Last month, I finished Portal 2. I agreed with Zero Punctuation's observation about too many of the puzzles between about getting from Point A to Point B, rather than the more obvious puzzle rooms of the original Portal (though the sequel has some of those, to be sure).

But the game is still one of the best of 2011, due not only to its humor but also its soundtrack. Sixty-four different tunes accompany Chell in her journey through the bowels of Aperture Science — and as of today, they're all available as free downloads

The soundtrack includes the closing (not credits) song, "Cara Mia Addio" also known as the turret opera, which employs Ellen McLain (GLaDOS)'s bad high school Italian for its lyrics. Independent artists have recorded an a cappella rendition of the tune that's available on iTunes:

Jonathan Coulton's "Want You Gone" is also part of this free download — but before you hear the song in-game, you have to defeat the final boss. This encounter's own moments of hilarity can't be fully appreciated in the heat of battle, so enjoy this playlist of three YouTube videos that captures the dialogue of the personality spheres:

I may've griped about Portal 2 being an expensive sequel to an affordable game, but the freebies like the soundtrack go a long way toward setting things right.

(Hat tip to Dave McClelland and GermanSeabass)

What little gaming I've had time for lately was marked by a significant moment in my console library's history: I popped my Xbox 360's cherry.

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Despite the lack of backward compatibility with the original Xbox, I asked for and received my 360 as a gift for Christmas 2008 and immediately proceeded to load it with downloadable goodness. Although I'd predicted purchasing plenty of retail games for the console, I never weaned myself off the ease and affordability of XBLA. I could enjoy a game like Shadow Complex for as long as I would any disc-based game, but for a fraction of the prize. Even though I was cutting retailers (such as formerly myself) from the equation, there were just too many reasons, from the day I got my Xbox through 2010 and today, to stay home.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and Portal 2 were the games that got me off the couch. The former has a great demo that reminded me of the stealth aspects of the fantastic Metal Gear Solid series, and the latter is the sequel to one of my favorite 360 games thus far. Accustomed as I was to paying $1–15 for an Xbox 360 game, I waited for the prices on each to fall, paying $20 and $35, respectively.

I've not yet played Batman, but Portal 2 is proving fun … though slightly less so than I hoped. The story is somewhat predictable so far, and many of the puzzles seem oriented toward figuring out what to do instead of how. I'd rather be given an objective to decipher than placed into an empty room with no clear goal. In that respect, more of Portal 2 is like the final stages of its predecessor, when Chell has broken out of the test rooms and is navigating the tunnels of the facility. I didn't like that part, either.

But both games are successfully imbued with liberal amounts of humor. I'm looking forward to the end game sequence and the closing credits song, but in the meantime, even little gestures like the defective turrets' dialogue are uplifting:

What will be the third game I'll buy for the 360? There are none currently on my radar, which perhaps bespeaks of my fall from "hardcore" status. But There's plenty to enjoy in the meantime.

Green Lantern has always been one of my favorite superheroes. Whereas Superman's abilities are physically derived, GL wields the power of imagination and creativity. Anything that he can envision becomes reality through the the magic of his power ring, which designates him a member of an intergalactic peace force of alien police.

Gl is the latest superhero to get the silver screen treatment, with Ryan Reynolds starring as the emerald knight in the film to be released on June 17. Film adaptations of comic books are hit-or-miss, with some great ones (Spider-Man, Scott Pilgrim) balanced by others that are critical or financial stumbles (Catwoman, X-Men Origins: Wolverine).

Video game adaptations of movie adaptations of comic books have even less success. While the Xbox 360 game Batman: Arkham Asylum demonstrated the potential of the source material, games like Iron Man are too far removed from what makes the superhero so captivating.

So how will Green Lantern succeed in its various media this summer? It's too soon to tell, but you can get a glimpse of his arrival on home consoles in this trailer for Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters, which pits the Green Lantern Corps against their predecessors: the robotic Manhunters, a failed attempt by the Guardians of Oa to create intergalactic peacekeepers.

This being the last day of the year, and the last weekend of your holiday vacation, it's a great time to spend those Microsoft Points you received as gifts, or to treat yourself to something fun with which to usher in the new year. Here are my recommendations of games released to Xbox Live in 2010 that aren't to be missed.

Limbo: This platform-puzzle game is perhaps most memorable for its morose atmosphere and the macabre results of failure. With almost no backstory, a boy sets out on an adventure through a woods devoid of color or background music. His weapons with which to defend himself from giant spiders and worse are limited to the player's ability to make him jump, climb, push, and think. At $15, the game is pricey for a digital title, but it's 33% off today only — either way, a fair price for what Wired called one of the best games of 2010.

Cthulhu Saves the World: You may not have heard of indie developer Zeboyd Games, but their previous Xbox Live release, Breath of Death VII, sold 30,000 copies. Created by a long-time gamer and RPG aficionado, the game capitalized on the rich history and tradition of 8-bit RPGs while correcting many frustrating aspects of the genre, such as random encounters. Cthulhu Saves the World is its spiritual successor, with more inside jokes and great gameplay but with a presentation that's been bumped up to 16 bits and a story that will take ten hours to experience, unlocking multiple replay modes. The price tag on this game is triple that of its predecessor and will set you back a whopping $3.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX: Despite the name, Pac-Man CE DX is so much more than a remix of the 2007 Championship Edition. With "ghost trains" that harken back to the old computer game Snake, a bullet-time effect when Pac-Man is cornered, a variety of skins by which to customize the game's look, and more gameplay modes than you can shake a power pellet at, it's an impressive amount of content and replay value for $10. As the creator of Cthulhu Saves the World wrote:

Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is a worthy sequel to some of the best games ever created (the original Pac-Man and Pac-Man: Championship Edition) and is probably the best game that will come out this year. Given that this is a year that has included gems like Super Meat Boy & Civilization V, that’s saying a lot.

Return All Robots!: RAR! is a top-down puzzle game in the tradition of the Adventures of Lolo. Players direct a scientist whose remote control will send good robots back to base while avoiding their evil counterparts. Check out our preview for more details and a gameplay video. Again, you'll be supporting an indie developer and getting a great title for a mere $3.

Chime: Released in early 2010, this top-down puzzle game invites you to place blocks anywhere on a playing field such that they form perfect rectangles. As with Lumines, a line regularly sweeps the playing field, clearing any completed pieces. An excellent soundtrack, including a piece by renowned composer Philip Glass, is enhanced by sound effects made when the line encounters your shapes. Play until you've completed the level, or in time trials of 3, 6, or 9 minutes, for only $5.

RISK Factions: The classic board game comes to Xbox 360 with multiple enhancements and features. Though the classic map and rules are available, other modes offer rewards for capturing specific terrain; multiple factions (all identical in gameplay); battle animations; online play; and more. This game has been on sale for 50% off all week; today is the last chance to get it for only $5. Check out the reference to an Apple II contemporary in this cutscene:

Worms 2: Armageddon: You'd never guess how much fun it could be to arm a nematode with a bazooka and send him to kill his brethren until you've tried it. This turn-based, 2D strategy game pits teams of worms against each other, using bizarre terrain (a construction site, a moon made of cheese) and armaments (banana bombs and exploding sheep). This $10 iteration in the 15-year-old franchise is already a few years old, but a $5 battle pack released in the summer of 2010 adds new levels, weapons, and more.

Portal: Still Alive: Valve's release of Portal 2 for Xbox 360, PS3, Mac, and PC has been continuously delayed and is currently slated for April 18, 2011. While waiting for this full-fledged retail game, you'll find it's not too late to crawl out from under your rock and discover what all the fuss is about. Portal came out in 2007 as part of a compilation of games, but an enhanced version of this first-person puzzle game was released as a standalone product for Xbox Live in 2008. Although not a 2010 release, it's the only Portal product available this year — and at $15, it's the cheapest Portal experience you'll find in 2011, too.

With so many games available for the Xbox 360, this list can only begin to scratch the surface. What were your favorites this year?

For a few hours last month, the Xbox Live digital edition of Lionhead Studio's Fable II, normally priced at $19.99, was free. The discount was a glitch in Microsoft's system and was quickly rectified, but not before countless savvy shoppers took advantage of the brief and inadvertent deal.

I was not one of those lucky few, but I am someone who regularly grapples with the ethics of piracy. The theft of digital content is unequivocally illegal, yet pirates nonetheless justify their actions with a series of arguments — some tenuous, some less so. I wondered how downloading Fable II for free when it's rightly a $20 purchase was any different from piracy, and how strong its case would be?

For an answer, I turned to Jeffrey Seglin, professional ethicist. Seglin writes a weekly newspaper column for Tribune Media Services Syndicate entitled "The Right Thing", which provides an objective perspective on the right and wrong of any number of scenarios, from dealing with difficult landlords to keeping deathbed promises. In this past week's column, he addresses my question, "Is free Xbox game a fable?"

I confessed to Seglin that I wish I had known about the error, as I would've taken advantage of it to get a free game. But if I had, would I have been able to live with what I had done? The main argument I made was to compare the online Fable II to its retail origin:

"If I were shopping in a retail store and the clerk forgot to charge me for an item, I would bring it to his attention and expect to be fairly charged for it," K.G. writes. "When it comes to a digital product instead of a physical one, the situation somehow seems different. Is taking advantage of an online store’s mistake akin to theft? Do I have a responsibility to not partake of such an error? … [and] now that th[ose who downloaded the game] know [it was an error], do they have a responsibility to do something about it?"

Seglin's answer is one that owners of Fable II can feel good about, and one that I again liken to retail: if a product is advertised at one price but is "supposed" to be another, the retailer is expected to make good and offer the product for the advertised price, then correct the issue.

That's what I did when I invited international customers to subscribe to Juiced.GS, a print magazine I publish. A limited number of subscribers received a postcard offering renewals for $19/year, which includes shipping anywhere in the United States — which didn't do the postcard recipients, who lived anywhere from Europe to Australia, any good. Despite having to swallow the difference in shipping rates, I felt the only responsible recourse was to honor the $19 price. I doubt those international subscribers felt it unethical to save $7 off their usual renewal rate.

If I can acknowledge a mistake and not ask my customers to suffer for it, then it's fair for Microsoft to treat its customers with a similar respect. So enjoy Fable II any way you like, and lose no sleep over your good fortune.

Growing up playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, I was accustomed to video games that challenged my dexterity and reaction times. It wasn't until I encountered Adventures of Lolo in 1989 that I discovered the medium's potential to make one think as well. Puzzle elements have since broken out of their own chess-like origins and into everything from Tetris to Resident Evil, requiring gamers to have both fast thumbs and clever minds. Few games appeal strictly to the thinking man like Lolo did.

An upcoming Xbox Live Indie Game and PC title is aimed specifically at that underserved audience. Return All Robots! from Space Whale Studios challenges gamers to direct robots, whose mobility is limited to linear movement — once a robot hits an obstacle, it stops. Some obstacles can be destroyed; others are lethal. Some robots are beneficent; others are malevolent. The players' scientist avatar must route the good robots to the escape hatch while avoiding their evil brethren.

If that's a complicated description, this gameplay footage should clarify matters:

When I first saw Return All Robots! in action, I was overwhelmed by the number of variables and potential solutions. Even the first room struck me as hopelessly complex! But the more gameplay I watched, the more I got in the groove of what approaches are likely to work and what logical traps to avoid. Even better, the game reminded me significantly of the Super Nintendo puzzler The Brainies (known on the Apple IIGS as The Tinies):

One of the creative geniuses behind Return All Robots! is Andrew Aversa, a remixer whose work I've been following for years. Not only is he responsible for RAR!'s soundtrack, but he's supporting the very music community of which he is a member by encouraging them to remix the game's music. The Return All Robots! Indie Action-Puzzle Remix Contest invites musicians to submit their original takes on this nascent game's tunes to win the chance at being included on the soundtrack CD (with monetary compensation — very professional!), as well as copies of the game, the CD, and more.

The puzzle genre is crowded, but this entry looks stand out. Watch for Return All Robots! on your Xbox 360 for $3 (240 Microsoft Points) within the month.

Vandal Hearts II is one of my all-time favorite RPGs. I'm not usually a fan of tactical games and have earned much vilification for being the one gamer on Earth to have disliked Final Fantasy Tactics. But Vandal Hearts II earned sixty hours of my time, something I'm rarely able to devote to any single title but which this game warranted. The first Vandal Hearts, along with Wild Arms, were the games that convinced me that the leap from the Nintendo 64's cartridges to the PlayStation's CD-ROMs was warranted, and I was playing Vandal Hearts II well after the PlayStation 2 was launched. The series thus bookended my experience with the 32-bit gaming era, but I was eager for more.

So I was excited to learn in the past few years that Konami was considering reviving this decades-old franchise, and when news came last year that the form would be an Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network game, I considered it my good fortune, as I'd just gotten an Xbox 360 a few months earlier. Yet no gaming site I followed seemed as interested in the title as I was. I checked them regularly but found updates rarely. Finally, Konami emailed me this week: Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment had been released on January 20th.

As I'm currently in the middle of three other games, including one RPG, I did not rush to purchase this title, but it was easy enough to move the demo to the top of my queue. The trial version of Flames of Judgment, supposedly a prequel of the game's predecessors, consists of two battles with some storyline in between. Having played only that much, I can offer only first impressions.

The most significant, or most immediately apparent, departure from Vandal Hearts II's battle system is the ability to change weapons in mid-battle. Heroes can attack from a distance with missile weapons, then switch to melee gear when the enemy draws close. Although many gamers will appreciate this versatility and realism, I don't prefer it. It's not that the system is inherently bad; few people complained that Final Fantasy VI's espers allowed every character to learn the same magic spells, for example, as doing so did not diminish the party members' unique attributes, such as Sabin's blitzes or Setzer's slots. But I did not expect to see such adaptability in Vandal Hearts. One of my favorite attributes of Vandal Hearts II was that each character was essentially a blank template, to be crafted into any sort of warrior needed: fighter, archer, mage, and more. Whatever the person's equipment was defined their purpose, which was fixed for the battle. What I've seen of Vandal Hearts: FoJ is that characters can more easily fill each other's voids should one fall, which for me eliminates some of the tension of battle.

Beyond gameplay and into mechanics, the animation style has taken a turn for the cartoonish, which doesn't match the game's mature themes and Teen rating. It also seems harder than I remember to adjust the camera to get a good view of the 3D playing field. Cinematic interludes feature voice acting, but the game's main dialogue is presented via text — unusual for this generation of RPGs, but not for a 500-megabyte download.

It's been more than a decade since I first played Vandal Hearts II, so my memories and expectations may both have been distorted by time. Even if not, it's unfair to expect a franchise to remain unchanged over so long a period. Either way, I'm not sure Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment will draw me into the tactical RPG genre the way its predecessors did.

Today, April 22nd, is not only Earth Day; it's also the day that, after a year of waiting, Lode Runner arrives for the Xbox Live Arcade.

Lode Runner was originally released in 1983 for the Apple II computer, where its combination of frenetic activity and puzzling gameplay made it an instant classic. You can play the original online — it looks something like this:

Lode Runner has always been one of my favorite games and one that I return to in any year and medium. I drop quarters to play the coin-op at FunSpot every year, and courtesy the Wii's Virtual Console, I have the Nintendo version of Lode Runner — though that game's limited resolution requires the screen to pan to see everything, limiting its effectiveness. There's even an iPhone version called Gold Runner, reviewed in the March issue of Juiced.GS.

I've been waiting for the Xbox sequel for awhile, as evidenced by my blog post last August, when I counted it among my reasons to buy an Xbox 360. My desire formed well before that — a year ago this month — when Xbox Live's Major Nelson interviewed Ross Erickson, who detailed the lengthy legal path to finding out who owned the rights to Lode Runner. This week's podcast interviews Brett Ballow of Tozai Games, the company responsible for Lode Runner. (You can follow Tozai Games on Twitter — but only nine followers? Following zero people? That's not effective networking.)

Lode Runner costs 1200 Microsoft Points, which is the equivalent of $15, the high end of XBLA games. I hope it's worth it, as this gameplay video looks a bit mundane:

The lack of background music combined with the somewhat confusing graphics (I can't quite tell where the player can go and where he can't) might not represent the final product. I'm also hoping the Xbox version is somewhat frantic, as I'm used to playing Lode Runner at a slightly accelerated pace.

I'm delighted when Apple II games inspire today's greats, but I'm overjoyed when they are resurrected, heart and soul, in a form that any geezer can recognize.