All I can really think of to talk about right now are a few of the games that were either just released or will be showing up on Xbox Live Arcade soon.  Every Extend Extra Extreme was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be... I played previous versions of the game and wasn't impressed, but E4 left me detonating glowing shapes and bobbing my head to the beat all night long.  For the first time, I feel like Tetsuya Mizoguchi has created that perfect mix of music and gameplay that he's been working hard to create over the past seven years.

Then there's Exit.  Opinions on this game were evenly divided when it was first released for the PSP, and after playing its Xbox Live Arcade counterpart I can easily understand both points of view.  On one hand, you've got a great looking action game with a funky jazz/techno beat and a clear artistic direction.  I can't stress enough how important this is in the 21st century.  Today's systems are powerful enough to display practically anything you can imagine, meaning that good graphics just aren't good enough... your artwork must make a strong statement to be truly effective.  Exit does just that, with a style that evokes memories of hard-boiled detective novels and pop art from the 1950's.

But that's only one side of the coin, unfortunately.  The other's all green and crusty, like a penny left in the ashtray of your car for a few years.  Exit's control is so stiff and mechanical it'll make you run to the first Prince of Persia for relief.  You must take every move you make step by laborious step, and puzzles can only be solved EXACTLY as the developers had intended, without any room for deviation or error.  It's really a shame, too, because there's so much to like about this game, yet the robotic control leaves all of its qualities dangling just out of your reach like a carrot hanging on a strand of barbed wire.

From the already released to the soon to be, we have Omega Five, a Natsume shooter very much in the vein of Forgotten Worlds.  Longtime readers will recognize Forgotten Worlds as the game that convinced me to purchase a Genesis way back in 1991, so this unofficial sequel gets my seal of approval right out of the starting gate.  The film clip on XBLA suggests that Omega Five looks as impressive now as Forgotten Worlds did over fifteen years ago, with high-definition, wide-screen visuals that make every explosion more earth-shattering and every screen-filling boss more mind-blowing.  I'm not digging the characters- didn't we already see that brawny monk in a million other Japanese games?- but if the gameplay makes the same impression those graphics had, I could learn to live with them.

It's been a week and a half since I've updated the site, but not much has changed.  I'm still obsessed with the Atari 5200, spending nearly all my free time with the system while leaving the other ones covered in dust.  The Wii is on its third coat despite the best efforts of Sin and Punishment, Treasure's long-delayed Nintendo 64 shooter.  The game is fun, sure, but it would be a lot MORE entertaining if it took advantage of the system's motion sensitive controllers.  The three wimpy control options offered in S&P just aren't enough to get the job done.

The Xbox 360 gets a little more of my attention, thanks to Bioshock and Halo 3.  At first, Bioshock was my favorite of the two titles, but after graduating from the demo to the full game, I'm not so sure.  Bioshock takes an approach to the genre that's very much like the Xbox 360 launch title Condemned... in other words, the artistic direction and horror theme take precedence over the gameplay.  That works pretty well the first time through, but the stifling linearity and single-minded focus on the storyline leaves you with a hollow shell of a game the next time you play it.  Plus, the creepy atmosphere is really starting to get under my skin.  Even rescuing the Little Sisters gives me the heebie-jeebies!

Halo 3's sleek futuristic look is more my speed, and the gameplay is a lot more rewarding.  The stages in Bioshock always feel so cramped and claustrophobic, but that's never a problem in Halo 3.   The wide open spaces are not only more inviting, but they expand your strategic options and add excitement to each battle.  I also like having an arsenal of laser cannons, machine guns, and needle launchers available to me from the very beginning.  Bioshock adopts that plodding Metroid style of weapon acquisition where you've got to find firearms to gain access to new areas.  That worked pretty well back when Metroid was first released, but twenty years later, hunting down glorified keys for thinly disguised doors just starts to feel like a cocktease.