A Joyful Noise

HIGH The perfect build and delicious release of "Only a Man."

LOW Hitting a retro cartridge by accident during a perfect run on high difficulty.

WTF Please, please tell me that those aren't Reverse Merman's balls.

In other games news, I've been tooling around with a few things randomly. With the wife currently in command of my Nintendo 3DS (she's working on her own Monster Hunter character, of course) I've hopped back onto the PlayStation Vita and have been trying to catch up with what I've missed during my recent 3DS binge.

Hallways… In… Spaaaaaaaaaaace!

HIGH The second half of the game.

LOW The first half of the game.

WTF Why is there so much filler here?

I've been touched by some of the response to the Shooting Straight post that I wrote a few weeks ago. I wrote it in reaction to the spate of layoffs that we'd seen from IGN at the time, and the layoffs really shook me because that could have been me out there had I found the courage to trust in my talents and go for a paying job in the gaming press. I don't know how I would've handled being suddenly let go, having to scramble to salvage my future, and wondering where to go from there.

One of my favorite time wasters on YouTube are the Vsauce channels. I was thrilled earlier this month when Vsauce3 tackled something that I have always wondered about but dared not ask: can I actually rocket jump in the real world like I did in Quake? The answer is disappointing, but at least I know for sure.

Horrific in All the Wrong Ways

HIGH The touchdown on LV426 is adequately realized.

LOW Everything else.

WTF They released this colossal pile of dross at full price?

Continuing our effort to spotlight worthwhile games that didn't manage to make it onto many 2012 Top 10 lists, here are the rest of the nominations for "most overlooked" as selected by friends and freelancers in the gaming sphere.

One Step Forward and to the Side

HIGH Taking down the sleazy dean.

LOW Going to a lot of effort to record someone's voice on a dictaphone when I am carrying a smart phone.

WTF Student loan corporations corrupting college deans? That is... surprisingly topical.

Who's Your Daddy?

HIGH The battle with the Daemon Lord in Chapter 3.

LOW The godawful laser puzzle in Chapter 2.

WTF Who or what was the Lost Soul supposed to represent?

The End of the Road

HIGH More Trials!

LOW The second-to-last Extreme track broke my spirit.

WTF Why does the whole thing skew towards a higher difficulty?