In a nutshell, I Am Alive's a post-apocalyptic story about a father who was trapped far from home when disaster struck, and is only just now returning to find his wife and daughter. There are a number of things that make this title unique, such as the extremely stark visuals, the dark, mature subject matter and the interesting combination of environmental traversal and highly non-standard combat which is more like lethal puzzle-solving than it is about punching dudes out.

The last week or so has been off-the-charts crazy here at GameCritics.com West—tons of stuff going on and all of it equally important, capped off with the left front tire of my car literally falling off as I was in the middle of a busy intersection in Seattle. I don't like to go so long between updates, but there you go.

Still a D*ck

HIGH Seeing that Vergil has his own fully-developed skill trees.

LOW Too many of those irritating Wisps.

WTF Why isn't Mission 5 the final mission?

Dante Must Combat

HIGH More glorious DmC combat...

LOW ...that takes too long to really get going.

WTF The time required for an entire session is substantial.

With buzz building around "inevitable" new console announcements, I started thinking about it and came to a realization: For the first time in over thirty years of playing games, I'm honestly not excited about or even looking forward to the next generation of hardware.

The Return of the Ripper

HIGH A spectacular boss battle with a sai-wielding man made out of magnets.

LOW Finding out who the final boss is.

WTF I normally don't like heavy metal music, so why do I like this soundtrack so much?

If you're into strategy games or old-school role-playing games, the Nintendo 3DS is where the action is right now.

A Fistful of Clichés

HIGH Reconstructing Robert's last memory of his wife.

LOW Every time Rose speaks.

WTF I, an FBI agent, cannot examine evidence at a murder scene because there are too many people around?

The Extra Credits guys and gals certainly aren't afraid to tackle the big topics, even though it can take them a while to get to them. There aren't too many other topics surrounded with more landmines than that of "Religion in Games." And in fairness to crew, a lot was covered in the 12 minutes of video, but it feels like they only brushed the surface (no Christian-based games?). Hopefully, there is another, deeper discussion in the works that covers more of this subject matter.

I'm just going to shoot straight from the hip: I'm a big ol' coward. I've been writing about video games in some capacity since 1999. I got my first reviewing "gig" in 2001. I've had many stops along the way since then, and I've probably had my fair share of opportunities to pursue my "dream job" and write about video games for a living.