Lair for the PS3 is unplayable, and while multiplayer enthusiasts are going crazy over Warhawk, people who aren’t interested in that sort of play aren’t buying the game. The 360’s Two Worlds is a half decent game with a half decent premise, but it has been crippled by a terrible english translation from the original finnish, a near total lack of explanation of gameplay, and poor camera controls. Stranglehold, a cross platform release, is a lot of fun to play, but the experience is too short to pay $60 for. I’m going through Blue Dragon right now, the X-Box 360’s number one selling title in Japan, and I’ve already come to the conclusion that this game absolutely does not appeal to western gamers who weren’t Japedophiles to begin with. Except for Bioshock, August and September were rough months for The Industry.

Also somewhat fresh out of Japan, Project Sylpheed, a really fun space combat game in the same vein as the classic X-Wing and TIE Fighter titles that borrows heavily from Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, while mixing in the same tired old Japanese political issues that are in every other form of exported Japanese media (WMDs are bad, OK, I get it, already). Its a really beautiful game, offers a great presentation and upgrade system, and most importantly, again, its fun to play.

I did expect Lair to fail, so that doesn’t bother me so much. The biggest disappointment for me, personally, was Two Worlds. The voice acting is so groan inducing, I just can’t play this game. You’ll read other reviews complaining about it, but really, you don’t catch the weight of how terrible it is until you experience it for yourself. Hearing your character say, in the voice of a horrible actor, "Maychance," in a very flippant way, just may cause you to grind every tooth in your mouth into a fine white powder with just one single whip of the lower jaw. I can forgive the game its odd difficulty curve and frame rate issues, but I refuse to get trapped in a Frederick County Community College production of O-edipus for 100 hours. Don’t buy this game.