... oh, no. I think I hate this.

Voxelgram remains one of my absolute favorite nonogram games because, on top of spoiling me with puzzle content, it went considerable lengths to make multi-dimensional puzzle solving accessible. By treating each slice of the puzzle as its own grid, even though an individual slice may not be fully solvable, checking another slice for open hints allowed me to make step-by-step progress -- like typical picross logic with an extra dimension.

Voxelgram 2 has chosen to add a two-color mechanic, so grid spaces aren't just "filled," they're marked Blue or Green depending on similarly-colored hints for the row or column. And this affects the fundamental meaning of hints: if three spots are hinted with a Blue 2, that doesn't necessarily mean that one of those 3 spots is empty ... it might be Green.

And therein lies the accessibility conflict that, I hate to say, turned me off of Voxelgram 2. It's no longer possible to make iterative progress on a puzzle by following one row's or column's hints at a time, like a typical nonogram; those hints no longer contain enough information.

Now there are situations where the meaning of a hint is unclear without seeing all of its intersections, which, y'know, might not be visible in the slice you're looking at.

To illustrate, given an orange underline highlights that something can be done in a row or column...

... the middle columns here, with Green "2"s at the top and consecutive green blocks in the middle...

... may look like their topmost and bottommost blocks can be removed. But in fact, only one of those logical deductions is correct...

... because the bottommost blocks are relevant to the depth-wise Blue 5, which in turn is relevant to layers that're hidden in this slice view.

It's not as bad as having to guess, since all the necessary information does exist, but it's frustrating - especially as its predecessor was so user-friendly - that Voxelgram 2's hints require so much additional scanning and inspection to accurately understand.

I'm thrilled that more games like Squeakross: Home Squeak Home are getting made. Not because of its cozy interior-decorating mode - though I'd bet fans of The Sims will enjoy this rat-shaped variant - I mean that I'm stoked on the trend of "nonogram and..." games, games that're loaded with picross puzzles and wrap them with extra features and a substantial theme that forms a unique personality.

Squeakross's personality is pretty adorable.

It's little details like in-game emails from Nini the rodent realtor, and her furniture-building brother Nono - even spam promising free seeds or promoting "logic booster" courses - that show just how much love and care went into crafting this game's squeaky theme.

Of course it's also important for a puzzle game to have a solid user interface; a cute premise can still be made ugly by shoddy messaging or unreliable input-handling. But Squeakross hits it out of the park -- its click-and-drag behavior, its row- and column-based selective zoom, its rich set of hinting options, and they're customizable! Squeakross's UI is really some of the best I've seen.

The only mark against it I'd even consider, is that there are some puzzle grids with dimensions that aren't multiples of 5, and doing coordinate math without those regular guide-lines can be a bit tedious. ... which isn't a big deal at all.

Squeakross is an extremely well-made nonogram game, and the interactive rat dollhouse that's wrapped around it is just delightful. Oh and it has a whopping 650! puzzles, like, damn.

Better than: Logiart Grimoire, Puppy Cross
Not as good as: Piczle Cross Adventure
After all of these cheesy puzzles: I've certainly got my picross fix for- oh, a Voxelgram sequel just came out? ... oh no.

Looking back, it's notable that BioShock's much-lauded narrative mostly occurred off-screen; Rapture's rise and fall, the fracturing of its society and infrastructure, are all over by the time the game starts. (Perhaps to Ken Levine's chagrin, as he's been trying to re-invent interactive storytelling ever since.)

It nailed that retrospective exposition, though - with dramatic audio diaries and poignant environment-art details - and the action-ey, adventure-ey flow of the game was really well-served by having that narrative as its background.

Experiencing those dystopian socioeconomic events in real-time would not be very fun.

I first booted up Deep Rock Galactic way back in May of 2020, for some COVID-lockdown virtual socialization. It didn't stick with me then; I was confused by the different mission structures, and the progression mechanics felt grindy. I moved on.

Years later, my Palworld and Ara: History Untold virtual crew was looking for something new, and ... well, now I'm hooked.

It was DRG's colorful and collectible-filled seasonal events, Yuletide and Lunar Festival and Anniversary and Great Egg Hunt, that actually piqued my interest; I loved that every few weeks we were greeted by new Space Rig decorations, and there were new holiday-themed twists in our missions. (I've been missing those events, I hope there's a summer one coming up.)

And it takes more than a little practice to "get it" -- to understand how each dwarf's mobility tools really work, and how to efficiently tackle each type of objective, and which weapon upgrades are worthwhile.

And then it takes more work to unlock the mechanics that make Deep Rock worth coming back to week after week, month after month: promoting your dwarves and collecting overclocks that can power up your weapons even further.

Is it a grind? Yeah, it sure is.

But once it clicks, once the mechanics finally make sense, the exploring-and-mining gameplay - with friends, with drinks, with the dwarves' lighthearted banter - and the unpredictable emergent moments of randomly-assembled missions, like when your Dreadnought boss fight is interrupted by a swarm of exploding bugs ... it feels worth some grinding.

But a [Fallen Order] sequel could inject some personality into [its characters], and if it focuses up on polishing a smaller feature-set - instead of doing a mediocre job of imitating four different genres - I could absolutely see Respawn delivering a Jedi iteration that's truly exciting from start to finish.

That was my wishful, optimistic hypothesis three years ago. But I guess the simpler and more-likely outcome for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was always going to be "more of the same" and, yeah, that's what it is.

Just like its predecessor, Survivor crams together Dark Souls map mechanics and stamina-based combat, poorly-interconnected worlds that "can" be revisited but aren't worth the effort, clunkily-controlled Uncharted action sequences, and a story with some well-acted scenes but which lacks an overall compelling (or coherent) plot.

The resulting mess is, well, it's kinda like when a game looks beautiful in a screenshot -- but real-time motion suffers from awful framerates or glitchy visual effects. What I mean is, there are sweet moments in Survivor - wall-running through a canyon, force-pulling a structure down to crush stormtroopers - and when you see intriguing landmarks on the horizon, hear an NPC talk about some side-story, or survey points of interest on the map, it feels like the game is promising a whole lot more exciting content.

But those promises are consistently let down by repetitive and punishing fights; by unclear and inconsistent platforming behavior; by underwhelming puzzle and exploration rewards (yeah, more lightsaber cosmetics!); and by a weirdly-paced story which is only really memorable for how absurd its third-act twist is.

... and by some truly incredible technical issues, even though post-release patches have made some progress, there are still glaring problems. My living room setup's GPU (AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT w/ 8GB VRAM), for example, just wouldn't load most textures (like other reports around the interweb: 1, 2, 3), making many sections of the game literally unplayable due to visual unclarity; I had to stream it from a different PC instead.

(no, this isn't what it's supposed to look like.)

As before, maybe a Souls superfan will get something out of this - particularly the unforgiving combat, which can be downright relentless as the game proceeds, like the Jedha Archive Darth Vader encounter was too tough for me even on "Padawan" difficulty - but otherwise, there's not much here to praise. I'm already struggling to remember those set-piece "sweet moments," days later.

If somehow, despite crippling layoffs, there does end up being a third Cal Kestis game: I don't expect it to be any different.

Progress: finished on Story difficulty.

... what was I doing here again? ... was it building a dark matter factory? No! that's right, I was blogging about video games.

Satisfactory has consumed me over the past couple months, late into the night connecting assembly lines, and early the next morning calculating production requirements for a milestone part. It's got that same "just one more step" addictiveness that Factorio hooked me on -- and while it's easy to summarize Satisfactory as first-person Factorio, there are some differences which help sustain that addiction even longer.

One is its world map, meaning, it has a world map: a deterministic and (at least partially) hand-crafted arrangement of diverse geographic features and landmarks. It's no Hyrule or Toussaint, there's not much "story" to weave into it, but Satisfactory's map is varied and intriguing enough that - while you're searching for more resources or tracking rare collectibles - there's a sense of "new," of freshness that comes from exploring (then exploiting) its nooks and crannies.

The terrain makes great use of verticality, not just for visually-awesome cliffside beaches and towering rock pillars, but as a basis for construction gameplay. Like Factorio, Satisfactory makes you rely heavily on conveyor belts to move materials around; but being able to build them in 3D space, and thread conveyors around hills and through valleys and even caves! adds another fun, well, dimension to the construction game.

(Although I do wish Satisfactory would make it easier to build ultra-long conveyor lines, 'cause having to draw out one segment under the length limit, then another, then another... can be a bit tedious.)

Satisfactory also includes some non-conveyor-belt logistical solutions, but - with the exception of a train line that supplied distant resources to my "main" factory complex - I wasn't very compelled to use them. (I had a cargo truck following a programmed path, for a bit, but that was more trouble than it was worth; and I never even bothered trying the late-game delivery drones.)

One more non-obvious difference between Satisfactory and Factorio is combat: there are hostile alien creeps in this game, including some absolutely hateful and GIANT jumping spiders, but they naturally avoid your buildings. You need weapons to defend yourself while exploring, but your factories don't require any defensive fortification, and you're always safe while hanging out around machinery.

That enables some coziness while you're building out factories and manually assembling parts, which is ... pretty great! It may seem strange that "idling" is a positive feature of the game, since it can detract from "automating" and "optimizing" objectives -- but being able to chill and take it slow is actually kinda nice.

Like I said, first-person Factorio is a straightforward - if reductive - way to sum up Satisfactory; it scratches the same itch, but has more staying power thanks to a well-crafted world and flexible mechanical design. Almost 200 hours later, I sure am satisfied.

Better than: Factorio
Not as good as: I dunno, like, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom?
Now that I've got my factory-building fix: guess it's back to real-life automation work. sigh

Progress: completed Phase 5, and all production milestones and research trees in version 1.0

Since it languished without an official English translation for almost 14 years, I was immensely surprised that Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit tells an incredibly good story -- not only an improvement over Edgeworth's earlier, chronologically-chaotic investigation, but one of the best in Ace Attorney's long history.

I was less-pleasantly surprised by just how shitty its (il)logical puzzles are. I've lamented this before - "sometimes-confounding evidence solutions" (Trials and Tribulations), "leap-of-logic evidence puzzles" (Apollo Justice), "expected connections are a leap too far" (Edgeworth's last game) - but I don't think any Ace Attorney game's been quite this bad. Maybe Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was worse; it's hard to remember.

It's worth spoiling one of the first chapter's deduction puzzles to prove my point. While investigating an attempted assassination:

• One clue is a photograph of the target, flanked by bodyguards, with a bright red dot on his forehead.
• Another clue is a red laser pointer found at the scene.

Can Edgeworth deduce that the red dot was painted by the laser pointer? No; he must first connect that photo to another image, from a newspaper article about the target, to deduce that the red dot is not a birthmark.

...

Investigations 2 is littered with counter-intuitive puzzles like this, deductions that seem unnecessarily obvious or evidence connections that aren't foreshadowed or hinted at all. And then there's Mind Chess, which despite being a thematically-awesome idea...

... uses mechanical rules that are never explained very well (I don't feel like I really "got" it until the game's 4th chapter), and punishes wrong guesses by rewinding - forcing you to re-attempt - multiple dialog-tree choices.

Bring a guide. You'll need some outside help to resolve these investigations.

And they're worth resolving! That's the thing: in spite of its mechanical frustrations, this "Prosecutor's Gambit" absolutely pays off.

In my last post, I called out the previous game's "sincerely confusing" chronology; Investigations 2 tells its story in-order, and also uses flashback scenes in sensible, clever ways -- fleshing out a years-old case with Edgeworth's dad, as it relates to a present-day investigation of similar scenes and characters.

I also griped that protagonist Miles Edgeworth saw "very little character growth" in his first game; Investigations 2 challenges Miles to learn from his reunion with Phoenix, to do more than simply move past his old "perfect prosecutor" ways and really question how he can serve the goal of justice.

(His character development here adds an exciting, satisfying dimension to the more-experienced Edgeworth we see in Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice.)

I also complained that in the first Investigations, without a regular courtroom or witness stand, supporting characters tended to "feel picked-up and then thrown-away"; Investigations 2 more deliberately and more frequently replicates an Ace Attorney "courtroom feel" when interrogating subjects in the field, developing their stories and stressing-out their personalities over multiple rounds of dialog combat. It even has a traveling judge!

Investigations 2 totally paves over its predecessors' narrative gaps, on top of maintaining this franchise's flair for delightfully absurd characters...

... and for, I can't say this enough, expert localization that positively oozes personality and charm.

This may be my favorite Ace Attorney soundtrack, to boot. Especially when Edgeworth is pushing his cross-examination (and Mind Chess) opponents hardest, this music is some of the pulse-pounding-est that Capcom's ever produced, more thrilling than Apollo Justice or even Mega Man ZX. I've never been so pumped to click dialog choices and watch text appear in a box.

I'm so glad to have finally played Edgeworth's story -- and that's really what Investigations 2 feels like, regardless of recurring guests like Gumshoe and Larry, regardless of references to other games' cases. This is a story about Miles Edgeworth, standing proud and strong on his own.

Better than: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies
Not as good as: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice (... though it'd be close, if this game's logic puzzles weren't so stupid)
So that's the whole series remastered, then: wonder if we'll survive long enough to see a new Ace Attorney game.

Fifteen years on, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth might still be my least-favorite Ace Attorney game. But! the Collection's high-def remake improves the game, enough that it's satisfying to play through despite some deep flaws.

Edgeworth's side-view investigation scenes work better on a big screen: where hunting for clues on an NDS touchscreen was a fiddly squint-and-poke exercise, now there's plenty of room to walk around and much more detailed art to grab your eye.

Likewise, high-resolution character portraits and backgrounds let this game lean farther than it once did into the Ace Attorney franchise's flair for drama.

As always, Ace Attorney shines when its absurd characters are front and center -- but Edgeworth's cases just don't exploit that as much as Phoenix's and Apollo's. Although investigation scenes do include Cross Examination-like dialog combat, and Edgeworth's opponents react bombastically when their contradictions are pointed out, the game almost never uses these in sequence to continue building tension. Instead, most witnesses or suspects tend to feel picked-up and then thrown-away before their character has had a chance to develop.

Edgeworth himself experiences very little character growth, only showing slight development in the final chapter by begrudgingly acknowledging the "turnabout" logic championed by his blue-suited friend. (Who goes weirdly unnamed, despite other cameo guest appearances.)

Not that a deep-dive into Edgeworth's story would be easy to follow, anyway, as this game's chronology is sincerely confusing: its 2nd and 3rd chapters take place before the 1st, then after a 4th-chapter flashback to years earlier, chapter 5 picks back up where chapter 1 left off. I don't think the order of narrative events needed to be this disjointed; I think the game was just poorly paced.

And so long as I'm being negative, same as I lamented in 2010, the "Logic" mechanic of connecting clues to reach a conclusion is neat when it works but often feels like bullshit. Many of the game's expected connections are a leap too far, or alternatively so obvious that I couldn't believe Edgeworth needed help to reach the conclusion.

So yeah, this is definitely a weaker Ace Attorney game, between mechanical awkwardness and rough story pacing and lack of memorable characterization. But like I said at the top, remaking its character art and its investigation scenes in high definition succeeds in elevating Ace Attorney Investigations to feel more at-home among its courtroom peers.

The rogue-like genre, or more abstractly resetting progress as a game mechanic, isn't generally my thing. But sometimes a die-and-retry game does something cool enough to suck me in, like Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Desolation of Mordor's Batman-like gadgets. In God of War Ragnarök: Valhalla's case, it was story.

It seems light at first: Valhalla's premise, set after the events of God of War Ragnarök, is a thin mystery (who invited Kratos to Valhalla?) and a gradually-revealed post-ending beat (Freya setting Kratos up as the new, uh, God of War).

But as you push farther into Valhalla's labyrinth, a more meaningful narrative's dots start to connect -- referencing Kratos's previous exploits in Greece, his regret and guilt, and his desire to "be better."

It does struggle a bit with, well, the passage of time; I can barely remember what Kratos did 15-20 years ago on PS2. But Valhalla uses its Kratos-and-Mimir banter and some animated flashback scenes to recap the relevant points.

(Valhalla also re-introduces the Blade of Olympus weapon as a Rage ability, which is fucking rad.)

I'm still not a huge fan of re-playing combat gauntlets with randomized upgrades - which is why I only bothered with Valhalla's easiest "Show Me Will" difficulty - but this DLC mode gave me the narrative content I wanted without wearing out its welcome.

Better than: Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Desolation of Mordor
Not as good as: Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores
Though...: I do not have the patience to re-run Valhalla enough times to see Sigrun's full story.

After 50 more hours of following Kratos and Atreus across the realms, meeting new mythic figures - including Freya's hard-partying brother Freyr, and an endearingly-sarcastic Odin (bless you Richard Schiff) - defeating more fantastic monsters, fulfilling more dramatic prophecies, and watching father and son (and dwarf friends! and severed-head counsel!) develop more character through emotional conflicts, I wouldn't say that God of War Ragnarök is "better" or "worse" than its 2018 predecessor.

Ragnarok is the same kind of game, but its strengths and weaknesses are a little different.

It's bigger, covering more ground and involving more personalities than the journey to Jotunheim -- and though some of Ragnarok's locations and characters are still minor (see: Helheim, Fey), most of them are really significant and meaningful, with copious amounts of environment traversal and collectible objectives and voice-acted dialog.

This amount of written narrative prevents the story from having a focused, emotional poignancy like Kratos and Atreus's earlier tale. Ragnarok has heartstring-tugging story beats, and it succeeds in showing characters' personal struggles and growth; the ending even provides them with satisfying closure (bittersweet, in some cases). But its cast is just too big, and those character arcs too numerous, for any one of them to be "the" story ultimately tying the game together.

Occasionally those individual arcs also disrupt the game's pacing, by spending too much time stuck in one place. Ragnarok's main story quest has many sequences which "railroad" you into a linear series of objectives, without a free-roam break, while one NPC or another tags along as a temporary companion. And although the new companions are refreshing at first, some of those mission sequences go on way too long and wear out their location's welcome.

On the other hand: the glut of optional content in Ragnarok's wide and varied worlds is a lot of fun to play in. The last game's Lake of Nine was a contained, but rich and enjoyable area to explore -- this time there are more, and they're still great. Vanaheim's jungle and "crater" regions, Alfheim's desert barrens, Svartalfheim's claustrophobic dwarf mines and industrialized bay, plus Midgard's now-frozen-over lake ... are all chock-full of high-quality side-stories and puzzles and collectibles.

On top of which, Ragnarok's post-game quests avoid the extended grindiness of last time, what I recently called "multiple tedious runs through Muspelheim and Niflheim." Well... this Muspelheim is still a little repetitive, but I got all the equipment-upgrade materials I needed much more quickly than before.

(I haven't tried the post-launch Valhalla mode yet, though; maybe that's where the grind is.)

As before, there's probably more combat than a narrative-motivated player like me really wants. And the complexity of this game's equipment customization is no better -- Ragnarok smartly eliminates per-armor enchantments, but foolishly adds more armor slots as well as more customizations for Atreus (and his occasional Freya stand-in). But playing on "Give Me A Story" difficulty saved me from having to worry too much about either of those gripes.

In the end, I may not remember Ragnarok's story as fondly as the previous game's, but it was still a thrilling adventure and the amount and quality of sidequests definitely make up for it. As far as world-ending prophecies go, this was a pretty good one.

Better than: Middle-earth: Shadow of War
Not as good as: Horizon Forbidden West
Most of all, I'll miss: Brok's irreverent name-calling, especially as a temporary combat buddy.

Progress: Finished on "Give Me A Story" (easiest), all map objectives and all Favors.