Take the edgy design of Killer7, then add free-roaming controls and a lightsaber, and you've got most of what I've played of No More Heroes. The combat is, thus far, not hard, but very fun. Motion-controlled finishing moves and the High/Low attack dynamic make the fights really interesting. But mostly, it's just ultra-fast-paced, stupefyingly violent, and awesome.

I take a little issue with the camera, because while its orientation has changed since Killer7 - it's a third-person over the shoulder style view - the level design has not. Running down narrow corridors gets a bit irritating when the camera gets twisted around to watch my back instead of my front. Just a bit, though.

A lot of care has been given to the game's style, including Travis's pad (there's a pet cat), the save system (use the toilet), how you charge the batteries of the beam saber (by jerking it off), and especially the special moves, which are too damn cool, even the ones that don't do a lot. The screen goes dark, Travis yells something intimidating, and all of a sudden you're seeing a totally different sort of carnage than you've ever seen before.

So far all I've done is kill the (previously) 10th-ranked assassin after wrecking up his mansion, so I still haven't touched the game's overworld or its badass bike.

Also: the soundtrack is incredible. There are perhaps too few games that really pump you up with the music, but No More Heroes is definitely one of them.

Progress: 10th ranked assassin

I decided to give God Hand another shot, and this time I appear to be stumbling in the right direction. Like I mentioned before, the game has little in the way of explanation for ... well, pretty much everything. So the story is still fairly nonsensical (which isn't helped by awkward voice-over translations). But I'm getting more of a feel for how the game is played.

As it turns out, the level-up meter that goes up when you land hits, and down when you get hit, is not your level - it's the enemies' level. So as you do well, the game becomes more difficult, and as you get hit, it becomes less difficult. In theory, anyway. It's not an especially effective system, but it makes things interesting.

Something that is important to get the hang of is the technique/shop system, because the moves you start out with are super-weak. Keeping up with more and tougher enemies requires you to buy new and more powerful moves. You earn money, conveniently enough, by beating guys up; and you get huge bonuses for minigames, which, so far, have included a rigged boxing match and the Street Fighter-style challenge of beating the shit out of a minivan.

It's pretty quirky, but I'm not sure what else I can say about it at this point. Except that the music really needs to be switched up, because I get tired of it quick (unlike another pretty quirky game).

Progress: Stage 1: Secret Warehouse Carnival

Some DigiPen students were involved in developing this game, so I felt a kind of obligation to try it out. But I have to say that I feel really lukewarm toward it. Technologically, it's pretty cool; but the gameplay isn't very fun.

Drawn to Life's claim to fame, so to speak, is the ability to draw your protagonist (among many other in-game objects) using the touchscreen as a painting tool. It sure sounds cool to have your own creation moving around - and the animation is very well done, what with angled limbs and rotating joints - but in execution, the action of the game is just held up by having to draw the stuff in it. I don't want to sit around sketching out a cool-looking hero; I just want to get to the game.

Unfortunately, this was a bad decision on my part. Because now all the stuff in my game looks like shit, because I drew it like shit. And I don't want to take the time to re-draw it because drawing is boring. It's really a vicious cycle.

At the heart of it, though, the platforming is not that great. While the drawing mechanic is pretty innovative, there's nothing creative about the game itself. Run and jump. Land on enemies. Collect coins and key items. Stand on moving platforms. It's nothing you haven't seen before.

I feel like this game would be really good for the right person: for someone who's genuinely interested in drawing. For me the action is ultimately underwhelming. I'll put a bit more time into it, but at this point I don't really see myself finishing.

Progress: Finished the third level, 100% so far

There is a lot to do in Vice City. I'm really impressed by the amount of content here. I'm also really impressed by how poorly some of it is implemented. When you've got a game that has so many options, it's inevitable that a bunch of them end up not working too well. But there is enough good in the game that playing it is still damn fun.

Progress: Wiseguy (2013), finished main missions

Progress: Gave Up -- Finished the Silver Cup, and totally lost interest

It's very clear from the title screen that Excite Truck is a first-generation Wii game; you can't even use the pointer to navigate menus, or to type your profile name on a virtual keyboard. Then it forces you to play the Tutorial mode before you're allowed to actually race. Just the same, for such a 'primitive' game, it's pretty fun.

The remarkable thing about Excite Truck is that it isn't about what you might know as Racing - getting first place is not really what counts. Each race has a goal number of stars, which are earned by performing stunts: getting air, drifting, driving through trees, crashing into other trucks, what have you. Colliding with a blunt surface or falling in deep water only ends the race very temporarily, as pressing the 2 button rapidly will put you right back in.

Placing at the end of the race is worth stars too, many of them; but stunts throughout the race can more than make up for it. There are also pickups throughout each course that will change the landscape in front of you, creating hills, valleys, and other arenas for performing off-the-cuff stunts.

So put all this together, and what does it mean? This isn't a typical racing game that balances safety with outpacing your competition. Excite Truck is all about going fast and being crazy. I don't really care if I'm in fifth place if I see an invincibility powerup and a big forest ahead of me. And if I crash, oh well. It's hectic, it's fast-paced, and it's fun, albeit shallow.

Progress: Finished the Silver Cup

I thought I was getting toward the end of the game when I found out that the city kingpin, Diaz, was behind the botched drug deal the game starts with, and I began working for him. But as it turns out, I wasn't; after taking out Diaz, I'm now able to buy businesses in Vice City, and have more, even higher-class missions. I didn't expect the game's content to be this involved, which is pretty cool.

Technologically Vice City is really a mixed bag. The physics are great, but the camera makes it hard to see if your escape route is face-to-face with a police car. The crowd-based AI is very awesome, with pedestrians investigating dead bodies or fleeing gunshots and car crashes. Aiming at and shooting these people, however, is extremely difficult with the game's control scheme. And the game world is impressively large, with laudably short load times (after the super-long one as the game boots), but until a point in the game where you can get more, which is fairly far in, there's only one save point and it can be a real pain in the ass to get to.

On the whole it's way too fun for the flaws to really get in the way. My new guilty pleasure is mowing down groups of gang members on the sidewalk.

Progress: Criminal Rating: Thug (711)

Even though I've barely touched the other half of the game (Free Mode, where it doesn't tell you when you've made a mistake!), I really need to move on from Picross. It's devilishly addictive and engrossing - since I've started playing, I daydream of tile situations and how to solve them. It's really creepy. I need to stop.

Progress: Finished Normal mode

I hadn't played much GTA until the other day when I started up Vice City, and I have to say, I have been missing out. It was easy to write the series off as a glamorization of crime and the start of a "generic sandbox game" fad, but the real beauty of Vice City (and, I assume with hope, its companions) is in its balance of freeform play and mission goals. The missions start out easy enough, but get into some pretty intense car chases and firefights, which are all the more meaningful when they take place in a bustling, AI-driven city.

One of the cooler things about Vice City, too, is its music, which really enhances the 1980s ambience; switching radio stations in the car while not paying attention to the road is a guilty pleasure. Ramming headlong into a guy on a minibike just to watch him fly is another one.

Progress: Criminal Rating: Rot (282)

After an extended vacation from the game, I finished up the professor's first level; and though it was what I was most looking forward to, it's the most disappointing of the three. The professor's core puzzle-solving mechanic is by using and combining items into practical tools, and much of it is just nonsensical. Pipes and a blowdryer make a leafblower? Pipes and an extension cord make a ladder? Atomic toasters are one thing, but too much of his gameplay is randomly bumbling around to see what works.

I've also grown extremely bored of the tedious level design. I started the next level, another Kurt one, and it barely kept me awake. The sloppy controls, the repetitive music, and the half-baked design have conspired together to really make me want to put the game away. So I have.

Progress: Gave Up -- Level 4B