Adventure/Explore

Escape into the Cubiverse

HIGH Discovering a vast cave system underneath my house.

LOW Repeated game-killing glitches.

WTF The game can often be scarier than most horror titles.

Well, E3 is upon us again. While a tsunami of new game info is pouring out of LA, I'm not sure that anyone will have time for this little old blog, but it's still business as usual for me until PAX later this year. The convention always falls on the first week of my son's summer visit, so I haven't gone to the last few. Family > E3, but I will be watching all the press briefings!

I Am Alive clearly wants to be a serious, adult take on post-apocalyptic survival, and in some respects it is. Unfortunately, the game's treatment of women, among other things, seems to devolve back to the attitudes of a teenaged boy. In I Am Alive, women are helpless objects to be fought over and protected by men.

Square, Cube, Spiral

HIGH "A-HAAAA!!!"

LOW It ain't fun fighting the Backtrack Monster.

WTF The ending is pure gaming gravy.

Mixed Mess Age

HIGH Making it to a safe ledge with just a sliver of stamina remaining.

LOW Staggering around for half an hour with a sliver of life with an irritating "heartbeat" rumble and an ugly red-screen effect ruining the look.

WTF It ends in the middle of th

Taking a Stab at a New Audience

HIGH Swooping down onto an enemy battleship before destroying the entire fleet.

LOW The versus multiplayer is intolerably bad.

WTF "Hello Canna, I'm Ryu. It means 'Dragon.' Now, shake this scabby corrupted hand of mine. I said shake it!"

Ink-credibly Bad

HIGH The sumi-e art style is pretty nifty.

LOW Nothing else is.

WTF Ancient Japan is lousy with giant, demonic, self-aware wagon wheels?

Killer App

HIGH Soaking in those sumptuous visuals.

LOW Finger-swiping QTEs.

WTF Why do I have to clean 100% of the dirt off this artifact with my tired finger when I can already make out the "hidden" image?

When do I Actually Get to Play this "Game"?

HIGH It's only six hours long, so my suffering was short-lived.

LOW So many options... how about the fact that I spent a huge chunk of that six hours doing nothing but watching a cruddy subpar anime masquerading as a video game?

WTF A character possesses a sword so large that it can stab through one side of a planet and out the other with length to spare.

Brutal, Unflinching and... Important

HIGH Finding a safehouse where colors still exist.

LOW Taking a beating and limping along for two areas on a sliver of life.

WTF Why aren't critics talking about this game? Oh, right. Mass Effect 3.