Going on hiatus through September -- there's nothing good out for me to review right now.

I Played This Game for Five Minutes: In Lieu of a Review Edition

Ico (PlayStation 2)

Between the unintuitive controls and obtuse puzzles, there’s no wonder this became a cult classic.

Spider-man 3 (Xbox 360)

It’s never a good sign when your game crashes while trying to load the title screen.

skate. (Xbox 360)

Just like real skating, the point is to gain corporate endorsements and go professional. Trademark issues prevented the original title from being used: Tony Hawk Simulator 1.000.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved^2 (Xbox Live Arcade)

I imagine this is what being on LSD is like. Warning: May induce epileptic seizures.

1942: Joint Strike (Xbox Live Arcade)

Yet another in the series of endless remakes of old arcade games. To quote Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily follow that we should do that thing.

Star Trek: Legacy (Xbox 360)

There is a long legacy, that’s for sure: Star Trek games that look good on paper, but turn out, well, not so much. In this game, you chase down some Vulcan scientist, T’Uerell (seriously, that’s how it’s spelled), who is trying to take control of the Borg for some damn reason. In a neat little twist, the game progresses from the Enterprise era to the Next Generation era, including voice acting from all five Star Trek captains. The bad thing is they spend an entire third of the game on Enterprise. Who the hell cares about Enterprise that much?

The one good thing about this game is the graphics. They’re quite pretty. Everything else about the game is mediocre to bad. It’s ridiculous that the single-player campaign mode is only 15 missions long, which you can complete in probably a few hours. They consist of at least one of these two things: a. combat, or b. performing some dull tasks like scanning ships or destroying asteroids. There’s multiplayer, but it just amounts to “fight until one side loses”. The controls are… okay, aside from sometimes having ships in your fleet just sit around and do nothing.

Seriously, though, this game does look good. It’s a shame that they didn’t think to build a better game around the graphics. If you’re a Trekkie, you’ll probably want to play it just for the nerdgasm factor, but that’s about it.

2 out of 5

Alone in the Dark (Xbox 360)

Alone in the Dark is another in the series of survival horror games dating back to the early 90s on the PC. Edward Carnby is the protagonist, and he’s really ugly. But that’s okay, because the game is so damn dark you won’t be able to see him, or much of anything else, for that matter.

This game is buh-roh-ken. The controls are quite possibly the most unintuitive controls ever in the history of video games. Even something as simple as picking something up and putting it down requires separate buttons. Combat generally involves moving the right thumbstick around wildly hoping you actually do something right. And then there’s the inventory screen, in which moving the left thumbstick only vaguely corresponds to what you intend to select onscreen. It would help if the onscreen tutorials weren’t so hard to see that you can’t tell what button you’re supposed to press. Often, picking up an item means you unequip whatever you’re holding, so you have to dig out your flashlight for the hundredth time.

Using the gun isn’t too bad, but it’s kind of pointless since the enemies are hardly affected by bullets. I think I unloaded about a dozen shots into one monster before he dropped to the floor. For about ten seconds. See, you have to burn enemies to kill kill them, which generally means grabbing a flammable object, lighting it on fire (incidentally, the fire effects in the game are nice, one of the few good things about it), then chasing them down until you can touch them with it. Exciting! This all makes moving Jill Valentine around in Resident Evil seem like a ballet in comparison. And the much-vaunted MacGuyver method of cobbling together weapons never actually took off, because by the time I gave up on the game, I still hadn’t collected enough items to make anything.

The one thing I like about this game is the presentation: it’s set up like a DVD (the game has eight chapters, akin to TV episodes, even beginning with a “Previously On Alone in the Dark” recap), so you can skip ahead if you want. I find that an incredibly clever idea and I wonder why nobody else ever thought of it first. The only problem with this is, if the game is so bad you have to skip forward to continue playing, why play it in the first place?

1 out of 5

Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)

One of the massively-hyped games of 2007, Assassin’s Creed is a stealth game in which you play a Crusade-era assassin named Altair who has to go assassinate a bunch of Knights Templar. This is framed around a futuristic storyline in which some guy named Desmond, who is apparently a descendant of Altair, is being put through some sciencey bullshit (see, he has Star Trek DNA that does things real DNA doesn’t, like retain memories) to remember the location of some mystical object of power so that the evil corporation can take over the world or something like that. I don’t know, all you need to know is that the scientist’s assistant is voiced by Kristin Bell. Yes, Veronica Mars herself in a video game! What more do you need to know?

Okay, well, the actual assassinations take place in the Middle East cities of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus. Which, despite being in different countries now, are all located a short horse ride away. Just take the expressway, but watch out for the cops, they’re real jerks about the speed limit. Regardless, the cities are rendered absolutely wonderfully, and are just stunning to see.

Now, I’ll admit that the gameplay is repetitive. You do pretty much the same thing for all nine assassinations: climb towers to expand the map, help citizens in distress, collect flags or perform kills for hapless assassins, and interrogate local blowhards, in order to get enough information to make each kill. But, I don’t know, I liked it. The controls are tight – most of the time. Combat can veer between sheer awesomeness and sheer frustration, especially at the beginning. But running and jumping around on the rooftops is completely effortless and fun.

Aside from the repetition, there’s also not much replay value in this game. There was a lot of bullshit about how you can do the assassinations multiple ways, and that may be true, but I can’t say I’ve felt the need to try that out. Also, the ending is about the most abrupt ending ever made in a game since the days of “CONGRATURATION!” It couldn’t scream “We’re making a sequel!!!” any more if it had a megaphone. Despite these flaws, I think Assassin’s Creed is a good game, and is not deserving of the scorn it receives (outside of the mainstream game press). Doesn't mean that the mainstream game press is right about it being great, though.

3 out of 5