The difficulty keeps ramping up. I've lost a few times, now. The final ten levels are back in the sun, but on your roof, and you need to place special planters to amass your plant army. Meanwhile the curvature of the roof also demands that you use new, catapult-style lobbing plants, and new foes include zombies with pogo sticks, and bungee zombies that fly down from the sky and fuck up your shit.

At the same time, new mini-games and "puzzles" (which aren't very puzzling, but are still fun) are slowly unlocking. I try them out of necessity, as I need more money to buy upgrade items - or so I think, as most of them turn out to be useless - but each one has a fun charm all its own. One puzzle scenario has me playing as the zombies, and trying to get to the brains on the other side. Awesome.

I'd be surprised if the final few levels frustrate me too much, which is cool. I almost finished this last one, but I made some bad design decisions that ended up kicking my ass later on. While there's definitely an element of luck in Plants vs. Zombies, in where zombies come from and what types show up when, in general it isn't enough to overpower the game's real strategy- and sometimes reaction-based challenge.

Progress: Level 5-7

There are parts of this game that I like, and it would be great if I could have more of them. But there are just too many problems that make Exit DS a huge pain in my ass.

The pathfinding is retarded - some situations work fine, others don't. If I tell Mr. Esc to drop from a certain height to the floor on the next square, he'll do it. But if I tell him to go to the square next to that, which is on the same level, he can't figure it out. Or if he's on the square next to the edge of the height, he won't be able to figure that out, either. As I've mentioned repeatedly, stairs are a nightmare.

Position is an incredibly irritating problem. The game is grid-oriented, in that you control characters by telling them to go to a square on the map, and everything has squarish dimensions. But not all positions within a square are the same! and so if someone's standing too close to the edge of a square that's next to an elevator, or a fire, or a falling crate, it's a wash.

I've already talked about the problem of the game's plague of movement and strength statistics. Levels that operate only or mostly on basic, "normal" values are fine, but now I keep running into levels where blocks can't move the same because they're on ice - or there's a crippled survivor who has to be carried and can't be dropped more than one square at a time - or this damn kid can't fucking swim. There are too many exceptions to the game's rules.

The ironic thing is that for all the faux-realism that the game's complicated parameters fabricate, it still feels cheap and phony. Why can't a survivor move until Mr. Esc comes in contact with him? Why can't a dog fall as far as a human can? Why can pickaxes destroy pillars, but not doors? Why is there no way to pull a box? There's still a puzzle to be figured out behind all this crap, but I can't be bothered to care about it anymore.

Of course the gameplay problems are to say nothing of a glaring presentation issue: the sound effects. Exit's graphics are mostly fine (the style is actually pretty neat), and the music is alright, too. But until you rescue a survivor, he, she, or it will make the most annoying noise possible, constantly. And even afterward, you're likely to hear frequent "idle" gibbering from them or from Mr. Esc. The sound effects are grating, and I hadn't been able to play the game with volume since Situation 1.

Progress: Gave Up -- Stage 4-3

Zomboni. It's a zombie riding a zamboni. It paves a path of ice behind it, and when it's gone, a zombie bobsled team sleds down it.

The first set of ten levels is in daylight, and the second set is at night. The third has a pool, and you have new aquatic plants like kelp (and new aquatic zombies who sometimes ride zombie dolphins). The fourth set is the pool at night, so naturally there are aquatic mushrooms. Also there's fog that obscures your vision of the field.

Zombonis aren't the only impressive thing about this game's design - you're also frequently accosted by your neighbor, Crazy Dave, who gives you advice while mumbling and yelling a lot. Eventually he opens up a shop where you can buy more seed slots (so you can bring more plant types into a level), and other stuff like plant upgrades. You pick up money in levels, or you can earn some extra coin by doing bonus challenges. In one of them, the zombies shoot at you, which totally changed my plant placement strategy. In another, there's a slot machine that randomly rewards you with seeds or sun power, and you have to survive long enough to accumulate a certain amount of sun wealth.

At the 60% mark, the game's level of variety is still surprisingly impressive. And the zombies in some levels are really starting to make me sweat.

Progress: Level 4-1

There's a demo on Steam which allows you to play the game free for 60 minutes. It's one of the better things you can do with 60 minutes of your life.

Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game from PopCap. Yes, this rang alarm bells for me, too. Low-budget? Undoubtedly. Simple? Sort of.

It starts out slow; the first several levels really ease you into the gameplay. Ten minutes in, I felt a little bored, and started wondering what all the fuss was about. But in these first few stages, the game is disarmingly easy, and inoffensive enough that I simply preferred to keep playing over stopping.

Then the challenge kicked in. Ideal plant placement is initially not difficult to figure out, but it gets more complicated when you gain more plants, and have to choose which ones to bring into a level with you. New enemy types force you to rethink your strategy. And then it gets dark, and the sun-powered resource system is appended with magic mushrooms and shit.

The brilliance of Plants vs. Zombies is that, although it is a simple game at first, it doesn't stay that way. This is real, good, old-school game design - start basic and keep building. Almost every level introduces a brand new element, be it a new plant, a new zombie type, or a new playing method: some levels completely throw out the strategy and resource management for pure arcade-style action. The levels that don't, will instead tweak the game's vital variables like zombie count and swarm rate, so the experience always has a fresh element of challenge.

Which is not to say that the game, at least as far as my trial went, is ball-bustingly difficult. I never died, and rarely lost any plants. But even though I was always one step ahead of the zombies, they kept pace pretty well, and I have a feeling that later parts of the game (I got to level 14 of 50) will be less easily trampled.

Though the game supposedly retails for $20, it's $10 at this very moment on Steam. Andrew Jackson is a bit iffy about the game, but Hamilton is all over this bitch.

Progress: Level 2-4

I really like the puzzles in this game. They start out as simply chaining gears together, and within a few levels, I'd already put together gear assemblies on one face of a cube, and steam pipeworks on another side, in order to power a wheeled contraption. The design is ultra-cool.

But it's a slide puzzle. God damn it. Fuck slide puzzles.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played the Steam demo

It looks like a tactical RPG, and it even has many of the game mechanics of a tactical RPG - but as far as I can tell from the demo, Knights in the Nightmare plays more like a space shooter. Like The World Ends with You's ecclectic combination of design elements, it's an interesting hybridization that results in a really unique experience.

The game's tutorial sessions are available in the demo from the Nintendo Channel. You play Knights in the Nightmare not as one of said Knights, but as a wisp that controls Knights on the battlefield. The tutorial battlefields are rather small (the whole thing can fit on-screen at once), and I'm assuming that they don't get larger either, as you sometimes have to drag your stylus to and from UI elements on the edge of the screen. The field is organized into an isometric grid, with a Knight in one square, and enemies on other squares. There was no movement in the tutorial, and it seemed to imply that certain characters won't even be able to change the direction they're facing.

So what the hell do you do? Basically, you attack. Touch a Knight with the wisp (by moving it around with the stylus) to "activate" the Knight. Holding the stylus down will "charge" the Knight's attack, increasing his attack range. Letting go will execute the attack. What grid spaces the Knight can attack depends on the Knight, and on a sort of controllable weather system. Normal attacks don't deal much damage, but can release MP-replenishing crystals; you can also use items to attack - by dragging them from the sidebar UI onto your Knight - which stand a real chance of killing enemies.

Here's where it gets really interesting. Enemies don't attack the Knight. They attack you, the wisp. Enemies shoot projectile attacks that make the screen look like a bullet hell shooter game, and you must move your wisp around to dodge them. You must coordinate attacks at the same time. That is to say, you'll be moving your wisp to the necessary on-screen objects to attack, while simultaneously evading enemy fire. Getting hit reduces your time, but it's not a "time limit" in the traditional sense. Your available time is only used when you charge attacks and when you get hit, so you're still free to sit and observe the battlefield when necessary.

It's a really bizarre system, and I'm not entirely sure I understand it yet. I'm looking forward to finding out more about it.

Progress: Played the tutorial demo

I later went back (with the same partner) and tackled the game again in New Game+. Like RE4 before it, RE5 is chock full of replay: this, a Hard mode, Mercenaries, and in a cool twist, a scene/chapter select. Easy way to relive fun parts of the game, and a fun way to earn easy money for weapon upgrades. Oh, and a slew of unlockable weapons, of course.

A friend and I were discussing this the other day - other than the graphical fidelity (and maybe the online co-op?), there's really nothing in RE5 that can't be done on the Wii. If it was re-done in the RE4 Wii engine, like Chop Till You Drop, it could be a near-perfect facsimile. But with point-to-shoot! Wouldn't that be cool.

Progress: Finished normal in co-op

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