Thesis statement: Red Dead Redemption 2 is a $450 million (source) wildlife simulator.

I could go on, and on, and on, about how slowly RDR2 tends to move. Not in the same way as John Marston's story, that is, Arthur Morgan doesn't need to herd cattle or break horses for two hours before something interesting happens... but.

He does need to ride his horse from point A to B, for minutes at a time, in and between practically every mission. Sometimes the narrative scripting skips this ride, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a riding companion will provide dialog, and sometimes they won't. Sometimes there's a "fast travel" option at A to go directly to B, and usually there isn't.

And I could similarly go on and on and on about the absurd number of gameplay mechanics in RDR2 - 20 hours in, the game was still tutorializing new activities (like fishing!) - as well as how player-hostile the controls for those mechanics are.

Letters and books share inventory space with animal meat ... except when they don't, depending on which vendor you're talking to. Some guns need to be cocked inbetween shots, which is done with the fire button. Sometimes the aim button gives you dialog choices, and sometimes it points a gun, removing dialog choices. I missed a cutscene because the "run" button is the same as the "skip scene" button.

And don't get me started on how fidgety and fiddly position-sensitive button prompts can be.

And, I could continue going on!, about how these and other problems interfere with RDR2's storytelling -- from attempts at re-watching cinematics getting stuck on infinite loading screens, to the (spoilers) final story mission actively punishing attempted gameplay. ("Stay behind cover. You aren't meant to shoot [the guy] here.")

The story of Arthur Morgan and the Dutch van der Linde gang is good, but it's 20 hours of good story stretched out over 50 hours of actually playing it.

What's shocking about these various shortcomings is that they all sabotage the very "sandbox" formula that Rockstar is known for: optional activities are frustrating to play, exploring the map is overly laborious, and it's impossible to move through the story at your own pace. Like, literally, there are so many scenes where you can't run! and so many other scenes where NPCs yell that you're walking too slowly!

While Red Dead Redemption 2's story can be good, and its shooting can be fun, and its optional activities can be interesting, the game goes out of its way to prevent you from focusing too much on any of those.

Therein lies my conclusion: the only thing that it doesn't prevent you from focusing on, in fact, the thing it frequently forces you to focus on, is watching varmints and livestock and other cowboys run through the wilderness as you're on your way to some mission objective.

And the quality of those floral and faunal animations is top notch. So, for a wildlife simulator, Red Dead Redemption 2 is pretty great.

For an epic narrative, it's pretty good, except when it's slowing itself down; and for an open-world sandbox, it's simply not open enough.

Better than: Red Dead Redemption
Not as good as: Grand Theft Auto V
Hard to be sure, but probably better than: Grand Theft Auto IV, since this game at least has checkpoints.

Progress: Finished the epilogue.

Let's get an important warning out of the way, first: don't buy the Borderlands 3 Season Pass 2. It is an absolute rip-off.

If you bother reading into it before purchasing - which I, admittedly, didn't - it should be obvious why: this isn't a collection of extended story chapters, like the first season pass was (and like Borderlands 2's season pass was!). The majority of Season Pass 2's content is new skills, new cosmetics, new arena challenges, and new raid bosses; superfan stuff, which a superfan would already have via an Ultimate Edition or some similar bullshit.

The only new narrative content is a quartet of missions in the Director's Cut add-on, which sure doesn't seem like a "season" worth of content to me.

Alright, so, here's the good news: those Director's Cut missions are actually pretty fun! Moreso than the morose and melodramatic Bounty of Blood and Fantastic Fustercluck, these investigations on behalf of Ava's "Mysteriouslier" podcast demonstrate the kinds of irreverent humor and thrilling pacing that are peak Borderlands.

There's even a solid film noir aesthetic in its intro mission, which, well, is an instant "win" for me.

It's over relatively quickly, at about 2 to 2.5 hours, but "Mysteriouslier" manages to pack some pretty respectable quality into those hours.

Better than: Borderlands 3: Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax
But, and I can't stress this enough: this content is not worth Season Pass 2's $20-30 price tag, or even the Director's Cut itself at $15. Just consider it a nice bonus if you've already bought "everything" for Borderlands 3.

I liked Massive Chalice a lot more than I expected to.

Its broad, "Grand Strategy" scope; its deep, statistics-drenched, micro-management combat; and its randomly-generated characters and events; these are all significant turn-offs for me. But!

I was pleasantly surprised to find each of those concerns tempered by a light, fun attitude. Its bickering voice cast brings an entertaining personality to the otherwise-sterile empire-building premise, and holds your hand through tutorializing combat and asset management. Even the randomly-generated content is pleasantly silly, assuming you choose the "Humorous" content option (instead of "Thematic"); then you, too, can recruit brave warriors like Catkicker Cooke-Gallagher.

And, at least in my initial campaign, I rarely had to sweat the intricate details of dynasty optimization or character loadouts. When a regent died, the game suggested replacement candidates to me; when I researched new equipment, my vanguard equipped it automatically. By my campaign's end, selecting the best new hero or the best new researcher or et al was a triviality, every time.

This isn't a genre I ordinarily get into, but for exceptionally well-polished entries like Civilization and its "just one more turn" addiction loop. So I was surprised to find that Massive Chalice tapped into that same addiction; every time I finished a battle, or placed a new regent, I was eager for the next thing, the next event ... whatever that might happen to be.

I won't be starting a new campaign anytime soon, and I'll never forget how repetitive Massive Chalice's combat encounters and empire planning got by the end. But I had an unexpectedly fun time learning those limits, and I won't forget that fun, either.

Progress: finished a Normal campaign.

I mean, yeah, Splasher's paint-twisted platforming feels pretty fresh: bouncing between walls and running along ceilings to get through dangerous, sawblade-filled laboratories is exciting! Fun, even! And at least at first, doesn't feel punishing.

But it's got the narrative hooks of a Splosion Man - that is, none - which made me suspect that its "appeal" would turn out to be raw, brutal challenge. And looking ahead a bit, I can see ... yeah. I don't have the patience for that many lasers.

Glad that I tried more of it, but I'm convinced enough that the rest of the game would be "not for me."

Progress: Finished level 4.

Tembo is a better Sonic, but not by enough.

See, unlike Hell Yeah!, which landed somewhere between "reference" and "parody" -- Tembo actually channels the spirit of a Sonic game, in that it allows you to turn into a destructive ball and charge through obstacles at high speed. And it doesn't destroy you when you take damage, instead stealing just a portion of your health meter. And there are checkpoints!

Tembo makes meaningful strides toward letting you go fast, without punishing you for going "too" fast. But... it doesn't go far enough.

It's not so much the short walls, requiring a jump; or the resilient barriers, requiring multiple hits; but the surprise hazards, enemies with machetes or flame cannons or ... flame tanks? Even when Tembo forgives you for a momentum-defeating mistake, it still doesn't feel fair, because it's not your fault that the game suddenly decided that you need to stop and reverse direction.

It's also an unfortunate example of user-unfriendly PC porting, between the obviously unhelpful tutorial prompts for my Xbox gamepad:

... and some surprising crash diagnostics when I alt-tabbed away:

It's not like Tembo is bad - I mean, the PC port ain't great - it's just, well, it recognizes that "fast sidescrolling" can be improved upon but doesn't execute on many of those improvements.

Progress: Got to the first Phantom Dome before getting lost in what was apparently a ping-pong battle.

Semblance does an impressive job of explaining its mechanics without explaining them -- like the infamous opening of Super Mario Bros., it places elements in such a way that you'll learn how the game works practically by accident.

And, those mechanics are both pleasantly simple and refreshingly inventive; it put a smile on my face when I realized that environment deformation could be used to "climb" sheer walls, by denting platforms into the side.

Unfortunately...

Actually solving Semblance's puzzles is less gratifying, because of the tweaky, fiddly imprecision of that deformable environment. Like World of Goo, or so many other physics-simulation platformers, it's way too easy to "almost" solve a puzzle -- but the ground is a few pixels too high, or the laser angle is a few degrees off, so you need to reset and try it again.

There also isn't any external motivation, no promise of narrative payoff for pushing forward. As far as I can tell, the story is "purple stuff got infected by green stuff." If my only reward for fidgeting together a puzzle solution is more puzzles, well, no thanks.

I really, really like Semblance's mechanical premise. It just needed to do more to keep me interested.

Progress: Collected some glowing purple things.

At least I was prepared for them, this time, and knew to focus hard on weak spots -- or just run the hell away.

At the end of the day, though, The Frozen Wilds is still "more of the same" ... "but smaller."

And while more Horizon certainly isn't bad - I had no trouble dumping hours upon hours into The Cut's objectives and collectibles - it simply doesn't measure up to the main game's high-points.

From a level-pacing perspective, I wish The Frozen Wilds fit more "alongside" the main game than "after" it. After Zero Dawn's thrilling main narrative, this can't help but feel like a side-story.

Better than: The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Hearts of Stone
Next time, Aloy, please don't: add even more material types to an already overstuffed crafting inventory.

Progress: 100% completion

Replaying Horizon Zero Dawn does suffer a bit from, for lack of a better term, the BioShock effect: its story is so memorable that you just can't be shocked and amazed by it a second time.

It's still a great story, though. And moreso than BioShock - certainly much moreso than BioShock Infinite - Horizon's gameplay is engaging enough to keep things interesting even inbetween story beats.

I do still have some qualms about how suddenly an enemy can evade your aim, and about how frequently their attacks can interrupt you; kinda hope that Aloy's next adventure gets clearer lock-on/seeking and maybe a "kung fu movie" combat system (enemies waiting their turn to attack).

But knowing what to expect, this time around, helped me focus on what the game does well: building an awe-inspiring world, digging into deeply-intriguing backstory, and keeping tension high with dangerous robots.

Ironically, going into Horizon's sidequests with lowered expectations helped me get more out of them -- not as interesting character moments, but as checkboxes on my completion chart, and excuses to explore more of the richly-detailed world.

It was also helpful to know I should invest in inventory upgrades as soon as possible, to mitigate Horizon's laborious mess of crafting-material management.

But I digress. Horizon Zero Dawn is still a triumph of game-making, and, not like I needed an excuse to re-play it, but this PC re-release is gorgeous.

Better than: Ghost of Tsushima
Not as good as: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (agh, still waiting for that new-gen update)
The PC version: has, unfortunately, set my visual and performance expectations for Forbidden West pretty high.

Progress: 100% completion

Yeah -- it was Claptastic Voyage, when Borderlands last took us inside a party member's "mindscape." Surprisingly, Psycho Krieg and the Fantastic Fustercluck makes several of the same mistakes.

Its aesthetically-imaginative level designs look neat, but enemy behaviors and arena layouts are no different from what we've seen before. (I could only think of one truly-new enemy, the rocket-riding psycho, which is a fun idea but not interesting to fight.)

By focusing the story on one character, and not a very compelling one at that, it neglects two of the franchise's typical narrative strengths: wacky tertiary characters and comedic character interactions. (Krieg's "sane" inner-voice straight-manning himself just isn't enough to carry the tale.)

And, though less-so than Bounty of Blood, Fantastic Fustercluck similarly tries a little too hard for some "serious" story beats. Krieg's heartache over Maya is borderline creepy, and his tragic origin story turns out to be a familiar psychotic-break trope.

This DLC also has a shockingly difficult final boss battle, considering how easy the rest of its encounters were. (Though unlike in Claptastic Voyage, we did actually finish this one.) Here's a combat design suggestion: when character options heavily feature "Kill Skills," buffing the player after each kill, you probably shouldn't make a boss fight that has nothing to kill.

Fantastic Fustercluck has a couple of cool ideas, particularly the segments in which you're chasing - and being chased by - a psychedelic train called Locomobius. And, I mean, the core Borderlands shoot-and-loot gameplay still works just fine -- nothing wrong with that.

But it never really capitalizes on its ideas; including Locomobius, which just ends in a boss fight where you shoot at the train a bunch.

Better than: Borderlands 3: Bounty of Blood - A Fistful of Redemption, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel - Claptastic Voyage
Not as good as: Borderlands 2: Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax, Borderlands 3: Guns, Love and Tentacles - The Marriage of Wainwright & Hammerlock
Krieg's tragic science-experiment backstory: feels like it might have meant to hint at a broader "origins of the psychos" plot point; I'm not really sure why this DLC dug itself in so deep, there.

Years after trying the demo, my thoughts on Ronin are largely unchanged: it channels the same cool-factors as Gunpoint and Mark of the Ninja, but its attempts to be more tactical than the former suffer from imprecision relative to the latter.

Those messy imprecisions unfortunately run head-first into the game's second enemy type -- a dude with swords who insta-kills you at close-range. The rules of engagement for this enemy are ambiguous at best, so dying again, and again, and again, while trying to figure them out... becomes real tedious real fast.

At least those die-and-retry loops are somewhat small, with mid-level checkpoints (unlike, say, Deadbolt). But that's not enough. I don't feel like the game is giving me the tools to learn and improve; just more chances to guess at a sequence of moves that'll happen to work.

Progress: Killed the old man.