Strategy/Sim

The year was 1999. A plucky young lad fresh out of the 8th grade, I had just finished reading Timothy Zahn's fantastic Thrawn trilogy a year earlier, which began my immersion into the Star Wars expanded universe. There's a lot of good stuff to be found in said universe-the aforementioned Zahn books, the Rogue Squadron series, the Crimson Empire comics and so forth. So you can imagine my anticipation of The Phantom Menace, the long awaited beginning of the prequel trilogy.

HIGH Melting scores of enemy Armored Cores with my trusty flamethrower.

LOW Being sliced apart by beam swords for relying too heavily on my trusty flamethrower.

WTF The game has more functions than the system has buttons!

Recently I began playing Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, the sequel to the adventure classic The Longest Journey. My expectations were oh so high, after the original's blend of fantasy, sci-fi, and wonderful characterizations made it instantly climb onto my all-time favorites list. My reaction upon seeing about 45 minutes worth of Dreamfall was similar to one who may have just come home to see his dog ripping apart the giant K'Nex roller coaster/burger stand/space station he spent so much time building-who is this monster, and what did they do the my masterpiece?

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.

Cry havoc, and let fly the pigs of war

HIGH Capturing the enemy flag with a single scout running and gunning within the first turn.

LOW Leaving my own base totally unguarded allowing a lone enemy Lancer to lumber over and capture it unhindered, 10 turns into a battle.

WTF We definitely needed a cutesy flying piglet in our reimagining of WWII, right guys?

A nightmare worth experiencing

HIGH The moment where you finally "get" the game is pretty magical. There's a lot of depth here, but only patient gamers will stick around long enough to find it.

LOW The game's tutorial isn't as helpful as it should be. Knights in the Nightmare is difficult mostly because it does such a terrible job of explaining how it was meant to be played.

WTF The entire game is one giant WTF moment for the first few hours.

Maybe if I order you to aim better you'll stop missing

HIGH The supremely challenging boss missions.

LOW The horrendously out-of-place "stealth" missions.

WTF Some inexplicable actions by the main character that I can't reveal without spoiling everything.