While a few parts seem arbitrary, as is bound to happen in any puzzle game, on the whole Zack & Wiki provides a delightful challenge. Many of the game's levels are just plain cool - figuring out the grand puzzle unveils an awesome event to reveal your prize. It's always figure-outable, even the parts that are really, really brain-bending, which I like.

Something I don't like is the shaky motion controls. Most in-game items / actions are controlled by Wii remote movement, and while many of them work very well, many others do not. I've never had so much difficulty tossing a spinning lasso or dropping an object. Just the same, most of the remote's uses are good, and some are really clever.

There's a ton of extras in the game; I would say too many. Collecting them is only a reward in and of itself, with the exception of some endgame hidden treasures, which promise that there is something in it for me once I Catch 'Em All. Anyway, the superfluous hidden items don't detract from the game, and add a nice little feature for the obsessive completionists.

Zack & Wiki is a really fun, really smart game. Some people may not be smart enough for it; so even for them, there are buyable Hints and Revives (I have to admit that I used a few of the latter). So if you enjoy being mentally challenged, regardless of your skill level, this is a must-play.

Progress: Beat game, tooling around

This may be the coolest game preview video I've seen in a long time.

Recent previews have showed me two things about No More Heroes-

1) Graphical interface elements reminiscent of Contact (pixelated retro-throwbacks)

2) Wanton physical violence

Awesome.

I've gotten up to a Hard-ish skill level on the Bass and can dabble in the other stuff. Rocking the band is really fun. The problem is, the rest of the game.

The networking blows. When an XBL-enabled account is playing, the game takes a minute or longer after every set to communicate with "Rock Central," a task that should be trivial (sending the band name and a few scores along with a small band logo image). The menu system, as I've mentioned, is retarded. And the hardware reliability has really gone down the tubes; drums are being broken now, one of the ports on the USB hub is acting up, and I think the mic may be losing sensitivity.

Of course there are easy kit replacement programs in place - and there may very well be patches on the way - but the game is doing its best to make the fun part unnecessarily inconvenient.

First thoughts: This is a really zany game. Cartoon-inspired hijinx with rabbits and flying monkeys. Kind of weird.
Second thoughts: Early levels, the puzzles are surprisingly complicated!
Third thoughts: Second tier of stages - this game is damn hard.

There is a good deal of charm in Zack & Wiki, but the best part of it, even at my early point in the game, is the incredible challenge. The last level I did took like an hour for me to figure out. And I think I've got at least 3/4 of the game left! Very, very cool.

Progress: 7 parts

Progress: 9/9 Platinum medals

The Wii Zapper controller shell retails for $20 and comes with this game. So your expectations might be pretty damn low. But Link's Crossbow Training is surprisingly cool.

There are three different kinds of levels, basic target shooting, "Defender" (take out approaching targets), and "Ranger" where you have to move around and aim at the same time. Controlling the Ranger mode was really disorienting at first, but after a couple levels it's easy to get the hang of.

The gameplay isn't all that complex: shoot shit. As in Phantom Hourglass's shooting gallery, you beef up a point multiplier with consecutive hits, so in general you really want to not miss. Getting more points gets you better metals (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum), which probably doesn't mean anything, but is still fun in a score-attack kind of way.

There are nine levels, each of which has three stages, so there is actually quite a bit of variety. There are even - spoilers? - two boss battles in the last levels. The multiplayer isn't as cool as you may think, as it's just taking turns and trading off the zapper, but as a single-player venture I think Crossbow Training rivals any House of the Dead or Time Crisis. And for the price, it's hard to go wrong.

Progress: Need more medals!

I'm the manager of the Coppin' Feelies, an up and coming video rock band. Last night they won a school competition. Straight to the top baby! Yeeeeaaaaahhh!

As a rule, I don't like rhythm games, since their goals usually involve doing the same thing hundreds of times until you get it "right." But Rock Band has a tour mode that makes things a lot more interesting - you gather fans, earn money, unlock new venues, gain new band perks, and the rewards are new and cooler songs to play. Rock Band also solves the problem of looking like a jackass when you play a rhythm game, because there are three other jackasses right next to you, and you can all revel in your own jackassery. There's a lot of band synergy in it, individual players who fail out can be "saved" with another player's overcharge, and when the whole band gets going it's really a spectacle.

There are options for a solo player too, of course, with a solo tour just omitting the rest of the positions (vocals, drums, lead guitar, and/or bass guitar). Personally I haven't played it too much; just subbing for a player who had to step out, doing easy mode on the drum kit or a guitar or the mic. I'm clearly no good at it, but due to the band mechanic it's still really fun.

Now, there is no shortage of problems with the game, either. One is the high barrier of entry: $170 for the game with its kit (which does not include a second guitar), plus if you want to expand the game's 58-song catalogue, extra songs carry at least a $1 each pricetag. Another is the menu and character system. On the 360 at least, a band's progress and songs they've unlocked are tied to a band leader character - characters are tied to the instrument, which is tied to the controller slot, and to an Xbox gamer profile. If you want to make a band, get your characters right the first time, because changing them will probably involve starting the whole band over.

Also, while the craftsmanship on the instruments is generally good (the guitar's strum shoddiness notwithstanding), the USB hub that ships with it is a real piece of shit. Oh, and all the controllers are wired. C'mon. The 360's Guitar Hero III Les Paul is compatible, thankfully.

So a lot of the extraneous mechanics of the game are flawed. But the core gameplay is really remarkable. If you haven't played it with someone yet, give it a try.

Progress: Straight to the top!

A little company you may have heard of called BioWare didn't start out making space operas; one of their earlier titles was a sequel to Shiny's MDK, aptly named MDK2 (the PS2 version is an Armageddon, for, some reason). MDK2 combines three very theoretically solid gameplay mechanics - platforming, shooting, and puzzle solving.

The game stars three characters. There's Kurt, a janitor, who dresses up in a coil suit for killer jumping ability and can snipe with pinpoint precision. Max, the six-legged cigar-smoking dog, wields up to four guns at once and is all about unloading as many bullets as possible. Finally, the mad doctor Fluke Hawkins uses pickup items to solve puzzles. Each level of the game is played from the perspective of one character, e.g. level 1 was Kurt, level 2 was Max, and level 3 is the doctor.

While it sounds great in theory, unfortunately the game falls flat on some core mechanics. The biggest problem is the controls: you can select from about a dozen different control schemes, but none of them seem quite right, and you can't customize individual buttons. And the 3D engine, I mean it looks good for the time the game came out, but it feels like it runs a bit slow.

Anyway, it's an interesting title, and I'm just up to the doctor's first level. More on this as it develops.

Progress: Level 3A

I'm sorry, Gunpei. I just can't do it.

I put the game on Hard, and all that happened was the AI got better at surviving; offense in this game is a non-issue, and games take way too goddamn long, sometimes upwards of 8 minutes. This game blows.

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished four Frontier characters

Gunpei Yokoi - creator of the Game Boy and Metroid, among many others - is my hero. He was one of the original game engineers, responsible for bridging the gap between our video game fantasies and electrical reality. Before he died, he conceived a puzzle mechanic that would help debut his brainchild, the Wonderswan, and which now lives on in a PSP and DS reiteration. It's really, really too bad.

The game is, in a word, boring. The basic mechanism is fine enough: connect a line from the left side of the playfield to the right, using differently shaped joint panels. More panels are better, e.g. forks connecting to and/or diverging from the line. It's an interesting concept. Unfortunately there's little else to the game at all; playing "against" someone is a minutes-long affair of waiting for the playing speed to ramp up enough for the other player to lose. Survival is easy, and launching "attacks" is pointless, as most of them don't even do anything.

The music is the game's second bullet point, and this, too, falls flat. It's little more than the same thing everyone's gotten used to in puzzle games, where the music ramps up as the stack increases, and sound effects flare when moving and connecting pieces. Meteos does a much better job. Not to mention that most of the BGM compositions in Gunpey are utterly dull.

I'll keep going to see if I might be missing something, but as of right now, this is far from a worthy legacy to Gunpei.

Progress: Finished two Frontier characters