Frodo, meet Commander Shepard

HIGH Superb characterizations, story, and role-playing.

LOW The combat system is a mess.

WTF Screwing up a quest by missing one line of dialogue 20 hours beforehand.

As first-person shooter campaigns go, it's definitely in the 95th percentile of enjoyable shooting galleries. But it's also a campaign that worries me. While playing through the brief solo mode (roughly five hours), I couldn't help but be reminded of the stereotypical Bay film: Things blow up, uber-macho soldiers shout, the player performs wild stunts (like jumping into a helicopter for the umpteenth time), and loud orchestral music plays. It doesn't seem to matter that the plot is poorly paced, makes very little sense, and no characters are developed. If I'm a typical M-rated gamer, all I'm supposed to care about is that I shot people and stuff blew up real purty.

Stephen Totilo of Kotaku provided a fascinating look at Zach Gage's Lose/Lose, a curious statement-game (I would call it an "art game," but that label comes with its own baggage and may obfuscate the analysis below) that posits players in a pretty lousy situation:  Get "killed" in the game, and the application running the program is deleted from the computer. Destroy "enemies," however, and a file on your computer—represented graphically in the game as a blurry mess of pixels scrolling down the screen in true Galaga fashion—gets deleted. That's right. The game deletes your files. Of course, that's only if you choose to play the game as a game... and not experience it as a question of will and complicity.

Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate-at-Law

HIGH The Harry Potter-esque way that the plotline connects back to Chapter 1.

LOW The gameplay connects back to Chapter 1 (i.e. the jungle) as well.

WTF Morgan?! Nooooooo!

Over the past few weeks I've been eagerly awaiting Left 4 Dead 2, and in the meantime I've been digging through my collection of old games, giving in to a sudden and inexplicable wave of nostalgia. There were the old pleasures to be sure, but I was amazed at how many of these games just didn't do anything for me anymore. I remember spending countless hours with these titles, but for some of them it was like looking in the basement for that old toy or comic book you loved so much, only to realize that maybe it wasn't all that great to begin with.

Always one to support smaller development houses and those exploring the downloadable space, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to have a brief exchange with Max Wagner, one of the co-founders of brand-spanking (sort-of) new Signal Studios. The studio's first game, Toy Soldiers, was just revealed at the most recent Tokyo Game Show and will be leading the assault on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service in the very near future.

Three Heads Are Better Than Two

HIGH Excellent concept, great production values.

LOW Lack of any real boss battles.

WTF Experience comes in glowing green bottles?

I wrote the headline to this story not really thinking—and only now does it dawn on me that "gets a street date" make it sound like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories went out and picked up a hooker…

That's not what happened, though. Instead, Konami has announced the release date for the title (or, the date the game will "hit the streets"). Wii owners can experience an updated version of one of Survival Horror's most revered titles on December 8th. PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable owners will have to wait longer as no date has been set for either of those platforms.

Early demos for the game have been impressive and I'm excited to check out the Wii version of the game—if for no other reason than because it will actually give me an excuse to turn on my Wii…

Jump past the break for a character breakdown from Konami's press release.

Super Heroes? More Like Pretty-okay Heroes...

HIGH Going multi with Luke Cage and Iron Fist, together again.

LOW Generally poor selection of heroes from Marvel's vast universe.

WTF What happened to the QA process?