Back in April, one Sandra Erb of Lobstersoft contacted me, having through some strange twist in the universe found this website. Seeing my praise for Picross DS, she requested that I try her company's Gemsweeper game; and not being one to refuse free things, I said I would, when I got a Windows PC to play it on. Now, having had my quad-booting rig for a couple months, I've finally remembered my free game.

I quickly saw why Sandra (who is apparently not just a publicist, but also the game's producer and a primary designer) recommended Gemsweeper to me on the heels of Picross. It uses the same puzzle concept - a "nonogram" as WikiPedia has informed me - and, despite the ancient Mayan ruin trappings, plays very similarly. Affirmative blocks in the puzzle are "hidden gems" and must be overturned to retrieve them; negative blocks are "cursed" and must be chiseled away. The primary difference between Picross and Gemsweeper is that the latter tasks you not only with finding the picture, but finding the negative, which is to say, putting an X in the wrong place brings a penalty as well.

Being a shareware title, Gemsweeper is chock-full of bright colors, an active HUD, not-that-funny one-liner dialog, and a single, uninspiring background song on an endless loop. So yeah, it's kind of a casual-esque game, especially considering the difficulty (so far I haven't spent more than two minutes on a stage). But it's also got 210 puzzles. The official figure is 225, but that includes weird bonus stages that play like a different game - and aren't terribly interesting - but anyway, while not quite up to Picross's number, it's still a thoroughly impressive figure.

I'm not exactly stoked about Gemsweeper. It's not really a game "for" me; where Picross was a mix of accessible and challenging, Gemsweeper is mostly accessible. I'll bet you've got a bunch of family members who would love it, but if it wasn't free it would be pretty difficult to talk me into buying. Since it was, though, and since it does tickle my puzzle fetish, I'm sure I'll be starting it up again at some point. Thanks, Sandra!

Progress: Fifth temple

Considering I already know how it ends - I've seen people play through it on several separate occasions - I am amazed at how immersed I am nevertheless becoming in BioShock. I'm engrossed in the saga of Ryan and Fontaine, and their supporting cast, as revealed in the tapes. And it's striking how much care was taken in environmental design so as to make everything from the architecture to the clutter in each area of Rapture evoke a sense of getting to know the characters.

Of course the gameplay is also fucking fantastic. BioShock has a shitload of gameplay features, from plasmids and tonics to new weapons and upgrades, and they're introduced at a pace just barely slow enough to get to learn one before moving into another - still rapid enough to keep me hotly anticipating the next one. I'm even excited about the Camera!

And what really gets me is the exhiliration of combat. Between the quick-thinking AI (I'm continually impressed by the pathfinding throughout the city), the smart layout of enemy/security locations, and the way every element of combat plays out against one another - fire and oil, electric stuns, armored and unarmored dudes, on and on - even though I'm an avid non-fan of shooters, the shooting in BioShock keeps me coming back.

I'm, what, a third of the way through? The length of BioShock is really commendable, especially given that I'm compelled to spend hours at a time with it whenever I sit down to load my last save file. It's really fucking awesome.

It's easy for a blockbuster game to feel lukewarm if you pick it up after the hype has died down. BioShock still impresses the hell out of me.

Progress: Arcadia

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.