I'd meant to scrawl down some of my impressions for GTA IV's The Lost and Damned over a week ago, back when it still held some timliness and immediacy for the faster-than-light travel that the internet speeds around at, but my assigned review for Afro Samurai absorbed my spare time.  My apologies.  But some of the imagery has gelled to me, soaked through my skin as if beer-stained black leather could adhere and then sponge into my pores like osmosis.

I, as Johnny Klebitz, the anti-hero with his head squarely on his shoulders, couldn't ignore the Wild West tinge that Liberty City draped itself in during the Lost and Damned.  Me and the Lost Motorcycle Club--the Lost MC--rolled through the town like horseback-straddled outlaws, the only thing missing being bandanas tied over the lower-half of our faces and ten-gallon hats getting blustered in the wind.  Even if Niko Bellic's HUD wasn't all crisp and shiny, the road-worn scratches that edged the mini-map now portrayed Liberty City through a tarmac lense.  And even during the initial reunion of the Lost MC with its not-so-long-lost president, Billy Grey, the color of the city bled into sepia tones over the entire urban landscape, as if the city were being viewed via camera obscura. I half expected tumbleweed to take measured hops across dusty intersections.  Even the Lost's clubhouse is situated in a delapidated brownstone building, some of the oldest construction in the city, with room only for someone to hitch their horse--their bike--in the thin parking strip out front.  And those bikes are as vital to them as a man's horse was in the 1800s.

All of these subtexts (never mind the playbill font) wholly transform Liberty City into an out-west dustbowl where the streets are dried-up ravines and the highrises are canyon walls.  I know that Rockstar San Diego is hard at work on the sequel to Red Dead Revolver, but until then, the Lost and Damned is a brilliant revisioning of a Western tuned to the sound of Harleys and patched-up leather coats.

Last night off XBLA I downloaded the demo to Penny Arcade Expo’s PAX 10 Audience Choice Award winner (and Independent Games Festival 2009 finalist), The Maw.  Twisted Pixel's 3D light-puzzler/platformer is a cute little thing.  But Audrey II started off all adorable in the Little Shop of Horrors, too.

Frank the blue alien (that’s you) is strong-armed into some spaceship’s science lab holding cell.  An immediate bond formulates between Frank and the Maw who’s also in a heavily-watched cell.  Alarms inexplicably go off and rumbling tosses everything about.  Frank awakens at the crash site.  The translucent purple Maw and Frank, quickly reunited, are fast friends.  Frank groans with a headache from the impact.  The Maw’s excitement is tongue-wagging.

A couple hexic-uniformed guards also regain their senses, beat back the zealous but still miniscule Maw—whose panic attack goes off with Kill Bill-like sirens—before a drop ship swoops in and lassoes its guards aboard and away.  The Maw’s unbridled enthusiasm is immediately infectious.  I walk across the blocky crash site, find and then fearlessly don a wrist-mounted electronic leash that tethers me to the Maw.   The Maw doesn’t seem to mind at all.  The soundtrack kicks in with chewy, beatbox-infused jungle rhythms....

We emerge from a narrow, chocolaty canyon and into a glen populated by round, bouncy, inarguably adorable creatures.  To my horror—and then to my amusement—The Maw swallows one of the bouncy creatures whole.  Unleashing the Maw, it bumbles about the glen but can’t catch up to the bouncy creatures.  I call him back with some alien “suwee!” and it leashes up to me again.  I lead him around, and without warning, run him in a circle, letting him chomp down a diet of bouncy creature thingies.  If I unleash him, he pretty much stays, licking his lips (and his cyclopean eye) at the prospect of his next meal.

At a boulder-blocked portion of the trail, I learn that the leash can also tether to inanimate objects.  The boulder, many times my size and weight (Frank’s, that is), pulls along nicely with the leash.

We arrive at an even larger glen, this one populated by an even greater varieties of swaying, bulbous plant life, with yellow question marks (a recognizable enough trope in videogames nowadays) floating above the heads of some plants that look like a giant crossbreed of Venus Flytrap and Velociraptor.  I approach, the Maw safely in tow.

The Veloci-Flytraps panic, the Maw panics, I don’t see what the big deal is, and the glen is now jumping with more snack-sized bouncy thingies.  The Maw sets about its single-minded task of devouring anything even remotely appearing on a carnivorous menu—and it grows yet again.  While only waist high five minutes ago, the Maw is now looking over my head, and he thinks (with a bubble cloud) about his next meal…which is decidedly a much larger, four-legged Spore-like creature it spied earlier on the other side of the glen.

I take him to dine on small, bouncy creatures and the Maw chomps down gladly, always chomping, but the four-legged creatures it was thinking about eating have torch-lit tails.  The Maw chomps one, spits it out, lets out another alarmed yell, then bounds off to the base of a waterfall and starts swallowing gobs of water.

Distressed, I unleash the Maw in the running stream.  I run to the firebrand creatures, lasso an unwilling one, then drag it back to the stream.  Tssss, the torchy creature loses its fire, I re-leash the Maw, the Maw swallows the formerly-firey creature in an enthusiastic gulp, then the Maw itself turns into an orange, blistered, charcoal-smoked, fire-breathing version of the Maw.  It starts gushing flames out at anything moving in a relatively bouncy fashion around it, burning an orange radius around itself.  I run the Maw straight at the Veloci-Flytraps that frightened the Maw off before, and the Maw belches fire all over them in an unhesitant stream.  Me and the Maw press on to the next corridor, and the demo draws to a close.

So, what have we learned?  The Maw joyously devours anything and everything (except Frank the blue alien for no other reason than we need two living components to this boy-and-his-dog tale), while the Maw grows and morphs into different manifestations of whatever it snacked on.  Don’t try to eat anything you can’t swallow whole.  Don’t eat anything that’s currently on fire.  And witness “You are what you eat” taking on literal proportions.  Sure, it's cute, but I won't be going back for seconds right away.

Despite Gravity Bone's blocky facade, this (short, thrilling) game of spy vs. spy won't be confused with the LEGO series.  Keeping itself focused, the action gets quickly rolling as you descend in an elevator to some millionaire's Frank-Lloyd-Wright-styled club in the hills.  The blockheaded crowds are already parsed off into gabby circles, black masks marking this as a stiff-necked masquerade, while busboys swiftly balance platters of wine flutes through the crowds of privileged wealth.

 There's a flashcard-sized piece of paper in your hand with simple, typewritten instructions:  "THE SATURDAY CLUB.  Business initiative.  Wetworks.  Go to the FURNACE ROOM."

Assuming you accept your mission, you're in for a brilliantly-paced 20 minutes-or-so rendering of a contract killer's 9 to 5.  There's more than just a hint of Portal in how the game directs you across the levels and in how it congratulates you for a job well done.  All of which is an entirely welcome homage.

Download Gravity Bone from Blendo Games.

It's not always easy to stretch out our legs as gamers.  I'll raise my hand on that one.  I'm guilty.  In the past year there was more than one game I picked up that was suffixed with a Roman (or Arabic) numeral II, III, or IV.  But, in contrast to the times where it can be hard to stretch our legs, at times it's even harder to sit.  And be still.  Criminally few games bestow you with that simple pleasure.  There have been many times with many games that I've marveled at screenshots, or paused a pixelated video, all in the name of soaking in more details than could ever be possible caught midswing in whatever momentous direction I'm barreling towards, whatever endorphin-soaked booster shot a game has injected into my backside. 

But The Graveyard isn't that kind of game, if the ever-inadequate term "game" can even be used with a straight face in this instance.  In this case, we can don a polite countence and use the even more nebulous term "experience," were we so inclined.

Developed by the independent Belgian studio Tale of Tales and launched in Spring of last year (I only caught wind of this game when I saw the nominees for the 2009 Independent Games Festival), The Graveyard posits itself as the antithesis to what is conventionally perceived as a videogame.  And as with many things, some of the greatest depths can be plumbed from the simplest premises.  

You're an old woman clad in the vestements of old age, a cane gripped in your left hand to help along the hobble.  You're at the entrance of a graveyard.  And you make your way into the graveyard.  I make no apologies for that, because the brilliance is in the details, and The Graveyard has the ability--if you're of the disposition; perhaps the planets simply aligned for me just right this evening--to make you contemplate the fragility of the human experience.  (I will also, strange as this sounds, recommend that you play the demo through to completion, and then play the full game.  The full game will stir you and capture you unawares in what was seemingly a finite, understood, and unsurprising moment.)

As I traversed the graveyard, the gameworld slowly uncurled its fingers, one detail at a time.  In no particular order, my senses unerringly began to take in the sights and sounds of the graveyard.  Pigeons cooing, followed by a rustle of feathers.  Cicadas buzzing in the monochromatic warmth.  Clouds in relentless pursuit of one another, their shadows in pursuit of them.  The uneven crunch of gravel underfoot.  The distant barking of a dog.  Etched stone versus engraved skin.

I'm not going to give you the pleasure of hearing some caveat that goes "This game isn't for everybody!"  Because, to preempt the question as to whether you are or whether you aren't the type of person this game is meant for, you already know.

New Year's Eve 2008.  My wife Grace and I paid fellow GamingNexus writer Sean Nack and his wife Stephanie an overnight visit.  We brought over Monopoly, but we weren't feeling very cutthroat.  We brought over Balderdash, but weren't feeling definitive.  Nothing at the theater piqued our attention.  And so my mind wandered back over the year, as minds are wont to do when another 365 days have come and gone.  And I'd resolved to pay more attention to indie developers for the upcoming year, 2009--but it didn't feel like it was too early to start.

Jonathan Blow's Braid was a game that I'd continually skipped past.  My Xbox 360 red ringed a week before it hit XBLA.  By the time my 360 came back, Spore hit.  Then Warhammer Online hit.  Then Civilization IV: Colonization hit.  Then Fracture (wince).  Then Dead Space.  Fable II, Far Cry 2, Fallout 3, Need For Speed Undercover (wince again), Prince of Persia...then a revisit to Pirates of the Burning Sea and the new-to-me Europa Universalis III.

And through it all Braid has been taunting me, calling me a spineless, lilly-livered coward for (predominantly) sticking with this holiday season's no-brainers.  Jonathan Blow is a man that, as far as I can tell from photographs and videos, has never smiled in his life; and he wasn't smiling at me now either. So it was time to take my cowardice and crutch myself on Sean Nack and his wife.  One hour before an incredibly slow-moving ball was to drop in Times Square, I convinced everyone to participate in what's been heralded in certain circles as the Most Pretentious Moment in Gaming for 2008:  Braid.  Plus it's been showing up--rather conspicuously--as the media darling on more than one Top 10 of 2008 list.

All four of us took up strategic positions on the couch, and it took all four of our minds put together to make it through the infernally-puzzling Braid.  We played, we laughed, we scoffed, we scolded, we shook our heads in defeat, we threw our heads back in victory, we pumped our fists with elation then alternately wished we could punch Jonathan Blow in the face.  It'd been several years since I'd been on a roller coaster ride, but traversing Braid certainly counted.  And just because we made it through doesn't mean the entire journey made complete sense.  Here's what Braid's aftertaste fet like to Sean and I--this is copied and pasted from a back-and-forth email between the two of us--plus Sean divulges his sentiments on the endings of Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 as well.

* * * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * * *

[And if you haven't played Braid, then none of this will make sense out of context anyway.]

Randy on Braid:

Grace and I were in deep discussion about Braid during the three-hour drive home last night.  We were rather...dismayed by the insistence of it being a metaphor for atomic bomb construction.  We felt the story, in and of itself, was strong.  The character development, the human but individually tragic relationships, the open-ended sense of loss--despite "closure" being achieved, which I felt was never truly achieved--was stellar.

Ultimately, the story is awesome...until one tries to break it down into an overwrought metphor regarding the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer ["the father of the atomic bomb"].  Then?  It fails.  My Dad has given me plenty of advice over the years, but rarely is it eloquent.  He's a practical guy.  But one time he said something that stuck with me ever since.  "Just because no one understands it doesn't make it 'art'."  Besides that shocking-but-true point, Grace and I are fairly literate individuals.  We all have different things that we fixate on, and Grace and I are the type of people that fixate incessantly on plots and subplots, themes, motifs, symbols, texts and subtexts.  We're decently versed in those types of machinations.  (That's not bragging in the least.  There have been plenty of times where I'd trade that fixation for the ability to change the oil in my vehicle.  It'd be far more useful.)  So if Grace and I don't 'get it,' (if anybody doesn't get Braid) that's not a failing on the person playing it.  That's a failing on the part of the creator.  The moment you have to over-explain your wonderful metaphor, that's the moment that it crashes to the ground.

Then Grace hypothesized something.  Something she doesn't fully buy into, even though she threw it out there during the discussion.  I think it works.  She said that Braid isn't just a metaphor about the atomic bomb.  It is, in fact, three storylines braided together.

I gave that some deep thought.  And I like that theory. 

There's the atomic bomb strand of the braid.  Fine.  Slapping us across the freaking face with a direct-pull quote and a footnote makes that one irrefutable [Oppenheimer's famous "Now we are all sons of bitches" quote].  It was crass and heavy-handed, but it's there, so there's no way to ignore that.

But that doesn't discount the rest of the human instrospection on the level of individual relationships either.  Which, in my humble opinion, stand out stronger on their own merits as opposed to veiled references to "The light would be intense and warm at the beginning, but then flicker down to nothing, taking the castle with it." 

I think the other two strands of the braid deal with the relationship with his mother and the relationship with the woman that ultimately got away:  His soulmate (though I'm reticent to use such a loaded term).

This disucssion between Grace and I went on for a few hours, so this is unfairly boiling down some of our conclusions.  But here's another thing to consider, in case Jonathan Blow might fret that Grace and I are a couple of people that just don't 'get it' when it comes to his story:

Once a piece of artwork (as he clearly feels Braid is) is presented to an audience, the artwork is no longer the sole property of the creator.  There are three areas at work:  There is the artwork itself, then there is the viewer, and then there is the space between.  There is a series of mental and emotional negotiations and compromises that take place between the artwork and the viewer.  Once the connection is made somewhere in that clumsy no-man's-land between the two, then that is what becomes the final standing on the work of art (though "final" can be as temporary as subsequent viewings at any later point; art is 100% capable of evolving).  The art, after this compromise, is no longer the same size and shape as when the artist first conceived it.  There's no way for it to remain the same.  Otherwise--if the artwork was a static structure--it would be more of a math proplem, and less of a piece of art.  If Braid was static--if it was an A+B=C math problem with only that singular solution/interpretation--then it would arguably no longer be art.  That explosive middle ground?  That is where the art truly takes form.

That may sound like a bunch of hoity-toity collegiate Art Interpretation 101 garbage to some, but that's how my mind deals with artwork.  Art is like those particular variety of fruit seeds that have to pass through an animal's digestive system before it can germinate.  Now, in this overbaked metaphor, Braid is the fruit, I am the fruit-consuming animal, and the germinated seed that I poop out is the final manifestation of Braid.  Jonathan Blow?  He was the tree.  He spawned the fruit, but the fruit would only fall to the ground and die without an audience/animal/Randy-Grace-Sean-Stephanie [Sean's wife] to come along, eat it, and poop it out again.

But you know what?  When all's said and done, if I were of a mind to make a Top 10 of 2008 list, then Braid would unquestionably be on that list.  Just because I didn't fully accept some of the conventions Jonathan Blow assembled doesn't mean it wasn't one of the most enjoyably complex tests of mental endurance I'd engaged in this past year.  Braid is brilliant.  The mindful debate that Sean and I put forth shouldn't diminish that in the least.  It was simply time for the dialog on this game to open up.

Sean on Braid:

For me, the bomb thing is fine, it's the specifically Oppenheimer focus of the theory I read that I have trouble with. I'd prefer to think that Tim [Braid's protagonist] is representative of humanity's quest for power, the Princess being the power, the candy store being temptation ("it from bit and ethical calculus"), and the mother being kind of nature or our innate humanity. Something like that. 

I like that Mr. Blow thinks that games should be art, but I think that he's going in an obscure direction that I don't necessarily think fits the medium. Braid works really well as a sort of poetry (kind of...intimately distant, making you feel emotions but at the same time you're not very sure why or more accurately where they're coming from, your motivations are so aloof), and while that's cool, the story is extremely disconnected from the gameplay. It's fantastic as a kind of love letter to a bygone, 2D platforming era, but on top of that already fun concept is foisted this extremely pretentious nuclear cautionary tale? It would've made more sense to me to make it, I don't know, a little J. Robert Oppenheimer in a lab coat and glasses hopping over Nazis and atomic particles, you know what I mean? Significantly less subtle, but significantly more sensical.

Aside from Braid being merely disjointed, I think that games have a great potential as more of an experiential art medium, like a play or a movie you participate in. The problem with that is that in a lot of cases, in order to have great drama, a game's story requires you to make certain decisions. Not a perfect example because it wouldn't be that great of a game, but imagine a Schindler's List game; if the choices were all completely free, the player could choose not to save the Jews, but then where would the story go? Manufacturing sim? Another great example is something I've been dying to discuss with you: the ending of Far Cry 2.

As you already turned it in, I assume you won't finish it off, so I'll tell you: the Jackal ends up being a guy who's actually trying to stop the war because he's become so disgusted with himself and what he perpetuates, so at the end you can either detonate a bomb to block off a canyon and save the locals from the pursuing warlords that requires your death, or you can have the jackal do that (and die in the process) and you can escort said locals to the border with a bribe, pay off the other nation's guards, and then kill yourself because "you're part of this cancer." Either way you decide you die, and it has somewhat of an emotional impact, but it would've been higher maybe if you felt more about either character, for which I would place the blame on the cracked-out-fast voice acting; good stuff's there, it just goes by so fast (and is so difficult to find; why put the best parts of the story on tapes scattered in random places that you'll very rarely find by any other method than luck?) that it's hard to absorb. It ultimately feels inevitable, but the game's ending is scripted while allowing you free choice in a tactical-gameplay aspect, which is a great experience even if it gives you a total downer ending.

The ending for that one and Fallout 3 are very similar, in that it requires you to either do something that kills you or have another person do it; me, being the Wastland Savior that I am, did it myself, and while it had an emotional impact it was stunted somewhat by the "I can't play this character in the world anymore" sadness. That's fine and it was an in-character decision, but you know, I also have a radiation-immune supermutant right there that I could've sent in; they sacrificed some storytelling common sense for the sake of a heroic ending, which is ok, but for a game that's all about my behavior and what I choose to do, the choices at the end are a little limited. I could go on and on about good versus bad endings, but my point is that this medium is capable of inherently involving choice to a degree that others are not capable of, even if at this point we're somewhat hampered by the fact that it has to...go in a direction, it has to end.

Games all have a story, and this is a story that someone is telling, so even with options you still end up at choice A, B, or C. But i think...fantastical endings are great, but why not have a situation where...I'll use this scenario from the upcoming Heavy Rain as an example (though I'm adding in my own options): you're trapped in a house with a serial killer, and your options are A) jump out the window and run away, him never knowing you were there and he shows up later in the game oblivious to your investigation, B) you hit him and run out, but now he's more weary and harder to catch, or C) kill him and move on to another villain who may behave differently because you now have this reputation. Each one of these actions could have far-ranging consequences about how you and the killer would behave inside the game, have wildly different experiences based on any of these choices (if you hit him and run out, maybe he figures out who you are and he's more of an important villain than he would've been if you had just escaped, or if you killed him the police are suspicious of you and make it harder to perform your investigations), even though the ending would be the same. Games should have crazy reveals inside the narrative, be first and foremost about the journey, not the destination. All throughout Braid we were sitting there saying "wtf?", and at the end we were left saying "WTF?"

If games were novels, I'd prefer they be either fantastically scripted epics, like Call of Duty 4 or Half-Life, or Choose Your Own Adventure books, to a degree that the Fables and Fallouts are just starting to approach, but are still very distant from; heading towards a conclusion, certainly, but a conclusion that is a result of the choices you make. Games are unequivocally art, but Braid? Braid is Salvador Dali; Fantastic, surreal, provocative, but ultimately bizarre and somewhat unfulfilling, even if you can't look away.

* * * * *

[ADDENDUM FROM RANDY:  After poring over the script further, Grace, my frighteningly insightful wife, devised an even more plausible theory:  Braid is made up of not just three but six different strands (correlating with each of the levels/worlds)--not necessarily interlaced with one another--that play out more like the movie Groundhog Day. Tim was capable of fully rewinding time, and he did so on six separate occasions, each time with six relatively different starting points, and six different conclusions, despite his general goal remaining static.  The Oppenheimer connection?  That's a seventh braid introduced very late in the game.  That's why it's so discordant with the other worlds' streams of thought.  But this particular theory would require yet another very lengthy blog...]

Over at Gamers With Jobs (an intelligent and articulate group of guys, but thankfully never all-knowing), co-founder Sean "Elysium" Sands is commencing a "Horizons Broadening Project - 2009."  Once a month he'll be going out of his way to play a videogame genre that he wouldn't normally.  Hey, you can't like everything in the first place, so I certainly don't judge.  Sean picked out Birth of America II for his project in January; it's one of those games where "deep" is an obvious understatement when it comes to descriptors for the level of strategy-building involved.  He'll play for a month and then do a write-up. I'm not nearly so committed, but I'll humor the idea for now.

To follow suit with the "deep" strategy genre, one that I've never dipped my toe into (sorry, Sid Meier, your games are so easy they play themselves after a while) I picked up Europa Universalis III - Complete.  The original is about a year old, but the Complete version comes with the In Nomine and Napoleon's Ambition expansion packs. This game is no joke.  Even the tutorials--which are so vague that they have the gall to provide "hints"--assumes I've already had four cups of coffee and roll with an IQ of 120 or greater.

Deep breath, Randy.  You can do this. 

I've only had time to dabble for a few moments in the full-length singleplayer campaign, so I hopped around a few times just to get a feel for my options.  The results were less than flattering...

As England

Without Cassus Belli (justification for an act of war), my allies in Portugal were disgusted with my decision to invade Ireland, even though my advisers were whispering into my ear that Ireland was incapable of ruling itself, and so it was my duty (divine right) as England's ruler to bring it under the Crown.  I sieged one of Ireland's southeastern townships, and after 427 days of pounding on their walls, that city fell to my cannons--or actually, fell to eventual starvation and disease.  But not before France sent an emmisary with a warning for me to cease and desist--which I didn't--so France handed me my hat and kicked me out of my satellite colony in Southern France.  Confused by this turn of events (and since I haven't gotten all the rules down yet), the Irish city I waylaid sued for peace and bought their town back for 45 ducats, a paltry sum.  Plus, my people would've been feeling the initial effects of war fatigue, but I'd hired Geoffrey Chaucer to be one of my righthand men, and his literary skill--sheesh, he was something of a national treasure--must've been like bread & circuses for the unwashed masses.

As Maya

Another time, I ruled the Mayan empire in Central America's Yucatan Peninsula for a few rounds.  I managed to marry off a daughter to the Mixtec people's of Central Mexico, and ally myself with the Aztecs of Northern.  Then I sat stagnant, unsure of how to advance my nation's economic and technological bars.  With nothing more than 1,000 troops at my disposal and a daughter married off to a powerful rival, I retired early and, due to my inactivity, was declared a "mad" ruler.

As Spain

Before that, I took control of the Spanish crown, and quickly declared it a heresy to speak out in any way, shape, or form against God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Scriptures.  My advisers thought this was a brilliant move, then told me to erradicate every trace of non-Christianity from the Iberian Peninsula (modern day Spain).  I marched thousands of troops south to face a city full of Moors.  Those Sunnis up from Africa soundly curb-stomped my face into the Rock of Gibraltar.

This game is nuts.  I've cracked open maybe 5% of my options as a national leader.  The learning curve on it is more like a learning Mt. Fuji.  If that makes sense.  I'm excited to grow more--even if the game insists I learn through its school of hard knocks.

Give yourself that same hour to acclimate to the Prince’s controls.  I came for the artwork, but I’m staying for the momentum.  Altair in Assassin’s Creed is not 100-percent comparable to the Prince after you’ve taken him through some trial and error.  Ubisoft Montreal often equated Altair’s movements to that of a car:  You held down a trigger and “steered” through the environments.  That equation seems fair enough, but I’d offer that Altair’s “car” was an automatic – while the Prince’s vehicle is a stick shift.  In Prince of Persia, deft but patient thumb presses are required to navigate.  And though his initial steps in any direction feel like they’re in quicksand, the Prince dutifully leaps, wall-runs, ceiling-runs, slides, climbs, and shimmies at a formidable pace.

It feels fantastic when you’re dialed in, using Elika’s magic to enhance your jump across a cavern, then digging your claw into the cliffside to slow your descent, springing towards the opposite wall and coming to a two-point landing on a sand-dusted platform.  It also feels fantastic when you wall-run along a chasm lost in darkness, grip a wall-ring to extend your wall-run further, skitter across a patch of ivy to reach some horizontal wood railing, then run along the ceiling to a nearby vertical post.

But strangely enough, as fantastic as those moments are the first time through, they get even better on a repeat run.  This time, armed with the slightest bit of foreknowledge as to what obstacles approach, the parkour gets tighter, your movements more calculated, and Elika comes to your rescue far less often.

I was, admittedly, quite intimidated before I picked up Prince of Persia today.  I went into it knowing that I may very well not possess the hand-eye coordination to make this a valuable purchase for me.  And after playing the demo of – and being severely discouraged by – the fall-and-fall-again Mirror’s Edge, I thought that the Prince was also here to kick ass and chew bubble gum.  Thankfully, the Prince didn’t run out of bubble gum.

With frequent breaths to take between acrobatics, there’s also plenty of time and space between sword fights.  They operate on a set of timed combos; and while I’m too lazy to learn the myriad combos already available to me (Normal combos, Elika combos, Lift combos, Acrobatic combos, Throw combos and Aerial combos) the early stages patiently taught me one or two that have served me well in the one-on-one combat.  I can get lazy quickly when that many combos are at my disposal – there’s something to be said for Fable 2’s one-button combat, to be sure – but the fights are so beautifully animated that I’m starting to sneak peeks at that combo list again, hoping one or two more will sink in.

The only moment of confusion I had was in the open-world but not-quite-open-world map.  Paths spoke out in four directions from a central hub, and given the advice to essentially “go wherever you want to go” I went entirely too far in one direction right off the bat.  Prince of Persia wanted me to taste each direction, get a little bit of each level’s spice on the tip of my tongue:  Not charge whole-hog in one direction with a completist attitude driving my compass.  I wanted to sweep the map from one end to the other, west to east, no fog of war left defogged.  But that strategy won't work.  And Elika, along with her little magical “follow me!” comet that leads the way (when asked) to objectives, won’t automatically turn you around.  I was simply told “pick another destination” on the branching map, when in fact only 4 of the 24 other destinations were honestly viable.

But the journey is still young, and though there are imminent fast-travel options back to already-visited locations, I’m enjoying the journey as much as the destination.  Clearing the land of a black corruption unleashed by a dark god – since the good god is pretty much on vacation– makes for thirsty work with plenty of free-running left to do.  And when it comes to companionship, even though I can’t play a Fable 2 game of fetch with Elika (or emote with her in any other way), it’s great to be splitting the mileage along with a driving partner.

Do you hear what I hear?  That's the sound of my Xbox 360 no longer hitting Boeing jet decibels when Fable II is spinning in the tray.

Thanks to the crispy fresh NXE (New Xbox Experience), I download Peter Molyneux's ear-bleedingly-loud-in-the-tray role-playing game from the disc and onto the hard drive.  It took a grand total of 12 minutes.  And, let me be frank for just a moment, there's absolutely nothing else I did for 12 minutes this week that gave me the warm-fuzzy feeling that I'm feeling right now with Fable II.  In Fable II, if you're still running it from the disc, you don't have to do anything more than stand around an uneventful town square and you'll have to engage your 5.1 speakers at 80% just to hear what the in-game town crier is shouting right next to you.  But now?  The gravel-churning sound from my 360 has ceased.  Calmed itself.  Found peace and understanding with itself.

And it has graciously granted me a slice of that same peace.

But then with Grace, my wife, nestling next to me on the couch -- though she doesn't know why I'm dragging her in front of the 360 -- I open up the Avatar Customization screen.  The bright NXE spectrum splashes against the backdrop and I gingerly hand the controller to Grace.  "Okay," I say, no hubris in my tone, "it's time to make me!"

With very little hesitation in her movement, Grace makes a slightly-below-medium height fellow with caramel-colored skin, hair black and slightly slicked back, then skillfully fits him into a pair of Timbalands, dark jeans, and a straight-lined jacket.  Not bad, I say.  Not bad at all. 

I grow distressed, however, when she keeps trying to adjust my avatar's chubby factor.  "Is that all the further it goes to the right?"  She looks at my stomach, looks at the avatar, looks at my stomach again.  "Hm," she says.  "Maybe you'll be that skinny again.  Someday." 

She then promptly puts a wedding ring on my avatar's finger and then heads for the Facial Features screen.  She flips around the options, chuckling at a few, and settles on dropping a scar over my avatar's right eye. 

"Hey?" I say. 

"Hey," she stops me.  "Do you want to be you, or do you actually want to be interesting?"

I have to admit that the rules (or at least the procedural flow) isn't being made explicit.  

Two new tanks are rolling out to the field of battle in Warhammer Online during a two-week long Heavy Metal event that began yesterday.  The Empire Knights of the Blazing Sun are the veritable poster children for WAR, while the Dark Elf Black Guards have enough spikes on their armor to serve shishkabab at a Chaos warhost high school reunion.  But to be fair, both look downright gaudy in their peacock-plumage of overlapping metal plates, curvy spikes, and thickened feathers.

But how you get your hands on one of these bad boys, exactly -- that's what's not being made explicit.  The press release simply instructs people to "successfully complete the quests associated with the Heavy Metal event" to be given week-early access to the two new classes.  Well, after logging in this evening, I found no further instructions on how to unlock this new class.  I'll admit, I'm still having too much fun setting the roof on fire with my Bright Wizard, Pitchfork, but that doesn't mean I don't want a peek at these two guys that are crashing the party in such a high-profile manner.

Trashing enemy players at the Reikland Factory -- a new realm vs. realm scenario opened up especially for this Heavy Metal event -- is the only breadcrumb I've stumbled across.  And after playing through Reikland Factory a few times with Pitchfork (scoring 3rd, 4th, and 7th in number of kills -- not bad for being 5th level when 10th level players are on the field, and doubly not bad when there's 36 -- 18 vs. 18 -- people duking it out), I'm still feeling no closer to completing the "quests associated with the Heavy Metal event." 

I'll keep eyes and ears (not to mention a few scalps) peeled. 

EDIT:  A-ha.  I guess when it comes to the Warhammer Online site, I'm not so much with the reading.  Here's what I've found to answer my own question:

"When the Heavy Metal live event begins on November 18th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we'll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you'd earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR's new classes a full week before they're released to the public! This last reward won't be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event."

Very well then.  Question answered.  Crisis averted.

War?  War is everywhere.

All this talk about Wrath of the Lich King made me pine for some good ol' massively-multiplayer online action.  So I picked up Warhammer Online.  I ain't got time to level to 70 in World of Warcraft in order to enjoy the new expansion, and I'm digging my fingernails into my skin -- itching for something fresh.  And all I can manage to disclose from my first infantile steps into the world WAR is that -- wow -- this bad boy is deep.

I went into the character creation screen blindfolded.  I haven't read a novel, haven't watched a trailer, and haven't rolled a single die in the name of Games Workshop's tabletop-to-online role-playing game.  But the introductory video had me at "Hello! Who's that crazy Johnny Blaze dude breathing fire on everyone?!"  So it was love (and immolation) at first sight.  They're called Bright Wizards, eh?  I like the play on words, because I bet they're really smart, too.

I prepare to step for the first time into the Age of Reckoning.  I reckon that I've already got the torches, so I name him "Pitchfork" and get ready to riot.  And even though Pitchfork the Incredibly Smart and Bright Wizard is on the side of Order (vs. Chaos), I bet there's some disorderly conduct I can throw at an enemy that's just dying for some crispy critter time. 

Now everything looks all jim dandy from a high-fantasy perspective, but I hear explosions slamming into the hillsides the second I appear in the gameworld.  The Chaos warhost has arrived pretty much just now and the small hamlet I spawned into is getting pummelled with zipping cannonfire.  I'm pretty sure I can hear the debris raining down where I stand as well.

So while I'm much more naturally an explorer and one who takes their time jaunting through the countryside at a leisurely Hobbit's pace, I'm suddenly feeling like, y'know, I might be in the middle of a serious conflict here.  The starting missions aren't neccessarily any more complex in nature than any other MMO, but they feel unmistakably relevant to the war effort.  I'm saving people from burning cottages.  I'm rallying farmers that have long since turned their swords into plowshares.  I'm stiffening the weak spines of militia members that are suddenly taking on tougher baddies than the town drunk.

I've shown up on a front line that doesn't even fully realize the breadth and depth of the enemy forces on its doorstep.  My actions feel like they are making a difference in the war effort; and making a difference is typically a farce that MMO players are used to swallowing.  But I'll be darned if WAR didn't take the battlefield mentality of Tabula Rasa and make it even more integral to the gameplay from the get-go.  No time to admire that vista of the windmill, or the lakeside, or the pine-scented trees, laddy.  Because war?  Apparently it's everywhere.