "BloodBath" challenge sequences are introduced by an irreverent pimp. Thus far, all of the non-player characters have hilarious dialog, and amazing voicework to boot. A suggestion, though - go to the game options, and turn down all the volume settings except the commentary. Because the commentary is best enjoyed loud (and similarly, the music is best enjoyed quiet).

There are some real problems with MadWorld, notably the - obvious? - fact that the black-and-white design frequently makes enemies difficult to pick out from the background. I'm also pretty underwhelmed with the game's difficulty, but presumably things will pick up from where I am now.

Progress: Finished the first level

The mission I'm on right now - which is the same mission I was on last time - really highlights the problems this game has with stretching its humble engine.

The mission starts in San Fierro, the second big city in the game. From the mission start point, you have to drive all the way out to the countryside, down winding roads and around lakes and rivers, a good 5-10 minutes out of the city. Then you hop in a friend's car and need to drive to another area, just as far away (and even farther from civilization).

I haven't gotten to this second area yet, because:

• The mission is tied to your friend's car, and if it blows, the mission is failed
• In this game engine, cars explode when they're overturned
• The car in question is a lowrider, meaning that the right stick controls the suspension, not the camera (it's impossible to look around)
• The countryside I'm driving in is very hilly
• There is a "Trip Skip" option that I can use to skip the first driving sequence when I restart the mission - but I still have to go all the way back to San Fierro to try the mission again

What makes it all worse is that, other than flipping my car and blowing it up, there is nothing even remotely interesting happening out here in the boonies of San Andreas. It's a verdant wasteland. Someone at Rockstar must have really liked it, but I really don't, and I don't understand why I'm spending so much time driving around this godforsaken farmland.

Man, this is frustrating.

Progress: San Fierro

The game gets better as it goes on - which seems odd considering there's no story development or anything like that. No, it's getting better because there are less stairs. I've managed to get used to most of the game's ass-backwards controls, but... well, if this were an action game, the final boss would probably be a stairwell.

With that, I'm able to better appreciate the quality of the game's puzzles, which is, well, pretty alright. Some of them are real brain-benders, but unfortunately, many are made unnecessarily frustrating by the complexity of the game's movement parameters. How many grid blocks can Mr. Esc fall down before he breaks his legs? How much weight can you fit on an elevator before it stops working? How far can a dog jump - and why the hell can he jump across but not down? The exact values of these and other game variables are crucial to your success, as you'll need to stress their limits regularly, and getting it wrong frequently means killing a survivor or getting stuck in an un-winnable spot.

There is some fun here, and the format of having several dozen bite-sized stages is appealing for puzzling on the go. But the basic flaws in the game's mechanical design are a real bother.

Progress: Stage 3-8

Over the weekend (in two separate sessions) I played through Resident Evil 5 in local co-op, from beginning to end. Building on my great satisfaction with RE4 Wii, I still plan on picking up a copy of this for myself at some point, but I am now substantially less anxious to do so.

Most of the basic mechanics of RE5 are similar to RE4's - similar enough that it's difficult to find anything new to appreciate. The biggest changes of note are the inventory system (now everything takes up a single slot, although you are eternally limited to 9 slots), and, obviously, your partner. I've heard tell that the AI partner can perform rather poorly, but I've never played with it so I can't really say one way or the other on this.

So the mechanics are the same; but the content is pretty different. RE4 starts out slow, but methodical, and develops gradually from a suspenseful thriller into an engaging action game. RE5 rushes out of the gate pulling no punches, and is overall about half the length of its predecessor. Filled with schlocky dialog and Michael Bay-caliber explosions, this game feels much more Hollywood than RE4. And yes, much of it does come off as cheap and tacky.

In general though, it is a good game. This is despite a number of gameplay sequences that are of seriously questionable design - I speak in particular of two enemy encounters that present you with a powerful foe, but in fact expect you to survive for some measure of time, rather than actually attempt to fight. One is near the beginning of the game, when you have yet to really understand what it wants from you. One is near the end of the game, when you are quite certain that your fighting ability should meirt more than running and hiding. (Incidentally, the ending sequence is entirely too long, and words fail to describe how relieved my partner and I were when it was finally over.)

But as I said: in general, it is good. Not as good as RE4. Definitely not. While the addition of co-op makes for a fun multiplayer experience, it brings with it a certain shallowness - in item management, in cinematic quality, in the overall game length - that really detract from the single-player game. Though Resident Evil 4 brought the franchise tantamount to single-player adventure perfection, Resident Evil 5 has managed to stray somewhat farther from this position.

Progress: Finished normal in co-op

Overkill has more than a bit of charm in its grindhouse aesthetic and notorious profanity. Where other light-gun shooters are simply too stupid to take seriously, this one actually makes its ludicrous premise fun and entertaining. On the other hand, it is still just a light-gun shooter; don't let the home console setting fool you: it's just as long (which is to say, short) as an arcade House of the Dead. Other than the - fairly limited - weapon upgrading options, there really isn't much here at all. Fun in a party setting, but still doesn't seem worth the investment.

Progress: Finished normal in co-op

Eh - I've lost interest.

Progress: Gave Up

Progress: Gave Up -- Level 80

Holy fuck! They actually did it!

I made a motorcycle. And it only cost like 15,000 gold! Man, I am getting tired of this game again.

The new patch introduced another high-end raid, Ulduar, which has robots (!!) so I hope to visit it at some point. Other than that, the well has definitely run dry. Another new addition is an Argent arena where you can earn items and shit based on tokens, that you get from daily quests, so it literally will take X days to get Y reward. This is clearly Lich King's ultimate timesink, like the Nether drakes in Burning Crusade, and I really don't want anything to do with it.

Progress: Level 80

As the story proceeds out of the Los Santos area, the gang war system goes into hiding, giving way to more traditional run-around GTA missions. Problem is that this game world is huge, and missions have a depressing tendency to order you across the map and back again on a whim. If San Andreas were any other GTA, this would simply be annoying - but in SA, a lot of the ground you have to cover isn't cityscape, but fields and farmland. It's boring.

So this is why I've been making extremely slow progress in San Andreas. To a degree, I think this game may be too big for its own good. But given that I still haven't visited the game's Vegas-spoof city, I do intend to soldier on.

Progress: San Fierro