A decade later, Saints Row: The Third Remastered still feels pretty good.

In many ways, it's surprising how ahead of its time the original release was. From its character creator with gender-unlocked voice options and equal-opportunity genital sliders, to its unflinching embrace of anti-hero cynicism and moral neutrality; the Saints may be homicidal monsters but they're likable, and the game's avant-garde material still plays well in today's social climate.

(Arguably, its use of prostitutes in activities and as NPCs could be a little less sexist, i.e. it could use some male whores. But the game is already pretty sex-positive!)

The open world of Steelport also remains a blast to cause trouble in, despite shoddy car handling and uneven aiming controls -- you can still suplex pedestrians, hijack cars by leaping through their windshields, and zap helicopters with a VTOL jet. And those are what's important, after all.

"Taking over" the city is still a ton of fun, even though modern sandbox expectations make Steelport's list of activities feel a little lacking. Between formula re-use - like, Snatch and Escort are pretty damn similar - and an overall low number of optional objectives; plus how hidden and confusing the Assassination and Vehicle Theft diversions are... I mean, I still enjoyed coloring Steelport purple, but its side-content is a far cry from Tsushima's or even Skyrim's.

And there are some opportunities for gameplay polish that, I think, maybe this remaster could have taken -- like the radio's small track list, missions that take too long inbetween checkpoints, the high cost of endgame upgrades (and/or the tedium of accumulating cash), and how mobs of enemies can sometimes grow into an infuriatingly large swarm (especially in the zombie mission).

So, sure, time hasn't left Saints Row: The Third in quite the shape I recall from 2011. But it still holds up pretty damn well, it's still fun and crazy, and the remaster has it looking gorgeous even by modern standards.

Better than: Agents of Mayhem, Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
Not as good as: Saints Row IV, I just honestly miss running up buildings like a superhero.
I don't care if they drop Shaundi, and Johnny Gat, et al: in the upcoming reboot -- Volition just needs to recapture this sense of zany fun, and fill the new map with hectic, destructive activities.

Progress: 98%, conquered Steelport.

Rating: Good

Here's the headline: Piczle Cross Adventure is basically what I "wanted" PictoQuest to be. It's an imperfect, but delightfully satisfying, hybrid of exploration-based adventuring and nonogram puzzle solving.

Piczle Cross Adventure is an open-world RPG, or maybe more accurately a Metroidvania, where progress is gated by items and obstacles; items are acquired, and obstacles overcome, by solving puzzles; and puzzles have level requirements, where you level-up by ... completing more puzzles.

I might argue that the number of puzzles needed to meet those level requirements is pretty steep, limiting the amount of the map open for exploration at a given time. But, hey, I was gonna do all the puzzles anyway.

Nevertheless, framing its puzzles within a creative and colorful world elevates Piczle Cross Adventure beyond most "mere" puzzle games. Exploring the map is way more fulfilling than just following a linear sequence of puzzle prompts.

It also helps that, although its story is silly and stupid, the game has a good sense of humor about itself.

There is definitely room for improvement, both to the "adventure" and to the puzzles -- more flexibility in exploration would be great, as would some clarification of current objectives (like a quest list). And the puzzle interface doesn't do well with click-and-drag over a row or column, and some of the hint-highlighting behavior could be better...

But! Piczle Cross Adventure succeeds where previous puzzle-hybrids have failed: puzzles are well-integrated into its game world, a world that has nuance and charm all its own. It's a puzzle game with a personality, which is no mean feat.

Better than: Murder by Numbers, PictoQuest: The Cursed Grids, Puppy Cross
Not as good as: Pictopix, in "pure puzzle" terms... but this is definitely the best nonogram-hybrid game I've played so far.
That said: I can't wait to see what's next in an iterative follow-up, or for other developers to riff on this formula.

Progress: 100%

Rating: Awesome

Borderlands 3: Bounty of Blood - A Fistful of Redemption commits what might be a cardinal sin, for Borderlands: it tries to tell a serious story.

I can definitely see what it was going for, with its "western but slightly different" aesthetic (bizarrely reminiscent of Red Steel 2), its narrator channeling a "truly gritty" tone of cynicism, and its attention-grabbing hook of (trivial spoiler) introducing you to the story's villain before you find out that she's the villain.

It's got some promising narrative starts -- the problem is that they never lead anywhere interesting. None of the story's characters - not even the villain who you personally meet, nor her primary foil who you help throughout the story - are characterized for more than a second. I still barely understand why Rose was doing what she did, and I never saw any consequential significance in the late-campaign revelation that "the company" who exploited and ruined this planet is Jakobs; like, does this affect our relationship with Wainwright? or the technology available in Jakobs weapons? or the balance of power among other weapons manufacturers? No, it doesn't seem to mean anything.

And it shouldn't be surprising that Bounty of Blood failed to deliver on its initial storytelling promises, because Borderlands has almost never done well with serious content -- including, recently and especially, the ending of Troy and Tyreen's story in Borderlands 3.

The whole game is built around moving fast and being a jerk. That's why irrevent humor fits so well in it, and why serious moments only ever "land" when they're brief and straightforward interruptions to a sequence of hijinks. Like we saw in Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep. ... but I digress.

If there's anything redeeming in Bounty of Blood, it's that this DLC introduces - or reintroduces - some wacky gameplay twists like a melee-able bomb plant, The Pre-Sequel's bounce pads (now in the form of ... also a plant), and Portal-esque teleporters. But, even these mechanics are used so rarely that they barely impact any of Bounty of Blood's encounters.

And the loading screen art is pretty cool. So, there's that.

Better than: Borderlands 2: How Marcus Saved Mercenary Day
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax
There was one bright spot of humor in this DLC campaign: the story of "Soapy Steve" is more memorable than anything else I saw in Bounty of Blood.

Progress: Finished the main quests, almost no side-quests.

Rating: Meh

Guns, Love and Tentacles is something of a love letter to Lovecraftian horror, and the summary of that letter is: wow, Lovecraftian horror means a lot of weirdly different things.

It's got an icy planet in deep space, barren but for tentacle monsters. It's got ancient evils who drop curses that drive people homicidally bonkers. It's got a creeptastic New England-styled town that's always dark, and whose citizens are perpetually terrified of answering the door. It's got an abandoned library built on top of a hidden laboratory concealing eldritch secrets. It's got a detective-slash-demon-hunter who's too amnesiac to remember what he uncovered.

It's got, uh, vaguely Nordic barbarians who battle each other for sport. (Was that ever a Lovecraft thing? Maybe not.)

Anyway, it's got a lot. And in attempting to do all of those things, while following the high-level plot of Sir Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs tying their knot, and gradually uncovering the tragic backstory of the villain who passed her curse along to them... it just doesn't get into enough depth with any of them to deliver especially well.

Gaige the Mechromancer (Borderlands 2) gives a great performance as an only-slightly overwhelmed wedding planner, especially when her companion Deathtrap helps you fight demons and cursed chumps. And Mancubus, the absolute creep-show at the venue's front desk, is a genuine delight. Otherwise, though, this DLC chapter's narrative chops don't really stand out.

What Guns, Love and Tentacles does outside its narrative is just fine, on balance with Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot before it -- these environments are a little less varied, but there is a real hub level with vehicle traversal, so six of one and et cetera.

It's a fine DLC chapter with some fun trails to follow and monsters to blow up, just not as poignant or cohesive as some of Borderlands's best.

Better than: Borderlands 2: Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty, Borderlands 3: Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot (given my personal bias towards space casino robbery).
"Too many margs" Gaige: is a pretty awesome character. She and Mr. Torgue could do some real damage together.

Progress: Finished the main quests, almost no side-quests.

Rating: Good

Space casino robbery is a strong pitch, and Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot ... partially lives up to it.

It hits some high-value targets: a cool space-station aesthetic, filled with the same Hyperion loader bots that were so fun to blow up way back in Borderlands 2; a cool soundtrack, alternatingly jazzy and high-octane action-ey as it adapts to the DLC's varied environs; and hilarious character events, with cartoonishly irrevent and violent hijinks that can only be described as "Oh, Borderlands."

But it also misses some prime opportunities squarely in its target area: the misfits you assemble into a crew don't get enough screentime to really shine - in particular, they don't bounce their awkward personalities off of one other, like any successful heist crew is obligated to do - and the villain is, well, not quite villainous enough. Given that this DLC is built upon the legend of Handsome Jack, I feel like its big-bad should have done more to outgrow Jack's shadow.

I'll give them credit for trying to form plot points around people stranded in the casino after Jack died -- like, that's a powerful premise, and portions of the supporting cast deliver on it more strongly than I'd expect. But, while surprisingly-entertaining segments like "Trashlantis" show interesting ideas, few of those segments are executed thoroughly enough to make them memorable on their own.

At the end of the day, the Handsome Jackpot is a really sweet setting for more Borderlands gameplay, which is pretty good. I just wish that it was a better caper.

Better than: Borderlands 2: Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep
Now I really want to watch: a Cowboy Bebop and Army of the Dead fusion crime thriller.

Progress: Finished the main quests, some but not all side-quests.

Rating: Good
Playing A Game Biped PC

Biped seemed like a neat little co-op adventure when I started it back in January, but one frustrating level turned into a "break" that, six months later, it seems safe to assume won't get un-broken.

The game has a slick aesthetic, with simple and straightforward UI cues, and a colorful world that just plain "looks" fun. And you can collect items to unlock cute hats!

But Biped's sweet and sugary looks belie some stressful coordination challenges -- as the game goes on, it asks for more and more-rapid synchronized actions between not just your own two hands, but also someone else's two hands at the same time.

It's not so harsh as Kalimba, but Biped still requires a level of shared-brain button-pressing precision that my partner and I just aren't going to get.

Better than: Kalimba
Not as good as: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Definitely not as good as: Pitfall Planet

Progress: Finished "Rainy Ruins" in co-op.

Rating: Meh

Toward the end of The Talos Principle, and especially when hunting for secret stars, Croteam's puzzles crossed the line from "difficult" into "exhausting" -- I enjoyed the game but felt no shame using online walkthroughs to complete it. Road to Gehenna picks right back up where the main game left off: with elaborate, lengthy, error-prone puzzles that saw me frequently throwing up my hands and reading a guide.

It's bad enough when the path to a puzzle's solution is obscured by a significant number of fidgety middle steps, but especially demotivating when some missteps mean that you need to reset the puzzle and start all over again.

Fortunately, "puzzle immersion" isn't all that Road to Gehenna has going for it: like the main game, it's structured around a fresh and surprisingly-nuanced philosophical narrative. And while The Talos Principle covered its material pretty thoroughly, Road to Gehenna manages to add to it in a satisfying way, with the AI personalities who got "left behind" and this world's equivalent of a rapture. Aside from some fun moments where robots absurdly misunderstand human history, it raises really fascinating questions about mortality and faith in the idea of a next life.

It doesn't reach the dramatic heights of the main game's plot, but the way it's told - with a virtual BBS and a cast of AIs writing their own articles, fan-fics, and shitposts - is pretty damn cool. Not quite as enthralling as Hacknet: Labyrinths, but similarly successful at building some personal investment in the game's world.

So, frustratingly complex puzzles aside, I'd call Road to Gehenna a worthwhile follow-up. Just, uh, don't waste your time with the secret stars -- unless you've got a passion for truly torturous puzzles.

Better than: Recursed
Not as good as: The Turing Test
Text-adventure content better than: Pony Island

Progress: Unlocked everything, with interweb hints.

Rating: Good

Ghost of Tsushima's beautiful open world is inlaid with engaging action gameplay and touching character stories. But not at first.

At first, the story is painfully vapid: Mongols are invading Tsushima and all these characters will talk about is "honor" and "code." Like, I get it, the Samurai are philosophically unprepared for the Mongols' tactics. And they will not. Stop. Droning on about it. In utterly emotionless dialog, no less.

The uncharismatic main plot steered my focus toward the game's other activities, which are... kinda good! Tsushima is rife with side stories, from the supporting cast's multi-stage tales, to small scattered vignettes -- rescuing a guy's family, getting revenge for a widow, investigating reports of ghosts in the forest.

Even at their most dramatic - like when the musician Yamato sends you on scavenger hunts to recover legendary weapons - none of these stories are exactly mind-blowing; they're mostly low-key insights into townsfolk's day-to-day lives. But they fit so well in the game's world, and engross you in it as you ride through pastoral flower fields, suffocating bamboo forests, and foggy graveyards.

This part of the game squeezes some of the same juice as Breath of the Wild, though lacking Zelda's exploratory climbing and hidden secrets. Roaming across the map, just existing in this world, is calming and satisfying.

And that's about all I can praise about the early game. Aside from an underwhelming main plot, the "combat" part of Ghost's combat-sneaking-hybrid action is ... pretty broken. I don't just mean that it's hard, although, it is hard, leveling significant demands on a player's response time and gamepad muscle memory -- but also, several implementation details seem wrong.

In open combat, enemies surround you from all sides, but the camera is zoomed in too closely to show them all; it doesn't follow your action, often parking uselessly behind some scenery; tilting the left stick is supposed to target that direction, but frequently enemy closeness overrides it and you attack something other than what you aimed toward.

Enemies and combat stances implement a rock-paper-scissors system, such that swordsmen require one stance to break their defense, shield-holders another stance, pikemen another stance; but the combat stances are unlocked gradually, meaning that until you've made enough progress, you just don't have the ability to feasibly attack certain enemies.

To switch stances, you need to hold the R2 button and then press a face button for the appropriate stance. But R2 is also the "pick up item" button, for example, when a felled enemy drops some loot! So you've killed some Mongols, their friends are still attacking you, you need to switch stances to fight them, you press R2, Jin leans down to pick up loot and gets hit in the back like an idiot. This happens all the damn time.

(R2 is also the "climb down cliff" button, so heaven forbid you're fighting Mongols on a cliffside.)

The thing is... this stance-based combat system, using diverse enemy types to keep you engaged and active, can be really fun - once you've got all the stances - aside from those mechanical fumbles. On the Easy difficulty.

I can't recommend this enough: I switched to Easy fairly early on, and although it is quite easy, I still had a lot of fun! Certainly more fun than dying suddenly because an enemy I couldn't see ate half my health bar in one attack.

As the game goes on, technique upgrades (read: level-ups) add even more variety and spice to combat -- and the main story does heat up in its back half, once Jin truly embraces the dark side of dishonorable tactics, leading to dramatic conflict with his mentor and father figure.

It's unfortunate that the game's third act, set in the snowy north of Kamiagata, is low on side-stories and replaces Izuhara's and Toyotama's gorgeous landscapes with barren, bland snow. And whoever's responsible for Mount Jogaku can go straight to game design hell. But by this point the story and combat are finally strong enough to hold their own.

In the end, Ghost suceeds in turning itself from "fascinating Japanese milieu piece" into "badass simulator with tragic character arcs." Slaughtering Mongols with a fully-upgraded Jin is a blast, and his allies' stories are ultimately fulfilling despite almost all of them sharing the same revenge-obsession flaw.

If Sucker Punch's next open-world game can pace its storytelling better, and fix those clear mechanical shortcomings, they could rival some of the genre's heaviest hitters.

Better than: Assassin's Creed III, and almost all the other Assassin's Creed games I've played.
Not as good as: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Batman: Arkham City, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Oh, and as for the online Legends mode: I got through the tutorial and already hated it. Forcing subsets of gameplay into class-specific selections is bad enough, but -- why are the button mappings different than in the main game?

Progress: Finished on Easy, killed all the invaders.

Rating: Awesome

Here we are at last, the end of my Mass Effect Legendary Edition journey. And the Citadel DLC, even more than Mass Effect 3's actual ending, wraps that journey up with a very satisfying bow.

There are two major phases to the Citadel DLC - a hectic cat-and-mouse mission pitting Shepard against evil clone Shepard, and ... an apartment party - both with the same "true" objective: reuniting you with the Mass Effect trilogy's cast of lovable misfits.

The somewhat-absurd premise of this DLC's combat missions is kicked all the way over the top by your squad's flippant, "fuck it" attitude toward evil-Shep. (As I alluded to earlier, Javik and Wrex get some great commentary in here.) This content makes very clear that it isn't about saving the galaxy -- it's about bringing back old squad members and having some fun with them.

And then you get to invite all of Shepard's current and former squaddies to a big party. For real. This mission tasks you with talking to your friends, and listening to them banter back and forth, make fun of Vega, speculate about the nature of Joker and EDI's relationship, et cetera.

I missed my Mass Effect 2 allies throughout ME3's story, so I love that the Citadel party gave me a chance to "catch up with" them again. And, with all due respect to the Reaper star-child and the galactic cycle... the best send-off for Shepard was definitely celebrating the friends she made along the way.

Better than: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax (also a reunion tour), Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut (the "real" ending of the game), Mass Effect 3: Leviathan
Not as good as: Mass Effect 3: Omega
I just wish: I'd done the Citadel party before Mordin's sacrifice, so I could've invited him, too! RIP you loquacious son of a bitch.

Rating: Good

Leviathan taps into a theme that Arrival just hinted at: Reaper research leading to a dark place. Leviathan takes that ball and runs with it all the way into cosmic horror, shades of Event Horizon territory.

So while it may not have the strong characterization of Omega, it's got plenty of intrigue and tension to go around. The final mission is masterful in how it builds toward and reveals the mystery you've been chasing all along.

And the narrative payoff from this scene is one of the most memorable bits of the franchise.

Leviathan gets credit not only for adding meaningful background to Mass Effect's overall plot, but also for great pacing, scene-setting, visuals and voicework delivering a dark sci-fi thriller tale.

Better than: Mass Effect 3: From Ashes
Not as good as: Mass Effect 3: Omega
Seriously: Leviathan's lore revelations enrich the entire Mass Effect story.

Rating: Good