I loved the Deception series back on the PS1. Brilliant stuff. The series consisted of three PS1 games released over a relatively short span of time, so as the PS2 era plodded to a natural denuemont, I was increasingly surprised that the franchise seemed to be dead.

After a five year absence, Deception returned in 2005, reinvented in name - if not in gameplay - as Trapt. Silly name. Probably would have been okay with it if it had been "Trapt" from the start, but "Deception" is soooo much cooler. I'm positive we can blame marketing for that one.

But who to blame for the fact that Trapt is little more than an expansion pack for the PS1 versions? They did absolutely nothing to bring this wonderful series into the next generation. Same artificial limitations on trap inventory. Same no-effort movies and death-scene-cutaways. Same ugly castle interiors. After so long of a wait, Trapt just barely manages to avoid insulting existing fans.

It's still ridiculously fun, in a PS1-nostalgia kind of way. Can you ever get tired of launching jerks into spiked platforms? And since it has been a good long time since I enjoyed a Deception game, I can almost give it a pass for looking and acting like a PS2 launch title. But it remains a letdown. It seems clear that Trapt did not spend much time in development, and was probably just done on weekends while the same team was doing their real work on the Fatal Frame games.

Memory Score: Where are the TMD?

After two games that, apart from general theming, had nothing to do with each other, this third installment unexpectedly managed to tie the entire series together. I won't say it answered all the questions, but it did provide enough connections to keep the fanbase nicely roused.

With the camera-as-weapon dynamic pretty much perfected in Crimson Butterfly, The Tormented concentrated on multiple playable characters with differentiated abilities (a departure from the previous games, unless you count the brief sections of FF2 where you control Mayu). The other big change was the idea that the game proper was something to be encountered only in a dreamworld... which explained why Tormented could crossover with the other two. This led to a more traditional video gamey design that almost makes the game feel like it is divided into "levels," since main character Rei wakes up at key intervals, earning a (usually) restful break in her modern-day home.

I consider Crimson Butterfly the best of the trilogy, but Tormented is still a great play. I know that nobody truly believes it when a reviewer says that Game X actually frightened him or her... but with these games, you'd better believe it.

This is video gaming's premiere horror franchise, and one of the PS2's defining moments. (1 and 2 were later ported to Xbox, but Tormented remains a PS2 exclusive.)

Memory Score: sleep, priestess, lie in peace...

Scroll up and you'll see that I went after just every piece of MGS2 released in the US. But I managed to miss the debut of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater... largely because it came out in the shadow of San Andreas. I wagered that Konami would do a collector's edition re-release sometime later - as they had with Sons of Liberty - so I held out for that. I was right.

Subsistence - which is a reference to Snake Eater's weirdo gameplay addition of eating local flora and fauna for health-ups - was a helluva deal. Snake Eater + online play + minigames + extras + a compiled "movie" of Snake Eater's cutscenes. I even sprung for the mega-ultra-supreme edition with a bonus DVD with a short MGS retrospective documentary. All for less than the original price of Snake Eater by itself!

Although the storyline is far below the Twin Peaksian standard of Sons of Liberty, MGS3 is still a sequel/prequel worthy of the name. Kojima just owns this, and I have no reason not to adore every scrap of rumor surrounding MGS4. The online aspect of Subsistence was short-lived; a collector's edition game simply isn't going to generate the buzz of a full online multiplayer game. I spent more time playing the MSX-emulated versions of the original Metal Gear games.

And I loved loved loved the movie disc. Yeah, it's not exactly a gripping four hours (boy, could it have used some editing!), but every storyline-driven game ought to include something like this.

Memory Score: oh, but the "field surgery" part was pretty crappy

Next time: Sora escapes from the GBA, the peripheral game that made us all forget DDR, and an overlooked horror title that's DOA.