all games are not created equal

Both these games play out more like an interactive movie than a game.  However, unlike many traditional RPG's and point n' click adventures, you can control the outcome of the story.  These games take slightly different approaches, however.

Indigo Prophecy (of Fahrenheit, as it is known outside of my self-involved nation) has you controlling several people during the course of what begins as a murder mystery.  You play the roles of both the killer AND the cops looking for him, which is very interesting.
There is a sort of psyche meter for all the characters.  Simple actions like washing hands and drinking a beverage wlil raise psyche, while witnessing terrible events like finding a dead body will lower the psyche.  When the meter goes to zero, your character gives up and you fail.  Well, they put it a bit better than that, but there's the gist.

Heavy Rain is another murder mystery that controls similarly to Indigo Prophecy.  You control four different characters throughout the game, and everyone is involved trying to find a serial killer.  You play the role of a P.I., an FBI agent, a journalist, and the father of a recently kidnapped victim.  You see all sides of the story and it all eventually ties together at the end.  Some parts are slow, but it's definitely worth it for the finale.
Gone is the psyche meter.  Instead, Heavy Rain takes a much more direct approach.  Got your character killed?  Tough, live with it.  The story moves on.  NOTHING in this game halts the story in any way.  The main characters can die.  The victim may or may not survive.  The killer may be found, or he may not. 

I much much MUCH prefer Heavy Rain for one main reason.  Indigo Prophecy starts out excellent, playing out just like a murder mystery.  However, it suddenly takes a very stupid turn about halfway through and gets absolutely ridiculous at the end. 
Heavy Rain's plot stays consistent through and through and doesn't try to flavor the story with stupid plot elements out of thin air.  And with it's multiple endings and multiple paths, it's definitely worth replaying.

Neither of these games are for everyone.  The controls are definitely weird, especially for Heavy Rain, but it's also a great story to play through.

Curse of Monkey Island is generally considered to be the best Monkey Island game by many (I personally prefer LeChuk's Revenge myself).  So how does the new episodic adventure fare in comparison?

Curse was fresh by bringing in higher resolution characters, more lively animation, and voice acting to the series.  It gave a much needed facelift to the series and had pitch-perfect voice-acting that really brought the characters to life.

Tales isn't the first Monkey Island game in 3D, but it's easily more fun and designed better than Escape was.  You get a slew of familiar characters, and a few memorable new faces as well.  The game comes in five episodes, and they are all pretty entertaining.  Guybrush is as charming and occasionally dimwitted as ever, and there's a new spin on LeChuk that's definitely a treat, and even Stan the salesman returns with yet another business prospect under his belt.  The series has been handled with great care and Telltale did Monkey Island justice.

As far as length, Curse and Tales are about equal.  It's hard to judge the length cause everyone's playthroughs will be different.  Some will have harder or easier times on puzzles, and some will spend more time examining every nook and cranny, and exhausting every conversation option with every character.

Tales may look a little dated for today's visual standards, but it still maintains that pirate-y charm and humor that fans have come to expect from the MI series.  That being said, Curse still holds it's own with retro but beautiful 2D hand-drawn visuals that look copied straight out of a Disney film.

Personally, I believe Tales (and Telltale in general) does a better job of pointing out the puzzles that you need to solve, and a general idea of how to go about solving them.  When playing Curse, it sometimes gets so overwhelming that you start wondering around with little sense of what you should be doing.
It's important to note that neither of these games will allow you to die or get stuck to the point that you have to restart your game, so you never have to proceed with caution, so to speak.

I pick Tales over Curse mainly cause it's a fresh take on a long beloved series.  Nothing feels too out of place, the dialogue is as witty as ever, and I personally thought the climax was much better.  The only thing I could fault it for was that there was a key location from the series missing in Tales.  I don't want to give any spoilers, but it's pretty obvious.

Despite what many hardcore fans of the series may try to prove otherwise, Shattered Memories is best interpreted as a stand-alone spin-off game with no real connection the the canonical story/setting of the original games, other than some vaguely familiar characters and basic basic BASIC storyline.

These games start out the same, more or less.  Harry and his daughter Cheryl or driving and get into a car crash.  Harry goes searching for his daughter.  The similarities stop there, pretty much.

Shattered Memories makes great use of the Wii's capabilities (no, really!).  First of all, controlling the flashlight with the Wii's pointer is a treat and really helps immerse yourself into the game.  Creatures will pounce on you and latch on, and it requires you to actually shove the wiimote and nunchuk in the direction of the creatures, and it feels natural. 
My personal favorite is the implementation of the Wiimote's speaker.  Instead of a radio, Harry has a phone.  All noises from the phone come through the wiimote speaker, including calls, static, message notifications, and ringtones.  You may actually find yourself holding the wiimote to your ear without even realizing how silly you look.

The Silent Hill series always seemed to pride itself on being very psychological with it's horror (especially apparent in Silent Hill 2).  The team behind Shattered Memories know this, and they almost took the concept too literally.  Periodically through the game, you cut to therapy sessions with Dr. K, who will give you psych tests once in a while before moving on with the rest of the game.  These tests can change characters' behavior and outfit, and even change the appearance of the monsters and some graffiti and messages.

In the original Silent Hill, creatures roamed the streets and buildings.  You would fight them off with guns and melee weapons, or possibly flee if you so chose.  Occasionally, Silent Hill would transform into the "Otherworld" form, with wire meshes and bleeding walls and rusty metal forming the structure of the town.
In Shattered Memories, you encounter no enemies until you reach the Otherworld, which is actually called "Nightmares" in this game.  You do not fight.  At all.  Period.  Instead, you run and hide.  You charge through doors, topple objects to block your persuers, climb ledges, and hide under or inside of objects.  You can press down on the d-pad to look over your shoulder and see a small swarm of creatures persuing you, which really gets the adrenaline pumping.  Personally, I really really like the spirit behind this mechanic, but I do think it's very flawed.
For starters, the fact that you only encounter creatures during the nightmare sections really keeps you from being scared during any other portion of the game.  Also, when you get taken down, there's no game over, no death.  You just restart at the beginning of the section.  Finally, when you're running through these sections, there's rarely a reason to stop or observe something.  You're just constantly running til you find the exit to end the sequence, which means there's little reason to "hide" from these things.

Overall, I really enjoyed Shattered Memories, but it doesn't even begin to compare with the original.  I won't spoil the storyline, but there is a nice twist at the end of Shattered Memories worth playing for.  I really really like the spirit behind it, but the original had a much better atmosphere and much more to actually scare you with, plus it gives you more to think about than Shattered Memories does.

A lot of backlash arose when L4D was announced to be out about a year after the first one was released.  Did L4D2 really deserve to be it's own stand-alone title?  I say yes.

L4D2 really tickled me when it included a gameplay mechanic that I always thought would be awesome.  I'm talking about the dubbed "gauntlet mode" that occurs in some levels.
In L4D1, events usually consisted of hitting a button, finding a corner, and holding out until your door was opened.  Thankfully, L4D2 changes it up.  Some events required hitting a button and mad-dashing through horde to another button.  Others may include scavenging gas cans to fuel a car.

There's also new threats this time around.  Sure you have a couple new boss infected, but the surprise to me was the uncommon infected.  These are generally the normal horde, except they have special properties which vary between campaigns.  Construction workers can't hear pipebombs, riot officers are only vulnerable on their backside, etc.

The one disappointment is the L4D2 survivors.  Ellis is definitely my favorite, and Coach occasionally has some good lines, but Nick and Rochelle are incredibly forgetful and boring.  I honestly couldn't even remember Rochelle's name until I remembered Ellis speaking about her before.

I hate to say it, but I can't really think of a reason to go back to playing L4D1 now that I have L4D2.  It's really everything and then some.  Plus, I HAVE to mention how epic the Hard Rain campaign is on L4D2, especially the second half.  If you played it, then you know what I mean ;)

I really wanted to do a breakdown of these games category by category, but the honest truth is that Uncharted 2 may possibly the best cinematic video game I ever played and wins in nearly all categories.

The graphics are probably the best the PS3 has to offer.  And it's not just the graphics, but the way they look WHILE YOU'RE STILL PLAYING!  The developers did a great job of blending dynamic and pre-rendered physics and events together to really draw you into an action movie.  It's hard to forget the train ride, the helicopter chase, or climbing through the ice caves.

AC2 has great visuals too, though.  The architecture looks beautiful, and they are absolutely filled with townspeople to really bring the environment to life.  However, it isn't nearly as colorful or dynamic as Uncharted 2.  The voice acting and story is still good, but again, it's just not that memorable.


I greatly appreciate Uncharted 2 because it shows us that a game doesn't have to be an open world sandbox to be good.  There's definitely a distinctive charm and presentation with linear scripted gameplay.  Sure, the ride is the same every time, but it's a damn good ride.