I got Dead Nation for free as part of PSN’s “oops my bad” program. In the end, I was favorable impressed, as it ended up sucking way less than I’d expected. The game’s tragic flaw is that in a world of zombies, you’re at a distinct disadvantage in melee combat, and when you’re mobbed by as many zombies as appear in the game’s later chapters, avoiding a face-to-face with the undead is easier said than done. In other words, I was overcome and devoured alive by Zed so often that I uninstalled the game. It’s one of the few on this list that I never completed. Dead Nation gets a C.

I could easily write an entire article about Dead Space 2, the summation of which would be “The excessive gore in the game bothers me much more right now than it did even two years ago”. I’m not sure why that is. It’s odd, because I remember really liking the original Dead Space. I had to go back and re-read my original take on the game just now to remind myself why I really liked it. Turns out it was because it was the closest thing I’d played to a survival horror game since I’d had a Playstation 1.

That said, I mostly enjoyed Dead Space 2. I enjoyed getting many of the different weapon-specific Playstation trophies, and upgrading my weapons. I enjoyed using detonator mines and the line gun secondary weapon in a strategic way. But stomping on corpses got old quickly. Still, I was just about into the game’s final chapter when I quit. You see, near the end of the game, you’re forced to play a mini-game where you have to guide a large-bore needle into the center of your eyeball for no apparent reason. When you fail, you’re treated to a hideous and unskippable 20-second long death sequence. After watching that death sequence three or four times, I turned off the game, and I haven’t gone back to it. It’s been over six months, and I don’t see myself firing up Dead Space 2 ever again.

It seems a shame that the difficult segment that led to me quitting Dead Space 2 was gameplay for which the game had in no way trained me. After putting all that time into the game, I’d have liked to see the ending, and getting the endgame trophy would have been nice too. Despite all my complaints, I’m giving Dead Space 2 a B.

Back when the original Dungeon Siege was new, my wife and I had tons of fun playing it together, although we never got that far. We later tried Dungeon Siege 2, but for some reason that I can’t entirely pinpoint, I hated it. When the Dungeon Siege 3 became available for a console I owned and I found that I could get an inexpensive used copy, I jumped all over it. Linda and I played through the first seven of the game’s twenty-one chapters in split-screen co-op and got stuck at the Grand Chapterhouse amidst an Ikaruga-like trap complex that killed us over and over again.

While I won’t say for sure that we’ll never go back to the game, our recent purchase of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge makes it seem unlikely. I give Dungeon Siege 3 a C+.

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

My interest in click-to-attack hackfest RPGs has always been passing at best. I was never into Diablo as much as everyone else – the most fun I had with those is playing Diablo on the original Playstation with my friend Glenn and actually role-playing our twin barbarians (the Crush brothers) who resembled Hans and Franz from SNL.

But Dungeon Siege has a certain charm – a certain appeal that I don’t quite understand. I like the game. I played Dungeon Siege 2, and didn’t like it nearly as much, but I really enjoy playing the original. You can have a party with up to eight characters, and as I’m replaying it now, I’m finding in it just a bit of the appeal of games like Baldur’s Gate, wherein strategy comes heavily into play. Maybe I’ll actually finish the game this time around.