I've been reading interesting stuff, and watching cool footage, for Lock's Quest since a while back: a two-phase action/strategy game where you first build defenses, and then take part in the battle. Following 5th Cell's Drawn to Life, I was understandably apprehensive toward Lock's Quest; but after trying the downloadable Nintendo Channel demo - despite the intro battle dragging on long enough that I didn't even finish it - I'm pretty much sold. The art is still meh, the sounds are still dull, and the story is still boring, but this time, the gameplay is genuinely intriguing.

EDIT, years later - it's hard for me to get excited about tower defense, anymore. And I have no confidence in this game's non-gameplay elements. No longer anticipating.

Progress: Gave Up -- Played first four days of the demo

Toward the end, the last dozen or so puzzles did get pretty challenging. But when Gemsweeper gets difficult, it can also become pretty bothersome, for a few reasons:

• In complicated puzzles, it is easy to become lost within a particular row or column, as the interface does not have a good way of indicating which segment you're currently hovering on (Picross does)
• In large puzzles, the numbers at the side become so small that they are difficult to read, and the rows/columns so narrow that it is difficult to tell which one you are in (Picross has a zoom feature)
• Making a single mistake will nearly halve the possible score you can get from a puzzle, even though the score is mostly meaningless (Picross does not have scores!)

I don't want to harp on about how Gemsweeper and Picross compare, but my point is that the former lacks the kind of sophisticated interface polish that the latter benefits greatly from. Even when the last puzzles became sufficiently challenging, I had a hard time relaxing and becoming comfortable with the game's UI.

Previously, I wrote off the game's Bonus levels, which also make up the "Arcade" mode. These are not picture puzzles, but are actually an arcade interpretation of the nonogram concept; clearing a row or column brings another in from outside the screen, and the game continues for some time or until a goal score is met. Early in the game this mode felt trivial and irrelevant - but later, when the arcade grid grew (up to a maximum size of 10x10), the concept actually began to shine. It bridges the gap between the challenge of a large puzzle and the rapid pace of a smaller one. It's no Tetris Attack, but it is certainly an interesting idea, and could probably benefit from some sort of multiplayer mode.

Progress: Complete

I still really like the concept of Hitman. Stealth assassination - sneaking around and cleverly dispatching your foes, using AI and the environment to your advantage - is one of the holy grails of gaming, and Silent Assassin makes an admirable effort. But it just doesn't come together right.

Though there is always more than one route to taking out your target, each route tends to be extremely exacting in its requirements: doing just the right thing, in just the right place, at just the right time. It's not luck, because doing it correctly is 100% repeatable if you know how, but you're liable to die a handful of times in the course of learning the specific movements you have to carry out. This doesn't just make the game tedious and frustrating, but also ruins the immersion factor, which is a shame given the loftiness of Hitman's ambience. Granted, you can turn the game's difficulty down enough to fudge your way through almost any mistake with pure firepower, but this has the same duet of problems - the gameplay becomes tired and boring, and being practically invincible destroys any chance of becoming engaged in the game world.

From what I've seen of the follow-ups, Contracts and Blood Money, not much changes as the series marches forward, which is kind of disappointing; I guess there are series fans who prefer the reiteration, but I think it's a shame the gameplay never evolved into something more.

Progress: Gave Up -- Somewhere in St. Petersburg

I feel like something's wrong with me. I am a nerd, for fuck's sake, I write embedded firmware for my video game money. And yet, when I try KOTOR, it just turns me off. It's just like what happened when I tried Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game. I can stand character customization - I can take deep, involved stories and settings - but when a game's action is slow, even if it works on a deep foundation, I simply can't get into it. Hell, even Mass Effect, which is more shooter than RPG, couldn't keep my interest for long. Am I broken? Or are these games really boring as hell?

Progress: Gave Up

Uwe Boll's first video game! Check this shit out. I. Can't. WAIT.

My, how time flies. Back in ... middle? school I would frequently visit my friend who had and played this game, and be amazed by Tesla coils, and nuke tanks, and time machines and so forth. Time was, Red Alert kicked shit. ... in retrospect, strategy games have come a long way since 1996.

The installer barely worked, a testament to Windows XP's ability to work just like Windows 95. The cinematics were, well, not quite as impressive as Red Alert 3's. In the first campaign mission I barely knew what was going in, though it was all over in three minutes, and in the second mission I wandered around for nearly half an hour until all the Reds on the map were dead. Then I tried a skirmish, which was uneventful for quite a while, and just as I was nearing the apex of my tech tree the game crashed. The automated un-installer was of course a joke, not even giving me an error message.

Red Alert did succeed in reminding me how boring the original Command & Conquer was. For all the nifty units, it didn't really change the core mechanics of the game much; and I'm thinking Red Alert 3, though tempting me with amphibious warships, giant Japanese robots and fucking bears, will similarly leave me unexcited in the warm tepidness of battle.

Progress: Gave Up

I've always wanted to play a game about being completely evil. Not a game where you can unlock the evil guys, or choose "good" or "evil" paths; not a game where you're accidentally evil, or a game where you do evil things that are actually good; not a game where you're evil and lazy, or just emo. A game where you revel in evildoing. A game that not only allows evil, but rewards it. In Overlord, you start out evil, and your goal is to become more evil.

You control demon imps, ordering them to do your bidding - which makes the game resemble Pikmin in a startling number of ways, e.g. the imps picking up and carrying objects, or assaulting an obstacle or enemy. You even have different colors of imp, corresponding to unique talents, though these aren't in the demo. Just imagine that Captain Olimar is fucking evil, your spaceship is actually an evil tower, and the bug-monsters are short, fat people. Halflings were the enemy du jour in the demo, and though I had the option of slaughtering human bystanders, I didn't - on the advice of my imp advisor. Can you imagine this dilemma? If I kill them, I become more evil, but then I have less people to be evil to.

This game is just absolutely brilliant. I inadvertently helped out the villagers a number of times, usually by destroying their homes and/or crops (and sometimes they ended up dying anyway). As a result, they both love and fear me. My imps are selfless little balls of hate that are all but too happy to go when I give them a suicidal order. The writing and voice acting are hilarious, swimming in the game's sense of evilness. While the gameplay isn't especially new, the evil-styled packaging is just awesome. I'll definitely be picking this up when I have the time for it.

Progress: Finished demo

Easy to jump into, and surprisingly fun for a game that is definitely not "for me." I actually wouldn't be surprised if I try this again when I'm bored sometime.

Progress: Gave Up

Ultra-weird - Namco's putting out two versions of Tales of Hearts, with identical gameplay and everything, just that one has cutscenes in 3D-rendered CGI and the other in a Production IG-drawn anime style. I'm not really sure which one looks better, but it's strange at any rate.

It's pretty much the same game as before. There are still four instruments, there is still a world tour, there is still a character customization closet. The instrument hardware is better (which was a long time coming), and certain annoyances with the game, like characters being locked to gamer profiles (which should have just been patched in the first game), have been attended to. There are some new features, but I barely know what they are - an online battle of the bands mode? More competitive play options maybe? Something like that.

What really makes Rock Band 2 worth it is the new song catalog. Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, Presidents of the United States of America, even Beck and Modest Mouse - this is really cool stuff to play. To be sure, there are some stinkers (who let Linkin Park in here?), but the game's music collection is still a bargain for the price of the disc. If you didn't like Rock Band this probably won't change your mind, but if you did, this one - really more of an expansion pack - is a no-brainer.

Progress: Gave Up