Also over the numerous sales of Thanksgiving, I picked up Spec Ops: The Line for the PC. I have been interested in playing the story of the game and was waiting for the right price to get it. A short 5 hours later and I complete Captain Walker's journey in to the heart of darkness.

The shooting is functional, but unremarkable. That sentiment goes for most of the game, though a Dubai covered in sand makes for some pretty visuals. The main draw is the story which cobbles together nearly all of the "War is hell" stories you can think of. Playing through such a story is interesting as you slowly watch your special forces soldiers go from professional killers to savage murderers. The ending act of game becomes surprisingly trippy.

Of all the games with guns that I've played, this one had the most interesting story. I'm still not sure how to feel about it; the ending first struck me as the game trying too hard. Days after, I can't imagine the ending being anything else. I'm eager to play through the story again to solidify my feelings.

I got Max Payne 3 for the PC over the Steam Autumn Sale. It took a long time to download the 30 GB install, but I was glad to see run fine on my desktop computer. I completed the story in around 14 hours which is quite a bit longer than other single player stories revolving around firearms.

Max Payne to me has always been about bullet time and shoot dodging. Sadly, Max has lower health in Max Payne 3. This combined with the new (and sometimes buggy) cover mechanic and overwhelming enemy encounters mean it is far more effective to play the cover-based shooter whack-a-mole while occasionally using bullet time. To be fair Max wasn't significantly more resilient in Max Payne 1 & 2, but I wanted to be diving through the air with guns blazing more often than I did in Max Payne 3. That gripe aside, bullet time is still cool and it is wonderful to see it rendered beautifully.

The accompanying soundtrack is as excellent as the visuals. It sets the perfect atmosphere of San Paulo's criminal underworld where the air is hot and the flying lead is hotter. Also, I really like how the numerous video cuts cenes are used during loading of the next level. The seamless transitions made for a smooth playing experience that other games don't bother with.

I don't know if there should be another story for Max Payne. The character has gone through so much and killed an astounding number of people (in Max Payne 3 alone, my kill count is in the thousands). Max deserves a rest. Though, I wouldn't mind a remake of Max Payne 1 & 2 a few years down the line.

I cleared the story of Prototype 2 (PC) in around 19 hours. Right after, I revisited Prototype (1) on the PC and completed the story in about 20 hours. The reason why I played those two games back to back is to confirm my disappointments with Prototype 2.

First off, Prototype 2 performed extremely poorly on my PC. Apparently there's a memory leak issue that was and never will be patched. Some will find the performance I got to be unplayable, but I tolerated it. It's a shame that it did not run well on my PC because Prototype 2 is such a prettier game than Prototype 1.

As for the meat of the games, Prototype 2 is very similar to Prototype 1 except for a few changes here and there. The two active power set up makes for interesting combinations at the cost of some depth in attack moves. Stealth consuming is much easier and fluid compared to Prototype 1. A block power replaces Prototype 1's shield power, armor power, artillery strike, and patsy ability.

As opposed to Prototype 1's single big open level of New York, Prototype 2 has three separate zones. This along with how powers are acquired results in a loss of open world freedom and craziness that provided funny moments in Prototype 1. The side missions to get new powers in Prototype 2 are more substantial than grinding skill points in Prototype 1, but I miss the hives and bases being scattered around the map.

Performance issues aside, Prototype 2 addresses some of the annoyances of Prototype 1 (e.g. rocket spam). However, what was also changed are mechanics, systems, and objects that gave Prototype 1 entertaining randomness when the player is freely roaming the open world.

Although Fortune Street (Wii) has recorded that I played 50 hours to see the credits, that is a lie. In truth, I used the game's auto-play function called "Out To Lunch" mode in order to complete the single-player portion of the game and unlock all the characters and boards. I'm thankful for the auto-play feature as playing the game by yourself is boring.

With people, the game becomes an enjoyable, more complex Monopoly-like board game. The stock market makes it extremely important to own a set of property and investing capital in them. However, you can also own stock to a district and wait for other players to invest capital. There are also space where you can build special spaces that have a various effects. The two of note are a checkpoint that takes money for passing it and a tax office that takes 10% of an opposing player's net worth. As with any good board game, there are a lot of ways for a player to get screwed.

Locking content in a dull single-player mode, slow pacing and an inconsistent frame rate detract from the game. Despite that, Fortune Street is a unique and fun video-game spin on the Monopoly formula.

After much waiting, I have got my hands on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for the PC. I got the Digital Deluxe version that comes with The Da Vinci Disappearance DLC. It took me about 51 hours to finish the game with a 90% sync rate.

Assassin's Creed 2 was a delightful game and I was curious where Brotherhood would go. Brotherhood refines the systems and mechanics of the previous game while adding some new gadgets and tools. The most significant addition is the assassins' guild system where Ezio recruits and trains people to become assassins. Once Ezio has enough assassins trained, he can call on them to kill targets, help in a fight, or rain down crossbow bolts. It is a pleasure to see rooftop archers taken out by Ezio's brotherhood, though it does make an easy game easier. The low difficulty is offset some what by the Full Synchronization additional objectives in story sequences that challenge the player to play in a different style.

The big open world of Rome is beautiful and the accompanying soundtrack is excellent. My PC was able to maintain adequate performance during my play through of the game.

The story isn't as great as in Assassin's Creed 2, but it has some nice moments. The Desmond segments continue to underwhelm me but still leave me curious for more.

About 11 hours of mashing the B button and bursting later and I finish Asura's Wrath and all its downloadable content on the Xbox 360. I hate it when quick time events interrupt the action in video games, but they are the star attraction of Asura's Wrath. CyberConnect 2 has crafted a game that is an exception to a mechanic I hate. Along the way, they have crafted a fantastic interactive cartoon that delivers some of the best explosions and punching this year.

The non-QTE interactions of the game are very simple. There are shooting stages reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon that have you spamming regular shots and lock-on attacks. The beat'em up sections lack a variety of moves and eventually revolve around recognizing patterns and tells to open an opportunity for a contextual special attack. These special attacks build the rage meter, a meter that replaces a boss' health, much more quickly. Filling the rage meter will activate Asura's burst which advances the game in to the next quick time event.

Those quick time events are glorious pieces of action. The sense of scale in Asura's Wrath makes the demigod battles incredibly believable. While in truth you are mashing the B button to advance to the next cut scene or quick time event, what you are seeing can be so ridiculously awesome that you get caught up in the events on the screen. There are painful moments such as when you fail a circular motion analog stick input, but that doesn't matter when you are punching an enemy the size of a moon.

Asura's Wrath uses the Unreal 3 engine to great effect. All of the grand action is handled in the engine. The colorful characters and environments portray an interesting and bizarre world of gods and monsters. The music gives the drama appropriate melodies and the sound effects are suitably punchy.

Of special note is the DLC for the game which includes one titled "Part IV: Nirvana" that provides the true ending for Asura's Wrath. It is a little disgusting that the ending has been separated from the base game. However, the DLC has the game's most ridiculous and insane moments that makes up for the extra fee. As much as I enjoyed playing Asura's Wrath, it is still a video game about inputting button prompts to advance to the next cut scene. I paid a discounted price for the game and feel that I got my money's worth. BURST!

After about 32 hours of martial arts, high speed chases, bullets and explosions, I reach the end of Sleeping Dogs (PC). I have been anticipating United Front Games' open-world action game since it was announced as True Crime: Hong Kong and it has not disappointed me.

The setting of Hong Kong is used to great effect as a fresh and foreign environment. United Front Games has captured the density and visual overload of Hong Kong well. Almost too well as my frame rate takes a hit when I speed down streets that are dense with neon sights, traffic, and pedestrians. I don't mind it too much as the sights and sounds of the virtual Hong Kong are a pleasure to take in. In a nice and authentic touch, there is plenty of Cantonese chatter as well as Cantonese and Mandarin radio stations. The left-oriented traffic completes the package of immersing you in a virtual Hong Kong.

The martial arts combat of the game is reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum with much of it revolving around a strike button and a counter button. Unique to Sleeping Dogs is a grapple button that is used for some gruesome environmental kills. The fighting is fast, snappy, and satisfying. The combat is usually easy, but some encounters and enemy types can be a surprisingly damaging. The firearms combat is competent and functional. A unique aspect is vaulting over cover and aiming to activate slow motion that can be extended with enemy kills. This creates awesome moments of clearing entire rooms of enemies in slow motion with a single gun magazine. However, it also creates weird and reckless moments of seeking the particular cover points that you can vault over. The game also has free running and vehicles that control nicely. The free running has a timing aspect so it is not a mindless exercise of holding the sprint button and going forward. The vehicles come with physics-defying directional ramming and action hijacking that look goofy yet are fun to pull off.

The story of an undercover cop infiltrating the powerful triads is carried out with the fine competency that exists in the rest of the game. It doesn't have anything overwhelmingly awesome, but it is a well done and fun story. A nice touch that I've noticed is that the vehicle radio is sometimes scripted to tune to specific songs for the story missions.

I hoped for this game to come out as I love the setting of Hong Kong. I'm glad and grateful that Sleeping Dogs has been released and has turned out to be a great action game. Kudos to Square Enix and United Front Games; I'm looking forward to their next game.

61 hours and 5 minutes, a status ailment mistake, and software lock up later and I have seen the end of Lost Odyssey (X360). Mistwalker's JRPG is most certainly a JRPG in the style of those on the SNES and Playstation. This four disc epic is full of load screens and deliberate pacing that sometimes makes it a chore to play. It is worth to bear as there are some touching story moments.

An early example of the game's faults and triumphs is a funeral. The game made a mini-game out of a funeral. Preceding this mini-game is a boring collection quests that is just busy work. The funeral mini-game seems silly at first, but then you have the mourners coming up one by one expressing their condolences. When the final farewells have passed, what seemed like a silly thing at first becomes something that is emotionally moving. However, it doesn't excuse the beginning busy work of collecting flowers and branches.

The emotional moments continue to thrive, not in the game's main story but in "A Thousand Years of Dreams." The game's short story segments unlock as you happen on specific NPC or environment triggers. The text is accompanied by some animation, sound, and music. It is odd to read large blocks of text on a television screen, but the game makes up for it with nice writing that may cause a few tears to fall.

As for the game's main story, battle system, environment, etc., they work well and have their moments. The story never reaches the heights of emotions that are found in "A Thousand Years of Dreams." The battle system is standard turn-based fare that is amusing with its ability to stack various immunities and damage absorbs.

While the stand out for this game is the decidedly non-game "A Thousand Year of Dreams" short stories, it is still a solid & enjoyable JRPG. However, this style of game has shown its age and I don't think I can bear to play something with this style and pacing again.

A massive alien invasion in New York City? No problem, let me stay cloaked for 13 hours in the latest Nanosuit and I'll get rid of it.

Crysis 2 (PC) is a very pretty and colorful game. I know that is the point of its existence, but it still surprised me how nice it looked on my computer. As for the actual game of the video game, I spent most of game cloaking, hiding and killing minimally. That's how I played through Crysis and Crysis: Warhead, and that style of play carries on in to Crysis 2.

The change of from an island jungle to a concrete jungle has limited the playable space of the levels in Crysis 2. While there are quite a few options to flank (as the game will blatantly point out to you in the suit visor), it feels that there are far less possibilities in carrying out the mission. Perhaps that is a good thing considering how unwieldy mission areas in Crysis can be, but I miss the more open spaces of the Lingshan Islands.

The simplified suit powers are a disappointment. As impractical as the strength and speed setting were in Crysis 1, the gradation of abilities they offered were interesting. Crysis 2 combines strength and speed in to power in a manner that limits what could be done before. In Crysis, maximum strength throws took a modest chunk of power and maximum speed sprints felt super human. In Crysis 2, power throws and kicks empty the suit energy and the power sprint feels like any other sprint in a first person shooter game.

The last boss in Crysis and Crysis: Warhead were impressive and gigantic alien mechanical beasts. The final encounter of Crysis 2 is a squad of cloaked enemies (this was a mid-story encounter in Crysis).

While Crysis 2 is a slight disappointment for me, I do like that I ran through the game without any scripting errors or performance issues. I still had fun and am curious about Crysis 3.

And at the 35 hour mark, the three-phase final boss of The Last Story (Wii) goes down! However, the game wasn't finished yet as the epilogue contains multiple chapters that had me waiting until the 38 hour mark to see the credits. Adding to these time shenanigans, checking in with the Nintendo channel reveals a count of 41 hours. I did not know I spent so much time idling on the title screen, reloading saves, or getting past a point where I got a game over.

The game was good, but it could have been much more.

The combat showed some challenge late in the game but not much. The majority of the battles don't have much depth beyond using Gathering to draw enemy aggression, taking out healers and ranged enemies first, and then mopping up the rest. While the tactical options offered by Gale and diffusing magic circles are quite useful, all too often it is easy enough to whack away at an enemy even if it has a guard up. Boss encounters can be on the other end of the difficulty spectrum where their large health bars and supremely damaging attacks are overcome by the one trick the game wants you to do again and again at that phase of the boss. Finally, even with the Command mode, there aren't enough combat options to consider in a typical battle.

While the battle system has its shortcomings, it is still a great moment to diffuse a fire magic circle to break the guard of the enemy then dispose of them. Mistwalker has the beginning of a great combat system. It just needs to pace the fights to be less hectic, provide more skills and commands, and balance the difficulty better.

The story plays out in the save-the-world manner typical of the genre; there's nothing surprising or offensive. The characters are a fun lot and it's a shame that the game doesn't develop them a bit more than it already does. Because of the lack of development, several character moments in the climax of the game fall flat in varying degrees. The lengthy epilogue helps in providing closure which is very welcome given how the previous chapter twists and turns. Lastly, the narrator is a great example of telling rather than showing.

The sound and music have appropriate slashes and beats. It is a shame that the game couldn't afford to have more orchestration. The visuals and graphics are surprisingly detailed and suffer from frequent slow down (especially in the late game where you can have several characters and effects on the field).

The Last Story is a game I like that I wanted to love. Despite my disappointments with the game, I really enjoy the adventure it offers. Now, onward to upgrading the last of my armor sets and taking a peek at what New Game + offers.