Luigi's Mansion has all the traits and trappings of a bad game, and it would be wrong of me to call it anything else.

After the first area, the game becomes difficult by means of annoyance - trying to fend off multiple enemies at once is impossible; new rooms in the mansion take forever to get between; ghosts have to be followed once, twice, twenty times as they move from room to room and back again. My primary hardship with the final boss was because the boss himself obstructed my view, and I had no idea what the fuck was going on. The game is insultingly short at only a few hours, but to be honest I was still relieved to be done with the thing.

Not only is Luigi's Mansion missing polish, it's missing content. It's missing engagement. It's missing fun. Really, the only thing it does right is show off a new generation of graphical tricks, and trying to package it as a game was a mistake.

I feel for you, Luigi. I really do. Here's hoping you do better next time.

Progress: Complete

As I started this game, it was an affront to me. Everything about it - the weirdly-lit graphics, the quirky sound effects, the one-song "soundtrack," the invisible plot - just rubbed me the wrong way. It reminded me way too much of Vexx, which is just about the worst thing a video game can do.

As I'm getting further into it, the slightly increased depth of the game has me a little more interested. But its execution still irks me. Fortunately, I should be done with it very soon.

Progress: Area 2

Something that struck me early on was Pikmin's difficulty - the game mechanics are sufficiently complex to have a hefty learning curve, and there is a tendency for it to exhibit Lemmings-esque frustration with the utter idiocy of Olimar's little worker-soldiers, especially as the enemies becomes more difficult and better able to demolish large numbers of pikmin at once. So, as far as games that I really like go, this one tends slightly toward the more annoying end of the spectrum. But it's challenging, which I admire.

The complexity of the game's puzzles never grows too great (which is good, because I had serious concerns about my time limit as I went through some levels). Pikmin's "game" lies not so much in planning, but in the player's ability to quickly and decisively react to threats, shifting goal priorities in real-time. This is something I'm historically no good at (I usually prefer to throw dozens of Scouts at my problems), but I still had fun working my way through Pikmin, and look forward to picking up Pikmin 2 (NGC) when I can find it.

Progress: 30 parts in 24 days

Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the initial announcement of Ōkami on Wii, is a review from Nintendo Power that actually recommends the PS2 version over it.

"So why am I having such a hard time recommending this game? Quite simply, the controls just didn't make the jump to Wii as well as they should have. [...] while pointing and drawing [Celestrial Brush techniques] is faster and allows for more freedom than using an analog stick, it's harder to be precise, resulting in the game having a tougher time recognizing your brush strokes. [...] Slow, timed swipes of the remote are required to score consecutive hits with many weapons [...] And where's the motion-based fishing? For shame! [...] Ōkami is a work of genius, but you should play the original game instead of the Wii version if you can." - Chris H.

Progress: Gave Up

It's hard to nail down exactly what genre Pikmin fits into. On the one hand, it bears more than passing similarity to real-time and turn-based strategy games, in that the Pikmin which Captain Olimar order around must be strategically managed in order to accomplish tasks in a timely manner, to effectively deal with certain hazards, to preserve numbers, et cetera. On the other hand, unlike a proper strategy title, Olimar isn't fighting a comparably-equipped opponent - he's fighting nature.

In this facet, Pikmin takes on aspects of many other genres. Fighting bug monsters becomes an action affair, as Olimar hurls Pikmin onto the thing and tosses in little punches; clearing the way to a goal (typically, ship part) and getting the Pikmin to carry it back is often a sort of puzzle.

One of the more interesting things about the strategic nature of the game is that, while the Captain must be moved around the field to give orders and direct confrontations, he himself is unable to participate (unlike games like Battalion Wars where the commander is a unit as well). While this distills the danger element of the game, it also reinforces the responsibility of being in command of the tiny little guys, which is a feeling not often captured in games.

Progress: 6/30 ship parts

The first thing I noticed about Indigo Prophecy is that it was a very intimate project for the game's writer/director David Cage. The instruction manual starts with a foreword about the game's innovativeness (not in an egocentric way) from him, and there's a beginning tutorial narrated by Cage himself. It's clear that he had a goal for this game: to contribute, as he says in the foreword, "to the transformation of video games into a true form of expression that conveys emotion."

The ironic thing about Indigo Prophecy is that, as it goes about expanding what we (the player) think about how video games can affect us, it is by making itself more like traditional media - books and movies. This isn't an accident. The new game option on the main menu is titled "New Movie" for this precise reason. Yes, there are game-y elements, like a Simon-esque prompt sequence at particular plot points, but most of the "gameplay" is about making decisions that direct the narrative. Some of them work toward solving the mystery of the game's plot. Others are for survival purposes, e.g. preventing an early Game Over. Yet others can, apparently, change the content of the story itself - yeah, multiple endings.

To me, this game seems like what Beyond Good & Evil should have been, discarding schticky gameplay for the sake of writing that's actually compelling. In fact, I find the "game" parts of Indigo Prophecy to be aggravating because they distract me from the story, which I consider the game's real focus.

Unfortunately, I encountered a lock-up during an autosave sequence in chapter 6, which corrupted my save file and now I have to start all over again. But I'm looking forward to it. Actually, I'm really looking forward to making some different decisions and seeing how it turns out this time.

Progress: Gave Up -- Crashed in Chapter 6

The Challenges screen is fucking evil. What Brad said about the addictive nature of unlocking tiny little cubes with trophies or stickers or whatever - I keep telling myself that I'll shelve the game after just one more, just one more... I really need to stop.

Progress: 113/128 Challenges Complete

This game has way too goddamn many play modes, but that's not going to stop me from explaining most of them.

Brawl is the game you know and love, with new characters, items and stages. You can even do a Special Brawl to configure weird options like Tiny/Giant, Metal, the gravity and game speed, and more. There are even Rotation and Tourney options for more than four players.

Solo players can play Classic, the several-fights-in-a-row mode from both of Smash's previous outings. They can also play the Subspace Emissary Adventure Mode; an unlockable All-Star mode (just like the last one); Event matches; and Stadium challenges with Targets, the Home-Run Contest, Multi-Man Brawl, and an unlockable Boss Battles boss-rush mode. With the exception of Classic, every one of these play modes can also be done cooperatively with a second player (there are actually unique events for co-op play).

Online, not only can you download new custom stages and replays from NWFC automatically, but you can also play with your friends in Brawl, Multi-Man, and Home-Run Contest; or do a Brawl with anyone (automatic matchmaking based on rule selection), or just Spectate an online match, and bet coins on who you think will take home the gold.

The game's Vault doesn't just store up your collection of trophies and stickers (and snapshots and replays), but is also how you access the Stage Builder, a simple-but-competent custom stage editor; play Masterpieces, time-limited demo games from Virtual Console; and play the Coin Launcher game, where you shoot your coins at invading alien trophies and stickers to collect even more of them. You can also see what Challenges you have left, and view a Chronicle of Nintendo history, if you're into that sort of thing.

A game's Options screen may ordinarily be pretty bland, but this time around you can, among other things, set custom Control schemes for each of the game's four supported controllers. I've actually gotten pretty used to the 'mote and 'chuk configuration by now.

Finally, the game's Data section holds your in-game records, promotional videos for the game, all the Subspace Emissary cutscenes, and one of the largest and most impressive Sound Tests in game history.

Melee veterans can attest to the fun of returning modes like Events and the Home-Run Contest already, but the new Coin Launcher mode is surprisingly fun as well, and the Challenges screen provides a handy barometer for what you've yet to unlock in the game. As far as 'extras' go, Brawl has raised the bar quite high.

Progress: 100% in Subspace Emissary

In the end, I didn't care for this one as much as its predecessors. And it wasn't because of the new protagonist. No, all the new elements of the game, the new characters, the new Perceive system (most of the time anyway), the new investigation tools, the new soundtrack; those I liked, and more than I had initially suspected I would. Where I think Apollo Justice fails to live up to the bar that the Phoenix Wright series set is in terms of story direction.

The cases, in premise, were very cool. But there were a few things about how they were portrayed that I felt did some disservice. Something that I noticed early in Case 2, and which continued to bother me more and more from there on out, was that there were altogether too many flashbacks. Sometimes I felt like a court scene consisted of about 50% flashback to the investigation period, or even to itself. Remember that time the witness said this? Of course I remember it, it happened two minutes ago.

It was just a minor annoyance until Case 4, where the direction really took a nosedive. All of this game's cases were ambitious, but the fourth one was, I think, too much so. The story was complicated enough that it had to be split into distinct segments - two separate trials, the biggest investigation ever, and then another trial period - and by the end of it the whole affair just felt muddled. And that's setting aside my concern about the time-traveling evidence during the MASON System investigation. Plus, there was a lead in the investigation period that I had way too much trouble following because the in-game hint I kept getting was blatantly wrong. I'm still a bit sour about that.

By and large, though, while I don't feel it has continued to step up to the plate the same way the other three games have, it is a thoroughly entertaining title. Aside from a few occasions where the thing to 'focus' on was difficult to find due to its infrequency of showing itself, and in spite of a perhaps wordy introduction to the technique in Case 1, I found myself really looking forward to chances to Perceive a witness's tics. So, yeah, there's no way I won't be picking up the inevitable sequel.

Progress: Complete

I should clarify that when I said "exactly as fun," I meant to redact that for The Subspace Emissary. If you've been looking forward to Brawl's adventure mode as something epic enough to stand on its own, you're going to be disappointed (at least, I was).

The latter part of it is actually pretty cool, but the majority of the mode - spent tooling around the map and "meeting" the retardedly large cast of characters - is fairly boring, and way too long. It's extremely similar to the Adventure mode from Melee, which was novel then, but is pretty dull by real game standards. But after you gather everyone, there's a huge final "stage" with a Metroid-style room map that is surprisingly fun. It reminded me a lot of a Kirby game (like Amazing Mirror).

So I'm a little peeved that one of the game's primary bullet points was a drag. It doesn't have to be; if you play it in moderation, it's not "bad," per se. And that's easy to do with the slew of other game modes that you can switch between. But Subspace Emissary is the feature way to unlock characters, which is far and away the most important thing to do in the game, so the mode can easily come across as chore-like.

I should add that there are parts of the game that have exceeded my expectations. Notably, the presentation - the graphics are very attention-grabbing and impressive, and the soundtrack is really, really cool. I'll talk more about the other game modes (coin shooter!) some other time.

Progress: All characters unlocked