It's funny, looking back at Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor, how I laid into them for stitching together too many under-done features. I should've known that Ubisoft could put them to shame.

Star Wars Outlaws is a spacefaring take on the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy's The Division framework: it's got parkour, stealth, shooting, brawling, lockpicking, hacking, driving, crafting, sidequests and collectibles and minigames, all sprinkled throughout multiple open worlds. It's ... a lot.

Stuffed to the brim with mechanics and content, Outlaws is an enormously complex production which, bluntly, falls far short of its ambition. It does deliver a compelling "core loop" though, if you can get past its rough spots.

Storytelling, unfortunately, is not part of that compelling loop. Though Outlaws puts significant effort into opening cinematics setting up its plot, and a playable prologue that establishes protagonist Kay Vess, that plot is almost immediately lost in unfocused chaotic tangents; and that protagonist is utterly pathetic. Kay keeps trying to pull off "charming scoundrel" like Han, but is such a bad bluffer, and is so generally helpless, she comes across more like a young Luke -- awkwardly out-of-place in the galaxy, constantly falling into traps and getting shot at.

Most of the Outlaws cast is one-note or less, characters who're defined by a singular recurring trait - like Ank who wants to explode everything - or whose backstory is relegated to a couple paragraphs in the Lore menu. There's no one really interesting to root for, or against, except for Kay's cute helper-slash-pet Nix; and the trenchcoat-clad droid copilot ND-5, who demonstrates more relatability and growth than any of his organic colleagues.

What I'll give Outlaws credit for, though, is its thematic world-building. Although it's hard to pin down any single "Star Wars vibe," this game does nail the aesthetics of seedy cantinas you'd expect Han to hide in, crowded street markets that The Mandalorian might lurk for intel, back alleys where Cassian Andor would happily make a clandestine deal. The game's detailed environment art and ambient NPC chatter really sell its locations; these iterations of Canto and Kijimi are more memorable than in the movies.

As for what Kay does in those engrossing locales, i.e. the gameplay, well. It varies.

Sneaking is supposed to be Kay's primary tactic - stealthily taking down guards, ducking into vents to avoid detection - but the rules feel frustratingly inconsistent. Sometimes an NPC hears you knocking his co-worker out, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes bum-rushing an enemy will alert the whole base at once, sometimes it won't. Sometimes Imperial patrols eventually give up searching for you, sometimes they never do!

And despite the game's overall complexity, Outlaws doesn't provide all the stealth tools you might expect, like hiding bodies or dual-takedowns -- so in many situations, where a camera can't be disabled or when two guards are patrolling together, trying to remain undetected is a real crapshoot. It's a good thing that a post-launch update remove forced stealth, 'cause otherwise I think a lot of missions would be borderline impossible.

Meanwhile, gunfights tend to be overly punishing, especially early in the game before you've found health-boosting equipment; enemy fire just does too much damage too quickly. Most of the time, it still seems like the game "wants" you to avoid combat instead. But! there's a fix for this: turning the difficulty down to the Story level.

I'm an unrepentant fan of this game's fights in easy-mode, where instead of fleeing stormtroopers in terror, Kay can sprint up to them while shrugging off blaster bolts and then punch their fuckin' lights out. It's silly and stupid and I love it.

Space battles - yes, space battles! - are an unexpected bright spot in Outlaws. Chasing pirate fighters and TIEs through an asteroid field, leading your laser blasts into their trajectories, dodging missile lock-ons, targeting a warship's shield generators in a strafing run; these dogfights aren't exactly a challenge, but they do feel like a high-potency injection of X-Wing or Rogue Squadron nostalgia.

(It's a bit of a shame that more advanced piloting techniques, like 180-turns, aren't available until you've navigated a convoluted tree of ability-unlock requirements.)

And then there's the speeder bike. UGH. Jerky turning and acceleration that keeps flinging you into walls, it can cruise over some hills while crashing full-stop into others, the summon/call function is even more disobedient than Roach! I was dumbfounded each and every time the call button brought it a few steps too far from me, into a spot which restricted speeders, and I couldn't get on it.

Missions and challenges with the speeder were some of the most aggravating parts of this game -- and its fickleness is emblematic of Outlaws's general execution problems. Like the wonky stealth mechanics, like the not-visually-clear Uncharted-esque climbing surfaces, like the labyrinthine city maps full of dead ends which make compass markers un-usable.

Like escort missions where, by the time you're warned that the target is too far away, it's no longer possible to catch up in time; mission failure is inevitable.

Like the times when you can choose which syndicate to support, getting a reputation boost with them, but - sometimes - you'll lose rep with another syndicate with no heads-up.

Like when you're doing a time-sensitive smuggling run, then walk too close to a story mission objective, railroading you into that mission and force-failing the run -- which penalizes your syndicate rep!

So much of Outlaws is unpredictable, player-unfriendly in a way that seems unpolished and unfinished. That's not a huge surprise, given just how many different systems and how much concurrent complexity is crammed in here. Despite Ubi's tens-of-thousands workforce, and a morbillion dollar budget, I don't know that even a Cyberpunk-style multi-year rescue effort could "complete" it.

Nevertheless, when the difficulty's turned down so you don't need to worry about getting shot, and when you're not stuck in annoyingly half-baked climbing paths or speeder races, there is real fun to be had in this game's open-world exploration and upgrade journey. Scouring world maps for equipment to improve your ship, unlocking new abilities through its "Experts" sidequests, continuously mixing things up with sneaking into vaults and hacking locked doors and blasting down Imps, all the while soaking in its rich, evocative environments.

At its best, Star Wars Outlaws delivers the same kinda-janky fun-as-hell empowerment experience that I loved in The Saboteur and Red Faction: Guerrilla. It's far from perfect, but I can put up with a dull story and messy feature-creep to get the opportunity to remotely detonate grenades in a trooper's pocket.

Better than: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, Fallout 4
Not as good as: Middle-earth: Shadow of War, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
And, I'll argue, better than: Red Dead Redemption 2 because, even though Kay's story is a joke compared to Arthur's, some of the mechanics and activities in Outlaws are actually fun.

I've previously observed that I tend to like LEGO tie-in games based on my attachment to that "tie-in" -- and Horizon Zero Dawn is a strong one to tee up. Unfortunately LEGO Horizon Adventures isn't as tied-into its inspiration as I was hoping.

LEGO games are kid-friendly by necessity, so it's not a surprise that Horizon's T-rated dystopian narrative would need some reinterpretation: LEGO Horizon presents a lighthearted, cartoony version of the original world and its events. Ancient technology left behind by "the old ones" is just a passing fascination, or a prop used for visual gags; Helis the mad Carja warlord is obsessed with sun, like, tanning in the sun; a holographic Elisabet Sobeck helps Aloy stop HADES the angry red sphere while glossing over the whole Faro Plague extinction thing.

I think there was some real potential in this idea, especially with the familiar voices of Aloy and Rost and Varl and Erend. (This Ashly Burch performance gives Aloy a little Tiny Tina energy, which is delightful.) But in practice, so much of Horizon is missing - not just the whole sci-fi backstory, but also Zero Dawn's contemporary stories, like Erend's quest after his sister; Sun-King Avad versus the Shadow Carja; the Banuk tribe altogether; heck, Mother's Heart is the only named location here - with so many omissions, LEGO Horizon's world ends up feeling almost unrelated to its inspiration.

Considering Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West had great big open worlds to explore, full of memorable places and people and moments; and considering some previous LEGO games (like LEGO LotR's Middle-earth, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes's Manhattan, and LEGO City Undercover's ... LEGO City) have also pulled off open-world exploration; it's a real shame that LEGO Horizon lacks any of that scope. Even this game's campaign levels are just pseudo-random arrangements of generic level "pieces" -- small sections of forest or mountain or jungle or desert, with loading-screen transitions inbetween each section. Sections which feel increasingly repetitive if you bother revisiting them in the post-game.

Which I did! Because I'm a sucker for this formula, for the popcorn-like collectibles to unlock, even though these too are a disappointment compared to past LEGO games. (LEGO Horizon has a ton of costumes and other decorative unlockables, but only four playable characters. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes had an unlockable Stan Lee!)

LEGO Horizon Adventures isn't a bad game, it's a perfectly playable iteration of the tried-and-true LEGO game formula established by Traveller's Tales. But a lack of meaningful connection to Horizon, and an underwhelming amount of content, make it one of that formula's weaker entries.

Better than: ... Hob ?
Not as good as: LEGO City Undercover, LEGO Marvel's Avengers, The LEGO Movie Videogame
Weirdly, though: LEGO Horizon was not developed by Traveller's Tales, instead being co-developed by Guerrilla and partner Studio Gobo. Kinda odd that they mimicked the button-mashy parts of TT's games, without the open-world or huge-character-library parts.

Shivering Isles presents a narratively focused, madly energetic alternative to Oblivion's open-world sprawl.

The expansion makes its distinct attitude clear as soon as you enter the Isles, see its bizarre landscapes, and greet its unhinged NPCs. These guys are nuts. And the introductory quests you get from those nuts - collecting bones from a garden, stealing a sorceress's tears - set the tone for your upcoming journey through even more weird environments, wild enemies, and wacky quest-givers.

The real star of this show, though, is Sheogorath. Once you reach his throne room and start taking his tasks to stop the Greymarch, the mad prince's candidly out-of-his-damn-mind personality becomes the center of the Shivering Isles storyline; his bonkers dialog is the narrative foundation that starts every quest, as well as the payoff for completing them.

Even despite Bethesda's continued reliance on the same voice actor forever, Sheogorath is written and acted incredibly, enchantingly well. (Which is why it's such a shame that the main quest ends with his Jyggalag alter-ego reciting a bland parting speech, and Sheogorath leaving forever; farewell, sweet crazy prince.)

Not to say that Shivering Isles completely re-thinks Oblivion's approach to world-building: the expansion's world map, though satisfyingly contained, still includes lots of dead area; and there are several bland-and-dreary mushroom caves in place of the main game's bland-and-dreary Oblivion Gates.

But it's nevertheless an exciting counterpoint, an engaging and self-contained story that shows promise for ... well, for Skyrim and its own expansions.

Better than: Fallout 4: Far Harbor
Not as good as: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dawnguard, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Dragonborn
I'm still not sure what I should expect: from The Elder Scrolls VI; hopefully more focused stories and more strong personalities, but if not, at least there'll always be plenty of these remasters!

Skyrim is still an incredibly fond memory for me: it was the first Bethesda RPG I dove into, and I loved getting lost in its vast, dense world. The constant tease of a side-story just off the beaten path, and the surprising depth of its lore, made for a thoroughly engrossing adventure that I wish I could experience all over again.

Oblivion Remastered's sudden release was a perfect opportunity to try fulfilling that wish; sadly, for a few reasons, it fell short of my hopeful expectations. It's still been a fascinating experience, though, even if my time in Cyrodiil hasn't measured up against its northern neighbor.

One shortcoming of Oblivion's remaster is - quite understandably - that its core content remains two decades old. The map may be huge, but it isn't as richly detailed as modern genre entries -- that "constant tease of a side-story" I was looking for is, true to this game's 2000s-era origins, more like "constant talking to NPCs for a quest prompt."

A lot of the content here is kinda repetitive, too: from those NPCs' frequently-reused lines of dialog (especially their insipid "rumors" which are frequently some sterile lore factoid) to the titular Oblivion Gate dungeons (full of disappointingly bland paths and dreary copy-and-pasted tunnels).

There are some great storylines to follow in Oblivion, the main story's quests are legitimately gripping, and faction-based quests like the Mages Guild and Dark Brotherhood are well-scripted with some exciting twists. Looking for more narrative in the map's nooks and crannies, however, hasn't tended to accomplish much.

Another let-down in this remaster is overall convenience and usability -- and, yeah, I know it's a Bethesda game. But even after Oblivion Remastered's many, many quality-of-life enhancements, some truly baffling game-script jank and UI flaws mar this experience.

Like the fact that you can sort inventory by item weight, but not quantity weight, so the 2.0-heaviness item that you have 1 of will show as heavier than the 0.5-heaviness item that you have 50 of. It's just math, guys! C'mon.

And there's the map icons for caves, forts, and Oblivion Gates which don't show any indication of completion, even after a gate is closed forever.

And the NPC behaviors and schedules which, despite all the remaster's patches, still do some silly things like the Skooma addicts who...

... Gelephor will never return to the Imperial City. This is because the door can only be opened by those in the Bravil Skooma Den faction, and he is not. Since he cannot use the door, Gelephor will always be found outside the Den...

Again, yeah, it's a Bethesda game. I know and you know and they know that some jankiness is to be expected.

That's part of one other reason why Oblivion Remastered didn't help me experience an Elder Scrolls game "all over again" -- it's already so familiar to me.

After 140 hours in Skyrim, then another 180 hours in Skyrim's Special Edition and DLCs, and then 140 hours in Fallout 4, I've accumulated plenty of experience points in Bethesda's "style." The world-building and quest-scripting techniques that I found so fresh and exciting at first, simply don't hit me as hard anymore.

Which isn't to say I dislike the familiar feeling of unraveling Oblivion's narrative threads. There's still juice worth squeezing here: even after 80 hours of saving the Empire and ascending the ranks of its major factions, I'm still not done.

The Shivering Isles await!

Better than: Fallout 4, The Outer Worlds, probably attempting to replay the original.
Not as good as: Baldur's Gate III, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Becoming more aware of Bethesda's patterns: has dulled my enthusiasm for Starfield, and made me a little more skeptical about The Elder Scrolls VI.

Rarely, very rarely, a game will come out and seem like it's "for me." Not just a new Zelda or another crime sandbox, I mean: occasionally it feels like a game has targeted me, personally. So while I really hadn't intended to splurge on a Switch 2 so soon, this collectathon platformer sandbox with destructible terrain forced my hand.

Donkey Kong Bananza absolutely lives up to the promise implied by a Super Mario Odyssey follow-up. Like Odyssey, every time Bananza reveals a new "sub-level" - a layer of strata on DK's way to the planet core - the environment is always joyously imaginative, visually delightful, and richly stuffed with details to discover.

Bananza very quickly establishes that its downward journey is about much, much more than dirt and magma; layers have their own flora and fauna, lakes and waterfalls, even simulated skies and suns. (The beach resort layer is one of my personal favorites.)

And like Odyssey, Bananza's continuous surprises and delights include a seemingly endless supply of game mechanics: every sub-level introduces new types of terrain which may be uniquely helpful or hazardous, teaching you new traversal techniques; and new enemy types which move and attack in fresh ways, teaching you new tactics.

The titular "bananza" abilities, where DK hulks-out (using bananergy) into a super-buff animal with special powers, are practically underwhelming compared to the crazy variety of game elements happening around DK.

And, of course, the collectible bananas and fossils littering the world can be used to unlock skills - and outfits! - which addictively feed back into that classic collectathon game loop of exploring, collecting, exploring more, collecting more, exploring...

Oh yeah, destructible terrain! Bananza's Red Faction-esque twist, despite being one of my favorite features in any game, is easy to forget because it's so embedded in Bananza's core gameplay.

Digging tunnels through the map isn't (just) a way of exploiting the terrain's intent, nor is it a shallow excuse to hide collectibles underground; DK's punch-based terraforming is an intrinsic part of environmental puzzle solving, those puzzles continuously evolving as new terrain types and terrain-combination reactions come up.

Donkey Kong Bananza is a compelling iteration on the 3D Mario formula, full of creatively awesome levels and mechanics, supporting a wealth of collectible-filled worlds to explore and conquer. AND THEN it slips in a ton of grin-inducing references to Donkey Kong Country history: familiar background theme music, Cranky's tedious rants, side-scrolling challenge levels...

The genuinely shocking reveal of the "real" final boss, and subsequent fake-out ending, and "really finally real" final encounter, had me groaning and smiling the whole time. What an incredible homage to the SNES games' own fake-ending bullshit.

Aside from occasional camera awkwardness when punching through tunnels - and I mean, that's pretty understandable - it's hard to cite any shortfall or disappointment in DK's deepest, punchiest adventure.

Better than: Super Mario Odyssey
Not as good as: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I guess?
All I want now: is more content! ... but, no, not this content.

Progress: 1000 bananas

I knew going into NieR: Automata, last year, that its full story was a multiple-playthroughs affair -- and since I tapped out after one playthrough, I never did get that full story. "Might be better as an anime series," I mused.

And yeah, it is.

Watching through NieR: Automata Ver1.1a doesn't, like, completely make sense; it successfully captures the same feeling of obtuse otherworldliness (a.k.a "unexplained, confusingly weird shit") as the game. But the anime sure is more-sensibly paced, absent the game's chore-like travel requirements.

On top of which, if I understood correctly (though, hey, maybe not) the anime script effectively combines the game's first and second storylines - 2B's and 9S's perspectives - from the start. Way more efficient storytelling.

That said, in the last few episodes it became clear that Automata's "full story" ... was never really here at all.

When the exposition finally does talk about how and why this world is the way that it is, a few suspiciously-specific keywords (particularly Gestalt) are overt enough hints that the foundations of Automata's narrative are in Yoko Taro's other games. So. That's a bit of a let-down.

Regardless: I still got more out of Ver1.1a's linear, non-interactive storytelling than I did from my "meh" experience with the game.

... 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.