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Mass Effect: when X-treme Intergalactic Offroading is your flavor of the month. Mass Effect has a cult following rabidly defending this game with tooth and limb, and for good reason. The storyline becomes epic, the voice acting is stunning, and the sheer scope of the game is awe inspiring. You play as Commander Shepard, a space grunt with a few guns, some nifty tricks and an unwavering urge to curbstomp whatever so much looks at him funny. It's an over the shoulder shooter, in which a lion's share of the gameplay involves you blasting your way past waves of enemies to reach an exit to advance the plot. The ability to outfit my weapons to evolve them, which seemed like a good idea at first, ended up becoming a race to see how many damage modifiers I could staple onto my shotgun, regardless of heat generation. A shotgun with enough damage boosters pretty much one-shots 90% of the games enemies. The controls are tight and responsive, regardless of the class you pick, though it bears mentioning that some classes are much more overpowered compared to others. Playing as a Solider class fit my play style best and helped take some of the edge off of the game's difficulty. Shepard's squadmates, the heart and soul of the game, are engaging and can be surprisingly complex if you let them. The main plot is largely linear, with a few branches for you to pick and explore and seventy tons of side quests which serve, largely, as busy work. If you're as obsessive about having a clean mission log as I am, you'll spend hours on the side quests which serve no real purpose in this game, which makes for a very tedious experience. The release of Mass Effect 2 means that the decisions you make in this game carry over, whether through brief cameos or minor storyline changes. If you enjoy ME2, then playing through ME1 exactly how you want is the best way to get the character and events in the second game set up, which means playing all the side missions, and making all the "right" choices. Like most Bioware games, the Karma system is in full swing. You can play as a Renegade, which means you place your own needs, and the needs of Planet Earth, before anything else, or you can play as Paragon where you try to be the nice guy, rewarding people for their trust in you rather than betraying them, and save as many folks, alien or otherwise, as you can. For the more indecisive of us, playing as something the middle is also fully possible. Who you chose to kill and who you chose to save carries over into ME2, resulting in shifts in the storyline reflecting these changes. It's sad to say, but unless you play ME1 to completion and carry over your save file to the new game, your experience in ME2 will be slightly diminished, especially if you enjoy a Paragon route. The graphics were stunning for their time, though they may seem slightly dated by today's standards. I found the main storyline to be rather dull, until the last few sets of missions, where things ramped up resulting in a powerful and breathtaking climax that you take part in. While many folks seem to have taken a shine to ME1's music, most notably those guys from Penny-Arcade, I found the 1980's retro space synths to be dull and repetitive. Speaking of dull and repetitive, the side quests involve you visiting the same half dozen locations, shooting things, hopping back into your tank (called the Mako) and scaling a mountain to reach yet another location. The amount of time you spend in your tank scaling rocks is tiresome and takes away from all the space-badassery. Granted, most of these side quests can be skipped all together, they still could have done a better job varying locations up. If you've been to one transport/abandoned research facility/space mine you've been to them all. Lastly, there is the issue of the alleged romance scene. Let me spoil this for you: it's about as risque as an episode of Family Guy. Fifteen seconds of kissing with a single butt shot left me rather disappointed, considering all the hoopla that was churned up over it. Standing by itself, Mass Effect does many things right, but its repetitive nature dulls much of the excitement. Playing Mass Effect just to set up Mass Effect 2 just the way you want it is akin to pulling teeth. Mass Effect had several moments of clarity and an ending that was supremely satisfying, however the repetitive Mako missions, uninspired action sequences building up to the climax and impotent combat permeating the core the ME experience leaves Mass Effect wanting. Unless you dig the ME lore, you're interested in developing a world different from the default setting in ME2, or if spending hours in a tank trying to navigate impossible mountains is your cup of tea, then skip ME and go right for its superior younger brother: Mass Effect 2.

Scratches- Director's cut takes the player back to the day when first person meant point and click puzzle solving. Penumbra and Amnesia this game is not. Gamers who have been around for a long time will remember the days when Lucas Arts made the best brain bending adventure games, Myst stood tall as the king of casual, immersive gameplay, and FPS was relegated almost solely to ID software's largely two-dimensional Wolfenstein and Doom series. Scratches is a throwback to an age where casual gamers wanted to have their brains teased with devious puzzles, rather than the visceral thrill of turning swarms of alien zombie demons into exaggerated bloodstains. Scratches combines the likes of Myst with The Seventh Guest in a short, albeit intriguing, point and click style adventure. The game plays like a slideshow, as was the norm once upon the time, gifting you with puzzles that are likely to make you froth at the mouth, even with the tutorials turned on. The atmosphere is creepy, especially at night, and a lingering sense of dread keeps you engaged, at least at the start. As the game progresses it falls into the same trap F.E.A.R. fell into: the things that are supposed to scare you, can't kill you. Once you realize this, the game loses its fangs and becomes another first person adventure puzzler. And the puzzles are monstrous indeed. Combining a random assortment of items was the thing to do back in the heyday of adventure games, and Scratches takes a queue directly from their book. The answers are not as obvious as they may seem. Deciphering a particularly vague numberlock puzzle drove me to the edge of insanity. Don't feel too ashamed if you find yourself using a walkthrough. Scratches can give even a veteran adventure gamer pause. Like most classic point and click games in the vein of Myst, you don't kill anything, and success is measured by the puzzles you solve to advance the storyline. It's geared towards a thinker who wants a few scares tossed in to add some flavor to the tedium. Measured against games now-a-days, it will seem slow and tiresome for most, and the eight plus hours to beat it (if it's your first time through and you're not using a walkthrough) will seem like forever. However, measured against the games it was designed after, (The Seventh Guest, Myst and it's obnoxious little brother Riven) it holds its own quite well. The Director's cut differs from the original release as it also includes the epilogue mission, which shouldn't take someone who beat the Original Scratches more than an hour to complete. The epilogue, known as "The Last Visit", ties everything together and helps clear up any remaining loose ends, though due to the state of the house, The Last Visit reminded me more of the classic Myst knock off Pyst featuring John Goodman, more than anything else. Scratches is not for everyone. If you find yourself bored with point and click games, this will leave a sour taste in your mouth. However, if you remember Myst fondly, this game may provide a pleasant way to pass the time, and at $10 on Steam, certainly isn't a bad value. Scratches - Director's Cut fits a specific clique of gamers long since thought to be extinct, and is well worth a look if you fall into this category. Everyone else will find Amnesia to be a superior alternative.

Portal 2 is fun and engaging, but certainly not game of the year caliber. Once more you are thrust into the brain bending realm of Portal where you, a single weapon and your wits are all that you have to survive. Unlike the first game which was a pursuit of the ever elusive cake, this game actually makes an attempt to create a more fleshed out plot with its own back story, which is cleverly threaded into the actual gameplay. Of course, after a few chambers of the back story levels, I found myself pining for something different. Gel's were a nice new twist, but they really broke the Portal vibe for me, and a few of the puzzles felt less like discovering how to get to the end and more like how to paint every surface until you find success. The voice acting was exceptionally well performed, and the sounds and musical queues that pop up when you're in the process of properly completing a puzzle was nice. The HL2 engine gets a nice face lift from this installment and looks pretty good, considering how old the engine is. My pair of GF275's were able to handle everything maxed out, which was quite refreshing. Expect between six to nine hours for the first play through, depending on how smart you really are. Aside from the back story test chambers which became stale all too quickly, everything seems like peaches and cream until you come the bugs that (still) plague the game. Playing it on a console would probably circumvent 99% of these problems and provide for a smooth and clean experience, but if you're like me and prefer the precision of a mouse and keyboard to a pair of clunky joysticks, be prepared for some bugs. Reports have been made regarding glitches in sequences not triggering properly, bosses failing to properly launch their payloads and overall glitches, crashes and system freezes. I, myself, had the luxurious experience of not having any of the slender push buttons load, so when I get to the second test chamber with the glass and the three buttons, I was rewarded with three sets of flashing ERROR signs. Since the entire complex is in a state of disrepair, I had no idea that this was not supposed to happen (as the glitch looked like it could have feasibly been there). After an hour of slamming my face on the keyboard, I broke down and went to youtube to see what I was supposed to do and learned the error signs were, in fact, not supposed to be part of the experience. No amount of verifying game files, deleting local content and reinstalling seemed to fix this particular bug. After several days, the problem was corrected (though what I did exactly, I have no idea) and I was able to continue playing, albeit with a sour note. Still, bugs aside, the core of the game itself is remarkably solid and the puzzles will give your brain some exercise. Too bad about the glitches, or the stale test chambers midway through the journey. Lastly, at $60 Portal 2 seems a bit overpriced. I would personally wait for it to come down to around $50 before thinking about making a purchase. Overall, Portal 2 was a fun and engaging game, once all the bugs were finally sorted out.

If the 2010 grindhouse gorefest Machete and internet superstars Penny Arcade had a violent, sociopathic love child, Shank would be it. You take the role of Shank, an ex-hitman with a grudge against his old boss, standing toe to toe against an entire crime syndicate in a sidescrolling, 2D action stomp fest, that combines satisfying melee combat with smooth, crisp visuals and a south-of-the-boarder musical medley that fits together so nicely you can almost taste the sand and blood in your mouth. The combat is fluid, encouraging the player the mix things up. Mashing the shank button by itself without a heavy or range followup is a sure way to get yourself killed. Linking up deadly combos by virtue of a rampaging exploration of your grisly arsenal leads up to some pretty nasty combinations that bring a smile to anyone's face. There's a certain visceral thrill of pouncing on one guy, slicing him to ribbons with your shanks, while holding his buddies off with a few well placed shotgun blasts, before exposing your victim's internal organs to daylight with a few deft swings of your machetes. Shank is made by indie developer Klei Entertainment and, as such, bears the unjust stigma of many independent games. The controls are smooth as butter and the platforming feels tight and precise, allowing players to move forward, swinging and jumping around most pitfalls and traps with relative ease and grace. Many Indie games favor soul crushingly hard platforming to help add longevity to their titles. Shank steers away from this, opting instead for neat tricks and easy progression to help keep things moving. The music and art style are both wonderful and help the player to feel like they're actually a Mexican badass out for blood and revenge in the gritty, crime ridden underworld. The lion's share of the story itself is told by cut scenes presented in a Penny Arcade style of animation which some may find to be a little jarring. Shank is not without its flaws. Unless the player keeps things fresh by varying up weapons and combos, the combat can start to feel stale after a few hours. As a player, you have to want to explore the destructive potential of each weapon to find a wicked killing set to quickly dispatch large groups of enemies. If you're not careful, it's easy to get swamped by the large numbers of baddie, especially if half of them have guns and rifles. Also, the level designs tend to repeat themselves as the game progresses. If you've fought across one set of rooftops, you've fought across all of them. The bosses are a mixed bag as well. Each boss has a special trick that must be learned to defeat them and the game only drops hints as to what these tricks are after you die. Some of these hints are very non-specific which means that you'll have to try, and die, several times to discover how to annihilate said boss. The bosses themselves are varied, ranging from mexican wrestlers, meat packing men, a sword carrying version of the Bride from Kill Bill, and a Gimp. Nods to Tarantino films are present all over the place. The last few levels can be quite difficult, with a certain degree of frustration as you attempt to manage the waves of gun toting drug thugs, while the last boss will likely drive you bananas. Lastly, Shank is short and an experienced gamer will clear the normal difficulty in four or five hours. However, if the game were any longer it would become stale. Given the nature of the combat system, and the level progression, its length fits the bill perfectly. While imperfect, Shank is a blast. It is well crafted, smooth, clean fun, and did I mention the price point? At $10 on Steam, Shank is nothing to sneeze at. For 10 bucks you get a satisfying action sidescroller that lets you unleash the beast on waves of thugs, meatheads, hookers and canines, and still have enough money left aside for dinner. Shank is a superb value, giving you quite a bit for only little, and leaving you with the satisfaction of forcing a chainsaw down the brainstem of a luchador and ripping the nipples ****. Shank is great fun, for a great price.