This came with my Orange Box for ... some ... reason. The backgrounds and some flavor graphics and sound bits have been taken from Valve's closet, but the gameplay is - as far as I understand - the same as traditional "Peggle," whatever the hell that is. It's a PopCap game, and you should pretty much know what to expect from it.

Progress: Gave Up -- Got to level ... 5? Who cares

Even as far as golf games go, this is awful. Really I just wanted to upload the box art.

Progress: Gave Up

My anticipation for Force Unleashed still simmers, although now some condensation of doubt is beginning to trickle down my over-extended metaphor. Recent videos have shown quite a bit of the game's combat, and though there are definitely some very cool parts of it, I am struck by two distinct negatives as well - namely, the hordes of brainless enemies, and the lack of gore or dismemberment.

I, along with I'm sure countless other nerds who grew up with Star Wars, have always wanted a Star Wars game that both pushed traditional gameplay formulas (rather than rehashing an existing template "in space") and allowed me to be a total badass with a lightsaber. With its heavy promotion and dark motif, I was kind of hoping Force Unleashed would be that game; but now I'm not so sure. Of course this doesn't mean it won't be fun. Really I just want to lop off Stormtroopers' arms. Is that such a bad thing?

I'm sure you already know about the revolutionary and immersive storytelling/presentation of BioShock, as they have been reported and essayed upon since well before the game's release last year. You may also be familiar with the engaging guns-and-plasmids combat system that unites common shooter mechanics with higher-order ammo and weapon strategy. Hell, there's even a good chance you know all about the fairly deep genetic customization system, and the neat hacking puzzles.

What you may not know is that I have only recently started to play the game myself, and am suitably impressed by all of the aforementioned features, though somewhat intimidated at the moment by an imposing Big Daddy. Well I guess you know about that now, too.

Progress: Neptune's Bounty

Yeah, the main game tends to be fairly easy. There are a handful of head-scratchers, mostly in the final level, but the story mode functions primarily as a showcase and testbed for the super-cool portal technology (and great writing). As a concept, it's neat and fun to play around with for a while, which is why it's cool that the game's short.

It's also cool that there are bonus rooms, because they really stretch the difficulty of the game. Maybe too much, in fact. I did three of the advanced maps and have been met with significant frustration in the others - and the challenge maps (completing a level in a minimal number of portals, or number of steps, or amount of time) present a gargantuan challenge that I am not quite ready to embark upon. I'll probably come back to these sometime when I'm bored, because the completion of this package is pretty enticing. Just the same, for the moment I'm satisfied as-is.

Progress: Beat the story, haven't done too many bonus rooms

I've had the chance to play this at a friend's place a few times, and I came away a lot more impressed than I thought I'd be. Castle Crashers is a modern Golden Axe with Flash-game-esque humor and direction. It isn't a perfect production, and inherits some shortcomings from its genre, but is nevertheless extremely fun in the right circumstances.

Superficially, Castle Crashers is a multiplayer beat-em-up. You and up to three other players suit up from a bevy of selectable characters (there are only four at first, but playing through the main story unlocks more to choose from) and set out on a quest to save the King's magic crystal, and his daughters, from evil demon alien shit. Along the way you'll travel through ravaged battlefields, grassy plains, barren deserts, a volcano, and even a space ship, among other locales. The game's campaign is split up into discrete levels, such that your progress is saved incrementally and you can pick it back up anytime. There are occasional moments where I would really, really have preferred an extra checkpoint to avoid repeating ten minutes of enemy bashing, but these are fairly infrequent. There are also a few places where the path branches, although this is exclusively for the purpose of seeing that Path A is locked and finding the key at the end of Path B. Anyway, the ability to save is a much-appreciated improvement over traditional beat-em-ups.

Another thing that sets Castle Crashers apart from its ancient brethren is the RPG experience. The engine driving the game is experience- and ability-gaining, with a healthy dose of collectible and consumable items (weapons, helper pets, health potions etc.) thrown in as well. Attacking foes - be it with a weapon, a magic spell, or a bow and arrow - nets your dude experience points, and at every level you'll earn skill points to invest in Strength, Magic, Defense, or Agility. Where Strength and Defense will only increase your physical damage and health, respectively, Magic will increase your MP regeneration rate and give you new magic attacks; and Agility will increase the range, speed and damage of arrows, in addition to your normal running speed. You'll also learn new combo attacks at certain levels, if you're into that sort of thing.

Enhancing this robust customization is the fact that each character has a unique talent (although some unlockable characters copy magic spells from other unlockable characters, there are still a bunch to choose from). Red Soldier, for instance, has a sick lightning spell that can unload on foes continuously. Green Soldier can poison guys, and Yellow Soldier can light them on fire. Blue Soldier can freeze them! Each of these magic spells, and their companion moves which come with more Magic points, encourage a particular character type toward certain skill allocations. But, since each character can only be selected once in a single game session, there is no risk of overlap in a given game.

Local multiplayer is incredibly fun, and there is also an online multiplayer option (though I haven't tried it myself). However, this is the kind of game that is really only fun with more than one person. You might play by yourself to improve your guy somewhat, but unless you're trying to catch up to your friends, it's really just an exercise in tedium as you slash away at hordes of enemies on your own. More than just typical party-game flair, multiplayer games allow the unique characters to complement one another's skills, and so having only one skillset makes for a pretty boring experience.

With that said - and the caveat that there are some frustrating collision-detection moments, due to the game's paper-thin hit boxes - if you've got someone to play it with, Castle Crashers is an absolute must-try. It's cheap, it's very fun, and I wouldn't be surprised if it continues to be fun into the foreseeable future.

Progress: Gave Up -- Beaten once, Red Soldier is awesome

I'm beginning to learn that it wasn't just a matter of me being bad at the game. Hitman is kind of hard! I'm having a better time of it now that I've gotten the basics of avoiding detection, and since I found the save feature: you have a limited number of saves from within the level, so you can make incremental progress, but not too incrementally. But regardless, it is still a challenge figuring out how to accomplish the mission and get through the level in one piece, which I guess is the whole point of the game.

Right now I'm kind of lukewarm to it, but I'm holding out hope that it gets better - I've got an incentive in the form of its sequels waiting for me in my game rack.

Progress: Third mission

There isn't much I like more than tanks with nuclear bombs and Tesla coils, but free things are up there.

Pure dumb luck led me to find a PC version of The Orange Box on sale at Amazon, and so now I've finally got a copy of Portal I can call my own (along with the box's other bajillion games). Of course I knew I would be able to play through most of it in a single sitting, and I've already watched my friends struggle through the game so many times that it wasn't really challenging at all. But it's still super-cool.

Progress: Testchamber 19

I've actually had this sitting in my DS for about two months now. I played it a little the night after I got it, and then didn't touch it again until the other evening, when my complex's transformers blew out and all my other games were unplayable.

It's not that I dislike the game, but, it hasn't really hooked me yet. The super-complex combat gameplay I was looking for has barely even come up, as most of what I've played so far is scrolling through dialog. And the story is intriguing, but also slightly off-putting because of the bizarre turns it takes (and because the main character is a total douche).

One of these days I'll get back to it; but right now the DS is just at the back of my list.

Progress: Gave Up -- Day 2