I got one game during the Steam 2012 Summer Sale and that was Saint's Row The Third. I got the franchise pack with all the DLC which was slightly not worth the extra $12. The game took me about 30 or so hours to complete and I did nearly everything. I probably shouldn't have spent so much time doing the side missions. The story missions succeed with their humorous dialogue and scenarios. If the missions weren't so funny, the game's shooting and driving wouldn't have held the game up. What also didn't hold up was the game's framerate. I didn't get the performance I desired even at low settings so that is a disappointment.

While I didn't find the game as amazing as I was lead to believe, I still had a lot of fun with Saint's Row The Third. I'm eager to see what Volition will do next.

Driver: San Francisco (PC) was on sale last week and I couldn't pass on getting it. 19 hours and 13 minutes later, I finish the game with all the 140 cars owned and all of the challenges and activities at least played if not done. The game is not much of a racing game as it is an action game with cars that occasionally has races in it. A lot of the time you'll be chasing down bad guys and ramming them off the road. All the while, you have the powerful ability to shift in to any car on the road (except protected enemy cars) to complete your objective. The shift ability is an enjoyable mechanic that is used to good effect in the game. The most simple example is to shift in to opposing traffic ahead of your target and cause a head-on collision. The shift mechanic gets a glorious power up near the end of the game that exemplifies the goofy fun this game gives the player.

The graphics don't impress at first. The environmental geometry is simple and the textures can be muddy. However, the frame rate maintains a great pace on my desktop PC and this is with streets with a lot of traffic and pedestrians. Once you get a fast car up to speed, weaving in and out of traffic, and passing score of people on the side walk, you can forgive that the game doesn't look good in still shots. The sound effects of the game are adequate, but it is disappointing to go from the wonderful noises of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit to the serviceable effects of Driver: San Francisco. The music has a variety of rock and jazzy tunes that fit the atmosphere of the game.

Lastly, the story deserves praise for using a silly premise to contextualize game mechanics and have it be fun and enjoyable. It seemed a coma-induced "it was all a dream" story used to justify the shift mechanic would end in failure. Instead, the story has enjoyable characters and the right amounts of drama and comedy to provide light entertainment.

I had a lot of fun playing Driver: San Francisco. Open-world games can become boring quickly if there is too much repetition, busy work, or down time. Driver: San Francisco keeps things short, quick, and fun.

Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception (X360) has me pegged at 4 hours and 8 minutes of flight time in my first play through of the game. That doesn't account for time spent outside of playing the campaign missions such as in tutorials, ship load out, weapons development, and extra missions. Including the time not counted by the flight time statistic, Raptr says I spent around 14 hours in my first play through of the game.

Ever since playing the demo, I have been very eager play Project Sylpheed. After playing through the whole game once, I come away with my space combat needs very satisfied. Right from the start of the second mission the game throws you in the battle lines of capital ships by having an allied destroyer blow up right in front of you. The scale and volume of the battles in the game is everything you want out of a war-torn space opera. Sadly, the battles outpace the technology of the game and some missions are suspect to extreme amounts of frame rate slow down. Then again, those times are usually when you are giving a capital ship or a enemy fighter wing multiple missile punches so the slow down can be nice sometimes.

There are a lot of weapons in Project Sylpheed, but the end game devolves in to slinging the 60 lock on Condor missile at fighters and Cauldron rockets at ships. The resupply mechanic is very forgiving and fast so ammunition isn't much of a big problem as it is a temporary annoyance. The story is nothing to write home about, and the last mission is an odd boss fight that I do not understand completely.

There will most likely never be a sequel to Project Sylpheed, so I'm grateful for the missile spam joy the game has given me already.

The time counter at the end of Vanquish (X360) reads 5 hours as my clear time. I don't think the time accounts for menus and restarts which would pad the number to about 7 hours. After hearing much praise for the third-person shooter from Platinum Games, I was very eager to play Vanquish. Two disappointments that are made apparent in the beginning and persist for the entire game is the awfulness of the story and the frequent interruptions by cut scenes. Other than these two negatives, there is absolutely sublime shooting action in Vanquish. The combination of the fast rocket-powered movement and slow-motion special aiming gives the combat a quick yet controllable pace and also looks really cool. While you have the standard weapon assortment of assault rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and machine gun, there are unique weapons such as lock-on lasers, cover-penetrating energy guns, and a thing that fires big razor discs that cut off robot limbs with ease. Oh, and if the guns don't work you can rocket slide up to an enemy and flip kick it in the head. The game looks great and sounds good.

I do hope Platinum Games and/or Shinji Mikami will be able to make a sequel or a successor to Vanquish. If they do, I hope there will be far less cut scenes to get in the way of the shooting.

At just shy of 32 hours, I saw the 6th and last ending of Muramasa: THe Demon Blade (Wii). It has been a long time coming for me to finish Muramasa, and I'm glad I got around to it. The beautiful art Vanillaware made for the game is a treat to the eyes. The music sets the mood of a fantastical tale set in Japan. The combat is a simple but entertaining series of slashes and blades. Sadly, the combat and the exploration (the bulk of the game) doesn't hold up through all of the 32 hours I've played. The combat moves and strategies I made in the first few hours of the game are nearly the only moves and strategies I needed to complete the game. Also, the game gets grindy in the end when the last blade practically requires the two characters of the game to be at level 90+.

Even with my gripes, I had a lot of fun with Muramasa. I hope Vannilaware's future games will be more refined in their play and pacing.

After 37 hours, the story of my Commander Shepard comes to an end. The revelations at the end are sudden and bewildering, but it didn't get in the way of my enjoyment. I understand the negativity surrounding the ending, though I don't agree with it. Also, I am amused that BioWare addresses my peeves with the ammunition system in a conversation in Mass Effect 3.

Speaking of ammunition, I really enjoy the tweaks to the combat in Mass Effect 3. The weight system that affects cool down times and the power combination explosions add interesting and entertaining strategy and tactics to the gun play. In a similar vein, I really enjoy the multiplayer mode of Mass Effect 3. Shooting enemies is fun and the frustrating mysterious-grab-bag nature of gear procurement brings out the horrible gambling compulsions hidden within me.

As for the narrative beats of Mass Effect 3, the War Assets system doesn't compare favorably to Mass Effect 2's Suicide Mission. While it's nice to seem some familiar faces in Mass Effect 3, it is a little sad to see their final contribution to Shepard's story be a number added to a bigger number. The side missions in Mass Effect 3 are no better or worse than in previous Mass Effect games. The story missions has some great moments and keep up the quality I've come to expect.

Thought the story is over, I still want more of it. I eagerly await the Extended Cut content for Mass Effect 3.

A long while back in March, I survived the suicide mission of Mass Effect 2 in 41 hours and 10 minutes. Then I played a bit more until I stopped at 52 hours and 6 minutes. While I'm still a bit upset that the heating mechanic has been completely replaced by the thermal clip system (I would've preferred a hybrid system), I loved exploring the galaxy of killers and douche bags that Bioware has created.

I didn't mind the combat in Mass Effect 1 too much, but Bioware has made it a better and more enjoyable experience in Mass Effect 2. I'm glad that I don't have to spend level-up points in to Paragon or Renegade attributes or sift through the glut of items in the inventory. That said, I wish there were more things to put your skill points in and more equipment customization options. The primary missions weave wonderful stories with interesting choices. The best of them are those specific to a party member as add back story and depth to the characters. In stark contrast, most of the secondary missions are bland combat scenarios.

After spending so much time in Mass Effect 2, I'm eager to move on to Mass Effect 3 to finish the story.

The timer marked 22.6 hours when I completed the story of Batman: Arkham City (PC). I went in wanting more Batman as defined by Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I got exactly that. I ran to performance issues early on that took some fiddling with the video settings to iron out. Even after that I experienced some strange hiccups as the game was running, making me wonder if my video card is showing its age or if the game isn't as optimized as I thought.

The story is not better or worse than Arkham Asylum's; serving best as an excuse to bring a good chunk of Batman's rogue gallery together to be beat up by the caped crusader. The much larger Arkham City overworld brings many opportunities to glide and grapple as well as pummeling or subduing aggressive inmates. Navigating Arkham city can be a bit awkward at first, and it's not helped by the game hiding the important grapple boost upgrade in the AR training side mission. The simple and stylish combat from Arkham Asylum has been upgraded with more gadget short cuts and special moves. The combat is largely the same and can be quite tricky in large groups of enemies. The stealth portions of the game have received a boost in variety to avoid Arkham Asylum's overpowered gargoyle vantage points. New enemy gadgets such as mines and thermal goggles mean the Batman will have to be a better silent predator.

I enjoyed playing through Batman: Arkham City, though the game's narrative left me wanting more. Hopefully Rocksteady can have a break from Batman and gain the opportunity to work on something fresh.

After a lengthy 134 hours, I finish the story of Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii). The story gets a bit weird at the end but endearingly so. This game is worth all the wait and frustration to have it be released in North America.

The game's grand vistas and views are worth the frequent occurances of extremely straight geometry and muddy textures. The music is just as beautiful as the views and work with the various environments to set a unique for each new area. The combat system, reminiscent of MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, is fast and exciting though some battles can be a bit too hectic or suffer a bad camera angle. The characters are all likable, if a bit flat, and are worth the extra effort to unlock the heart-to-heart dialog sequences.

Some of the grievenaces I have with the game are towards its quests. Some of the quests rely on items that are dropped at a low rate which is annoying. It doesn't help that the quests text and in-game hints sometimes don't give you good clues in where to go. Most maddening of all are the quests that require you to find a particular NPC. These NPCs move around during the time they are available and are not prominently marked on the minimap or main map.

Even though I have already put in 134 hours in to the game, there are still many quests left to finish, skills not found, and heart-to-hearts locked away. Already I am back in Xenoblade's wonderful world to see more of what it has to offer.

In a brief 6 hours, I finished the story mode of Halo 3 (360). I played the game cooperatively, and it was great fun shooting grunts and being run over by a warthog. The large-scale battles with various vehicles were a real treat to play. The same can't be said of the Flood whose battles were often annoying and frustrating.

One odd thing about co-op on the same scren is that the game doesn't use all the screen space. It was a bit jarring to have black bars on the side, but I guess there's a reasonable technical reason for it to be that way.

I had a fun time finishing the fight. Hopefully it won't take me as long to get to ODST and Reach. Also, I hope Halo 4 has little or no Flood.